The Blossom and the Firefly

by Sherri L. Smith

  The boy who told me about the delay offers Mariko a letter to be sent to his mother. “I finished my jisei last night and would like her to have it,” he tells her. “And this is for you. It’s all I have.” He hands her a few worn coins from the depths of his pocket.

  Mariko’s face is very red. “Yamada-san, all I have to offer are these flowers. They are a poor gift, but I hope they will brighten your aeroplane.”

  It’s Yamada-san’s turn to blush. He accepts the flowers. “I had thought to leave the world behind this morning, but your kindness I will take with me.”

  I don’t expect any special tokens or thank-yous today, or any day. Unlike the other girls, I keep to myself. I don’t know any first names, nor any intimate details of our pilots’ lives.

  And then he is there before me. The boy with the violin. I look down at my fading flowers and cannot meet his eye.

  “Miss . . . I’m afraid I don’t know your name,” he says. His voice has a warmth I didn’t expect. A realness I do not wish to hear. If he becomes real, he will die and I will know it. I bow to hide my embarrassment.

  “But you . . . thank you for sewing my uniform. It is quite clean and suitable now . . .” He hesitates, and we both seem to feel the absurdity of the moment. My armpits are hot. My pants, damp and heavy from the trek through the grass. I am reminded of the fragrant burden in my arms.

  “Elder brother, these are for you,” I say, and thrust the branches toward him.

  But his hands are already full.

  “And this . . . this is for you.”

  The black case is suddenly the only thing on this airfield, the only thing in the world. This boy, whose name I do not know, is giving me his violin.

  I gasp and look up, needing to see if it’s true. If there are tears in his eyes, I can’t tell. They may be my own.

  “Arigatō gozaimasu.” I thank him profusely. “This one is not worthy of such a gift.”

  My voice catches in my throat, and he tilts his chin up, blinking rapidly. I look back down at the ground, and he gently removes the flowers from my arms, replacing them with the music case.

  “This one,” he says softly, “is unable to take it with him. Music should live, neh?”

  I bow from the waist. A single tear drops from my eye to the ground. The field is too wet to show where it fell.

  “Please, may I ask your name?” I can’t believe I am inviting this, but I could not stand to learn it after he is gone. I can barely breathe.

  “Inoguchi Taro.” Such simple syllables. No titles, no rank. Such a common name.

  “Benkan Hana,” I reply.

  “A pleasure,” he says softly. Unlike many of the other boys, he does not say it is the last pleasure he will experience, or that mine is the last face he will see. I hear the rustle of his clothing, and I know he is bowing. Then a gust of air, and he has departed.

  Only when I hear the engines growl and rev do I rise from my own bow. I hold the black case to my chest like a newborn and watch the planes take off one by one, dark birds against the brightening sky.

  For the first time, I am unable to wave goodbye.

  CHAPTER 29

  TARO

  March 1945

  The house seemed so small, two stories of dark wood, with an outside hallway wrapped around the ground floor like a porch. Taro closed the gate behind him and stepped into the yard. Over the wall, across the street, he could see Mrs. Tanaka’s laundry hanging, rimmed with frost at this early hour. The old dog that slept against the house was gone. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

  He’d reached the front door, lowered his duffel to the walkway, and bent to the task of undoing his boots, when he was struck by a memory. He went back out into the street. The sky was gray-blue today, not the vibrant sky from the day his father had flown overhead, but one that threatened gathering clouds and the promise of rain.

  The shōji screen slid open. Taro’s mother struggled into her geta and ran to him.

  “You’re home! You’re home!”

  Deep bows and, later, clasped hands. Once his duffel bag was put away, the boots were in the entryway, and they were sitting over cups of steaming hot tea, she chafed his cold fingers in her own. The calluses he had noticed at graduation were still there. Somehow, they were a comfort now.

  “From your last letter, I thought you’d be going straight to your air battalion.”

  “So did I,” Taro explained. “But they gave us a little bit of leave first. Nakamura has gone home, too. Some of the boys live too far away, but those of us in Kyushu and the south are lucky.”

  She smiled. “You must be tired. I will prepare your futon. Perhaps you would like a bath?”

  “I would very much, but it’s too much trouble,” Taro said. “Please don’t treat me as a guest.”

  “But you are! A welcome guest!” his mother insisted, pouring more tea.

  “I would rather be your son.”

  She put the teapot down then, and looked at him. “Taro,” she said, the way she’d always said his name. Like it was good news, a joke, a reason to smile. Only her face did not match the sound. He was no longer her little boy, Taro realized. He loosened his collar. Why was he still in uniform? A yukata would be better. He should change right away. But it would be disrespectful to excuse himself now.

  “Any news of Father?”

  His mother’s gentle smile wavered. “Only that he is well. I am afraid he is in the south now, in the Philippines, but he does not say. Only that he is thinking of us. And proud of you! I’m sure he has yet to get the news of your graduation. My letters take so long to find him. But he knew it was imminent and awaited it with much anticipation.”

  Taro bowed his head slightly. “I am glad to hear it.” And he was. At graduation, he had thought of his father and how proud he would be. But any celebration was tainted by the future now. Taro took a sip of tea to hide the unexpected bitterness in his throat. You would have two soldiers in this house. Soon there would only be one. How would his mother forgive his father—forgive him—for accepting a tokkō assignment?

  “Taro? You have something on your mind, I see. Not a young lady, is it?”

  Taro blushed. “No! I haven’t even seen a girl up close since Shōnen Hikōhei, and even that was in passing.”

  “Ah. Well.” His mother looked embarrassed now. “One hears rumors about women and pilots.”

  “Do they?” Taro feigned shock, but he knew. Nakamura had made sure of it. “They can’t get enough of us!” he’d crowed to Taro after a day’s leave from Akeno. “Just wear your uniform, you’ll see.”

  Taro had worn his uniform home, but he’d been too distracted to notice anyone noticing him.

  “And Ayugai-sensei?” He changed the subject.

  “Did you not get my letter? Sad news. Ayugai-san was in Tokyo performing for some important people when the city was firebombed. He survived,” she added quickly, “but I’m afraid he was gravely injured. His wife wrote to tell me he has lost the use of his hand!”

  “No!” Taro felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. “I must go see him!”

  “But he is not here. He is still in hospital in Tokyo. When she is able, his wife will have him moved to Sapporo, where her family is from, and hopefully out of harm’s way. Tokyo is a dangerous place to be these days.”

  Taro had heard of the firebombings. Allied planes would drop incendiaries at night onto the old wooden buildings of the Imperial city, targeting civilians and military alike. It was a cowardly act meant to force the Emperor to surrender. But Japanese were made of tougher stuff. Women, children, and the elderly might suffer, but they would do so gladly, for they were Japanese and that meant something.

  But poor Ayugai-sensei. “If I write him a letter, will you see that it’s delivered?”

  “Of course,” his mother said. “He wil
l be glad to hear from you.”

  “And how is old Mrs. Tanaka across the street?”

  “Oh, she is getting along fine. You know Mr. Tanaka was a navy man? So he’s away on business for the navy, but because of his age, he is not in the fighting. I bring her food when I can. It’s hard for her to get to the market anymore, and the lines are so long I hate to think of her standing in them. If I bring her ration book and a note, they let me shop for her. Our tonari-gumi is very good at that, I think. Others are not so lenient.”

  Taro looked down at his tea and the small plate of roasted soybeans his mother had placed beside it. “Food rationing. I almost forgot. I brought you some things from the base.”

  He rose and padded into the next room, where his duffel bag lay against the wall. “They take very good care of us on base and see that we are well fed. At first, Nakamura and I stuffed ourselves every night.”

  He returned carrying a bundled paper package. “But it’s unseemly for an officer to be a glutton, especially pilots who must be able to fit into our planes!”

  His mother smiled, and it lightened his heart. She had grown thin, careworn. Her hair was losing its color and its shine. “I hope you will find something in here useful.”

  She carefully untied the package, setting aside first the string—which she looped around her hands and tied in the middle to keep from tangling—and then smoothing out the paper so it would not tear. With each item removed, she gave a small cry of surprise or pleasure.

  “We have not seen chestnuts in months! Oh, but this is too much! Oh, Mrs. Tanaka will be pleased!”

  And with each exclamation, Taro’s smile grew sadder and sadder. A handful of condiments and treats could not bring enough joy for what would come next.

  At long last, he gave in to the hot bath and the warm yukata before a dinner made extravagant by wartime standards because of his gifts. He went to sleep that night on his old futon in his own room. He had yet to tell his mother he would be body-crashing within the month.

  It was a restless night.

  In the morning, he dressed in a fresh yukata and went to the window. From his usual spot, he could now see most of the street. The house seemed very small. He gathered his violin, went downstairs, slipped into a pair of his father’s geta, and stepped into the backyard.

  The sky was as gray as the day before, but that could not be helped. He lifted the violin to his chin and played.

  Mozart, that perfect piece, the one that had eluded him, glided easily from the strings. The song that once gave him wings did the opposite now. As he played, the house, the yard, the moss-covered stones, the lichen-laced roof tiles—all of it became real, as if he were playing the world into existence.

  A boy. In a yard. At home. His mother inside, waiting. This would all be true forever.

  As the last strains of melody melted into the sky, a sense of peace filled him. He had done it. He had played from the place he could not reach before.

  Lieutenant Saito had often told his students that the ancient way of the samurai, the true code of Bushido, meant the way of death. All warriors must live as though dead so they could face battle without fear. Bushido, in that sense, was a way of peacefulness.

  Taro bowed to the north, toward Tokyo and the Emperor and Akeno, where his old lieutenant was likely saying the same thing to his new recruits. It had a different meaning as a tokkō pilot. A truer meaning.

  A weight dropped from his chest. He turned toward the house and stopped.

  His mother stood in the doorway watching him. Her hand covered her mouth. There were tears in her eyes.

  “Taro-chan . . .” She bowed to him. “Ayugai-san would be pleased.”

  He spent the day with her around the house, visiting a few friends and Mrs. Tanaka. He wore his uniform for everyone to see. The rest of his duffel lay packed and waiting. The violin he placed in his old room as a memento for his family. He wrote to Ayugai-sensei, telling him what he could not tell his parents. He would body-crash in honor of his teacher, he said. The Americans would suffer for the crime of stealing his music. He told him of the moment in the garden and asked his old teacher to beg his parents’ forgiveness on his behalf. Not telling them was cowardly, but he could not bear to see his mother’s pain.

  But his mother watched him every moment, and the tears never left her eyes.

  She smiled when she took the sealed envelope from him. She addressed it herself, and tucked it into her coat to mail on the way back from the train.

  “Wait! You mustn’t forget your violin!” she said, carrying it down from his room.

  “Oh . . . I think it will be safer here,” he tried to say, but she insisted.

  “Taro-chan, music is your life. You mustn’t leave it behind.”

  His throat tightened. He took the violin.

  And then she walked him to the station just as she had his father so many years ago. Only, this far into the war, there was no crowd, no parade of tonari-gumi members. No schoolchildren with flags. Just a young man and his mother, and a lifetime of unspoken words between them.

  “If . . . if you should meet a young woman, Taro, I would like to meet her,” his mother said as they stood on the steps of the station. “It would be good to have company. To know someone else out there cares for you. There is so little happiness in this world, it would be good to find what you can.”

  He held his mother’s callused hands, lending her his warmth.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he joked, and she smiled and let him go.

  CHAPTER 30

  TARO

  March 1945

  “Did you tell her?” Nakamura’s voice was loud in the smaller bunkroom. With only eight beds, instead of dozens, their new housing reflected their status as Tokkō Tai. Nakamura was hanging his head upside down off the foot of his bed so that his face was very red. He was playing with something bright that Taro could not make out. Taro sat on his own bed, staring at his violin, pretending to polish it with a soft cloth. Tokkō training began in an hour.

  “I couldn’t bring myself to,” Taro admitted. The shame he felt was palpable. “It’s strange. I felt such a sense of peace; I thought of Lieutenant Saito’s Bushido.”

  “Ah! You’re samurai now?” Nakamura laughed.

  “I’m serious, Kenji. It felt as if nothing mattered more than what we are doing. Even telling my mother was not important.”

  Nakamura rolled over to look at him. “Was?”

  Taro sighed. “Was. It seems important now. Did I take the coward’s way out?”

  Nakamura shrugged. “Who’s to say?”

  “I suppose you told your family?”

  Nakamura gave him a lopsided smile. “Best and worst thing I’ve ever done. My grandmother slapped me, my grandfather got drunk with me, my sister’s girlfriends all asked to marry me, but I had to say no because my mother made me this.”

  He held up the toy he’d been fiddling with. It was a bride doll. A petite pale-faced woman sewn of cloth and hand painted with rosy cheeks and smiling lips. She wore a miniature wedding kimono of elaborate silk dotted with cranes.

  “Meet the wife!” Nakamura said, sitting up. “Her name is Nobuko—at least, I think that’s what my mother said. She’s going to serve me in the afterlife.”

  Taro felt a pang in his stomach. “It’s . . . I mean, she’s beautiful.”

  “Eh, she’s okay. Not fat enough to guarantee happiness, like that old guy said. But she’ll do. The kimono’s nice—cut from my mom’s wedding outfit. Little sis wasn’t too happy about that, but I told her by the time she got married, Western dress would be all the rage. That caused a ruckus. If we win the war, Western clothes will probably be banned for a thousand years, or so she told me in many, many more words. Sis is the only one not impressed by me. I’ll have to take out a big battleship just to make her blink.

  “So that�
�s what you missed out on. A slap, a hangover, an angry sister, and you could be married to a doll, too.”

  Taro imagined his own mother carefully cutting up her wedding kimono, painstakingly painting a little face. He gripped the neck of his violin and tried to summon his fortitude again. She would understand. He was doing this for her. He was doing this for Japan.

  “Oh, and the women,” Nakamura added. “Just watch the love letters I’ll be getting from here on out. Girls love pilots, but they go crazy for tokkō.”

  Taro surprised himself with a laugh. “Nakamura, your ‘secular’ fortitude is impressive.”

  Nakamura smirked. “Laugh all you want. By next mail call, you’ll see.”

  * * *

  —

  Tokkō training was very different from fighter training. Instead of learning swift maneuvers and how to dogfight, the new CO instructed Taro and his flight in the fine art of trust.

  “You will have no guns, so you won’t be able to engage the enemy. You must trust your escort planes to take care of them for you. In this way, you are no different from a bomber plane. You have one job. Do it well. The others will do theirs, and they will report your success when they return.”

  From there, it was charts and graphs and spotter cards. How to recognize an enemy ship from a distance. The best places to target—preferably near the ammunition storage or fuel tanks. Either would provide a sufficient blast to cause maximum damage and disable a ship.

  “There is nothing more pointless than sacrificing yourself without hurting the enemy,” the CO said. He was a ruddy-faced man. Rumor had it he drank too much. Taro didn’t doubt it. The man had trained over four hundred tokkō.

  “The deck of this aircraft carrier is armored. Crash on deck, and if you are lucky, you cause a fire and take out a few sailors. Hit the fuel stores, though—” He tapped the chart on the wall highlighting the spots where highly volatile aviation fuel was held for the thirty-six fighter planes and fifty-four bombers on board. “And you become gunshin warriors, lifted to Yasukuni in the arms of beautiful kami.”