Hiroshima Boy

by Naomi Hirahara

  For a moment he thought about buying a toy train for his only grandson, Takeo. But Takeo wasn’t a child anymore. He was in high school, not interested in anything that didn’t have a screen for digital images.

  As the train zoomed forward, he heard only a low-volume whooshing sound against the window. The familiar scenes of rice paddies and farmhouses outside calmed him to no end. This was the Japan he remembered. The Japan that time had forgotten.

  For a moment, he wished that Haruo wasn’t stuffed in his suitcase but was fully alive, next to him, watching this scene. Haruo had gone back to Japan a couple of times with his daughter, but as far as Mas knew he’d had no strong desire to be buried here.

  The request—or perhaps edict—came from Haruo’s older sister, Ayako. This sister, nesan, whom he had only heard of once in passing. Like Haruo, she’d been born in Fresno and taken to Hiroshima as a child. Unlike Haruo, she stayed in Japan. He wasn’t sure why, because he understood that she’d never married. And she was ancient, almost ninety, but had had enough energy to call Haruo’s widow, Spoon, every day.

  Spoon, who was so hunched over now that she resembled a round piece of fruit, could barely sustain such persistent calls. Also, Ayako didn’t seem to either recognize or honor that there was an international time difference that separated Hiroshima and Los Angeles by sixteen, seventeen hours. As a result, Spoon received these calls at two o’clock every morning.

  Spoon wasn’t able to make the international trip. And it wasn’t like she could put Haruo in an envelope or old coffee can and send him off to Hiroshima. The task had to be in person, and as it turned out, Mas was the best and maybe the only available person for the job.

  He, quite honestly, thought the whole idea was ridiculous. If it were him, he would have preferred to be blown in the California wind, scattered in the weeds, grass, and flowers, and end up on a sparrow’s wing, unnoticed and without any fanfare.

  She was holding a handwritten sign with his name in purple, “MASAO ARAI.” And below it, in Japanese. The Japanese was all in katakana, the script used for foreign names, not Japanese ones. Even the writing itself looked babyish, written by an outsider. The girl holding the sign was, in fact, an outsider. Her skin was dark, copper toned, and her eyes seemed too large for her head. Young men would deem her attractive, but to Mas, she seemed skinny and delicate. A child.

  The lopsided suitcase behind him, Mas stood in front of the girl on the platform. In spite of her youth, she looked weary. She must have been waiting a long time.

  “Are you Arai-san?” she asked.

  He grunted. Haruo’s sister had indicated that she would send someone to pick him up from Hiroshima Station, but he didn’t imagine anyone who looked like this.

  As he took a few more steps, it dawned on him. It was here. Not in this actual building, but in this physical space. This is where he had been. The bursting of atoms and molecules, the obliteration of the train station and the fire.

  “Are you all right? Daijobu?”

  He was doubled over his bag, and the girl helped him to his feet. Making sure that he was steady, she ran over to the vending machine next to the snack stand and got him a cold bottle of water.

  The water was actually exactly what he needed. He felt immediately revived.

  “Do you feel more comfortable speaking English or Japanese?”

  He didn’t quite know how to answer that question. He didn’t enjoy speaking at all, especially as he grew older. The words didn’t come to either his mind or mouth that easily these days.

  “My name is Thea.” Anticipating any questions he might have, she added, “I’m from the Philippines.”

  Most of the signs in the airport and train platforms were not only in English, but also in Chinese and Korean. Something had happened to the town he had grown up in—the same thing that had happened in America. The world had entered in.

  “You’ve had such a long trip. You must be very tired.”

  At least the girl had a semblance of common sense.

  “Youzu how ole?” Mas finally said.

  “Me?” Her face flushed slightly. She must get that question often. “Twenty. Mukai-sensei is my sponsor. She was my mother’s nursing professor.”

  “Your mama here?”

  Thea shook her head. “She is back in the Philippines. But she loved Japan, especially Hiroshima, so much. She told me that if I had the opportunity, I should come to Hiroshima, too.” She took the half-empty water bottle from him and tightened the cap before stuffing it in her canvas bag next to her “MASAO ARAI” sign. “Do you feel strong enough to continue?”

  He nodded, grabbing hold of the suitcase’s retractable handle.

  “I want to take you straight to the island.”

  They got into a taxi with Thea telling the driver in perfect Japanese that they wanted to go to Ujina Port. From there, Mas guessed, they would take a ferry to Ino Island.

  Ayako Mukai lived in a nursing home on Ino. As a child, Mas had gone to the island to go hiking. Ino was called the Little Mount Fuji of Hiroshima. Aside from being the approximate sloped shape, the mountain was, of course, nothing like Mount Fuji. The thing that had impressed him the most was Ino’s chorus of semi, cicada, which buzzed and screeched louder than anything he’d ever heard as a boy. The sound was so penetrating that it hurt his then-young developing ribs.

  But after the Bomb fell, Ino’s legacy had been forever altered. Mas didn’t hear about the details until days later, when he had finally returned to his home from the middle of Hiroshima. The makeshift rafts, the lifeboats that people rode to escape the flattened and burning city, the black rain. Ino, which had once quarantined soldiers who’d been exposed to cholera, still had its buildings intact. There were places for ruined bodies to rest on the floor underneath a roof to shield them from the punishing heat. Ten thousand people had come to Ino seeking refuge. Unfortunately, far, far fewer were able to leave the island alive.

  He wasn’t that interested in revisiting the island, especially during the height of summer. Why would Ayako Mukai want to spend her last years, months, and days in a place marked by the pikadon, the blast of the atomic bomb? The anguished cries of his classmates had followed him to the other side of the Pacific Ocean, tormenting him in the middle of the night. He couldn’t imagine living in the midst of those ghosts today.

  Reaching Ujina, they waited in a quiet port building, which was mostly empty. It looked relatively new, with high ceilings and a wall of glass that faced the ocean. In the distance was Ino, a mound of green. After waiting about half an hour, they walked outside to the landing, where about five or six young boys, little yogore troublemaker types, were running around causing mischief. A couple threw rocks into the water, while the others laughed and tossed a baseball cap, apparently the smallest boy’s, to one another. Americans had the impression that Asian children were well behaved, but they had not been exposed to these unsupervised boys, who actually could have been Mas and his friends, once upon a time.

  Their ferry appeared on the horizon, becoming larger and larger. It was at least a two-decker with a parking area for cars. “The last boat from Ino to Ujina is at eight in the evening,” Thea said. “If you don’t make that one, you’re stuck on the island overnight.” Not a great prospect, since there was only one inn on Ino, she explained.

  The boys had run ahead to the ticket taker, who had walked down to the landing from the boat. Thea and Mas were last to board and before he could take out any yen that he had exchanged in Los Angeles before he departed, Thea handed two large coins to the ticket collector. The coins went into his leather satchel, which looked like an American woman’s old-fashioned pocketbook. Mas made a move to pay Thea back, but she shook her head and laughed. “Please. Mukai-sensei has taken care of everything.”

  They climbed up a flight of stairs into an enclosed passenger area, rows of seats divided into three sections.

  “I get a bit seasick, even on such a short trip like this. I’ll be outside. But ple
ase rest your feet.” Thea walked up one of the aisles through the door to a small deck. As the ferry began to move forward, her long, dark brown hair whipped behind her, evoking the image of a young pony overlooking a wide expanse of land.

  He propped his legs across three seats in the back row. He realized that this was a very un-Japanese thing for an old man to be doing, but he didn’t care. This trip, which had just started, had already been rough on his battered body. He had a couple of hard candies in his jeans pocket and took them out, in addition to an old slim camera that Mari had given to him. He imagined Mari nagging him, Dad, take some pictures while you’re there. You haven’t been there in almost fifty years. To silence her, he pressed the shutter a good three, four times, not even paying attention to what he was photographing. There, good enough? he thought.

  The main passenger area was relatively empty, aside from two rows of the rowdy teenage boys. They were still harassing the little one, who still didn’t have his baseball cap. Across the aisle from these boys was another one, maybe fourteen years old, who sat by himself. Mas noticed him for two reasons. First of all, his face was downcast, as if he were upset or stressed. Perhaps the boys had done something to him, too? Had he been ousted from the group for some reason? The other thing that made the boy stand out was his T-shirt. It was bright red with a cable car on its back. When he abruptly stood up and turned, the words “San Francisco” on the front of the shirt caught Mas’s eye.

  When he was nineteen, Mas had spent some time in San Francisco after working the strawberry fields in Watsonville. He lived in the home of a rich hakujin man, for whom he worked as a schoolboy, a term that Japanese Americans used for houseboy. It was a short-lived experiment. He was summarily fired when his benefactor discovered that friends and cousins had spent the night on the floor in his tiny servant’s quarters.

  He did not regret that he had lost his schoolboy position. He wasn’t meant to answer to one boss. And San Francisco, with its colorful Fisherman’s Wharf, sourdough bread, and cable cars, was meant to be experienced to its fullest, at least until the money ran out.

  He doubted that this brooding teen had spent any length of time in San Francisco. America was definitely not for the weak.

  A car was waiting for them when they arrived in Ino. This was the main dock on the island, Thea said. A smaller landing on the east side was closer to the nursing home, but the big car ferry couldn’t dock there, the girl explained.

  The boys ran off the boat, scattering like crabs into the narrow alleys of the small seaside village. Mas was relieved for the quiet. The sun again seemed to burn through his clothing and he wished he’d brought his Dodgers cap to at least shield his eyes. A concrete toro gateway welcomed them to the island. Behind it was a simple shrine with a peaked roof covered in green patina, probably from saltwater exposure.

  The driver of the car, Tatsuo, worked at the nursing home. Of an indeterminate age, he wore a loose white cotton uniform and awkward sandals on his stockinged feet. After placing the suitcase into the trunk, Tatsuo made sure his passengers were secured in their seats before driving forward. The narrow, winding highway could barely accommodate two cars going in opposite directions. Luckily, there weren’t many vehicles to avoid, only an occasional motorbike or bicycle.

  They passed the only inn on the island, a modest ryokan that looked like the type that offerered meals of fresh fish and local vegetables. The driver made a left at what seemed the southernmost tip, the site of an expansive garden lined with sunflowers and dahlias, across from a large building that could have been a school.

  The ocean was at low tide, revealing rows of racks holding oyster spats. When he was a boy in Hiroshima, Mas had assisted an uncle in threading large white scallop shells with rope. He wasn’t quite sure how it worked, but somehow the baby oysters attached to the smooth inside surface of the shells.

  “We don’t eat oysters right now, though. It’s off-season. I’ve heard that in the summer a bacteria can be spread to the oysters as they spawn.” Thea then repeated what she said in Japanese to Tatsuo and he nodded.

  “Only certain kinds of oysters, though,” he said in Japanese. “We have all kinds now.”

  Mas wasn’t aware of the seasonal ban. He was a bit disappointed because he was looking forward to eating one of Hiroshima’s specialties, kaki furai, or fried oysters.

  “Tatsuo-san knows all about oysters. His uncle even has a factory here,” Thea reported.

  The car finally stopped in front of a two-story institutional-looking building.

  Mas was always a bit scared to go into any kind of nursing home. His biggest fear was to spend his last days trapped in one of these facilities. This one, though, seemed better than most. At least the ocean was a stone’s throw away.

  Leaving their shoes at the genkan, the recessed Japanese entryway, Thea helped him into oversized slippers made from some kind of synthetic material that was neither plastic nor nylon.

  “Let’s say hi to Mukai-sensei,” Thea said, taking hold of his suitcase. “She’s usually in bed by seven o’clock.”

  He again felt his stomach flip-flop. He didn’t know much about Haruo’s sister. Haruo had mentioned some brothers in Hiroshima and maybe Ayako in passing once. Or maybe Haruo did talk about his sister when Mas wasn’t listening, which was actually quite often.

  After being cleared to pass through a security door, they traveled down a wide corridor.

  “Your suitcase wheel is broken,” Thea announced, a bit irritated with its awkward roll.

  What else was new?

  Finally they stopped in front of an open doorway. “Mukai-sensei—” Thea called out to someone lying in a hospital bed. “Ojama shimasu, pardon me for disturbing you.” She and Mas both bowed before entering the room. On one side was a private bathroom.

  “So you are Mas Arai.”

  At first he couldn’t make out the speaker’s features because of the sunlight through a picture window overlooking the ocean.

  As his failing eyes acclimated to the light, he almost audibly gasped. The sister resembled Haruo so much—sans the ugly keloid scar that had marked the left side of his face.

  “I am Ayako,” she said in English. Her voice had almost a regal tone.

  He bowed again.

  “Where is he?”

  Mas realized that Ayako meant her brother. But how could he open up his suitcase to reveal his worn (but clean, of course) underwear bunched up next to the sock holding Haruo’s ashes? It was the ultimate embarrassment, a haji that he was loath to experience.

  “Perhaps Arai-san can rest first. He’s had such a long day of travel.” Mas was grateful that Thea saved him.

  “We have an extra room for guests here. I hope you can handle sleeping on a futon on the floor.”

  What kind of Japanese did Ayako think he was?

  “We will speak more later. Thea, show him where his room is.”

  Mas felt like he was being officially dismissed—from what? This was not a queen’s castle but a modest room in a nursing home on a remote island.

  In the hallway, Thea whispered, “She’s a bit frightening. I’ve gotten used to her.”

  At least Ayako’s pompousness was not a figment of his imagination. He followed Thea to the guest room, which was a six-tatami-mat room, about a hundred square feet, with a sink behind a sliding door.

  After helping him with his suitcase, she asked, “Is there anything more I can get for you?”

  “Needsu to make phone call. My wife.”

  “Oh, I thought that—never mind, of course. You can use my cell phone.”

  Mas resisted. That was too much of an imposition.

  “Okay, here, come to the office with me.”

  They returned to the lobby and entered the front office through a side door. Thea spoke briefly to Tatsuo, and Mas was brought over to a back room. After getting his home number, Thea dialed for him and handed him the receiver. A few strange rings and then it was his blessed wife on the line.


  “Hello.”

  “Hallo.”

  “Mas, you made it. Thank God. Mari and I have been so worried. Where are you?”

  “Ino Island.”

  “You must be exhausted.”

  He grunted.

  “So you saw Haruo’s sister? She must have been so appreciative that you came all the way with his ashes.”

  He didn’t mention anything about Haruo being smashed in his sock. “Yah,” he just managed to say.

  He kept his conversation with Genessee brief. These international calls were expensive, and his intent was to let her know that he was still alive.

  “Oh, by the way,” she interjected, “Mari wanted me to tell you that your niece has been calling her. She wants to know whether you’ll be visiting your family’s house.”

  “Umm,” was all Mas said. He didn’t want to think about that now. He had a task to do. This was not about fun and games and going back home. Besides there was no one left in that home—at least no people that he knew.

  After he finished his call, Thea was already sitting on the genkan, her shoes back on her feet.

  “I have to go back to my apartment.… I’ll try to check in every day you are here,” she said.

  As she rose, Mas was surprised that he wasn’t relieved. He wanted her to stay and be his advocate. There were too many unknowns on the island, a beautiful but somewhat brutal place.

  “Oh, by the way,” Thea added, “there are sundowners here. So make sure you lock your door at night from the inside. The men’s bathroom is across from your room. Make sure to lock it, too, when you use it. They won’t hurt you, of course, but they might be a bit confused.”

  He himself was a bit confused, and Thea, picking up on it, elaborated. “Sundowners are seniors who get a bit agitated when the sun goes down. Who knows why it happens? A bit like vampires, desho?”

  Thea’s comment on the elderly vampires shook Mas a little. As soon as he locked himself in his room, he turned on the television. It was a modern flat screen but on the smallish side. There were only about seven channels available, and he chose a comedy show that featured strange-looking Japanese people spouting nonsense from a puffy couch. The comedians were ridiculous, but the audience laughter comforted him.