“Got a new kid back home, Chief, I hear. Boy or girl?”
“News travels fast, sir. Just got that letter yesterday before we sailed. A boy. You got a boy too, right?”
“Well, he’s almost a year now. With this thing over, thank God, we’ll both see our kids before they’re much older.”
“Wife and I agreed if it was a boy we’d name him Charlie after me. What’s yours named, sir?”
“We did the same. Henry, after me. Maybe call him Hank, then. Here’s to getting home fast, Chief.”
“Aye, aye that, Mr. Crawford.”
The officer turned back to Kiyoshi. “Do what they tell you, and nobody’ll hurt you. Right, Chief? Guys?”
Kiyoshi watched the officer climb back up the ladders. Clean uniform, strong bearing, none of the distance he himself would have kept between him and his inferiors in rank. These were not the barbarians he’d been warned to expect in leaflet after leaflet.
The ship’s motion increased. Sometimes the entire vessel plunged, seemed to hit a wall, then shuddered to a halt while the engines around them sputtered. High above, seawater dribbled down through the hatch from the main deck. Once—most terrifying of all—the ship rolled so far that Kiyoshi lost his balance and the deck remained slanted while he stared up at the chugging pistons that were now directly in his face. Before the night ended, he was caked in grease, sweat, and seawater as he collected spilled oil and water into cans and helped in whatever ways they directed him. So much bilge had seeped through the holes in his boots that his feet squished in liquid. The American sailors accepted him enough to beckon him to them with “Over here, Jojo” when they needed help. Finally he drank dipperfuls of water without asking, while they shared their food with him—including an impossibly delicious apple. When the next watch came to relieve them, they all stayed on duty together for the emergency, and the two watches joked back and forth about “their Jap.”
“Got to admit,” Mike said. “Our Jojo’s done okay tonight.”
Kiyoshi felt both humiliated and surprisingly charged with happy energy. He grinned for the first time in months—perhaps years—and declared with a new English word learned during the night: “Fuck you, Mike.”
Mike returned the grin. “And fuck you back, Jojo. You’re okay. For this night at least.”
3
KIYOMIZU LEAP
The next week was confusion. The American sailors from the engine room saw to it that he had new clothes and shoes to replace the threadbare uniform that had been drenched with oil and grease in their service. By the ship captain’s orders, however, as soon as the seas subsided, he was returned to the crowded, stinking spaces where his own countrymen were imprisoned. The Americans, concerned now with the damage from the storm, which had swept much of their main deck clean and capsized smaller vessels, gave him no further thought.
Among his countrymen, he alone wore stiff new denims and shiny black shoes like an American seaman. It separated him. While in the prison camp, those who had been under his command in the caves had continued to address him as “Captain.” Now others did too. But when the pots of rice were passed, everyone grabbed equally for a share. No one noticed that he alone—with a belly full through the kindness of the sailors during the storm—chose not to cling greedily to the pot but allowed it to be pulled onward.
The ship, delayed nearly a full day by the storm, landed at last in a port on Japan’s southernmost main island. New Americans came aboard, accompanied by a female Japanese interpreter who blew a whistle for silence before making announcements. First, she instructed them to open a way for the stretchers carrying two wrapped bodies of prisoners who had died during the stormy crossing from Okinawa. Neither American nor Japanese questioned how they had died: death had become routine for all. The woman interpreter then declared, “Form in silence two by two, for orderly departure.” She pointed to rusted trucks that waited at the foot of the gangway.
The Japanese men were not accustomed to receiving commands from a woman. They began to murmur, without moving. Kiyoshi watched as the Americans grew annoyed.
“Do as you are told,” he barked in the tone he had not used since the caves. The others followed as he led the way. At the truck, a Japanese clerk compared personal data to the lists he held. The man was hollow-chested and middle-aged, with hands that trembled. Thick glasses kept slipping down his nose.
“How is it now in the homeland?” Kiyoshi asked. The man shook his head and gestured him on.
Two open trucks packed to standing jostled over roads cratered with holes. Outside the vehicles, red roofing tiles lay scattered around charred buildings. Some men were nailing stray boards into the shape of a shack. Kiyoshi saw no young women. Had the Americans then raped and murdered them as the government leaflets had promised? What of his own mother and sister? Could he arrive home in time to protect them? And what if he had to kill Americans while protecting them? At least then his family would all die together.
It began to rain. In one field, drops splashed into water already standing in bomb craters. Peasants were raking the holes level, bent like mushrooms under wide straw hats. They straightened to watch the procession pass. All were old—grandmothers and grandfathers—and expressionless, except for one man, who glared at them. The other prisoners looked down or away, but Kiyoshi bowed an apology as best he could while maintaining balance in the moving truck.
The rain increased and grayed out distant mountains. The trucks stopped by a long, open shelter beside a train, and the drivers told the prisoners to go. Other Japanese, wearing the uniforms of civilian officials, examined what papers they had and stamped documents permitting them to ride the trains to their home destinations. No Americans anywhere. They might have conquered, but they appeared to be taking possession slowly.
Two days later, with little food provided except for the two small cans of American meat rations given to each man upon boarding, Kiyoshi rode a slow train with others bound for northern destinations. He still wore the same American denim clothing. Those around him sometimes touched the stiff fabric enviously. The new cloth dye, bled out by sweat and rain, had stained his legs and arms blue.
A single car of the train held some Americans and a few official looking Japanese civilians. The entrance to that car stayed locked to the scruffy, sweating soldiers.
Only a year before—so long ago—he had ridden a similar train in the opposite direction, en route to defend the homeland from American bases on the colonized Ryukyu Islands. Despite wartime privation, he’d ridden in a separate car for officers. The talk had been of duty and sacrifice. They had raised cups of sake to the Emperor and, with choked emotion, had pledged him their lives. At the time, he’d written letters of farewell to Father and to the wife he barely remembered. He had expected to return only if victorious.
People brought water at the way-stops, but seldom gave food except for money or barter. One woman on the platform, who stood up straight even though her clothes were close to rags, handed him part of a rice cake.
“You have failed us,” she said.
“Yes,” he acknowledged.
His worn canvas pouch held the document of free passage as well as old letters and photographs. But he had neither money nor possessions to barter. In the prison camp and on the American ship, such food as there was had been simply handed to him. Now, somehow, he was expected to survive on his own, as were most of the others who called out to ask for food and water whenever the train slowed. Only a few had been canny enough to steal items from the camps and from the ship and hide them beneath their clothes. All Kiyoshi possessed besides the pouch were the metal dish and spoon issued him. They were soon traded. He had foolishly discarded the cans of American meat after emptying them—or rather, had set them aside without thinking and they had disappeared at once.
The train, he knew, took them north along Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four islands. Then it connected to Honshu, the greatest island, where the rails led through Hiroshima and Kyoto
to Tokyo, skirting mountains all the way. In Tokyo he’d need to find another train north to Sendai, then reach his hometown along the coast by some other means. He’d go by foot, if he had to. Let this train hurry!
But in the dark on the painstaking trip that had started shortly after daybreak, the train halted. “All must get off,” called an official. “The train goes no further. You must take a boat to where the train resumes. Go. Walk to the boat. Anyone will direct you.”
Like the others, Kiyoshi walked along the few streets of stalls and houses in the town. Only a few inhabitants remained outside as they approached. Too proud to beg, he asked only for water. Using chopsticks, one man placed a few noodles from the bowlful he was eating into Kiyoshi’s cupped hands. An old woman gave him a small piece of fish. Both avoided his eyes and said nothing when he thanked them.
The boat would not leave until morning. The passengers (except for those from the special car, who had been received in a house) had no place to pass the night but under the roof of an open shed that stood near the boats. Rain poured outside. They huddled away from the patches of water where the roof leaked, at first considerate of one another, but soon pushing without regard for any but themselves.
At last they boarded an old wooden vessel with heavy scuffed rails and a battered engine whose shaft poked unhoused into the water. The boatman, elderly and bent, accepted Kiyoshi Tsurifune’s travel document.
“A slow way home when I have so far to go,” Kiyoshi observed politely.
“You can’t travel on tracks that are melted, can you?” the man snapped. “Thank the barbarian Americans. Not a building or a person left in Hiroshima ahead, and the air itself poisoned, they say. Barbarians who stop at nothing. Criminals. I curse them!”
“Yes? Yes? Is that so?” News of the Hiroshima bombings had passed among the prisoners of the camp, but not the extent of the damage.
“And what did you soldiers do to protect us? Or to save the Emperor from disgrace!”
Among the islands, the first of the autumn leaves were turning red and golden on the highest hills. Gnarled pines bent to the breeze. Mists like those in classical paintings lingered among the branches. Nothing of war had changed their beauty. Kiyoshi gazed and gazed, and his throat tightened.
When the boat landed, a vehicle waited for the Americans and the officials, but the rest had over a mile to walk to the waiting train. The road, although it had not been bombed, was so rutted with gaps and holes that it might as well have been. Now they encountered only Japanese. An old man at the roadside gave Kiyoshi water.
“You’ve come from the hairy barbarians?” he asked. Kiyoshi nodded as he drank, careful not to stop for fear the pitcher might be taken back.
“As bad as they say? Tell me. Our women will hide. At least some may escape the rape.” The man’s voice quavered. “How do they torture? Beat with sticks? Whips? I’ve endured that, sir, with our own. But . . .” The man lost his voice and quietly resumed. “Break bones? Burn the skin with hot iron? All this they say, and more, more. How can we prepare? Such is fate, but we’re no longer strong.”
Kiyoshi made a gesture of reassurance, but it was a weak one. He too was uncertain.
“Listen, sir. Do you think ghosts can protect the living? Our son, you see. Protect at least his mother and sister. He gloriously fought and died for the Emperor, you see. But we have no offerings left to burn, and do you think his ghost can still pay attention?” Kiyoshi let the question go unanswered. Had he not wondered the same himself often enough? Undeterred by the silence, the man ventured a final, trembling question. “In the places you’ve been, have many survived?”
“Many, old father. And I’ve seen no torture. But that means nothing. Make the women hide.”
The train crawled, as weary as the people and villages it passed. Outside of Kyoto it slowed more and more, then stopped. An hour later, a conductor announced: “Power is gone. Tomorrow they say, perhaps. Stay aboard if you wish.”
A rickshaw driver pedaled up on a bicycle rusted wherever the old paint had peeled away. He quickly discovered the railcar with the Americans and began soliciting them in Japanese as they alighted. A sleek-haired Japanese man in the car joined the Americans and brusquely appeared to take over. Two other rickshaw men arrived, applying with equal urgency.
Kiyoshi wandered out into a field beside the train, squatted on his haunches, and chewed on grass to ease his hunger. Nothing to do but wait. Two American officers smoking cigarettes stopped nearby. One looked around. “Good,” he said. “He ain’t following, that pushy Jap interpreter. So busy covering his ass you’d think he’d personally advised the Emperor not to fight us.”
The other held an open book. “Looks like this is the temple place, Sammy. Now get this one. Famous temple that’s only sand and a few rocks. These Japs get excited about funny things. Think it’s worth the trip to go in and look around?”
“Not if that’s all they’ve got. And sure not with those Japs on the train we’re stuck with, whether they talk English or not.” He was the biggest of the officers, tall and fat by any standard. His khaki uniform stretched tight around his shoulders and waist.
“Well yeah. But, if we’re stuck here . . .” The American with the book was also tall, but thinner and more deliberate in his movements. His uniform had crisp lines. “Might as well see something other than bayonets and helmets.” He noticed Kiyoshi on the ground. “Hey. See you’re wearing our sailor dungarees. You an interpreter? Speak any English?”
Kiyoshi rose, understanding the question, although not all the words. “Yes? Yes?” he said politely in English.
It certainly was a stroke of luck. Nearly a decade ago, when Kiyoshi was twenty years old, his father had sent him to make offerings for their company’s prosperity in the great temple cities of Nikko, Nara, and Kyoto. With gestures and easy laughs from the Americans at his efforts, Kiyoshi named some Kyoto shrines and temples he’d remembered. “Number one, famous Golden Temple. Another number one, Temple of Thousand Buddhas, all one-two-three. The name, yes, I remember, Sanjusangen-do. You find in book, sir.”
“Buddhas?” declared the fat American named Sammy. “Then forget it. We’ve already seen more Buddhas than any Christian needs, so just forget it. Give this ’ol Mis’sippi boy a nice clean church. We’ll just stay here thanks.” Kiyoshi realized he would be a fool to let this opportunity escape. “Ah. Best number one—. No many Buddha. Good temple with . . . mizu, mizu . . . water! Kiyomizu-dera! Big. Beauti . . . ful. Good every, every . . . thing. No many Buddha.”
The lean American turned some pages in the book and read for a while. “That looks like an okay one, Sammy,” he said. “Don’t make a big deal over its Buddhas, in any case, if that’s what bugs you. Anyway, no harm in seeing what they’ve got.” He turned to Kiyoshi, “What the hell, you want to come show us?”
They whistled over to the three bicycle rickshaws. Each driver wore only a top, shorts, and sandals despite a chill in the air. Their frayed shirts flapped over thin chests, but their legs had muscles knotted like vines on a pole.
The fat American leaned from his rickshaw and asked in a drawling voice, “What’s your name now, boy?” Kiyoshi drew himself up and gave his full name. “How’s that, now? Say it again, slow.” Kiyoshi repeated it four times on request. “Shoot, who’d ever remember that? Might call you ‘Foonie’ but that sounds wrong. How about something easy like, well, Willie? That okay? Willie?”
“Hai. Yes.” Kiyoshi’s few words of English—long left unused for fear of inviting charges of treason—now served him well. The rickshaw drivers spoke only peasant Japanese. He named their destination to the one who seemed to have taken charge.
“No, no, sir. Far away. We’ll go to Thousand Buddhas. That’s the good one for the Americans.”
“I told you Kiyomizu-dera.”
“Sir, the priest at Thousand Buddhas has little Buddhas to sell. That’s what the Americans want. Souvenirs to buy. About ten days ago I brought other American soldie
rs there, the first ones here since the surrender. At first I was afraid, you know—they’re so big, and you know what we’ve been told, but . . . Well, they bought. Bought! Bought all the little Buddhas the priest had and wanted more but he had only four or five for the few Japanese pilgrims who come nowadays. All the priests at the temple started carving—all night long!—and now he has more. Some aren’t very good, but Americans don’t know the difference. Two I took yesterday, they bought many also. So that’s where we’ll go, eh? To make your Americans happy.”
If his American named Sammy became angry, Kiyoshi knew, he might lose them. But he considered, since they might indeed want souvenirs.
“Priests at Kiyomizu-dera also sell offerings,” he said.
“Not little Buddhas, sir. That’s what the Americans bought. What they all want. We’ll take them to Thousand Buddhas. They won’t know the difference from Kiyomizu-dera, which is far, far away from here.”
Kiyoshi decided. “No, straight to Kiyomizu.”
The rickshaw man muttered to the other drivers, but they started without further argument. Buildings along this road were undamaged. They passed gardens and small shrines. It was only the people that looked worn. After the destruction of the day before and of that back on Okinawa, Kiyoshi found it a sight to awaken hope. Perhaps the Americans had devastated only the islands furthest south. Suddenly there came a roar overhead, and Kiyoshi looked up to see six American planes approaching in formation. He readied to cry warning, leap from the rickshaw, and find cover at first sight of a descending bomb. But the planes passed on, out of sight. He regained his composure.
“Americans up there too, sir,” observed the rickshaw man. “All the time fly over, for months.”
“They never dropped bombs here?”
“Sacred city here, so Buddha protects us. Other places like Kobe, sure. All the beggars we get here from Kobe. Think they’ll get our rice. What rice? Phew! Kobe beggars need to stay in Kobe. Bombs in Nagoya and Osaka they say. And they say bad, bad last month on Hiroshima and the place called Nagasaki. But I’ve never been to such cities so I don’t know.” After a pause. “Sir, Thousand Buddhas is coming soon, so we’ll stop there. It’s a long way to other temples.”
WARRIORS Page 4
