Fires on the Plain

Private Tamura, a writer, is ridden with tuberculosis (TB) and is sent away from his company to the military hospital; the makeshift hospital refuses to accept him, as they are already full. Tamura is discharged back and forth until essentially ordered not to return and continue consuming supplies - he is ordered to commit suicide instead rather than return yet again. On his own, Tamura finds that military discipline has faltered as the Japanese army disintegrates into the jungle and subsists largely on yams. Tamura steals food from some local Filipinos while encountering disturbing evidence of the Japanese army's collapse. A despondent soldier blows himself up with a grenade, while others lie dying from malnutrition or injuries on the path. Tamura encounters two soldiers, Yasuda and Nagamatsu, who attempt to trade cigarettes for yams to soldiers who pass by; he declines the cigarette but gives Nagamatsu a yam regardless out of pity. Tamura desperately forages whatever food he can, while American aircraft occasionally strafe the Japanese army remnants with bullets. At a seemingly abandoned church, Tamura stabs a dog. He sees a pile of Japanese corpses nearby, but investigates regardless; he finds a cache of salt hidden beneath a floorboard, but is found out by two Filipino civilians. In a panicked haze, he shoots one; the other runs away, with Tamura's halfhearted shots missing. Tamura runs away with his stolen food before reinforcements come, abandoning his rifle in the process. Tamura joins up with some remaining soldiers from a different company, where he is told that the whole army has orders to attempt to retreat to Palompon. Tamura travels with them for a time, trading his salt for yams; the other soldiers morbidly joke that they practiced cannibalism in order to survive during the New Guinea campaign, although Tamura is unsure if it is actually a joke or not. The retreat to Palompon requires crossing an open road; as Japanese soldiers attempt to cross it at nightfall, they are easily detected and gunned down by the Americans and Filipinos. A famished Tamura prepares a white flag to attempt to surrender to a passing American jeep. Just before he runs out to surrender, he sees another Japanese soldier attempt the same act. The other soldier is gunned down by a vengeful Filipino woman in the jeep despite the American soldier's attempt to accept the surrender; Tamura perceives the shooter as the same woman he shot in the chapel. It is clear to Tamura that crossing the road to get to Palompon is impossible, so he returns the way he came into the jungle. Now delirious and perceiving corpses as talking to him, Tamura is found and saved from starvation by Nagamatsu, the soldier he had given a yam to earlier. Tamura is given bark, water, and "monkey meat". Tamura is bullied into giving his grenade to Yasuda, the canny superior whose leg was wounded and rolled up cigarettes for trade. After hearing a shot, Tamura chases after Nagamatsu; he sees that he had fired at a fleeing Filipino civilian, and that the "monkeys" he had been hunting were other humans. The loose alliance between Nagamatsu and Yasuda breaks down now that Yasuda has a grenade, as the two each fear that the other will kill them for their meat. After guarding the only source of clean water in the area, Yasuda is smoked out; Yasuda attempts to negotiate, but Nagamatsu shoots him. As Nagamatsu attempts to devour Yasuda, Tamura grabs his rifle. In the resulting struggle, he shoots Nagamatsu, who assures him before he dies that he knows Tamura will eat him. The scene shifts to post-war Japan, where Tamura writes a memoir. Tamura claims to awaken at an American field hospital in his notes and not have remembered what happened after shooting Nagamatsu, but dry heaves at the horrible memory regardless.