Yokohama Yankee

by Leslie Helm

  This area escaped major development, the director told me over the roar of the outboard motor, because it had been a naval base. During World War II, the Japanese navy bombed the smaller islands, many of which are shaped like battleships, for target practice. After the war, the area became part of the large US naval base nearby at Sasebo.

  As we approached the island, we came upon thousands of white floats bobbing in the water, and the speed boat slowed. The aquarium director explained that the nets below were filled with oysters into which perfectly spherical grains had been implanted to cultivate pearls. Before the technique was invented, girls would dive down as much as a hundred feet into those dark waters in search of wild oysters and their naturally grown pearls, learning to swim underwater as long as five minutes at a time.

  “Look! Over there!” the director said pointing to the tip of a peninsula. He accelerated the boat in that direction, and soon we could see remnants of a Roman aqueduct-like bridge, now in ruins. On the northern shore where the mansion should have been, however, there was only jungle.

  We tied up the boat and made our way up the embankment and into a thick jungle. As we walked, it became clear that this vegetation was part of a garden grown wild. Wisteria vines as thick as my thighs wended their way like snakes through ancient cherry trees, chest-high azaleas and massive rhododendrons. Soon we came upon a sunken outdoor bath made of rock and tile. And just beyond that, we could see the house that was in my father’s picture, now hidden by overgrown trees. When we slid open the glass front door and looked in, we stood silently for a few minutes. There was something very sad and haunting about the place. The elegant sweep of its massive tiled roof had caved in at several places. The wood floors, once polished to a shine by the soft shuffling of tabi-socked feet, were now covered with shards of glass and tile. Broken shoji doors were scattered across a rock garden in the small courtyard. I wondered what terrible thing had happened to make the inhabitants of this beautiful island leave.

  Don with Miki.

  IN THE SPRING AND SUMMER of 1947, Dad fell in love with Miki, a woman who had the oval face, the full mouth and the well-shaped nose of a classic Japanese beauty. Dad’s photo album was filled with pictures of her: Miki rubbing suntan lotion on his back at the beach; Dad and Miki standing on a hill, the wind blowing through Dad’s yukata; Dad in uniform next to Miki in front of a large rock memorial; and Miki in wood clogs gathering oysters. There were also photos of Miki’s stern-looking mother with the caption: “She rules the island.” Other pictures depicted the friendly cook, the vivacious sister and the happy boatman with his three apple-cheeked children. There were no pictures of Miki’s father. It seemed as if Dad were a young prince, brought there to fill the throne as lord of the island.

  Periodically, however, the army sent Dad to other parts of Japan, so he could take a hand in America’s mission of building a democracy. In May 1947, Dad and a couple of his buddies were sent to a small town near the port to supervise a local election. “Of course we had to meet the mayor and the chief of police and all the town officials,” wrote Dad. “They treated us as though we were the emperor himself. They gave large feasts in our honor, geisha parties and so on.” Dad wrote of beautiful sulfur springs and the blind masseuse who would work his back for an hour in exchange for half a pack of cigarettes. Dad spent a few days supervising the polling booths and reported that everything was in order.

  After the war, the US military kept largely intact the pre-war Japanese political system and bureaucracy in order to make it easier for the US to rule the country. Japanese officials quickly learned that if they kept American officials happy, they could still run Japan pretty much as they wanted. In the villages, democracy was used to give legitimacy to old village leaders.

  In the city, Japan used cruder means to keep the Americans happy. Just days after the emperor announced Japan’s surrender, the Japanese Home Ministry established a “Recreation and Amusement Association” which, in the name of patriotism, recruited tens of thousands of Japanese women to work as bar hostesses and prostitutes serving American soldiers. The association established dance halls, cabarets, hotels and brothels. In Maizuru, another port where Dad was sent to interview repatriated Japanese soldiers, local officials established a dance club for the soldiers. On opening night, the authorities invited officers along with some of the city’s young women. “They were all from good families, danced well on the whole, were very pretty, and we all had a jolly good time,” Dad wrote. “The chaperones were even worse than American ones but we sang the girls ‘Goodnight Ladies’ as they were carted away on the bus.”

  Dad found it difficult interacting with everyday Japanese the way he had done growing up as a child. His American uniform identified him as a member of the Occupation—someone who was a potential source of valuable cigarettes and whiskey, but could also be a source of trouble. Once when he was on duty, Dad heard the faraway sound of drums. It was a dance celebrating the obon festival of the spirits. He wanted to join the ring of dancers making their way around the platform on which the drummers performed. He wanted to dance as he used to as a child, but he was sure the Japanese wouldn’t feel comfortable having an American soldier in their midst, and so he quietly went home.

  Dad was happiest back in Hario, where he could retreat to his island paradise. He loved the lavish feasts Miki’s cook always prepared. “Fresh because the fish were alive one hour before. Tasty because the cooks were formerly engaged in serving these things at a big restaurant in Shanghai.” And to top it off, there was the pleasurable company of Miki. “Might I say that I am slowly but surely falling for her? She is a corker in every way,” Dad admitted to his mother.

  When Miki told Dad one day that her family was related to the Japanese Imperial family, he was impressed, but not surprised. Although Miki’s mother had the square jaw and tough eyes of a sergeant, she had exquisite manners, always wore elegant kimono and spoke in a highly stylized manner befitting a person of high birth. Dad was also impressed by Miki’s sophistication. “Miki discusses the problems of the world intelligently ... all of which is very much opposite to the average protected Japanese girl.”

  WALKING THROUGH THE DILAPIDATED OLD mansion with the aquarium director, I could easily imagine its former splendor. I could picture servants shuffling up and down these hallways, carrying trays of elegant dishes filled with delicacies from the sea. I could imagine Miki’s mother directing the household with a quiet nod here and an occasional frown there. When I told the aquarium director that Dad’s letters had spoken of the island family having ties to the Imperial family, he was skeptical.

  But on the way back to the boat we came upon a stone monument about twelve feet high that was all but hidden by shrubs. I held the branches back while the director read the inscription carved into the stone: “This is to memorialize the visit of his highness ... of the Imperial family.” The aquarium director looked at me with excitement.

  “Who would have dreamed you would find a house connected to the Imperial family on this remote island?” he said. “We can make this a stop on our ferry tour of the bay!”

  I shared his excitement. I felt as if I were getting close to finding Miki and to learning more about my father as a young man. When we returned to the Sea Pearl Resort, I thanked the aquarium director for his help and gave him copies of my father’s photos. Then I drove to the village where the boatman used to pick Dad up to take him to the island.

  “The island was abandoned sometime in the 1950s,” said an old fisherman who was putting away his gear in a small shed. “They didn’t have electricity and running water, you know. It was very inconvenient.” I tracked down a woman in a small village who had worked on the island in the early 1950s, but nobody could tell me about Miki.

  It was clear from Dad’s letters that he was head over heels in love with Miki that fall of 1947. He was writing to his mother asking her to send him books on dancing. He was learning the tango and taking Miki with him to the dance halls in nearby
cities to try out new steps. Spending so much time with Miki, I imagine, must have made Dad feel warmer toward Japan. He became more engaged with the Japanese men he was interviewing. In his letters home, he expressed empathy for the returning soldiers and what they endured. Some had been starved and treated as slaves in Dutch-ruled Indonesia. Others had been forced to fight on both sides of the civil war in China.

  The next time Dad came upon an obon festival, he joined in the dancing. “It was loads of fun,” Dad wrote his mother. “For once the Japanese people are out of their shells and act more like themselves. There were four hundred people around three taiko [drums] and several shamisen [stringed instruments]. Not drunk, but yet as gay as ever.”

  During the long winter months of early 1948, Dad found himself more and more disenchanted with the army. He couldn’t relate to his army buddies and more frequently succumbed to the magic of the island. He felt at home and happy when he was there. “She is the kind of girl that I would want to marry if she wasn’t Japanese,” Dad wrote his younger brother. Dad knew that his mother and father would not approve of his marrying a Japanese girl. They did not want Dad and his children suffering the discrimination they had faced.

  By the spring of 1948, the Soviets had started treating their Japanese prisoners better and were having better success at indoctrinating them. When the Russian ships came into the harbor, the soldiers would be singing The Internationale, the revolutionary workers’ anthem. During interrogations, they would refuse to answer questions. The US Army hired Japanese men who had been intelligence agents in the Japanese army and smuggled them aboard the freighters. The agents mingled among the soldiers and singled out the communist ringleaders. Once they were removed and isolated, the rest of the men were compliant. The men were often quick to renounce the Soviet Union, and many became double agents serving US interests.

  Dad’s assignment would come to an end that summer of 1948, and he was beginning to get impatient. He wondered if he shouldn’t be preparing for life after the army. When he was at the island, it was as if his ambition was drained from him. He just wanted to take walks and talk nonsense with Miki. But when he was not with Miki, he dreamed of Paris and all the other places in the world he wanted to visit.

  Perhaps it was to keep himself away from the island that he volunteered to be one of six men sent to deliver food and medical supplies to Fukui City, which had been hit by a major earthquake on June 28, 1948. They were trucked overnight to the city where they dug out survivors. “We never had to look far. They were always there—crushed chest, broken spine, broken limbs and flesh wounds,” Dad wrote in a letter home. “One became numb to it all working methodically, quickly, but carefully.”

  Nearly two thousand people were caught in an inferno that engulfed two adjoining theaters; only four hundred people made it out alive. Their charred bodies were pulled out by local firemen and thrown onto carts to be carried away. Everywhere there were cracks in the streets, and broken water mains flooded sections of the city. There was a story of a woman who was walking home from the paddy fields when the earth swallowed her up to her chin. The ground closed again, crushing her. The story, only a day old, was already told as if it were just one more tale in the long chronicle of tragedies the town had endured.

  Fukui had suffered more than any city should. Five years before, the city’s main shopping district had burned down in a fire. In 1945, the city had been destroyed again by American firebombs. Now this earthquake. Yet each time, the people cleaned up and went on with their lives.

  Dad admired the people of Fukui for their strength, but it seemed to him that their lives were a hopeless struggle. He wanted to get away from Japan. His plan was to finish college, enter the Foreign Service and travel the world. Miki and the island would not fit into those plans.

  MANY YEARS LATER, I TOLD my mother about my visit to the island and about Miki.

  “Oh, her?” Mother said. “She must be the girl that Dad used to talk about. Whenever we went to see Madame Butterfly, he would always cry. He always felt guilty about making her get an abortion.”

  An abortion? I felt disoriented. The child, if born, would have been my brother or sister. Dad was twenty years old at the time. How would he have reacted to the news of the pregnancy, and why had they chosen to abort the child?

  Perhaps he was concerned that his mother would disapprove of Miki. Or perhaps he concluded that she did not fit into his life’s plan. In either case, his father, Julie, had always spoken about taking responsibility for his actions. I suspect Dad was ashamed of himself for taking the easy way out.

  Dad escaped to Paris. He fell in love with another girl, this time a blond Swede who refused to follow him to the United States. By the time he returned to college at UC Berkeley, he had lost much of his early swagger.

  Dad’s broken relationship with Miki may have also colored all his views of Japan, for in some strange way, the island had come to represent everything that he loved about Japan. On the island he had experienced the joy of a Japan not consumed by the horrors of poverty and humiliation. There was the elegance of the house and the people, the simple happiness of the boatman’s family, the wonderful fruits of the sea. With the abortion, Dad may have felt he had besmirched the island, and in doing so, his image of the nation and its people.

  As I thought about the tragedy of Dad’s relationship with Miki, I was reminded of the end to the old folk tale about the undersea palace. Urashima Taro, growing tired of his long stay in that undersea kingdom, decided to go home. When he left, the princess gave him a box.

  “Do not open this box,” the princess said. “For as long as you have this unopened box you can return to this kingdom.” The turtle took Urashima Taro back to the beach from which he first came, but he no longer recognized anybody in the village. Feeling lonely and forlorn, he sat down, untied the silk cord around the lacquer box and removed the lid. A cloud of pink smoke came out. When he next looked at his reflection in a pond, he discovered he had turned into an old man. During his life of pleasure in the undersea palace, three hundred years had passed. The lacquer box had preserved those memories, frozen in time. Now that he had released them, he could never return. I wonder if Dad didn’t feel he had lost his innocence on that island, his sense that anything could happen if only he let it.

  Sometime after my visit to the island, I received a magazine clipping from the aquarium director. It was an article about the island and its Imperial connection. There was a sidebar about my search for the island “following in his father’s footsteps.” The article was illustrated with my father’s picture of the island.

  Soon afterward, I received an e-mail from Tomimura Hideaki, a young man who had just graduated from a junior college in Seattle. His family had once owned the island, but they had no pictures of it. He wondered if I would send them a copy of the picture. I was intrigued. I asked him if he knew anything about Miki and her family. He said he would look into it.

  That summer, a year after my first trip to the island, I flew with Hideaki to meet the Tomimura clan in Sasebo, a half-hour drive from the Kujuku Islands. Hideaki found cheap, luxury accommodations at Huis Ten Bosch, a $3 billion replica of a Dutch town that had been completed five years earlier to help boost the local economy, but was having trouble attracting tourists. It had a life-sized clock tower, a brewery and a cheese factory—all made of stone like the buildings in the original Dutch town. There were canals and windmills, acres of tulips and an authentic nineteenth-century ship that had sails as well as a steam-powered side wheel, like the Golden Age on which my great-grandfather had first traveled to Japan in 1869. There were hundreds of houses for sale built along Venice-like waterways in this fake Dutch town.

  At an exhibit showing the history of this town, I saw something that set my head spinning. There was a picture of a series of huge barracks in an otherwise beautiful valley at the edge of a bay that looked exactly like one of my father’s pictures. Suddenly it struck me: This fantasy town had been built on th
e site of one of Japan’s saddest and most humiliating events: the repatriation of Japanese soldiers. It was near here that my father had worked for nearly three years, interrogating soldiers. This strange effort to revitalize Kyushu’s ailing economy seemed to me like an expensive attempt to erase a past nobody wanted to remember.

  That night, I was invited to a banquet at a Chinese restaurant where twenty or so members of the Tomimura clan gathered in my honor. They thanked me for bringing the family together by rediscovering the island. They were an eccentric family. They had made their riches running a soy-sauce brewery. Hideaki’s grandfather took ballet lessons in a studio he built over the soy-sauce factory and later moved to Tokyo because he felt he didn’t fit in the little village. I asked everyone I met about the family that lived on the island when my father was there, but nobody seemed to know anything.

  Many cups of sake later, I was talking to an elderly man when he looked at me coolly and replied. “Sure, I knew them.”

  During the war, the Tomimura family had used the island as a summer home, the old man explained. They often entertained members of the Japanese Navy’s top brass, one of whom was an admiral, a member of the Imperial family. The stone monument on the island was erected in his honor. Toward the end of the war, Sasebo was fire-bombed and virtually the entire city burned down. The Tomimura family lost their home. By some strange fate, there was a woman, recently returned from Shanghai, who lived in a house that survived the bombing.

  “The woman was a geisha, you know, a woman of the floating world, the entertainment world. She was very good at business,” the man said. “I assume she heard about how we used the island to entertain Japanese naval officers and decided it would make a good business for entertaining American soldiers. She made this deal with us. We would move into her house in the city. In exchange, we would let her use our island.”