In a Flash

by Donna Jo Napoli

  Karo-chan and I weed the vegetable garden. Neighborhood children play on the mission grounds, since school is out till the end of the month. They talk about the emperor in loud voices. One says his mother calls the emperor baka—fool. The next says, no, the emperor is bakayarō—stupid fool. The next calls him oobakayarō—big stupid fool. Insults fly from all sides. I listen in shock. This is their emperor, who is said to be a god.

  I work harder, faster. We’ve finished one row when Karo-chan throws down her hand trowel. “It’s too hot to work outside.”

  “It’s our job.”

  “Come inside, Simo-chan. We didn’t sing after breakfast today. Singing is a job, too. It makes everyone happy. If we go inside, we’ll find someone we can sing to. Please, Simo-chan.”

  I stand and wipe sweat off my forehead. “We can finish in the evening.”

  We go into the residence and pause to feel the cool air. A blinding light invades the room. Then a roar louder than any train, and we’re thrown to the ground. I climb on top of Karo-chan to protect her as things crash down on all sides. I cradle my head in my arms and wait. After a few minutes things stop flying through the air. Everything is quiet. And dark as night.

  I roll off Karo-chan.

  “Are we dead?” she asks.

  “No.” I rub my throat; it hurts. I scrape grit off my tongue with my teeth.

  “Did the house fall on us? Are we buried alive?”

  “Reach your hands up. It’s still air above us.”

  “It’s dusty.”

  Slowly the dust settles and the air turns more gray than black. We look around. The big window on the side of the rectory has broken away, and everything outside is gray.

  “Are you hurt?” I ask Karo-chan.

  “My knee got bumped. Are you?”

  Something is wrong with me. I don’t know what. And then I see the blood coming from my hand. The little finger of my left hand—something sliced it clear off. As I watch the blood spurt, my hand starts to hurt. “I need a cloth.”

  Karo-chan looks at my hand. “I’ll get one from the kitchen.” She stands. “Oh no.” We look; a pile of rubble blocks the kitchen.

  “We have to go out through that window.”

  Karo-chan takes off her shirt. “Use this.”

  I wrap her shirt round and round my hand, and then we climb out through the hole into the garden. We stand there, unbelieving.

  Everything is destroyed. The church, all the houses on the block, anything made of wood, collapsed. Those neighborhood children. Where are they? But I can’t bear to look too closely; I don’t want to see small bodies. I splay my legs to keep from falling.

  Tokyo all over again.

  But different. In a flash.

  “Go inside, Karo-chan,” I say slowly. “I’m going to Dr. Fujii’s hospital to get my hand bandaged. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “We stay together. Wait here. I have to get Lella. Wait!”

  “You can’t come with me.” But she’s gone. My hand throbs something horrible. I walk out to the street. The public bathhouse next door is on fire. The remains of the church catch fire now, too.

  Karo-chan appears at my side. With Lella. My crazy sister. “You’re right,” I say. “We stay together.”

  I climb a pile of broken stone and wood, and turn in a circle. As far as I can see, nothing but demolished buildings. Wood planks, fragments of glass and shards of pottery, shoes, toys…everywhere. Rice paddles and whisks and wire egg baskets and knives and spoons and chopsticks.

  I finally let myself see them. They are strewn all around. Bodies. I can’t even tell Karo-chan to look away; anywhere you look, it’s the same. The wind is hot.

  It looks like the end of the world.

  We stand, immobile, for who knows how long. Rain comes, heavy black drops. Karo-chan and I go back to the rectory, climb inside through the window, and hug each other in total darkness. I’m grateful for the beastly pain in my hand; it keeps me from thinking. But gradually my brain works again. We walk through the three floors of the rectory, calling out. No answer.

  When we go outside, everything is on fire—a giant sea of fire. People straggle by, bleeding and burned, all headed in the same direction. I remember now: in a bombing, we’re supposed to take refuge in Asano Park. We follow them, picking our way through scorching debris. When we get to the park, we stand in one spot and lean into each other. And, thanks be to everything good, there’s Father Cieslik and Father Kleinsorge. Scraped up and bruised, but no worse than us. They tell us that Father Lassalle and Father Schiffer are in the hospital, but both will survive.

  Father Kleinsorge washes my injured hand in the park pond and rewraps it tighter with Karo-chan’s shirt. “You’ll be all right. Stay with me and you’ll be all right.” I choose to believe him. We’ll do whatever the priests do, no matter what.

  Karo-chan and I hold each other as fires burn outside the park all day. All night.

  Somewhere in the middle of the night she whispers to me, “I’m sorry, Simo-chan.”

  “For what?”

  “I didn’t mean it when I said you were mean and that I hated you. I wanted Naoki-kun to stay with us. I felt safer with him. I was afraid. But you were right. I’m glad he’s not here now. And I’m sorry. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  7 AUGUST 1945, HIROSHIMA, JAPAN

  “No food,” people mutter in the morning. Gradually they dribble away, looking for shelters with food. In the evening we walk with the priests back to the mission. The concrete residence did not burn down, but fire gutted the inside. It’s a pity Karo-Chan and I didn’t think to take our money—Obasan’s money—when we walked through the rectory after the blast. But what am I thinking? Money doesn’t matter now.

  We go to the air-raid shelter in our garden and take out rice, then pick one of the miracle pumpkins remaining in the garden. The kitchen sink in the residence is still standing, full of dirty dishes from breakfast the day before. When we turn on the water faucet, it actually works. The walls are black, the furniture is all burned up, but the water runs! We cook rice and pumpkin. Emergency workers come by, distributing rice balls wrapped in seaweed. We add this to the meal.

  Karo-chan and I walk the ruins near the mission in a large circle and gather everyone we see. We all eat together on the scorched earth in front of the residence, as smoke rises around us. Military trucks pass, picking up the dead. Now and then a building flares up in flame.

  On the third day after the attack, Karo-chan and I walk back to the park with the priests and take a boat across the river. I dip my healthy hand into the water, which is still hot. We walk to the nuns’ home, the novitiate in Nagatsuka. They have electricity. There’s none in Hiroshima, so there’s no radio—no news. The nuns tell us that what hit Hiroshima was a special bomb—an atomic bomb. The Americans drop a second atomic bomb while we are at the novitiate, on a city to the southwest of here, Nagasaki. The radio says that one hundred thousand people were killed by the bomb in Hiroshima. They already guess that the number will be the same at Nagasaki. Black rain falls there, too.

  Once upon a time, long, long ago, when we lived at the embassy, a German telegram to the Italian ambassador threatened to reduce Italy to mud and ashes. The Americans made good on that threat—but they did it to Japan. Japan is mud and ashes.

  I listen hard in case the radio says something about Italy, but I don’t hear anything.

  There are no trees in Hiroshima now. Are there trees in Rome?

  We walk back to Hiroshima as night falls.

  The following days blend as we work nearly around the clock to help the wounded. The bomb blasted Dr. Fujii’s private hospital off its foundations and into the river, with him in it. He climbed out and even managed to rescue patients. Not many, though. So now he works in the only hospital that still
has some structure left, the Red Cross hospital. Karo-chan and I assist Dr. Fujii and Dr. Sasaki. Most doctors and nurses in the city were killed in the blast, so anyone helps however they can. And Dr. Fujii bandaged my injured hand. It feels better.

  The radio tells us Japan has surrendered. It’s 15 August. We are silent.

  That day we set up a generator in the backyard of the hospital so we don’t have to work in the dark. News comes from a trickle of volunteers from other cities who bring operating tables and X-ray machines for the hospital. I overhear Dr. Fujii talking to an elderly man as he pulls a thick spear of glass out of his neck and bandages him. Dr. Fujii says, “This bomb was an atrocity, a war crime. When the Americans come, they will apologize. They have to.”

  The Americans are coming already? That’s what surrender means, I guess. I clutch Karo-chan’s hand. We’ll hide in the rectory. No one lives there anymore.

  But what if the Americans arrest the priests? The priests are German, after all.

  Well, then we’ll hide in the hospital. Whole areas of the hospital have crumbled. But we know where to go.

  Over the next weeks, we stay alongside Father Kleinsorge, Father Cieslik, and the new priest, Father Laderman. It’s important to be close to one of them at all times, because people trust them; and everyone who sees us with the priests assumes we’re German, too. The bandage on my hand helps—we’re suffering like everyone else in Hiroshima. So they don’t hate us.

  One day, we have to run an errand on our own, and we learn that we can walk around freely. No one has the energy to look twice at us. They need all the help they can get from whoever brings it. A strange fever has come, and people develop reddish-black spots all over their bodies. They vomit blood. Dr. Fujii calls it radiation sickness. And Father Kleinsorge suffers from it!

  Outside the hospital, small children wander aimlessly, all alone, not even crying. One morning Father Cieslik stands beside us at the entrance to the hospital and watches the children. “We have to do something for them. Come.” We walk around for the next hour and gather the orphans into a group. “All right, it’s your turn,” he says to Karo-chan and me. “Do something. Make up riddles. Something children will like.”

  Has he gone mad?

  “What is the smartest animal in the world?” says Karo-chan to the children, just like that—as though she’s been planning this all along.

  The children stare at us, listless. Then a girl says, “Snow monkeys. They play snowball, just like children. My teacher told us.”

  “Good guess. You are smart. Very smart. But this time you are wrong.”

  After a bit a boy says, “The Akita dog. They’re loyal. That’s the best you can be.”

  I remember the mangy Akita dog that day in Tokyo, when the old woman gave Papà and Karo-chan and me three perfect sticks of fish studded with sesame seeds.

  “Another good guess,” says Karo-chan. “You, too, are very clever. But this guess is wrong.”

  They guess on and on. Every child guesses now. They cheer for each guess, saying it must be right, saying how smart the child is who made that guess.

  When they’ve all had a turn, Karo-chan says, “It’s the kaba. Right? Kaba is the reverse of baka. So it must be. See?”

  Everyone laughs. Everyone agrees. A kaba is a hippo and a baka is a fool. Just flop the syllables. I hug my sister, the riddle wizard.

  After that, every day Father Cieslik takes us with him to walk among groups of children. He carries a big tub of water. We scoop wooden cups into the water and offer drinks to everyone we pass, small and big. They bow quietly in thanks. They don’t spill a drop. We tell stories and riddles, and the children laugh.

  And when Father Cieslik gets radiation sickness, too, we go without him among the children.

  We are on our way back to the hospital one day when a woman grabs my wrist as I offer her water. “I couldn’t save my sister,” she murmurs. Her face is lifeless. She doesn’t cry.

  I should say what everyone says: Shikata ga nai. One simply has to go on. But I can’t. My sister is alive; we are among the lucky. I kiss the woman’s hand, over and over, till she lets me go.

  Weeks turn into months.

  On 11 September the radio tells us that Nagasaki is occupied by the Americans.

  On 6 October the radio tells us that the American navy landed at Hiro, close by Hiroshima on the coast to the southeast. The next day the American infantry sets up headquarters in Kaidaichi, even closer to Hiroshima. The radio says, “They come to ensure compliance with the terms of Japan’s surrender.” None of us know what the terms of Japan’s surrender are, so we don’t know what that means.

  The radio says, “The Americans will demilitarize the area, as they have done in Tokyo already.” We don’t know what that means, either.

  The radio says, “The Americans will patrol the streets.” We know what that means: nothing. There are no streets left to patrol.

  “All we know,” says Karo-chan, “is that the Americans are coming.”

  We keep working at the hospital, boldly moving everywhere the doctors need us to go. Father Kleinsorge and Father Cieslik are healing, but they can’t work yet, so we try even harder to make up for their absence.

  We label boxes of the cremated remains of the dead so they can be returned to their families. What was done was done. Shikata ga nai; it’s time to put it behind us.

  We scavenge the city for fallen tiles. The hospital collects them so that people can make roofs on the wooden shanties they will build on the ruins of their old homes as soon as the stench and ash are gone. What was done was done. Shikata ga nai; it’s time to look ahead.

  The Americans are here now, but we rarely see them, and only at a distance. Each time, my heart beats fast and loud, but I don’t flinch. Shikata ga nai.

  It’s November and winter approaches; the chill surprises me. Every day has been just like the last, like time stopped. But now I realize time is moving relentlessly. So few have shelter, and no one has warm clothes.

  Karo-chan and I come across a line of children singing the national anthem. They hold apples cupped in their two hands and nibble on them between words. Their faces are solemn but proud. Their bodies are skin and bones, but they are still standing. When they finish singing, I ask, “Where did the apples come from?”

  They run, as though they’re in trouble, but a girl shouts over her shoulder, “Yokogawa Station.”

  That afternoon I tell one of the young aides at the hospital about the apples. He says, “Didn’t you know? People gather at night near the Yokogawa train station. They console each other. A black market has sprung up there. It’s illegal, but…” He shrugs.

  Toward dusk, Karo-chan says to me, “Let’s go.”

  “We have nothing to barter with.”

  “So what?”

  We walk to Yokogawa Station and look, trying not to gape at wares and foods that people have somehow managed to find for sale. Karo-chan halts. She jerks her chin toward a couple of men off to one side.

  American soldiers. Looking at us.

  I put my arm around Karo-chan’s waist, and we make an about-face.

  A shout comes from behind.

  We run, but the soldiers are faster.

  They catch us by the arms, then hold on, gently, as they smile and chatter at us. It isn’t shouting; it isn’t mean. I tell myself that, but I can’t control my terror. I know they’re asking if we’re American, because their word for “American” is almost exactly like the Japanese word and the Italian word. I look around at the other people in the market, hoping someone will help us. They look away.

  One soldier points at his chest. “Joseph.” Then he points at me and raises his eyebrows.

  I can’t speak.

  He does the same to Karo-chan.

  She says, “Karo-chan.” She points at me. “Simo-ch
an.”

  Joseph blinks. “Simo-chan? Simo…na? Simona?” And he says more words in his American gibberish. I make out mamma.

  “Si chiama Simona, Sua mamma?” asks Karo-chan. She wants to know if his mamma’s name is Simona.

  It’s so odd to hear her speak Italian out in the open. I jerk and look around to see if anyone has heard.

  “Sì,” says Joseph, nodding. And in simple but beautiful Italian, he tells us he is Italian American.

  “Please,” Karo-chan says to me in Italian. “Please. Please now can I be Carolina again?”

  “Sweet Carolina,” I say in Italian, and we hug. The words soothe my heart.

  16 NOVEMBER 1945, HIROSHIMA, JAPAN

  In this past week, Joseph and Sam, the two American soldiers, have become our friends. We are friends with Americans! They promised they’d figure out how to help us. On Sunday, Joseph came to Mass, and afterward we sat and talked for a long time. He said the International Red Cross is handling displaced people like us. Slowly, though; the International Red Cross could take months to get to us. But he thinks he can convince the American military to help us right away instead, because Papà was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. Joseph managed to set up a meeting for us with an American officer.

  That’s where we are now, walking into a room. Joseph leads the way; Carolina and I follow. The American officer sits behind a desk and talks.

  Joseph translates into Italian: “Sit down, please, girls.” We sit in chairs side by side. “We have information for you. I’m afraid it’s…not very satisfying.” The officer blinks many times. Maybe he has daughters. “The Allied authorities worked with the Japanese authorities to search for information about what happened to the personnel of the Italian embassy.” He scratches above his eyebrow. “We’ve been thorough.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Carolina leans forward. “What did you find out?”

  “Yes…exactly. The ambassador and his wife were transferred from the Tempaku internment camp in Nagoya to house arrest at the Denenchōfu Church in Tokyo in the summer of 1944. They’ve now been sent home to Italy. They are as well as can be expected.”