Above the East China Sea

by Sarah Bird

  Vaughn, too, sags back down, the scene on the monitor forgotten. “So I assume she got Gene to marry her, take her with him when he left?”

  I nod that this is the case. As Vaughn goes to a shelf and searches through it, I think about how I’d always been told that my grandfather’s family had rejected us because they were racist and hated my “Oriental” grandmother. But I recall a family photo when my grandmother was pregnant, standing in front of Gene’s husky Missouri farming family. They were all smiling. A big woman in a housedress stood between Gene and my grandmother, her freckled arms draped protectively over both of them. No such happy family pictures exist after my dark-skinned mother was born.

  Vaughn pulls out an old leather-bound Bible, opens the tissuey pages to one showing a family tree. “There it is. Goes all the way back to slave times. Got a German in there. Seminole. Cuban. Irish. Little bit of everything. All ended up getting called black.”

  I ask him for some paper and a pen and begin copying. Vaughn goes from monitoring the girls with the marines to watching me and nodding with approval. “It’s good to know who your people are. Important.”

  I copy the names. The oldest ones, from the early eighteen hundreds, sound either English or Old Testament. Nancy. Abraham. Bessie. Isaac. I write them down, but those aren’t the names I’m really interested in. I doubt they’ll help the yuta; I need Okinawan names. When I’ve gotten down enough of this stranger’s family tree to be polite I ask, “What about my grandmother’s family?”

  “Sukie’s people?” He blows out from between clenched teeth. “Okinawans and family, that’s a whole other deal. Hard for an American to understand. We go around saying, ‘Family’s the most important thing.’ Not even close. Minute family gets between an American and what’s really important to him—money, power, pussy, being left alone—he’ll cut ’em loose so fast. Not Okinawans. Ain’t no cuttin’ loose for an Oki. Family’s yours in this life and all the ones to come. Worse than the damn Mormons.

  “Sukie thought she was lucky that way. Bragged all the time about what an important family she come from.”

  “The Ueharas.”

  “Right. She even took me once to see the tomb. Bigger than her apartment, swear to God.”

  “Do you remember her father’s name?”

  “What was that sonabitch’s first name? Haru? Hideo? Hiroshi, that’s it. Hiroshi Uehara.”

  I write the name down, the first on my list for the yuta. “And her mother?” I ask, but Delmar Vaughn isn’t finished yet with my grandmother’s father.

  “Old Hiroshi. Owned most of the land where the big marine air station is now. Of course, all the property titles were burned and bombed to dust during the war. U.S. military only too happy not to have any property titles to deal with when Japan gave them pretty much anything they wanted long as it was way off here on Okinawa and not on the mainland. Without the land, though, Uehara had nothing. That’s why he adopted Sukie.”

  I stop writing. “Adopted?”

  “Yeah, thought you knew that. Sukie was an orphan. Ueharas adopted her.”

  I put the pen down. I need the names of blood relations. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Happened a lot back then. There were so many orphans after the war, they were handing them out at those detention camps like puppies at the pound. Sukie was too young to remember her real family, her mother. All she knew was that she was what they called a ‘surplus person.’ Thought she was lucky that the Ueharas took her in, even if it meant she worked like a dog all day and slept on a mat in the kitchen at night. The whole deal was tied to them allowing her to be buried in their tomb. That was supposed to be the big payoff for her, that she wouldn’t spend eternity all alone. Always knew that her place was to serve that family however she could, ’cause if she ever let them down, all the Uehara ancestors would make her life hell not only in this world but in the next one too.

  “The reason girls were adopted was to be maids or field hands. Then, if they were pretty enough and the family needed money because Dad gambled or whored around, they’d be sold to a house. All the shame would be loaded onto the girls, so the family would be cleansed when she was sold off as a prostitute.

  “Very common, very accepted back then. Hell, happens now. The big Korean?” He points to the screen where the Korean girl sits, waiting. “That’s why she’s here. And her?” He nods toward a screen where one of the Filipinas is, alone, hosing down the tiled room. “Dad gambles. Got so far in the hole to the Yakuza, he had to sell her or they’da killed him. But these girls”—he waves dismissively toward the screens—“none of them are as smart or as determined as Sukie was. By the time I met her, she’d worked her way out of the suckee-fuckee business, and had a job as a hostess, getting dumb GIs to buy watered-down drinks.”

  A speaker emits a scratchy blast of staticky Japanese. Vaughn zooms in on the panel showing Mama-san having an angry conversation with the two marines, who are now standing in front of her reception desk; she’s holding their ID cards hostage.

  “Oops, gotta go to work.”

  I follow Vaughn downstairs, where he steps up and tells the marine, “We got you on tape, buddy. You had your hands on the girl. That is illegal and you know it is illegal. So you can either pay the penalty or we call in the local popo, show them the tape, and see what they want to do.”

  As I slip out, unnoticed, I think of the Ueharas, the family my grandmother thought had truly accepted her, the one she told her daughter would be waiting for her with open arms. I think of my mother locked in the bathroom smoking her secret cigarettes and of the letter she’d read in there. How it had probably told her that she and her mother weren’t related to them at all. That, no matter what Setsuko had told her, or even believed herself, she had no real, no blood connection to them and they owed her nothing. That the stranger in the photo, the street corner dude, was her only true, blood relation. It is dark outside when I leave. In the side room, the Korean girl is still sitting alone, waiting.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Hatsuko’s hand was ice-cold when I took it and led her away. In the main corridor one of the Himeyuri teachers, an Okinawan man, was addressing the student nurses. Nearly all 220 of us were there, listening anxiously as he said, “Each of you will receive one go of rice. We will follow the army south to Makabe. Only patients who can make the journey unaided will be allowed to come with us. Move only at night. Seek shelter before the sun rises. There are caves everywhere. Hide in them during the day. Stay away from our tombs. They have been used as gun emplacements by our brave soldiers; hence the enemy will blow them up on sight.”

  My heart constricted. I prayed that Mother and Father had fled to a cave near our home and not to our family tomb.

  “And most important, know this: Anyone who attempts to surrender will be shot. Death before dishonor!”

  A few girls answered by wishing the emperor a thousand years, but most of us scurried away, anxious to draw our skimpy rations before all the rice was gone.

  There was no moon that night and our group set forth into a dark, expectant stillness. I hoped that Mitsue would remain out of sight; I didn’t want Hatsuko to have to see her. Though we felt the presence of the enemy as if horrible beasts hiding in the darkness were watching our every step, it was heartening to be surrounded again by so many Princess Lily girls. I took strength from their courage. We barely whispered to one another, and then only to call out warnings. Hatsuko, though, said nothing and moved in a slow, mechanical way, still in shock from what we had seen in that dark corridor.

  As we climbed a steep hill, the only sound was our own labored breathing. We had almost been lulled into believing that the enemy was sleeping when a shell burst lit the forbidding hill with a stark bluish blaze of illumination. The sky filled then with enough tracer fire and gun flashes for a dangerous twilight to leave us exposed. A shell landed on a pile of rocks nearby and sent hundreds of lethal fragments flying toward us. Bigger rocks, shaken loose by the concussion, avala
nched down the hill. Shrieks of pain identified those hit by fragments or crushed by the boulders.

  My body flooded with adrenaline strength at the sound of those death cries. I reached behind me, grabbed Hatsuko’s hand, and dragged her off that hill and as far from the group as I could before collapsing. There was no safety anymore in our group. There was only the danger of being a larger target. I huddled with Hatsuko for a long time, letting the others drift far ahead of us, before we set out again.

  After we had marched for several hours, it began to pour. The American flares glittered like long silver arrows through the sheets of rain. Water streamed down the ghostly faces of the refugees we passed. Villages had been reduced to piles of stone and ash, with an occasional bit of broken red roof tile. The stench of rotting carcasses filled the air. Worse were the occasional blazes of red and blue flames that burned even in the wet darkness, for we knew the flames were feeding on the burning fat of a body recently hit by shells. We hoped that it was animal fat but knew that many times it wasn’t.

  The rain stopped shortly before dawn. I managed to find shelter in a rare, intact farmhouse so recently abandoned that a fire was still warm in the white ashes. Hatsuko and I huddled together through the long day. That night we were unable to sleep for the constant bombardment all around.

  By nightfall, we were back on the road to Makabe, and had no choice but to occasionally join the stream of refugees fleeing the bombing that, like a forest fire, was driving all creatures ahead of its destructive wake. The battle behind us rumbled as loudly as an approaching thunderstorm. Tanks roared; rockets shrieked; mortars landed with powerful whumps that we felt in our guts. The smell of cordite drifted in, mixed with the stink of decaying corpses.

  Soon a heavy, drenching rain began to fall again. The night air turned cool, and, soaked and starved as we were, we started to shiver. In the downpour we splashed past mothers begging their exhausted children to hurry; old men pulling carts piled high with clanking pots, bent over so far that their wispy white beards dragged in the mud; young boys balancing huge bundles tied to either end of long shoulder poles, staggering beneath their loads; old women plodding forward mechanically while rain and tears washed down their wrinkled faces; mothers struggling forward with babies strapped onto their backs and heavy baskets wobbling atop their heads. The mothers carrying babies made me think of Chiiko and Little Mouse and I prayed that they were safe.

  I could no longer hold back my concerns, and asked everyone I could where they were from, hoping to find someone from near our village who might be able to give us news of Mother and Father and the others. But I found no one. The rain stopped, but, exhausted by heartbreak, Hatsuko faltered and pleaded for rest. In a few hours, the sun would rise and we would be exposed to the tombos, the droning dragonflies searching for the slightest jiggle of motion. Because we were all streaming down this road together, soldiers and civilians, carts and army trucks mixed together, the planes swooping out of the sun would see only targets to be bombed or strafed. I had to keep Hatsuko moving. We had to find a cave, somewhere to hide, before the sun rose.

  So when Hatsuko let her pack fall to the ground and started to slump down beside it, I lied, saying, “Ahead there! On the road. That platoon of soldiers that just passed us. Isn’t that Nakamura with them?”

  Even after what we had seen back in the cave, the lieutenant’s name acted on my sister like a jolt of electricity. She retrieved her pack, shouldered the bundle, and told me to hurry; the platoon was getting away from us.

  “I won’t speak to him,” she assured me, adding, “I will never speak to him again. I just want to make sure that he got out safely.”

  Because I knew that Nakamura wasn’t with the soldiers, I became the one who dawdled; I wanted to keep Hatsuko moving, but not quickly enough to discover my ruse. Still, she summoned her last bit of energy and hurried us along. When we drew abreast of the soldiers, Hatsuko ran to the head of the platoon and stood watching as they straggled past. After the last dispirited soldier had marched by, she waited for me to catch up. Her body and spirit slumped dangerously as she said mournfully, “He wasn’t with them.”

  “He must already be in Makabe then,” I offered. And, though I hated the lie, I added, “He’s probably waiting for you there, sick with worry. I’m certain that once we find him in Makabe, Nakamura will explain everything.” Then I added the worst part of the lie: “Hatsuko, Nakamura is an officer in the Japanese Imperial Army, a soldier of the emperor. Which means that, by definition, he is incapable of doing anything dishonorable.”

  Hatsuko considered my pretty words, weighed them against the sight of Mitsue and Nakamura together, and found that they came up short. “I can’t go any farther, Tami-chan. Leave me here. I will rest and find you in Makabe. Or in the next life, if that is my fate. I have to rest. I have no energy left.” She collapsed on the wet ground and begged me, “Leave me here. I can’t go on.”

  It was just as Anmā had warned me: My sister’s head was filled with airy thoughts. And now that they had been punctured, she deflated like a balloon. For a moment I wondered why I had to be the one whose broad feet were planted on the earth; I was the little sister. She was my onēsama, my honorable older sister. Shouldn’t she be the one looking after me?

  A deafening explosion blew all such thoughts away as a bomb went off so close that fragments of smashed stone were driven into the side of my head. A sharp pain stabbed deep inside my right ear and I felt warm blood flowing down my neck, but could hear nothing except a loud ringing deep inside my skull. I knew that the next bomb would finish us off. I yanked Hatsuko to her feet and dragged her forward. Blocking out our own suffering and that of everyone we passed in the night, we tramped on in a state of oblivion.

  “Look out where you’re going!” an angry voice snarled, snapping me out of my stupor. At my feet was a man I’d nearly stepped on. He’d lost one leg and injured the other, and was dragging himself through the mud and bomb-crater puddles with his hands. No one stopped to help him. No one could stop to help him. To do so would be to choose a life that was beyond your power to save over your own, over your family’s.

  “Damn it, Hatsuko,” I cursed, even my voice sounding strange now, hearing it with only one ear. “Move!”

  We stumbled forward, leaving the one-legged man behind. Ahead was a steep hill. Halfway to the top, my knees gave way and I sank to the earth, almost too spent even to breathe. Hatsuko collapsed next to me. Though the rain had stopped, water still oozed from the porous ground and streamed down the hill. I lay against the limestone and let the water trickle into my mouth. Even after drinking my fill, though, I had no energy left. I could not lift my own body, let alone my sister’s. I accepted that Hatsuko and I would die on this rocky patch of soaking ground. Then a cloud of flies with glaring red eyes—flies in the middle of the night!—swarmed about my head, buzzing into my eyes, nose, mouth, nipping at me with an uncommon ferocity. I smiled. This was Old Jug displaying her anger at my surrender.

  “Nuchi du takara,” I whispered my mother’s words to myself. “Life is the treasure.”

  The stinging pain of the fly bites jolted enough energy back into my body that, somehow, I managed to drag Hatsuko and myself to the top of the hill. Too tired to move another centimeter, we joined a group already resting there. Far behind us, back toward Haebaru, we saw long tongues of fire leaping out of the darkness. “Flamethrowers,” someone in the darkness said. “They are burning alive the brave ones who refused to surrender.”

  “Death before dishonor!” someone called out.

  One person answered with wishes for the emperor’s long life: “Tennō heika banzai!” But the cry was not picked up.

  Instead, someone said, “Do you smell that?” A rancid odor of diesel fumes and singed hair reached us. “That’s the smell of human flesh being burned.”

  I did not want Hatsuko to concentrate on such ghoulish thoughts, and so turned from the sight of our island being incinerated and said, “Look, a
full moon.” My sister followed my finger to the good-luck coin of a golden moon sailing through a filigree of navy-blue clouds.

  “Remember all our moon-viewing parties?” I asked, simply to change the subject.

  “That isn’t until the middle of August. I won’t live long enough to—”

  I cut her off before she could speak the unthinkable. “Remember Anmā’s muchi? How she mixed rice with black sugar and her purple sweet potatoes, then steamed the dough in fragrant ginger leaves?” My mouth watered thinking of the special treat.

  Even Hatsuko couldn’t resist the delicious memory. “Then we would tie a few of the bundles onto a long string and hang them from the eaves of the roof to ward off evil spirits?”

  For a moment, we were not wet and hungry and scared, and flies, mosquitoes, fleas, and lice weren’t chewing away at us, and we didn’t smell worse than our goats ever had. We were beloved daughters, clean and fresh in the yukatas that Aunt Yasu had woven for us from the softest, finest banana fiber. Our stomachs were full of Anmā’s muchi. And we were gazing at a moon that promised us the best harvest we’d ever had, while one of my uncles played his sanshin and sang a song about the beauty of Okinawa.

  At the foot of the hill was the road to Makabe. The fat moon transformed it into a ribbon of silver that we would follow to safety after a bit more rest. Far up ahead, we caught sight of the platoon of soldiers I had lied about, telling Hatsuko that Nakamura was among their ranks. We watched them for a moment. The moonlight gleamed dully on the few bayonets they had left. Just as they were about to disappear from sight, a bomb exploded directly on them. For a split second the blast of the bomb was so bright that it outshone the moon and we saw silhouetted soldiers flying to their deaths. Not one of the soldiers rose from the spot where he’d been thrown; they were all killed, the entire platoon.