Carolina and I wait. When the officer doesn’t go on, I nod.
The officer continues; Joseph translates: “The prisoner-of-war camp at Ofuna was secret. No one knew about it until the Allied forces raided it after Japan surrendered. It wasn’t registered with the government. It kept no records.”
I fold my shaking hands to still them.
“When the Allied forces raided it, they found no employees at all.” Joseph’s voice catches as he translates. “Not in the kitchen.” He speaks very slowly. “Nowhere. Just starving prisoners. And corpses.” Joseph presses his lips together. “I’m sorry. No one knows what happened to your father.”
Carolina reaches for my hand. I hold hers tight.
I won’t let this be the end of things. It cannot be. “Can we go there?”
“Of course not. Why would you want to?”
“We could look around the kitchen for traces of Papà,” I say. “You wouldn’t recognize traces, but we would.”
“I’m so sorry. You’d find nothing. The place is filthy, and anything of use was stolen. Besides, we can’t allow it.”
“We could go to people in the houses near the prison,” says Carolina. “We could ask if they knew the cook. We could ask the farmers who sold food to the prison.” Her voice rises. “Someone somewhere knows something.”
“There is no functioning farm close by. The country was starving when it surrendered.”
Does he really think we don’t know that?
“I’m very sorry to disappoint you. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry for every child in every war.” The officer’s eyes are liquid. He’s American, but I still believe him. “I understand you will turn fourteen in February, Simona, and you are nearly eleven, Carolina. I understand that your mother is deceased. You are very young to be facing all of this. But you have a grandmother in Italy who will care for you. You have long and wonderful lives ahead. I’ll trust Joseph to explain to you what happens next.” The officer leaves.
Joseph smiles encouragingly and takes each of us by the hand. “I’m sorry, so sorry about your papà.” We are silent. Then he says, “Pack your bags. Because—your nonna has already received a telegraph that you’re coming home! She knows the ship and the day. She’ll be waiting for you at the docks.”
“No,” says Carolina. She pulls her hand from his. “No!” And she cries.
“We can’t just leave,” I say. My tears stream now, too. “Not without Papà.”
“It’s terrible news, I know.” Joseph kneels in front of us. He looks right into our eyes. “But, Simona, Carolina, you can’t stay. We won’t allow you. If your father turns up, the Allied forces will send him home. Just like we’re doing with you girls. You can count on that. I promise you, I’ll keep asking about him.”
Joseph and I look at each other.
They won’t allow us to stay. I stand and take Carolina’s hand. She looks at me through her tears, gritting her teeth, but she stands, and so does Joseph. There’s nothing else we can do. And Nonna is waiting for us. Sweet and gentle Nonna.
Joseph watches us, somber. Finally he says, “I’ll go with you to get your things. Your train leaves for Kawasaki this afternoon. You’ll board the ship there tomorrow.”
“We have no things,” says Carolina. “Only Lella.”
“Lella?” Joseph draws back in alarm. “There’s another of you?”
“She’s a doll,” I say. “But we can’t leave too fast. We have to say goodbye to everyone at the mission.”
“There’s time.”
As we walk out of the room, Joseph puts a hand on my shoulder and one on Carolina’s. “Whenever I was sad as a kid, my mother said something that helped me, so I’ll say it to you. Forza e coraggio.”
Carolina and I look at each other. It’s as though we can hear Nonna already.
* * *
—
A month later, our ship reaches Italy. I’ve been sick the whole time; the seas were rough. Carolina has been my comfort, singing to me sweetly. We’ve been talking nonstop in Italian, trying to wrap our tongues around the old words again, trying to remember who we are. We stand silent now, as our eyes scan the small group of people on the dock.
And there she is. Yes, yes, it’s her, waving like a maniac. She spotted us first. We wave and jump and yell, “Nonna! Nonna!” And that man beside her, he’s waving now, too. He wears a mustache—but I know it’s our uncle, Zio Piero.
We are alive; we are home; we are loved.
6 AUGUST 1965, HIROSHIMA, JAPAN
It’s barely dawn, and Carolina and I sit on a bench in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The letter in my hands is in Japanese, and the first time I read it, it took me hours to figure it out. But I’ve read it a dozen times now. I’ve practically memorized it, like Obasan made us do with her brother’s haiku. “Want me to read it to you again, Carolina?”
“Like when you used to read me Nonna’s letters, over and over,” she says softly. “Sure. Go ahead.”
Dear friends,
The season of heat is upon us again in Japan, as it must be in Italy. Seasons carry memories.
I traveled to Kyoto this week, to the opening of an exhibit of manga—subversive manga from the war years. I saw a series by a certain Fujiko. Unfortunately, her work was exhibited posthumously; she was prosecuted near the end of the war, and sentenced to death. When I saw her name in the newspaper announcement, I thought of the Fujiko in the cabin that you told me about, and I went to the exhibit wondering if it could be her. I am sure it is. And I urge you to return to Japan. You need to see this exhibit and see why I am so sure this is your Fujiko. Please find enclosed the newspaper announcement with the address and dates.
I don’t know if you have ever gone back to Hiroshima, but you need to go there as well. You need to sit and look at the Peace Flame in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. It was lit last year and will remain lit until all nuclear bombs have been destroyed. It will make you cry in so many ways.
You need to visit Omihachiman, too. I have something I must say to you.
It is my fondest hope that you enjoy the sun, and refresh yourselves in the breeze if there is one.
With great affection,
6 JULY 1965
Naoki
P.S. Do you wonder how I found you, if, indeed, this letter truly finds you? I will enlighten you in person, if you come.
Please come, Simo-chan and Karo-chan.
Carolina looks around. “We are here. At last.”
So many times we talked about coming back to Japan. With every letter we wrote, to every official we could find, asking over and over about Papà, we declared that we’d get back here to search for him ourselves. But even as children, we knew we’d never see him again. If Papà had survived, he’d have climbed mountains, swum oceans, to get back to us. So what does it matter if we have his remains or not? We have memories, and they comfort us.
In 1955, we thought about coming here, to the opening of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It was a huge event for Japan, an admission of how wrong the war had been. But I was twenty-three then and a new mother, and Carolina was twenty and still a student, and we simply didn’t have the money for such an extended voyage, no matter how much we longed to be surrounded by Japanese people again, to hear the language we treasured, the language that has become our private language in Italy, to use when no one else is around—just like Italian was our private language in Japan.
In 1958 we again thought of coming; the Children’s Peace Monument in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was completed that year. No one could understand better than us that children are the ones who must demand that the world seek and maintain peace. But by then I was the mother of two small children, and Carolina was finishing her university studies in jurisprudence. So the timing was wrong again.
Then came Na
oki’s letter. This was different. Our Naoki. Carolina and I took one look at each other and made plans. Here we are, after twenty years.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is large. A small crowd has gathered since we arrived. They stand in silence as an old man rings a bell. The silence of a group somehow makes the park feel even larger.
Nonna died two years ago, and I miss her terribly. But my family is full. I have a dear husband, Lodovico, who manages a grocery in Lido di Ostia. My daughter, Teresa, is named after my mamma, and she is thirteen years old. My son, Luciano, is named after Papà, and he is nine. They are with their father. Lodovico is perceptive and kind; he never raised the question of whether the whole family should come along. He knows this trip is just for Carolina and me. I feel their absence, even though I’m grateful for it.
Carolina stands beside me. She is a lawyer, one of a handful of women in law in the whole country. She advocates for the rights of children, especially in wartime. She lives in the center of Rome, so we see her often. Teresa and Luciano adore her. And Lodovico loves to debate politics with her.
Now an old man rings a bell. He lights a candle that sits in one of the shallow wells of sand in the park. More and more people are arriving to watch him.
“It’s getting mobbed,” I say. “Can we go?”
“As long as we go together.” Carolina smiles. “And we come back for the lanterns this evening.”
We go directly to the mission. None of the people we knew are still there, but the priest who greets us walks us through every room, gracious enough not to ask too many questions. We say prayers for Papà together. Then we go to a memorial Mass at the World Peace Memorial Cathedral. When the mission’s church of Our Lady’s Assumption was destroyed, Father Lassalle gathered funds to build a new church, so in a sense, this is the replacement of the church where Carolina had her First Holy Communion. We arranged to have Papà’s name be printed on cards to give to whoever comes to Mass today. No one in Hiroshima ever knew him, and his death was never confirmed, so, in some impossible world, the cards may be a mistake. But a harmless one. To us, they mean that we love him and always wish him peace.
Afterward, we walk around town and stop to eat sweetfish grilled on a stick. Delicious. The town feels normal. New and clean, as though every trace of the bomb has disappeared. The Atomic Bomb Dome, in the park, is there—but it’s part of a past that only memory can see.
When we stop for tea, the waiter says, “Your Japanese is wonderful. Natural, just a bit old-fashioned. Your teacher in Italy must not have come back to Japan for a while.”
We don’t tell him we’ve been speaking Japanese longer than he’s been alive. “Tell me,” I say. “How is it that the town is so fixed up? I expected to see rubble.”
“The museum holds the horrors of war. You can go there if you’re curious.”
He’s young and sweet. I don’t tell him that we lived those horrors.
That evening we return to the park for the lantern ceremony. People send off spirits of the war victims in lanterns with lit candles. They float on the Motoyasu River, carrying messages of peace. It’s beautiful, but I feel my skin prickle.
“It’s like when we were in the bokugo,” says Carolina. “We watched the giant silk balloons float away from Tokyo.”
Exactly. I kiss her cheeks.
The next day we take a train to Kyoto. It is a perfect town—old temples, red-lacquered gates, everything preserved. “Carolina, do you remember the professor saying that the Americans would never bomb Kyoto because they’d want to visit it as tourists?”
“I do,” says Carolina.
“He was right.”
“Yes and no. The Americans talked about bombing Kyoto. But they changed their minds. And the weather chose Hiroshima that hateful morning, anyway. It was perfectly clear for the bombers.”
* * *
—
The manga exhibit is in the new National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto’s annex to Tokyo’s modern art museum. Fujiko’s manga are in a room by themselves. I’d recognize them anywhere. But how did Naoki know this was the Fujiko from the cabin at the foot of Mount Fuji? I scan the paintings on the wall, searching, searching.
“Come here,” says Carolina. She stands over one of three glass-encased tables in the center of the room. “Oh, Simo-chan, come here.”
A painting of two girls playing Daruma Otoshi, that game that Botan taught to Carolina, where the Buddha’s head sits on a stack of blocks and you use a hammer to knock out the bottom blocks, one at a time, without making the Buddha head fall. The “hammer” the girls are using is a human bone.
One of the girls has curly hair. The other holds a rag doll under her arm.
Today is a day of many tears.
* * *
—
We rent a car and drive to Omihachiman, where we tried to find Aiko when the professor abandoned us. Where Naoki lives. We park the car at the edge of town, and walk. Agog. The town is built along the sides of a canal. It has a merchant street from the 1600s. It is charming. That one night we spent here so long ago, we didn’t see the place at all.
And there it is, the address on Naoki’s envelope. It’s a craft supply store. We’re a day earlier than we told Naoki we’d be, so I wonder if maybe we should come back tomorrow. But Carolina’s already crossing toward it. We enter, and she goes up to the counter and presses the bell.
A boy comes hurrying from the back. He bows. “Can I help you?”
“You’re too young to be in charge of this shop,” I say.
The boy laughs. “I’m just having fun till school starts again. I’ll call my father.” He disappears.
Naoki comes out, and I gasp. He is tall and thin, a stretched-out version of the boy he was. He wears an artist’s apron splotched with paint. “Can I…” He steadies himself with a hand on the counter. I understand; my own bones feel like water. He stares, then grins. “Welcome back.”
The next hours fly by. We talk and talk, then have dinner with Naoki and his wife, Mayumi, and their son, Kaede.
When I am alone with Naoki, I ask, “Does your son know you named him after a gecko?”
“He does.” Naoki laughs. “If we had had two sons, the other would have been Masaki. Does your son know you named him after the best cook in the world?”
I laugh, but it breaks into a sob. “Naoki…I’ve wanted to tell you how sorry—”
“Simo-chan, don’t apologize. Let me speak first. That’s what I wanted to say to you. I’m sorry for how I behaved when you left me here.”
I press my hands to my cheeks. “I didn’t want to leave you behind that morning. I was afraid for us without you, but afraid even more for you with us.”
“I needed a home. Those people were good to me. They’re still my family. You did what was right for me. I know that.”
“But you didn’t know it then,” I say.
“Yes, I did. I just couldn’t bear losing you two. I had lost everyone else, and you were sisters to me, as I was a brother to you. I saw how you two made it through anything, everything, because you stayed together. I suffered without a home. But you two were home to each other; I wanted to be part of that. You were right, though. You saved my life. I’m sorry for turning my back on you.”
We take each other’s hands, and he gently rubs the scar where my finger used to be. We stand, forehead to forehead, till we can manage to talk again.
At last, I ask, “How did you find our address? You amazed me.”
“I’m not a magician.” He laughs. “The Italian embassy helped.”
* * *
—
The next day Carolina and I drive to Mount Fuji and walk past where the little cabin once stood. We stop only briefly—we’ve had enough of crying—then walk a trail to enjoy the glory of the volcano. We hold hands and look out at the world. At its immensity and u
nfathomable beauty.
We hike and visit the Shinto temple and rest quietly for a few nights.
Finally we take the train to Tokyo. This must be the busiest city on earth. Thousands of people race by. We get lost in the subway system. But aboveground, we sometimes pass places that remind me of the Tokyo that was ours.
The next day we walk by the embassy, but we don’t go in. We walk along the road where Obasan’s laundry was. This is as close to her as we can get; years ago I wrote to officials in Hokkaido and asked for her address. They wrote back that a woman by the name of Tanaka, first name Natsu, died in Sapporo in 1956, at the age of sixty-one. She was blind.
There’s no laundry on this street. All the shops are new.
But we do find Aiko, at the address Naoki gave us. Her mother still lives in Omihachiman, but Aiko attended university in Tokyo and stayed. We go to her home for dinner.
Aiko’s hair is long and shiny; her arms are muscular; she looks the vision of health. “This is my husband, Oto.”
I bow and say, “The Oto who was your sweetheart when you were only eleven?”
He laughs.
“We’ve been lucky,” says Aiko.
Her father died. Her brother died. But Oto made it through. I hug Aiko. “I am so happy for you.”
She and Carolina and I talk late into the night. Like Naoki, she doesn’t ask about my finger. But when we are leaving, she takes my hand and kisses the scar. The intimacy overwhelms me. I hug her tight.
“We must never lose each other again,” says Aiko. “Let’s send photos every year on the first of January. You two can be in your kitchen and I’ll be in mine far across the world—we can make your father’s crust with citrus custard and pretend we’re sharing it.”
Carolina claps. “The perfect way to start the new year.”
Before bed, I say to Carolina, “I’m sorry no one knows what happened to Botan.”
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