The Blossom and the Firefly

by Sherri L. Smith

  “Let’s sing a song!” Kaori-sensei suggests, clapping her hands for attention. Soon she has started singing “Umi Yukaba,” the ballad of young sailors and soldiers dying for the Emperor without regret. I bend my back to the laundry, my lips moving to the words, but I do not sing—another thing that’s gone missing since the day I died. I no longer have a voice for song.

  One patriotic tune leads into another, and then we are joined by male voices as the pilots, done with their exercises, come to join us at the river.

  They follow us as we hang the laundry to dry beneath the cover of trees. It will take longer this way, but the sheets must not be visible to the enemy overhead. Then it is time for the midday meal. We walk with the pilots, still singing, and make our way to the triangle barracks, where a soldier with a hand truck of dishes is waiting. From the outside, the barracks look like little more than A-shaped roofs resting on the ground. That’s because they are dug six steps into the earth. The wooden doorway is rain-stained and green with new moss. Inside, the short sunken walls support the roof so that the ceiling is high in the middle, but barely tall enough to stand with your head ducked at the edges. Two sleeping platforms line either side of the barracks, with feet facing the wall so no one hits their head upon rising in the morning. Shelves on the wall hold footlockers and helmets, in case of air raid.

  The boys go inside to roll up their futon and we girls line up at the “kitchen,” carrying back trays of rice, pickled plum, and seaweed. The boys sit cross-legged on the sleeping platforms, backs hunched against the slant of the roof as they devour their meals. I stand by the hand truck, doling out portions and loading the girls’ trays. Mariko carries cups of miso soup. The salty scent of the broth makes my mouth water, but we do not eat until the boys are done. We bow our thanks to them and clear their trays. Then it is our turn to sit on the grass outside with bowls of rice. It is so good and fresh, this spring rice, I could cry. At home, we only have rationed rice—old and dusty—and not much of it. But here on the base, they offer the best. Still, Sensei cautions us to eat only our share. A little food can go a long way, if we are not greedy. And my appetite has dwindled since March.

  After lunch, we check the sheets drying beneath the tall, naked pine trunks. If they are still damp, we redistribute them to catch the wind. The ones that are ready we carry back to the barracks. Mariko knows I don’t like to go inside since I died. So she makes my pilot’s bed for me, while I sit on a nearby rock, sewing the holes in a still-damp sock.

  “Hana, you will have to go in and help someday,” Kaori-sensei says. But she does not say it unkindly. After the bombing, I did not leave my bed. For one week, I lay on the futon, sore and afraid. Okā-san tended my bruises and stayed by my side. Each night, she sat beside a single lantern shuttered but for a thin rail of light on my face because I could not bear the darkness. But duty called. My limp lessened, my bruises hidden behind clothing, I went back to my unit and discovered we’d been reassigned to serve the tokkō. I had died in the bombing, and now I would be a handmaiden to the dead.

  But on my first day at the base, when I stepped down into the barracks, a great stone hand reached out to squeeze my throat, crack my chest, and blind me. For the second time in two weeks, I was dragged back into the light, given water and a towel for my sweating face, fresh air for my constricting lungs. Sensei says it is just nerves, but I know the truth. The earth has swallowed me once. Only a foolish person would give it a second taste.

  “I will do my best, Sensei,” I murmur. The other girls talk about me behind their hands. They think I am afraid. It is not fear that keeps me aboveground. It’s common sense. I will stay above the dirt, not in it, until it is time for me to leave this earth once and for all.

  I must continue. I am Japan.

  CHAPTER 7

  TARO

  Winter 1936

  “The spider climbs up the ladder, the spider climbs down.” Taro followed his sensei’s instructions, plucking a rising and falling scale on the violin.

  “And now we are ready to play.”

  Taro stood in the center of the room. His parents were watching. They had invited his aunt and a neighbor.

  “All this talk of war is trying,” his mother had said to his father this morning as he mulled over the news of a pact between Germany and Japan to counter a treaty between China and Russia. “What we need is a little pleasantness.”

  Now they all sat patiently over cups of hot tea as Taro tried to ignore them, focusing on Ayugai-sensei’s hands as they directed the flow of the music.

  “Haru no Umi”—“The Sea in Spring”—began with gentle plucking, imitating the sound of the koto. Then Taro laid the bow across the strings, and the ocean swelled.

  Miyagi Michio’s famous piece was written in memory of the water by his home, last seen as a child before he lost his sight. Meant as a duet for traditional instruments, Ayugai-sensei had adapted it for violin. Taro played it like a child. Joyfully. It brought smiles to his parents’ faces, but Sensei was not happy.

  “Of course he lacks the mono no aware Miyagi-sama intended for this piece. But Taro is only eight. Perhaps, in time, he will learn to play the melancholy beneath the joy,” his sensei said apologetically to his parents.

  “We are sorry he has not yet found the ear for it,” Taro’s father replied quickly. Taro’s cheeks burned. He would do better.

  But later, when his mother put him to bed, she whispered into his ear, “Time enough for sorrow later, Taro. Today, play like it’s spring.”

  CHAPTER 8

  HANA

  This is Chiran, in the south of Kagoshima on the island of Kyushu, the last in the chain of home islands above Okinawa. This is my home.

  Before the war with the West, we were known for our tea, our dolls, for the nearby hot springs, and the black beaches where one can be buried up to one’s chin in healing volcanic sand. We were known for some silk and for our sweet potatoes. We were a stop on the way from the beaches to the city, from beautiful Kaimondake, Mount Fuji’s twin, to Kagoshima city, with its shining bay and view of smoldering Sakurajima. Now we are known for our army and navy air bases, our strategic proximity to the enemy.

  Seven hundred years ago, a mighty man lived in our prefect, lord to more than five hundred samurai families, whose houses dot the sand streets at the end of our town. Samurai were warriors, loyal and brave, who pledged allegiance to their lords and lived by Bushido, a code of honor until death. The yards still boast perfect gardens—smooth stones, pure green moss, and a long wall to keep out invaders.

  But there is no stone wall large enough to keep the Western invaders out. Today, we no longer have samurai. We build our walls with men. Soldiers keep filling the gaps where others have fallen, and the men have given way to boys, and this is Chiran—the last line of defense. If Okinawa falls to the Americans, we are next. If we fall, then so will Tokyo, and all the rest of Japan.

  We must not fall.

  * * *

  —

  Tonight there is a meeting of the women in the tonari-gumi, our neighborhood association. My mother has asked me to come serve tea.

  Every week they gather to discuss all village business, big and small, from organizing ration delivery to gathering money for the war effort. They meet at alternating houses, a different one each week, and sit drinking tea and eating sweet potato stems or azuki beans. They gripe over who can afford to buy ocean fish these days, not just the river carp available in town. My mother will bring some salted plums to offer the hostess, Mrs. Higashi, as a thank-you gift. I will make the tea go as far as possible with leaves scavenged from the old plants behind our house. I’ll pick some extra to bring to the base tomorrow. They have plenty of tea, but none tastes as pure. Perhaps I can give it to the kitchen staff. The boys have all the ocha they need and then some, but the people working in the kitchen have to make do like the rest of us.

  This w
eek’s meeting is at Hisako’s house. Hers is an old noble family. Their land is gone, but they keep a fine house in the walled samurai district up the road from our home. The boy she loved was also from a samurai family. They were wealthy before the war. But Okā-san says such a family’s greatest wealth is in their son. In this way, the war has made them paupers.

  I follow my mother along the road, glad to be in monpé rather than a kimono that might trail and dip into the stream that runs along the same path. The sun has gone down, but the sky is still light. The carp in the water are rising to catch evening bugs, kissing the surface as they search for their meals. The fish are the only ones to not go hungry in a war, I suspect. The less food we have, the more bugs seem to thrive.

  “Hurry up, Hana!” Okā-san urges. I pull my eyes from the cool flow of water in time to see her disappear through the entrance to the samurai district.

  Eight feet tall on the outside, the sturdy gray wall is rough but tightly mortared. Inside, all is silent but for the chirping of birds and the susurration of the wind. Our geta break the natural silence, crunching softly on the sandy road. I try to match my steps to Okā-san’s so that we sound like one person interrupting the quiet avenue. Far ahead, the walls stretch like a long, eloquent maze, broken by a gate here, a doorway there, and the occasional step up into the gardens of the samurai.

  Hisako’s house is several turns away. We reach it, and my mother gestures with her chin for me to pull the gate wide. The old men of the house have scurried off into town, to Tomiya Shokudo or some other place, no doubt. The young men reported for duty long ago. But Hisako is there, and Mariko, waiting on the wide veranda, kneeling to help guests remove their shoes, or rising to carry their packages inside.

  “Go on, then!” Okā-san insists. She slips off her own geta, nodding a quick hello to my friends. Taking the sack of plums from my hands, she hurries inside. Cries of greeting ring out as she disappears through the sliding door. I settle in beside Mariko and wait.

  “Are we the last?” I ask.

  “No, we are expecting three more,” Hisako says in her low, distant voice. She reminds me of thunder over the mountain, a storm moving away across the sky.

  “Kaori-sensei says she will not make it tonight,” Mariko announces. “She is working at the hospital. Can you imagine! After a full day at the base, she is helping there, too?”

  The hospital that was our school is just up the hill from my house. It’s strange to think of sick people, wounded soldiers, propped up in our old classrooms.

  “My mother says it’s because she knows the filing system,” Hisako says softly. “Before she became a teacher, she worked in the office there. I suppose they need people who are good at such things.”

  “I would be terrible at it!” Mariko decides. “My handwriting is too messy, and I’m not good at remembering where things are.”

  All of this is nonsense, of course. “Mariko, there are no men here tonight. No need to act silly.”

  Mariko blushes. She’s not a flirt like Sachiko is, but she thinks too little of herself out of habit. I’ve never understood why.

  “Well, maybe I could do it,” she admits slowly. Any further revelation is interrupted by the arrival of two more women. We rise and take their packages, help them inside. The last member to arrive is old Mrs. Hirano. We can hear her tapping her cane as she climbs the stairs. We rise to our feet.

  “Ah, Hana-san!” she calls out, too loudly for the quiet night. “How is your health today?”

  I bow and thank her. “All is well,” I say.

  “Good! Good! Such a terrible thing, that bombing. I was glad to see your pretty face went unscarred. And the rest of you too, neh? It won’t do to lose all our pretty ones to this terrible fighting. A soldier deserves an attractive wife. And we need you young people to make more Japanese! We’ve lost too many by my count, neh?”

  She pauses and jabs her cane toward Mariko and Hisako. “You three pay attention! This is your duty in the war. And help your mothers, neh? Such hard times make everyone ugly. Look at me! I’ve lived through three wars in my time. No wonder my face is so full of wrinkles!”

  She cackles loudly as Hisako and Mariko each bend to help her slip out of her shoes. I offer to take the sack swinging from her wrist, but she shoos me away. “I’m old, but sturdy. Leave it be. But make my tea extra hot, will you? A pretty night, but these bones feel a chill. They always do when the seasons change.”

  We follow her indoors at a respectful distance, sliding the shōji screens shut behind us to keep out the cool April air.

  Inside it is warm, and the air smells of tea and roasted soybeans. The screens have been pushed back to join two rooms together, and still there is quite a crowd. Mariko and I move between the women, filling teacups and offering plates of savory snacks provided by Hisako’s mother, while Hisako carries the gifts brought by the tonari-gumi members into another room. She will sort and store them later. Most likely, several of the small cookies and other things on the trays tonight are from the last time her mother hosted. If they are stale, no one comments. It’s a treat to have them at all. Salted peanuts and preserved items are a favorite gift because they will last without losing flavor and reduce the burden of hosting the next time. Occasionally, there are oranges or other fresh fruit—a luxury this early in the season, but possible because there are farms nearby. The cities are not so lucky. Even here, in the midst of war, there is a subtle or not-so-subtle tug and pull between the women, showing off with gestures of abundance and largesse, attempting to appear better-off than they are. Than any of us are.

  At last, every plate is full, every cup steaming, and we retire to the back veranda, one ear open in case we are needed. The water is on for more tea. When it boils, we will do another round. Once upon a time, we longed to attend these meetings, to hear what secret things the older women spoke of when no men were around. Aside from a few off-color jokes, it was mostly complaints about husbands and sons. That has faded with the war. There is no one left to complain about but grandfathers and boys too young to cause much trouble at home.

  “Today, they will discuss recipes for the new rationing,” Hisako confides. “They are strange. So much frying.”

  “Yes!” Mariko agrees, tugging her short hair. “My grandmother says the government is trying to fatten us up and disguise the poor flavor of canned goods.”

  I doubt Okā-san will give in to the new frying fad. We make do with very little. Rice, a bit of vegetable, an egg if we are lucky—that is enough for us. The rarer treats, like salted plums, are saved for guests, or evenings such as this.

  With such dull talk inside, we are glad it’s warm enough to sit outside where we can sip our own cups of tea and look at the stars, while Mariko wonders what life will be like if we are ever tonari-gumi women, wives and mothers eating salted nuts and boiled beans, counting up coins and donations for the war effort. It feels like make-believe, pretending there will ever be peace again.

  “I could do it,” Mariko says suddenly. We are swinging our socked feet off the edge of the veranda. Hisako’s family’s garden surrounds us. Soft slopes shaped by unseen earth and covered with fine moss rise like frozen lavascapes turned tender and green. Maple trees and evergreens are pruned into delicate poses, like dancers frozen in time. It’s a lovely place. The rush of water from a little fountain. The twinkle of moonlight off the basin where koi swim in long, lazy strokes back and forth. We could be living two hundred years in the past, courtiers writing poetry in the gardens of our samurai lords. Or perhaps it will still look like this in another two hundred years. The future will still come to Chiran, despite the war.

  “A clerk. I think I will ask Sensei what it entails. Don’t you think? It would be good to have a career,” Mariko says.

  “Yes,” Hisako replies, plucking the leaves off a strip of bamboo growing in a pot at the veranda’s edge. Bamboo is a greedy plant. It will take ov
er a garden if left unattended. Pots are the best way to contain it. “It’s wise to have a way to support yourself. When we graduate, I must find a job, too.”

  “You will both have to,” I say. “Okā-san says there will not be enough men for every job needed after the war.”

  I wish I had not said it. Not enough men. That means our fathers, brothers, friends, may not be coming home. But that has been the truth since we were little girls. Since we were born, I realize now. I have never known a time when Japan was not at war.

  “The kettle will run dry,” Hisako comments, and rises to her feet. She brews a new pot of tea, and we follow her, this time with a bowl of sweets.

  In the front rooms, the women are nodding vigorously as Hisako’s mother counts the donations. “Enough to provide new firefighting hoods!” she announces. There is polite clapping. Since the Americans began firebombing Tokyo, there has been a great fear the same will happen in other cities and military towns like Chiran. The women have organized a fire brigade. Last week, we saw an example of a civil defense hood—heavy drab cotton lined with wool, shaped to cover the head, neck, and shoulders and tie across the front. Wool and good cotton are fire-resistant. Such hoods are valuable against burning ash.

  That is one thing to be grateful for—on the day I was buried alive, the bombs that fell were not incendiaries, filled with long-burning fuel. No one in the fields could have survived that.

  We return to the veranda while the women complain about the fabric rations and question Okā-san on her next delivery. In a few days, they will line up with their tickets, elbowing each other for a chance at new pants, a new shirt. Now that the warm weather approaches, everyone will need lighter workwear.

  “Hana,” Mariko says, drawing my eyes from the star-studded sky. She takes my hand in hers. I reach across to Hisako, and we swing our feet again, like we used to when we were children. Tomorrow will come soon enough.