Above the East China Sea: A novel

by Sarah Bird

  Though we no longer fooled ourselves that we would find safety, we had no choice but to keep moving south, toward Makabe, toward the end of the island. At least we would have the protection of our army there. With a weary sigh, I stood, prepared to move my sister forward by force if I had to.

  Instead, to my surprise, Hatsuko jumped to her feet and whispered to me, “Those soldiers blowing up, that was a sign. It was a sign that Nakamura isn’t meant to die yet. He wasn’t in that platoon as you thought, because the gods are protecting him. Our destinies are intertwined; I can feel it. You were right; he is waiting for me. There will be an explanation.”

  Hatsuko’s eyes glittered as she told me to hurry. I didn’t say anything about how grotesque it was to think that all those young men had been slaughtered simply to send her a message. Instead, I pulled out the padded bonnets that our mother had made for us and tied one on her head and one on mine. It no longer mattered how I kept my sister alive, only that I kept my promise to Anmā and did it.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Just before dawn, I managed to find the crumbled remains of a bombed-out bridge. We wriggled into the hollow formed between two large chunks of cement and, though water trickled beneath our hiding spot, soaking us through, we felt safe. After resting for a few hours in the damp spot, neither of us could ignore the rumbling of our empty bellies. We hadn’t eaten since leaving Haebaru, and it was far too wet to make a fire to cook part of our ration of rice.

  By scurrying out of hiding for brief periods, I managed to find some locusts, a lizard, and a handful of sweet potato leaves to eat. Though Hatsuko gagged eating bits of lizard and locust, I promised her that tomorrow we would cook the rice and have a proper meal. Thinking of the rice to come and Nakamura waiting for her with an explanation allowed her to swallow. The food quieted our complaining bellies enough that we slept for several hours, then continued on when night fell.

  We reached Makabe at dawn the next day and found dozens of other Princess Lily girls. We were overjoyed to reunite with Sachiko and Miyoko. Mitsue stood apart from the others, averting her eyes when Hatsuko glanced her way. We had only a few short minutes before the sun rose and enemy soldiers would be able to see us. I led Hatsuko and the other girls to the main hospital cave. Centuries of rainwater had carved the entrance, a vertical hole in the ground. There would be a safe place to sleep and food waiting for us within its dark depths. Outside the entrance to the cave, wounded soldiers moaned in pain on stretchers. Their comrades who had risked their lives to rescue the fallen begged the guards to let them in.

  “You may enter,” a guard told the soldiers. “But you must leave the stretchers behind. There is no room for them.”

  “Don’t worry,” I assured the brave soldiers who had risked their lives to bring the wounded to safety. “As soon as we are admitted, I will bring help for those men.” But when Hatsuko and I stepped forward to enter, two guards blocked our way.

  “We are Himeyuri girls,” I informed him. The girls behind me nodded. Some of them called out their names or the names of their teachers. But the guard did not move.

  This time when I spoke, I used the crisp tone I’d heard Japanese soldiers adopt when they addressed those of lower rank. “Let us in immediately. We work with the hospital as student nurses. We are needed inside. Your superiors will be quite angry with you if you don’t admit us and these wounded men.”

  The guards glanced at each other and muttered, “Kawaii,” the Japanese word for “cute.” As they laughed, the taller of the two grinned.

  Feeling the weight of being responsible now not just for Hatsuko, but for all the other Princess Lily girls who had joined us, I cried out forcefully, “The sun is rising! You must let us in! The bombing is going to start! We will all be killed!”

  “No one else is getting in here,” the grinning guard said. “This is for hospital staff only.”

  “But we are hospital staff. Do you see this blood?” I pointed to a brown splotch on my collar. “This is from a soldier whose leg I helped amputate. Now let us in so that we can find help and carry these men out here to safety inside.”

  “No more room. All filled up. There are already so many of you Lily girls down there that they’re calling it the Cave of the Virgins.”

  The shorter guard grunted out a laugh, then ordered, “Move on. No more virgins needed here! But you.” The guard pointed to the stretcher bearers. “You soldiers, you can come in.” They moved forward, and the guard barked, “Without the stretchers, you idiots. What did I just say? There’s no room.”

  Far behind us, like a train in the distance, the droning of bombers setting off on their deadly mission came once more. I grabbed Hatsuko’s hand and shoved my shoulder against the guard to knock him aside and let us in. Instantly his hand closed around my throat. His companion cocked his rifle and pointed it at Hatsuko. The first guard choked me long enough to show that he could kill me if he chose to, then he thrust me out, bawling, “Japanese only! The rest of you, you Okinawans, you are on your own. Now get out of here before I shoot you all!”

  But we couldn’t move. We were too stunned by this ultimate betrayal. We were being denied shelter, turned out into sure death in the Typhoon of Steel. The able-bodied soldiers shoved their way past us and entered the cave.

  An instant later, I was thrown forward onto my face by the percussive impact of a bomb exploding behind us. There was a white flash, and fragments flew past us with a throaty, angry buzz. We screamed as gravel and rocks bludgeoned our backs.

  A large stone hit my head with a force that might have been deadly had it not been for Anmā’s bonnet. Debris rained down, battering the unshielded, wounded soldiers until their moaning stopped and they lay silent forever. Their comrades who had risked their lives saving them huddled inside the cave and wept.

  The instant the barrage stopped, Hatsuko and I clambered to our feet. Mitsue and Miyoko lay motionless on the ground. Sachiko, the fastest runner in our group, writhed in agony, the white of bone and brain showing through the blood that sheeted her face.

  Hatsuko and I went to help our friends, our cousin, but a fast-approaching roar stopped us. “More bombers are coming,” I said, dragging my sister away. “The next one will kill us!” We joined the few other student nurses who had survived and bolted toward the nearest cave opening we could find. Here too Japanese soldiers lunged at us with bayonets, driving us away.

  “Why don’t you just kill us right now!” I screamed. “That’s what you’re doing! You were supposed to protect us! We nursed you! We brought you water! We picked maggots from your wounds!”

  The next flight of approaching bombers clouded the sky to the north so completely that I knew we would never survive their devastation. I was commending my soul to our ancestors’ care when a Japanese soldier’s head popped out of what I thought was a pile of dead brush that had blown against the side of the hill.

  “Hurry,” he called out in a shrill voice, pushing the camouflage away to reveal the opening to a cave that descended straight down into the earth. The kind soldier pulled us into the cave, and we clambered down into its depths just as the first bombs dropped. Though the hole in the earth was already packed so tightly with other refugees that we all had to stand, we were happy to do so, for none of us would have survived the barrage that roared outside.

  “Katsuko?” a voice called out in lull in the shelling. It was Natsuko, searching for her little sister with the rhyming name. In the darkness of the cave, we all picked up the cry and called out for Katsuko. But Katsuko didn’t answer. Natsuko, unable to believe what this meant, said, “She was right behind me. She was always right behind me. Someone, please help me find my little sister.”

  As an explosion that made the earth around us rumble drowned out the rest of her words, my sister found my hand and squeezed with a strength I hadn’t felt from her in too long. I clung to it through that long day of destruction. All around us, girls weak from hunger and thirst fainted. Whispers reached us that three girls,
wounded by shrapnel and weakened by malaria, had died and that there was not enough room for them to crumple to the earth. We were all packed in so tightly that I too remained upright even when I fell asleep.

  At nightfall, though the bombing didn’t stop, we flooded out of the cave, driven from safety by thirst, hunger, and the desperate need to relieve ourselves. Since all the other girls had finished off the meager rations of rice they’d been given in Haebaru, Hatsuko and I had to find a private place to cook and eat ours. If we shared what little we had there wouldn’t be enough to sustain any of us.

  Outside, we rushed away from the cave and eventually found a sheltered spot in what had once been a stable. It had been raining all day, though, and Hatsuko said, “We’ll never find anything dry enough to build a fire and cook our rice.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I answered. From around my waist, I untied the tube of money Anmā had given me so long ago and used a wad of the bills to light a small fire. It was just large enough to boil the water I had scooped out of a bomb crater in the lid of my mess kit. As we waited for the muddy liquid to boil, I reached into my satchel for our rice. It wasn’t there. We emptied every bundle we had and clawed frantically through every scrap they contained. The rice was gone.

  “Someone must have stolen it,” Hatsuko concluded. Packed in as we had been, I never would have noticed the slither of a thieving hand. We waited for the water to boil and cool; then, because thirst was clawing at our throats, I poured us each a cup of the foul, oily stuff.

  I held my cup up. “Here’s to the most expensive drink we’ll ever drink.” Hatsuko didn’t laugh at my joke, and I choked down the water in silence.

  As we squatted there, I took stock of our situation: We had no food. No clean water. And no safe shelter. The Japanese army had turned us out to die. The ketō would be arriving soon with their flamethrowers. I imagined the flames licking into our hiding place like the tongue of a voracious dragon. I imagined the last sounds I heard on this earth being Hatsuko’s tortured cries, and I announced, “We’re going home.”

  “But we will be shot as deserters.”

  “Hatsuko, the army has deserted us. We have no choice. Everyone here will either surrender or die.”

  “Death before dishonor.”

  I wanted to slap her when she said that, but didn’t. We weren’t having a sisters’ spat. There was no longer any winning or losing. There was only living or dying, and I was determined that we would live. “Hatsuko, there is food in our family tomb. Anmā put it there for us. Pork miso. Dried sweet potatoes. Black sugar. And the springs? Remember the springs in the woods behind our house? There will be clean, fresh water. We can drink. Bathe. We’re not far, Hatsuko. We can be back in our village in two nights’ marching.”

  “Perhaps Mother and Father will be waiting for us, safe in the tomb.”

  “It’s possible.” If anyone could outwit the Japanese and American armies, it was my resourceful mother. How, I wondered, had such a simple countrywoman been able to predict all that would happen? Thinking it would help convince Hatsuko, I added, “You know what Mother always says: ‘Life is the treasure.’ ”

  Instead of convincing her, however, Anmā’s mantra must have reminded Hatsuko of the warrior’s code of death before dishonor that Nakamura lived by, and she insisted, “No. I can’t. I must find Nakamura.”

  Again I fought the impulse to slap my sister. I knew that if I did, though, it would only make her more stubborn. Instead, speaking in the flowery way she did with Nakamura, I lured her with this promise: “Nakamura is the reason we must go. Like all the others, he, too, is starving. We must go and fetch food for him. Imagine his delight when you present the crock of Anmā’s delicious pork miso to him.”

  In her eyes, I saw the scene she imagined playing out. Nakamura would be on his deathbed, his features even more refined and ennobled by all he’d endured. Hatsuko would cushion his body with hers, helping him to sit up. The first few bites she would feed to him herself. She would snatch him back from the White Dragon of Death. Dazzled by gratitude, he would fix his eyes on hers and their love would be reborn.

  “Yes, all right,” she agreed.

  The way to our village was littered with corpses bloated to two and three times their size. We had covered only a few kilometers when the sight and smell of rotting flesh combined with hunger and thirst made Hatsuko’s pace wobbly and uncertain. Unless I found food and water, her energy would continue to dwindle, until she joined the poor souls who’d already given up their lives. That fear drove me to approach the body of a Japanese soldier, lying facedown in a dry ditch. Flies, their blue bellies fat, buzzed around him. I tried to shoo them away, but they wouldn’t leave. In the soldier’s rucksack I found three hard candies and a tin of food. I was forced to shove his body aside to retrieve the canteen he’d fallen on. His rifle had been smashed by falling rocks, but I was able to remove the bayonet, and I took that with me.

  I sucked one of the hard candies, and every sight and sound and smell except for the voluptuous sweetness of barley sugar melting in my mouth faded away. I retraced my path back to Hatsuko, gave her the two candies I had left, and we each took sips from the canteen. The tin, which I opened with the blade of the bayonet, contained squid in oil. Hatsuko and I savored every tentacle of the squid and every drop of its dark oil. The water, candy, and squid gave us the energy to toil on for a few more kilometers before the sun started to rise. Even if it meant stealing from the dead, my sister and I were going home.

  FORTY

  It is dark outside and a misty drizzle is falling when I get back to the car. In the pink light cast by the SoapLand sign, I see that Jake is asleep. His head rests to one side, nestled against his shoulder. He looks blurry through the wet windshield. All the shops on the street have closed for the night, their shutters lowered. I try to figure out what to tell him, but I haven’t even absorbed it all myself. As soon as I open the door, he wakes.

  “Hey, how’d it go? You were gone a long time.”

  “Yeah, he wanted to tell me the story of his life.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Did you get what you needed?”

  I show him the list I copied.

  “That should work. You okay?”

  “It was intense.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “I feel like I’ve already dragged you into more than you bargained for.”

  “You didn’t drag me; the kami did. Want to try the best yakitori on the island?”

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Then just come with me, because I’m starved. My cousin and her husband have this unbelievable yatai over near the Sunabe Seawall.”

  His cousin’s yatai, a cross between a noodle cart and a tapas bar, glows as brightly as the red paper lanterns hanging at either end of the seating area, where half a dozen stools are crowded around the counter. As we approach, the owners, a beaming thirtyish couple, greet Jake like a long-lost son. “Jay-koo! Jay-koo! Hai-sai! Hai-sai!”

  The husband, sautéing mounds of bean sprouts and pork on a griddle that stretches the length of the counter, wears a short white kimono dotted with navy-blue fans over jeans, and sports a soul patch beneath his lower lip. His wife, busy chopping up piles of cabbage and scallions, greets us in happy, fluting Japanese. The heat from the griddle makes her face flush a pretty pink beneath thick bangs and a white kerchief that hides the rest of her hair.

  Jake ducks his head in a few swift bows, returning the greetings as he exchanges a volley of Japanese with the couple, who grin and laugh at his every comment. My name, pronounced Loozoo, pops out, and they both rain friendly nods and bows my way.

  “Luz, I’d like you to meet my cousin Kana.” The wife wipes her hand on her apron and extends it over the griddle for me to shake. “And her husband, Matsukichi.”

  The yatai with its luminous openness and welcoming ambience is the perfect antidote to SoapLand’s grubby sordidness. Al
l I want to do at this moment is forget everything Vaughn told me.

  Kana gestures for us to sit, sit. From a poster advertising Boss Coffee, Tommy Lee Jones’s pitted, Easter Island face scowls down at us. He does look like a boss. Certainly no one you’d want to cross. A quilt of business cards, brown as a flurry of moths, is tacked up overhead, covering the ceiling of the yatai.

  Jake explains, “Matsukichi used to work in Tokyo in equity derivatives.”

  Matsukichi looks up from the griddle and calls out, “Team lead!”

  “And Kana taught Ryukyuan history at Sofia University. But when they had children, they both wanted to come back and raise them as true Okinawans.”

  “Uchinānchu! Ichiban!” Matsukichi calls out, having pieced together that we are talking about his return to Okinawa. “Tokyo no yasashii.” He waggles his fist, thumb, and little finger out, in the “Hang loose, brah,” shaka gesture, and I get that he returned because Tokyo is not as laid-back as his home island.

  Matsukichi slides a feast onto the counter in front of us: skewers of yakitori, the grilled meat glistening with tangy sauce; pinwheels of thinly sliced omelette; and bowls of soba topped with pork and vegetables. I recognize in a distant, abstract way that it’s delicious, but the SoapLand shocks have tightened my stomach into a hard ball that repels food. Though I try to push the thoughts away, my heart clenches as I imagine the unthinkable hardships that my sweet grandmother endured. Even as images of all she suffered begin to appear in my mind, they are lulled away by an insistent cooing, “Shi, shi, shi,” and, knowing it is what Anmā wants, I am able to eat.

  All the happy bantering among Jake, his cousin, and her husband stops dead when a group of Japanese tourists, half a dozen guys in their midtwenties loud and boisterous as drunk frat boys, ducks in under the canvas curtains. They fall silent the instant they see Jake and me. Before they can back out at the sight of a non-Japanese, though, Jake jumps up and waves the newcomers in with a burst of high-volume Japanese.