Occasionally, there were soldiers like that. One soldier came twice a week, making such a racket, clomping up the stairs, shouting to his friends, but once he was in the room—it was really a partition—he never looked my way. Eventually, everyone did what they paid for, even those who fancied themselves different, you know, talking and caressing, asking us to open more than our legs. But that soldier? He never did a thing. When I finally summoned the courage to ask him whether he might know how to, you know, look for my son, it took him a long time to find the words. His Japanese was only slightly better than my English, which was awful, you understand
Yes, the ones that bombed Germany. They were called Liberators, weren’t they? Funny, isn’t it? That’s what they called themselves, too, those soldiers. Years later—I think it was in the eighties—I saw photographs of Willow Run on NHK. I was watching a program about your President Roosevelt. To learn that it was such an important factory…Most photographs were of the assembly line, but one was of a large room with rows and rows of cots. Do you know what the caption said? “A bomber an hour.” A bomber an hour!
* * *
*
[K]-SAN WAS younger, in her twenties. She had a strong, clear voice and was quite the force, standing up to everybody
Our manager was older, in her forties or early fifties.
She was fair enough—we weren’t unlucky. Women like her can be quite cruel to other women; as a manager, she had to answer to not just the Americans but our government too. I certainly didn’t envy her her position.
Yes, she was hard on [K]-san. But I think she rather liked her too. She put herself out quite a bit when…I’m sorry…
No, no, I’m all right. It’s just that…You see, there was one soldier. He was a regular, one of those…brutes. He liked the new ones, you know, and we all did what we could to protect one another. There was a woman who started after me. We never got her full story, but we suspected she was one of those munitions factory girls—you know, the ones taken to our officers’ parties to be “broken in”? [N]-san was young—very young. Of course, in those days, it was hard to tell, everybody was so skinny. Still, she couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. And that man. That murderer. He forced himself into her through the back—
I’m sorry, yes. The anus. Usually, one of us would have heard something, but that poor girl…When she didn’t appear at reception, our manager went looking for her. She was lying on the floor in her own blood. She had soiled herself too. That monster—he had ripped her right up. Nobody even knew her name…
Yes, we had assigned names. Kimiko, Emiko, Maiko—something bright and easy to pronounce. I suppose it also helped us keep things…separate…
[K]-san? She was beside herself. We were all afraid she’d try to hunt him down.
No, [N]-san never came back to work.
Report the soldier? To whom? Our police?
Oh, yes, all the time. Especially in Okinawa. Your government never cooperates, does it? Instead, you shelter your soldiers. Your criminals.
That monster? He came right back. Acting as though nothing had happened. One day he smuggled in a baton—not to beat anyone, you understand. The poor woman. She made sure she screamed and screamed. How anyone could turn out that way, at that age. I’m sure they came from nice families, like our own boys, who committed such unimaginable…brutalities.
I was luckier. I was older; I had learned not to be reactive. With the “wrong” kind of journalist for a husband, I had plenty of training
[K]-san never got over it. One day, about six weeks later, she pulled me aside and asked if I’d do her a favor. She asked if I’d take her baby if something happened to her. I was surprised; I had no idea she had a baby. But [K]-san had been an invaluable friend, and I had no reason to refuse or suspect her. In retrospect, I realize I’d told her all about Seiji; I suppose I’d exposed my susceptibility. It was three weeks after that. She asked me to watch her son for a night.
Yes, she told me she had an errand. Five days later, she turned up in the Sumida River with three beer bottles broken inside her. She had burn marks all over her body and a rope burn around her neck. After that, many of us started carrying cyanide.
Yes, the ones we were given in case we were invaded.
No, we never found out. We assumed it had something to do with that monster, but there was no way for us to know. We were lucky enough that our manager happened to be acquainted with a policeman who happened to recognize her…
Yes, when she didn’t return for her son, I went straight to our manager. None of us had any idea where she lived. Our manager asked her policeman to look into it. It turned out [K]-san lived not five minutes away, in a tenement apartment, with two other Korean women—
Yes, I believe [K]-san was Korean.
No, she never said as much, but she told me her parents had been conscripted workers, forced into the mines.
Her Japanese was flawless. But she would’ve been a little girl when she was forced to learn—
No, the women she lived with spoke with an accent.
Well, we didn’t ask their profession. They were terrified when we knocked, and we weren’t there to interrogate—
I suppose they could’ve been former—
[K]-san too could have been, as you say, a “comfort woman.” But, frankly, at that moment that wasn’t at the forefront of my mind—
No, I hadn’t a clue. We’d heard the term, some variation or another, but we assumed it was some sort of nurse corps. Of course, insinuations were made about “nurse corps,” but insinuations are always being made, aren’t they? It’s the sort of talk men enjoy over a cup, isn’t it? And even if we expected there to be…camp followers, we never imagined a whole system of…of…
…thank you, sexual slavery.
Yes, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals were going on then, but what with your Occupation censors, even with my husband’s connections, information was always second- or thirdhand. But I heard about a group of white women—Dutch, or half Dutch, I think they were, in Indonesia. That country was under the Dutch, wasn’t it? Before it was occupied by our men?
Yes, I believe the case was raised during the Tribunals, though I don’t think the case went anywhere. It was a male court—
Oh, I don’t know if anyone knew the extent, all those tens of thousands of women, but I believe the practice was known. Though with men, white men, in charge…Even when it concerned white Dutch—
When I first heard the testimonies? I couldn’t stop shivering. Those brave Korean women. To come forward like that. All these years later in front of the whole world. I kept wondering what [K]-san would’ve thought. Of course, I had to rely on subtitles and voiceovers—
Oh, yes, our circumstances were very different from the women who worked—
—I’m sorry, were enslaved at the comfort stations. Of course, I heard many of them were set up like brothels. Not that the women were paid—or that that should excuse the behaviors—
No, no, I don’t mean to suggest any were brothels—
But I’m not trying to “conflate” my situation. Though one wonders sometimes whether soldiers from one country are so different from another’s. Even now, wherever there are foreign soldiers, even peacekeepers…Your own troops in Korea, Philippines—
But, surely, this isn’t just a “national” issue or a “historical” one. Just last week there was that woman in Okinawa with an umbrella—
Didn’t you see it in your newspaper?
But it’s hardly an “isolated incident.” Why do you think there are so many protests—
Well, it’s not the only reason—there are the drunken hit and runs, the environmental destruction—
No, no, I’m not trying to “shift the blame.” Our government, our media, our own men—
Yes, I understand your specific mission, I understand you’re advocating—
Yes, that Okinawan woman was, as you say, a “professional.” But an umbrella.
No, I wasn’t a comfort woman, I know my country was the one that perpetrated—
But what are you doing? Where are you—
No, please don’t go.
Please, [K]-san was Korean; she was probably—
No, please. You must tell the world. You must tell our—
No, please. You must stop—
Please. Please, think of what [K]-san went through. Please, I promised her—I promised myself. You see, my son—her son—
Please!
I STAND ACCUSED,
I, JESUS OF THE RUINS
…am I not on target in calling him “the Jesus of the ruins”?
—ISHIKAWA JUN, “JESUS OF THE RUINS”
Q. Where were you on the afternoon of April 29, 1947?
The body, curled in the corner of the dusky room, was still, and the boy, equally still, stood peering at it as the afternoon light caught the lip of the blackout paper covering the window. Outside, businesses had reopened, and he could hear the tinkle of the shop bells, the chime of the tills, the mundane sounds that used to pepper his world before the bombings and the Surrender and now the Occupation. Somewhere in the building, a press was running, its muffled clicks and clacks stapling the air. Behind him, the doorway stood agape, the dark corridor running past it, and someone stepped into it, trailing the smell of hot ink and paper. The boy turned, a slow tropistic pivot, the hairs on his neck standing on end: Furukawa.
WITNESS #1: SATO
TOKYO METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT, APRIL 29, 1947, 18:00
I know the kid. Met him downtown by what they call Little America about seven months ago. I was with Kiyama, the one you brought me in with. I had business at the CCD, the Occupation’s censorship detachment—I work for a publisher, though nowadays that means paging through what magazines we still put out, excising what’s “noncompliant” with the American censors. Which is pretty much anything related to the war and the Occupation, which is the most relevant topic, if you ask me. At least I’m not in film, all those retakes Kiyama’s got to do because the Yanks want evidence of their presence expunged. First of all, they’re everywhere, and second, we’re talking down to the tiniest blip of a plane. Now that’s true censorship. Makes you wonder what’s changed; we had high hopes for this democracy. And you wonder why everyone’s flocking to us Commies? Who else is fighting for our rights, our freedoms, the direction of our future?
So, we were in Little America. Afterward we swung by an izakaya, our old haunt from before this mess. Mama there used to feed us for free around exam times. Best noodles, hands down. Only reason we got into university. That night we’d just left Mama’s when we saw two Yanks kicking the shit out of this kid. They were in their browns—probably just got off patrol—but they’d had a few, and, like I said, we’d come from Mama’s, we’d had a drop or two ourselves, and you know Occupation life. Kowtowing day in and day out like someone snapped your spine. Now don’t get me wrong, we’re not violent, just ’cause we’re Party members—not all of us Commies are radical, you know that, right? We saw the Yanks, we rushed in, we ended up with the kid, face like a plate of soft vegetables. We dragged him back to the shelter you picked us up at, nursed him for days, and the first thing he says? I thought heaven would be nicer. Could’ve clocked him right back to where he came from. What I’m saying is, he’s a kid. He doesn’t plot and plan. He does things for love. Her name? Why should I tell you that? You brought me in to ask about the kid. I’m telling you: he’s no schemer. No murderer. You think that kid can overpower a man? He looks thirteen.
Q: Who did you see on the afternoon of April 29, 1947?
Furukawa looked old. Only thirty-two or thirty-three, he was a slip of a man, his gaunt head drooping over his dusty button-down tucked into worn trousers that gave him the appearance of a wilted bean sprout, world-weary but hiding all the vigor necessary to birth a new era. Or so it seemed to the boy, who’d heard legends about this renegade who’d survived the wartime Communist purges that had disappeared hundreds of his comrades. In the dimness, he looked as grainy as the magazine mugshot made famous by the boy’s own father, a wartime journalist known for his exposés of the purges. Of all the Communists his father had profiled, Furukawa had caught his attention. He’d seemed so ordinary, answering his father’s questions with such plain sincerity it had been inspiring. He’d impressed his father too. Now, though, Furukawa frightened him. Less than a year into the Occupation, the Americans, increasingly alarmed by the Communists’ popularity, had begun retracting civil liberties, harassing the same political prisoners they’d made a show of releasing only months earlier. Word was that Furukawa was on their watch list, and the restriction, coming from the very power that had legalized the Party, had soured his heart, spinning his compass in a new, potentially violent direction. Furukawa, as he had during the war, had been keeping out of sight in this defunct press, printing uncensored news and tracts, allegedly in preparation for a red insurgency.
The boy glanced at the curled body in the corner, its small back brushed by a weak light, and quickly introduced himself, dropping the names of the two university students he knew Furukawa was acquainted with from Party meetings: Kiyama and Sato. “They would’ve never told me where to find you if it wasn’t urgent. I’m looking for Konomi.”
Furukawa showed no recognition, and a splash of heat spasmed the boy’s carbuncular face. Despite the armor of skin that covered his burns, a result of his failure to outrun the incendiaries that had razed his neighborhood two years earlier, inadequate treatment and nutrition had left him susceptible to eruptions and abscesses. He knew he reeked; for months after the bombing, he’d kept to unpopulated areas, scrabbling in the ruins, avoiding the organized gangs of scavengers who prowled the alleys behind restaurants as well as the black markets that had sprung up across the city. But the previous winter had left his body a bed of bones, and he couldn’t shake the fever that had nestled in; following the pull of his feet, he weaved his way into a throng of people that led him to a patch of shade cast by Konomi’s stall. Instead of chasing him away, she’d sat him down and fed him a warm bowl of gruel. It had been
the first time in weeks that anyone had spoken to him. That was the end of April almost exactly a year ago.
He glanced again at the body. It was definitely small enough to be a woman.
Furukawa, watching him, moved into the room and crouched to check the body’s pulse. Pushing two fingers into the neck, he lifted the wrist. The arm was still soft.
The boy licked his lips; the tang of pus coated his tongue. “Listen, I know this isn’t protocol, I know you have no reason to trust me, but I’ve got to find her. I know you were with her,” he said, regretting this last part. The information had come from an unconventional source: a rōjin who roamed the city streets in the garb of an Imperial officer, reporting on the goings-on around town. He often showed up at the welfare shelter where the boy had been living for the past seven months. The rōjin’s stories were ranging, picked up from anywhere and everywhere, drawing an attentive crowd. It was also the one lead he had; Konomi had been missing for close to a month.
Furukawa continued to regard him. Then he dropped the wrist and rose to his feet. “I don’t know who your eyes and ears are, but seems like you’re getting outdated information. Your friend Konomi is a traitor.”
The word hit the surface of the boy’s thoughts and rippled through him. “No,” he said finally. “She’d never do that.”
“No? Then tell me why she’s working for the Americans.” Furukawa stepped toward the window and ripped back the blackout papers. The dusty light illuminated the body. It was not Konomi but a compact man in a suit. Furukawa’s right-hand man: Ōtsuka.
WITNESS #2: KIYAMA
TOKYO METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT, APRIL 29, 1947, 18:30
As far as I know, Konomi met the kid in Ueno, at the black market you shut down last summer, starving a nice chunk of the population. She had a stall there. Took one look at the kid and took him in. Before long, he was helping her, guarding her from the cads lurking around. You said Sato wouldn’t talk about her? I always thought he had a little something for her. Fact is, we haven’t seen her in about a month.
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