Above the East China Sea

by Sarah Bird

  It annoyed me to hear her speaking the same backward, traitorous thoughts as my mother, and I wanted to leave. But she still gripped my chin as she went on. “You with your true Okinawan eyes and heart and soul, remember all that you will see. Remember and then tell the tale. Tell the truth of what happens.” With that, she released my chin and set off at a furious pace. When I didn’t follow, she glanced back and snapped, “Come along.”

  I was torn between prudence and curiosity. As it always did with me, though, curiosity won out and I scurried after her. A cluster of silk cherry blossoms dangled like a cute pink tail from the long silver pin stabbed into her high bun. I followed that bobbing pink tail down the steep stairway back to Shuri below. Even at this early hour, the town was bustling. Vendors yelled out that their gōyā melons were fresh or their suzuki fish had been caught that very morning. Delivery girls balanced pots of tea and baskets of andāgii still warm from the fryer atop their heads. At the base of the stairs, we passed beneath a high torii just like the ones in Japan and onto a broad avenue that was lined on both sides by stone lanterns as tall as a man. At a Buddhist temple next to the avenue, a priest sprinkled water on the steps to keep down the dust.

  A mother and her daughter emerged from the temple. The girl, probably only a year or two younger than me, ran ahead of her mother. When the mother saw her nearing the juri she called out sharply, “Watch where you are going! Remember what I told you!”

  The girl stopped, stared up at the juri, and froze in horrified recognition. The mother rushed up and yanked her stunned daughter away.

  Though the juri acted as if she hadn’t noticed the insult, a red welt appeared on the pale skin of her neck, as crimson as the mark of a lash. With her head held high, we continued on. When she spoke, her voice was calm and deliberate, and since she didn’t so much as glance my way, it almost seemed as if she were speaking more to herself than to me. “No one knows what fate has in store for her. This very day, for example, a habu viper hiding and waiting for just such an opportunity might strike at that mother’s ankle as she walks to the gate of her fine home. And in spite of the desperate prayers her daughter offers for her beloved mother, the heart of her hearts, her protector and comfort, the mother will die that night. Then, in what he says is his grief, but all know to be his selfish cupidity, the father will marry his young and stupid mistress and bring her and her stupid family and all their debts into their house. The father will drink even more as the debt collectors’ demands grow ever more impossible. When everything has been sold, except for all the mistress’s fine goods and expensive presents, which she has hidden away, the father, who must save his honor at all costs, will sell his daughter, and all his shame will be transferred to her.

  “Mind where you’re going,” the juri snapped at me, and I jumped out of the way of a motorcycle. A Japanese naval officer, splendid in his sparkling white uniform and peaked hat with its black patent-leather visor, sat in the sidecar, serenely observing the passing scene. A class from the Shuri Boys Prefectural High School approached. They were dressed in long-sleeved white shirts, crisply ironed white pants, and white shoes. They wore black ties and their hair was neatly combed and shone in the sunlight. When the boys passed, the fragrance of sandalwood and mandarin oranges hung in the air behind them.

  “Careful, you’ll catch a fly.” The juri laughed at me for gaping, open-mouthed, at the handsome boys. The juri stopped and studied me. “Well, aren’t you going now to high command headquarters to join your fellow Princess Lilies?”

  I glanced at the chaos around me with no idea what direction to set out in.

  The juri, seeing my confusion, said, “Come along; follow me. Even a very, very smart girl can get turned around in Shuri.”

  As I followed her farther into the heart of Shuri, the town on the outskirts of Naha that I had visited so often became more and more unrecognizable. Gone was the peace I’d always found strolling the sleepy streets canopied by banyan trees. The sound of horse hooves slowly clopping against the cobblestones and the jolly cries of vendors were replaced by the harsh voices of commanders barking orders at soldiers marching past in crisp lines, by the sputter of motorcycles and the rumble of truck engines. Where once the air had been perfumed with the fragrance of vendors’ papayas, pineapples, mangos, and bananas, now a pall of diesel fumes enshrouded the town.

  We approached what had once been a shady park with stone benches for resting beneath a thicket of ancient Ryukyuan pine, some of them said to have been planted during the reign of King Shō Tai, and I found that all the trees had been cut down. The barren field, trampled now into mud, was surrounded by a tall barbed-wire fence with loops of razor wire at the top. Inside were rows of crude, hastily constructed huts, each one with a door that opened at the top like a stable. All the doors had a number on them; most were shut. At the few open ones, women stood looking out, like horses waiting to be fed. Their faces seemed made of stone, statues with no expression at all.

  Outside the fence, a line of soldiers—low-ranking ones in baggy uniforms, crumpled, sweat-stained caps, and dirty leg wrappings—waited beneath a sign that read, “Welcome Soldiers of a Holy War.” When each man’s turn came, a sergeant gave him a number and pointed to one of the doors. Clasping his number, the soldier would hustle over to the appointed stall, step in, and both sections of the door would be closed behind him. Two briefly unoccupied women exchanged a few words in a language that wasn’t Okinawan or Japanese.

  “Korean comfort women,” the juri informed me. “Don’t stare; they’ve been brought here to keep you Princess Lilies pure.”

  I didn’t understand why her tone was so harsh, and she gave me no time to ask as we hurried on to an area where there were no civilians at all. Everyone was in uniform. Suddenly I recognized what had once been the home of Okuda Seitoku, who’d become the richest man on the island by selling lumber to the Japanese. I wondered what had happened to him, since his vast, Western-style mansion now had a magnificent flagpole out front with the rising sun whipping in the wind at its top and a sign that identified it as the headquarters of the 32nd Imperial Army.

  “You, Okinawan whores, you aren’t allowed here!” A skinny guard with snaggled teeth braced his rifle across the juri’s chest, barring our way.

  In perfect, high-class Japanese without the slightest trace of an Okinawan accent, the juri responded, “And you, you ignorant, cat-toothed bumpkin who smells of his own shit, you had better step aside immediately if you know what is good for you.”

  The guard’s face purpled with fury, and he spoke in a hissing whisper that boiled with rage: “You have insulted a soldier of the emperor. You have insulted the emperor. You will be executed.”

  As soldiers, bayonets pointing at us, closed in, I cursed myself for being so stupid as to fall in with a crazy woman; there was no hope of running away this time.

  TWENTY

  The juri whirled on the soldiers and demanded, “What are you idiots doing? Do you dare impede my passage? Move aside immediately or I shall be forced to report your insubordination to”—she pulled a pass from the sash of her kimono, and with a theatrical elegance handed it to the cat-toothed guard as she pronounced the name—“General Chō.”

  The look of horror that dawned on the guard’s face froze into wide-eyed terror as he read the signature at the bottom of the juri’s pass. Holding the pass with the sacred signature above his head, the guard prostrated himself at our feet. The other soldiers followed suit. The juri plucked her pass from the guard’s trembling fingers, stepped around the cowering figures, and led me away, tossing over her shoulder, “I detest bullies, don’t you?”

  A road, so new the asphalt was still black and sticky, led us to a massive construction area. Through the clouds of dust raised by dump trucks, I saw an army of Okinawan workers streaming in and out of a building guarded by soldiers in khaki uniforms, rifles slung over their shoulders, who glared fiercely at all who approached.

  The workers were a mix of men i
n loincloths and women in baggy trousers, all with cloths tied over their mouths and noses to keep out the dust. They left the building tottering beneath the weight of baskets filled with large rocks balanced on their heads with only a coil of thin cloth as a cushion. One after another, the laborers dumped their loads onto a huge pile, then turned around and went back to the building, holding their now-empty baskets.

  “Well, here we are,” the juri said, stopping behind a pile of discarded stone. “Just show the guard your Himeyuri ID card and you’ll be admitted.” She watched my nervous expression for a moment, then added, “Or you could simply slip in with the work crew.” She smiled; I hadn’t fooled her.

  “How did you know?”

  “No real Princess Lily girl would ever speak to a woman like me. It was one of the first things our Japanese teachers taught us.”

  “You …”

  “Were a Himeyuri girl?”

  Instead of answering, she folded back the inner collar of her kimono and revealed the distinctive lily brooch pinned there. Turning to leave, she said to me, “Don’t ever let them make you forget that you are Uchinānchu. The blood of kings runs in your veins.” With the slightest of bows, she disappeared in the dusty haze. The last I ever saw of her was the pink cherry blossoms at the end of the long silver pin in her beehive bun bouncing gaily behind her.

  Before I could be noticed, I pulled the furoshiki from my satchel and tied it around my face so that only my eyes were visible, then hurried to the stone pile, snatched up a discarded basket, stuck it atop my head, and fell in with a crew entering the work site. The Japanese guards, seeing only the bracket on my head and my round face and brown Okinawan skin, barely glanced my way as they waved me in.

  Once inside, we all funneled into a single narrow line and descended down a steep staircase carved into the limestone and lit with naked bulbs strung up above our heads. The stairs plunged farther and farther into the earth until we were deep beneath the ancient capital. When we had descended twenty meters beneath the surface, we arrived at a main tunnel. I glanced around and my mouth dropped open in astonishment, for stretched out in front of me as far as I could see was a vast underground kingdom.

  Side tunnels with plastered walls and polished concrete floors fanned off in every direction from the main one. Soldiers on vital missions marched briskly past stooped laborers. I followed the crew I’d entered with. We passed large rooms filled with officers bent over maps. Okinawan boys my age and younger, members of the Blood and Iron Student Corps, stood at attention nearby, waiting to serve as couriers. An officer called for a boy, snapped a message into his hand, and he bolted away to deliver it. In a kitchen area with a chimney dug up through the ground, a red-faced cook bent over a large kettle that wafted the delicious odor of boiling rice. Room after room was stacked with sleeping planks, a vast barracks large enough for hundreds of men.

  Farther on was a dispensary, a roomful of typists, and, most astonishing of all, a telephone switchboard with operators wearing headsets pulling out and plugging in cords. And all of it was buried deep in the earth, safe from American bombs. As this marvelous warren hummed around me, I knew then that my mother and the juri were wrong and that Hatsuko and my father were right: The Japanese Empire was unconquerable.

  I shivered as a thrill of pride ran through me at the thought that I, too, might be allowed to be part of this magnificent enterprise. Even if I had to do it as a rock carrier, I was determined that I would serve our emperor. For a moment, it appeared that this was exactly what would happen. The crew came to a halt at the end of a tunnel that rang with the clanging of picks striking rock as men burrowed farther into the earth. The workers scrambled to refill their baskets with the loosened stones.

  I gently slid my basket to the ground and was backing away when a squat sergeant wearing a cap too small for his melon-shaped head stopped me and, wagging his finger at the student’s satchel strapped across my chest, demanded, “What are you doing here?”

  I didn’t know whether to answer in my best Japanese or to prove that I was nothing but a local laborer by speaking in Uchināguchi. Even though I decided on Japanese and was answering in his language, the impatient sergeant made a face, stopped me, and said, “Never mind. I can’t understand your Okinawan gibberish anyway. You must be one of the new Himeyuri girls straight off the farm. You are in the wrong wing entirely.” Speaking slowly, as if to a not-very-bright child, he gave me directions, adding, “And don’t get in the way. There are a thousand soldiers down here serving the emperor. Don’t disturb them!” I nodded my head and hurried away before he could demand my school papers or notice that I wasn’t wearing a lily pin.

  Though I tried to follow the sergeant’s directions, I quickly became lost in the labyrinth. To hide how bewildered I was, I would straighten up every time an officer, his heels clicking smartly on the concrete floor, right hand resting on the hilt of his sword, strode past. If he was especially handsome, I wondered whether he might be Hatsuko’s lieutenant.

  I was at a loss as to how I would ever find Hatsuko without revealing that I was an intruder, when a group of girls passed by, all neatly dressed in sailor blouses with the brooches of the Princess Lily students gleaming on their chests. I followed them to a large ward where a class of more than a hundred students watched a nurse with a name band tied around her right arm that identified her as Head Nurse Tanaka. A heavyset Japanese woman with a deep voice and a sallow complexion, Head Nurse Tanaka was demonstrating how to inject salt water into a tangerine. I searched frantically for Hatsuko’s face, but there were so many girls crowding around the nurse I couldn’t find my sister.

  Head Nurse Tanaka clapped her hands sharply and all the girls immediately fell silent. “We have no time to waste today. We must finish our lesson quickly, because the photographer is here to take portraits for your records. So let us begin without—”

  Head Nurse Tanaka saw something in the doorway that caused her to stop and come to rigid attention. All the girls followed suit when an Imperial officer strode into the classroom. He was tall and slender with the bearing of a prince and, when he conferred with Tanaka, he never once removed his white-gloved hand from the hilt of his sword. This had to be the famous Lieutenant Nakamura. I searched the crowd even harder for Hatsuko.

  Head Nurse Tanaka clapped her hands sharply and called out, “Girls, attention! Our liaison officer, Lieutenant Nakamura, has been kind enough to leave his far more important duties for a moment and deliver a message to us. Because your backward country never developed a system of dams and reservoirs such as we have in Japan, water supplies are running low.”

  I joined the other girls and bowed my head, ashamed of Okinawa.

  “The lieutenant reminds us that water is not to be wasted on bathing or for any purpose other than drinking. Do you all understand?”

  As one the Princess Lily girls shouted out a rousing, “Hai!”

  The lieutenant bowed in response, his long, curved sword sweeping out behind him. In the split second before he stood back up, his gaze locked on someone in the crowd. I followed it and found Hatsuko in the moment that her eyes met his. Hatsuko jerked her glance away from the lieutenant’s, but not before a blush had crimsoned her face. Nakamura gave a barely perceptible nod in her direction and left.

  “Group leaders!” Head Nurse Tanaka called out brusquely. Four students stepped forward. Of course Hatsuko was one of them. “Gather up your supplies.” She nodded toward three sopping tangerines already heavily perforated from earlier practice groups, and one rusty old syringe.

  I joined the girls who clustered around Hatsuko. My beautiful cousin Mitsue was the first to notice me. She smiled such a wide smile that two dimples dented her cheeks, and she rushed over to hug me. I hadn’t seen her since she’d gotten engaged to a soldier, Masaru, whose name meant Victory, and she seemed even lovelier than she had before. When my sister spotted me she squealed, clapping her hands over her mouth to silence the shriek.

  “Little Guppy, y
ou came! I can’t believe that Mother and Father actually allowed you to leave. Aaah, you’re so dusty, and your hair!” My sister plucked a dead leaf from my hair, smoothed the crazy waves down with her fingers, turned me to face her friends, put her arms around me, rested her chin on the top of my head, and, squeezing hard, whispered to her friends, “Look, everyone, it’s my little sister, Tamiko. My darling Tami-chan. We call her Little Guppy. Doesn’t she look just like a little guppy? A cute little guppy?”

  “She does!” a girl with straight, shiny bangs whispered back. “She reminds me of my little sister. Oh, I miss my Kiko-chan so much. Will you be my little sister too?”

  The six other girls in Hatsuko’s unit all agreed on the spot that I had to be their little sister as well. Just as Hatsuko had promised, I was not only welcomed but adopted as a mascot. The Japanese were another story. In order to ward off any suspicion that I might be a spy, Hatsuko took off her Princess Lily pin.

  “Here,” Hatsuko said, “put this on.”

  “Big sister, I can’t. That’s your school pin.”

  She brushed aside my protest, pinning the lily on my blouse herself. “You need it more than I do. Everyone knows me. I’m head girl. That’s the head-girl pin. Though the soldiers don’t know us by name or face, they all recognize a head-girl pin. They won’t question you if you’re wearing one.” I glanced down and tried to see what the difference was between her pin and the other girls’, but they all looked identical to me.

  Before I could ask what distinguished a head-girl’s pin, Hatsuko interrupted with a question of her own: “So did you see the secret we’ve been working on?”

  “The tunnels? They’re astonishing.”

  “And there are dozens, hundreds more like them all over the island.”

  “Even hospitals,” Sachiko added. “Where we will serve as nurse’s aides, helping patients write letters and cheering them on as they prepare to return to battle. All safe beneath the flag of the Red Cross.”