Tal cupped the envelope in his palm. He felt ambushed and cheated that Remy was involved and knew what was in the envelope. Remy had doubted that Tal could do the job on his own. He’d arranged Donnelly to be backup. Remy had saved the day.
Tal passed the envelope over. Remy put out a hand, too.
“You did a good job. Put ‘er there.”
Tal did not take his father’s mitt.
McElway wagged his head. “You got no call to be that way to him. He done nothin’ wrong. It was me. I asked your daddy if I could send you.”
“You what? You asked him for permission?”
“Yes I did. What you expect a man to do? I ain’t gon’ risk a man’s son without his say-so.”
“What’s in the envelope, Mac?”
“You lookin at the only two people in this camp know what it is. It’s gon’ stay that way. For your own protection.”
“You weren’t too worried about my protection last night.”
Remy spoke. “All right. You’re done.”
Tal walked off. Again, he had no inkling which way to go inside the bounds of the wire, only that he could not go far enough.
~ * ~
yasegaman—”emaciated endurance “
referring to spiritual and physical purity;
a core virtue of the samurai
§
the holidays, shovels, and Camp Freedom
~ * ~
Chapter Seven
C
hristmas morning, Carmen accepted her small bowl of rice.
She set it on the bedside table and stood in front of it, so Mama could not take it back.
“I won t do it,” she said.
“Yes, you will. The little chosenjin will, too. You’ll both go.”
Mama was right. Choice in Carmen’s life had become rare, like food.
“Get out before I slap you.”
The old makipili considered Carmen. “Will you, now?”
“Stay and find out.”
“You lack trouble in your life, Songu? Hmm?”
Carmen held her ground.
“Well, I do not,” Mama said. “Be ready in five minutes.”
Carmen ate her rice sitting on the mattress, avoiding the window. She did not want to be seen by the boy this day.
She had little preparation. She dressed in her cast-off soldier’s uniform, the only clothing she possessed beyond her haori, and laced her black sneakers.
Buttoning the tunic, Carmen no longer sensed the unnamed soldier who’d worn this uniform. Her first days in the shuho, she’d wondered if he’d been killed. When Papa had tossed her the outfit, she checked it for holes or blood, finding none. For months she loathed the absent solider as much as any of those present who used her. His ghost touch was as close as theirs. She tried to launder him away. Then days ago, without expecting it, the soldier in the khaki was gone. This happened the morning after Nagata disgraced Carmen in front of the window. Not just the soldier in the cloth but all the Japanese and the makipilis were gone to her. Her quiet hatred seemed to have withdrawn, as if it were not enough. It cooled into something harder, nothingness. She’d begun to act in temperamental and fearless ways, like the threat just now to give Mama a binta. This had happened to Hua, Carmen understood. The Chinese girl had lost her fear of death and she’d acted, against herself.
Carmen slid aside the curtain to wait in the hall outside her door. She stroked the black drape. The curtain was her captor, too, for it hid what happened in this room. She bunched the fabric and yanked, to pull it down. The drape and rod resisted. Carmen readied to pull again, just to break something. Corporal Kenji arrived at the top of the stairs.
Kenji, already thin and pale, seemed a scarecrow when he looked down the hall at her. He went first to the opposite wing to collect the Korean girl. Carmen let the curtain unfurl from her hand, accepting the uselessness of pulling it down.
Kenji returned to the landing with Yumi. The girl also wore sneakers and a tossed-off khaki uniform too large for her. In the three days since the girl had come to the shuho, Carmen and she had little time together. During the day they were allowed outside at different times, and at night one or both lay with officers. Twice, Carmen had watched Commandant Toshiwara come to Yumi after nightfall.
The two girls followed Kenji past Mama. The old woman turned over the wooden tags for Songu and Yumi, and .
Carmen walked down the stairs beside Yumi. The Korean girl stood no higher than Carmen’s chin, but there was little delicate or timid about her. At the bottom of the stairs, leaving the building’s rear door, the girl swung her arms in her gait, mocking the uniform she wore, and bounced in her sneakers. She seemed merry, on an excursion. Carmen marveled at how unfazed Yumi was; the girl could not have understood what was happening. Even so, Yumi’s mood infected Carmen. She joined the girl in an exaggerated march behind Kenji.
The soldier turned on them. “Stop it,” he said to Carmen. “Others will see.” At Yumi, he barked, “Yamate!”
Kenji led them to the main gate. Carmen made a point of looking into the eyes of every guard she passed, so they could view her on her feet and not her back.
A car and driver waited. She climbed in the rear beside Yumi and rode away from the camp. Carmen left the place and the Tuck boy behind. He could not come today, he would not see. She would do this without him.
Little Yumi took her hand.
“Kenji-sama?” Carmen asked.
The soldier turned from the front seat. His spare face and drawn lips expressed his shame.
“Do not ask me to stop this. I can’t. The order came from Toshiwara. Even he was given an order.”
“I want to ask you something.”
“Yes.”
“What does the symbol on her name tag mean?”
“It is an archery bow.”
“Will you ask her a question for me?”
“Yes. One.”
“What is her real name?”
He spoke to her in Japanese. Yumi replied, her glance flitting between Kenji and Carmen.
Kenji said, “Her birth name is Yun Soo Min. She says it means cleverness and excellence.”
The Korean girl reeled off more fluent Japanese. Kenji’s face curdled. The driver grunted over his shoulder. Yumi finished and smiled.
Kenji said, “She says the bastards who conquered her land made her take the Japanese name Yumi. It means ‘helpful beauty.’ She says this is not likely.”
Kenji muttered something on his own to Yumi. When he finished, he turned to face forward.
Carmen asked at his back, “What did you say?”
Kenji answered. “I told her I was sorry, there was nothing I could do. And to mind her tongue.”
The car headed east toward the sun. Yumi kept Carmen’s hand in her lap. The road wove through villages and towns Carmen had never seen. She’d not been farther than the outskirts of Manila before she was taken to Los Baños, and during her time in the shuho had not once left the camp. The road ran through uncut forests, alongside paddies dried up or weeded over, past farmlands barely worked. Carmen could see plainly that the Japanese had brought much of the hunger on themselves. Only a few carabaos and mules plowed the fields, no cattle grazed. The Japanese must have taken the animals from the farms for their own labor or tables. Only a smattering of peasants worked the soil. Carmen assumed the rest had been jailed or killed, or driven into the resistance. Not one young girl walked free in the villages.
Twenty kilometers from Los Baños, the driver pulled to the shoulder at a sign for the village ahead, Rizal.
Carmen took her hand from Yumi. She reached around the girls shoulders to hug her. Yumi laid her head against Carmen’s breast and Carmen kissed the back of her dark hair.
The driver gestured into the backseat, sweeping his hand across the girls.
“Ike!”
Yumi got out, Carmen followed. Kenji spoke to the driver. The men argued while Carmen and Yumi waited beside the road. After heated words, Kenji joined the girls
outside the car. The driver reversed his course and motored away.
“I will stay with you,” Kenji said.
The three stood on the shoulder, staring into the village. Carmen became thirsty. Yumi kicked stones into the ditch.
Carmen touched Kenji’s arm. “Thank you.”
He would not look at her.
“Will you ask her another question for me?”
“No.” The tall corporal raised a hand. “Listen.”
From the village a hundred yards away came a sound of crunching. In seconds the noise grew louder, a horde coming their way, the din of boots on the tarmac.
“It’s time,” said Kenji.
The Korean girl moved first. She peeled the khaki tunic over her head, then dropped her overlarge pants. She was bare in seconds, standing only in sneakers. Yumi rolled her clothes together and handed them to Kenji. She thrust her small breasts, her short muscular thighs, up the road to face the soldiers, like the archery bow of her symbol. Above the grind of the soldiers’ approach, catcalls fluttered.
Yumi spoke to Kenji, then gestured to Carmen.
He interpreted. “She says it’s too hot for a long walk in clothes. Come, sister.”
Kenji turned his back to allow Carmen to strip. She thought this a naive and wasted kindness.
Hesitating, Carmen undid the buttons of her tunic. She glanced down at her brown bosom. In the confines of the shuho, day after day, her body had been pummeled beneath the squalid and sour weight of the Japanese. She lived naked under her thinning red haori for weeks at a time. But this, in the sunshine, being forced to walk stripped in front of a thousand troops to draw them onward, she had built no calluses against this. She was Filipina. This road was her country. The villagers who would gawk were her people.
Naked, Yumi stepped in front of her. The girl lowered Carmen’s motionless hands, replacing them with her own on the buttons. Gently, she disrobed Carmen, attending her emergence, folding the clothes. She gave them to Kenji. Carmen, like Yumi, remained in her sneakers.
The column of soldiers arrived, swarming all three of them on the road. Passing, they whistled, made guttural noises, some touched the girls.
“Walk,” Kenji said. “Please.”
All the soldiers were filthy and haggard, and some looked exhausted. Many appeared no older than Carmen, teenagers. This unit must have just landed on the coast. They were marching west across Luzon toward Los Baños, then probably on to Manila. Someone assumed they’d go more eagerly if they were shown that comfort women waited for them ahead.
Carmen faced into their current. The soldiers flowed past with hands sliding across her stomach and buttocks. One cupped her breast, shouting to his mates, “Kurisumasu desu!” It’s Christmas.
Kenji gripped the girls’ clothes. He repeated, “Please.”
Again, Yumi took Carmen’s hand.
~ * ~
Carmen and Yumi led the tired column. The men marched with no banners, cadence, or pomp, just scuffling soles. The girls walked quickly to stay out front, away from the soldiers’ dirty hands. Kenji lagged one step behind them as a buffer. He, too, was an object of whistles and vulgarity, some of which Yumi found amusing and asked Kenji to translate for Carmen.
After the first two kilometers, they entered the village of San Lorenzo. The street remained empty; the citizens and their children peered from huts or the pitiful fields. Lined faces and silvered heads brought to mind Carmen’s parents and her grandfather. They would not comprehend this if they saw. She could not run out of the procession to tell the watching people, I am not a whore, I am not disgraced. She drew her spine erect to explain herself, that she was a slave like them and humiliated like them, but she was not beaten. Beside her, Yumi, who had walked like this from the outset, nodded.
Word spread ahead of the column. In the next village, San Buenaventura, the road was lined with folk. Villagers held out cups of water to the girls. An old woman stepped into the road to spread a quilt across Carmen’s bare shoulders. Carmen thanked her and handed the blanket back. Filipino men balled fists, called to her in Tagalog to stay strong, “Lakasan mo ang loob mo” and we’ll get even, don’t worry, “Makakaganti rin tayo, huwag kang mag-alala.” few younger ones shouted, “Hukbalahap,” the name of a Communist guerrilla group.
Beyond San Buenaventura, into the eighth kilometer of the walk, the soldiers’ fervor waned. The procession entered a long stretch of trees close by the road, killing the breeze. The tarmac grew warm, the march became a trudge forward. The girls’ nakedness at the head of the column turned absurd. Carmen grew numb to the soldiers behind her and they, by their scraping boots and complaints, paid little attention in return. She shared the last of a bottle of water from the village with Yumi. The girl spared a swallow for Kenji. On Carmen’s brown skin, the sun made no dent. She worried about Yumi’s pallid complexion.
“Kenji.”
“Yes.”
“Lay her shirt across her shoulders. She’s burning.”
“I cannot.”
Carmen stopped walking, the first time in an hour. She wheeled on Kenji to pull from him the girl’s tunic. He did not resist. She covered Yumi’s shoulders, then resumed the walk.
No one in the shuffling ranks behind them objected. Carmen left herself fully naked. Those with the stamina left to do so could gape at her alone.
“Carmen?”
She did not look at Kenji.
“What?”
“I want you to know. I am a good man. I am educated.”
A bead of sweat dribbled between her breasts. The blue marks of chains around Yumi’s ankles had not faded. Kenji’s statement made no sense. Carmen did not judge him. He was Japanese. Nothing could alter that.
He continued. “When the war is over, I will save you.”
You can only keep me alive, she thought. The Tuck boy can save me.
She asked, “Will you do me a favor?”
“If I can.”
“I want you to translate to Yumi for me. I want to talk to her.”
“About what?
“I want to know where she’s from. How she got to the shuho. And I want to tell her about me.”
“But... do you have an answer for what I just said? That I will save you?”
“Why would you save a pii?”
“I’ve never called you that.”
“No. You haven’t.” She touched his arm. “Will you talk to her for me?”
He looked back at the thousand soldiers. “Now?”
Carmen gestured at the blank road stretching onward. “I’ve got nothing on my hands at the moment.” She laughed alone at the pun. “Yes, Kenji-sama. Now, if you please.”
~ * ~
Yun Soo Min kept her name for her first five years. At age six, she told her mother she wanted to go to the school in their village of Kon Ham in North Cholla province. The mother agreed, but the father said that women who study become foxes. He did not know a letter of the alphabet or a single written symbol but he could thresh rice, drive an ox, and raise a family. The mother won out. When the child returned from the village on her first day of school, she told her father the Japanese teacher had ordered her to go by the name Yumi. The father slapped her and the mother.
Carmen asked if the girl had brothers. Yes, two older boys. Both were taken to Japan to work in war factories. She did not miss them, they were as ignorant and harsh as her father.
Would she rather be called Yumi or Soo Min?
Yumi was fine. One name was given by her father, the other by the Japanese. Neither was preferable.
How did she come to Los Baños?
Yumi corrected the way Kenji asked the question. He used the term jugun ianfu, for “comfort woman,” a phrase Yumi would not accept. She said, “I am gunyo sei dorei. A military sex slave.” Carmen, walking naked, was struck at how Kenji could translate these words without expression.
Yumi said that, for years, recruiters of young women roamed Korea. They claimed to be seeking volunteers, girls to
travel to Japan for work in munitions factories, first for the war in Manchukuo, later for the fight against the Americans. Large advances of money were offered to families who sent their daughters to join the jungshindae, “voluntary female war workers.” The girls would work off the payment and earn enough to live on their own.
Yumi wanted no part of this corps. She had no wish to see Japan as a laborer like her brothers, and even less desire to help her father gain a sum of cash he would likely squander. She wanted just to learn and one day teach others. Her father insisted she join; she was useless on the farm, too small and light to walk on the rice plants to separate the stalks from the grain. Even carrying her books from the Kon Ham school she did not weigh enough, he said. So she should go with the Japanese and help her family that way.
Broken Jewel - [World War II 05] Page 10