Above the East China Sea

by Sarah Bird

  “But no one knows where our leaders generals Ushijima and Chō are.”

  “They are here,” Nakamura answered, and placed the palm of his hand over Hatsuko’s heart. She looked up at him like a fish with a hook in its mouth. “They are but the mere embodiment of the noble Japanese spirit that will give us all the courage to make the ultimate sacrifice for our emperor when the time comes.” At that moment, with Hatsuko’s lips trembling and Nakamura’s jaw set firmly, they looked like two film stars staring into each other’s eyes. “The spirit that will join us forever when we have the honor of shattering like jewels defending our homeland from invasion.”

  Hatsuko gazed up as dreamily as if he’d just proposed marriage.

  “What are you saying?” I demanded. Hatsuko shot me a sour look that warned me not to go on. I ignored her. “ ‘Our’ homeland has already been invaded. Okinawa is our homeland.”

  Nakamura spoke to me as if I were a slow child who required a simple explanation for something that was obvious to everyone else. “Oh, Little Guppy.” I bristled at his using Hatsuko’s nickname for me. “Okinawa is a finger, the littlest of the fingers, which will have the honor of being broken as we deliver all the blows needed to stop the American bullies from ever reaching the shores of our homeland and harming any real Japanese.”

  “A finger to be broken? Is that all Okinawa ever was to you? To any of you ‘real’ Japanese?”

  Nakamura’s expression hardened.

  “Tamiko, you’ve said enough,” my sister scolded. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand. You ‘real Japanese’ said you were defending us, but from the beginning we were nothing more to you than a shield for your own defense. Our deaths, our island, mean nothing to you and your precious emperor—”

  A slap stung my cheek. “That will be enough!” Nakamura thundered, his handsome face twisting into that of a petulant child. “I could have you killed as a spy for voicing such unspeakable treason against the emperor.”

  “You, you with your long, shiny sword, you are the bully, just as much as the Americans.” Barely believing myself what I’d said, I ran away. When I reached the safety of a bend in the corridor to hide behind, I stopped and looked back. Hatsuko had thrown herself at Nakamura’s feet and was begging forgiveness for my transgression. He reached down, pulled her to her feet, tilted her tear-splashed face up, and gently stroked her cheek. I ran on, heavy with the knowledge that after such a display, Nakamura would surely propose marriage to my sister.

  Hatsuko was still not speaking to me when, a few days later, the order came for us to evacuate the patients; the ketō ground troops were closing in. Head Nurse Tanaka had to go into the wards to determine which of the patients were mobile enough to make the journey south.

  “You,” she said, pointing to me. “You’ll come with me and do something useful for a change and write down the names of the patients who can walk.”

  “What of the others?” I asked. “The ones who cannot walk?”

  “What do you think? Quit being an Okinawan simpleton and come along.”

  A medic carrying a large brown box accompanied us, and we entered the first ward. None of the emaciated men with their maggot-infested wounds and missing limbs seemed capable of making the trip to the latrine, much less a hard march on hilly terrain. But when Head Nurse announced our mission, all the men struggled to stand. A few managed to hold themselves upright. Head Nurse told me to take their names.

  Those not selected trembled with fear as they pleaded for her not to leave them behind. “The ketō will crush us beneath the treads of their monstrous tanks,” they wailed. “I heard that they kill prisoners by skinning them alive. Please, Nurse, please.”

  “All of you, stop disgracing yourselves!” Head Nurse bellowed. She nodded at the medic, who passed among the men, handing out packets of white powder. “Mix this with water and it will speed you on your way to a glorious death in the service of our emperor.”

  I recalled the stories about Head Nurse’s familiarity with poison, and a shiver ran through me.

  “You men over there.” She indicated a cluster of a dozen patients packed together on a couple of mats on the cave floor. “Since there is not enough powder for everyone, you will have a special honor.” The medic handed the man in the middle a grenade.

  “All you patients will remain silent when the enemy comes,” Head Nurse instructed them, her eyes alight with a strange gleam. “When they have wandered far into the cave, then, and only then, will you pull the pin on your grenade. And, if luck is with us, the cave will collapse and those of the enemy not killed outright will be crushed. In this way your deaths will be of some small service to the emperor.”

  We helped the abandoned, bedridden patients arrange themselves in the proper posture of death, with their heads facing north. Their piteous cries, begging us not to leave them to starve to death or to die at a cruel enemy’s hand, echoed out as we strode off to the next ward.

  By that evening the ambulatory patients had gathered in front of the main cave. Men tottered on crutches; arms were in slings, heads bandaged. There wasn’t a complete uniform among the lot of them, just a battered hat here, the scraps of a jacket there. Few even had boots. We stood in an eerie, ominous silence so unusual that it took a moment for us to identify its cause. A one-legged man who had his arm looped around the neck of a companion finally said, in a flat tone devoid of all emotion, “The bombing has stopped. Now they will come to kill us one by one.”

  As the sun set, I watched the army of broken bodies leave Haebaru. The stragglers at the end cast long, dark shadows that teetered behind them as they hobbled up the sloping hill.

  In our cave, I felt Hatsuko’s silence more keenly now that the incessant bombing had stopped. Sachiko, Miyoko, Mitsue, Hatsuko, and I were the only Princess Lily girls remaining. The others had left with the mobile patients. We had been assigned to stay behind until the next morning, in case the officers arriving then needed our help. We tried to chat, but our voices sounded stilted and too loud in the echoing silence. Soon the others were snoring softly, but I had become so accustomed to the sounds of war that I could no longer fall asleep without that constant rumble. I got up and went outside again.

  It was drizzling, and a miraculous sound reached me: the croaking of frogs. The call of night birds joined their serenade. And then, most magical of all, I heard the chirping of a happy gecko, just like the one that had always brought luck to our family. I imagined the pink bubble of his air sac blowing up and down at his neck and was transported back to my room beneath our thick thatch roof. In that dark and serene moment, it was as if there had never been a war and there was nothing more natural in the world than for me to take a stroll. I followed the peaceful sounds out beyond the edge of our cave world. I would have gone farther, gone wherever those sounds led me, had a squad of twenty Japanese soldiers not marched past.

  Each soldier wore full combat dress and carried a small square box under his arm. Their movements were crisp and forceful. It was exhilarating to see such a by-now-rare display of pride and spirit. These were the human bombs I had heard so much about. They would go out into the night and hide. When the enemy approached in their monstrous tanks, they would hurl themselves beneath the awful treads and detonate their bombs, destroying the machines, their occupants, and themselves in one final burst of glory.

  As they came closer, I saw that the troops were not all Japanese. In fact, only those on the outer edges were. All the men, boys, really, inside the square of real soldiers were Okinawans of the Blood and Iron corps. One of the Okinawans glanced my way, and for just one instant, his mask of noble sacrifice fell away and he was only a boy again, young and scared, and I was the last girl he would ever see on this earth. He risked his sergeant’s wrath by hissing at me, “They’re here. The Amerikās. They’re only fifty meters from this spot. Don’t stay any longer. Go back to your cave. Hurry. Run. Save yourself!” His words were a dying wish. A wish not to be dying. />
  As I ran back toward my cave, I passed another group of soldiers carrying rifles. They took positions behind a windbreak, ready to fire at any enemy who should appear. Just as I reached the cave entrance, several cracking shots splattered the mud where my feet had landed only an instant before. The soldiers at the windbreak fired back and no more shots were aimed my way.

  In the cave, Hatsuko, Miyoko, and Sachiko were stuffing what few things they had left into bundles. The moment she saw me, my sister rushed up and enfolded me in a hug. My heart soared with happiness that she had forgiven me. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “I couldn’t find you. I was so worried. They’re here! The order has already been given for us to evacuate for Makabe immediately. We’re all ready to leave, but we can’t find our cousin Mitsue.”

  “She must have left with another group,” Sachiko said.

  In the corridor orders were yelled for the evacuation to begin at once.

  Hatsuko nudged me toward Miyoko and Sachiko, who were rushing to join the group assembling.

  “Go with them,” she ordered. “I have to do one last thing before I leave. I’ll find you when we reach Makabe.” I knew immediately what that last thing was. “No, we have to go now. Lieutenant Nakamura is probably already on the road ahead of us.”

  “He’s not. His unit was ordered to stay behind,” she answered, setting off without another word.

  “I’m going with you,” I insisted.

  We shouldered our packs and rushed toward the officers’ quarters.

  “He must have just left,” Hatsuko said, stricken, as we stared into the cave, empty save for a few playing cards and a can holding the butts of their pine-needle cigarettes. Some of them were still smoldering.

  “Wait,” I whispered. “Do you hear that?”

  From around a corner, down the dark corridor came the sound of whimpering, as though someone might be trapped. Certain that someone was in terrible danger, I hurried off toward the distressing sound. I turned a corner and saw Nakamura far down the corridor. His back was to me. His pants were down and his slender buttocks shone in the guttering yellow light of the kerosene lantern at his feet. They clenched rhythmically as he thrust into a woman pressed between himself and the cave wall. Her legs were wrapped around Nakamura’s waist. I tried to stop Hatsuko from seeing who he was with, but failed. The woman saw Hatsuko as clearly as Hatsuko saw her. The luminous whiteness of her arching neck. The profile perfect enough to be carved onto a cameo brooch. The unmistakable outline of her lips, as full as a cartoon goldfish’s.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I lead Jake back through the Heiwa-dōri’s maze of shops. Outside, beyond the high, arched roof of glass, the light drizzle has turned to a hard rain, and a field of colored umbrellas bright as Easter eggs has burst into bloom. Jake and I are both soaked by the time we jump back into his car, and the spot on the shoulder of his shirt where I wept has been washed away. The rain slithering down the windows makes it feel cozy inside the car, turning everything outside into a wobbly, Impressionistic painting. I dig through my bag, grab the photo, hand it to Jake, and point to the gray-and-red car that I had thought was part of Chicago’s elevated train.

  “Isn’t that the monorail?”

  Jake nods.

  “And those blossoms at his feet?”

  Jake studies the date. “This was taken when the deigo trees were in bloom.”

  “There must be one nearby, outside of the frame.”

  “And this guy? You think he’s your …?”

  Jake waits for me to fill in “grandfather,” but the certainty I had standing in the yuta’s courtyard dissolves beneath his hard-eyed scrutiny. I can’t tell Jake about Codie’s hair. How the silent, aggrieved man with his pale, patchy skin who was our grandmother’s husband could not have been our mother’s father. All I can say with even the smallest sliver of confidence is, “I’m pretty sure he knows something about my family history.” I change the subject. “The photo had to have been taken here, though, didn’t it? A deigo tree and a two-car monorail? How many other cities could possibly have that combination?”

  “It has to be Naha.”

  “Of course, now the problem is to figure out where this was taken. Naha has, like, what? Half a million people?”

  “Close to that.”

  I touch the corner of the sign above the guy’s head. “ ‘apLand.’ My best guess is that it’s a misspelling of App Land. Some tech store.” I grab Jake’s phone, regretting that I haven’t brought mine along, even if it would have meant being subjected to Mom’s texts. “I’ll Google it.”

  “Don’t bother.” Jake’s tone is weird. He flips the photo back onto my lap and pulls into traffic. “I know exactly where and what that is. It’s pretty much the first place a certain kind of guy wants to see.” Jake doesn’t give any more explanation as we drive in silence, but his reaction, verging on disgust, reminds me of the yuta’s.

  The rain has stopped by the time we leave the broad boulevards lined with royal palms and shops spilling out their glittering merchandise and turn onto narrower and narrower streets until we’re creeping along a nearly deserted back road lined with dingy two- and three-story concrete buildings. We pass through a few blocks that look like a ghost town. Abandoned businesses with boarded-up windows and weeds growing through the concrete steps in front sport signs with letters so faded by the sun that I can barely make out the names: Club Kentucky. High Time Bar. The Manhattan. Girls Girls Girls. Beneath several of the names is the invitation “GI Welcome.” High overhead, the gleaming silver track of the monorail skims above the rooftops.

  Suddenly, amid all the gray buildings, we encounter one painted a vivid crimson. The shocking color frames a painting two stories high that depicts a beautiful woman in a red-and-lilac kimono sniffing a flower. A few blocks later there is another clump of equally gaudy bright buildings. The first is painted a shocking pink. On its far end, a two-story poster depicts a pair of anime girls in French-maid costumes, breasts overflowing laced bodices, while some invisible fishing line hoists up the backs of ruffled skirts to reveal the clefts of their butts. With a sarcastic tone, Jake translates the caption beneath the girls: “ ‘Welcome home, Mr. Married Man. Your wife is out shopping for the day. Is there anything we can do for you before she gets back?’

  “Check that one out.” He points to a place with a sign that translates as “The Girls’ Nursing Academy.” The two-story building is covered in bathroom tile and features giant posters of young Japanese girls in sexy nurse uniforms and pink scrubs. There is another caption, and though Jake does this translation in a high, girly voice, it’s obvious that he doesn’t think any of this is funny. “ ‘Please come in! We need to check your pulse. Now please remove all of your clothes. We’d like to check your blood pressure, too.’ ”

  On the street, a couple of businessmen in black suits crane their necks to study the photos of the nurse girls. A thuggy-looking guy with slicked-back hair steps out and beckons the men to enter, holding the door open, and pointing to other photos posted on the signboard next to him.

  “What are these, strip clubs? Whorehouses?”

  Jakes gives a dry imitation of a laugh. “Whorehouses? Technically, no, since prostitution has been illegal in Japan since the midfifties. No, these are ‘bathhouses,’ sōpus. Which is why what you pay for in a sōpu is just a bath. A very, very expensive bath where the girl washes you with her naked, soapy body. But if, during all the rub-a-dub-dub, the couple should just happen to realize that they are soul mates and fall deeply in love and can’t keep themselves from having mad, passionate sex … well, it happens. That’s just two strangers who’ve fallen in love. The money is for the bath. Period. That’s the Japanese way.”

  “You sure know a lot about all this,” I say.

  Jake shakes his head. “No one who grows up here doesn’t know about Soaplands. In a lot of ways, they’re an essential part of Oki history. This, the Tsuji pleasure quarter, is the point where Japan, Okinawa, and, n
ow that the dollar is so weak, to a much lesser degree America all literally rub up against one another.”

  I’m relieved that Jake’s judgment and disgust are for murky political relationships. He drives on, pointing out the tiled, painted businesses as we pass them. “Okay, there you’ve got the Princess Heart, the Emerald, and Wave. And look.” Jake tilts his head toward a couple of soldiers. “The first customers of the day.”

  Though they’re in civvies, I figure them to be marines, since everything about them—from their bald-on-the-sides, high-and-tight haircuts, to their weight-lifter muscles, to their rolling gaits, like their balls are so enormous they have to straddle them with each step—is military on steroids. They’re too big for the narrow street, too red-faced for the glaring sun. The marines pause in front of the Princess Heart and stare at the poster of a girl with a face like Betty Boop and breasts like a Jersey cow.

  The soldiers shove each other as they study a price list that starts at twenty-four thousand yen for an hour, more than they make in a week. A tough-looking Okinawan bouncer wearing sunglasses, his hair gelled into a spiky ’do, slouching against a wall, straightens up, flicks his cigarette into the street, and closes in on the marines. He waves the soldiers away with broad gestures. The marines fail to take the hint and start to go in anyway. The bouncer, arms folded in front of his chest, blocks their entrance, and, with one nod of his head, two guys appear to flank him. The marines start to force their way past, and the three men drop down into the Stance. The marines recognize the serious ass-kicking potential on display, flip the guys off, and leave.

  Jake takes a left, turns down a street drabber and drearier than the others, and stops in front of the drabbest and dreariest building in the neighborhood. It is, however, distinguished by three features: 1. down the alley that runs along the side of the building is a clear view of the monorail; 2. shooting straight up from a massive planter embedded in the sidewalk a deigo tree reaches for the sunlight above the roofline; and 3. the sign above the door is spelled out, not in Japanese characters but in straightforward English: SoapLand. “This the place you were looking for?”