Grenade

by Alan Gratz

  “Principal Kojima?” Hideki asked. He sniffed and dragged his dirty sleeve across his eyes. The principal still clutched the sack full of pictures of the Emperor, but now he lay next to the sack, hugging it like a pillow.

  Hideki approached slowly, cautiously, as though Principal Kojima might pop up and begin scolding him for speaking Okinawan and not Japanese. But Principal Kojima was dead—killed by the blast from an artillery shell. His face looked more concerned than pained. Even in death he was still worrying about protecting the Emperor’s pictures.

  Hideki pulled out one of the pictures and looked at it. His Majesty the Emperor was a young man, with a long nose, short mustache, and round, frameless glasses. He wore a ceremonial military uniform, with fancy braids on the shoulders and arms, a silk sash across the front, and so many medals that they filled the whole front of the jacket. Hideki felt a swell of pride for his country. Principal Kojima had been doing a brave thing, protecting His Majesty’s mabui.

  Maybe Hideki could make up for his own cowardice by taking over this sacred duty and seeing the photographs to safety.

  Hideki repacked the photographs in the bag and found that Principal Kojima had a bit of bread and a sock full of rice tucked away too. That would come in handy.

  An airplane roared overhead, and Hideki looked up. It wasn’t a kamikaze—it was an American plane. And it was dropping something!

  Hideki threw himself on the sack to protect it from the falling bombs. He put his hands over his head and clenched, waiting for the booms, but they didn’t come. He heard a soft rustling instead.

  Hideki looked up to see thousands of white pieces of paper fluttering to the ground like the cherry blossoms that fell from the sakura trees every spring.

  The Americans were dropping paper?

  Hideki caught a piece of paper and looked at it. It had Japanese writing on it. HOW TO SURRENDER it said in big, bold letters, and after that it explained how the Okinawans should approach American soldiers if they wanted to give themselves up and be protected. To make it clear you were surrending, the leaflet said, you should stay away from the Japanese army, leave the combat area immediately, and wear something white if possible.

  Surrender? Hideki crumpled up the leaflet and threw it to the ground. It was like the Americans knew he was a coward and were teasing him about it. He wasn’t going to surrender. And he wasn’t going to let the Americans or Shigetomo’s mabui tell him what to do.

  Almost in response, the American battleships began to range in on his location. Ka-THOOM. Ka-THOOM. Ka-THOOM. The bombs were getting closer every second. Hideki quickly hefted the sack onto his shoulders. He had to get away from here. But where?

  Hideki’s mind went to the safest place he could think of: his haka, his family’s tomb. Yes. It wasn’t far. Hideki put his head down and ran through the falling bombs, zigging and zagging so they couldn’t catch him. When he was clear of the artillery, he kept running, past the crater-filled rice paddies and burned-down farmhouses outside his village. He had been to his family tomb so many times in his life he knew the way by heart.

  The Kaneshiros’ haka was where they buried their dead. It was where they came to worship and celebrate them too. Going back to it felt like going home, in a way, and gave Hideki a new sense of confidence and purpose. Three times a year, Hideki helped his father clean the tomb. Eventually, the job would be his, until he could share the duty with his own firstborn son.

  Where was his father now? Hideki wondered. Was he alive? Was he dead? He might never know.

  As he rounded the last turn to his family tomb, Hideki worried that it might not be there anymore. That an American bomb might have blasted it and all of Hideki’s ancestors to bits. But there it was, just as it had always been, and his heart soared.

  The Kaneshiro haka was built into a hill and had a big round roof that resembled a giant turtle shell. Family name markers sat in the courtyard outside.

  The small door to the tomb was fronted by a narrow porch with a railing. If he looked through the frame of his fingers, Hideki could see the porch as it had been before—his extended family gathered to make their annual offerings of incense, food, and rice liquor to their ancestors and share the happy feast with the spirits. It was one of the days Hideki most looked forward to, but they had missed it this year. Everyone had been relocated by the Japanese army or was too busy working for them. Or both.

  The most recent time he’d been back here was with Kimiko. He and his sister had come over the winter to repeat the ritual they hoped would finally bring peace to Shigetomo, and free Hideki from the influence of his ancestor’s mabui. Kimiko had noticed that Hideki was moving stiffly as they prepared the incense and offerings for the ceremony, and she pulled back the sleeve of his shirt to reveal the bruises on his arm he’d been trying to hide.

  “Who did this to you?” Kimiko demanded.

  Hideki looked at the floor. “Yoshio,” he said. “A boy at school.”

  “Did you at least fight back?” Kimiko asked.

  “No! Yoshio would have beaten me up!”

  Kimiko smacked Hideki in the head. “He did beat you up. And he’ll keep doing it until you stand up to him.”

  “It’s Shigetomo’s fault,” Hideki told her. “He makes me scared.”

  Kimiko shook her head. “It’s not about being scared,” she told him. “It’s about doing what you have to do, even though you’re scared.” She yanked Hideki’s sleeve back down to hide his bruises again. She was still frowning, but her tone softened. “If he does it again, come and get me and I’ll beat him up.”

  Hideki could never do that—let his sister fight bullies for him? The boys at school would never let him live that down! But he still hadn’t stood up to Yoshio either. Kimiko just didn’t understand.

  Hideki crawled inside the dark tomb just as it began to rain outside. He suddenly realized he might not be the first person to think of hiding out here, and he called out in Japanese.

  “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  He repeated his question in Okinawan, despite his fears that someone Japanese might overhear him and punish him for speaking his native language. When the Japanese had taken over Okinawa all those years ago, they’d made it illegal for the Okinawans to speak their own language or practice their own religion.

  “Hideki?” said a weak voice, and Hideki froze. Goose bumps crawled up and down his arms. Were his ancestors speaking to him? Was this the voice of Shigetomo, the ancestor whose mabui he carried?

  “Hideki, is that you?” the voice croaked again.

  It was an ancestor, Hideki realized with a start. But not one nearly so old as Shigetomo.

  “Otō!” Hideki cried. It was his father.

  “I’m coming out!” Ray called. He didn’t want his rifle squad to shoot him as he exited the little Okinawan tomb. Sergeant Meredith, Big John, and the others waited outside, rifles at the ready, as Ray ducked through the doorway.

  Rain poured down on Ray like he was standing under the well-pump back home. He leaned against the outside of the tomb, trying not to lose his breakfast.

  “Empty?” Big John asked.

  “It is now,” Ray said. After a Marine had chucked a grenade inside the tomb, Sergeant Meredith had sent Ray inside to see if there was anyone still alive.

  There wasn’t. Not anymore. There had been—an Okinawan family had been hiding among the ceramic pots that held their ancestors. But they were gone now.

  The grenade had destroyed both the living and the dead.

  Ray put the back of his hand to his mouth, but he wasn’t going to be sick. As horrible as it was in there, he’d seen worse already.

  God help me, I’m getting used to it, Ray thought. Just like Big John had said. But Ray didn’t want to get used to it. That was how you became heartless like Big John, or stared off into the distance like the Old Man. Or like Ray’s father. Ray didn’t ever want sights like this to sit easy with him.

  “Let’s move out,” Sergeant Meredith told his
squad.

  “Sergeant, wait,” Ray said. “That tomb, it was full of Okinawans. Women and children. We gotta stop using grenades on them.”

  “But the last tomb was full of Japs,” Big John reminded him. “They had built a machine gun nest into it!”

  “I know, but sometimes there’s innocent people in there,” Ray argued. “We should at least be using smoke grenades on them. That won’t kill them. Just flush them out.”

  “Yeah, flush ’em out shooting,” said Big John.

  “Dang it, Majors, that’s just what the Japs want us to do!” said Private First Class Brown, a rifleman from another squad.

  Sergeant Meredith grabbed PFC Brown by the poncho and slammed him up against the stone wall of the tomb. “You don’t ever call that boy by his last name again,” the sergeant barked. “Do you understand me, Private?”

  Sergeant Meredith thrust Brown up against the tomb once more, knocking loose his helmet. Rain poured down on the private’s head as he nodded, his eyes scared.

  Sergeant Meredith turned on the rest of the squad, and they all took a step back. “It’s Ray, or it’s Barbecue. But never Majors. Do you understand me? The next joker who says it gets nicknamed ‘General.’ ”

  Another Marine snorted at the idea of a death wish for a nickname, and Sergeant Meredith let go of Brown and glared at him. “You think I’m kidding?”

  Everybody found somewhere else to look.

  “We use smoke grenades on the tombs from here on out,” Sergeant Meredith told them. “We don’t none of us wear this uniform because it’s easy.”

  There was some grumbling at the decision, but Sergeant Meredith was the boss. He gave them fifteen minutes before they had to head out again, and Ray found a place to be alone. The sergeant had yelled at everybody on his behalf, and Ray was the reason they couldn’t chuck frag grenades in tombs anymore. Ray wasn’t the most popular guy in the squad right now, and he could feel it.

  Ray found shelter under a palm frond and took the pictures he’d collected out of his pack. After he’d taken the first photograph from the man he’d killed with his rifle, it had become something Ray did after every encounter. Now he had pictures of families, pictures of sweethearts, pictures of houses and pets and parents. They weren’t all from Japanese soldiers he’d killed himself, but a lot of them were.

  “Why do you keep all them things?” Big John asked, making Ray jump. He hadn’t heard him come up.

  “I don’t know,” Ray said. “Don’t you wonder about these people? Who they are? Where they come from? Why they’re here?”

  “I know why they’re here,” Big John said. “They’re here to kill me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ray said. “About the smoke grenades.” He knew his request would be the least popular with his own foxhole buddy.

  Big John just shrugged. “Like the sergeant said, we ain’t Marines ’cause it’s easy.” He grinned. “Shoulda nicknamed you ‘Soft Spot.’ Come on, Barbecue. Time to move out. Hopefully this dang rain will let up soon.”

  The squad gathered near Sergeant Meredith, and they were all about to move out when they heard a distinctive pop. Everyone froze. After several days on Okinawa, Ray knew exactly what that sound meant. They all did.

  “Grenade!” Big John cried. “Hit the deck!”

  But where? Who? Ray was about to throw himself into the mud when he caught Sergeant Meredith’s wide, horror-filled eyes. Ray suddenly understood, and the bottom dropped out of his world.

  One of the grenades in the sergeant’s belt pouch had activated by accident, and it was going to explode in less than five seconds.

  “Otō!” Hideki cried.

  As Hideki’s eyes adjusted to the darkness inside his family tomb, he saw his father lying propped up against the stone caskets in the corner. Along the back wall of the tomb ran the shelves of urns that held the bones of his ancestors from generations past, including Shigetomo’s.

  A wide streak of blood trailed from the entrance of the tomb to Hideki’s father, and Hideki’s heart lurched.

  “Otō, you’re hurt!”

  Hideki dropped the bag of the Emperor’s photos by the door and ran to his father. Otō’s breathing was ragged, and he slumped unnaturally to the side, one arm laid across his uniform jacket. Hideki lifted his father’s hand away and saw a jagged wound in his stomach. His father had taken shrapnel from a grenade.

  “A little run-in with the Americans,” Otō said.

  “We have to get you to a doctor!” Hideki cried.

  “It’s all right, Hideki. Someone is on the way,” his father promised him. “But I could use some water.”

  Hideki grabbed an empty pot and ran through the rain to a nearby spring like it was the most important thing in the world. When he returned, he had to tip the pot to Otō’s mouth for him. His father wasn’t strong enough to hold it himself.

  “You need the doctor,” Hideki told his father. “I should go and find him.”

  Otō grabbed Hideki’s arm with more strength than Hideki thought he had. “No. Don’t go. I want you to clean the tomb while we wait.”

  “Clean the tomb?” Hideki said. “That doesn’t matter right now.”

  “It always matters,” Otō told him. He closed his eyes. “And make an offering. It’s been too long.”

  Hideki didn’t want to leave his father’s side, but he did as he was told. The haka was dusty and full of cobwebs. In the past, they would never have let the family tomb become so untidy. But like their annual family picnic, the cleaning of the tomb had been set aside in their preparations for war. Failing to look after a haka brought sickness and death to a family, so cleaning it was doing something to help his father. At least that’s what Hideki told himself. He found a broom and hastily swept the floor and shelves.

  When he was finished, he took half the rice from the sock in Principal Kojima’s bag and put it into a small stone bowl as an offering to Shigetomo and the rest of his ancestors. It wasn’t as much as Hideki and his father usually left, but his ancestors had gone too long without any kind of offering, and it was as much as Hideki could spare.

  “What’s in the sack?” his father asked.

  “Pictures of His Majesty the Emperor,” Hideki said. “I’m keeping them safe.”

  His father closed his eyes again and shook his head. “No, Hideki. Forget about those things. You need to find your sister instead. She’s all we have left.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hideki, your mother and brother—they’re dead.”

  Hideki’s head spun. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “But—no. No! They were evacuated to mainland Japan. They’re safe.”

  His father shook his head. “Their ship was torpedoed by an American submarine,” Otō said. “No one on board survived.”

  Hideki sat down on the cold floor of the family tomb. Shock washed over him like a wave. It couldn’t be true. “No. I would have heard,” Hideki said. “At school. They would have told us.”

  “The Japanese army forbade anyone to talk about it. It was bad for morale. But it’s true, Hideki. I was at headquarters when the news came in. The ship was sunk the day after it left Naha Harbor. They stopped the evacuations after that.”

  Hideki reeled. He had almost been aboard that ship! If he hadn’t decided to stay and fight, he’d be dead now too. His eyes fell on a cobweb he’d missed in his haste, and he felt sick to his stomach. Hideki had always resented having to clean the family tomb, but now he saw what disaster neglecting it could bring.

  “I should never have sent them away,” Otō said. “And I should never have let the IJA have you and your sister. You’re both going to die with the Japanese.”

  Hideki saw again in his mind’s eye the awful carnage of the Blood and Iron Student Corps’ failed attack on the Americans. It was hard not to agree with his father.

  But he and his classmates were just students. Boys. Surely, the Imperial Japanese Army would fare better than the Blood and Iron Student Corps had a
gainst the invaders.

  “No,” Hideki said. “We have to win!”

  Otō shook his head again. “Hideki, the Japanese were never going to win this fight. They knew that from the start. The generals withdrew the very best soldiers from Okinawa long ago and sent them to Taiwan. They didn’t want them to die here with the rest of us. We’re just here to slow the Americans down while the army sets up their real defenses on the mainland. We’re a sute-ishi in Go. A sacrificial pawn.”

  Go was an ancient game from China with black and white stones, where the object was to capture as much territory as possible. Sometimes you had to play a stone you knew was going to get taken, but you did it to make your opponent play a stone that would hurt them later. But the Okinawans weren’t stones to be won or lost. They were real people! Hideki couldn’t believe the Emperor would just throw their lives away like that.

  “But … the Yamato!” Hideki argued. “They wouldn’t send the biggest battleship in the Japanese fleet if they thought—”

  “The Yamato was sunk by American planes three weeks before it was supposed to get here,” his father said. “No one is coming to save us, Hideki. That’s why you have to save yourself. And your sister.”

  Hideki’s father coughed up blood. Where was that doctor? No one is coming to save us, Hideki. That’s what his father had said. What if Otō had been lying about a doctor coming to help him?

  “Otō—” Hideki began, but suddenly he heard someone coming through the entrance of the tomb. The doctor, at last!

  But as the shadow emerged from the doorway, Hideki saw it wasn’t a doctor after all. It was a soldier.

  “Grenade! Grenade! Get down!” Big John yelled.