Forgiveness

by Mark Sakamoto

  “We can’t lose Stanley. We lose it, we are done for. Grab as many able men as you can find. We have to make sure that the Japs don’t set up their heavy mortars to shell Stanley. We’ll leave at twenty-two-hundred hours,” Officer MacDougall ordered.

  Ralph did as he was told. Armed with the reports he had been ferrying for the past few hours, he purposely chose no one he knew to come on the mission. He felt it was suicidal. Nonetheless, at twenty-two-hundred hours, he and twelve other men joined the captain at the back door of the Villa. Between them they had two canisters of water, three cans of bully beef, one Bren gun with three bandoliers of shells, five hand grenades, and enough .303 shells to last one—maybe two—real firefights.

  Ralph said a prayer. He asked God to watch over him. He asked for mercy. He sought grace. Ralph had never had to make this call before. As he had three days earlier, he found himself crouched in a line of men, single file, at the back door of Palm Villa. They gripped their rifles and waited for their call to move.

  “Suppressing fire!”

  The ring of discharged shells rattled down the hallway.

  “Move!” the sentry bellowed.

  The point man made a cross against his chest, kissed his fingers, and hit the door with his shoulder. The men dashed into the bush and regrouped five hundred yards from the Villa at the rally point. They counted off and, all accounted for, began their trek through a deep valley. Darkness was their ally and their enemy. It hid them from the enemy but made it all but impossible to see their way through the dense brush. The men took turns carrying the heavy Bren gun. The persistent buzz of Japanese planes ensured the guy with the Bren gun kept one eye to the sky.

  The men clutched their rifles as they trudged through the night. Every broken branch they heard brought them to a standstill, wary. They made their way down a steep hill, grasping at branches and roots as they slipped their way down. Midway down, Ralph saw three shadows. He squinted. The long bayonets were the telltale sign. He raised his rifle and squeezed the trigger again and again. He didn’t think, he just shot, just as he had been trained. He had his sights on the last man and saw the silhouette go down. Was he shot or had he jumped into a water catchment? There was no way to know. Ralph may have killed a man, he may have not. The threat gone, he continued down the steep embankment.

  At the edge of the valley, the CO stopped the men and called for Ralph. Ralph hustled up. The CO pulled a blanket over his head and shone his flashlight at the map. As Ralph ducked in, the light momentarily blinded him. The two men pored over the map, running their dirty fingers along the line representing the trail they were on.

  “We’ll cross this creek, proceed through this clearing, and dig in on this hill. From there, we’ll fight like hell to keep the Japs from setting up and shelling the village and Stanley Fort,” the CO decided out loud.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How are the men, Ralph?” the CO asked as their bloodshot eyes met.

  “They are scared. But they are holding up, sir,” Ralph responded.

  “Volens et valens.” The CO gave Ralph a wink and a smile.

  “Volens et valens,” Ralph repeated. A show of bravado is sometimes the best medicine.

  On his way back down to the line to assume his position among the men, Ralph swapped out and took Bren gun duty.

  Dawn was breaking on Christmas Day. The men waded through a little creek at full attention. If spotted, they were sitting ducks. They tried to make as little sound as possible with each step. One by one, they made it to the water’s edge and waited, guns pointed, searching for movement in the deep brush. Large explosions were heard in the background. The daily dawn assault was underway. It had become part of their routine. It could be counted on more than breakfast.

  Once across the creek, the men crouched in the tall grass. The CO gave them a brief reprieve to wring out their socks and share what meagre food they had. Ralph pulled out the spoon that was in his shirt pocket, rinsed it off in the creek, and got in on an open can of bully beef that two other men were already sharing. Somewhere down the line, one man quietly hummed “Silent Night.”

  With damp socks donned again, the men gathered their gear and peeked out of the grass. The clearing they needed to cross was a full mile. A point man went out first. The rest of the men waited in silence but heard no gunfire. The CO waved them on, each man saying a little prayer as he stepped out from the cover of the brush. The dawn sun was already warm and Ralph was thinking about how the men were going to need more water than they had to last the day. He was thinking maybe they should have bottled some of that creek water, when he heard an unmistakable sound. He looked up at the men. They were continuing on course, their eyes on the trees on the other side of the clearing. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. Instinctively, he gripped the Bren gun a little tighter. No, there it was again. Ralph took a knee and scanned the sky. The sun was bright. He squinted hard. If he was right, he had only a few seconds more to act. And there it was, getting louder and closing in, the incendiary Zero. Its green-tipped wings with the red Rising Sun were the last thing many Canadian men saw before dying.

  “Plane!” Ralph yelled.

  The whole squad hit the ground, each man on his belly, eyes frantically searching the sky. They were smack dab in the middle of the clearing, too far out to run back to the grass, too far from the treeline to make a dash for it.

  “Hold, men,” the CO warned.

  One man could not contain his fear and jumped up and tried to run. Another tackled him immediately.

  “Stay the hell down!” someone else yelled.

  Their only hope was that the pilot of the lone plane would not spot them. Ralph loaded the Bren gun and readied himself. He looked at his watch. It was 6:32 a.m. Back home, his mother would be cleaning up from Christmas dinner.

  The plane did one loop high above the clearing. Maybe they were in the clear. Ralph could hear one man whispering to himself, “Just go … just go.” The plane’s engines accelerated and it began to descend. It was bearing down on them. The CO screamed a life or death order: “Ralph, keep him off!”

  Ralph scrambled off his belly, braced his knee into the dirt, and hoisted the Bren into position. The plane opened up on them and a hail of bullets tore into the ground. Ralph took dead aim at the plane, drew a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger. The gun released a burst of angry little angels into the sky. Ralph fired until he ran out of bullets. Fourteen lives depended on him and that Bren gun.

  Through his scope, he saw the plane bank to the right. The pilot was veering away from the clearing, away from them.

  “Move! Move! Move!” screamed the CO.

  All the men heard the terror in his voice.

  Ralph grabbed the ammo, threw it over his shoulder, and ran as fast as he could. He was the last to hit the treeline. He collapsed beside two men, both scanning the sky.

  “I think it’s gone,” Ralph said, too tired to join the two others in their search. He leaned against a tree, head back, mouth open.

  The CO crawled over to them.

  “Have a drink of water, Ralph. That was some fine firing. You gave it to that S.O.B.,” he said as he unscrewed his water canteen and passed it over.

  “I thought he had our number,” one of the guys nearby stated matter-of-factly.

  “Okay, men, we can’t wait here for that pilot to radio in our location. Let’s move out.”

  The group trudged up the hill overlooking Stanley Fort. They could have sworn the mud had hands that pulled their boots in deeper. They could see the fort and the surrounding village through the breaks in the forest. Steep hills ringed it on all sides; the sunlight glistened off the sea. From their vantage point, they could see several unattended fires raging. The men set up a perimeter defence, which consisted of seven men forming a small semicircle around the remaining seven, spaced a few paces apart. They had begun digging their own foxholes when three shots rang out. Everyone hit the ground.

  The three men on the left
flank returned fire. Ralph saw two Japanese soldiers run down the hill. They had light, mustard green fatigues and hats with tails. Their rifles were long and each had a bayonet attached. The men were short and had black hair. They were the first Japanese soldiers Ralph had ever seen. Fortunately, they were going the other way, running back to the new base of Japanese operations: Palm Villa.

  “I can’t get any response from the base. The line is just dead, Captain,” the radioman reported.

  Ralph was sharing a can of corned beef with two other guys. As he leaned over to take his next turn at the tin, the man holding it was hit twice in the chest. The bullets landed with a thwap, burying themselves into his lungs and ribs. He slumped over and the tin rolled out of his hands. Time stood still for a brief moment as bullets came from all sides. They were caught in their enemy’s crosshairs. There was nowhere to go. Ralph scanned his left. He could see three men firing their single-action rifles as fast as they could. To his right, one man was staggering aimlessly, screaming, his stomach completely opened up. Ralph shot his rifle in the direction of some of the incoming fire. Two grenade explosions shook the ground behind Ralph’s position. He could hear the cries of several men.

  “Every man for himself!” MacDougall cried.

  Ralph saw a small cliff about fifteen yards down the hill. He grabbed the guy beside him by the collar.

  “There! There!” he pointed. “Let’s tuck in down there!” he screamed over the gunfire that was hitting the leaves like a metal rain.

  Ralph crouched down, leading the way, picking up two other men as he ran. The bullets cut into the branches and exploded above their heads. Another grenade detonated, propelling the fourth man into a tree. His mangled body wrapped around the trunk. The bullets were missing Ralph by inches, each buzzing by with a zing as it cut through the air, hungry for flesh.

  The three men reached the cliff and leaped over, not even knowing what was on the other side. Away from the bullets was destination enough. They landed on a ledge six feet below. Ralph fell hard on his side. The wind was knocked out of him and his rifle flew out of his hands. He watched it tumble down the steep hill. The force of the fall broke the leg of the second man on the ledge. They looked for the third man in vain.

  Neither man had a rifle. Ralph instinctively drew his knife. Fifteen yards above him were at least thirty Japanese soldiers with machine guns. The second man was crouched down in near hysterics as heavy machinegun fire rang out unabated. The two did not hear any further .303 gunshots in response. Anyone left alive was hiding, crouched somewhere, hoping that they were not experiencing their final moments. They could hear a few of their buddies groaning and weeping, imagining this was the end.

  The sun was steaming hot and Ralph swallowed hard. Between his fear and the heat, there was no moisture in his mouth at all. He knelt down, back firmly against the hill, to pat his comrade’s back. He did not have the gall to say everything would be all right. The view from the ledge was beautiful and Ralph was struck again by a sense of irony.

  Suddenly Ralph laughed. He laughed and looked down at the man hunched beside him.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Celtic, British Columbia

  It felt as if the bombs of Pearl Harbor had been dropped on Mitsue’s living room.

  The family had the radio tuned to the CBC. They were trying to get as much information as they could. As the devastation revealed itself, Yosuke stood up from the kitchen table, slowly walked through to the living room, and clicked off the radio. He turned and everyone stared into his weary eyes.

  They had never before prayed as a family. But that afternoon, for the first time, they sat in a circle on the living room floor. Susanne was the first to ask the question that everyone in the house, and every Japanese Canadian in British Columbia, was thinking: “What will happen to us now?”

  Yosuke knew that this crisis would be used by people who wanted the Japanese fishermen out of the industry to whip up fear and drive them away from the coast, away from the fish. He knew right away what was coming. And he knew that it would come wrapped in the Canadian flag in the name of national security. He knew that the only thing the government wanted to secure was the fishing stocks.

  Japanese-owned fishing boats confiscated by the Canadian government in the Fraser River in Vancouver

  By midafternoon, reports of arrests were trickling out of Little Tokyo. Everyone was on edge. That night they went to bed afraid of what tomorrow’s newspaper headline would be.

  And sure enough, the very next day the headline confirmed their worst fears: CANADA AT WAR, JAPS FORCED OUT. Yosuke went down to the dockyard where both his boats were moored and he saw police and some of his friends standing around. It had begun. Every single boat owned by a Japanese fisherman, Canadian or not, had been seized. There could be no more fishing. The boats were to be taken away and locked up. Over one thousand of them would be tied up and left to sit idle. By the end of the day, the seized boats stretched out along the Fraser River made it difficult to see the water.

  Yosuke was crushed. For so long he had tried to make sure that something like this would not happen. But world events had undermined him. There was nothing he could do. He wasn’t even allowed to board his boats to retrieve the books he had left there, including his Bible. The RCMP ordered him to leave immediately. He complied.

  Some of the men cried as they left the dock. Yosuke tried to comfort a few of them. They were inconsolable. One man cried out, “How will I feed my children?” Yosuke didn’t have the answer to that. He wondered the same thing. The effect of that afternoon was devastating: over eighteen hundred men with families depending on them, all out of work. The round-up took three hours.

  Yosuke returned home and tried to conceal his concern. He just said: “They took our boats, we’ll have to figure it out.” He was trying to keep his wife and children positive. But he knew things would not get better. A few days later the RCMP came to Celtic and locked up the community centre. They knew exactly what they were doing. It was a school, a church, and a meeting place. The point was made.

  For the next few weeks, rumours swirled everywhere around Mitsue—at home in Celtic, at the dress shop in Granville, and on Powell Street. She avoided Powell Street as much as she could. Everyone was so scared you could see it in their eyes. Everybody was worried about their families, their businesses, and their homes, but mostly their children. What was going to happen to them? Some thought everyone would be rounded up and sent back to Japan. Their world was getting smaller—closing in on them.

  Mitsue felt a little safer than most. She was a Canadian citizen, after all. They wouldn’t do all the terrible things people were talking about to Canadian citizens. She had been born here, all her brothers and sisters had been born here. She’d never even been to Japan. Canada was all she knew. She felt Canadian through and through. And even though she was not permitted to vote, Canada was a democracy. That meant it was a safe country. That is what she had learned in school, and she believed it.

  The next two months shattered those beliefs. Fear and greed can do terrible things to the human heart. Every morning brought a fresh round of stories about windows on Powell Street being smashed in. People would just hurl rocks, bricks, or anything else they could find at Japanese storefronts. The insurance companies began to cancel the policies of Japanese owners. Everyone felt that same isolating feeling: there was nowhere to turn. So few were willing to help. Things were getting uglier by the day.

  Mitsue kept going to work at the dress shop, praying each morning as she turned the corner that she would not find it burned or smashed. One morning just before Christmas, a woman who owned a dressmaking shop on Powell Street found a “black hand” note taped to her door. This had become common. The writers of these notes threatened to burn the places down if they didn’t close. Mrs. Yamamoto had enough to worry about already. The shop was not on Powell Street, so a lot of her customers were white and many of them had stopped
coming around. Her store had never been quiet at this time of the year. People were always buying dresses or having dresses mended before Christmas, but this year they weren’t coming by the shop.

  On Christmas Eve, Mitsue had a turkey dinner at home. The entire family was there: Yosuke and Tomi, Pat, Mary, and Susanne. Hideo came too. He and Mitsue had been engaged for just over a month. After they finished cleaning up, they were listening to the radio in the living room when a news flash came on. Mitsue hated the sound of the news flash—nothing good ever came from it.

  Hong Kong had fallen. Over one thousand Canadian troops were now in Japanese hands. For the second time, the family prayed together. They prayed for the prisoners. They prayed for themselves.

  Yosuke knew this was more bad news for his family. He was staring straight up at the tsunami that he had tried to avoid all those years ago when he had left Japan. It was about to wash away everything he had worked so hard for. He knew that it was only a matter of time until that wave crested right at his door.

  The December 7 attack had left Ottawa reeling. The Japanese military machine had crippled the U.S. western fleet and its troops had moved swiftly and simultaneously through Malaysia, Guam, the Philippines, and Wake Island. Their attack on the British fleet had left Hong Kong a sitting duck. Leaders in Canada were scrambling to bolster defences along the long western shoreline.

  Anti-Japanese politicians saw this as their golden opportunity. They loaded their propaganda ammunition and opened fire. They bombarded the national press and charged at Prime Minister Mackenzie King with all they could muster. The anti-Japanese politicians from British Columbia had been held at bay for far too long; on December 17, 1941, they formed the Pacific Coast Security League. This league’s sole purpose was to deport or remove all Japanese from British Columbia.

  The first official proceeding took place in Ottawa on January 8 and 9, 1942. A parliamentary committee requested representatives from B.C.—many of whom had just founded the Security League—to meet with senior members of External Affairs, the RCMP, and the military. The fate of every Japanese-Canadian soul hung in the balance as these leaders met in a room in the basement of the nation’s Parliament buildings. The men all held their positions as firmly as they gripped their dossiers.