So Far from the Bamboo Grove

by Yoko Kawashima Watkins

  Hideyo edged himself forward. Yasuo’s body was so close he could touch it, and he leaned out cautiously and smeared some of the blood streaming from his friend on his own face, his hands, and his clothes. Then he backed into his box.

  There was the tramp of feet as soldiers and prisoners left the factory, but other soldiers were moving about. One came so close that all Hideyo saw were his boots. Hideyo closed his eyes, and lay down as if dead.

  Dadadadaaaaaa! went a machine gun. Someone had still been alive.

  The soldier before Hideyo kicked Yasuo’s body. Then he saw Hideyo’s arm, and he kicked it. With the tip of his machine gun he poked in at Hideyo’s face and side. Hideyo lay as dead.

  The man went toward the washroom. Hideyo heard the door kicked open. He held his breath.

  “No one in here, sir,” the soldier reported. “All the others dead.”

  “Lock the doors,” he was told. “Bring dynamite and blast the building as soon as the ammunition is moved out.”

  Hideyo heard the commander and the last soldiers leave the room. Still he stayed motionless. The factory door was slammed. Silence.

  He waited, staring at Yasuo’s body. He heard no sound. Cautiously he crept out from the box and over the body of Yasuo. There were bodies everywhere. Sick, terrified, he crawled among the bodies and the blood, stopping to listen.

  He reached the washroom door and pushed with his head to open it. The rusty hinges squeaked.

  “Makoto!” Hideyo whispered.

  No response.

  There were four toilets, all the doors reaching to the floor, all closed. Hideyo stood up.

  “Shoichi, Shinzo, Makoto! It’s me, Hideyo,” he whispered.

  The third toilet door opened slightly. Makoto peeked out. “You! Alive!” he gasped. Shoichi and Shinzo came from the same cubicle, shaking, their faces ghostly white.

  “We heard the machine guns,” said Shinzo, his lips trembling. “We hid together. They never looked. Who got killed?”

  “Yasuo was killed right in front of me,” Hideyo told them. “I don’t know who else. They’re going to blow up the building. We have to get out.”

  Makoto peered cautiously from the window. “They’re making the captured ones walk toward the street. They’re pointing machine guns at them.”

  Stealthily they crept to their bunkroom next to the washroom. They crammed belongings into their rucksacks. Then they went back to the washroom and carefully, slowly, so as not to make a sound, they pushed the window open. The soldiers’ backs were turned. One by one the boys jumped out and ran around the building toward the mountain.

  They had not gone far when they heard the explosion. They turned and watched the factory exploding into the air. Hideyo thought of Yasuo.

  “It’s almost noon,” he said, looking at his watch. “If we take the mountain path now we can be home by early morning.”

  They began walking. Suddenly Hideyo wondered what had happened to his mother and sisters. He walked faster and faster, the others following.

  They walked until they were so weary they had to stop, and Makoto said, “Hey, I’m hungry. Does anyone have any food?”

  They all searched their sacks. Mother had packed only six days’ rations for Hideyo, as he had expected to go home the next afternoon for the weekend, so he had only some strips of fish and dried biscuits. They sat on the roots of a tree and shared what little he had.

  “What time is it?” Makoto asked.

  “Five o’clock,” Hideyo answered.

  “I’m still hungry,” said Shinzo.

  “Let’s look for mushrooms,” Makoto suggested.

  “Yes! Roasted mushrooms are good!” Shoichi agreed.

  Hideyo said, “Look, my friends, let’s look for mushrooms as we walk. Every moment is precious.”

  At dawn they reached Hideyo’s home, our home, which stood in its bamboo forest at the edge of the village.

  “What the hell!” yelled Hideyo. The main entrance door had been burst open. The service entrance door stood wide. They rushed into the house.

  “Mother!” Hideyo called.

  Makoto surveyed the desolation before them. “The Korean Communist troops have been here,” he said.

  “I’m going to my house!” Shinzo cried.

  “Let’s meet at Shoichi’s house later,” Hideyo called after them.

  He was shocked at the ransacking of his home. He examined the rooms carefully. The hanging scroll painting in the receiving room had been slashed to pieces. Closet doors stood open, their contents pulled out. Fur coats, hats, and his sisters’ muffs had been stolen, except for a tiny fur coat lying on the floor.

  Little One’s, Hideyo thought, and picked it up. Holding it in one arm, he continued to check the rooms. The phonograph-radio was gone. The collection of classical records lay scattered on the floor. Kimono drawers were empty.

  He saw the treadle sewing machine. Why had the robbers not taken this? Probably because they did not know how to use it. The machine was covered, as always when not in use, with a black velvet cloth, but a rice bowl sat perched on top. Strange, Hideyo thought. Mother never left anything on top of her machine. He went up to the machine and then he saw Mother’s note in script writing beneath the bowl. He read it.

  “Honorable Son: We must leave. We shall be waiting for you at the railroad station in Seoul.”

  The note was dated the day he had left for the factory. And, he observed, it was written in the cursive style, so that no one who did not know calligraphy could read it. He was putting it in his pocket when he saw that Mother’s savings book had been with it under the rice bowl. They must have left in haste, he thought, and he took the savings book.

  He went to his own room. Whoever had entered here had liked what he possessed. The wall clock, ski shoes, radio, collections of wooden tops he used to play with on the ice, fountain pens, his kimonos as well as formal attire were all gone. His desk drawers had been opened and left in a mess.

  In the kitchen he found cookies in the cupboard, and rice in the rice bin. He gathered them all into his rucksack. He stuffed in an aluminum cooking pot, candles, and matches. There was a small barrel next to the rice bin where Mother kept pickled plums, and he put as many into his lunch box as it would hold and wrapped the box in a dish towel. He filled his canteen with water from the kitchen pump.

  Then he went back to his own room to gather underwear, socks, and a sweater that had not interested the enemy soldiers. His overcoat was nowhere to be seen. In the bathroom he hastily washed his bloody face. I must go, he was thinking now. They may come back to finish stealing our belongings. He took a bar of soap and a bath towel.

  Then he rolled the tiny fur coat in his blanket and tied the blanket on top of his already full rucksack.

  Out of habit, he closed and locked the service entrance door. There was no way of locking the main entrance, for it was broken, and he wished he had time to nail a board across the opening.

  He headed for the narrow bamboo path when suddenly he turned and ran back to the house. He rushed into the family room and picked up an old family photo album he had remembered seeing. Carrying it under his arm, he left the house behind. He looked at his watch. It was 9:15 A.M.

  The sun was above the bamboo trees now, and carrying his heavy bundle made him hotter. He hurried to Shoichi’s house, meeting no one on the street and feeling the silence ominous.

  Makoto and Shinzo were already at Shoichi’s. Makoto was sobbing. Shinzo’s and Shoichi’s parents had fled south, where their relatives lived, but Makoto’s aged parents were dead. An only child, he had no place to go. “Don’t you have any relatives at all?” Hideyo asked.

  “Not in Korea.” Makoto sniffed back tears. “I want to go with you. They are killing Japanese. I am scared.”

  “You can,” said Hideyo. “But we cannot flee from this town in Japanese students’ clothes.”

  They looked at each other. “What are we going to do?” asked Makoto, still crying.

 
Hideyo snapped his fingers. “I know. Let’s go to my family’s friends, the Lees. They have been working for my family faithfully for years. Even though they are Koreans, they are not Communists. They’ll lend us some clothes.”

  When they found the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Lee, beginning to decay in the summer heat, the four students at first were speechless. The stench assailed their nostrils. They had thought Koreans would be safe.

  Then Hideyo yelled in anger. “Damn them! My home was ransacked, the valuables were stolen. Now the Communists slaughter good people!” Hideyo sobbed.

  “Let’s borrow some clothes and get out of here!” yelled Shoichi.

  They changed into Korean clothes. They rolled their students’ uniforms in their blankets.

  There was no map to lead them south, so they decided to follow the railroad tracks. But they had walked all night without sleep, so now they went up on the hill near the Lees’ house, crawled into the bushes, and slept until evening came.

  Their walking journey began. If they had to speak, they spoke in the Korean language. They slept during the day for fear they would be discovered by the Korean Communist Army. Also, it was cooler to walk through the night.

  When they came across vegetable fields they dug up whatever they could find, simply shook the dirt off, and ate the vegetables raw, to save their own food supplies. They sucked the juices from wild plants. They devoured wild carrots and any tomatoes they found, for the heat made them thirsty. They had been walking now for ten days.

  Their canteens were empty of water, their lips peeling. When they saw anything green they put it in their mouths and sucked as hard as they could to draw at least a drop of juice. They were exhausted.

  “There is a pond!” Hideyo shouted.

  Water! They were overjoyed. Hurriedly they walked toward the pond, but the pond was not there. It was a large bloodstain on the ground, and dead bodies were scattered all over the place. They walked back to the rail track, dragging themselves toward the south.

  As the days passed, they began to see numbers of Koreans, or Japanese, children as well as women, walking on the rails.

  “Hey, are you Japanese or Koreans?” asked one elderly man in Japanese. He walked along with Hideyo and his group.

  “We are Koreans. But not members of the Communist Party,” Hideyo answered carefully in the Korean language. He was taking every possible precaution. There was a prize for producing anyone on the “wanted” list, dead or alive. Hideyo suspected that Korean Communists who had trained in Manchuria were itching to get hold of his father. They would gladly slash the son’s head. He would let no one know who he was, lest someone betray him to the Communists for a price. “Are you heading for the south?” he asked the old man in Korean.

  “I am going back to Japan. If I can, that is. Too bad Japan has lost the war.”

  Hideyo almost screamed in his surprise. “Lost the war? Is the war over? When?” Shoichi, Shinzo, and Makoto all looked shocked, but they remained silent for they did not speak Korean as well as Hideyo.

  “We’ve been working way up north,” he told the man. “The Korean Communists attacked us and we’ve been walking ever since. I am heading for Seoul. What day is this?”

  “The seventeenth of August.” The man spoke in poor Korean. “It’s all over. I heard the Emperor’s talk over the radio.” His voice cracked. “And I heard that the Americans dropped powerful bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s over!” Tears streamed like a river on his deeply wrinkled face.

  Hideyo wanted to comfort him, to tell him that he was a Japanese boy, his sadness was great too, but he held back and stayed cool. “When did the war end?” he asked.

  “Two days ago. It’s all over.”

  They heard more stories.

  “No wonder everybody is heading southward,” Shinzo whispered. “They’re getting away from the Korean Communists. We’ve been walking fifteen days!”

  They entered a railroad tunnel that became darker and darker. They stumbled on the ties. Hideyo and Makoto fumbled for the candles in their rucksacks and Makoto lit them. The candles gave a faint light, and carefully they went forward.

  They felt vibration on the rails. A train! The boys stepped aside, but there was not much space between the rails and the wall of the tunnel. The engine passed by, roaring and shaking the tunnel, and the wind from the train blew out the candles.

  Hideyo pasted himself against the wall and turned his head sideways. He could see sparks from the wheels, and they flew to his legs and hips and his skin burned. The thick, heavy smoke enveloped the tunnel, and he was unable to breathe or keep his eyes open. He coughed and coughed and felt dizzy. Is this the end of me? he thought. Still he clung to the wall. He heard a sound like something smashing and at the same time he felt warm water on his neck and face, running down to his chest.

  At last the train passed. With deep relief, still coughing, Hideyo called his friends’ names, and they answered. Again Makoto lit the candles and they went on carefully, touching the tunnel wall as a guide, for the candles did not give enough light.

  Suddenly Hideyo stumbled and fell. Makoto, right behind him, fell too. Both candles went out.

  “Hey, what’s going on? Are you all right?” yelled Shinzo.

  “I think I stumbled on a human,” Hideyo replied. Once more Makoto lit the candles, and there lay the mangled body of the elderly Japanese, blocking the track.

  They were glad when they saw a faint light in the far distance, and walked much faster, eager to swallow fresh air. They left the tunnel and took deep breaths. They were all splashed with blood from head to toe, and at first they thought they might be injured, but it was blood splashed from other escapees who could not get out of the way fast enough.

  Looking for a thicket, they left the track and began wiping off the blood with large leaves.

  “Halt!” someone shouted in poor Korean. From an opposite thicket two Russian soldiers with machine guns came running.

  The boys raised their arms high. If there were just one soldier, Hideyo thought, they could fight him, but there were two, with weapons.

  “Are you Korean Communist members?” the Russian asked.

  The boys answered as one. “We are!”

  “Where are you going?”

  “We are going to P’yŏnggang,” Hideyo answered.

  “Why are you carrying Japanese sacks and blankets?”

  Hideyo lied. “We stole from the Japanese. Our parents got killed. We are heading for our relatives.”

  “Are you all brothers?” one of the soldiers asked.

  “No, cousins. We are orphans.” Hideyo made a sad face.

  The soldiers stared at the boys and there was silence. Shoichi broke the stillness. “I have fine cigarettes. Do you want to smoke?”

  “Where did you get them?” a soldier asked.

  “I stole from the Japanese,” answered Shoichi. “You’ve never tasted fine cigarettes like these.” He reached to his chest pocket, his right arm still in the air. The soldiers came closer.

  “Do you have food? Let’s exchange,” Shoichi said.

  “No, we don’t have food. Give me those cigarettes,” commanded the head Russian.

  Another, close to Shoichi, shouted, “You stink!”

  “We have not bathed for almost two weeks,” said Hideyo with a little laugh. And then Makoto and Shinzo began to laugh too.

  With the laughter the soldiers seemed to relax. They let the boys bring their arms down. And as they puffed the fine Japanese cigarettes the taller soldier said that if they went on to the next town, Tanch’ŏn, they would find that Communist Army Headquarters was hiring laborers for a little money. If they stayed on they would be fed.

  Tanch’ŏn? Hideyo thought. They had only walked a fourth of the distance to Seoul. It’s a long way to Seoul but I must make it. Hideyo talked to himself in his heart.

  “Say, comrades.” He spoke brightly to the Russian soldiers in Korean. He asked if there was a pond or river nearby, as he wante
d to bathe before he met his relatives. The Russians said to walk a couple of miles to the west and he would cross a little river.

  Once more the boys walked. They were thrilled to hear they would find a river but they did not run or show joyful faces. They walked slowly and composed themselves by singing Korean love songs loudly as they went.

  The first thing they did when they came to the river was to fill their stomachs with water. They filled their canteens. Then they stripped, washed themselves, and rinsed the Korean clothes borrowed from the Lees. They spread the garments on the riverbank where the sun-heated rocks would dry them, and then they threw themselves on the warm rocks and went to sleep.

  When they reached the army headquarters in Tanch’ŏn they learned that the labor was putting dead bodies into large straw sacks and tossing them from the cliff into Tanch’ŏn Bay. These were bodies that had been thrown from trains or left to die in the fields. At the end of the day they were given cooked cabbage and rice. Each time, the four boys saved a little, for they knew they had many miles ahead of them.

  Whenever the boys handled a dead woman or a young girl they took extra care, sliding the sacks gently down the cliff into the water. Hideyo was very relieved that he did not see his mother’s or his sisters’ bodies.

  When the work was finished, headquarters gave them their small earnings. Then they walked on. They walked for a month and a half until they reached the port city, Wŏnsan. It was the end of September now, and the companions decided to part. Makoto would go with Shinzo and Shoichi to their relatives, Hideyo would go on to Seoul. He was determined to get at least as far as the thirty-eighth parallel, beyond which lay some safety and the hope of meeting his mother and sisters later in Seoul. They cooked the last of their rice and shared the water from the canteens. They lay in the mountain bush, reminiscing about their wonderful friendship.

  “Hey,” Makoto said, “if we ever get back to Japan, where shall we meet?”

  “At Tokyo Bridge. It’s a famous meeting spot,” Shoichi suggested.

  “When?” asked Shinzo.

  “Maybe five years from now,” answered Hideyo.

  The stars shone brightly above them, but the breeze from the bay held the smell of fall. None of the four young men could sleep for thinking of this, their last night together. As night advanced Hideyo began to feel chilly, and he spread his little sister’s tiny fur coat on his back and covered himself with his blanket.