The Eternal Zero

by Naoki Hyakuta

  It was then that I noticed my left arm was killing me. I glanced down and saw that it was coated in blood from the shoulder down. I temporarily pulled away from the action to take stock of the damage. The wings and fuselage were riddled with bullets but thankfully the fuel tank and engine were still okay.

  After the air raid, I flew back to Rabaul relying mostly on just one hand. Due to the pain and loss of blood I nearly passed out several times, but I willed myself to keep flying. Six bombers and three Zeros were lost that day. It had been a tough battle. Most of the Zeros that made it back were covered with bullet marks all over.

  I learned this afterwards, but Miyabe’s plane didn’t have a single bullet hole in it. Even after such a ferocious battle, his plane was totally unscathed. He had been a part of the convoy. Where had he been while we were risking our lives fighting? Where was he flying around when my left arm was shot?

  Ultimately I lost my arm. In the interior they might not have had to amputate it.

  I was in Rabaul for just under two months. I’m not sure whether that was a lengthy or short stay. All told, my life as a pilot had lasted a year and a half.

  * * *

  —

  Life after the war was a series of hardships. Society was cold to a fellow who’d offered up his life to his country and lost his left arm. Though I was discharged with the rank of ensign, such titles held no meaning in postwar society. Besides, I was only promoted after the war was over, as a so-called Potsdam Ensign. There were no jobs for a one-armed man. As a kid I had been thrown out of my hometown to lessen the burden on my family, but I ended coming back here after all.

  And yet someone was kind enough to play the matchmaker, and I took a wife. Well, rather, I married into her family and took their name so perhaps “took a wife” isn’t quite an accurate statement. If I hadn’t lost my arm, perhaps a better life would have awaited me. No, if I hadn’t lost my arm, I would likely have died in the skies. That would have been fine. I wasn’t afraid of death in the slightest. Wouldn’t it have been more splendid to die a manly, spectacular death than to eke out a miserable life covered in dirt in the countryside?

  In my old age I’ve come to fully realize that I wanted to die a kamikaze. Had I not lacked a limb, I would have volunteered for sure.

  Three years after I lost my arm, Miyabe died a kamikaze. I don’t think he volunteered. There’s no doubt they forced him into the Special Attack Force and that he begrudgingly followed orders. Thus a man who put his life on the line during every battle has survived into old age, while another man who held his life so dear ended up dead.

  If that isn’t an example of life’s irony, I don’t know what it is.

  * * *

  —

  It was past six o’clock but the skies were still light.

  My gait was heavy as we made our way back to the station. I’m sure it was the same for Keiko. Her expression was grim.

  In her handbag was the voice recorder that contained Hasegawa’s tale, but I was uncertain as to whether she would want to listen to it again.

  It had been an unpleasant interview. No, it couldn’t be called an interview. Hasegawa’s monologue. The more he spoke the more he seemed to think back on his hatred of our grandfather, and he bluntly leveled that hatred at us, too. I was overwhelmed by his gaze, filled with so much malice and hostility.

  “What a nasty old man,” I said some time after we had left his house. “He curses his fate. Maybe he thinks that his life was taken from him when he lost his arm. I bet he blames our grandfather for his missing arm, too.”

  Keiko was silent for a while. Then she sighed and said, “I feel sorry for him.”

  I was struck momentarily dumb.

  “That was the first time I’d heard about the war from a vet. It wasn’t easy. I feel like I understand how he feels. I’m sure he went through a lot after the war, too.”

  I didn’t have a reply. If anything, I was ashamed for saying something so bitter after hearing what she said.

  For a while we walked in silence back down the road we had traveled a few hours prior.

  “But I didn’t think the stories about our grandfather were fabrications,” I blurted out.

  Keiko let out a modest sigh. “Honestly speaking, I’m a little disappointed in him. They said he was a kamikaze so I thought he was brave. To learn he was actually a coward…Actually, I’m a pacifist, so I don’t really want my grandfather to have been some war hero. But aside from that, I’m disappointed. Aren’t you, Kentaro?”

  I nodded silently. Hasegawa’s phrasing, that our grandfather was a coward, weighed heavily on my mind. My grandfather was someone who flew around the skies fearing for his life. I realized that I was reacting to the word “coward” as if the old man had insulted me personally. That’s because I was running away, too. So then, my grandfather’s blood coursed through my veins.

  Of course, my grandfather had been running from death, which was totally not true for me. Yet, it seemed certain that my grandfather had run from his duty as a pilot.

  While I—well, what on earth was I running from?

  “Ugh. This research is already too painful,” my sister muttered to no one in particular. I felt the same way.

  Chapter 3

  Pearl Harbor

  The week after meeting Hasegawa, I visited Grandpa to tell him that we were doing research on our biological grandfather.

  Keiko said there was no need to go out of our way to tell him, but I hated the idea of sneaking around behind my beloved grandfather’s back. I was also confident that he wasn’t the sort to take issue.

  But there was a concern. Ever since developing a heart problem the year before, he had been recuperating at home. He had essentially been retired from his long career as a lawyer for the past several years, leaving the running of his law firm to others. He had a regular housekeeper who looked after him and the house.

  He used to often say, “Once you pass the bar, you’d better head straight to my firm.” But recently he had given up saying such things, and I was a little saddened by that. Maybe he thought it was no big deal for me to take a three- or four-year detour since he himself had worked for the National Railway for a decade before passing the bar.

  * * *

  —

  When I arrived, Grandpa was already entertaining someone.

  Shuichi Fujiki had once been a part-timer at Grandpa’s law office. An impoverished student planning to take the bar, even after graduating he’d studied for it while working at the firm. But several years ago, when his father fell ill, Fujiki was forced to abandon his dream of becoming a lawyer and to go back to his hometown to continue the family ironworks. He was paying Grandpa a visit after attending a college reunion the day before.

  “Long time, no see, Fujiki-san.”

  “Same here.”

  Two years had passed since I’d last seen him. He made a point to visit Grandpa whenever he was in Tokyo.

  “Ken-chan, you’ve grown into a fine young man. You were still in high school when I left the firm.”

  Fujiki had said the exact same thing when I saw him last. I was afraid that he was going to ask, “So how’d it go this year?” He’d always told me seriously that he’d “never seen a kid as smart as you. You should be able to pass the bar before you’ve even graduated.” He was always very nice to me, and this time he didn’t ask about my current circumstances. I appreciated his kindness.

  “So how’s your ironworks going, Fujiki-san?”

  “Not well at all,” he replied with a laugh. “We lose money just staying open. To be honest, I want to close up the factory but I can’t do that to my employees.”

  He scratched at his head that was beginning to show signs of gray. He looked like a typical worn-out middle-aged man. It was a little hard seeing him like that since he’d always seemed eternally youthful. As I looked at this man
who had failed to pass the bar year after year, I felt as though I was looking at an image of my own future.

  “Are you married, Fujiki-san?”

  “No, not yet. Working my tail off at the ironworks, I woke up to find I’d turned thirty-six,” he laughed.

  Fujiki soon bid us farewell and left. After he had gone, my grandfather said, “When he was with our firm I was on active duty and going strong.” He looked briefly lost in nostalgia.

  “Grandpa,” I hazarded, making up my mind, “I’m doing research on Kyuzo Miyabe.”

  I thought I saw his features stiffen for a moment. Damn, I fretted. Guess it doesn’t sit well with him after all.

  “Matsuno’s first husband, huh…”

  I explained in a rush how my sister had asked me to help and that Mom wanted to know more about her real father.

  “Kiyoko does?” Grandpa asked. Then he muttered, “I see.”

  “I actually understand how Mom feels,” I said.

  Grandpa stared into my eyes. There was something unnerving in his gaze.

  When my grandmother had died, he had clung to her lifeless body and wailed. That was the first time I had ever seen him cry. He sobbed so hard that the hospital nurses were moved to tears. He loved Grandma from the bottom of his heart. Perhaps it was painful for him to recall that she had once been another man’s wife. They say men prized pure women back in those days, but she’d even borne another man’s child. Kyuzo Miyabe could hardly be a welcome figure for Grandpa.

  “According to our research, Kyuzo Miyabe and Grandma lived together for a very short time. After they wed, he was almost always away with the military,” I said, trying to be considerate of his feelings.

  Grandpa merely nodded. “So how are you conducting this research?”

  “I’ve sent letters to several veterans’ groups asking them to find people who knew Miyabe. We’ve only been able to speak to one person so far, a man who was stationed in Rabaul with him for just a couple of months. He was a pilot like Kyuzo was.”

  “And what did he say?”

  I hesitated but decided to tell him the truth. “That he was a coward, always fleeing from battle.” Then I added, self-deprecatingly, “Maybe the reason I’m so spineless is because I’ve inherited grandfather Kyuzo’s DNA…”

  “Nonsense!” Grandpa rebuked me. “Kiyoko was a hard worker ever since she was a kid. She never whined or complained, no matter what. After her husband—your father—passed away, she managed an accounting firm and raised you kids single-handedly. Your sister Keiko, too, inherited that trait and is a tough cookie. The blood of a coward does not run in your veins.”

  “Sorry, that’s not what I meant.”

  Seeing me wilt, Grandpa said gently, “Kentaro, you’re a far finer man than you give yourself credit for. One day you’ll realize that.”

  “You’re always so kind to me, Grandpa. You say that even though, well…”

  “We’re not related by blood?”

  “Uh, yeah…”

  “I love you because you’re kindhearted. Keiko is strong-willed but she, too, is a sweet girl,” Grandpa said with a smile. “Speaking of kind-hearted people, Fujiki is one, too. He was always there for others even if he was going through hell. I’m sure that trait is the reason he’s having such a hard time at the ironworks, too.”

  I nodded. It was true that Fujiki was a kind and sincere man.

  “He’s precisely the sort of man that should become a lawyer…” Grandpa said with a note of regret.

  When Fujiki first came to my grandfather’s firm, I was in elementary school and my sister was in junior high. He taught us about all sorts of things: interesting novels, history, tales of great artists. My sister and I loved to listen to him talk. He was the one who taught me that becoming a lawyer was a most wonderful career choice, and that Grandpa was the very model of a good lawyer. He may have influenced my decision to pursue a law career. In my very young eyes, he was like Superman. I adored him.

  But unfortunately, he wasn’t a very good student. Or rather, he wasn’t very good at taking the bar. He loved novels and music more than legal tomes, which is why he didn’t always pass even the short-answer portion of the test. Keiko always poked fun at him for it, but that was simply the flip side of her affection.

  The week before Fujiki left for his hometown, he rented a car and took Keiko and me on a drive to Hakone. I was a high school senior and Keiko was in her last year of college. I had apparently asked to go on a trip to Hakone a long time before then, and while I had forgotten any such promise Fujiki faithfully kept his word.

  On the drive, Keiko laughed, saying things like, “You worked so hard for ten years, all for naught…” and “You’re gonna end up a middle-aged owner of a struggling ironworks in the sticks of Yamaguchi.” Her jabs lacked the usual undertones of affection. But Fujiki simply gave a troubled smile in return, never losing his temper. I found myself getting offended on his behalf. I wanted Fujiki to be happy.

  * * *

  —

  That night I had dinner with my mother for the first time in a while. Since she ran an accounting firm she always worked late, and we rarely got to eat together. She used to run the firm with Dad, but she had been in charge ever since he passed away from illness ten years ago.

  “Had you really never been told anything about your real father, Mom?”

  “Grandma didn’t tell me a thing. Maybe she hadn’t married him out of love. It wasn’t uncommon for a couple to meet just once for an arranged match before getting married.”

  “Did you ever ask if she loved him?”

  “I did, once, when I was a teenager.”

  “What did she say?”

  Mom looked as though she was recalling the past. “She said, ‘What do you want me to say?’ ”

  “What did she mean by that?”

  “I thought it meant that she didn’t love him, but looking back on it now maybe I was wrong.”

  “I wonder if she did love him.”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t think she’d have said so even if she did. She was in love with Grandpa.”

  I nodded. I remembered Grandpa always being on Grandma’s mind. Whenever something happened she’d run to him, saying, “Oh, Grandpa…” Grandpa cherished her, too. She was actually older than him but it didn’t show. So I’d been genuinely surprised to hear that she’d had a husband before him.

  “It’ll be an eternally unsolved mystery whether my real father loved my mother, and whether she loved him. But I would like to know what kind of young man he was.”

  “Young man?”

  “Yes, he was twenty-six when he died. The same age you are now, Kentaro.”

  I went over Kyuzo Miyabe’s resume in my mind. I was struck anew by how young he was when he died.

  “I wish Mother had told me what he was like,” my mother said.

  I risked asking a difficult question. “What if he didn’t have a good reputation?”

  “Is that so?”

  “Oh, I just mean hypothetically. Suppose in the course of our research someone told us something you’d rather not hear.”

  “Hard to say,” she said after briefly considering it. “In that case, maybe the kids were left with no stories because that was for the best.”

  My mood darkened at her words.

  The next week, I headed to Matsuyama in Shikoku. We had found someone else who had known my grandfather.

  At first, my sister was supposed to go on her own, but at the last minute she said, “I just got a gig that I simply can’t turn down. Please go in my place.” I wanted to refuse, but she implored me, saying, “Freelance writers are at the mercy of their clients,” and I found myself unable to turn her down. I didn’t think she was lying, but I couldn’t quite rid myself of the notion that she didn’t want to sit through another story like Hasegawa’s.


  That’s why I ended up traveling all the way to Shikoku by myself. While I was disgusted by my trusting, good nature, since Keiko had given me double the usual per diem I decided to enjoy the trip as if I were on a mini-vacation. After finishing the interview at some appropriate point, I’d stop by the nearby Dougo hot springs or something like that.

  Former Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade Kanji Ito lived in a large house in a residential area near the center of town. Ito was a small, elderly man with perfect posture and sprightliness to his movements. He was supposed to be turning eighty-five but looked to be in his seventies.

  I was shown to a large sitting room. He handed me a business card that bore various titles. He seemed to be a bigwig in the local Chamber of Commerce. It also said that he was the chairman of some company.

  “Do you run your business, sir?”

  “No, I left my son in charge. Now I’m enjoying the retired life. Besides, it isn’t much of a company.”

  The housekeeper served me some iced coffee.

  “It’s nearly August. August always makes me think of the war,” Ito said with some feeling. “So you’re Miyabe’s grandson, eh? Hmm, to think he would have a grandson like you.” He stared fixedly at me. “I certainly never thought Miyabe’s grandson would pay me a visit sixty years after the war. But such is life.”

  I tensed up, remembering Hasegawa’s tale. Flustered, I said rapidly, “To be honest, I don’t know anything about my grandfather. My grandmother remarried after the war and died without talking to us about him. My mother, too, has no memories of her real father. I wanted to learn more about my own roots, so I thought I’d visit anyone who knew him personally and listen to their stories.”

  Ito listened silently to my explanation. He gave his head a small shake, as if attempting to call up old memories. Then he looked up at the ceiling, thinking of where to start.