Soldiers in Hiding

by Richard Wiley

  Kazuko put her hands to my cheeks, pulled me toward her, and whispered. “Could we go home now? If we stay longer we will lose what ability we have left to understand what is happening to us.”

  The firemen had turned their hoses on once again and were running high streams of water onto our Buddha, fixing his new expression for us all to see. His lips, always before so prim, appeared now to be drooling, his jaw, always before so firm, was now slightly askew. It was as if this fire had given him real life and then quickly singed his heart. It was as if he had altered his expression of his own free will.

  As we turned to leave, others began streaming across Meguro-dori, for the danger of the fire was less. Around the dead monks the air seemed cooler. Behind us the burnt ginkgo trees were spent and slump-shouldered, heads hung like beggars’, thin and ashamed. Kazuko’s mother and the tea teacher held hands and walked slowly, and when we got to a certain street we took a shortcut, one we always used when coming from that direction. The shortcut was so nice and familiar that I regained, a little, my feeling of the permanence of things. People were sleeping here, under the cool light of the moon. When we got to our gate we waited for Kazuko’s mother and the sensei. The night was actually mild. Across my arms Milo was quiet and smiling. He had opened his eyes again and I could see the fire still burning in them.

  KAZUKO’S SENSEI STAYED AT OUR HOUSE THAT NIGHT and for many nights thereafter. In the morning, when dawn crept in so normally, he told us that he’d had a bomb too, landing somewhere near his home, and that his obi knot had been pulled tight by his wandering hands as he walked the streets in search of a place to get clean. When he left his house, he told us, the flames were licking its back side, his storage shed was already gone, and the acrid smell of burning tea was in the air. “ It was not unpleasant,” he said. “The odor of my life was everywhere. All of the neighbors took a moment in their fleeing to put their noses to the wind and remember me.”

  During the next weeks the constant humming engines of the enemy planes gave Tokyo its rhythm. When our house was finally burned we were away at the bath, just as Kazuko’s mother had always predicted. We had packed a few valuables, Kazuko’s tea bowls, a little money, and had buried them in a safe place, under the loose earth at the foot of our fig tree, so we had more than many of the others did, should we ever get back home again. The sky was orange above our house when we left the bath but we’d lost interest in looking at fire and did not return. Instead we headed, without comment, toward where we knew government resettlement buses, sooner or later, would come to take us away.

  There is little more to tell. Once we were settled outside the city we heard the sounds of American planes so often that many of us no longer even noticed. Kazuko and her mother and the sensei and Milo and I were given a canvas shelter and were able to stay together; that’s something. We cooked rice over a small hibachi built at a central location. The entire camp was in good order. It was quiet and no one interrupted the fragile thoughts of his neighbor. Bulletins were posted everywhere, testimonials as to how we were winning the war. It was the government’s way of telling us, I think, that we were lost.

  No one we knew, none of our neighbors and not even the sensei, had ever been so far south as Hiroshima, but it was the consensus that, across the surface of the camp, there was a perceptible movement of liquids at the precise moment that the American bomb was dropped. The sensei was doing tea, he said, and even the thick liquid in his cup turned a bit, bubbling once, like lava. Soon after that the planes stopped coming altogether and the bulletin board remained unchanged. Everyone was so sad, so resigned to the arrival of the Americans. They were all looking forward to more pain, to violence, this time perpetrated on a one-to-one basis, eye-to-eye. But I did not think that would happen. Now that the war was over the Americans would walk our streets calmly, I knew, and we would be left alone. It was I, not the others, who understood how it would really be. Incidences of violence would be rare. Insubordination would be unheard-of, and the Americans would be surprised at that. The Japanese would be model prisoners. That had been Major Nakamura’s point.

  One day, after a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, I left the camp by myself. I took the bus into town and walked the kilometer or so necessary to find that untouchable street, to find Meguro-dori, to see where we had lived. As I walked I got lost, for the landmarks I’d always recognized were gone. In a few places buildings stood as if whole, in others only the tops were missing, but if I walked into what used to be their centers I still found myself outside of things. As I got closer to where we had lived, the rubble and clutter grew, the presence of people diminished. I was wearing, stupidly, my only remaining pair of American pants, and I was busy, most of the time, brushing the soot from them, trying to step high to keep my canvas shoes clean.

  Everything I saw reminded me of a forest fire I’d seen once, from the window of a train, as we’d slowly passed through the mountains of northern California. Buildings were stumps, streets were charred earth, schools and marketplaces were roughly burned fields. Perhaps because I wore such odd clothes I felt onstage and acted up a bit at the approximate location of our old house. As I stepped high and turned in the surprising wind I came to the spot where Kazuko had hidden her beautiful bowls, and I found one of them, untouched by the fire. The leaves of the fig tree above the bowl were rolled tightly and still hung, most of them, like charred cigars, from the branches of the dead tree. I stopped moving then and dug, with my fingers, to see what else I could find under the earth. Our money was there, and a paper bag containing photographs. A few feet away, where our sleeping room had been, I saw the little feet of my calico cat, and that stopped me from searching further. The cat looked like a small version of the monks we had seen and I was nearly sick. Though I had been strong through human death and misery I could not face the roasted body of my cat. I retched once against the side of the fig tree and then stumbled clumsily away from there. I thought, even a charmed life then, even a life which appears to be protected by something outside what we call luck, can find a place in the ashes at any time. There is always room for it among the ruins.

  THE END OF THE WAR CAME OUT OF A QUIET SKY. PEOPLE in the camps and on the street were increasingly nervous, increasingly willing to chatter. Though the sky had been silent for days there were still no Japanese soldiers home, except for the few who had been there as long as I had, the ones with the missing parts, some of whom already sat at the dirt edges of the camps, tin cups placed where their laps had once been.

  Each day seemed exactly like the one before it, exactly like the next, but finally, as we were milling about, walking in aimless circles and nodding to those we passed, the camp commander got on the loudspeaker and told us that the next voice we heard would be that of the Emperor. We all laughed in disbelief and kicked the dirt about us gently with the toes of our shoes. But a voice did come to us, all sad and sounding, suspiciously, like the camp administrator himself. It was a high-pitched voice and, though it was almost impossible to understand, there was something in it that reminded me of my father the farmer, dead to me for so long.

  To our good and loyal subjects: After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our empire today, we have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure.

  What? Surely if that was the Emperor speaking, the extraordinary measure was that he was doing so.

  We have ordered our government to communicate to the governments of the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union that our empire accepts the provisions of their joint declaration.

  To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations as well as the security and well-being of our subjects is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by our imperial ancestry and which we lay close to the heart.

  Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to insure Japan’s self-preservation and the stabilizati
on of East Asia, it being far from our thoughts either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement… .

  Certainly not! It was the Americans who were infringing upon Japan, with bombs! Territorial aggrandizement with bombs and with fire!

  … The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.

  This was not the Emperor speaking, but some politician in his place. The people around me all listened with their heads bowed. Could it be that they were taken in?

  We are keenly aware of the inmost feelings of all of you, our subjects. However, it is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand and lasting peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unavoidable and suffering what is unsufferable. Having been able to save and maintain the structure of the Imperial State, we are always with you, our good and loyal subjects, relying upon your sincerity and integrity.

  Beware most strictly of any outbursts of emotion that may engender needless complications, of any fraternal contention and strife that may create confusion, lead you astray, and cause you to lose the confidence of the world.

  Who was this man who spoke to us? He had not been inside these camps, that was clear. There were no outbursts here, would never be.

  Let the entire nation continue as one family from generation to generation, ever firm in its faith of the imperishableness of its divine land, and mindful of its heavy burden of responsibilities, and the long road before it. Unite your total strength to be devoted to the construction for the future. Cultivate the ways of rectitude, nobility of spirit, and work with resolution so that you may enhance the innate glory of the Imperial State and keep pace with the progress of the world.

  The loudspeaker crackled as it always did when the camp commander wanted us to know that an announcement was over.

  “ Who was that really?” the tea teacher asked, and I found myself saying, “That was him. No question about it.”

  It was the last blow needed to bring us to our knees. Large tracts of burn had scarred the city, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were gone, but it was the Emperor’s speech that made us want to weep. Jimmy and Ike were dead. My son was woefully attracted to the scars that the fires had left, loved the look of destruction across the earth, was already showing signs of the oddness of his other father. Kazuko and her mother and her tea teacher stood beside me there in the relocation camp and what they felt, what I could see across their faces, was shame. It was over. The war was over. The bodies of the Buddhist monks could not withstand the lick of the flames any better than mine would have, but I had survived while most of the people I had known were dead, most of the remainder lost to me. Our losses were incalculable but it was interesting, I think, that though whole cities had been taken from us we were crying then for our most important loss. The virginity of the Emperor’s voice.

  THOSE DAYS AND THE DAYS FOLLOWING WERE VERY BAD for the Japanese. All around the war zone officers sat naked to their waists, the sharp points of ritual swords pressed tightly against their bellies. Their intestines came upon the world with an ironic kind of robust energy, all healthy-looking next to them on the failed ground. In Tokyo there was little impulse to die but there was chaos. There were only tents, and cardboard covers that people held around themselves when it rained.

  After the war I put off, for a while, my search for the American officials who could give me safe passage back to the longed-for life of Los Angeles. After the war I could do nothing but lie about listening to General MacArthur telling us to forsake, forever, our wayward ways, to look toward peaceful means, toward trade and textiles. He said that he believed in Japan and that America would someday learn to forgive and forget. “ Let it be in the marketplace that you once more work your way to the top,” he said.

  I can remember very well MacArthur’s English speeches and the obscure, meaningless, translations given them by his aides. And the more I heard from MacArthur, the more he spoke, the surer I was that I would not be forgiven, that I would be among those for whom the great general would not be able to find room in his vast and wonderful heart. His megalomania would be my downfall, I feared, and in my small room, with cardboard all around me I realized the irony of my fate. Toward the middle of that year the radio began to introduce MacArthur’s speeches with music, you see, and the tune that they found to play was my rendition of “ Mood Indigo,” from a recording never released, Ike’s best work on behalf of Jimmy’s poor old band.

  “You ain’t been blue,” I sang, just before MacArthur came on with his somber tones, his gift of guilt. “You ain’t been blue. No… No… No …You ain’t been blue …’ Til you’ve had that mood indigo.…” He wanted us unhappy in shades of the rainbow the Japanese could not even recognize. Yet the people loved him and it was not long until that tune, my tune, was heard everywhere in the rebuilding city. And when finally I came forward, as I knew I must, I was swept to fame by it. I had the first hit song of postwar Japan and when it was released to the general public it bore the name Teddy Maki, with no sign of the AyJays, no sign of Jimmy Yamamoto at all.

  By the time the Korean war started I was the best-known entertainer in all of Japan. I began to mix my American tunes with those of the new composers, and I took Milo before the cameras so the people watching could see him grow, so that he could become their darling. I lost my American citizenship and Milo grew away from me and Kazuko became the wife that I have so often cheated in the sharing of my evening time. I have had Sachiko and I have had my little tricks, the ones I like to play on Americans, if I can find them, at train and subway stations. For a man whose early life took such odd turns my present one is very staid. If, internally, my chaos has continued, on the outside all seems serene and sequential, I am sure.

  The Korean war brought MacArthur back to the front for a while. The Japanese people, in their fervor to be forgiven, to make up for all that they had done, tried to take the general’s good advice to heart. There was a presidential election coming up and MacArthur, with the settlement of Japan under his belt, let his broad-billed cap cast its shadow, for a while, over the semblance of a candidacy. It was clear that all of Japan supported him. I was well into my coasting period, well into the time when I did not think of my past at all, when the government of Tokyo posted a sign high across a stretch of street in Ginza, the busiest section of town. We Play for MacArthur’s Erection! the sign said, and as I look back on it I realize that it spawned in me the embryo of my present life. We Play for MacArthur’s Erection! Soon those transposed consonants were corrected but the truth of it was not lost on me. On the “Amateur Hour” my own small campaign was ignited by them. As the show’s popularity grew I made sure that its taste and quality diminished. Surely, I thought, I will find a level of entertainment so low that it will defeat even Japan’s appetite for the awful, the insipid, the mundane. But though I have tried, that level is still not found. “Mood Indigo” greets the nation each week so ironically, and the whole idea has made me rich. I am living in a country of farters and contortionists, a world as full of them as Arabia is of oil. Plasticity can control Japan as it has America, I have faith, though Japan is the last real holdout of the modern world.

  I MUST HAVE DOZED IN THE BACK SEAT OF THE CAB FOR when I awoke the taxi driver was grumbling, anxious to get home himself, to drop me in the low street though I knew immediately that Sachiko had not returned. I let myself into her room with my latchkey. This room is Sachiko’s personal domain, one that I should not have been in alone, but the coldness of the night precluded my waiting outside. Before entering the room I walked all around the building but the air was even cooler than in Roppongi and the alley behind the building was too narrow to traverse with ease. When
I looked up I could not make out her room. I could see the moon, though, which showed me some debris along the path.

  Have I mentioned that twice in the nineteen-fifties and once in the sixties I was voted Entertainer of the Year? My mind was on it then, my whole being aimed at it. Kazuko and I were happy, we were sane and quiet with each other, at least, and we made strides. All during those years, more than thirty of them, we were involved with accumulation. Kazuko maintained a sense of order about our lives while I moved up and down on the popularity polls. And though as a girl Kazuko had been interested in western things, as we grew older she began to change. As if to honor her mother she started wearing kimonos much of the time. Indeed, after her mother’s death she made her mother’s closet her own, her mother’s wardrobe her preferred attire. Yet unlike her mother’s, Kazuko’s was not the voice of criticism but that of consideration, of high regard. She has never mentioned the past, not once, after Milo’s birth, mentioned his other father. And if Kazuko and I do not speak often, at least we speak well, our conversation free of platitudes. About Kazuko I can say that ever since I became her husband she has been my wife. It is not so much that she loves me, you understand, but that she is simply of me, a part of the whole. It isn’t happiness which Kazuko chases but a sense of rhythm, a motion that flows with the rest of her world.

  Why then, it must be asked, have I come, alone, to the empty room of my mistress? Surely I knew that she was hiding, waiting within the dark confines of the bar for my passing. Why could I not have stayed with my son or ridden home safely in his limousine? The answer is that some time ago, from below the placid surface of my middle age, I began to anticipate a change. At first it was a remembrance, the floating up of random visions of war, but later it took on more concrete tones. Occasionally I would wake, after initially sleeping soundly, only to find myself unable to return to sleep. And my dreams began to take on a certain cadence. In one, which recurred, I was a small boy hiding in an apple crate at the side of the road. I had a hammer with me in the crate and I would reach out and pound the hammer down upon the toes of passing soldiers, wounding them all. I was terrified that they would catch me but I kept my hammer moving just the same. And yet, as I have said, all during that time I was not an unhappy man. I knew my show was poor but I had not focused, greatly, upon why I wanted it so. And misleading Americans was a mere hobby. No, my real life, up until the time I met Sachiko, was simply this: I worked, I saw my son, I went home to my wife and the accumulations which surrounded us.