A Thousand Stitches

by Constance O'Keefe

  “I have an announcement,” said Shun. He got up from the table, walked to the cupboard, and pulled out the Ashikagas’ set of sake cups. “I don’t think the good doctor would mind,” he said, walking back to the table, where he set out the cups. As he eased himself back into his seat, he pulled a small bottle of sake out of his pocket and put it on the table with the cups. “We have something to celebrate. O-Hana met Hashimoto-san yesterday. Then he came to see me at the market. You don’t know him, but he owned a medical supply company. The company used to have a warehouse and assembly facility not far from here. Like the hospital, Hashimoto-san’s business is gone. However, the dorm where his workers lived is still there. And it will have some empty rooms as of the end of the month. One of them is yours, dear Michiko and Shotaro. You’ll have your own place.”

  Michiko looked at Shotaro and then at the old couple—their weathered faces shining with happiness at being able to offer such a magnificent gift. “We can’t thank you enough,” she said, standing and bowing to Shun and O-Hana. Shotaro joined her, and took his hand in hers as they finished bowing.

  “Fine, it’s settled. Enough formal stuff. Let’s drink. To youth and to new beginnings,” said Shun.

  Starting the next day, Shun or O-Hana, or sometimes both of them, produced something for the new household every evening: a cooking pot, soap, quilts. There was a great deal of laughter the night both of them showed up with fancy chopsticks. “See, even without consulting, we knew you needed these—and needed two pairs,” said O-Hana.

  As the New Year holiday approached, it grew bitter cold. Shun had Shotaro sit with him and examine the simple accounts he kept for the scrap business. He then announced they could slow down and get ready for the holiday. He and O-Hana said they would stay home and work to make the house ready for the Ashikagas.

  Shotaro decided he would search for some scrap on his own, knowing that the old couple wouldn’t let him help with the menial household jobs they considered theirs alone. Michiko left for another trip to Mie with Nishida-san.

  She didn’t arrive home until dawn the next day, after a cold, crowded overnight train trip. She entered the house and searched for Shotaro, and when she didn’t find him, walked into the back yard, calling “O-Hana. Where are you?” When she finally reached the doorway of the carriage house, she saw Shun asleep on the bed. Shotaro was sitting at his side, holding his hand. “My darling,” he said, quietly. “It’s another funeral. This time we have to plan it.” She sat down beside him and he told her the story, careful not to disturb the old man.

  Shotaro had not had a successful day, and he tired quickly in the cold. He trailed back to the Ashikagas’ with the few pieces of scrap he had found. As he approached, he could see a group in front of the gate. He quickened his pace, his anxiety growing as he drew closer. When he reached the entrance, he was filled with dread—many in the group were police officers. It took him a while to talk his way past the officials. By the time he reached the carriage house, he had heard most of the story. Dr. Hagiwara was in the carriage house with Shun, who was again lying on the bed—this time without the determination he displayed after his heart attack. “I didn’t help. I didn’t protect her,” he was moaning.

  “They’ve just taken her away,” said Dr. Hagiwara when he saw Shotaro in the doorway. “This is a bad business.”

  When he went home, Dr. Hagiwara left behind some sleeping potions. Shotaro sat with the old man, who kept mumbling through his story. “She was outside sweeping the road and picking up the litter. Cheerful as always when she went out. She was joking about Christmas and tried to sing me a Christmas carol. I told her I couldn’t stand any more of her singing. She was still laughing as she went through the gate with her broom.”

  “Shun, quiet now,” said Shotaro. “You need your rest.” But the old man kept talking. He had heard a loud bang. He rushed out to find O-Hana lying unconscious in the road, the left side of her body bloody and bruised. The police appeared quickly and carried her into the carriage house. One of the first police officers on the scene fetched Dr. Hagiwara. Despite the doctor’s efforts, O-Hana never regained consciousness. The police had asked Shun the same questions over and over, but all he could tell them was what he repeated to Shotaro. “There was a huge shiny car pulling away. It was bright yellow and its chrome glinted in the sunlight. Along the sides, it had a black and red dragon decoration, like a tattoo.”

  Shun refused the food Shotaro offered, but finally drank some tea. It was long into the night before he fell asleep.

  Two days later, on a cold gray afternoon, they helped Shun home and then back to his bed after the funeral service. He placed the container with O-Hana’s ashes carefully on the one shelf in the tiny room and let Michiko pull the quilts up to his chin. Shotaro carried the kerosene heater from the kitchen into the carriage house. Once he had it going, he went to the kitchen to help Michiko make dinner. Shun sat up to eat the rice and vegetables they brought for him, but couldn’t manage more than one or two spoonfuls. When he lay down, they piled quilts on him again, knowing the fuel in the heater would soon run out. The days since O-Hana’s death had diminished him—he now seemed no more substantial than his tiny wife. He refused to let them stay, shooing them away to their room in the house. As Michiko leaned over him one last time to make sure he was comfortable, he took her hand and said, “She was everything, my heart and soul. You have the same thing. Be good to the Young Master.”

  “We shouldn’t be surprised,” she said to Shotaro the next morning when they found Shun dead in his bed. “He couldn’t live without her.”

  “A bad business, a very bad business,” Dr. Hagiwara repeated when he returned again with Shotaro. “And the police won’t do anything about the gangsters. Just promise me you’ll be careful and stay out of their way.”

  “We will. We will,” Shotaro replied.

  Michiko walked to the market to tell Nishida-san she wouldn’t be available to help for a few more days. She and Shotaro made more sad arrangements, attended yet another sad service and arranged for interment and a marker for both of the old people. We were orphans when we met and now, together, we’re orphans all over again. It was a cold, lonely day; there was plenty of time to think.

  When they returned from the cemetery, they began a top-to-bottom cleaning of the Ashikaga residence and the carriage house. Shotaro took all of the scrap stacked in the yard to the dealer with whom he had the best relationship. They arranged all of their meager belongings in the kitchen and on New Year’s Eve they made several trips, carrying them to their new home in Hashimoto-san’s former dormitory.

  Three days after the New Year, the Ashikagas returned. Dr. Ashikaga was surprised but happy to see Shotaro waiting at the gate when he pulled up in a rare taxi with his wife and daughters, and then overwhelmed when he heard about Shun and O-Hana. “I suppose I shouldn’t be able to care at all anymore,” he said. “There’s been too much death. Too much. And there will only be more.”

  On their way back from the public bath to their new home, Shotaro said, “The ward office isn’t someplace I want to go to again, but it’s time for us to do it. I want to update my family register. It’s time for us to be husband and wife officially.”

  Michiko thought of O-Hana and Shun, and shuddered with sudden, piercing sorrow when she remembered the last thing the old man had said to her. How could anything be dearer to her than Shotaro, but what if she lost him?

  Feeling her tremble beside her, he put his arm around her. “Darling, you’re not going to say no, are you?”

  “No, my dear, but can we afford another day off?”

  “Yes, with what Shun taught me and what he left us, I know I can be successful carrying on the business. I know we’ll be secure. We are starting this New Year well, thanks to him and O-Hana.”

  They climbed the stairs to their room, spread one of O-Hana’s quilts over the dirty, dingy tatami, and spread out their futon.

  The hair at the nape of her neck still damp fro
m the bath, Michiko snuggled into the futon and into warmth. She let the exhaustion of the day and the week claim her. She began to drift toward the sweet oblivion of sleep. Almost there, she started to roll to her side, pulling herself up to the top of the arc of the turn, and then, feeling safe, fully aware of her youth, and certain, despite the pain and illness of the year past, of her good health, she relaxed and let gravity do the rest of the job. She felt Shotaro’s left arm beneath her, and felt his right arm encircling her as he curled around her. “Remember, my darling, the ward office tomorrow,” was the last thing she heard before she left herself go and melted away.

  16. SAM

  Matsuyama, 1948–1963

  The Occupation lasted until 1951, but by 1949, the Americans had decided to dissolve the military government teams in each of the prefectures on Shikoku. That spring it was announced that only one team would remain, and it would be in Takamatsu, not Matsuyama. Captain Schneider was being transferred to army headquarters in Washington, D.C. Our group of translator-interpreters, which had worked together for four years, was about to break up. Like my colleagues, I was apprehensive about where I would find work. But soon after the official announcement, Colonel Scranton, the Ehime MGT commanding officer, summoned me to his office. I was dumbfounded when he announced that he had arranged for me to be hired by the Ehime Prefectural Board of Education as its first English Teacher Consultant.

  It was a wonderful job. I worked hard during the day, taught my classes at night, and spent whatever time I could find studying more about language teaching. And I also thought a lot about my life so far. Even though I was only twenty-seven, I felt that I had experienced a great deal. I wondered how I could have thought and functioned as I did during the war. Now I was clear about who I was. I was an educator. Peace was ultimately what I was working for, but I think that even then, with all the effort I had put into trying to sort out what had happened to me during the war, I would not have quite put it that way. But I did know that I was extremely fortunate to have work that involved both Japanese and Americans, to be helping both sides, and to have arrived at a point where my everyday life reconciled my skills from my Mother Country and Mother tongue and my Father Country and its language. And I knew that I was fortunate to have had my post-war experiences and be doing work I loved because my home life was getting no better, no better at all.

  I officially held my job with the Prefectural Board of Education for six years, but I was on leave of absence for two of those six years. More about the leave of absence in a bit.

  As the Prefecture’s English Language Consultant, I observed that most of those teaching English in the secondary schools were woefully ill-equipped for their jobs. Suzuki-sensei, I realized, had not been an anomaly. Tragically, high school teachers were not educated in spoken English, and they had virtually no opportunity to practice. Hence, both their abilities to speak and their abilities to understand spoken English were extremely limited.

  After one year in my new post, I decided to start a special program for the vacation period before the start of the academic year in April. I commandeered an old school building that had been standing empty since the educational reforms were put into place two years earlier. And I pressed virtually every native speaker I knew into volunteer service. We managed to gather a group of about a dozen educators and military personnel. They came from all over western Japan. We called the program “in-service” training and circulated materials to all teachers in Ehime, making it clear that if they came, they were to expect housing in the same unheated school where the class would be held. We even told them to bring their own blankets. We only had enough funds to purchase tatami mats to spread over the wooden floors of the classrooms at night. Teachers as well as students would have to curl up in their own blankets. The program was strictly on a volunteer basis, and our brochures made it clear that the one rule absolutely enforced during the two-week intensive program was that only English could be spoken. Japanese was completely banned.

  I was astonished when a hundred teachers registered. The program, the first of its kind in Japan, was a spectacular and unexpected success. The teachers were enthusiastic and made great strides. They found the experience of working on their listening and speaking skills extremely rewarding. I particularly loved watching them gain confidence day by day.

  After that first year, the prefectural officials endorsed the program as an annual event; they were delighted when word of the program spread and officials of other prefectures asked to borrow me as an advisor. I traveled to Hiroshima, to Sendai, and to Kyushu to help officials there set up similar programs. Those were happy days professionally.

  Late in 1950, I read an announcement that competitive exams would be held to choose scholarship recipients for a one-year study program in the United States. It seized my imagination. I didn’t talk about it much at home, but Father and I discussed it one weekend during a fishing excursion. They were now rare occasions for us, but I still treasured those peaceful times. He said he understood my enthusiasm, and talked about how he would like to see the States again. Kayoko wasn’t mentioned, and he didn’t speak about Mother. We both knew she was not likely to be pleased. “Isamu,” he said, “you’re quieter about it now than you were then, but I remember this kind of enthusiasm when you were determined to pass the Navy’s entrance exam.”

  I pulled my line out of the water, saw, as I suspected, that the bait was gone, added some more, and recast as I thought of how to respond.

  “Well, Father, I’m a different person now.”

  “Yes, I know, son,” he replied. “I’ve been proud of everything you’ve accomplished since the day Yamamura-sensei took you to the office of the Occupation. You’ve built a career to be proud of, and this would be an opportunity to secure your future in that career. I’m sure you’ll ­succeed.”

  Late in the year, I traveled to Tokyo to take the exam. It didn’t seem that difficult to me, but the throngs of applicants—thousands I thought—made me doubt that I would be chosen. An oral interview followed the written exam. On the trip home I told myself not to get my hopes up too high. My welcome home was a week-long dose of the silent treatment from Mother and Kayoko. I went back to work and tried to forget about seeing San Francisco again.

  About a month later, I was summoned to the office of the Prefectural Education Director. There was a phone call from the States for me. When I picked up the phone, I was astonished to hear Shirley Schneider’s voice. She had retired from the army after reaching the rank of major and was now working at the Institute for International Education in Washington. She told me she happened to notice my name when the list of scholarship applicants had come across her desk,

  “Now, Isamu,” she said, “if you pass, what university would you like to go to? Scholarship recipients are not given the option of choosing their schools, but if I know what you’re thinking about, I may be able to help.”

  Without hesitation, I said, “University of Michigan,” and explained how much I admired Dr. Fries’ work and what an honor it would be to study with him.

  “Well, Sam, there are no guarantees, and you do have to pass. But I can’t imagine that you found the exam all that difficult. I’ll do what I can. I was delighted to see your name on the list. I spent all day yesterday remembering the good times I had in Matsuyama.”

  In June, official word arrived that I had been awarded a scholarship. And I was going to attend the University of Michigan after an orientation at Yale. I was supposed to report to the GARIOA (Grant in Aid and Relief in Occupied Areas) office in Tokyo on July 9. A month of frantic activity commenced. My superiors at the Prefectural Board of Education gave their permission reluctantly, and only after a week of negotiations. Leaving in the middle of the school year was highly irregular. When I announced my news at home, there was no acknowledgement, except Father’s quick smile of pride, that my achievement was valued. During my last weeks in Matsuyama, Kayoko spoke to me rarely, and when she did her tone was either surly or
sarcastic. I began to yearn for my release and started telling myself that the time in the U.S. would be good. I would miss Kayoko, and missing her I would learn to appreciate her. My feelings would change.

  I went to Tokyo alone, reported to the GARIOA office, listened to the orientations, and reported to the dock in Yokohama on the morning of July 13 with a great sense of excitement. It was almost twenty years since the journey that had brought me to Yokohama. Twenty years since the only home I had known was relegated to memory and Matsuyama became my world. The ship was a troop transport, crammed with GIs on their way home from battle in Korea and all of the 470 GARIOA scholarship students. We slept in bunks in three tiers and had little to do during the long days. It took us eleven days to reach San Francisco. Everyone was on deck when we sailed under Golden Gate Bridge, which had not yet been built when Mother and I had left for Japan. Father talked about how he had seen the towers when he left the year after us—but only the towers; construction had been just beginning when he left. When the white houses and streets of San Francisco came into view, I was close to tears. My home town. What a journey my life had been.

  The ship docked in Oakland, where we spent a few days in dorms on the campus of Mills College. One day the group went on a bus tour of San Francisco. I found myself pointing out landmarks.

  I also went on an excursion with Mr. Nishikage, a friend of Father’s, who had been in San Francisco all this time, except for when he, like all issei and nisei, was interned during the war. Mr. Nishikage kindly drove me around to all the places I wanted to see: our old house on Cedar Street, the beach, Cliff House, North Beach, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Chinatown. Mr. Nishikage also took me home to meet his family. That was the day I saw my first television.

  After a few days, the entire GARIOA group was put on a special train for the East Coast. The trip to New York took five days, and small groups of students got off in Denver, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. After we arrived in New York, the five of us who were scheduled for orientation at Yale changed trains and headed for New Haven. We stayed in dorms with students from all over the world. My roommate was Finnish. Our orientation lasted three weeks. The days were filled with lectures on American history, geography, architecture, and popular culture. On the weekends, local families took us in for home stays. I spent my weekends with the Weber family in Westport. I still remember their warm hospitality and many kindnesses.