House of Kwa

by Mimi Kwa

  Hong Kong is silent and dark. She waits.

  Tak Lau sits shoulder to shoulder with his friends, hoping the Bogie Boy who is chewing gum will break up his packet into small pieces and share it around. When he does, Tak Lau chews enthusiastically and alternates between looking up at the sky and down at the magnificent harbour. It is difficult to know which is the better view. His eyes rest on the bottom of the hill where the bunker must be – where his family is huddled in the dark.

  And then it happens. Planes soar and cut through the inky cloth of the sky, blades of steel that are blacker than the rich thick night. They are black as death, these US bombers sent by Roosevelt to help Churchill eject the Japanese. Every time they appear, it seems they come from outer space then disappear into a black hole until they are summoned again.

  Tak Lau watches as each fuselage releases its bombs, birthing them into the humid air, raining them onto the water. Three, four, five, six, seven. Falling, whistling. The vibrations are accompanied by violent explosions. Some shells hit their targets, smashing Japanese vessels to smithereens. Some miss and fall to the depths of the harbour or connect with buildings near the shore. An untouched Japanese vessel rocks violently in the storm of its life. Another target explodes, and the boys cheer. The lightshow continues.

  ‘We know about the bombs before London does,’ one boy says. He is wearing horn-rimmed glasses and still chewing gum even though it must have lost its flavour by now.

  ‘We know about the bombs before the world,’ another boy shouts over the next explosion.

  At the edge of Tak Lau’s peripheral vision, a row of houses is taken out on Wu Hu Street. Before he has time to think about it, a bomb pounds the area near to where the family bunker must be.

  ‘I’m so clever.’ Tak Lau nudges his friend with boyish bravado. ‘My whole family might be dead down there. Up here I am alive.’

  Bombs keep coming, and six boys cheer and holler on top of a hill. At one stage, to the group’s delight, Tak Lau does a little dance mimicking a Japanese soldier looking up in terror at a descending bomb before it pulverises him. Tak Lau flounders on the uneven earth, flailing his arms and legs.

  The boys take a break from clowning around to see if there is a better viewing platform. The previous air raid lasted around two hours, so they have plenty of time to gad about. After Tak Lau points to a good spot, the boys congregate there on a broad rock that fits them all. Tak Lau has prime position. His eyes widen, the reflection of the fires making his pupils glow.

  Japanese aircraft fly onto the scene, ducking and weaving, intercepting the US B-25s and P-40 Warhawks.

  ‘We must be pretty special,’ Tak Lau says, almost drowned out by the rumble. ‘Everyone is fighting over us!’ he shouts louder as the other boys laugh.

  Tak Lau turns his back on the airshow and holds up a piece of paper so that it catches light from below. It’s a diagram clipped from the newspaper of six warplanes, including the three in the sky right now. Whenever he can, he tears out pictures of mechanical things he fancies. The paper is crumpled from being incessantly studied, and for the hundredth time Tak Lau traces the printed shapes on it with his fingers. He can barely make out any labelled parts anymore, but that doesn’t matter, he’s memorised them; he keeps the news clipping for reassurance.

  Now the news is right here in front of him. Planes fire and fly at one another, spitting, twisting and diving. As a vessel tacks towards shore, an Australian naval mine explodes beneath it. Above, US bullets tear the wing from a Japanese aircraft, and its fuselage dips, the relentless shots a jagged burst of fire against the oily backdrop. There’s a lull, then a splash. Tak Lau watches the burning Japanese fighter spin into the water. It sinks slowly until it disappears.

  EGGS AND COMICS

  BY LATE 1943 THE FACADE OF THE HOUSE AT 183 WU HU Street shows signs of the violent reverberations of bomb assaults, the kind of crumbling and distress that weather would take centuries to achieve.

  After the first time Tak Lau disappeared up the hill during a raid, he was severely reprimanded by Mother and Father, but they later had a change of heart.

  Ying Kam said to Ng Yuk, ‘Remember the humble farmers who took a basket of eggs to the Emperor?’

  She did remember the tale. The eggs had been laid by the world’s finest rare hen, and after the farmers took them on a long and treacherous journey to the Imperial Palace gates, they were completely unharmed. But as the farmers approached the throne, one of them tripped, and the eggs tumbled out of the basket and broke. Even as a Cantonese speaker Ng Yuk knows the Mandarin expression is Bie ba quanbu de jidan fangzai yige lanzi li: now they are afraid of putting all their eggs in one basket again.

  ‘No royal family ever travels altogether,’ Ying Kam insisted.

  Ng Yuk agreed, and from that point on the Kwas have split up during Allied attacks: Tak Lau and Elder Brother go to the top of the hill, and the remainder of the family to the shelter at the bottom.

  All except Theresa, who stays and prays in the house. The concrete building has held out against friend and foe so far, and it may end up being the Kwas’ best chance. As she is only a girl, Theresa cannot pass on the family name, but she has always been the family’s good luck charm for her dexterous ability on an abacus and for her maternal and thoughtful ways with all her siblings. During the air raids she waits patiently for the shelling to end and the family to return, never once complaining other than to say, ‘But what if you need my help out there?’ To which Father replies, ‘You will help by digging us out of the ground.’

  ‘The shelter can be closed in by a bomb, and everyone inside will be buried alive,’ Tak Lau tells Elder Brother like a broken record. ‘Being on the hill is much safer because the planes will not be shooting at us.’ No matter how many times he says this, the idea of surviving their family gives neither brother comfort. Tak Lau reassures his brother with a grin, ‘At least we get free fireworks.’ He doesn’t feel quite so brazen as the first time he watched the bombs drop, but even after so many air raids, the spectacle never gets old.

  ‘Haha,’ Tak Lau shouts over the din breaking his own reverie. ‘We are so clever. We know where the US drop the bombs before the news broadcast.’

  US aircrafts avoid the central business district and even errant bombs land clear of essential commercial buildings, but the Hung Hom shipyard is heavily shelled several times. One missile destroys five houses in a row, very close to the House of Kwa, and embeds in a concrete slab, its tail visible among the rubble. This is a stark reminder of how Hong Kong exists on a precipice: no one is safe in the path of deadly friendly fire.

  Tak Lau peers over the balcony. He feels like theirs is the only house left standing, that this latest onslaught completes the flattening of homes on Wu Hu Street. Ramshackle dwellings have been erected in their dozens where buildings once stood; this is all the living can do to stake a claim to their land, the only thing they have left. The House of Kwa is like a shrine of hope to the locals, who have a kind of reverence for the Kwa family as a result.

  The Kwas count themselves lucky and raise lit joss sticks to the gods, tapping the red incense vigorously three times before pushing it into dishes of sand. They could be far worse off. Their home, at the far end of Wu Hu Street from Whampoa Dock, enjoys proximity to a park with trees near enough to brush Ng Yuk’s upper-storey windows. They have the immense privilege of breathing clean air from a rooftop terrace above Happy Shadow’s place. Even so, for months a sickening smell hovers near the Kwa home, reaching under doors and windows, wrapping itself around furniture: a reminder of the rotting bodies caught beneath rubble nearby. Locals bring wheelbarrows and shovels, digging into the night to bring up the corpses. They load them onto carts: ten, twenty, fifty – Tak Lau loses count. Locals who passed in the street a few years ago without so much as a nod are now pulling one another from under twisted roofs and fallen walls, an awful intimacy that leaves survivors guilty and hollow. There is no proper burial for these neighbours and friend
s. Their bodies are carted to trucks on a path to one of the civilian burial grounds in the countryside, to be lain to rest often unidentified and nameless.

  Weeks wear on with air raids occurring so unpredictably that everyone lives in a heightened state of fear. Kwa luck sustains, though. Not only are they all still alive, but they are also fortunate not to be among the thousands of civilians held in internment camps, let alone the POW British, Indian and Canadian soldiers here and in Japan – subjected to inhumane and horrific conditions. The Kwas are of Chinese decent, and there are no Chinese in confinement. They are simply captives at home, and at least have the freedom to take their chances in bunkers and houses or on hills.

  Tak Lau and Elder Brother roam streets and lanes; every way the boys turn, people are dying of starvation. Hong Kong is on its knees. Japanese ships continue to blockade Victoria Harbour and control all the territory’s supplies.

  The malnourished Kwa boys make their daily scrounge for scraps before joining a queue for rice, along with hundreds more anxiously awaiting their allocation. After an hour the Kwa boys reach the front, and Elder Brother stands behind Tak Lau, shielding him from view as the little boy scoops extra rice into his pockets.

  A Japanese soldier paces up and down the line of people deliriously focused on the heavy sacks of grain. As one bag empties, the soldier prods a poorly dressed middle-aged man to return to the truck to replenish supplies; his filthy half-buttoned shirt and full-length trousers rolled to three-quarters may have once been part of a suit.

  Elder Brother leans forward as if to assist his younger sibling, just as Tak Lau spills some rice on the ground. The two hold their breaths. The soldier stops and looks down his nose at the boys. Then he walks on.

  Tak Lau and Elder Brother hurry home, passing corpses in doorways, starving orphans huddled under cardboard-box lean-tos, and beggars pleading for ‘just one small morsel, please, sir’. Tak Lau keeps his arms awkwardly by his sides to hide his full pockets, while Elder Brother carries a decorative ceramic mug full of the official rice ration; he holds his right hand over the lid to keep it steady.

  Death leans on buildings and stalks alleyways, couples hold each other for the last time, and parents cling to their dying young. Morgues overflow, and mass graves fill before another must be dug, over and over. King’s Park is host to routine beheadings, along with Japanese soldiers carrying out shooting and bayonet practice on civilians as targets.

  Tak Lau and Elder Brother walk on, now eight and fifteen years old.

  The life the Kwas knew before the occupation is a distant apparition. Yen is the currency now. Bankers and brokers are locked in small hotels, forced to trade, and Japan has taken ownership of the Kwa factories, everything Ying Kam and his brother Eng Lee have worked for. Japanese firms are established in Hong Kong, and factory production across every industry is suspended, stopped and started according to the unpredictable whim of the new masters.

  The House of Kwa buys additional rationed rice, oil, flour, salt and sugar with the pittance Ying Kam has saved from his Swatow Lace shop while the factories of his own sweat and blood lay dormant.

  Tak Lau’s infant school has been turned into a military hospital; another local school, it’s rumoured, has become an execution headquarters. In fact, there seem to be no normal Hong Kong schools left.

  The authorities tell the Kwas that Tak Lau and Elder Brother must attend a Japanese language class at a recently abandoned shopping complex. Each local family is represented by either a child or children, who are expected to return home to teach their parents and grandparents their new ‘mother tongue’.

  Their way to the class is littered with evidence of looting. Roller doors and concertina panels have been buckled by force, and there is nothing of any value to see. As they approach their destination, Tak Lau and Elder Brother automatically bow their heads at a Japanese guard wearing an oversized soldier’s cap. He looks them up and down. He’s holding a rifle across his chest in a lazy, disinterested fashion and doesn’t seem much older than Elder Brother.

  The boys take the stairs to a second storey. Smooth tiles gleam, perhaps from the sweat of an old man who is hard at work, charged with mopping the floor before classes begin each day. ‘The enemy may be torturing and killing in our school buildings, but they do like a clean classroom,’ Elder Brother whispers to Tak Lau.

  The skin of the janitor’s crinkled hands is like leather. Gripping the mop, he methodically passes it over the surface, almost mesmerised by his task. He wears a brown buttoned shirt and matching brown shorts, his hair dishevelled and his left eye bloody and bruised. There are bruises on his legs too. He lowers his head as the boys pass.

  ‘Get back to work!’ the juvenile Japanese soldier screams from a landing below, and the old man resumes mopping the sparkling floor.

  Tak Lau ventures a glance at what used to be one of his favourite stores. Trinkets and comic books are haphazardly heaped in a corner, their charred and burned pages like a black moss engulfing a hill. Someone must have lit a fire then changed their mind and stamped it out, the boy thinks. One of the rules is that all English and Chinese reading material must be destroyed – everything must be printed in Japanese from now on. This is a real blow to Tak Lau: he has only just got a grasp on Cantonese characters, and he enjoys reading English, though he can hardly speak it.

  Something catches his attention. There is a counter with an empty open cash register on top. A Sanmao comic book pokes out from under it as though his favourite character has been waiting especially for him. The cartoon boy, Sanmao, was born the same year as Tak Lau, and living in poverty against a backdrop of colonisation and war just like him, the famous manhua illustration is a survivor.

  The Japanese guard is lecturing the old cleaner about a missed tile. People are killed for random things these days, so Tak Lau can understand why the cleaner falls to his knees, begging for mercy. With the guard distracted, Tak Lau takes his chance. Before Elder Brother can hiss, What are you doing? Get back here, Tak Lau scoots inside the shop and slides the Sanmao book out from under the bench. The orphan boy on the cover, with his trademark three strands of hair, gives him an encouraging wink. He quickly scours the floor for any of the ancient hero books he also loves, without any luck, and slips the comic inside his shorts, so it flattens against his back. The guard looks away from the apologetic janitor in time to see the Kwa boys disappear around a corner to their classroom.

  The language lessons take place in a large shop that was once a record store, the jewel in the crown of the shopping centre. Now stands of vinyl LPs have been shoved along the edges of the room – miraculously, though, they seem relatively untouched. Tak Lau wonders if he can bring any more souvenirs home. It won’t be long before all Chinese and English language music is destroyed along with the reading material. Radio stations are shut or used to spout Japanese propaganda, with both new announcers and old favourite media stars proclaiming, ‘How wonderful it is to be living under the most holy rule of the Japanese Emperor of the Chrysanthemum Throne.’

  A hand slaps Elder Brother’s left cheek, abruptly snapping Tak Lau back to earth in the makeshift classroom. ‘Sit down!’ a soldier-turned-teacher screams.

  It is as though Japanese people don’t know how to talk, thinks Tak Lau. Do they believe we are deaf?

  He watches his brother rub his reddened face, then the boys take their places on school furniture at the very back of the class.

  Local teachers who have not been executed are at a camp for re-education about Japanese customs and values, and, most importantly, Japanese language. ‘Teachers have three months to pass an exam in Japanese,’ Ng Yuk told Tak Lau. ‘If they pass, they will come back to teach you. If they don’t, they will be killed or sent to China.’ While Tak Lau and the rest of Hong Kong’s children wait for their teachers to return from being indoctrinated, they are stuck with soldiers for tutors.

  An older Japanese figure with a commanding look sits in the corner. Maybe he’s a captain, Tak
Lau thinks, or a colonel. The boy has learned every military term he’s ever come across, along with the names of weapons and land, sea and air vehicles.

  ‘If you are late again,’ Soldier Teacher screams in broken English, ‘I will shoot you!’ He pulls a pistol from his belt and points it at a boy near the front who was not late. ‘And’ – he scans the eyes of the class for dramatic effect – ‘I will shoot your classmate.’

  Tak Lau and Elder Brother bow their heads. The roomful of boys – six to sixteen years old – holds its breath.

  Soldier Teacher returns his gun to its holster. ‘Time to begin,’ he shouts.

  Tak Lau wriggles in his seat. The comic book digs into his back, making his spine tingle.

  AXES AND STEAK

  AFTER A FEW MONTHS, THE STRICT LANGUAGE LESSON requirements are relaxed. Teachers return and a few schools reopen, but everything is unrecognisable from the signage to the curriculum. Everything is in Japanese. Posters of Emperor Hirohito are pasted on walls and lockers, while his framed regal portrait is hung in classrooms and offices to show that Japan’s Imperial House has an eye on everyone.

  Far fewer schools are needed than before with so many children having died or been sent to China, often rounded up onto buses without the supervision of parents or guardians. Tak Lau’s old school is among those to remain shut; for all he knows according to the whispers it is still a death and torture camp, and the nearly nine-year-old Kwa hasn’t been assigned a new place for his education.

  ‘Perhaps they are satisfied with the course you did at the shopping centre,’ Ng Yuk says over the sound of hammering next door as neighbours attempt to rebuild their home.