Brazil-Maru

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  Kantaro was not afraid, but he did not take sides, no matter what Befu believed or what Saburo told him about news on his radio. Befu believed in the rumor that anything said about Japan’s defeat was an American propaganda trick. Befu decided to read the old Imperial Rescripts before dinner, and we all listened. Kantaro did not complain about this. The rescripts told us to work hard and keep our faith. Great sacrifice was required for victory. Kantaro thought that even if Japan lost the war, we still had work to do, and people were inspired by Befu’s readings. There was always disagreement between so many of us, but only Saburo protested Befu’s readings. He went to Kantaro and said, “Befu must stop! What is this reading from Hitler’s Mein Kampf? Are you crazy? How can you put this stuff next to the scriptures and prayers?” I didn’t understand Saburo’s argument, but somehow it all made sense.

  Kantaro would not become involved in these discussions. He had to be a leader while others argued. If he did not remain quiet, perhaps there would have been more trouble than just talk. As always, many people traveled through and stayed with us. We liked to welcome these people who brought stories and gossip. Kantaro was always uncommitted. He liked to watch the people sitting at the same table; eating side by side, there might be a man hiding from the kachigumi and another hiding from the police. I remember this man Nakashima who received a death threat from the Shindo Renmei. He left his wife and children with relatives in another town and came to live with us. One evening at dinner, I came by with the big pot of soup. Nakashima was quiet; he served himself some soup. There was another guest nearby talking arrogantly to Kantaro saying, “All of you need to be careful around here. The traitors know who they are. They have run away to hide, but we will find them eventually.” He lowered his voice to make us afraid and said, “Confidentially, I heard some of those dogs might have come here to hide.”

  I saw poor Nakashima turn green and choke on his soup.

  Kantaro laughed. “What nonsense. Why would anyone come here to hide? Everyone here knows everyone’s business. It would be foolishness.”

  The man nodded. Of course, he agreed, a traitor would easily be spotted in such a place as ours. The man continued, “I am grateful to you for your sanctuary here. The Brazilian police are too stupid to look for me here.”

  Occasionally the police did come to ask questions, but Kantaro only shrugged innocently.

  They said the war was over, so we were allowed to travel again. Befu, Kantaro, and the men were always talking about what they would do if they could sell Befu’s eggs in São Paulo. Finally, we could do this. Kantaro made a deal with the Sarandi Cooperative in São Paulo, and Ichiro Terada started to drive shipments of eggs to the city. It was a long trip for Ichiro. In those days, it took all day, driving along endless dirt roads. Sometimes these roads were long sun-beaten tunnels of rising red dust or, during the rainy seasons, they became muddy rivers. More than once, Ichiro told us he got stranded on a lonely highway with a flat tire and a truckload of eggs. He was always glad for a passenger to accompany him on these rides. I liked to pack him a thermos of cool water or hot tea with sweet cakes and rice. Kantaro often went with Ichiro on these trips, traveling to the city to make purchases, negotiate deals, and meet friends like Shigeshi Kasai, the newspaper man.

  Kantaro had to spend so much time in São Paulo he decided to buy a small house. I never went to this house, but then, I never went again to São Paulo. I heard it was a little two-story place on a secluded street. Kantaro said it was nice. He said we were becoming a very lucrative operation; now we could afford small things. Sometimes I wondered about this house, about life in São Paulo. I had only stayed at Takehashi’s house. The city frightened me; it was too busy. I was glad to get back to Esperança.

  I know there are stories about Kantaro’s life in the city. People did not like to say things to me. I asked Ichiro when he returned with the truck from São Paulo, “What is that house like there? Does Kantaro keep it clean?”

  Ichiro said, “I don’t know about the house. I have never seen it. Kantaro gets a taxi from the warehouse. I just sleep in the truck and come home.”

  “Why don’t you sleep at the house? You are too tired to drive back. You are going to kill yourself.”

  But Ichiro wasn’t concerned. “I don’t mind. I don’t like that city. I’d rather drive home.”

  I asked Kantaro, “What do you do in the city?”

  “I run around all day making deals.”

  “What about the house. It must be a mess.”

  “Kasai’s wife, Teru, found me a maid. She’s very good.”

  Maybe I was stupid, but I said what Kantaro said, “There’s a maid. Kantaro says she’s very good.”

  Now that we’re old, everyone says everything. They don’t say it in front of me, but I know everything anyway. Kantaro always did what his heart wanted him to do. I could not change that. He would not say that he was without faults. He said he was a great sinner. But when you reach the end of your life and your life has been as full as his, maybe you can understand how he cannot admit shame. He cannot apologize for the way he chose to live his life. Well, I am old now, too, and have seen so many things. I shake my head; it’s just another story. Kantaro said that God did not give him humility. If after so many generations of his ancestors he did not receive humility, then he must accept this result in himself. This was part of his destiny. I have had to accept many things about myself, but then, I am not Kantaro. My destiny was to marry him and to have his children. Perhaps, Kantaro said, it was a sin to take hold of his destiny, but he could not have lived another life. No one, he said, bears greater pain or greater pleasure for the fulfillment of this destiny than he. Perhaps this is true, but who can measure such things? I think all of us have borne the same pain and the same pleasure.

  I’m not sure when it was, but Kimi’s father, Shinkichi Kawagoe, decided to move to our place. He decided he wanted to be close to Kimi and his grandchildren. He brought his invalid wife, Kinu, and his phonograph and record collection to New World. With Saburo’s help, Kawagoe wired the entire commune—every house, the dining hall, the laundry and kitchen and even several acres of the chicken pens and vegetable gardens—with loud speakers. He wanted to share his record collection by playing it over these loudspeakers for everyone to hear. All the young girls—my daughter Mieko, Akiko and the others hummed classical pieces while filling water troughs and shoveling chicken droppings. Even I started humming the music in the kitchen. All of us were working and humming, working and humming.

  My son Kanzo was too young to think about girls, but Ichiro Terada was getting too old not to. I was not the only one who noticed him following the girls around in the chicken pens. When Ichiro was not on the road delivering eggs, he was with the girls helping them with their chores. The funny thing about Ichiro is that he didn’t seem to know why he was out there with the girls. He was always hanging around watching the girls chick-sexing—tossing the peeping hatchlings into fluffy piles of male and female. I think he was tired of Befu’s talk of war and tired of Saburo’s sullenness, tired of men. Everyone noticed this change in Ichiro and made fun of him.

  But Ichiro was like everyone else on our farm in those days, happy and not knowing really why. We didn’t have any cares. We never saw money. The children did not know what money was; they went into shops and grocery stores and took what they wanted without payment. They weren’t dishonest; they just didn’t know. Here at home, everything belonged to everyone. If they were hungry, they wandered over to the kitchen and bothered me for a piece of cake. Or someone got a big machete and hacked down a bunch of bananas. If anyone needed anything—toothbrush, soap, razorblade, it was in our big pantry.

  All this time Hachiro Yōgu was just like Kanzo, just like Ichiro, growing up, but Yōgu did it faster. Every day he was changing, working his way back from childhood. The problem was that Yōgu was a strong grown man. What do you do with a child that big? Gradually he began to understand, but he still could not speak. It was fu
nny to watch Yōgu. Maybe he would be playing with some toy or staring at something like an insect or a dog. Suddenly he would stop, his face full of confusion. Everything in his head seemed to be swirling around. Then everything seemed to settle, and he threw up his arms and walked away. The other mothers and I watched Yōgu. “Just like Nobu-chan at that age,” Toshiko would say. Maybe watching him every day like that, we should have known what would come next, but instead, we were completely caught by surprise.

  Kimi slept by herself. Who would want to sleep with a grown infant? We put Yōgu in a room with his sons. One morning we were changing the sheets. Kimi stopped suddenly and stepped away from Yōgu’s bed. I went to look at the bed and saw the sheets. Kimi turned very red, but I pulled the sheets up quickly and said, “What do you know. Having dreams. Same thing with Kanzo. All turning into little men.” Of course Yōgu still did not know who Kimi could be, except maybe his mother. But he had dreamed something and went around looking for his needs. He liked to spend a long time watching the chickens. He must have noticed the young roosters vying for the hens. One day, I was humming with Kawagoe’s music. Kawagoe said it was called the New World symphony. Suddenly, I could hear a commotion coming from the chicken pens just behind the incubating barn. The girls were running this way and that. Eggs toppled out of their baskets. Corn feed got scattered everywhere, and the chickens squawked like crazy chasing after the corn and in and out of the way. Feathers flew everywhere. I ran out to see better and saw Yōgu with no pants on running around after the girls. Everyone who heard the commotion ran around trying to capture Yōgu. This was almost impossible because the girls had thrown eggs at Yōgu to keep him away. He was not only fast but slimey with egg yolk. Ichiro was already there, but he was no help in catching Yōgu. All he could do was to bend over in laughter, and he could not stop laughing until Kimi arrived with her angry look. Suddenly Ichiro became serious. He got a funny expression on his face. Yōgu was innocent, but finally Ichiro must have understood why he was always in the chicken pens with the girls. He laughed foolishly.

  While Kantaro was in São Paulo, a traveling pots-and-pans salesman had already arrived in Esperança. He came to stay at New World for a few days. He spent most of the time in the kitchen trying to make us buy his shiny new pans, fixing broken handles and mending old pots. In the evenings, the salesman and Befu got into animated discussions about the war. A lot of people sat around to hear the news the salesman had to bring: gossip about Japanese victories in the South Pacific, ships in Santos, spies, traitors to Japan, Japanese planes located somewhere. There was even a story about a Japanese prince who was secretly traveling around visiting Japanese colonies and testing our loyalty. “Maybe he has already been here,” the pots-and-pans man said. “Well, you have nothing to fear if you are honest and loyal Japanese subjects.” Then he said, “I have heard that Okumura is makegumi.”

  Even Befu smirked, “Okumura is a pacifist. He doesn’t support any wars.”

  “Those are the sorts of people you have to be careful about. The people you least expect are traitors, secretly dealing with the Americans. Didn’t you say that Okumura had been to the United States?” The salesman looked around searching for other traitors among us. “Think of this,” he leaned over and spoke softly. “Isn’t Okumura promoting the production of silkworms here in Esperança?”

  “That’s true. We are thinking of starting a batch ourselves.”

  “Where do you think this silk production is going to be sent?”

  Befu and the others shook their heads.

  “To the Americans of course!” The salesman slammed his hand on the table. “For military parachutes! This silk production has got to be stopped! Anyone who participates in this is a traitor!”

  So the talk went.

  “All lies and nonsense,” Saburo grumbled. I heard him say to Ichiro, “Eh, Emiru, I saw your brother Kōichi listening to that salesman. He isn’t being swayed to Befu’s camp is he? Why don’t you talk to Kōichi?”

  Kōichi was the youngest of the Terada brothers, the one born in Brazil. When Sei Terada’s husband died, Kōichi was just a little boy. Ichiro and his other brothers wandered off to our place and left Kōichi behind with Sei. When Saburo spoke of Kōichi, Ichiro shrugged. “He just wants to listen in. What harm can it do?” He pushed Saburo’s concern aside.

  The night after the salesman had left, we could see flames filling the skies on the southwestern end of Esperança. Soon there was a commotion of people jumping onto trucks and tractors with buckets. Everyone in Esperança was headed for the Tanaka farm to put out a fire started in their silkworm barn. By the time we all arrived, the barn had burned to the ground. Silkworms and mulberry branches were a charred sizzle. Lumber and thatching smoldered where the barn used to be. Tanaka’s wife was weeping quietly. The Tanakas were having a difficult time, but they were very proud people and didn’t want to join us at New World. My father encouraged them in their new silkworm project, and it looked as if they were starting to make ends meet.

  “This fire was not an accident,” Tanaka insisted. “Cans of gasoline were left behind. You can smell it everywhere.” Those of us who had heard the salesman’s talk about silk farming and traitors felt a strange pang in our hearts, but we did not say anything. Now people say that the burning of the Tanaka silk barn was the work of fanatics, but it was also part of a plan to create confusion.

  At the other end of Esperança, my father had also seen the flames shooting across the moonless night skies. Always a father to our colony, he ran out to the road in the direction of the Tanaka farm to gather help. A car rolled up and stopped on the road. He ran up to the car. “I need to get to that fire! Can you help me?” he cried to the driver.

  Five men in black hoods clambered from the car. One of the men yelled, “Okumura! Traitor!”

  My father did not have time to respond. Five rifles exploded in terrible unison. Unknown to any of us, Takeo Okumura lay in a pool of blood, his body neatly cupped in the palm of that red earth each of us had once held in prayer.

  PART III:

  Kantaro

  You have seen my peaceful youth pass away in a tolerably uniform and agreeable manner, without great disappointments or remarkable prosperity. . . .

  The sweet remembrances of my best years, passed in equal innocence and tranquillity, have left me a thousand charming impressions. . . . It will soon be seen how different are the recollections of the remainder of my life. To recall them renews their bitterness. . . .

  The real object of my Confessions is, to contribute to an accurate knowledge of my inner being in all the different situations of my life. What I have promised to relate, is the history of my soul.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Confessions

  CHAPTER 11:

  Natsuko

  By the end of the war, I was the leader of a large commune of three hundred people farming on a ranch of 420 acres and at least another thousand in outlying areas. At this time, we had a group of ten poultry barns and five thousand laying hens. Seijiro Befu had his trap nests filled with breeding hens stacked three and four shelves high. Befu and I walked through the barns, inspecting our work—the layers all clucking in contentment, nesting in the sweet-smelling rice and sugarcane chaff, smooth white perfect eggs peering from beneath the feathers. We were selling eggs in the immediate vicinity, but if Befu continued to breed with such success, we would need to find markets farther away. Befu could easily see our operation doubling in the next few years. Now that money had again begun to flow, it was time to venture out to make deals, to expound on new ideas, to get financing for new projects. Three hundred hard-working, dedicated people were an immense fortune in productive wealth. It could not be overlooked. Befu and I and others had spoken about so many possibilities, so many grand projections. Now with proper financing and a network of cooperative support, a great dream could be realized. I, Kantaro Uno, would turn Esperança into a great civilization.

  There has been much conjectu
re over the years about my life in the city. Everyone has a story and a particular perception to tell about this period, but I will set the record straight. Of these things I will be honest. There is nothing to hide. My life is an open book.

  In this venturing forth, I renewed my friendship with Shigeshi Kasai, the former owner and publisher of the Brazil Shimpo. While Befu was perhaps my closest comrade at home, it was Kasai who became my city comrade.

  Kasai had left Brazil before the war, barely escaping the Japanese police who had come to Brazil to arrest him. The Japanese military government had been advised of Kasai’s radical views and his outspoken newspaper, and they ordered his immediate arrest. There were few places that Kasai, with a Japanese passport, might be welcome. Kasai went to Germany, mingling with the people and watching the tide of war until one day he was recognized by the Nazi Gestapo. His luck had run out. He was shipped at the request of the Japanese government back to Japan and into prison. Kasai spent the rest of the war in a wretched prison cell in Tokyo. All around him, he could hear Tokyo being bombed. His captors finally left Tokyo in fear. Kasai found himself locked in a cell guarded by no one, without food or water, rotting in the stench of his own refuse, while the city crumbled and burned around him. One day a fellow prisoner managed to escape and excitedly released everyone in the prison. “Go! Come on! We can go! Get out!” he yelled at Kasai, who stared blindly in the man’s direction. “What is it?” the man asked. “Don’t you understand? The Americans are coming. Save yourself!”