The Distant Land of My Father

by Bo Caldwell

  My father remembered someone who’d been in Bridge House saying that you had to keep track of the days and hours in there, that doing so helped keep you sane. But by the time he remembered that advice, it was too late. The days had already run together.

  He was given a bowl of rice in the morning and evening, sometimes with pickled vegetables or a dried herring head. Some of the Chinese boys would pick lice off him if he gave them some of his food. He was interrogated frequently, always at night. A gendarme would come to the cell and call his name, the door would be unlocked, and he would be led upstairs and told to write the approximate dates of the history of his life. When he had done this, he was told to do it again, and again after that, so that he wrote out his personal history perhaps a dozen times. Each time, it was translated into Japanese. Then the gendarme read it over and questioned him. His answers were written down in Japanese on large sheets of ruled paper, which, when complete, were folded into a sort of book that my father was forced to sign and fingerprint on the last page. Most of the prisoners’ statements filled half a dozen books. Some men had been questioned for a month, some for two or more. The intent of most of the questioning seemed to be to link the prisoner with British or American intelligence.

  Interrogations were helped along with various kinds of torture. Some of these my father experienced, some he only witnessed. The gendarmes might beat a man with rubber truncheons, or they might force him to sit in a bright light for twenty hours or more. They used the water cure, letting one drop of water at a time fall on a man’s head for hours. They would force a prisoner to sit up or stand until he or she collapsed. There was also a way in which a man could be made to sit on a bench, his legs straight out in front of him and tied to the bench just below the knees. Then a brick would be placed under the heel, and the guard would hit the man’s heel with a small billy club. They might insert a bristle into the tip of a man’s penis, or place delicate bamboo pipes into a man’s nostrils and pour water into those pipes until the man almost drowned. This was what they did to my father. Within days, the pressure from the water had been so great that it burst both eardrums, and soon they were infected.

  And then, as suddenly as he was taken out, he was returned to camp. His eardrums had started to heal by then, and though his hearing was compromised, it was improving. He had no idea why they were letting him go back to camp. He had not, as far as he knew, answered any of their questions satisfactorily. The questions always centered on American intelligence, a subject about which my father knew little, which was no accident. He had long been certain that no good could come of that type of knowledge, and he’d been careful not to pick it up.

  He was driven back to camp in the same black Chevrolet, where he sat slumped in the backseat, not completely certain of what was happening. But then the car pulled into the main gate at Haiphong Road and he knew where he was.

  The car stopped, and after a pause, the door opened, and John Barrows peered in at my father. “My God,” he whispered. He heard Barrows call for the camp doctors. Then he passed out.

  His condition, though horrible, was no worse than that of anyone who’d been brought from Bridge House. In fact, Dr. Anderson told him that evening, he had actually fared better than most. My father asked how long he had been gone; he guessed a month. “Eleven days,” Anderson said grimly. “It just seemed longer.”

  When he had been back for a few days, and had had food and liquids and a bath and a shave and sleep, he learned that Fletcher had not returned. Barrows asked if he knew anything about what had been done to Fletcher, and my father groaned, for he had forgotten what he’d heard: that Fletcher had been taken to the roof, where he was bound and left there, exposed to the elements.

  Five days after my father’s return, he was up and around. He wrote down as much as he could about his treatment in Bridge House, and he kept to himself, though he knew many of the internees made an effort to welcome him back. Martin tried; he approached my father and met his eyes and my father nodded, but Martin couldn’t speak, and that was all the conversation they had. It was enough for my father. After that he worked at putting Bridge House out of his mind. He concentrated on the future, not the past, and told himself that repatriation, not interrogation, was what should fill his thoughts.

  The weather in Shanghai had been unusual all that summer, but in the days following my father’s return from Bridge House, it turned even stranger. What started as a steady rain became a downpour. A typhoon warning was issued, and wet gusts of wind tore at the huge plane tree by the main entrance. By the next afternoon the camp was flooded inside and out, and at dusk the plane tree blew over and fell to the ground, blocking the entrance to the camp.

  The wind and rain eased the next day, and in the days after that, the flooding subsided. Lieutenant Honda called Barrows and my father in and instructed them to have the camp begin cleaning up. The first order of business was the plane tree. Barrows nodded; he had assumed they would be cutting it up and hauling it away.

  “Colonel Odera orders that the tree is to be put back,” Honda said casually. “It is very beautiful and very old, and he does not want to lose it.”

  Barrows and my father looked at each other and laughed, then stopped. Honda was serious. They tried to explain to him that a tree as big as that could not simply be “put back,” but Honda would hear no arguments.

  “The colonel’s wish,” he said again, and he sent Barrows and my father on their way, giving them orders to have a crew of men working on the tree the next day, no matter what.

  The next morning a crew of fifty men got to work, tying the tree with ropes and using two-by-fours for leverage to help them lift the tree and get it back into the ground. After lunch a new crew relieved them, and it was sometime after that that the gendarmes’ Chevrolet entered the main gate. The work crew was getting close to the point where they could begin to raise the tree, but everyone froze when the car drove into the camp.

  The car stopped in front of the administration building. The gendarmes in the front seat didn’t move. No one did. Not my father, who had been near the tree, but had followed the car when it entered the yard. Not Barrows, or any of the other men near the car. Everyone waited, watching the gendarmes, who just sat in the front seat, staring hard at the internees as if daring them, waiting for them to do or say something.

  My father was closest to the car. The gendarme at the wheel recognized him and nodded as though they were old friends. “You,” he said. “Open the door.” My father walked to the car and carefully opened the door.

  At first he thought it was a prank; there seemed to be no one inside, not on the seat anyway. He thought perhaps it was some sort of delivery, because he saw something on the floor. And then he realized that it was a man. He glanced behind him, suddenly afraid, and met Barrows’s eyes. Barrows called for the camp doctors, and my father leaned into the backseat to help the man out. He thought about trying to lift him, but he knew he had no strength. Finally he stood back from the car and let Barrows climb into the backseat, where he sat for a moment, his expression stunned. When the doctors had carried out a stretcher, Barrows and the two of them lifted the man out of the car and onto the stretcher, then carried him into the camp’s makeshift clinic. It was Fletcher.

  Honda had come out of his office by then. He called for work on the tree to resume, but no one obeyed. The men dropped whatever tools they had, they let the ropes and two-by-fours fall to the ground, and they walked toward the clinic.

  By that time, Anderson and White had seen some twenty-five former guests of Bridge House, men they could barely recognize when they were brought in for care. But Fletcher’s condition was beyond the pale. He looked more dead than alive. He was naked and far too weak to stand, but that didn’t matter yet, as he was unconscious when Barrows and the doctors carried him into the clinic. In fifteen days, he had become a skeleton. Not only was he starved; he was so dehydrated that his internal organs were failing. The skin on his wrists and ankles had been cut
to the bone, as though he’d been bound with wire.

  My father watched as Anderson examined him, and he heard Anderson murmuring something. He was unconsciously reciting the names of the bones he saw protruding from the skin, as though he were teaching anatomy: tibia, femur, ilium, sternum, clavicle.

  It was after Fletcher had been bathed that they found some kind of message, letters scratched into the skin on the insides of his thighs. The word murdered was visible on the inside of one thigh; on the other was the word roof. There were scratches on his wrists as well, but no one could read them.

  “Do you think he did it with a stick?” Anderson said softly, for it was clear that Fletcher was trying to tell whoever found him what had been done.

  The camp doctors were certain that there was nothing they could do for Fletcher. He was too far gone, and although they doubted that he would survive for long anywhere, they insisted that he be taken to a hospital for more care. Barrows went to the colonel, and the next morning Fletcher was transferred. My father and a few other Americans watched him being taken out, a barely living corpse.

  That afternoon Barrows talked the men into resuming work on the plane tree, which was already called Fletcher’s Tree. The colonel had given a direct order that they were to complete the work, and it was pointless to risk his anger, no matter how upset they were. By dusk, the tree was back up.

  The next morning, Honda sent for Barrows and informed him that Fletcher had died at nine o’clock the previous evening. “He did not receive adequate care in that clinic of yours,” Honda said flatly. “We see now that your American and British medicine has its limits, do we not?”

  At the beginning of September, 1943, the colonel announced that Americans and Canadians would be leaving camp in the middle of the month on the Swedish exchange ship Gripsholm, which had carried the first group of repatriates out of China a few months earlier. Negotiations were still in the works for other Allied nationals, so they would stay, for now. On August 14, an announcement in the Shanghai Times had said that the Gripsholm was leaving New York for Shanghai the next day, and that it would be carrying fifteen hundred Japanese, who would be exchanged for the same number of Americans and Canadians.

  That afternoon, my father went to the carpentry shop the prisoners had set up. Martin, the man who resembled my father, was working there that day. Carpentry was a hobby of his, and he’d made a couple of small tables for the camp. He and my father talked for a few minutes about the exchange and about going home, and then my father asked his favor: Could Martin make him a small folding chair for the trip home aboard the ship? He didn’t want one of those big deck chairs, just a small chair he could keep with him.

  Martin looked confused, but he didn’t ask questions. He just said he’d do what he could.

  Two days later, Martin found my father in his room. He’d finished the chair, he said, and he set it up on the floor. My father was impressed; it was perfect. To brace the chair, Martin had used a hollow crossbar from a piece of brass curtain rod he’d found. The wooden slats were from a vegetable crate he’d found near the kitchen garbage. My father thanked Martin, they shook hands, and that was that.

  When Martin had left the room, my father took from the large inside pocket of his overcoat the journal he’d been keeping. A week earlier he’d taken to rolling it up and keeping it in his coat, thinking that it was the safest place. It was sixteen typed pages on thin white paper. My father rolled it up again, as tightly as he could, then looked from it to the curtain rod that braced the chair. It looked possible. He knelt next to the chair and fitted the rolled-up diary into one end of the curtain rod and slid the journal all the way inside, and out of sight.

  Finally the date for the exchange was set: the fifteenth of September. Early that morning, Barrows asked my father to be in charge of the baggage that was to be taken from the camp to the ship, a job my father was more than happy to do. When everything was ready, the Japanese searched every bag and suitcase and box. My father had strapped his chair to his suitcase, and the Japanese guard ordered him to undo it. My father did, and the guard searched his suitcase, then nudged the chair with the toe of his boot and told my father to put it all back together again. An hour later, my father and fifty-four other Americans were taken in army trucks from Haiphong Road to the docks at the Whangpoo, luggage in hand, where they boarded the Gripsholm. Because the ship would be stopping in other ports for prisoner exchanges, the trip would take much longer than usual, three months instead of one. My father didn’t care. All that mattered was that he was leaving.

  Though he knew it would be hard on his heart and his legs, he stayed on deck for the ship’s departure, a gesture of respect for what he was leaving. He could not stand for very long. He was thin and weak, his feet and legs and joints ached, and his right hand trembled crazily when he waved to the few onlookers on the dock. He looked years older than he had ten months earlier; he knew that. He knew, too, that as a result of extreme vitamin deficiencies his complexion was sallow, and that the whites of his eyes were a dirty yellow hue.

  As the Gripsholm began to travel up the Whangpoo, the skyline of the Bund grew small in the distance, and my father strained to keep it in sight. He grieved for the city Shanghai had become, and for what he had lost in the course of that transformation. But when the ship reached the Yangtze and later the Pacific, he ceased dwelling on those things. He was going to a place he would learn to call home, a place where he was loved.

  waiting

  ON A TUESDAY in May of 1942, five months after Pearl Harbor, my mother had received a letter from my father, the first in a year. She came into the kitchen holding it in the air as though it were good news. I looked up from a page of long division I didn’t want to do. “It’s postmarked ‘Java,’” she said, her voice tight, and for the seconds that it took her shaking hands to tear open the thin envelope, I made a wish. Maybe he’s on his way here.

  And then my mother began to read: “‘The McLains are leaving today. They’re sailing on the Tjisdane for Java, and I’m hoping Mac will take this with him and post it there so you’ll know how things are. Shanghai is changed more than you can imagine, Eve. Spirits are low, there’s a closed-in feeling that brings on regret, and every week I tell more friends good-bye. Those of us who’ve stayed don’t talk about where it will end. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get another letter out, so this will have to do for a while, I expect.’”

  The letter went on to detail some of Shanghai’s changes more specifically, much of which I didn’t fully understand. And then there was something I did understand: “‘Two months ago, I closed up the house and moved into town and took a room at the American Club, a few blocks from the Bund and my office. It’s easier to keep a low profile here, and I feel safer. It was the prudent thing to do, though not the easy one. I know that for many foreigners in China, servants are servants. But Chu Shih and Mei Wah had become friends to me, always had been really, but even more so since you left. Saying goodbye to them was harder than I care to admit. The only good thing I can say is that I was able to pay them well. Tell Anna that they will be all right, especially Chu Shih. He planned to go further south, to Canton, where he has relatives. As for our home, it is one of many beautiful residences that have been boarded up and deserted for now. I saw no other choice, as it is more and more dangerous in the Western Roads District.’”

  My mother turned to the last page of the letter. “‘I have tried not to say too much,’” she began, and then she stopped and read the rest of the page to herself.

  “What?” I asked.

  She was still reading and didn’t answer at first. Then she glanced at me and said, “It’s just more about Shanghai.” She refolded the letter and slipped it into the pocket of her skirt.

  “Is he all right?” I asked.

  My mother didn’t answer for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said finally, “but I’m going to believe that he is. I’m not sure how I would function if I considered the alternative.”
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  I nodded, stunned by her lack of reassurance, a first. For four years, she had told me over and over again that he would be all right, that he would be here soon.

  Now she sank into one of the kitchen chairs and leaned forward, her forehead resting on her palm. “I never imagined he wouldn’t come,” she said softly. She sounded truly confused, and she shook her head and laughed sadly. “I thought I was saving him, by leaving. I knew he’d never leave on his own, no matter how bad things got. I just thought that if we left, he’d come, too.” She looked at me and her expression was pained. “What did I do?”

  I took a deep breath. “It wasn’t you,” I said. “I think it was me.” She looked at me quickly. “What do you mean?” “I think he didn’t come because of something I did. Maybe he’s mad at me.”

  My mother looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  I shrugged slightly, feeling some relief at telling her the secret I’d held for so long. “I don’t know what I did, but I think he must be angry with me over something. Why else hasn’t he come?” I’d rarely seen him angry with my mother, so it had to be me. I looked to her for an answer yet again.

  My mother’s face softened. “Oh, Anna, it has nothing to do with you. He loves you, he’s crazy about you.” She smoothed my hair. “How long have you thought that?”

  I shrugged again, trying to seem as though it weren’t important. “A few years,” I said, and I looked down. “Since second grade, I think.”