by JH Fletcher
I had written to my parents before I got shot down, explaining what I wanted and asking them to fix things up for me. When I was in hospital, Mother wrote to tell me that everything had been arranged.
You know how particular your father is, so I was most relieved when he said he had been into everything and was satisfied that the girl is right for you. Her name is Mariko Hosokawa. Her parents are wealthy, with land outside the city. The reports we have of the girl are that she will make a good wife for you. She is healthy and reasonably good-looking. Apparently she feels herself honoured to be a possible wife for a war hero, and to become a member of our family. When you come home we shall arrange a formal miai so that you can meet each other. It will be your decision, of course, but I really feel you could do much worse.
I put the letter aside and studied the girl’s photograph. She looked all right. I told Mother to go ahead with the arrangements. We wouldn’t have much time, after all. A couple of weeks at most. No-one was getting more leave than that. In the old days, to rush things in this way would have been unthinkable, but we had no choice. The Hosokawas would understand.
Things went quite well. The miai was arranged for the day after I got home. My shoulder was still a little stiff and Ochiba told me I looked more dead than alive, so the Hosokawas no doubt wondered what they were getting. Mariko talked quite cheerfully, though not too much. I decided she’d do fine.
Not that it mattered. The rigmarole was for my parents’ benefit. In the circumstances it wouldn’t make any difference what she was like, and her parents’ wealth wasn’t likely to be much use to me. There was one thing, though: I was pleased that she is, as Mother said, quite attractive.
The wedding was to be in ten days time; I wanted to make it sooner but everyone said it would take at least that long to organise. I suppose Mariko was entitled to have things done properly; it’s not every day that a girl gets married, after all. We wouldn’t have much time for a honeymoon. I had to be back at Base two days after the wedding. We just had to make the most of it. I would be able to think of ways of passing the time.
During the miai I looked at her and wondered if she were real. In ten days, perhaps, I would find out.
On his wedding night, Hideo thinks:
I should never have done it.
I see it so clearly now. Mariko is very young. This poor child is married to a dead man. She knew the risks, of course; what she does not understand is that I feel nothing for her, not because I dislike her, but because I no longer feel anything for anyone. In the Navy you learn not to feel; it’s the only way to survive. I have taught myself too well.
Now the time has come. We are spending our wedding night at an inn. It is an old building from the time of the Meiji Emperor, seventy years ago. It’s a miracle that it hasn’t been knocked down by an earthquake, in all that time. Its air of history pleases me; it reminds me of a world that is outside the war, yet somehow more real to me than the present. It represents the point of everything that is happening in our lives.
I have two friends with me. Ataro Saba lost a leg, hand and part of his face when the Americans raided his airfield and caught him on the ground. He is no beauty, but I have known him for years and I want him here. The other is a friend of my father. Kojiro Miki is too old; I would not normally have invited him, but the men of my age are either dead or serving, so he will have to do.
Mariko and I sit side by side on our floor cushions. Formally, I turn to Miki, putting him first because he is the older.
‘Please pour us saké.’
He hands us each the tiny saké cups. We down the contents in one gulp.
We repeat the process. This time Ataro passes us the cups. As he has only one hand, he passes a cup to me first, the second one to Mariko. Again we drink.
We look at each other, silently. None of us can bear it any longer. ‘Well …’
They leave us; we walk down the corridor to the bridal room. Inside, Mariko turns to me. ‘Two days,’ she says.
‘Does it bother you?’
Smiling, she shakes her head. ‘I am thankful we have so long.’
I am really very lucky.
We climb into the sleeping mattresses. Hold each other’s hands tightly. This is wrong. I feel it, but say nothing. One more madness in a world that is nothing but madness.
Mariko lies still. She is waiting. We are both waiting. I suppose I have to do what is expected of me. I turn to her. Find I can do nothing.
It is appalling. Despair overwhelms me. I fear I shall shame myself by crying. Manage to say: ‘I’m sorry …’
She places her fingertips on my lips, her touch as gentle as a butterfly. I am ashamed. I close my eyes.
‘Tell me.’
I look at her. She has pushed back the quilt and has turned towards me.
‘Tell you what?’
‘About the war. What it’s like. What you do.’
I stare at her. ‘I can’t.’
‘Please.’
My brain is whirling. How can I tell her things we pilots never discuss even about ourselves? About the hopelessness of fighting against aircraft twice as fast, far better armed, a hundred times your number? How do I explain the exploding warships, the rain of metal and flesh after a torpedo strike, the certainty that, following this sortie or the next one, or the other after that, you too will be nothing but a rain of blood, a dream blown apart forever?
‘Impossible.’
She is touching me, drawing her fingernails gently across my face, my throat, my chest. She touches the scars, barely healed, where the Hellcat’s bullets almost finished me off.
‘Do they hurt?’
‘No.’
They do hurt; everything hurts. Life is nothing but memory and despair. Death is something we have come to long for, because living hurts too much. This woman has no place here.
This is wrong. I was wedded to death long before I sat at the miai and looked at Mariko Hosokawa for the first time.
Her fingers caress my arms, tracing the path of my veins until they reach my fingertips. She leans over me. Her black hair trails kisses across my skin. Her voice is so low I can barely hear it. ‘Tell me …’
On Kundan Hill in Tokyo is the Yasukuni Shrine. It is known as the Shrine of Righteous Souls, to commemorate those who die in war. It is a sacred place. I go there now, in my mind, as I start with such pain to drag out of my heart the words that my wife has asked to hear.
This, too, is a sacrifice, not at a Shrine, but to this woman who by marriage has become part of me.
Once started I cannot stop. She goes on touching me. Her fingers soothe me, her concern soothes me, even my own words soothe me.
I tell her everything. In so doing I discover things I had not realised I knew. About the first glory days, when war was little more than a game. About the steady descent into the pit. Friends gone. Hopes gone. About myself, and the certainty that it will be only through death that I shall live.
It is over. My voice is still at last. By talking, I have become, once again, a man. In the three hours since I began to talk, Mariko has become more than my wife, my confidante. She is my love, because who can lay so heavy a burden upon another and not love? More even than that: she has become a woman. She is naked to me, as my heart has become naked to her. I look at her pearl-coloured skin, her breasts so defenceless in the remains of the lamplight.
She watches me watching her. She lifts her arms to me.
‘Come.’
And so what was a burden, heavy with guilt, becomes a time of joy, of sharing, of life that I know, when the time comes, I shall be able to cast, gladly and with pride, into the face of death.
One more thing. Later that day, when it was once again light, we lying sated in each other’s arms, she said,
‘One thing I regret …’
‘What?’
‘That we have not been to Kyoto together and seen the cherry blossoms at the Heian Shrine.’
We look at each other. We are tempted t
o say perhaps next year, but do not. It is too precious a moment to sully with lies.
Instead she says, ‘Why?’
I understand what she is asking. Why the war? Why do you have to die?
‘For Japan. For the land. Because the land is everything.’
Mariko, speaking:
He is gone. I shall not see him again, yet shall see him always. He will not permit himself to survive the ending of the war, and the war, he tells me, is lost.
I would not wish him the shame of surviving the destruction of our nation. On that day I intend to follow him. I shall be not with the god that, common with all fallen warriors, is my husband’s destiny, but a kindred spirit. In death we shall live forever. He has told me that his spirit will return to the Yasukuni Shrine. I shall meet him there.
He told me what he should not have said, that his aircraft carrier will put out in an attempt to seek refuge off a distant island. From there they will make one final raid upon the enemy, seeking to destroy even as they are destroyed. He does not tell me the island’s name or when they will leave. I am content; already I know more than I should. I shall in any case not know the moment of his glory, yet I shall know. I shall feel him come again to lie within my arms.
One thing more I can do. Every day, very early, I climb the steep slope of the headland. From the summit I can see over the anchorage where the great ships lie. Day by day I wait. He has told me they will leave in the last light, to try to avoid the American dive bombers.
Two days, three. On the evening of the fourth day, the great vessel moves at last. I watch as it sails out, grey wings on a grey sea, with overhead the rain-bearing clouds that will protect it from the eyes of the enemy.
I see, I think I see, the sun banner waving from its stern. I see, I know I see, my husband, although the ship is too far away for any person on board to be visible to the human eye.
He watches me as I, from the shore, watch him going forth to glory. I feel his eyes and his spirit engage with mine.
I stand motionless, waiting. He sees my arms raised in triumph, senses the proud beating of my heart. I know that above the clouds the enemy also watches me, watches us all. Let me draw their wicked eyes from the ship, from the men who will triumph over evil. My husband, my love, wars with the enemy within my soul and is triumphant.
I take my heart and throw it far across the waves, through the clouds and fading light, to come to rest at last in the body of my love. Where he goes shall I go. When he dies I too shall die and so live. Always. Always.
My face aflame with pride, I watch until the great vessel, barely visible in the fading light, rounds the point and is gone.
The land alone remains.
A dark shore, low-lying where the mangrove swamp extended into the tepid water of the bay. At the northern end a headland, crowned with forest, plunged vertically into the sea. At this point, close to the shore and scarcely visible from the air, there was almost eight fathoms of water at low tide; enough and to spare for Ryukyu’s twenty-four-foot draught.
News was coming in of a raid on Hiroshima. It seemed there was something unusual about it, the suggestion that it might be a new type of bomb. Three days later another bomb fell on Nagasaki.
Five days after that, they stood to attention and listened as the Emperor announced that the war was over.
After the broadcast they looked at each other, lost. ‘Now what?’
Hideo walked off, to be alone. At its end, his life was coming together at last. He tried to imagine how it would feel to drive his Zero into the target’s steel hull.
But could he even reach an enemy warship? He’d heard that most of the kamikaze boys never managed it. The Yanks blasted them before they got there. He didn’t want that.
Senjin Kun, the battle code that had been issued in 1941: Do not stay alive in dishonour.
A vision opened: of Mariko, as his mind had seen her the evening they sailed out. He had been on the afterdeck, getting his last look at Japan. Halfway to the horizon, the headland drew to itself the gathering darkness, yet he saw her clearly, standing on the highest point, waving farewell to him. It was impossible; the land was miles away and it was almost dark, yet the fact remained. She stood on the very edge of the cliff, in the kimono she had worn at their wedding, and raised her arms in a final embrace as Ryukyu powered past.
He had tried to avoid thinking about his wife, about anything that might serve to distract him from the task in hand, but now realised that to think of her was to reinforce his resolve. Once again she would make him strong, as she had at the inn on their wedding night.
Never would he forget the way she had soothed away terror with her patience, her silken body, the slow and gentle caresses of her fingers scouring mind as well as flesh. A memory, warm and glorious, that he would carry with him for whatever time remained to him.
So at last he had come to it. He spoke to Commander Shigemitsu, told him what he had to do.
Shigemitsu eyed him impassively. ‘The Emperor’s orders —’
‘Axe impossible. Forgive me, but they are impossible.’
‘Officially I cannot approve, but I understand.’
Their words were stiff, lifeless. Behind them, feelings ran blood-red.
‘Where will you go?’ Shigemitsu asked.
‘It would be better if you did not know.’
The Commander thought about that, nodded. ‘Very well. You have a wife?’
‘Yes.’ Said no more; at this moment it was unbearable to think of wives, of home, of all that would exist afterwards.
‘I shall write to her.’
‘Thank you.’
His Zero gassed up, bomb racks full, he headed south.
Part cloud. Far below, the sea was flecked with white. The Sakae engine ran smoothly, the exhaust stacks whistling. He was flying at ten thousand feet. The training manual claimed that the Zero 52 had a ceiling of thirty-eight thousand feet, but he didn’t intend to check it out.
Thirty-eight thousand? He shook his head. You’d freeze to death before you were halfway there.
He was halfway to his target when the Hellcat found him. The first he knew about it was a burst of cannon fire that shattered the starboard screen just behind the pilot seat. Immediately above the foot pedals, the magnetic compass disintegrated. How the burst had missed him he didn’t know, nor was he waiting to find out.
Reflexes honed by years of war, he flung the Zero to port and dived, heading for a providential bank of cloud just ahead of him. The grey fog enveloped him. He was flying blind; with the compass out, had no idea even where he was headed, but for the moment didn’t care about that. As long as the cloud covered him, he would be safe.
As though to mock such an idea, he heard from astern the reverberating clatter of machine-gun fire. Something struck him a hammer blow just below his right shoulder. The Hellcat’s indistinct but unmistakable hump-backed shape swept past him, engine howling. He glimpsed it for a fraction of a second before it disappeared, sucked into oblivion by the fog.
Hideo was functioning on reflex, now. Frantically his eyes scanned the instruments. Tachometer, fuel and oil pressure, artificial horizon — everything in order. The engine note was unchanged. Nothing fundamental had been damaged. Even the loss of the compass, important though it was, would not interfere with the mechanics of the plane.
The Hellcat would never find him in this. He maintained speed, keeping his eye on the altitude, and flew on. Once again he had come to the edge and survived.
As he thought that, an explosion of pain lifted him high off his seat, legs and body rigid, before letting him down again. For a moment his feet were unsteady on the pedals. He felt the plane slip sideways beneath him before he brought it back on course.
He was sweating. The pain had steadied to a grinding pulse that tore him with jagged teeth. Again he nearly lost it. Dizziness engulfed him but this, too, passed, drawing back like an assassin into ambush. It was only a matter of time before it returned.
The cloud was thinning now. Another wave of weakness washed over him, swamping even the pain. He felt the warm stickiness of blood flowing down his back and knew that the round must have done serious damage. Cautiously he lifted his arm and tried to flex it. The pain savaged. Sweat broke out all over him.
The Zero flew into sunlight. He looked quickly around, but could see no sign of the other plane. He squinted up at the sun but it was too high to give him any idea of direction.
The cloud cover was thickening again. Below him was sea, above, a patch of brilliant blue sky, but of a true horizon there was nothing. The cloud swirled in smoking pillars around him.
He flew back into the cloud, feeling his strength ebbing. He explored over his shoulder with his left hand, fingering the tear in his jacket, the stickiness surrounding it. When he brought his hand back again, it was wet with blood. He stared at it, knowing his life was draining away, that there was nothing he could do about it.
He told himself to put it out of his mind, to fly on, to remember why he was here. Half an hour later, he decided that the bleeding had stopped. The pain was still there but, at least, it was no worse. His right side and arm were stiff, but still functioning.
By degrees he closed the throttle. The muted pulse of the engine throbbed in time with the throbbing of his blood.
Lower … Lower …
The cloud shredded, was gone. He flew into sunlight. The sun was still high, but Hideo had always had a keen eye and it seemed to him now that it had developed a westerly slant behind him. That meant he was flying east but, after being blind for so long, he had no way of knowing if that was where he wanted to go or not. He peered down, even so slight a movement making his senses swirl. Four thousand feet below, the coastline of what had to be Australia traced an emerald line against a sapphire sea. No sign of habitation, of any life at all. Again he checked the skies for another aircraft, craning his neck this way and that, while the pain in his back and shoulder howled and he felt once again the stealthy slither of blood over his skin. He could see nothing.