by Alan Gratz
Hideki still had trouble understanding it all, but his sister seemed to know what she was talking about.
“I’m a middle child too, and I never acted like that,” he’d said at last.
“That’s because you have a different mabui to worry about,” Kimiko told him.
One Hideki would have to wait a little longer to appease.
“I’ve got to get these pictures to safety,” Principal Kojima was saying now. Hideki watched as he stuffed the last of the Emperor’s portraits back in the bag and stood up. “Remember to fight and die for your country with honor. We’ll meet again in the afterlife!” he told his former students, and ran off.
The boys were debating whether to return to the cave or to keep looking for American soldiers when Yoshio perked up. “Do you smell that?” he whispered.
A delicious aroma tickled Hideki’s nose, and he turned into the wind and sniffed. Somebody nearby was cooking something over a campfire. Something good. Hideki hadn’t eaten meat in ages—all the meat in Okinawa now went to the Japanese soldiers—and his mouth watered at the tasty smell. Some of the other boys had picked up on it too, and they smiled at each other.
Hideki’s stomach growled eagerly, but he didn’t smile. The smell of roasting meat could mean only one thing.
“Americans,” he whispered.
Ray sat apart from the other Marines, watching them laugh and talk as they ate barbecued pig. His squad had met up with the rest of Easy Company—strength in numbers as they set up camp for the night. From the safety of their foxholes, they were all sharing in the feast Ray had prepared. He was the man of the hour, but he didn’t feel much like celebrating. He’d just watched Billy Lineker get shot in front of him. So had the other men in Ray’s squad. How could they be joking and enjoying barbecue just a few hours later?
Sergeant Meredith sat down on the edge of Ray’s foxhole. “You did good today,” Sergeant Meredith said. “Flushing that sniper out.”
Flushing that twelve-year-old boy out, Ray thought. That little kid.
“You okay with it?” the sergeant asked.
“The sniper? I guess,” Ray said. As surprising as it was that the sniper was just a kid, Ray understood why they’d had to kill him. This was a war. It was kill or be killed, and the kid had killed one of theirs. But the way Big John had done it, so easily. So casually …
But that wasn’t even what was bothering him the most about that day.
“And Hard-luck?” Sergeant Meredith said, as though he could read Ray’s mind.
Ray huffed. “I don’t understand.” He raised his chin at the other men. “Don’t they care?”
“They do care, yes,” said the sergeant. “So do I. But it’s fate—either you have a bullet or a mortar or a grenade with your name on it, or you don’t. That bullet finds you and we mourn, but we have to move on. Nothing else we can do.”
“But it just seems so—so heartless,” Ray said.
“It is,” Sergeant Meredith allowed. “But Marines like me and Big John and the Old Man, this ain’t our first rodeo. We’ve seen a lot of good men die. If we mourned every one of them the way they should be mourned, we’d go crazy.” The sergeant rubbed a callus on his palm—the same place Ray’s rifle had given him blisters during basic training. “We had to let our skins harden up, so we don’t feel it as much. We can’t, or it’d hurt too bad. You ever see a guy with that thousand-yard stare? You know it’s getting to him.”
Ray had seen that stare before in his father’s eyes, like he was focused on something a long way off that nobody else could see. Ray knew that’s when his Pa had been remembering his time in the First World War. Over in his foxhole, the Old Man was doing it now.
“Starks, grab me a hunk of that pig, will you?” Sergeant Meredith called to him.
The Old Man shook himself out of the stare and grinned. “Sure, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Meredith glanced at Ray, and Ray understood.
Their lieutenant found them and told Sergeant Meredith that scouts had reported a possible enemy cave nearby. “Send a team to check it out while we’ve still got some daylight,” the lieutenant said.
The sergeant saluted and called Big John over. “Big John, take Gonzalez and Barbecue here and a couple of the other rookies and show ’em the ropes.”
And just like that, Ray had a nickname: Barbecue.
The cave was a quarter of a mile away from camp, very close to a steep cliff that ran a long way down to the sea, where waves crashed against big rocks. It was a natural cavern, with rock walls and a dirt floor. The entrance was about half as tall as Ray and overgrown with moss. It was pitch-black just a foot or two inside. There was no telling how far it went back into the hillside, or if anybody was hiding inside.
“Is someone going in there?” Gonzalez asked.
“You kiddin’?” Big John said. “We’re gonna flush ’em out. Rifles ready.”
Big John took a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and chucked it inside. Ray raised his rifle to his shoulder and aimed at the entrance.
THOOM. The explosion shook the ground, and smoke billowed out from the entrance. Inside, there were screams.
Ray’s heart raced, and he shuffled his feet nervously. Suddenly, people came streaming out from the cave and Ray’s finger tightened on the trigger. But it was a woman holding a baby. And the next target Ray swung to was a little boy. Then an old man.
“Wait—wait!” Ray cried. “They’re Okinawans! Civilians!”
The Okinawans kept coming. Ten, fifteen, twenty—Ray lost count. He watched as the people ran away screaming from the Marines. They went straight for the edge of the cliff and raced back and forth along the edge of it, looking down like they were trying to find some path to escape. But Ray and the other Marines had walked along that ridge to get here—it was just a long fall into rocks and trees.
The grenade going off must have spooked them, Ray thought. He fished out his Japanese phrase book and tried to find something that would calm them down.
“Hee-DOY koat-o wa shee ma-SEN,” he tried, walking closer. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he said in English.
The women and children wailed as Ray got closer, sobbing like it was the end of the world, and Ray wondered if he was saying it wrong.
Then the whole lot of them stepped off the cliff.
Ray blinked, and his stomach dropped. One second they had been huddled there in fear, and the next moment they were just gone.
“No!” Ray cried. There was no way they could have survived the fall.
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat,” Big John whispered.
“Why in the name of God would they do that?” Gonzalez asked.
None of them had the answer. Ray double-checked his phrase book—he hadn’t said anything wrong. But for some reason the Okinawans had been so terrified of him and the other Marines that they had killed themselves rather than be captured.
“Well, better that than one of ’em coming out with a grenade and trying to blow us up,” Big John said. “Let’s make sure there ain’t any more of ’em in there, and then get back and get us some more of that pig before it’s gone.”
Ray followed Big John into the cave, but he wouldn’t be eating any more barbecue tonight. Ray had lost his appetite.
Hideki and the other boys crept toward the delicious smell, and sure enough, there they were. American soldiers. There were almost twenty of them, sitting around a cook fire or in holes they had dug in the ground. Some of them wrote letters or cleaned their guns. Others were eating a pig they’d cooked up. Hideki could hear their voices on the breeze—the long, slow, deep, slurred sounds of English that made no sense to him.
None of the soldiers had seen or heard them yet, which meant the Blood and Iron Student Corps had the element of surprise. This really was Hideki’s moment of glory, but he wasn’t feeling so bold anymore. This was going to be a violent battle. This might be the moment he died.
One of the other boys, Takeshi, must have been thinking the
same thing too. Hideki could see him sobbing quietly a few meters away.
Shigetomo’s mabui tugged at Hideki’s gut, and Hideki took a step back.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Yoshio whispered at Hideki’s side, making him jump. “We’ll crawl closer, and then when we’re all in range, I’ll whistle, and—”
Ka-THOOM!
A grenade exploded close enough to knock them over, and Hideki’s ears rang from the explosion.
“What—what happened?” he asked as he pulled himself back up on his knees.
“Takeshi killed himself! He blew himself up with his own grenade!” one of the boys yelled in horror.
Was it an accident, or had Takeshi killed himself out of fear? Hideki was still gaping, still trying to understand, when he heard the American soldiers cry out in alarm. The element of surprise was gone. The Americans were going for their guns! They would be on top of Hideki and the others in seconds.
“Attack! Attack!” Yoshio cried. He pulled the pin on his grenade, whacked the brass igniter on a rock, and hurled the grenade. It went off with a POOM! a few meters away. Hideki couldn’t see what Yoshio had hit, because a second later the bullets started flying.
Pak pak pak pak! Chu-chu-chu-chung!
Hideki barely had room to curl up and hide behind a shredded tree stump. He watched as a fifth-year named Gensei couldn’t get to cover in time. Gensei was hit again and again by bullets, his body dancing like a broken puppet before he crumpled to the ground.
Hideki had never seen somebody die before. His own body shook uncontrollably, like he was the one being hit, and tears sprang to his eyes.
“Banzai!” some of the boys cried, and Hideki heard one or two more grenades explode. The American bullets became a deadly hailstorm, and Hideki clenched himself into a tight, shaking ball. He looked at the grenade he held in his hand. He knew he should be brave. He knew he should stand up and throw his grenade and kill as many Americans as he could, the way Lieutenant Colonel Sano had told him to, but he couldn’t do it. His fear froze him. He couldn’t move.
Off to his right, his friend Katsumasa stood, grenade in hand. “Long live the Emperor!” he cried. Katsumasa threw his grenade with all his strength. The grenade hit a tree, bounced right back at Katsumasa, and exploded in his face with a BOOM.
The blast knocked Hideki from his hiding place, and he landed on his back with a thump that knocked the wind from him. He gasped for air and swallowed a scream. This was a disaster. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. This wasn’t what it had been like in training. It was all happening so fast, and they had no control over any of it.
Hideki was going to die here. They were all going to die here! His eyes darted around, looking for somewhere to hide, but all he saw was the decimated hillside. Less than half a dozen of the boys were still alive and fighting. The rest had been shot or blown apart. And if he didn’t get out of here, Hideki was going to join them.
Ray leaned on his entrenching tool and stretched his sore back. He’d spent the last half hour digging a four-foot-deep foxhole with Big John that both of them would sleep in that night. If he’d thought shoveling hay back home was hard, it was nothing compared to shoveling sand and coral on Okinawa.
Was this what it was like for my father in the First World War? Ray thought. That war had been all trenches and foxholes. Were his father’s arms and back sore every night from digging endless ditches?
When the hole was finished, Ray wanted nothing more than to pass out in it and sleep until next week, but no such luck.
“Barbecue,” the sergeant called. “You’ve got guard duty first watch. And be careful. While you two were off clearing caves, we were attacked by a bunch of kids with grenades.”
Ray had heard the sound of shots and explosions in the distance as they’d been returning from the cave. He shook his head. Women and children throwing themselves off a cliff? Children with grenades? This definitely wasn’t what he signed up for.
Big John clapped Ray on the shoulder. “The fun never stops when you’re a Marine. Don’t worry. I’ll stay up with you for a bit.”
Ray sighed and picked up his rifle.
“Don’t forget this,” Big John said, plunking Ray’s helmet on his head. “That helmet’s the best thing the Marine Corps ever gave you, Barbecue. It’s got a hundred uses.”
“Really?”
“Sure,” Big John said. “You can wash in it, shave in it, cook coffee in it, and barf in it when you get sick. You can put gas in it to clean your gun, dig a hole with it if you lose your entrenching tool, sit on it, and use it to bail out your foxhole when it rains. That right there is the greatest military tool ever invented.”
Ray reached up to straighten his helmet. “You forgot the part about it keeping you from getting shot in the head,” he told Big John.
Big John snorted. “Oh, it don’t do that.”
Ray remembered the sniper putting a bullet right through Sergeant Meredith’s helmet. That made him think of Hard-luck again. The look on his face after the bullet hit him, the way he’d tumbled headfirst into the mud. Laughing and joking one minute, dead the next.
The camp settled into quiet as darkness fell. One man in each foxhole went to sleep while the others, like Ray, watched the surrounding terrain for intruders. But all Ray saw was Hard-luck, over and over again.
“How’d you end up in the Marines, Barbecue?” Big John whispered.
“Hunh?” Ray said, shaking off the memory of Hard-luck’s death. Had Big John caught him doing the thousand-yard stare and asked him a question to distract him? It didn’t matter. It had worked. “Oh, I, uh, I graduated from high school and I wasn’t going to college, so I enlisted before I got drafted.” He left out the part about the fight he’d had with his father. The awful things Ray had said to him. His mother in tears.
Big John nodded. “Me, I never finished eighth grade.” He spoke quietly, just above a whisper, so they could hear any Japanese soldiers approaching. “I was already big enough to work and join a street gang, and that’s what I did until I borrowed a car for a joyride and the cops got wise. Judge gave me a choice: join the Marines or go to juvie. Enlisting sounded a lot better than reform school, and here I am.”
Ray couldn’t believe Big John hadn’t even finished eighth grade—and that he’d been arrested for stealing a car! How many more of Easy Company had crazy stories about how they’d ended up in the Marines?
Something rustled in the undergrowth just beyond the camp’s perimeter, and Big John put up a hand to tell Ray to be quiet. Ray raised his rifle and squinted in the half-light of the moon.
“How’d you make out, Joe?” asked a quiet voice. The words were English, but the accent was definitely Japanese. Before Ray knew what was happening, Big John opened up with his big Browning Automatic—Chu-chu-chu-chu-chu. Ray didn’t know what Big John was shooting at until a Japanese soldier popped up right in front of them.
“Banzai!” the soldier screamed, charging Ray and Big John.
Ray flinched but pulled his trigger—PAKOW—and the bullet hit the soldier. He fell to the ground, but he wasn’t dead yet. With the strength he still had left, the Japanese soldier raised his rifle in the direction of Big John. In a wild panic, Ray pointed his rifle straight down at the enemy soldier and shot him again—PAKOW—and at last the man was still.
Ray stood over the soldier, watching the life in his eyes go out.
More Marines from Easy Company came running with their rifles, but it was all over as quickly as it had begun.
As his adrenaline wore off, Ray started to shake so much he couldn’t stand. He staggered back, dropped his rifle, and collapsed inside the foxhole. He couldn’t stop the tears that streamed from his eyes, and he turned away, sure Big John was going to make fun of him.
“Hey, it’s okay, Ray,” Big John said softly. He knelt beside Ray and put a hand on his shoulder. “I know what it feels like to kill a man for the first time,” Big John told him. “We all do.” That just made Ray cr
y harder. But it felt good to cry. To get it all out, all this sadness and terror and shaking rage he felt about everything he’d seen and done in just a day on Okinawa.
“You had to do it,” Big John told him. “You saved us both.”
Ray nodded, running his sleeve across his nose and wiping the tears from his eyes.
“It gets easier,” Big John said, and Ray couldn’t tell if he meant it as a good thing or a bad thing.
Big John stood. “Get your rifle and see if he’s got anything on him.”
Ray wiped his nose and dried his eyes again, and he stood. Looking at the body of the man he’d killed was easier if he didn’t look at his face. Ray collected the soldier’s rifle and laid it to his side. Then he went through the man’s pockets. In one of them he found a wallet, and inside the wallet was a picture of the soldier and his family.
Ray was taken aback for a moment. Here was the face of the man he’d just killed, standing with a woman and a boy—probably his wife and young son. They all looked serious, the way people often did in old American photos. But the man had his hands on the shoulders of his wife and son. He loved them. Wanted to keep them safe.
Wanted to protect them from American devils like Ray.
Ray took the picture out of the wallet and put it in his pocket. Ray would keep the photo. Carry it with him. Keep this man and his family alive, in a way.
It felt like the right thing to do.
Hideki cried as he ran. The forest around him blurred, but he kept running, stumbling blindly through the undergrowth.
No matter how far he ran, he couldn’t escape his memories of what had happened. The whizzing bullets. The exploding grenades. Takeshi killing himself. Gensei, Katsumasa, all the other boys—dead. He didn’t want to think it, didn’t want to see it. But he couldn’t stop seeing it. The images flashed in his mind faster than he could handle them.
Hideki tripped and fell, scraping his elbows. Heart in his throat, he felt for the ceramic grenades in his pocket, but neither of them had broken. As he got to his hands and knees, he saw that he’d tripped over a log. No, not a log, he realized—a body. He scrambled away from it, his heart racing, until he backed into a blasted tree stump. He was about to get up, to keep running, when he recognized the shape of the person through his tears.
