The Blossom and the Firefly

by Sherri L. Smith

  These boys’ uniforms are impeccable. They have not hopscotched around from base to base without anyone to care for them. Their hair is trimmed and smooth. Their shoes are pristine. These are the perfect tokkō pilots. The government should take pictures of them, smiling, apple-cheeked boys.

  “Hey, Little Flower, we hear you sing well. Will you sing for us?”

  I startle out of my reverie. Sachiko and the cloud watcher are calling to me. It seems my nickname has spread. And someone is telling tales out of school.

  “Come on, Hana, sing us a song!” Sachiko cries, clapping her hands. “You used to be so good at the cherry blossom festivals!”

  “Why don’t we all sing?” I say. She doesn’t know I’ve lost my voice for singing. It’s still buried on the mountainside in a ditch.

  N looks like he’s about to protest, but the other girls come to my rescue. Mariko claps her hands, and they all launch into “Dōki no Sakura.” The boys throw their arms over their friends’ shoulders as they sing—two cherry blossoms of the same season, doomed to fall, brothers-in-arms vowing to meet in the afterlife at Yasukuni Shrine. What should be a somber song seems almost joyful the way they sing it, like a festival drinking song.

  I should like to see the great Yasukuni in Tokyo, the Shinto shrine of our gunshin—war gods—where the spirits of our honored war dead dwell. With no bodies to bury, families pay their respects at the shrine. Perhaps when this is all over, we Nadeshiko Tai will make a pilgrimage, too.

  “Nakamura, you sing like a bullfrog!” one of the boys says to N. Nakamura. That was the name I couldn’t remember. Nakamura barks out a laugh.

  “I know! That’s why I asked the girls to sing instead!”

  They launch into another song, and I move my lips but stay silent, trying to distinguish each voice from the next. There is Mariko, with her high, sweet vibrato, a better singer than she thinks herself to be. And Sachiko, with her little-girl voice, earnest and off-key. Hisako sings in a breathy alto, as if she has spent the night in sorrow. And Kazuko sings the song exactly as we learned it in school. Even when the others stumble on the lyrics, or fail to reach a note, she is there, a baseline strumming through the entire composition. These are the girls of my unit. We are sisters here.

  The boys are a different story. There is Nakamura, with his toneless, deep voice, much deeper than when he speaks. I suspect he took singing lessons in a swamp, as his friend suggested. That same friend has a lovely baritone, like a wooden flute. But he is uncertain of it at times. And then there is the boy with the violin case. He does not sing, only listens, like me. Although, the way his fingers tap, I suspect he hears music just the same. The rest of the boys bellow as if shouting out of a passing train, not caring who hears them or how foolish they might seem. These are the ones who make me smile. I suppose that is a benefit of dying soon, not caring how one looks. All that matters is that they crash well.

  “Look! The sun!” Nakamura says, pointing my way. His finger chases away my brief smile. “Did you see it? A sun flower!”

  Sachiko giggles, and even Mariko laughs. I smile again because it pleases them, but my cheeks are red.

  A messenger arrives from the main office. The boys will have exercise and briefings soon, but it appears their flight has been delayed a day. Not by weather, but by strategy. The tokkō will fly out in waves, to crush the enemy with constant attacks.

  The boys cheer each other on with bravado, resetting their courage for the new date. Later, they will go over their aeroplanes together to assure their readiness. Then tonight they will visit the comfort girls or drink saké at Tomihara-san’s and eat egg custard until it is time to say goodbye.

  The messenger departs, and I, still blushing, excuse myself to see about their next meal. I hurry across the pebbled path, annoyed with myself, clutching at the sides of my monpé. Nakamura is a name I have learned, and now I will not forget it. Things will be harder now. But, I tell myself, it is only one more day.

  CHAPTER 15

  TARO

  Spring 1943

  Taro pressed a hand to the sun-warmed window as the bus came to a stop. This was it. Oita Air Cadet School sprawled before him in a series of low wooden buildings and a few more modern ones. It looked like a school, not a military base.

  “Where are the airfields?” the boy beside him demanded. Nakamura was his name.

  “Kenji Nakamura,” he’d introduced himself earlier using the Western name order—given name first—and with a Western handshake that clipped Taro in the forehead mid-bow. He’d confided he thought it made him sound more sophisticated. It didn’t, really. “I’m going to be a fighter pilot, like Kashimura Kanichi. How about you?”

  “Why are you shouting?” Taro had asked. Nakamura’s voice was forte, as Taro’s violin teacher would say. The loudest of the loud. Or was it the strongest of the strong? That would suit Nakamura, too, Taro had decided, rubbing his forehead. Nakamura had given him a lopsided grin.

  “Sorry.” He had dropped from a bellow to a husky voice, as if he’d just woken from a nap, reminding Taro of a grumbling frog. “I’ve got two brothers, and we live by the train tracks.”

  Now he was pushing his way to the window, inside voice forgotten. “Maybe behind those buildings?”

  “What?” Taro was lost.

  “The airfield. You know, aeroplanes. Flying?” Nakamura made a propeller sound and flew his hand through the air. “They must be behind those buildings.”

  “No, you ninny,” a boy said from the seat in front of theirs. From his air of authority, Taro guessed he could be as old as seventeen. “This is cadet school. No different than high school, except we get to wear uniforms and learn the military way. We won’t see any planes for a full year, assuming we don’t screw up here. Flunk, and you’re infantry for sure.”

  Nakamura laughed. “Flunk? Not me. I was born to fly. Right, Taro? Fighter pilots all the way.”

  “Only birds are born to fly,” Taro replied, gazing out at the school grounds. A worm of worry burrowed in his belly. “The rest of us have to learn it.”

  * * *

  —

  “Inhale . . . breathe out.”

  Taro exhaled in a sigh.

  “Open your eyes wider. Look left. Right. Up. Down. Good.”

  The base doctor made notes on a chart. He thunked Taro’s knee with a small rubber reflex hammer, making the leg jump, and had a nurse draw some blood. “For tuberculosis and other ailments,” the doctor explained.

  “All right. I’m going to have you run in place for five minutes and then take your pulse. Do you know how to do this?” The doctor placed a finger on Taro’s neck, explaining pulse points. Taro did as he was told. It must have been satisfactory. He was given new clothing and assigned to a barracks that held almost a hundred other boys. Nakamura was waiting when he got there.

  “How did you finish before me?” Taro asked. They’d been called in alphabetically, and Inoguchi Taro came well before Nakamura Kenji.

  “Extra healthy, I guess. Maybe when they took my heart rate, I ran faster than you.” Nakamura waggled his ears and lay back on the bottom bunk.

  Taro laughed. “Did you show them that trick?”

  “You bet. The nurses loved it. Only great warriors can control their ear muscles. Hey, I saved you a spot.” He pointed to the upper bunk bed. “We can share this one,” he said in his husky indoor voice. The other boys were already unpacking. Taro looked at the footlocker at the base of the bed. It would hold his shoes, but little else.

  “Do you mind if I take the bottom bunk?” he asked.

  “Not at all. Us pilots need to get used to heights,” Nakamura said with a grin.

  “Are you afraid of them?” Taro asked, surprised, as Nakamura moved his things to the top bunk.

  “Afraid? No. Unacquainted with, yes. The tallest thing I’ve ever been on is a mountain, but both my
feet were on the ground, so it doesn’t count. What about you?”

  “My father is a pilot. He was an aircraft engineer before the war.”

  “He ever let you fly?”

  “No, but I’ve been up. I was little, though, and sitting on my mother’s lap. Then the war in China started, and there were no more pleasure flights.”

  “I know what you mean. We used to go on picnics down to the sea, my whole family—brothers, cousins, aunties and uncles, grandparents, too. But that many people out in the open is a bad idea these days. Not to mention picnics are a lot less fun with rationed food.”

  Both boys sighed. Taro slid his violin under his bunk.

  “What do you suppose the food will be like here?” Nakamura asked. “My brother says in the army they have all the fish and saké they can handle.”

  Taro tugged at his new uniform. It was thick olive-drab cotton in a Western style. He liked the cut of the jacket. He should find a way to send a photograph to his mother. “I hear they save the good stuff for officers and pilots.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Nakamura said, leaning on an elbow to look down at Taro. “But we’re going to be pilots soon. It wouldn’t do to starve us. We need our strength! What’s that you’re hiding away there?”

  “It’s not hidden. Just trying to keep it safe.”

  “Is it a shamisen?”

  “No. A violin. I’ve been playing since I was a kid.”

  “A fiddle, eh? Do you know any jazz?”

  “It’s a violin, not a trumpet. Or a fiddle.”

  Nakamura shrugged and lay back on his bed. “Well, let me know if you learn some jazz. That would be worth listening to.”

  * * *

  —

  The older boy had been right. Life at Oita was not much different from Taro’s junior high school. Except, instead of regular teachers, they had a mix of civilian and military instructors. And instead of going home at the end of the day, they convened in a dining hall like private-school kids. They slept in cots or hammocks in the barracks, instead of on clean white futon at home. And, of course, there were the uniforms and rifles.

  “Have you ever fired one before?” Nakamura asked him the first day they were assigned their weapons. They stood in line, waiting for the rest of their class to retrieve a gun from the weapons master.

  “Never,” Taro replied. He was bleary-eyed from the six a.m. wake-up reveille and burst of morning exercises. Now that they were gunkoku-shōnen, or military youth, the boys were expected to run everywhere in unison. At first it was fun, but as the days grew warmer, it just left him sweaty and sore. The lieutenant in charge promised they would soon become hardened to the discomfort. The Emperor needed fit soldiers, not soft schoolboys. Still, Taro would have given a lot for more than a two-minute dip in a hot furo bath—preferably one not crammed with ten other boys.

  To make matters worse, he wasn’t even sure he had buttoned every hole properly on his shirt. His jacket hid any mistakes for now, but there would be a uniform inspection in a couple of hours, before classes started. He’d have to figure it out somewhere between breakfast and study period.

  And now he had a rifle to worry about. He held it gingerly against his chest as they waited for the rest of the weapons to be assigned. “I’m a city kid. What would I be shooting at?”

  Nakamura shrugged. “Rabbits? My father hunted rabbits, but I guess he used snares, not guns. Boy, would he like to get his hands on something like this!”

  Taro laughed but quickly turned it into a cough when he caught their commanding officer glaring at him. Laughing was not the military way, especially not in formation. Transgressions were punished. Severely. Two boys had been punched by the inspection officer their second day for not having polished their boots properly. Laughing would earn him a hard slap at the very least.

  Nakamura had straightened, his rifle held over his shoulder, the perfect specimen of an army man. Taro mimicked him until they were sure the CO wasn’t looking.

  “What was that for?” Nakamura frog-whispered.

  “Your dad’s a soldier now, Nakamura. He’s got a rifle twice this size.”

  Nakamura’s eyes widened. “That’s right! Boy, I’d like to get my hands on something like that!”

  Taro snorted, but managed not to laugh. The rifles were impressive, but everything about the military life was making an impression on Taro. He had been used to reciting the Imperial Rescript for Education at the start of each school day, but now they had a Rescript for Soldiers and Sailors to memorize. His days were filled with lessons and inspections and drills in the yard. He sparred with Nakamura and the others in kendo, fighting each other with sticks the length of his body, as the samurai had once fought with swords. He learned about military planning and mentality. And now he would learn to clean and care for his firearm.

  The last rifle assigned, the boys came to attention and paraded across the grounds to the firing range, where two lieutenants ran them through the workings of their new weapons. Taro’s fingers shook a little as he loaded his first bullets. At the lieutenant’s command, he took aim and squeezed. The trigger was stiff and slow to respond. When it did, the recoil slammed the butt of the gun into Taro’s shoulder. His ears rang and, most surprising of all, tears came to his eyes. He blinked them away, blaming them on the dull ache in his arm.

  “Quite a kick, eh?” the lieutenant shouted. Taro rolled his shoulder, wondering if it would affect his playing. Violinists needed strong arms for proper positioning. Not that he had played much since arriving at the school. Once he had his routine down, he would make time, he told himself. For now, he lifted the rifle—his rifle—and took aim once more.

  Beside him, Nakamura was grinning. “Aw, worried about your precious violin arm? Don’t look so sad. Rifles are infantry stuff. We’re gonna be pilots. Eagles don’t use rifles—they have claws!”

  * * *

  —

  Taro missed both of his parents, but his mother most of all. She would have been proud of his grades. He scored well in math and in history. He learned the ranks of officers from privates to generals, and was only beaten once, for tracking dirt into the barracks.

  For all his mother’s worry, Taro believed the war was going well for Japan. Not a day went by that their teachers didn’t crow about the bravery and fortitude of the Emperor’s soldiers. And if the officers’ faces sometimes grew shadowed as they huddled around the command office and their voices dropped when the cadets marched by, Taro took comfort in knowing his superiors were so actively working toward victory.

  Sundays were home days, when local families would open their doors to the cadets. Taro and Nakamura became favorites of the Oshita family. Mrs. Oshita lived with her elderly father-in-law and two little boys, who clung to Nakamura like monkeys on a tree. Taro would bring his violin some days and play for the family. The boys would dance and Oshita-san would smile and clap slowly, sometimes even singing if it was a folk tune and she could remember the words. On those days, Taro would feel close to his mother and worry less about having signed on to fight a war. But the worry only returned twice as heavily on Sunday nights, and he would try not to make a sound as he cried into his pillow, knowing from the heavy sighs throughout the barracks that he was not the only one.

  CHAPTER 16

  TARO

  Fall 1943

  “Taro, did you hear?” Nakamura frog-whispered one day as they ran to the auditorium with the rest of their group. While he didn’t think he was as hardened as the lieutenant had promised, Taro was getting used to all of the running, especially now that autumn had made the air crisp and cool. Nakamura said it was to prepare them for emergencies, but Taro thought it was to tire them out so they wouldn’t fidget in class.

  Taro’s hair was newly cut, and the clippings made the back of his neck itch. But a soldier wasn’t allowed to scratch like a flea-bitten dog. Fortunately
, Nakamura ignored his scowling. “Great news,” he said. “Hiroshi got a jazz record from his sister. Sent to his home-day family! She’s brilliant. I’d marry her if she’d have me.”

  Taro had to agree, it was impressive. Jazz was contraband, as were most Western things these days. They were un-Japanese. Yet somehow military uniforms were still based on British designs, and even mess-hall rations were more Western in style, with meat-heavy dishes to build muscle.

  “Hiroshi’s sister is married,” Taro reminded him. “And twice your age.”

  Nakamura sighed. “Some women like a younger man.”

  Taro laughed, drawing a frown from their CO. He cleared his throat and stood straighter. Sunlight gave way to a narrow door, then a high-ceilinged room lined with chairs. The boys filed in, heading to the end of each row and taking their seats until every chair was full.

  “Anyway, I was thinking we could go check it out later, after dinner. You can pick up some jazz riffs for that fiddle of yours. That way, even if they confiscate Hiroshi’s contraband Western tunes, we’ll still have you.”

  “You already have me,” Taro said. “And Mozart. And Beethoven—”

  “And a pain in the neck. Fine. Be a stodge. I’m going tonight anyway. Got a line on some unsupervised shōchū. We’re gonna have a fine time with or without you.”

  Taro shook his head. He knew he’d end up going along, but not for the pilfered booze or the jazz—which he liked well enough, and knew how to play a little—but to watch Nakamura dance. His voice wasn’t the only thing that reminded everyone of a frog.