A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

by Jackie Copleton

  On days off, he would take the bus to a place where he could forget the work he did for his country. Customers chose their women from photographs displayed on a wooden veranda. They all had flower names: Peony, Chrysanthemum, Lotus, Plum Blossom. They even had a Western woman at the pleasure palace, Rose. He found her lying on a filthy futon, coiled up, foetal. She flinched when he knocked and entered, drew her knees higher. Her soles were bare, black with the journey she had taken. Her calves were thick and stained with dirt. He could not see her face but her hair was worn loose, dirty brown, knotted down her back. He imagined lice laying eggs in those unwashed follicles. He moved to the window and began to smoke. The tobacco roused her and slowly she turned around. He could not determine her age but he learned later she was thirty-four. She had two children, alive somewhere, she hoped. Her cheeks had the hollow mark of malnutrition, her mouth stretched in a mock smile, the grimace of starvation. Her nose was long and thin. Her forehead and eyes were too large for her head, like a fly, but her body was solid despite her hunger.

  ‘Cigarette,’ she said in English and then she repeated the word in Japanese.

  ‘You speak Japanese?’

  She held out a palm and he moved toward her and gave her the one in his mouth. ‘A little.’

  ‘Your name is Rose?’

  She considered the word for a moment and shook her head. She pointed at his pocket and he handed her another cigarette. She took it, moved from her bed and placed her prize on the windowsill, where she perched looking out through the shreds of an orange curtain.

  ‘My name is Alva.’

  They smoked in silence and when she had finished her cigarette she undid the buttons of her dress, once patterned with pink rose buds long turned grey. She stood up and pulled the fabric over her head. Bruises were patterned yellow and green and purple and black over her breasts and hips. Teeth marks were pressed into her back. She took his hand and led him to the squalor of her bed. He would never forget the smell of sweat and blood and other men. She took his hand and pressed his fingers between her legs, until she was wet enough to be ready for him. When he was done, she walked to a bucket of water, wrang out a cloth and wiped herself down. ‘Next time, bring me a packet of cigarettes.’

  Sato worried about diseases carried by the other men but he couldn’t resist the foreignness of her. He did not want to be reminded of home. He bought her cigarettes and medicine and once a new dress he found at a street stall. Alva never wore it. She told him she would do so when she left the comfort palace. She wanted to look pretty when she met her children again, if she ever did. He never found out. Sato left Pingfang halfway through 1943, first to Tokyo for a time, and finally he arrived back in Nagasaki at the start of 1945. But he carried China with him. The cries of the prisoners, the staff sheathed in white safety suits, that iron gate to the inner complex: they haunted him.

  Rumours of the dark acts committed there had surfaced in the years after the war and Sato expected for many years to be prosecuted for his work. But the authorities never came for him, nor many of the others. They knew too much, their knowledge of bacteriological warfare was too important. Many returned from China to senior posts at hospitals, universities and research laboratories, both in Japan and America. Others were not so fortunate. In 1946 he read of Hayashi’s imprisonment for war crimes. He looked at the picture of an innocuous man in round metal glasses and a neat moustache and thought, ‘Why you, Masaru? Why not me?’ I began to understand why Sato had hidden away at the orphanage for five years after the war. Not for fear of exposure, but guilt. Those children and his studies, perhaps Hideo most of all, were his attempt at atonement, but could they ever make up for all those lost logs at the lumber factory? He waited until 1968 to publish his research on the effect of the atomic bomb on child victims. He wanted his case studies to have turned twenty-one years of age so that the work would be definitive, thorough, indisputable. If the book was another bid for redemption, he seemed strangely unmoved by its poor reception. He reasoned he could not force people to face what he had concluded from the wards and X-rays and medical samples. Experts lined up to dismiss the data he had collated in the orphanage and Nagasaki. They argued his case studies, those two marked toddlers in particular, would have developed their conditions regardless of August 9, 1945. A few voices backed him up but their support was muted. He understood the negative reaction.‘Yes, we mourn our dead, and we campaign for proper health care and compensation for the survivors of pikadon, but we seem more resistant when it comes to accepting how that day carried forward in our bones and in our offspring. Is it not safer to contain the horror to one day? How could we parade these children, now adults, to the world, and say, look, this is the legacy? And who was I to do this?’

  In 1970 he had just turned seventy-five when he began to suffer from night sweats, fevers and aching muscles. Natsu forced him to go for tests and the results came back: leukaemia.

  Of course, I wonder if I have always carried these sickly cells since that first August 9. Maybe this ending was always my fate. So many other survivors have had multiple cancers, I’m surprised I haven’t fallen ill sooner. Natsu and Hideo want me to treat the disease aggressively. I go through the motions of chemotherapy and other treatments for them but I do not much care for the fight. My illness has had one side effect, however, perhaps not so unexpected. Last week I found Natsu searching for the adoption papers we filed twenty years ago. It did not take much of an interrogation to find out why. Hideo did not want to upset me so he had gone to her with new questions about his biological family. I am not offended. I understand the motivation. She asked me, ‘Could we have done more when he was still young? What if he has living relatives out there somewhere in the world? We’ve kept him from them.’ Too many decades have passed, I assured her. The search would likely end in failure. Best not to give him false hope.

  But here is the truth I will tell only to you. Yes, of course I could have looked for Kenzo and Amaterasu with more determination after the war. I could have tracked down mutual acquaintances, written to newspapers or A-bomb organisations or contacted migration authorities here and abroad. I did none of those things, gladly. I fulfilled the cursory official obligations for the adoption process and then I stopped. And this is why: I was punishing your mother. I was keeping Hideo from her, deliberately. She had kept you from me; I would keep her from her grandson.

  I thought when Hideo started to become known for his peace work, she would hear of him and come looking. We never hid his family name. How could she stay away? I am glad for all our sakes she never turned up. Her opinion would have been definitive, as it had been on all matters. She would have claimed him as her own or refused to believe he was her grandson. I had to shield him from both possibilities. I had to protect him from her.

  The Rising Sun

  Hinomaru: A red circle against a white background symbolising the rising sun also represents the Japanese national flag. It was officially selected as the Japanese national emblem by the Meiji government in 1870 because it had been one of the symbols of authority granted by the preceding Tokugawa Shogunate. The symbol is very popular in Japan. Hinomaru-bento is a packed lunch with a red pickled Japanese apricot in the middle.

  Hideo and I left the restaurant as an ambulance howled its way down the road. We started to walk to the train station. I cleared my throat, awkward with the question. ‘The letters mention Jomei’s illness. Is he dead?’ He nodded. Hideo said it had been hard to watch the man who had raised him end his life in so much pain. I asked when. ‘Ten years ago.’ I had thought so many times about what I might feel when I heard the news of his death, but there was no sense of victory, quite the opposite. I felt cheated somehow. What to do when the enemy is defeated and not by your own hand? I was glad his passing had not been easy, but death does not discriminate; even the most undeserving leave this world in unimaginable agony.

  Sato’s victims would have known this as they too
k their last breath. Natsu must have found the letters about Pingfang and presumably read them. How must she have felt to read this outpouring made not to her but another woman? Or maybe in a moment of remorse, some deathbed confession, he had told her what he had done? Either way, surely, her instinct must have been to burn the letters? What a risk to keep them and then give them to me. Had she feared what I would do with this information?

  I paused in the street to get my breath. ‘So now you have no family?’

  ‘Well, Angela’s parents live in Chicago.’ He noticed my confusion. ‘Father hasn’t mentioned her?’ I told him no. He took a photograph from his wallet of a Western woman, thickset, with hair the colour of rice ready for harvest. She was sitting by a pool, laughing, dressed in a sunflower-print swimsuit. Beside her were two children grinning at the camera. ‘These are my children: Benjiro we call him Benji, and this is Hanako.’

  I noted with diplomatic care the mix of American and Japanese blood in their genetic make-up. I could see little of Yuko in either. ‘Your children are beautiful. How did you meet your wife?’

  ‘Angela’s a teacher like me. She came to my school to work, a sabbatical for a year. We became friends. I took her to peace rallies, showed her the countryside, picnics on the beach. We got to the end of the year and I realised I didn’t want her to go home.’ He paused.

  ‘So you asked her to stay?’

  He laughed. ‘We married in 1972. Father died a few months later.’

  I looked again at this family of his. Why wait until now to mention them? He too must have had doubts about me. Why would he share his children, this life with some stranger? His company had been a welcome oasis in the desert of my small world. That was the truth, I think he knew this. Our final hours were nearing. What a gift to give him an identity, and me a grandson. But there had been no moment when I thought, yes, there you are, there’s my Hideo. Natsu had set me an impossible task. How could I put an imprint of a seven-year-old boy on this grown man? I gave the photograph back to him and reached into my own purse. I handed him a black-and-white image of Yuko and Hideo sitting under a tree, smiling at the camera. ‘Why don’t you have this?’

  ‘I couldn’t, it’s yours.’

  Here was a kind man. Had the scars made him so, had Sato? ‘Please, keep it for now.’

  ‘Thank you. When was this taken?’

  ‘Hideo was six. Shige was just home from training. He left a couple of days after that was taken.’

  He looked at his watch and hesitated. ‘I’ve got time before I need to catch my train back. We could talk some more, if you like.’ I caught my reflection in the mirror, a lonely woman with nothing of value to fill her days. Did he feel sorry for me? ‘I know he died in New Guinea. I don’t know much else.’

  We were standing by a bar with no windows, just a red neon sign that said ‘BAR’. I knew I would need a drink to tell him. ‘Let’s go here.’

  Inside, a green lamp hung above a pool table. Two customers, in baseball caps, sat hunched over beers. Behind them there was a toilet for men, and a poster with a picture of a cupid on a condom and the headline, Don’t aid AIDS. Hideo asked, ‘Is this OK for you?’

  ‘It has character, certainly.’ He laughed and I enjoyed the long-lost sensation of amusing someone. Once that talent had come naturally to me. We hung our coats on metal pegs and chose two stools near the entrance. A bartender, pockmarked at the neck, hair falling long in chemical waves, nodded at us and we ordered a beer and a whiskey. We clinked our drinks together. I thought back to July 9, 1946, the day Kazuyoshi came to tell us about Shige as we packed for a new life. There had been no word from him but still we heard stories of men held in prison camps and of soldiers who refused to surrender. The possibility of life did still exist.

  Kazuyoshi stood at our door in a dark suit and tie that seemed tailored for a shorter, stouter body. He had been a first lieutenant of the 20th Division of the 18th Army, recruited on our island of Kyushu alongside Shige. They had become friends, two of the 170,000 men sent to New Guinea. Embarrassed, he told us he had been one of only 10,000 to make it home. He seemed to find this shameful. He apologised for taking so long to find us but he had been detained as a prisoner of war, then he had become ill with malaria and only recently recovered. Shige had asked him to deliver a letter to Yuko, in the event of his death. He blushed furiously. He was also sorry to hear the news about our daughter. Reaching into his pocket, he handed over a small bamboo box. ‘This is from Shige. I don’t know what to do with it now.’

  We invited him into our home, fed him steamed vegetables and broth. When he had eaten, I brought what alcohol I could find to the table and poured three cups of sake. He thanked us both and we drank. I refilled our drinks. ‘Please, what happened to him?’ His mouth trembled. I glanced at Kenzo, who lifted up his own cup as encouragement. ‘Drink up, then tell us.’ When the bottle was nearly empty, he asked, ‘The truth?’ My husband nodded. ‘Shige would demand it.’

  His voice was so quiet we had to lean forward. ‘During those last weeks we saw so much death. Friends and strangers killed by hunger, disease, enemy bullets, their own hand, that stinking coastline. There were bodies everywhere, we had no time to cremate them, we just kept moving. We knew we would be expected to make some last stand, one final sacrificial battle. But Shige would whisper to me, what was the point? Why die in some foreign place? We needed to surrender, to get home. There was no shame in this, he said. Sometimes at night we would hear our enemy calling out. It was always the same man, speaking perfect Japanese in a Tokyo dialect. “Surrender and you will be treated with due consideration under the guidelines of international law. You have fought well but the battle is lost. We have food, medicine, blankets. Come forward and soon you will be home safe with your families.” This went on for days. Then one night Shige handed me the letter and stood up. Before I had a chance to stop him, he dropped his rifle and began to walk. Others watched him, some started to follow.’ Kazuyoshi stopped, looked at the bottle, poured another drink. ‘The shot came from over my left shoulder, hit him in the back of the head. He must have died instantly. He didn’t suffer, I’m sure.’

  Kazuyoshi fell silent. My husband took his time to find his words. ‘Thank you for coming here today. We are grateful.’

  Our guest nodded. ‘Shige was a good man, a fine soldier, my friend.’

  When he left we sat side by side, staring at the box. Finally, Kenzo picked it up and opened the lid. He pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to me. ‘I can’t, Amaterasu. You must.’ I opened it carefully, worried those creases and tears might disintegrate to nothing. Shige had used a blunt pencil, the letters thick and fat.

  Yuko,

  I broke our promise. I said I would never leave you again. I tried my hardest to come back to you. I’m sorry I failed you and Hideo, but there is comfort in knowing some part of me lives on in him. Don’t let him forget me. Thank you for the happiness you brought me. I wanted to spend my life repaying my debt of gratitude. Now that I cannot, promise me you will find joy again. Don’t let this war define your life. Be happy, Yuko. We are here to love, so love.

  Your husband, Shige

  I looked up and saw Kenzo’s face, tears falling down his cheek, but then he faded from view. In his place was Hideo, sitting in the gloomy bar with music churning out from a jukebox. ‘Do you still have the letter?’ I nodded. ‘Would you let me read it? Just to see, not to keep.’ I reached spontaneously for his hand, but he pulled away. ‘I know what you’re going to say. But what if I’m right, what if I am Hideo Watanabe?’

  A clock next to a row of upended bottles of spirits ticked forward to 3.12 p.m. ‘Isn’t your train due?’ He looked at my empty glass and signalled to the barman. ‘I’ll get the next one. Amaterasu, I understand your suspicion, your caution, I do, but what I struggle with is your total resistance to the possibility that we are related. Why would you not want this . . .
well, miracle . . . to happen? This armour you wear. I don’t know how to pierce it.’ The barman put our drinks in front of us and Hideo took a swig of beer. ‘My good looks don’t seem to be working.’

  I found myself laughing at this. He did too. ‘Tell me more about Angela and the children.’

  He knew he was humouring me but he began to sketch out their lives. He told me how Benji was more like his mother: lively, boisterous, a joker. Hanako was quieter, more sensitive. She was older, nine. He was seven. They had terrible fights but loved each other fiercely. I listened, nodded and smiled and thought back to my own childhood. No one knew about my life before my marriage. Not even Kenzo. At least, not the whole truth, just carefully chosen excerpts. Unlike Sato, I had felt no need to confess my past even if I could not forget it.

  Professional Entertainer

  Geisha: Around the end of the seventeenth century, geisha girls replaced an earlier class of ‘courtesans’ who were skilled in such arts as music and dancing. Geisha no longer carries the sexual implication that is often suggested by the English use of the word. Dressed in kimono and often with their hair done in the old Japanese style, they entertain a group of men by playing the shamisen, singing, dancing, serving food and drinks, or through light-hearted talk with a sympathetic smile. Some are highly educated and are intellectually stimulating enough to entertain elite businessmen.