by NAM LE
Last night there were no warnings and it was hard to sleep. Behind the paper door where the teachers sleep, the radio did not speak but made the sounds of a sick person breathing. My mat is four mats away from the radio. I sleep in the front corner of the room with all the other girls, next to one of the stone Buddha statues. The boys sleep at the back of the room by the Temple doors. If I lie down and look at the ceiling, on my left is Tomiko and on my right is Yukiyo. Tomiko is my friend and Yukiyo is one year older than me but she is nice. She is in the fourth grade. Two days ago, Yukiyo told me her father is a science teacher at the PrefecturalTechnicalSchool and chief of the air-raid evacuation team in Yokogawa-cho. She said he was studying in Tokyo to be a doctor but went to China to fight our reviled enemy after the Manchurian Incident in the sixth year of Showa, period of enlightened peace. Father went to China too, I told her. He hurt his legs serving the Emperor with unquestioning loyalty. She nodded in approval. I did not tell her he came back to become a Shinto priest in Zaimoku-cho. Mother says we are at war and that some people do not wish to be reminded of the gods. She tells me to press my hands together for those people.
After cleaning we eat soybean rice. We have eaten soybean rice every day since the last Visiting Day. Tomoe says out loud that she hates soybean rice as much as she hates the American beasts. She is a sixth grader and everyone laughs. But I see Mr. Sasaki, who is married to Mrs. Sasaki, give her a look like the one Father gave Big Sister on the ferry. Then, like Father, he looks away. Father's face is wet from the rain and he turns to look at me instead of her. Mr. Sasaki is a teacher from my old elementary school in the city. Now he lives in the hills with us. Waste is the enemy! I say in my head. My sister's face is shiny with spirit. Do without until victory! I remember the story of the little boy-prince of Sendai. He says to his servant: See those baby sparrows in the nest, how their yellow beaks are opened wide, and now see! there comes the mother with worms to feed them; how happily the babies eat! But for a samurai when his belly is empty it is a disgrace to feel hungry. I do not like soybean rice either but I like it better than pounded rice balls with bran. Or parched soybeans. We third graders are allowed to choose the bowls with parched soybeans before everyone else. The sixth graders are allowed to choose the bowls with rice. All of us weigh the bowls with both hands. On our first day here we had luxurious food: rice with red beans, then red and white rice cakes in the nearby village. See, children, said Mrs. Sasaki to the younger ones still crying for their mothers, is it not better here? But the night before that, at home, I had had sweet rice cake dumpling with bean paste, with extra sugar Father brought home from the Shrine. It was my favorite meal in months. We set an extra bowl at the table for Big Brother, who is with the Emperor's West Eighty-seventh Division in the confidential place. He has been confidential since the Chinese Incident in the twelfth year of Showa, period of enlightened peace. Everything is given to the holy war but everything about the holy war is confidential. We must press our hands together for Tojo-san and the leaders of His Imperial Majesty's government. No, we do not say Tojo-san anymore, little turnip. Koiso-san, says Mother. Suzuki-san, says Father. No, says Big Sister. Just press your hands together for the Fatherland. Mother has a photograph of Big Brother wearing a khaki uniform with a rifle in his hands and a dagger on the right side of his belt. It was taken at UjinaPort. We made a photograph to send to Big Brother too. Look here. Don't blink now. The man's rabbit teeth above the box, the sky behind him dark and green-looking. Your brother Matsuo held you when you were a baby, Mother tells me, and said you were as strong as a carp. At night, sometimes she unfolds a letter from him. I was promoted to First Class Private, she reads. I am grateful that I have skill with the anti-aircraft guns. If you can spare it, please send some ink and a safety razor. And some cigarettes, if you can spare it. Banzai to the Emperor. Well, good-bye, and good-bye to Sumi and little Mayako. Mayako-he is talking about me, but I do not remember him.
At exercise time I run with some of the others to the top of the hill. Running is good to stop the cold but bad for the hunger that comes after. The day is white and clear and cloudless. From the top of the hill we can see another hill, and behind that, the ocean. The ocean is a darker blue than the sky. Behind the hill is the city. We are safe here. Then from behind the hill the warning sounds. The sound is weak, then strong, like the wind. We look over the hill and over the ocean. I do not see anything when a boy says, There's only one. Everyone knows the cowardly Americans drop bombs only when they have hundreds of planes, grouped like geese, when the sky sounds like heavy thunder. When it is a single plane, says Big Sister, it is either taking photographs or dropping handbills. The plane passes far away to our left. Takai, a tall sixth grader, tells a group of third graders to be China, then some others to be Americans. The rest of us organize ourselves into His Imperial Majesty's forces. Like Father, I am in the Fifth Division. Evacuation! At Takai's signal, our enemies drop down to their bellies and put thumbs in their ears and fingers over their eyes, just like we have been trained in school. The rest of us pick up stones and clods of dirt and throw them at the enemy. We charge and fall on them with our knees and elbows and bamboo swords. One hundred million deaths with honor! Defend every last inch of the Fatherland! Big Sister says this, taking the words from the radio. Father looks at me instead of her. The soft rain runs down his hair and down his face. Everything is the same color in the rain. One hundred million deaths with honor! I say after her. We are fearless. Pilots of the Imperial Air Force transform themselves into human-guided missiles and crash into the enemy, sacrificing their lives for the Fatherland. I lie dead on the ground, looking into the deep blue sky, overwhelmed with a glorious feeling of happiness. Kana kana kana. We will defend our nation through all eternity! Some of the children are crying. I am filled with such love for my nation I forget my hunger and nearly cry too.
The radio is sick again that night. It coughs and wheezes. Behind this is the small noise of the weak ones trying to hide their weeping. Outside, the wind comes in from the black bay and over the city into the hills. When we were evacuating, the truck stopped on the top of the first hill and we looked down behind us and the city looked like an empty rice bowl with a piece broken off where the ocean was. The Temple is dark and silent except for the radio and the small sniffing. I lie on the straw mat and think of Big Sister. It is the holidays and she lets me come with her to mobilization. She has recently joined the Young Women's Volunteer Corps and the Students' Patriotic League by over-telling her age. We do not tell Mother. We catch a streetcar to Fujimi-cho where there are hundreds of students and some soldiers gathering around a large building. It is hot. Big Sister insisted that we both wear our padded air-raid hoods and now the sweat from my neck runs down my back and the backs of my knees. A man from the Volunteer Corps approaches Big Sister and gives her a basket. His shirt is open and the skin beneath it is the color of concrete where the dust sticks to his sweat. He does not check her nametag. When he smiles at her she looks away from him for too long, the way a cat does, and I realize they know each other. This is little turnip. Mayako, I correct. I prefer Mayako too, he says, bending down. It's a strong name. See over there? Watch this. He jogs back to the building and picks up one end of a long two-handed saw. Someone holds the other end. Someone cries out from the roof. Clay tiles and paper doors fall to the ground. Dust rises up and through it Big Sister's face is full of light. She is explaining it to me, the demolition, the need to create fire lanes, but I am more interested in watching her friend's arms as they work – left, right – across the beam, exactly the same speed as the man on the other side of the saw. Everywhere things are falling. More cries, and two soldiers climb to the tops of two ladders with ropes trailing behind them; then, when they climb down and walk away from the building, ten, maybe twelve, men pick up the two ropes and all of them strain toward the street until both ropes are straight. Big Sister holds my hand. The building groans like a tree, shivers, then falls into itself with an enormous noise. Is
n't it glorious? she says. The air fills with dust. Cover your eyes. The Fatherland, a voice cries. If the building was a tree it would have died. All things come to kami, Father says. He is alone in his Shrine garden in the city. Is it one of the eight million kami now? I will ask Father. I will ask Mother on the next Visiting Day to ask Father. The idea excites me, and I try to keep the loudness in my head.
Mayako? It is Tomiko. Yes? Do you hear the warning? It is nothing but the wind. It is the wind, I say. We are safe here, says Yukiyo. You will be safe there, says Mother. My son is gone and my eldest daughter wants to follow – you are my heart. If I die, at least my heart will still be alive.
I am safe here, Big Sister says to Mother before the evacuation. They are in the kitchen and I can hear them from the outside yard where I am trapping cicadas. You are permitted to go, says Mother. You are of the age, Sumi. You will go with your sister. But I am safe here, says Big Sister. What do you mean, safe? – every night there are the warnings. But no bombs, says Big Sister – the planes fly over the city but do not bomb us. There are bombs, says Mother. My friends know students mobilized at the central telephone office, says Big Sister. In Kobe there are bombs. In Yokohama there are bombs. In Nagoya there are bombs. Tokyo, says Mother. Yes, in Tokyo. But not here – we are lucky here. What of the handbills the Americans drop? Mother asks. On the farm Tomoe tells everyone the American handbills look like money. But on one side only. What is on the other side? It is forbidden to read them. Her father works in the Mitsubishi shipyard in Eba and picks them up without looking at them and delivers them to the Prefectural Office. We are safe here, says Big Sister. I will stay. Her face is white, even through the dirty kitchen window. Your father will decide, says Mother. Yes, I say in the darkness to Tomiko, we are safe here. Then the wind picks up and I imagine I can hear the engines of a B-24 behind it. Father taught me the difference between the sounds. It will also depend on how high they are, he said. The natsuzemi cicada says ji-i-i, the higu-rashi sounds like a bell: kana kana kana, the minminzemi makes the sound of the lotus sutra. Do you hear that? It's a plane. The wind blows under the door and across the rows and rows of mats and I am back inside the dark Temple. It's your belly, I say to Tomiko. The radio coughs. Tomorrow I will find wild herbs to eat with my potatoes, whispers Yukiyo. And my mother said she will bring me more pickled apricots next Visiting Day. I lie back and put my hands on my belly and listen to the wind. It sounds like dry grass moving. I breathe in and out – one, two, one, two. The best and most rare cicada, Father says, is the tsukutsukuboshi, which sounds exactly like a bird: chokko chokko uisu.
Mayako. Mayako? Chokko chokko uisu.
White rice – bowlfuls of it. Eba dumplings with ground wheat and mugwort grass and sugar and lots of sugar. When the Fatherland wins the war we can eat anything we like. Heaped bowls of silvery white rice. Be patient, says Mother. Waste is the enemy, says Big Sister. Big Brother holds out his dagger and on the tip there is a big stewed white radish. Good-bye, little Mayako. He looks like the man in the photograph.
The soybean rice is cold. When I open my mouth the cold air of morning comes in. Be filial to your parents, we chant together, affectionate to your brothers and sisters; as husbands and wives be harmonious; as friends true; bear yourselves in modesty and moderation; extend your benevolence to all. Tomiko and I gather flax in the hills behind the Temple. The day is bright and still cold. Kites and carrion crows fly around us. The crows are evil spirits with black eyes and I am frightened. Karasu ni hampo no ko ari, Mother says. The young crow returns its filial duty and feeds its parents. Don't be frightened, child of my heart. When I tell Father he smiles. The proverb is from China, he says. China is our reviled enemy, I say. The Chinese are godless bandits. He looks away from me for a long time like a cat. Yes, he says. I look for the flower stalks of butterburs and field horsetails and dig up pine roots. The cicadas say ji-i-i. Some of the boys go to the villages three hills away for potatoes. When they come back we go to the farm in the nearby village and work. The village boys tease us about our feebleness. Be careful or you will faint, city dweller. Be careful or your hands will blister, city dweller! See, she holds the shovel like a firecracker ... be careful or it will explode . . . pika don! In the line of students everyone is older than Big Sister but she has the strength of two women, passing baskets of sand and rubble from hand to hand, left to right, without stopping. It is white-hot on the street. The air is still dusty from the dead building. Her face is shiny, full of Yamato, and often she looks at the man who moved the saw, left, right. At my old elementary school in the city we farmed the playground for sweet potatoes and eggplants and squash. Turn the soil over, one time, two times, three times. One time, two times, three times. Mr. Sasaki gives the same orders here. He is nice to us. Now my mouth is hot and dry. I am no feeble city dweller. I turn the soil with my spirit. One time, two times, three times.
I am in the Fifth Division on the hill again when some boys cry out from the river. The water is cool and the leaves are green. The stones by the water are covered in moss. There are more than fifty types of moss in Father's garden. The shadows are large and cool. He is always alone there. I like the sound of water running over the stones. Father says the water is singing of impermanence. I am thinking of sweet potatoes and eggplants and squash. There is great excitement because some boys have caught a dragonfly. It is bigger than three thumbs. It is an Emperor's dragonfly, boasts Takai. Is it a female? It is a female, says Takai. He ties it with flax to a cherry branch and the dragonfly spreads its four wings and moves them so fast they look like they do not move at all, and holds them so wide they look like they hold every color-colors of pine oil and wet stone and metal. Don't blink now. We come close and hold out the captive prisoner and sing, Konna dansho Korai o, adzunza no meto ni makete, nigeru wa haji dewa naikai. . . O King of Korea, are you not ashamed to flee from the Queen of the East? I try hard to remember the folktale. A male dragonfly comes immediately over the water. Someone catches it and we laugh happily, passing it from hand to hand.
When I was your age, Mother says, I liked nothing more than to dive into the KyobashigawaRiver from the streetcar bridge. We played there all summer, my sisters and I. Then the city installed lily-of-the-valley lanterns in the Hondori shopping district. We would walk back and forth for hours, never looking down, and when it turned to night it was like walking under a curved ceiling of moons. Smoke from the chestnut grills rising like clouds. There were lights on at night? Yes, child of my heart. They are gone now, of course, they were metal. But then, you could walk under the moons all through the night, all the way from Nakajima to Shintenchi, where there were shops and movie theaters and music halls and cafés and restaurants.
Tell me of when you met Father. When I met Father, we went to the Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall to watch a tap-dancing concert. Afterward we went to a restaurant where they played jazz on a gramophone. It was music straight from heaven. Happy and sad at the same time and no one knew how to dance to it. The water is cold. Hiroshima is the city of rivers, Father says. Seven rivers run through it, each with a kami. You don't become a kami until you die, little turnip. Let's go, Mayako. She is wet, says Tomoe. The wind makes the water cold. Now the sky has changed color. Mrs. Sasaki will punish her, says Tomoe. No swimming in your clothes, says Mrs. Sasaki. Masachan got the pneumonia and went to the clinic in the city and did not return. Tochiki and Akira and his friend with the small ears were taken by Mr. Sasaki back to the city. Maybe they were naughty too. I will come later, I say. I think: When my clothes are dry. When I was your age, Mother says. It feels like a long time since the last Visiting Day. Do without until victory! Then you become one of the eight million kami. I will tell Mrs. Sasaki you are digging pine roots for dinner, says Tomiko. The light is changing into the color of our watercolors and on the blue hills a bird cries hoo hoo. Farmers hear that, says Father, and they know it is time to plant the millet. He teaches me the name: awamakidori. The wind is loud now. There are kites above
me in the watercolor sky and everywhere the sound of cicadas. Father teaches me the difference between the sounds. That is a B-24. That is a B-27. And that is a B-29. Father went to China and served the Emperor with unquestioning loyalty and hurt his legs and now he serves the Emperor as a priest in his Shinto Shrine in the city. The shadows are large and cool in the garden. You are like Matsuo, your brother, he says. Big Brother is wearing a khaki uniform with a rifle in his hands and a dagger on the right side of his belt. Father sighs as if I have been naughty. And you are like your sister too. Kanai anzen: may our family be preserved. You do not have to stay here, Mayako. I look around. There are maples and pines and cherry trees and small green hills and stone basins with running water and nanten shrubs with red berries. If you have an evil dream, you can whisper it to the nanten first thing in the morning and it will never come true. There are yellow peonies and irises with flowers like purple tissue paper and lotuses with leaves like cups. There are rocks with more than fifty types of moss. I like it here, I say. Yes, I know you do, says Father.
Do without until victory! I am under a gingko tree and behind it the sky is darker, the color of dry dirt. I will walk and dry in the wind. The watercolors are gone. Takai's friend tried to eat the watercolors and was punished by Mrs. Sasaki. I imagine the smell of potatoes, with spices. Butterburs and horsetails. It has been so long since the last Visiting Day. Yukiyo and Tomiko were angry because Mother did not follow the rules and brought me luxurious food: two pears, and rice with red beans, and sesame seeds mixed with salt. Their mothers did not bring so much. I give them sesame seeds to chew. Where is Big Sister? I ask. Sumi could not get a travel certificate, says Mother, even though she is eligible for evacuation. She tells you to work hard on the farms to help with the food shortage. Yes, I will. Sumi is a loyal subject, says Mother. In the day she is mobilized and at night she works at the munitions factory. I see her in the rain with her face shining. Father does not look at her. She tells you to remember the way of Bushido. Mother sleeps with her head on the summer clothes she brought for me. Now they are wet, and cold against my skin. The wind is loud. That night the room is full of darkness and whispering. Her hair smells of chrysanthemum and pine oil and as I sleep I try to keep the smell in my nose. The Emperor sits on the Chrysanthemum Throne and is our Father. Flowers fall from the sky. My eyes are heavy and Mother stands next to the truck. The other mothers are already inside the truck, crying. I want you to have this. Look here, says the man with the rabbit teeth. The sky is green like the leaves of the plum tree before night. I stand in the middle and sitting on my left is Mother in her best kimono and sitting on my right is Father in his white joe with his headgear and standing behind me is Big Sister in her designated nametag and armband and headband from the Volunteer Corps. We look into the box. Mother is holding the photograph of Big Brother in front of her stomach. Father has one hand on the bronze statue of Kannon, Goddess of Mercy. Don't blink now. But everything turns white – the box disappears – and I blink. I have been naughty. It's only the magnesium flash, says Father. He laughs at me and says, Don't worry. The air feels like it wants to rain. The clouds are green. The military mail service sent this back with the last letter, says Mother. I want you to have it. I look down at the photograph. Big Brother is not at the confidential place? I ask. When I look up Mother smiles strangely at me and I see she is crying. Your brother is safe now, she says. She steps onto the truck. Many of the children are crying. I do not cry. Now, by myself on this cold hill, in the night wind, I cry. Mother.
