In it I had criticized the Sagano Girls’ School students for snobbish behavior, but this made little difference in the way my classmates treated me. Perhaps they were not so mean and sarcastic in the days that followed, but they were very cold. I was sure they had not liked my essay. Not a single teacher mentioned the prize. Obviously the school was not pleased.
The newspaper gave a banquet for the contest winners. Ko took tucks in her school uniform for me to wear, but I had to be accompanied by a guardian. In Japan all guardians must be parents or must be male even if the male is a baby brother. I had no one, but I desperately wanted to go to the banquet.
Then I thought of Mr. Naido, and he was delighted. Of course he would go with me. No one asked who he was. I would have said he was my uncle. He did not even stutter very much.
I had not eaten such food, or so much food, for months. I slipped half into the newspaper I had brought, for Ko.
And I received my ten thousand yen. But I did not buy shoes even though Ko wanted me to. That prize money would feed us for many weeks and we would not have to use more of the money in the wrapping cloth. The wrapping cloth money was our security.
A week later I was called to the office by the principal. I had been afraid that sooner or later I would be sent for and suspended because of my essay, but I had that prize money, the difference between eating and starving for Ko and me. I had decided I could take suspension.
“Sit down, Miss Kawashima,” ordered the baldheaded principal. I sat. “Do you know a man by the name of Matsumura?”
I thought for a moment. “I knew a Corporal Matsumura in Korea.”
The principal showed me a square white envelope. “This letter came addressed to you in care of the school. I opened it.”
The letter couldn’t have come from the Corporal. He belonged to my past. He didn’t know where I was. My heart began to pound. Then I suddenly remembered that Father had forbidden his children to open each other’s mail, and first things first.
“Sir,” I said, “you shouldn’t have done that.”
“I feel responsible for you. You are a very young maiden.”
Stubbornness forced me on. “You should have given it to me first. I would have shown it to you, sir.”
He handed me the envelope without replying, and I took out the letter. A self-addressed postcard was enclosed and the letter was on the paper of Kyoto’s Sanjo Hotel. I read:
To Miss Kawashima Yoko,
I am not sure I am writing to the right young lady. Your name character, Yoko, struck me after I read your essay in the newspaper. The only Yoko I know using this character lived in Nanam, Korea, a little girl who came to see me when I was in the hospital. If you are the same person please reply. I enclose a postcard.
Sincerely,
Mr. Matsumura
Halfway through his letter I began shedding tears, and they rolled down both cheeks to my chin and dropped on the letter paper. Ah! Corporal Matsumura! He had lived through the dangerous war. He must have crawled under the showers of bombs and fire. I looked at the principal, sobbing, and said brokenly, “Sir, Mr. Matsumura is a friend of our family.”
“Then the letter is yours.”
I could not wait for school to end that day. I ran and skipped along the rail ties and excitedly showed the letter to Ko. She read it over and over, not able to believe, and she shed tears of gladness too, to hear from him and know he had been spared.
“What is he doing in this city?” she wondered.
In very small characters I wrote on the postcard that I was the one he was looking for, and that I was studying hard even though we had almost starved, and that Mother had died at the train station in November. We were like two orphans, I told him, for we were separated from Father and Hideyo. 1 added, “My thoughts often go back to the happy days, but someday I trust good fortune will come my way again.”
I walked to the small post office next to the general store and mailed it right away, hoping he would receive it before he left the city.
How I wanted to see the Corporal! How I wanted to go to the Sanjo Hotel. But such a visit was strictly prohibited by our customs; no maiden should ever visit a man, especially in a hotel. For Ko and me it was even worse, for we had no guardian. I had not told the principal that Mother had been dead for three and a half months, for the school did not accept students without an established guardian.
As we sipped miso soup I told Ko I wished she were married. Her husband would be my guardian and he would take me to see the Corporal.
“At least he is alive and well,” Ko reminded me. “We will meet him someday.”
I even thought of calling the hotel, but I felt it was awkward.
Such a mean world! “Nothing goes right for me!” I complained. “It’s been like hell!”
“Let’s hope there will never be war again as long as we live,” said Ko.
Strong north winds shook the warehouse that night and drafts came in from everywhere. We were cold. Ko doubled our mattress, using the extra futon. She put all the covers on us and we snuggled together for warmth.
It was two days after I had mailed the postcard, and our class was doing a silkworm experiment in the laboratory during the last period, when Mr. Naido came in and spoke to Mr. Iwai, the biology teacher.
“Miss Kawashima,” called the teacher, “report to the principal’s office.”
Why did the principal want me again? The only thing I had done wrong was that I had not told him about Mother. I was going to tell him when my tuition ran out and I could not go to school anymore. Or was my appearance so bad that he didn’t want me in the school? Or could it be, even now, that essay?
My heart beat loudly as I stood at the office door. I combed through my two-inch-long hair with my fingers. I opened the door quietly and bowed to the principal.
“Here she is!” he said.
A man wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit turned. “Oh!” I exclaimed. That scarred face . . . and familiar smile! “Oh, Corporal Ma—” I ran toward him and threw myself into his arms and sobbed. How safe I felt in his arms.
The Corporal held me with one arm, stroking my porcupine hair, his tears falling on my head.
“Little One, Little One!” he said. “I had to see you before I left the city. When does your sister get home?”
“About six.” I was still crying.
“Take me to your place. We have much to talk about.”
I returned to the laboratory, gathered my belongings, and rushed back. The principal and Corporal Matsumura were talking in low voices, and I sat and waited. I had sat on this chair when Mother and I first came to the school, I remembered.
How joyous it was to ride the streetcar with the Corporal all the way to our warehouse. I led him upstairs. There was no cushion to welcome my important guest so I folded my blanket four times and asked him to sit on it.
The Corporal met with Mother’s urn. He bowed deeply, his eyes closed. Then I heard Ko and rushed downstairs to take her hand and bring her up quickly to meet our honorable guest.
Ko tried hard not to show tears when she met the Corporal, but she pulled out her handkerchief, barely able to say, “Welcome!”
He was in the city on business. As we ate our humble supper and after we had told our story, he told us that he had left Nanam the day after we fled. He was assigned to the Niigata Army Hospital in the homeland, but as his ship crossed the Sea of Japan it was attacked by American bombers. He had floated, holding on to a log, for four days until he was rescued by a Japanese fishing boat. Then the atomic bombs had been dropped, the war had ended, and he had returned to his hometown, Morioka, a castle town where long ago Lord Taira had lived and governed the district. The Corporal had taken over his father’s silk thread and textile business, which had been passed down from ancestors who had woven materials for the lord of the castle and his family.
“Oh, that was why you felt my costume at the hospital!” I exclaimed.
“Right,” he said. “I could f
eel the quality of the materials.”
His marriage had been arranged upon his return to his hometown, and now he and his wife were expecting a baby. He gazed at me and he said lovingly, “If it is a girl I shall name her Yoko.”
“By the way,” he continued, “I kept your calligraphy, Bu Un Cho Kyu, in my uniform pocket. It was soaked, but I framed it and it hangs in my office. It has brought me good luck.”
Corporal Matsumura wanted to buy me a pair of shoes but the stores were already closed. He also wanted to help us with our daily expenses, but we told him we had enough money for now. He gave us his address and made us promise to wire him collect when we did need something—anything. We would hear from him soon, he said.
He was taking the midnight express, and Ko and I went to the station to see him off. Mother had left me at this station, and now the Corporal was leaving too. Loneliness attacked me and once more sobs wracked my body.
“Here,” said the Corporal, taking off his wristwatch. “I noticed you have no clock. Keep this and give it to your brother as a welcome. No more tears, Little One. Keep up your good work.”
A station bell’s sound burst in the air, warning that the train was leaving. The Corporal jumped on and took his seat. He waved at us through the window, and Ko and I bowed to him deeply for his friendship. I held his wristwatch tightly.
The train began moving. He waved to us again. I put the watch to my good ear and it was ticking and warm. I read his lips. “We’ll keep in touch.” The train increased speed. Ko and I watched until we could no longer see the red taillight.
ELEVEN
IN A SMALL FARMHOUSE NEAR THE thirty-eighth parallel lived Mr. and Mrs. Kim and their boys, Hee Cho, sixteen, and Hee Wang, fourteen. They were having supper when there was a loud thud outside the kitchen door.
“Probably the wind,” said Mr. Kim, eating his fluffy rice with kimch’i, the hot Korean pickle. “The snow has changed to a blizzard.”
“Hee Cho, go check,” said Mrs. Kim.
The thin wooden door was usually easy to slide open with a toe, but this time Hee Cho could not move it. The door was off the track, and he tried to put it back. “Something is pushing the door,” he called.
“Maybe the wild boar again.” Mr. Kim got up, went into the earthen-floor kitchen, and picked up a large broadax. Hee Wang came with a rope and Mrs. Kim brought a lantern. Mr. Kim gave his elder son the broadax while he worked on the door.
He could not get it back on the track. Mr. Kim thought the wild boar would be pacing around the barn, not pushing against their door. Finally he lifted the door and removed it completely from the track. Wind and snow blew in, and Hideyo lay there, unconscious.
Mr. Kim touched his garments. “Frozen.” They carried Hideyo in and put the door back on the track while the wind howled and the snow blew in.
The boys brought straw and mats from the barn and made a bed on the dirt floor. Mr. Kim removed the rucksack and Mrs. Kim tore off the thin, torn Korean garments. A Japanese student’s uniform appeared.
“Is he a Japanese boy, Father?” asked Hee Wang.
“The way he carried his rucksack and the cherry flower emblem on the buttons of the uniform show he is Japanese,” his father told him.
They took off leg wrappers, shoes, and wet socks. Hideyo wore four pairs of socks, half-frozen, and all the shirts he owned. Mrs. Kim wiped his body and massaged his chest.
“Look what I found,” exclaimed Hee Wang. “A belly wrapper, with a notebook in it.”
The notebook was a Japanese savings book. “What’s his name, son?” asked Mr. Kim. Both of his boys could read the characters for “Kawashima.” They hid the savings book and the contents of the rucksack, in case the Communist Army came to inspect the house.
Mrs. Kim put more wood in the clay firebox that heated the cooking vat and the rest of the house. While the men massaged Hideyo’s legs and body, Mrs. Kim put crushed hot pepper in dry socks, put the socks on Hideyo’s feet, and wrapped the feet in the little fur coat. More crushed dry pepper went onto Hideyo’s chest, as the massage continued.
They put a nightshirt on him, covered him with a blanket, and tucked lots of straw over and around him. “He will be all right while we eat,” Mr. Kim said.
As they ate, the farmer made his decision. “If he should die or if anyone finds out we have rescued a Japanese boy, we will be betrayed for prize money and executed. Listen, everyone. The boy is going to be my nephew. His parents were killed by Japanese and he has come to live with us. Do you understand? This way we are not in danger.”
They ate quickly and then Mrs. Kim crushed garlic, added warm water, and tried to feed Hideyo as Mr. Kim forced open his mouth. His throat contracted—he swallowed. His feet were warming a little but his hands were ice-cold. Crushed pepper went into mittens for his hands.
Long after their sons had gone to bed Mr. and Mrs. Kim massaged Hideyo’s body, kept water boiling for steam, and fed him garlic water with crushed hot peppers in it. Mr. Kim was feeding logs into the fire when his wife called out, “Aboji (Daddy)! He turned and groaned!” Mr. Kim rushed back and patted Hideyo’s cheeks.
Honorable Brother returned to life, so tired that he could not move. He did not know where he was or who these people were. And where were his things? He was even fearful of being poisoned when the woman held a spoon to his lips. She tasted the pepper and garlic water to show him it was safe, and the hot mixture felt good to his stomach.
He told them who he was and where he had come from, and Hee Cho, when he came home from school, told him, “You are going to be our cousin.”
Of course Hideyo wanted to be on his way to Seoul, but he was in no condition to travel. Besides, Mr. Kim told him, everyone trying to escape to the south had been killed by the Communist Army. “Now you are our relative,” the farmer said. “Stay with us until you regain your health. You will be at home here.”
As soon as he was able to get up, Hideyo helped the family, weaving straw, repairing the barn. Often he went to town with Mr. Kim to sell the straw mats they made. After supper he would fetch two wooden buckets of water on a pole across his shoulders, to fill a large tub in the kitchen, so Mrs. Kim would not have to walk on the icy path. He got up early to build a fire and heat water.
He helped Hee Wang with arithmetic and discussed politics with Hee Cho in the Korean language. He learned a political vocabulary.
Spring came. Hideyo helped remove the protective straw from the apple trees, and as the fragrance of apple blossoms filled the air and bees danced from blossom to blossom, his thoughts drifted to his birthplace, Aomori, in Japan, where lots of apples were grown. Then the images of his parents revived in his heart, for they too were born in apple blossom country. Homesickness for his parents and sisters overwhelmed him, and one evening as they ate supper he told the Kim family he must leave.
“Stay. Become our boy,” said Mr. Kim.
“Please stay!” begged Hee Cho and Hee Wang.
Mrs. Kim was in tears.
But he must go, Hideyo said. As soon as the spring work was finished and when the moon was dark, so that he would not be spotted.
When the last supper with the generous Korean family was finished, he gathered his few belongings. His student’s uniform, underwear, pants, and socks were washed and folded by Mrs. Kim. Hideyo put the fur coat in the bottom of the rucksack, then the family album and savings book, then his clothes.
Mrs. Kim packed large rice balls in a bamboo box and Mr. Kim handed Hideyo a little money. Hideyo tried to refuse the money, for Mr. Kim was a poor farmer who had to give almost all his earnings to the government, but Mr. Kim insisted that he carry some Korean money.
He wanted to tell Mrs. Kim many things to express his gratitude, but the tears came and his chest tightened. Mrs. Kim held his hands and cried, “Aigo!” an expression of sadness. He shook hands with Mr. Kim, and the hand, rough from years of hard work in the fields, seemed gentle and soft. Mr. Kim, in tears, bit his chapped lips and nodded his wrinkl
ed face, as if to say, “Don’t say anything. I understand.”
Then, because a rucksack would give away the fact that he was Japanese, Mrs. Kim put the rucksack in a burlap bag tied with a long rope and told him to carry it around his hips like a Korean.
Hee Gho went with Hideyo as far as the river. Imjŏn, the fourth-largest river in Korea, crosses the thirty-eighth parallel. American soldiers controlled southern Korea, and Hideyo knew he would be safer once he crossed this boundary. The river was four miles from the Kims’ house. As they left the house the sun was about to set. Hideyo kept looking back, waving to Mr. and Mrs. Kim and Hee Wang. Just before they vanished into the deep forest he waved a towel three times for a final farewell. At their doorway the Kims waved back.
The river was well guarded by the Communists. From a watchtower nearby, a searchlight swept over the area, throwing its strong beam on the river surface. Hideyo untied his burlap bag and took off all his clothes, even his rubber-soled tabi. He shoved them all into the bag, put the bag on his head, and fastened it to him with the rope. That way, if the bag fell off his head it would still be tied to him.
He cast his eyes onto the dark, wide river and wondered if he could swim across. The thought flashed through his mind that if he was spotted and killed, this running water would be crimsoned by his blood.
The boys looked at each other. They shook hands.
Hee Cho whispered, “Chosim haesŏ kaseyo (Go carefully).”
“Komapsŭmnida (Thank you),” whispered Hideyo.
“Chaphi jianko kaseyo (Travel so that you do not get caught).”
“Ŭnhe rŭl ichi an gesŭmnida (I will not forget your kindness).”
“Chigŭm kaseyo (Go now)!”
When the searchlight had passed over them, Hideyo slipped into the river. It was much colder than he had expected and the current was very strong. He swam. Each time a light came toward him he dove under, so that only his bag showed, half submerged and looking, he hoped, like a floating log. Again and again he had to dive.
So Far from the Bamboo Grove Page 12
