The Seventh Samurai

by Doug Walker

  Nana was right. Hardy's ticket was one-way. On top of that, the ticket was first class. Totally out of character for a foreign teacher.

  The class of the ticket bothered Watanabe almost as much as its one-way status. He called the immigration office in Osaka and got a clerk to pull Hardy's file. He had always been prompt about renewing his work visa and he had always gotten a re-entry visa before leaving the country - except this time.

  Even though tourist visas had been done away with by mutual agreement between the two countries, any American with a Japanese work visa absolutely had to get a re-entry visa before going abroad in order to re-enter Japan. Otherwise there would be serious complications. Hardy obviously had no intention of returning. He had stood in the doorway and lied to Watanabe on that pleasant Sunday afternoon.

  "You were right," Watanabe told Nana that evening.

  "I did see inside the house. You didn't," she said.

  "That's why he didn't want us to come in."

  "I suspect so. Have you any idea what he's up to?"

  "I'm baffled as of now. Immigration gave me a couple of names and addresses. Former employers in the States. I sent letters to them. Asked them if they might know his whereabouts."

  "Was there a home address? A family address?" Nana asked.

  "I don't think so. I mean there was an address, but it looked like an apartment, in a California town called El Centro."

  "El Centro," Nana said in surprise. "That's in the desert, an odd place for a scuba diver."

  "I know. I checked the map. I dropped a note to the police chief. Maybe I'll get something. But I still can't understand the ticket. He traveled first class JAL."

  Nana brightened. "That is strange. JAL doesn't give many discounts. It's expensive if you buy your ticket in Japan. And first class. A little wider seat, a little more free booze, a wider selection of magazines, a stewardess fawning over you. I don't know anyone who would pay the price."

  "And it wasn't the only thing available. There were economy seats empty. He was traveling alone, a single. I can't believe he bought a first class ticket."

  "That's it," Nana blurted. "He didn't."

  "But he did," Watanabe shot back. "I checked and checked again. It bothered me."

  "No," Nana insisted. "You're absolutely right. I know Hardy's type. I've been to meetings, bar rooms, parties, where travel always comes up during the conversation. It would be a little unusual to travel JAL because most gaijin think it's more expensive. I'm not sure if it always is, or not. But some other airlines would be more common. Maybe KAL or Northwestern. Or anything else the discount travel agents sell. But first class, no! No gaijin at my level would do that unless their mother was on her deathbed and there was no other seat available. So, you're right. He didn't buy it. I'd bet on it. If you find out who paid for that ticket you might find out why Hardy left Japan in such a hurry."

  CHAPTER 4: Akira Yoshimoto Comes Home

  On August 6, 1945 an atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima. The decision to drop the bomb was made by President Harry S Truman, who hoped for an immediate surrender. It didn't work. Three days later a second atomic bomb was dropped, this time on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on August 14th. Surrender terms were agreed to and signed on September 2nd aboard the Battleship Missouri.

  Akira Yoshimoto learned of the bombings and the surrender in a prisoner-of-war camp. He was stronger now and his mind was clearing of the confusion of battle and the trauma and the sake and his final hours as a Japanese soldier.

  He had slight scars from the sword wounds he had accidentally inflicted upon himself and a jagged scar on his forehead from being dashed against the rock. That one would remain with him for life. It would be whispered that he had received it in battle as a soldier of the Imperial Army, but he would refuse to discuss it.

  For the most part, he had been treated well. Camp life had settled into a routine. The prisoners were better fed and less harshly treated than they had been in the Japanese army.

  But one guard, Corporal Ridley, Yoshimoto learned to despise. Ridley was a stocky, running-to-fat young man from Arkansas. He was the type of tough farm kid who would be given a shotgun in some southern states of that era and put out to watch over a chain gang. A round, moon-like face and small pig eyes, bad skin that always seemed to ooze oil.

  He insisted on being called Corporal Ridley and the Japanese struggled with both the "R's" and the "L" in his name, but almost always got it wrong because the two letters are pronounced similarly by most Japanese.

  Most of the men held with Yoshimoto were veterans accustomed not only to being derided, but also physically abused by their noncoms. They took Ridley's bluster in stride because the man never once as much as touched a prisoner. Ridley's orders were shouted in a booming, taunting voice: "Best by God you fall in;" "Best by God you move your yellow asses," or "Best by God you police up the area." Prisoners and other guards alike called him "Best by God" behind his back.

  Because Ridley was a natural bully and because Yoshimoto was a frail youth who had not yet reached his fifteenth birthday, the corporal picked him out for special attention. Of course Ridley knew only a word or two of Japanese and most of the Japanese knew no more English, but through shouts and body language he made himself understood.

  The more the guard insisted that Yoshimoto pronounce his name correctly, the more confused and frustrated the boy became until sometimes he thought he might cry in front of everyone, which would have been his final humiliation. It never quite came to that. Sometimes another American guard would intervene and sometimes Ridley would simply tire of his sport.

  Many of the Japanese prisoners thought of themselves as living corpses. First off, they assumed they would be killed immediately after capture. A great many had been captured only after being seriously injured and a great many had later died of their wounds.

  Surrender was not supposed to be an option in the Imperial Army. For that reason the troops were not told how to conduct themselves if captured. This was a great aid to American intelligence. Most captured Japanese, who thought themselves no better than dead, would answer all questions freely.

  Each prisoner was haunted by fear that through capture he had betrayed not only the Emperor and his country, but that he had disgraced his village. Most of Japan was a series of small villages, even clusters of humanity in great urban centers such as Tokyo and Osaka had the sense of villages, small shops with residents rooted to their neighborhood. A Japanese would be born and pass on of old age in the same small space, or family compound. Mobility would come much later with the evolution of the so-called economic miracle - the rise and demise of a very different Japan.

  In early December, the beginning of an awful winter of poverty, hunger and freezing despair, Akira Yoshimoto was returned to Japan. About a hundred prisoners were herded aboard an LST for the voyage through the Ryukyu Islands, then northward, passing east of the large island of Kyushu and landing at Hiroshima where the prisoners helped unload food and medical supplies for survivors of the devastation. Back on board the LST, they continued the voyage through the Inland Sea and finally to Osaka.

  The prisoners were dressed in American uniforms with "PW," for Prisoner of War, painted on the back. They were in the harbor, not more than a hundred and fifty yards from the nearest dock, when the vessel stopped dead in the water. An hour passed, then another.

  Finally, they were off-loaded into small boats and taken to the Osaka receiving center on shore where there was another long wait in an unheated room. The men shivered and stamped feet and rubbed their hands together, their breath, small white clouds in the frigid room. This was a far cry from the milder Okinawa climate. They were back in Japan, in the reality of a defeated nation.

  It grew dark and gasoline lanterns were lit. There seemed to be little organization. A couple of warmly dressed American guards lounged on the dock outside the building, talking and joking, with little concern for their charges. The small bundles of belongings the PWs had c
arried off the LST hadn't been searched.

  Finally, a cheerful Japanese man came in with a large cardboard box full of bento boxes - cold box lunches made up mostly of rice with a few shreds of fish and pickled vegetables. An oil stove was brought in and a kettle to boil water for tea. The man said they would be processed the next morning. He indicated a series of cupboards along the wall that contained futons.

  That was Yoshimoto's first night home, on the main island of Honshu, in a warehouse-like room with hissing gasoline lanterns, a supper of cold rice and hot cups of tea. Then to sleep on futons that were scarcely clean. No one had greeted him; it was almost like a visit to an alien planet. Yet the men around him seemed content ? rice to fill the belly, steaming green tea and a warm futon, this was the Japan of their youth. In their brief journey from the vessel to the shore they had glimpsed the desolation caused by the carpet bombing, gutted buildings, a wall standing here and there, a grotesquely charred tree, its twisted limbs fixed in death. Feeling lost, Yoshimoto drifted into sleep amid the snoring and hacking coughs of his companions.

  In the morning there was hot rice and tea. They were lined up and marched between a team of Japanese who sprayed them, their clothing and belongings, with DDT. Then they reassembled and took seats on the floor while waiting to be interviewed.

  When Yoshimoto's turn came he was told to go to desk number five where he was motioned to a seat by a cadaverous old man who wore the uniform of a U.S. Army Air Corps master sergeant. The sergeant had survived the Bataan Death March following the April 1942 surrender. He was fifteen years younger than his gaunt appearance indicated. By rights he should be at home recuperating in the States, but he was regular army and had been sent to Japan because of his fluent Japanese.

  "I'm Sergeant Chalk. If you answer my questions honestly you will be given a formal paper that must be presented to the head man of your village. Your name?"

  "Akira Yoshimoto."

  The sergeant inspected his list of the names of the new arrivals, both in Kanji, Chinese characters used by the Japanese, and Roman letters. "It says your outfit was called 'Tekketsu.' Do you know what that means?"

  "Yes," Yoshimoto replied. Here it comes, he thought. This sergeant, this old gaijin who speaks Japanese, knows as well as I do that Tekketsu means "Blood and Iron for the Emperor." He probably knows that we were ordered to fight to the last man. I will surely be shot. Why did they bother to bring me to Osaka?

  "Do you know that the Emperor himself surrendered Japan to the Americans?"

  "I have been told that," Yoshimoto said, mustering courage. There had been those among the prisoners who believed it and those who didn't believe. Yoshimoto wasn't certain.

  "Well, it is true. If you don't believe it now you soon will. If the Emperor has surrendered, are you prepared to live a peaceful life in Japan?"

  What kind of question was that from a man on the brink of having him shot? "Yes, I would like to lead a peaceful life." His heart was beating fast and he could not look this gaijin in the eye. He would like to live any type of a life, but confusion ruled his thoughts. His mind darting to those hours in the cave when he was a samurai, one of seven. The only survivor, the one who had killed the colonel. In fact he was the Seventh Samurai and now he must die like a samurai. But he wished it were not so.

  "How old are you?" Sergeant Chalk asked, deviating from his normal pattern of questions. Yoshimoto's extreme youth struck him as particularly pathetic. Chalk had every reason to hate the Japanese. He had seen comrades beaten to death, starved, die for lack of the simplest medical treatment. He himself had been beaten and starved; malnutrition might well shorten his life span. He had become perilously close to death on more than one occasion at the hands of his Japanese captors. Yet talking to these pitiful, dispirited, creatures, it was hard to feel hatred.

  "My birthday is December 20th," Yoshimoto said, dodging the question, ashamed of his youth.

  "I see," Chalk said sadly, "and where is your hometown and family?"

  "Hirakatashi," he replied, using the "shi" ending, which means "city."

  Chalk made a note of the city. "Very nearby, and are your parents there?"

  "My father, I think, was killed in the war. No one knows for certain. We last heard from him in Singapore. I'm not sure where my mother is. She was on Okinawa."

  "I see," Chalk said, outwardly calm. But there were certain words, buzzwords, that brought unusual sounds and visions to his mind. Singapore was one. Not all that far from the Philippines where he was stationed at the outbreak of the war.

  Singapore fell almost two months before Bataan and the story of the Japanese rampage, the blood frenzy, was well known. British nurses raped at their stations and thrown to their deaths from hospital windows. Prisoners killed, thousands of Chinese murdered. Singapore, Bataan, Corregidor. Would he never forget? And now this Japanese soldier, this youngster who should be on the soccer field, or collecting butterflies, or studying geography. This frightened boy. "Were you conscripted into the army from Hirakatashi?"

  "No. I was on Okinawa. I had just graduated from Shuri Middle School. My entire class was taken in. We graduated the night before the invasion."

  "Do you know if any of your class members survived?"

  "No, sergeant, I hope I am the only one. It is a great disgrace for me to be here and I would not want to look into the face of another member of my class."

  Chalk looked into the boy's sad eyes. He spoke very seriously in hopes that his words would take hold. "I want to tell you, Yoshimoto-san, that there are many brave Japanese soldiers being repatriated every day. They are returning to their homes and villages. Their families and friends are happy to welcome them back to civilian life. Japan has a lot of problems, but young people like yourself are needed to put the country back together."

  Yoshimoto nodded, but said nothing.

  "Now, do you know if any of your family is still in Hirakatashi?"

  "My grandfather's house is there. I know he would never leave. He would wait there for my mother and father and me."

  Chalk could have let the boy go at that moment, but he hesitated. He disliked the idea of turning this youth out into the cold, devastation and heartbreak of post-war Osaka. From time to time during the interview he had glanced at the scar on Yoshimoto's forehead. Now on impulse he asked the boy to tell him how it happened.

  He knew he was taking too much time with one prisoner, but there were only a hundred for processing today and there were six interviewers. More than three hundred had passed through the office the day before.

  By asking a question here and there, Chalk managed to draw out the entire story of the cave, the colonel, the drunken banzai charge. Yoshimoto seemed happy to get it off his chest. Not a word of it had he mentioned to fellow prisoners. Thus Chalk, a father-confessor, was quick to understand and forgive.

  When the story was over, Chalk nodded and said, "You've had quite an experience. I'll bet you're glad to be home."

  "Yes, I am glad to be in Osaka. But what will happen to me?"

  "I'm through with you, at least officially. You have 200 yen coming." He pushed the envelope of money across the table and instructed Yoshimoto to count it and sign a receipt. Then he filled in a certificate and presented it to the boy. "Give this to the mayor, or whoever's in charge of Hirakatashi. It gets you back in the record book. So you're free to go."

  "I'm free?"

  "Yes, you are once more an ordinary Japanese citizen. You can find a job, go to school, whatever. There is no blemish on your record."

  "Even after what I told you?"

  "Your story is not much different from many other soldiers in the war. Your career was a bit shorter and a little more unusual than most. But so what? It's forgotten."

  "I just walk out of here then?"

  "Yes, you can if you want to. But that bothers me a little. Your grandfather may or may not be in Hirakatashi. Where the rest of your family is, who knows? Obviously, you never should have been in the army. You'
re too young. If that's so, you're also too young to face civilian life alone."

  "I was a soldier!" the boy insisted.

  "Of course you were, Yoshimoto-san. And a good soldier. I know. But usually a person is two or three years older before he becomes a soldier, and those are important years. Take me, I joined the army in Topeka, Kansas in 1925. I was seventeen years old, almost eighteen. I knew what I wanted to do. Did you really want to lay down your life for the Emperor the day after you got out of middle school?"

  The boy thought for a moment. "I guess not. But we had been forced into this war and it was national honor."

  "OK," Chalk said. He was tired of hearing how America had really started the war. "Let me put it this way. There are kids much younger than you begging and eating out of garbage cans, sleeping in packing crates, all over Osaka. I may be able to save you that if your family is not in Hirakatashi. Tomorrow is Sunday. I have no duty. I have nothing to do. I'll get a car and we'll drive to Hirakatashi. If your grandfather's there, you're back with your family. If not I'll try to place you in some sort of home or program."

  "What sort of home or program?" Yoshimoto asked, immediately suspicious.

  "I don't know, but there must be something. But this is just an offer on my part." The sergeant was already wondering where he could get a car. It was illegal for Japanese to ride in Jeeps. "You're free. You can walk out of here if you want to."

  Yoshimoto considered a moment. "I'd like your help."

  Chalk took the boy to a guarded room where prisoners were detained if their stories didn't have a truthful ring. There was hot water and Japanese tea and a toilet. Also a few tattered newspapers. Three older men were in the room, rough-looking customers. Yoshimoto scowled and busied himself with a newspaper. The time was just after three.

  When Sergeant Chalk came for the boy at five, two of the men were gone. The third sat glumly, his hands thrust into his pockets.

  "Here, put this on," Chalk said, handing him a coat. It was a small field jacket, the kind that came over the hips. It had a draw string so the waist could be pulled tight. There was no "PW" printed on the back. Yoshimoto slipped it on quickly and almost managed a smile.