The Occupation of Joe

by Bill Baynes

  To Joe, Tokyo is like Mars. He’s used to the sooty streets of downtown Schenectady. His world there was one square mile with the Polish ghetto at the center. No English was spoken at home. Gospels and sermons were delivered in Polish at the church on the corner. His people were poor, but proud and clean. Their lives were ordinary, but ordered.

  In Tokyo, everyday existence is anything but ordered. It’s shattered. The squalor is repulsive to him.

  Joe draws the boy close, absently patting his back. He is so small, it’s hard to guess how old he is.

  They cross a double bridge and enter an area that is entirely undamaged. Carefully cultured evergreens and groves of bamboo are arranged artfully across the beautiful grounds.

  “Will ya look at that,” Wade quips, snapping some pictures, another cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  “The Imperial Palace Grounds,” Doc says.

  They traverse sections of expensive homes, the slanting roofs and graceful jutting eaves untouched by the blazes, the wooden fences intact.

  “How did our bombers miss these places?” Joe wonders.

  “Not how,” Wade mutters, taking a deep drag. “Why?”

  “This is where MacArthur and the brass will live,” Doc says.

  They come to an area of unharmed offices in what used to be the financial district.

  “Little America,” Doc says. “GHQ.”

  The men check in at the military command before heading back. As they near the port, Joe signs for the boy to show them where he lives. Sam points across the river and the jeep detours over the Sumida.

  The stench is unthinkable. Unidentifiable clumps bob in the putrid waters.

  “Thank God for the cold,” Doc says. “In the heat of summer, it’d be … peh.” He blows out his lips.

  They move into a residential area and pull up behind a man in an ox cart piled high with household belongings. It’s slow going.

  “An ox!” Wade smirks, standing on the front seat to get a photo. “Can ya believe this? What a backward country.”

  The men creep past women and babies lurking under a few boards, past children with horrible burns.

  “We’ll be here all night at this rate,” Doc says.

  “Drop him off,” Wade says. “He can find his own way home.”

  “Just a little farther,” Joe says.

  But the ox cart veers to avoid a cluster of rubbish and gets stuck in ruts of frozen mud, blocking the way.

  “End of the road,” Doc says.

  As the jeep rolls to a stop, Sam shouts something in Japanese and points down the street. Two older boys are wrestling a sack of food away from an elderly woman.

  “Hey!” Doc bellows.

  “Calm down,” Joe tells Sam. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Fucking savages,” declares Wade.

  He decides he wants a photograph of their first outing, the three of them and the boy. He hands a camera to the cart driver, who is standing on the shoulder and trying to figure out what to do. Wade signs that he wants him to snap a shot.

  “This will never happen,” he says. “He’ll never figure it out.”

  But the driver takes the camera reverently, backs up and frames the four subjects with great care. He gestures for Wade in his belted jacket, Doc in the back and Joe to form a semicircle around the boy.

  Sam is barely half the men’s height. His thin shirt seems too small, his feet so naked.

  The men are wearing hats and gloves. Doc and Wade button their Navy-issue jackets and turn up their collars. Joe is used to cold weather. He leaves his jacket open and his hands bare.

  They’re standing in front of a leafless tree, squinting into the wintry sun. Ruins surround them.

  The man with the camera grins widely and gesticulates to the men. Sam looks back up at them. They’re all smiling. He smiles too.

  3

  Isamu

  He’s heard the talk around the neighborhood, boys swanking behind four-foot walls, women whispering in the open air stalls. He knows how he’s supposed to think.

  They’re the enemy, the gaijin, the occupying forces. They are arrogant, ill-mannered monsters. They did monstrous things here and in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They made war against women and children and the old.

  They must be tolerated, but only until the Emperor launches his secret plan to regain the homeland and expel them once and for all. They should be shunned, whenever possible.

  But to Isamu, forced to be practical, the Americans are the best shot he’s got at keeping his family alive. So the next time the young officers land at the pier, there he is.

  “Hi, Joe.”

  “Well, look who’s here,” Joe smiles. “Hi, Sam.”

  “What a surprise,” Wade snickers, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

  The men are looser and louder than they were before.

  The last time the boy met them he had his first ride in an automobile and his first gum. He was as hungry as ever in half an hour. Now he’s looking for something more filling. He wants a little for Mama too.

  He falls in next to them as they walk to the motor pool. He’s seen people at the marketplace make the universal sign for money, rubbing thumb and fingers together. He signs it to the officers, then points to his mouth.

  “Money. Mouth,” Wade interprets. “He wants ya to put money in his mouth.”

  Isamu can’t understand what he’s saying, but he can smell the alcohol on his breath. He isn’t carrying any camera gear this time.

  “He wants money to buy food,” Doc says.

  Joe offers another stick of gum, but Isamu refuses. He pretends to cradle a baby and points back over his shoulder toward home.

  “A baby back home,” Doc says.

  “Christ, what is he? Eight, nine?” Joe says. “And he’s got a family to feed?”

  “He could be ten, I’d guess,” Doc says. “Malnutrition, you know.”

  From the way the men relate to him, the tone of voice when they speak to him, Isamu suspects they think he is younger than he is. He turned twelve last spring. How can he take advantage of their error?

  The boy points to himself, holds his arms wide and then waves his arm in a semicircle.

  “He’s saying he can show us around,” Joe says.

  “Let’s go,” Wade says, lighting another cigarette.

  Isamu climbs in the back seat with Joe, like last time, but he stands behind the driver. He’s dressed more warmly today, wearing a light sweater and socks, along with his too-small shirt, shorts, and sandals.

  “Where to?” Doc asks.

  “Somewhere to buy some hootch,” Wade says.

  “I could use a shoeshine,” Joe says.

  Joe takes a pull on an imaginary bottle, then points to the boy, then sweeps the neighborhood.

  Isamu points forward. Doc drives for a couple minutes before the boy taps him on the shoulder and motions for him to wait. He makes the money sign and points partway up the street toward a stooped man with a beard shaped like a shovel. He holds out his palm.

  “That’s where you buy booze?” Wade asks, pointing his cigarette. He gives the boy a few coins.

  Isamu scoots over to the man, bows politely, gives him a single coin and asks a question. The man points to the northwest.

  Back in the jeep, the boy taps Doc on either shoulder when he wants him to turn. All the road signs are gone.

  They find a shack selling liquor in ten blocks. Isamu runs over and purchases a jar of sake. He pockets one coin and returns the rest to Wade.

  The shoeshine is next. Isamu asks directions from a boy on the street and guides the men to where several women are cleaning sailors’ shoes. Joe pays for all three shines. He notices when the women slip a couple coins to the boy, but he doesn’t say anything.

  Their shoes are soiled as soon as the men walk back to the jeep.

  “See if he can find us some ‘comfort women,’“ Wade laughs, making a crude hand gesture.

  “I think he’s too young to kno
w what that means,” Joe says.

  Wrong. Isamu understands Wade’s sign. He’s seen women behind his hotel, bending over, raising their skirts. He inquires of an old woman and then directs the men to an intact housing block, where a large sign in American letters stretches over the front: Wellcome Joe!

  Hundreds of American sailors, wearing their whites with their Dixie cup caps, crowd eight-across in front of the building. Some are playing cards and a few are drinking, but everyone is orderly. MPs patrol the perimeter.

  “A lot different than the red light district back home,” Joe says.

  “The Brass is turning a blind eye,” Doc says. “Lots of rapes of local women. The Japs are hoping this’ll cut that down.”

  Women with babies shelter in the shadows across the street. There are no other girls in sight.

  “Wonder if there’s a special line for officers?” Wade asks.

  While the men are talking, Isamu reaches for the side compartment on the driver’s door and pulls out a comb, a pencil and the real prize, a pack of cigarettes. He puts the comb and pencil back and sneaks the cigarettes into his pants.

  Joe sees the theft, but he looks away when Isamu glances over at him.

  “I don’t think we should be seen standing in that line,” Doc says.

  “Besides, it would take forever,” Joe says.

  “Shit!” Wade says, smashing his bottle on the street.

  “C’mon, Lieutenant,” Doc says.

  Wade turns to the boy. “Is that the best ya can do?”

  Isamu ducks his head and falls back into the seat. He gets a bad feeling from Wade. He doesn’t like the way the shorter man with the cigarettes looks at him.

  “It’s not his fault,” Joe says.

  Isamu rubs his stomach and whines.

  Joe responds by pulling a sandwich out of an inside pocket of his jacket. He tears it in two and gives half to the boy.

  Isamu wolfs the food, then looks up at the officer. He tries to smile sweetly like a little boy.

  This American seems to notice more than the other two. They already stopped registering the wreckage and decay, but not this one. He still stares across the desolate streets like it’s the first time he’s seen them. He’s the softest target. And the boy knows that he’s always watching him.

  Joe isn’t his friend, but Isamu isn’t afraid of him. Not all monsters are alike.

  * * *

  On the next trip two days later, Isamu knows in advance where the men want to go, so he is able to get detailed directions before he meets them.

  They drive for nearly an hour before Isamu holds up his hand to stop. He points behind a building, where sunlight glints off something greenish and metallic.

  It’s the Great Buddha of Kamakura, sitting in lotus position, a massive statue seven times the size of a man. Isamu joins hands and bows to the massive bronze.

  “Buddha,” he says.

  “Da Budda,” says Wade, who has been drinking steadily during the entire trip. “Da Budda had a brudda …”

  “Who coulda been big,” Doc chimes in, chuckling.

  And Wade comes back: “But da Budda was a pig and wouldn’t share.”

  He roars with delight at his own wet wit, holding his hands in front of an imaginary fat belly. The few Japanese in the area glance at him with irritation, but quickly look away.

  “Is there a place to take a piss around here?” Wade wonders. He pantomimes unzipping his fly and holding his cock.

  Isamu backs away, shaking his head, and bumps into Joe, nearly knocking him down.

  “Jesus, Wade,” Joe says.

  Wade shoots the finger at him and walks behind the statue to relieve himself.

  Eyes wide, horrified, the boy scuttles away and waits for the officers by the jeep.

  When they get back to the port, Joe puts his arm around Isamu’s shoulder and takes a few steps to the side. He reaches into his jacket pocket, removes a paper bag and sneaks it under the boy’s shirt.

  “At least it’s something.”

  Isamu looks under his shirt and sees the sandwich. He looks up and nods.

  “Domo,” he says.

  Hugging himself tightly, he runs away as fast as he can.

  4

  Joe

  The men are thousands of miles from home, often hundreds from landfall, frequently lost in fog and waves. They have no way of knowing what’s happening in the war or what they’re supposed to do, sometimes even where they are, unless the communications officer tells them.

  That’s Joe.

  The information arrives at Radio Central, where enlisted men work in spaces so crowded with electronic equipment that they have to squeeze by each other sideways. Pipes clutter the ceiling. Everything is cold, gray metal.

  Operators in headsets transcribe incoming dots and dashes into sequences of numbers and words. They have no idea what the numbers and words mean until they take them next door to the crypto room.

  That’s where Joe spends long hours by himself, painstakingly entering the sequences on a decoding machine that looks like a typewriter. Only he and the exec have clearance to decipher the messages beaming aboard Chourre.

  During baseball season, Joe takes the time every day to decode the major league box scores, so that the sailors can follow their hometown teams and favorite players. The scores are transmitted in Morse code to all the ships at sea when there are no orders or official operational data to send.

  Joe thinks it’s good for morale. President Roosevelt thought the same thing when he permitted the leagues to continue their seasons during the war years.

  Joe loves the statistics in baseball, the way they wrinkle and ripple and settle, the way one revision causes dozens of others. He sees the numbers as facts. They’re real, reassuring, true. Kind of like orders aboard ship. Like their belief that their enemies are evil. Baseball is something they can count on.

  Joe hardly played ball as a boy. He was too busy making deliveries, helping out at the neighborhood store his parents operated. He fell in love with the sport in this place where there are no groomed green fields, no chalked enclosures, only the endless waters of the Pacific Ocean.

  He copies the scores for each team in his careful, legible script and takes them to Cookie, who posts them in the mess hall. As a result, Joe is popular with the seamen. When he asks Cookie to make a few extra sandwiches for him, it’s no problem, doesn’t give it a second thought.

  Joe has a son, not quite two years old when he shipped out. He hardly knows him, but he thinks about him often. Good Catholic that he is, he’s guilty about not being there to help raise him. That might have something to do with the fatherly feelings he has for the Japanese boy. That’s the topic of discussion at lunch in the wardroom.

  “You ain’t his daddy, Joey-boy,” Wade says. “Don’t give him any more. He’ll just keep pestering ya.”

  “It’s just a few sandwiches,” Joe says. “It can’t do any harm.”

  “Next thing ya know, you come ashore and thousands of little Nips will follow you, demanding food for their families.”

  “He’s hungry,” Joe says.

  “They all are, every one of them,” Doc says. “That’s why MacArthur is shipping in food.”

  “That’s what they get for killing Americans,” Wade says. “They’re getting off easy, in my opinion.”

  “We ought to do more,” Joe says.

  “I think Binky’s running for office,” Wade says. “Governor of Nipland. He wants to feed the masses.”

  “Ha!” Doc chuckles in his good-natured way, “Binky’s legions.”

  “We ought to give ‘em the food we throw away,” Joe insists.

  “Are ya crazy?” Wade demands. “We won’t be able to go anywhere. They’ll be on our backs the whole time. Ya heard what the exec said.”

  The executive officer told the men to stay away from the locals.

  “Don’t trust ‘em,” he said. “They’ll glom onto anything you own and sell it on the black market. Eve
n the kids’ll do it.”

  “Japs are vermin,” Wade says. “They’re dirty.” He grimaces and brushes imaginary dirt off his sleeve. “They’ve got no right to our grub.”

  Make no mistake, Joe is a naval officer, fiercely proud to be a member of the club. But he’s sensitive to slurs, abuse, abasements. He’s a Polack, the second son of an illegal immigrant. Throughout his school years, all the way through college, he was the target of bullies and the butt of endless jibes about his nationality.

  During the Depression, he saw his folks feed their neighbors, selling groceries to them on credit. Much of it was never repaid. They did it because they had to. That’s how his father explained it. Not could. Not should. Had to.

  “I just don’t think they should starve,” Joe says.

  Wade rolls his eyes. Doc shakes his head and smiles.

  The three young officers agree on another excursion, this time to the underground tunnels at Matsushiro. Sam, of course, is their tour guide.

  Joe brings a sack with two sandwiches stuffed in his jacket. He pats his jacket so the boy knows he has something to give him after the trip.

  They putter south past vast landscapes of wreckage, dodging huge potholes, beeping at children standing in the middle of dirt streets.

  In one neighborhood where a few wooden structures are still standing, dozens of smiling children clamber onto the jeep. Sam ducks behind the front seat and grabs onto Joe’s leg, trying to secure his place.

  The men empty their pockets, shoveling gum, candies, even cigarettes into the hungry swarm.

  “Have you ever seen anything like that?” Doc asks.

  At Matsushiro, they stroll the huge caverns, where the Japanese government planned to build factories, docks for their ships, even a scaled-down version of the Imperial shrine. They were 75 percent completed when work stopped.

  The men are astounded at the immensity, stretching under several mountains. They’re amazed at the human cost of construction, which is described in hand-lettered signs pasted around the complex. Thousands died, many of them Korean prisoners.

  Doc points to a brand-new Mercedes parked against one wall. “That’s the old man’s.”