by Alan Gratz
“Barbecue! Barbecue!” Big John yelled, trying to snap him out of it. But Ray could already feel his rifle lowering. He couldn’t shoot this woman. Wouldn’t.
So Big John did it for him.
KABOOM!
Ray’s skin glowed hot from the blast. He felt fuzzy-headed, dazed, like he did when he had the flu. He tried to shake it off, to come back to his senses.
“My rifle’s overheating!” Zimmer cried. It was too hot for him to hold.
“Ray! Ray, we need your help, man!” Big John called.
“Come on, Majors!” Zimmer yelled.
As soon as Zimmer said it, time stopped. Big John froze mid-reload, his eyes wide. Ray’s mind cleared like a fog lifting, and his heart quit mid-beat.
Zimmer had called him Majors on the battlefield.
The moment broke like lightning. Japanese rifles and machine gun tracers mowed down the Okinawans from behind and pelted the ridgeline. The Japanese poured everything they had at the saddle between the hills.
And then a grenade landed right between Ray’s legs.
“Run, run! Get out of here!” Big John roared.
Ray launched himself from the saddle. He dove behind a tree stump as the grenade exploded behind him, and he tumbled head over heels down the hill. He landed with a crunching thud, his ears ringing from the nearness of the blast, his helmet gone. He didn’t know if Big John or Zimmer or the new guy were still alive, and he didn’t turn around to find out.
Ray staggered to his feet and ran, ran straight and low and fast just like Sergeant Meredith had taught him. He didn’t know where he was, or where he was going. He just knew he never wanted to see another Japanese soldier again as long as he lived.
Hideki ran.
He dodged shattered trees. Leaped over corpses. Ducked mortar explosions. He was close to the front line—he could tell from the gunfire, the explosions that shook the earth. He knew he should stop. Turn around. Find a place to hide. But he couldn’t stop himself. He was more scared than he had ever been in his entire life. He had to get as far away from the Americans as fast as he could.
He had to run. Had to keep going.
There was no going back. Only forward.
Ray ran.
He dodged shattered trees. Leaped over corpses. Ducked mortar explosions. He was getting farther from the front line—he could tell from the distant gunfire, the dull thud of the explosions. He knew he should stop. Turn around. Rejoin his company. But he couldn’t stop himself. He was more scared than he had ever been in his entire life. He had to get as far away from the Japanese as fast as he could.
He had to run. He had to keep going.
Stay low. Don’t bunch up. Run like hell.
Hideki crested a low hill and slid down the other side. He’d run too far without zigging. Too far without zagging. Too far straight ahead. At the bottom of the hill he changed direction and took a hard-right turn, running straight for a stunted little pine tree that had miraculously escaped all the shells falling on the island. He ran left around the tree—
Ray slid down a low hill and struggled up the other side. He’d run zigzag too far, like a chicken trying to escape a fox. At the top of the hill he stopped dodging back and forth and ran straight ahead, toward a stunted little pine tree that had miraculously escaped all the shells falling on the island. He ran right around the tree—
Hideki slammed into someone bigger and stronger running the other way. It was like running headlong into a stone wall, and he landed with a splurch in the mud.
Ray hit somebody small and fast coming the other way around the tree. The boy’s helmet hit him right in the gut like a punch to the stomach, and he fell back into the mud with a splurch.
Hideki was dazed for a moment, but when he shook off his surprise, he found himself staring at a young man wearing an American soldier’s uniform.
Ray was equally dazed, and when he got his breath back, he found himself staring at a young boy wearing a Japanese soldier’s uniform.
A moment passed—an eternity of shock and fear condensed into the single beat of a heart—and they both scrambled back away from each other.
Ray fumbled for his rifle.
Hideki scrabbled for a grenade.
Ray raised his rifle from the mud.
Hideki struck the fuse on his grenade.
Ray squeezed the trigger of his M-1.
Hideki threw his grenade.
Pakow!
BOOM!
The blast threw Ray and Hideki back into the mud and knocked them both out cold.
Hideki woke to rain slapping him in the face. His head was groggy, and he couldn’t focus his eyes. He ran a hand through his hair and felt something wet and sticky. Blood. Where was he? How had he been injured? Why was he lying on his back in the mud? And why were his ears ringing?
The cave. He remembered the cave, and the crazy lieutenant. His arm still stung from the gunshot. Hideki remembered the air shaft. The flamethrower. Running. Running and running and running and then—
The soldier. The grenade.
Hideki propped himself up on his elbows. As his focus returned, he saw the body of the American soldier lying just beyond the pine tree a few yards away. Hideki’s heart hammered in his chest. What if the soldier was still alive? He wasn’t moving now, but what if he woke up?
Hideki scrambled back, away from the soldier. But the American still wasn’t moving, even as the rain beat down on his upturned face. Hideki stood and crept around the other side of the pine tree, his legs wobbly, afraid that any moment the soldier was going to jerk awake and start shooting at him again.
But the American soldier wasn’t going to get up ever again.
The American soldier was dead.
Hideki’s quaking legs gave way, and he plopped back down into the mud. He had killed a man. He had killed a man. Back at school, when he’d first been given his grenades, he’d been excited at the thought of blowing up an American soldier. And this one had even shot at him. But now that Hideki had done it, now that he had actually taken another human being’s life, he felt a great yawning emptiness inside. A shaking sadness came over him, and he wept. He didn’t care about being brave anymore. Or defending the Emperor. Or fighting the Americans. He just wanted to undo what he’d done. To take it back.
But the soldier’s broken body told him there was no going back.
How could he move forward from this? His life was now divided in two—the time before he threw his grenade, and the time after it. How would he ever be the boy he was before? How could he go on?
The zipping bullets and thundering mortar shells that exploded all around him answered that question. He had to move on, or die.
His stomach in knots, Hideki crawled toward the body of the American soldier. He was surprised to see that the soldier wasn’t much older than he was. More a freckle-faced boy than a man. He didn’t even have the beginnings of a beard. Hideki felt sick all over again for killing him.
“I’m sorry,” Hideki told the boy, but of course the boy didn’t answer back. He just kept looking up lifelessly into the sky.
Hideki noticed the boy’s pack and realized he’d be a fool to leave behind whatever was inside. He wrestled the pack from the body, turning the boy’s face down into the mud. Hiding those questioning, frightened eyes for good.
Hideki was about to steal the dead boy’s shoes too—they looked like they would fit—when he caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. He spun, panicking—but there was no one there. He turned this way and that, sure someone was with him, but all he saw was the driving rain, and all he heard was the hammering of his own heart.
Feeling guilty and frightened, Hideki snatched up the American’s backpack and ran.
Hideki hiked the soldier’s pack up on his shoulders and went back down the other side of the hill. Where was he going again? South. Yes, that’s where he was going. Through the front lines to Ichinichibashi. To find his sister. It was hard to think straight after the exp
losion. Hideki’s head throbbed, and his eyes were still blurry. His bare feet were clammy and sore. He needed to get someplace safe and dry where he could lie down first. Close his eyes. Find something to eat.
American tracer fire streaked across the sky, red lines that crisscrossed the low, gray storm clouds. Artillery shells from both sides shook the ground. Mud filled the cratered fields, and every tree was shattered and broken.
It felt like the end of the world.
Hideki staggered into what looked like an old Japanese camp. Sandbags were stacked up in a ring, and a torn canvas lean-to tent was tied to what was left of a tree. Hideki guessed the IJA had abandoned the place before they were overrun by American soldiers.
Hideki scavenged through the camp, looking for food. His eyes fell on cardboard ration boxes half buried in the mud and he dropped to his knees to dig them up. The boxes had food in them, but it was all spoiled. The Japanese soldiers had deliberately destroyed them so they wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. A whole crate full of food, ruined!
Hideki sobbed once, then dragged himself wearily into the partial shelter of the lean-to. It was muddy and wet under the torn tarp, but at least it kept the rain from pounding his sore head. Hideki shrugged off the heavy American army pack and planted it at his feet. It was time to see what was inside.
Hideki set aside the shovel attached to the outside of the pack. He would keep that. The other items he examined one by one. Extra socks: keep, for if he ever found shoes again. Toothpaste and toothbrush: throw away. Matches and lighter: keep. Japanese money: That was a surprise. Keep. What looked like an English-to-Japanese phrase book: throw away. Cigarettes: keep. Hideki didn’t smoke, but plenty of Japanese soldiers did. He might be able to trade the cigarettes for food. Razor and shaving cream: Not even the young soldier had needed this, so why had he lugged them around with him? Hideki threw them away.
Hideki was disappointed not to find any medicine or bandages he could use on his head and his arm and his scraped-up elbows and knees. He thought again about the dead American soldier, and he shuddered. Hideki pushed the image of the soldier down, trying to forget it, but he knew he never would.
Hideki dug deeper in the pack and came to thin cardboard boxes that looked like the ones Japanese army meals came in. Hideki tore open one of the packages. Inside were neat little paper-covered rectangular packets, hard crackers, and something brick-like covered in aluminum foil. There was also a tin can and a key to open it.
Food! It had to be! Everything had English words on it to explain what it was, but Hideki couldn’t read any of it. Hideki’s stomach snarled at him. He wanted to rip open the packets and eat whatever it was, but he hesitated. For months the Japanese army had told him and all the other Okinawans that the American devils couldn’t be trusted. That they would lure them in with the promise of food, only to trick them. What if the English words on one of these packets said POISON and he ate it? He would have fallen right into their trap.
Almost crying, Hideki put the lid back on the cardboard box and stuffed it back down inside the pack. He wouldn’t eat it. But he wouldn’t throw it away either. If he was about to die from starvation, he would try the food. By that point, what would he have to lose? But while he could still stand, could still stagger on, he would wait.
As Hideki repacked the bag, he found a waxen, waterproof pocket he hadn’t seen before. Inside was a stack of photographs. They were black-and-white, with a glossy, slick feel to them on the picture side and thick, coarse paper on the backs.
The first picture was of an American boy and a man who must have been his father, dressed up in funny costumes.
It wasn’t just any American boy, Hideki realized. It was the boy. The one Hideki had killed. The American soldier before he was a soldier, when he was younger even than Hideki. Hideki felt like he was looking at a ghost, and he got goose bumps.
Hideki quickly shuffled the picture to the back of the stack.
The next picture surprised him. It wasn’t of the boy or his family, or of any American. It was a photograph of a Japanese soldier, in uniform, sitting with a woman in a kimono under a cherry tree. His girlfriend or his wife, Hideki guessed. On the back, someone had written Kanazawa, 1944 in Japanese. Hideki looked at the photo for a long time. The couple must have been on a hanami picnic—a flower-viewing picnic. In Japan and Okinawa, people gathered each year with their families and friends to sit under the cherry trees when they bloomed. The picture was black-and-white, but Hideki could imagine the vibrant pink colors of the blossoms, the bright blue sky. What were they saying to each other, this young man and young woman? Were they planning their lives together? What happened right after the picture was taken? Did they lie back under the trees, holding hands as they stared up into the sky? Did they kiss?
The rest of the pictures were of more Japanese people. Some were Japanese soldiers. Others were women and young children, or older couples who looked like mothers and fathers. Some had places or names written on the back in kanji: Sapporo, Nagasaki, Osaka, Tokyo. Mother and Father, Hisako and Mieko, Futoshi and Toyo. Why did an American soldier have these pictures in his pack?
The last picture made Hideki freeze. His eyes widened. He knew this picture. It was the photograph from the wall of his sister’s school! The one he’d seen an American soldier take from its frame while Hideki was in the same room, pretending to be dead! This American soldier—the boy Hideki had killed. They had been in the same room together, long before they had run into each other on the battlefield. One of the other soldiers had used the American’s name when he called to him. What was it? Hideki’s head was so foggy he couldn’t remember.
This soldier had been keeping all these pictures the same way Principal Kojima had carried the pictures of the Emperor. Did Americans know about mabui? Was this soldier carrying the pictures with him so these people’s spirits would be protected and preserved? Hideki hadn’t thought the Americans would care about things like that. Especially not the mabui of their enemies. The Americans were supposed to be devils. Evil.
Hideki flipped back to the picture of the boy and his father and studied their faces. They didn’t look evil. But what did evil really look like, after all? Evil was what you did, not how you appeared on the outside.
“Rei,” Hideki said aloud. That’s what the other soldier had called the boy. It came back to him through the fog.
Rei was the name of the boy Hideki had killed.
The air grew cold, and Hideki’s skin crawled. He had the singular sensation that he was being watched, but when he looked around, he was alone.
With a shiver, Hideki suddenly remembered: rei was another word in Japanese for “ghost.”
Hideki was so thirsty he tried to catch rainwater in his mouth, but it wasn’t enough. He searched until he found a rivulet of running water in the darkness. The water was muddy and foul, and who knew where it came from and what was in it, but Hideki drank it anyway. He didn’t know how far he’d wandered, or how long. All he knew was that his head still pounded, his stomach still growled, and Shuri Castle still stood.
Someone splashed through the muck nearby, and Hideki reached for his last grenade. The person was bent over and carried something big and round on his back. Was it another American soldier? No—he was too small for that. The shadowy figure drew closer, and Hideki saw it was an older Okinawan boy. On his back he carried a small wooden barrel.
The boy saw Hideki at almost the same moment, and he cried out in surprise, falling backward onto his barrel.
“I’m sorry!” Hideki said. “I’m sorry—I’m Okinawan too. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Hideki?” the other boy asked.
Hideki was startled. Was this somebody he knew?
“Hideki, it’s Yoshio,” the boy said.
Hideki reeled. Yoshio? Yoshio was only a year older than him, but this boy looked like he was ten years older. Yoshio’s face was hollow and thin, with deep bags of sleeplessness under his eyes. Yoshio had changed so much
in just a few weeks. With a sudden jolt, Hideki wondered if he had too.
Yoshio splashed across the water toward him. Hideki flinched, expecting a punch, but Yoshio threw his arms around Hideki instead. Yoshio was … hugging him? Hideki stood rigid, expecting a trick, but Yoshio just clapped him on the shoulders.
“Hideki, it’s so good to see you! I thought you died when we attacked the Americans.”
“I—I thought you were dead too,” Hideki said. Yoshio smiled like they were the best of friends. Like Yoshio hadn’t tormented him constantly for the past four years. What was going on here?
“What are you doing with that barrel?” Hideki asked him.
“Getting water for my family. Hideki, I found my mother and sister! Can you believe it?”
It was incredible, yes, but Hideki had found his own father too. It was a small island, after all. But the mention of Yoshio’s mother and sister made Hideki’s heart ache for his dead mother and brother. For a moment he was lost in a vision of them in the dark, treading water, trying not to slip under the waves, until Yoshio’s voice brought him back to the present.
“We’re hiding in a cave nearby! Do you need a dry place to sleep?” Yoshio asked. “Help me fill this barrel, and I’ll take you back there!”
Hideki was still wary of Yoshio’s friendliness, but he helped the boy lug the water barrel back to the cave where his family was hiding. He and Yoshio were met at the entrance by an Okinawan woman and a little girl—Yoshio’s mother and sister—and an elderly man and woman who helped them haul the barrel inside. There were more Okinawans deeper inside the cave too.
From the reek of human excrement and sweat, Hideki guessed that most of them hadn’t left the cave since the battle began. Even so, Hideki was relieved to finally be out of the rain and among his own people. But as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the cave, he saw something that turned his empty stomach.
