by Alan Gratz
And there in the corner, framed perfectly in the foreground, was his sister, Kimiko.
It would take work, but together, he and Kimiko and all the others who’d survived would restore the spirit of Okinawa. They would mourn their dead, reconnect with their ancestors, and build a new future for themselves.
“No,” Hideki said. “This isn’t the end, Kimiko. It’s a beginning.”
Throughout this book, American characters use the word “Jap”—short for Japanese—to refer to Japanese people. While the use of this term was common among soldiers and the American public during World War II, calling someone a “Jap” is offensive and disrespectful. I used this word in my book for historical accuracy, but it’s a word you should never use.
In Japan, as in other places in Asia, people list their family name first, then their given name. Thus, Hideki Kaneshiro would actually be known as Kaneshiro Hideki. To avoid confusion among American readers, I reversed the order of Japanese names in this book to follow Western naming conventions.
The Battle of Okinawa began on April 1, 1945, and lasted 83 days, ending on June 22, 1945. It was the last battle of World War II, and the bloodiest of the Pacific War. The Americans brought nearly 1,500 ships and more than half a million men to invade an island defended by a combined Japanese and Okinawan force one-fifth that size. At the beginning of the battle, the population of Okinawa was just an estimated 450,000 people.
Just before the fighting began, the Japanese army encouraged civilians to relocate to northern parts of the island or to evacuate completely. But it was too little too late. The Tsushima-Maru, a Japanese transport ship, left Naha Harbor in August of 1944 filled with Okinawan refugees bound for mainland Japan. But because the Japanese used the same ships to deliver troops and weapons to Okinawa as they did to evacuate refugees, US submarines couldn’t know if a Japanese ship was filled with soldiers or civilians. The Tsushima-Maru was sunk by the USS Bowfin shortly after the Japanese ship left port, killing 1,375 Okinawan refugees, including 777 children. Refugee transports were soon abandoned, leaving around 300,000 Okinawans still in harm’s way.
The Imperial Japanese Army knew they were never going to hold on to Okinawa, and before the Americans arrived the most elite Japanese troops were withdrawn to prepare for what everyone assumed would be the eventual invasion of mainland Japan. To bolster their troops on Okinawa, the IJA conscripted 110,000 Okinawans into the army—about one-fourth of the island’s entire population. Of that number, around 2,300 were students drafted from Okinawa’s middle and high schools. Boys over the age of fourteen were first used to dig caves and build airfields. Then, as the conflict drew closer, they were drafted into the Blood and Iron Student Corps or the signal corps of IJA infantry and artillery units. Girls were conscripted into student medical corps and put to work as nurses in IJA hospitals and command posts. Neither group was well trained or well organized, and almost half the young people forced to serve in the Japanese army died in the battle.
The Imperial Japanese Army fought a war of attrition on Okinawa, trying to wear down the US forces little by little as they advanced south. The US Tenth Army moved forward an average of 133 bloody yards a day for the first two months of the battle—little more than the length of a football field. GIs and Marines would fight for days to take a hill, only to find that at the last minute the Japanese army had abandoned the hill and withdrawn to fortify the next one. The US Army conquest of Kakazu Ridge—two small hills linked by a “saddle” in between them—took more than two weeks and cost the lives of hundreds of Americans and thousands of Japanese.
Throughout the battle, innocent Okinawan civilians suffered and died. Japanese soldiers often ejected them from the safety of tombs and caves or forced them at gunpoint to go out for food or water during bombings. The IJA used Okinawans as human shields, strapped explosives to Okinawans, and through propaganda and outright commands convinced Okinawans to commit mass suicide rather than be captured. While some American soldiers tried to be conscientious about the differences between Okinawan civilians and Japanese soldiers, many more found it safer to throw grenades into caves or shoot machine guns through the wooden walls of houses, killing anyone inside, rather than risk their lives by investigating first. Thousands more Okinawans were killed by American battleships and planes as refugees fled south with the retreating Imperial Japanese Army in what has become known as the “Typhoon of Steel.” Approximately one-fourth to one-third of the island’s entire population died in the battle, including almost every Okinawan male over the age of eighteen.
The Imperial Japanese Army never surrendered, retreating all the way to the southern tip of the island and finally committing suicide when there was nowhere left to run. By the battle’s end, 12,274 American soldiers and 110,000 Japanese soldiers were dead. The brutal fighting on Okinawa, and the Japanese commitment to fighting to the last man on what they saw as Japanese soil, made American soldiers and commanders alike believe that a full-scale invasion of mainland Japan would cost the lives of a million Americans and every last Japanese soldier and citizen. Though there is no direct proof, many military historians now believe that the lessons learned at the Battle of Okinawa were a direct factor in the United States’ decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki two months later, which prompted Japan’s unconditional surrender.
The United States occupied Okinawa after the war, finally returning control of it to Japan in 1972. But American military bases remain on Okinawa even today. An important part of America’s strategic defenses in the Far East, Okinawa is home to thirty-two US military installations, which take up almost twenty percent of the island. The American presence is very controversial among Okinawans. In 2012, the United States agreed to reduce the number of US military personnel on the island, but the bases and ships and soldiers remain.
So too do thousands of bombs. According to Okinawa’s Fire and Disaster Prevention Unit, several million shells and bombs were dropped on Okinawa by both sides during the battle, and an estimated five percent of them did not explode on impact. Many of them sank into the mud and muck, and remain there. From the end of the war until 1981, more than 6,000 tons of unexploded ordnance was discovered and disposed of, and more are found every year. Twenty hand grenades and 5-inch shells were found in a public park in Urasoe, and an inspection of a new site for a high school in Kadena uncovered one hundred rounds of armor-piercing antitank shells and nineteen hand grenades and naval shells. Officials estimate it may take another sixty or seventy years to clear Okinawa of all the remaining unexploded ordnance—if ever.
Many of the family tombs destroyed in the Battle of Okinawa were never rebuilt or were replaced by smaller burial chambers. But Okinawa as a whole has largely recovered and been restored in the decades since the end of World War II, becoming the bright, beautiful vision Hideki sees at the end. The capital city of Naha, which was completely destroyed by American bombs during the war, is a modern, shining metropolis of nearly 350,000 people. Kakazu Ridge is surrounded by apartment buildings. White Beach, where Ray and company landed on Love Day, is now one of the top-rated tourist beaches in the Pacific. Shuri Castle was rebuilt in 1992, and in 2000 was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Okinawa is a paradise once more, and its people are among the longest-lived on Earth.
At the southern tip of the island, at the site of the last fighting in the Battle of Okinawa and all of World War II, stands a monument called the Cornerstone of Peace. Dedicated on the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa, the Cornerstone of Peace lists the names of every single person who died during the Battle of Okinawa or because of it, Japanese and American and Okinawan, soldier and civilian alike. It is a memorial not to war but to peace, not to victors but to victims. Like Hideki’s wall of photographs, it honors the men and women and children listed there not as soldiers or conscripts or refugees, but as the people they were before war swept them away. New names are added every year.
Artillery—large, long-range, land-based
guns
Banzai—(Japanese) “Long life”; short for “Long Live the Emperor!”
Bashōfu—(Japanese) cloth made from banana fibers
Battleship—a heavy, armed warship with large, long-range guns
Bayonet—a blade attached to the end of a rifle for hand-to-hand fighting
Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR)—a heavy, rifle-like machine gun
Cover fire—gunfire meant to keep the enemy from shooting back
Cruiser—a fast warship with smaller guns and less armor than a battleship
Deferment—permission to put off military service until a later date
Destroyer—a warship that is smaller and faster than a cruiser
Dojin—(Japanese) “primitive animals” or “natives”; used as an insult
Emperor—the ruler of an empire; Hirohito was emperor of Japan during World War II
Entrenching tool—a collapsible shovel
Go (game)—a Chinese strategy board game played with black and white stones
Hajichi—(Japanese) indigo tattoos worn on the back of Okinawan women’s hands
Haka—(Japanese) a turtle-shaped Okinawan family tomb built into a hillside
Imperial Japanese Army (IJA)—the official ground forces of the Empire of Japan during World War II
Kamikaze—a Japanese airplane loaded with explosives for a suicide run against enemy ships
Kanji—(Japanese) a system of Japanese writing using Chinese characters
Kanpan—(Japanese) hard, dry biscuits given as rations to Japanese soldiers
Kijimunaa—(Okinawan) small wood sprites from Okinawan mythology
Kimono—a long, loose robe with wide sleeves and tied with a sash
Lieutenant—a commissioned officer in the military; ranked above a sergeant
M-1 rifle—a semiautomatic rifle that was used during World War II
Mabui—(Okinawan) in Okinawan religion, the spirit, soul, or sense of self
Machine gun nest—A small, fortified position with room for a free-standing machine gun and its operators
Major—a military officer of high rank
Marines—the United States Marine Corps; a branch of the US Armed Forces
Mortar—a short gun for firing bombs at high angles
Prefecture—a district under the control of a government
Private—a soldier of the lowest rank
Sergeant—a noncommissioned officer in the military; ranked above a private
Sherman tank—a medium-sized tank used by the United States in World War II
Shisa—(Okinawan) a cross between a dog and a lion
Star shell—an ammunition shell that bursts in midair and produces a bright light to illuminate enemy positions
Sute-ishi—(Japanese) in the game of Go, stones played with the intention of sacrificing them
Yōkai—(Japanese) a ghost or phantom
Yuta—(Okinawan) in Okinawan religion, a person, usually a woman, believed to have the ability to talk to the dead
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CRACK! BANG!
Josef Landau shot straight up in bed, his heart racing. That sound—it was like someone had kicked the front door in. Or had he dreamed it?
Josef listened, straining his ears in the dark. He wasn’t used to the sounds of this new flat, the smaller one he and his family had been forced to move into. They couldn’t afford their old place, not since the Nazis told Josef’s father he wasn’t allowed to practice law anymore because he was Jewish.
Across the room, Josef’s little sister, Ruth, was still asleep. Josef tried to relax. Maybe he’d just been having a nightmare.
Something in the darkness outside his room moved with a grunt and a scuffle.
Someone was in the house!
Josef scrambled backward on his bed, his eyes wide. There was a shattering sound in the next room—crisssh! Ruth woke up and screamed. Screamed in sheer blind terror. She was only six years old.
“Mama!” Josef cried. “Papa!”
Towering shadows burst into the room. The air seemed to crackle around them like static from a radio. Josef tried to hide in the corner of his bed, but shadowy hands snatched at him. Grabbed for him. He screamed even louder than his little sister, drowning her out. He kicked and flailed in a panic, but one of the shadows caught his ankle and dragged him face-first across his bed. Josef clawed at his sheets, but the hands were too strong. Josef was so scared he wet himself, the warm liquid spreading through his nightclothes.
“No!” Josef screamed. “No!”
The shadows threw him to the floor. Another shadow picked up Ruth by the hair and slapped her.
“Be quiet!” the shadow yelled, and it tossed Ruth down on the floor beside Josef. The shock shut Ruth up, but only for a moment. Then she wailed even harder and louder.
“Hush, Ruthie. Hush,” Josef begged her. He took her in his arms and wrapped her in a protective hug. “Hush now.”
They cowered together on the floor as the shadows picked up Ruth’s bed and threw it against the wall. Crash! The bed broke into pieces. The shadows tore down pictures, pulled drawers from their bureaus, and flung clothing everywhere. They broke lamps and lightbulbs. Josef and Ruth clung to each other, terrified and wet-faced with tears.
The shadows grabbed them again and dragged them into the living room. They threw Josef and Ruth on the floor once more and flicked on the overhead light. As Josef’s eyes adjusted, he saw the seven strangers who had invaded his home. Some of them wore regular clothes: white shirts with the sleeves rolled up, gray slacks, brown wool caps, leather work boots. More of them wore the brown shirts and red swastika armbands of the Sturmabteilung, Adolf Hitler’s “storm troopers.”
Josef’s mother and father were there too, lying on the floor at the feet of the Brownshirts.
“Josef! Ruth!” Mama cried when she saw them. She lunged for her children, but one of the Nazis grabbed her nightgown and pulled her back.
“Aaron Landau,” one of the Brownshirts said to Josef’s father, “you have continued to practice law despite the fact that Jews are forbidden to do so under the Civil Service Restoration Act of 1933. For this crime against the German people, you will be taken into protective custody.”
Josef looked at his father, panicked.
“This is all a misunderstanding,” Papa said. “If you’d just give me a chance to explain—”
The Brownshirt ignored Papa and nodded at the other men. Two of the Nazis yanked Josef’s father to his feet and dragged him toward the door.
“No!” Josef cried. He had to do something. He leaped to his feet, grabbed the arm of one of the men carrying his father, and tried to pull him off. Two more of the men jerked Josef away and held him as he fought against them.
The Brownshirt in charge laughed. “Look at this one!” he said, pointing to the wet spot on Josef’s nightclothes. “The boy’s pissed himself!”
The Nazis laughed, and Josef’s face burned hot with shame. He struggled in the men’s arms, trying to break free. “I’ll be a man soon enough,” Josef told them. “I’ll be a man in six months and eleven days.”
The Nazis laughed again. “Six months and eleven days!” the Brownshirt said. “Not that he’s counting.” The Brownshirt suddenly turned serious. “Perhaps you’re close enough that we should take you to a concentration camp too, like your father.”
“No!” Mama cried. “No, my son is just twelve. He’s just a boy. Please—don’t.”
Ruth wrapped herself around Josef’s leg and wailed. “Don’t take him! Don’t take him!”
The Brownshirt scowled at the noise and gave the men carrying Aaron Landau a dismissive wave. Josef watched as they dragged Papa away to the sounds of Mama’s sobs and Ruth’s wails.
“Don’t be so quick to grow up, boy,” the Brownshirt told Josef. “We’ll come for you soon enough.”
The Nazis trashed the rest of Josef
’s house, breaking furniture and smashing plates and tearing curtains. They left as suddenly as they had come, and Josef and his sister and mother huddled together on their knees in the middle of the room. At last, when they had cried all the tears they could cry, Rachel Landau led her children to her room, put her bed back together, and hugged Josef and Ruth close until morning.
In the days to come, Josef learned that his family wasn’t the only one the Nazis had attacked that night. Other Jewish homes and businesses and synagogues were destroyed all over Germany, and tens of thousands of Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. They called it Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.
The Nazis hadn’t said it with words, but the message was clear: Josef and his family weren’t wanted in Germany anymore. But Josef and his mother and sister weren’t going anywhere. Not yet. Not without Josef’s father.
Mama spent weeks going from one government office to another, trying to find out where her husband was and how to get him back. Nobody would tell her anything, and Josef began to despair that he would never see his father again.
And then, six months after he’d been taken away, they got a telegram. A telegram from Papa! He’d been released from a concentration camp called Dachau, but only on condition that he leave the country within fourteen days.
Josef didn’t want to leave. Germany was his home. Where would they go? How would they live? But the Nazis had told them to get out of Germany twice now, and the Landau family wasn’t going to wait around to see what the Nazis would do next.
Thank you to my amazing editor Aimee Friedman, and to publisher David Levithan, for their continuing faith and support. Huge thanks as well to the experts who read Grenade and helped me get my facts right, including Trent Reedy, Mitsuyo Sato, and Mieko Maeshiro. Any mistakes that remain are my own. Thank you to my copy editor Bonnie Cutler and my proofreader Susan Hom for making me look like I know what I’m doing.
