The Emperor's General

by James Webb

  The road turned again and dropped down a very steep slope. In the distance far below me I could see the mammoth Subic Bay, where the Americans had kept a naval base since 1898, except for the period of Japanese occupation. Dozens of warships and troop transports were anchored in the bay. As we neared Subic, the roadside paths and the nipa shacks became mixed with an increasingly larger percentage of American soldiers and sailors, until they seemed to dominate our view. Their caps were pushed back. They sauntered when they walked. They laughed loudly and waved money at young Filipinas whose faces were fixed with delighted, devilish grins.

  From the outer provinces the young girls came, emptying into Subic in search of money and with dreams of happiness, ready in their youth to believe every sailor’s lie, content in their middle years to assuage their sorrows with the color of his money. And if they were lucky enough to live into their older days they spent their wisdom in an effort to convince other unbelieving young girls who found their way to Subic from the same dream-ridden provinces that life would truly have been better if they had spent it harvesting coconuts and planting rice.

  I knew all that. But as we dropped off our thankful passengers and absorbed the dozens of hungry stares that bored in on Divina Clara, she reminded me anew with the angry flashing of her eyes.

  Isabela Ramirez was Divina Clara’s grandmother. She lived with four servants in a large two-story home surrounded by a walled compound on a grand hill that overlooked the bay. From the turn of the century on, the Ramirez family had grown wealthy through its dealings with the American navy. Isabela’s husband, Fidel, who had died during the war, had begun as a young man by supplying fruit, vegetables, and meat to the naval base. Later he had expanded into construction and was a major contractor as the base grew larger. He had insulated his children from the raucous conduct of American sailors who took their liberty calls in Subic by sending them to school in Manila, bringing them home on weekends to help him work. Divina Clara’s father had taken over the family business, which by the beginning of the war had expanded to include the port of Manila.

  Living on the edges of Subic’s constant chaos, benefiting from it and yet always threatened by it, had taught the Ramirez family one vital lesson. They had drilled it into every female, from the first day that her hips began to widen and her breasts began to swell. It boiled down to an axiom. Divina Clara had warned me of it when she first told me that her grandmother had demanded that I meet with her before I left for Japan.

  In the Philippines, falling in love with an American means that someday you will be left behind.

  “I want to ice-skate,” said Divina Clara as we drove up the hill on the way to her grandmother’s house. “What do you think about that?”

  I began to laugh. “What are you talking about?”

  “Ice-skating,” she said. “I saw this movie last night at the American hospital. Sonja Henie. She is a very famous skater. It looks like wonderful fun. All the men were loving the way she moved on the ice. She had strong legs and a beautiful costume.”

  “You’re far more beautiful than she is, Divina Clara.”

  “I don’t have strong legs.”

  “You have wonderful legs. I marvel at your legs.”

  “She has long eyelashes,” said Divina Clara, studying my face for a reaction. “I don’t have eyelashes. Did you ever notice that?”

  “Of course you have eyelashes.”

  “Not long ones.”

  I took her hand. “Are you nervous?”

  She squeezed my hand, looking toward her grandmother’s house. We were almost there. A flash of hopelessness passed across her face like the shadows of an old storm.

  “Yes.”

  A teenaged boy was sitting lazily at the high black gate that led inside Isabel Ramirez’s compound. As we drove up he recognized Divina Clara and jumped to his feet, smiling widely and waving to her. They called happily to each other as he slid open the heavy wrought-iron gate, letting us inside.

  “She’s been expecting us for hours,” said Divina Clara as we climbed out of the jeep. “I told him the bridge was out.”

  “What happened to Filipino time?” I teased, deliberately taking her hand as the houseboy scrutinized me.

  “It’s different when you’re waiting for your children to come, don’t you think?”

  “I think you just make things up to fit the moment.”

  “Today I am,” she smiled. “Is that a sin?”

  Her grandmother’s house was a palatial and beautiful mix of Spanish and Filipino, as if its designer had placed brick and masonry around the basic structure of the nipa huts we had seen on the road coming into Subic. Instead of thatch, its high, steep roof was covered with rounded Spanish tiles. Almost the entire second floor was recessed, leaving a wraparound porch that opened out from the bedrooms. The elegant wooden eaves above the porch ringed the house with elaborately carved floral designs.

  Isabela Ramirez appeared suddenly in the doorway. She was a smooth-skinned and full-breasted woman. Her grey-streaked hair was pulled tightly behind and then wrapped on top of her head. She was wearing a gold necklace with a matching bracelet and a brightly colored satin dress. Her firm lips told me that she was used to making decisions and that she was already beginning to make one about me. In fact, she was giving me a look that could have cracked a rock.

  Isabela moved to us, pushing me back with a hard glance as she embraced Divina Clara. She melted then, lovingly holding her grandchild as she mussed with her windblown hair and teased her about her lipstick and earrings. Without loosening from her grandmother’s embrace Divina Clara found my arm and tugged on me, pulling me into their orbit.

  “Grandma, this is Jay Marsh.”

  “Yes,” she said, giving me a small, frigid smile. “I know that.” Finally she gestured to her doorway, speaking to Divina Clara. “Come in!”

  Isabela had every reason not to like me or trust me, and she made that clear to me from the moment I entered her home. The home was cool inside, high as it was on this majestic hill that took its breezes from the bay. A grand mahogany staircase pointed upstairs. Old pottery and heavy wooden artifacts surrounded us as I followed her toward the sitting room. In the nearby batalan a tiny, hunchbacked cook who was about Isabela’s age was busily preparing us a sumptuous midday meal. She and Divina Clara waved gladly to each other, exchanging hellos in Tagalog as we passed.

  We reached the sitting room. The cook brought us juice she had squeezed from green mango, and a pot of jasmine tea. I drank the juice quickly and began to sip my tea. We sat in a nervous triangle, each of us intensely studying the other two. In this land where tests were rarely obvious, I could sense that I was failing mine. Finally I cleared my throat and tried a smile.

  “You have a beautiful home,” I said. “Far nicer than my own family’s in the States.”

  Isabela nodded her thanks. “Do you have servants?”

  “No,” I answered. “But I’ve never been a servant.”

  “You are a servant of MacArthur,” said Isabela, unimpressed.

  “An aide,” insisted Divina Clara. “Important to the General’s success! Not a servant.”

  “Divina Clara has always had servants. I don’t think she could live in a house without servants.”

  “Grandma—” began Divina Clara, forcing a smile and trying to interrupt.

  “—and we are very close,” said Isabela. “I cannot imagine Divina Clara living far away from family.”

  “Grandma—”

  But Isabela would not be interrupted. Her words began pouring out of her with a force of their own, like a bubbling volcano. “—Divina Clara is young. And you, you are young. And I cannot find fault with this, this—force of nature. But you see, I have watched this for forty-five years already. It is not new to me. It is all around us here. I myself once thought I was in love with an American boy.”

  “Grandma!” said Divina Clara, laughing and clasping her hands underneath her chin as if praying. “You never t
old me that!”

  “It would only have encouraged you, Divina Clara.” Isabela’s eyes went far away and brought back a memory, still young in its simplicity. “His name was Wesley Allen. We were not yet lovers, but he said he loved me. He told me he was coming back. I waited for him. I believed him. And he did not come back.”

  Divina Clara reached over and touched her grandmother’s hand. Rather than comforting the old woman, it seemed to bring her to her senses. “But I have had a blessed life without him. And we have more experiences with Americans now. We know things. Americans for some reason are drawn to Filipina women. It is something I cannot fully understand. But when they go back to their own homes in the States they are somehow ashamed. Perhaps it is American women who shame them, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter if I know. And it is true that many Filipina women have a weakness for American men. Perhaps it is the Lord’s work—”

  “Yes,” said Divina Clara hopefully, “I think it may be the Lord’s work.”

  “—but it does not matter.” Isabela said it with a flat finality, and looked directly into my eyes. “I will not trust you to go away and then say you are coming back. Or even to take Divina Clara so many thousands of miles away, into a culture that does not understand us, and that none of us understand. She is beautiful. She is educated—probably far better than you yourself! She has been tutored for years by Jesuits! What do the Americans understand about that? They will only see the color of her skin.”

  “But Grandma,” said Divina Clara, her face lit with a new expectation. “He wants to stay here. He wants to live with us!”

  She studied me for a long time, openly and without inhibition, reading my eyes and the set of my mouth and even the way I sat with one leg crossed over the other. “Why would you stay here?”

  “I love it here,” I said.

  “It is hot, and it rains a lot,” she protested.

  “I’m from Arkansas. I’m used to that.”

  “What about your family?”

  “My father and sister died before the war. My brother died in battle. My mother is living in California, but she has her own life now.”

  “She’s living with an Italian!” volunteered Divina Clara, as if that were full evidence of my independence.

  “You would want to work with our family business, then?” I picked up a hint of instant suspicion in Isabela’s question, as if my interest in Divina Clara were mercenary.

  “Only if you wanted me to,” I said. “And only if I liked what it was that you wanted me to do. I’ll never have to worry about finding about a job.” I could see her beginning to weaken, perhaps even to believe. “I have a degree from the University of Southern California—a very fine college. And I’ve met many people who’ve offered me jobs while I’ve been working for General MacArthur.”

  “MacArthur does hold great sway in these islands,” said Isabela. “Many Filipinos love him, you know.” She eyed me carefully. I knew there was a test in these simple words. “How do you find him?”

  “He is a genius, of course,” I answered, holding her eyes. “And a very difficult man.”

  “You must try to understand MacArthur,” she said coquettishly. “It is a burden to be admired.”

  “To the contrary, I think he rather likes it.”

  “Yes,” she said, holding back an amused smile. “But once they put you on a pedestal you must live in fear. It is a humiliation to be removed.”

  “I doubt that the thought of being removed has ever occurred to him.”

  “Of course it has,” she said. She had finally allowed herself to smile fully, but her eyes seemed to hold a glimmer of respect for my honesty. “He’s more human than you think. The Japanese took him off his pedestal at Bataan and Corregidor. Now he must climb back up and stay there, or his life means nothing.” She stared at me for another moment, her eyebrows arched with curiosity. “You sound like you don’t like him very much.”

  “I respect him,” I answered.

  She nodded judiciously, as if she had reached some sort of a decision. “You’re very careful with both your criticism and your praise,” said Isabela. “Most Americans are not like that. So I will be more open with you. Not all Filipinos love MacArthur. Many are disappointed in him.”

  She watched me shrewdly for a moment, measuring me, then continued. “My husband is dead at the hands of the Japanese—just down the road from here! My son fought them from the jungle for three years. And what does MacArthur do, once he is reestablished in Manila? He makes a point of taking care of his high-level friends. He even pardons Roxas and all the others who openly collaborated with the Japanese.”

  Roxas. Her comment surprised me, but I could see its logic. Before the war the widely popular Manuel Roxas y Acuña had been a favorite of MacArthur, who had given him a general’s commission in the U.S. army. He was also the protégé of former president Manuel Quezon, who announced just before he died while in exile that Roxas should be his successor. But the war had altered this pristine image. Roxas had at a minimum been used by the Japanese and from the evidence had turned into a willing collaborator. And MacArthur had indeed insulated him and other prominent Filipinos, shielding them all from any legal action by the strength of his own reputation.

  “He didn’t pardon them,” I answered weakly. “He issued statements indicating that it was his opinion that they should not be tried.”

  Isabela laughed at me. “He exonerated them, Captain Marsh! They will use this. And never forget: they are from the great families. The little Filipinos are in awe of them and afraid of what would happen if they oppose them. Eighty percent of those who were in the Senate when the war began ended up serving under the Japanese in Laurel’s puppet regime. They were spoiled landholders who had never worked in their lives. What did they know about fighting? They knew nothing but playing tennis and having parties! And already the suffering of my husband and my son mean nothing to them. They will continue to rule.”

  I remained silent, unsure of her motives in telling me this. And finally she nodded, as if urging me on. “You must be careful with MacArthur, especially in his new position. He worships power, you know. He will deal you away if it suits him. That is my point.”

  “I have learned a great deal from him,” I finally managed to say. “The Philippines would not be free if it wasn’t for his persistence.”

  She giggled, a vision dancing in her head. “Free, Captain Marsh? With his corrupt friends running the country again? And anyway, you have no memory of him before the war. His rich patrons tolerated him, and the little people loved it, but the rest of us used to laugh at him strutting around in his grand field marshal’s uniform. He designed it for himself, you know! All the gold braid and flashy medals and white tunics. He takes himself too seriously. And then when the Japanese came they defeated him, did they not? Perhaps by forgiving Roxas he is forgiving himself.”

  “Jay is a very important adviser to the General,” interrupted Divina Clara, leaning forward hopefully and taking my hand. “He speaks perfect Japanese.” She squeezed my hand. “Jay, you should tell Grandma how you changed the words on the surrender document when the Japanese delegation visited Manila last week.” Before I could begin she sat straight up, putting an arm on my shoulder as if presenting me for evidence. “Jay prevented a major international incident!”

  Divina Clara was being a bit dramatic, but she was not incorrect. The week before, I had worked as an interpreter when sixteen representatives from the Japanese government had been flown into Manila. Arriving on an American C-54 with “BATAAN” emblazoned on the side, the delegation had been summoned by MacArthur to discuss the terms of Japan’s surrender and to begin preparations for his arrival at Atsugi, a Japanese air force base just outside Tokyo. MacArthur, mindful of the ways of the emperor he sought both to emulate and supplant, had refused to meet with them, sending General Willoughby to greet the plane and General Sutherland to conduct the negotiations.

  We had worked through the night in the war
-scarred city hall. The Japanese turned over detailed maps and lists of their military units throughout Asia. Sutherland delivered MacArthur’s instructions for the mechanics of the formal surrender and the logistics of our arrival at Atsugi. They had discussed the need for full command chronologies of all units during the war, a first step toward the nasty issue of accountability for war crimes. All of this was expected and went smoothly. But when Sutherland handed them the proposed surrender document that would be issued in the emperor’s name, General Kawabe, his Japanese counterpart, dropped it onto the table as if it were on fire.

  Drafted by the State Department in Washington, the document required that the emperor refer to himself as Watakushi, the ordinary and humble Japanese term for “I.” The emperor, as with his predecessors before him, had always used Chin, an ancient word taken from the Chinese and reserved only for the royal family, meaning, roughly, “the moon that speaks to heaven.” For the emperor to speak of himself as Watakushi would be to announce to the world, and to his own people, that he was now little more than a commoner.

  This thought did not exactly displease the acidic, fury-ridden Sutherland, who was having the time of his life humiliating the Japanese delegation. But Katsuo Kasaki, the senior Japanese foreign affairs representative at the table, pleaded with Sutherland that the issue was “of the utmost importance. It is impossible for me to explain how important it really is!”

  Sutherland had called a break in the meeting, and I had taken the matter to General MacArthur, who was following the course of the meetings in his own office, along with the ever-present Willoughby and Court Whitney. The General had understood instantly.

  “We will not debase him in the eyes of his own people,” MacArthur had said. “We will be attempting to govern a nation of eighty million people with a few hundred thousand soldiers. A few weeks ago every man, woman, and child in Japan was preparing to fight us, even if it meant dying with a pitchfork in their hands. This whole thing will be impossible without the help of the emperor.”