Everything went dark. She must have lost consciousness. Her awareness of where she was and what was happening returned when she landed on the stone step at the front of the house. She fell hard on her right arm and her hip, and she felt her ankle rip open on the sharp edge of the stone. She heard the door slam and the heavy stamping steps retreating. She was grateful that the noise was muffled. Too weak to get up, she gathered herself around her wounded arm and laid her cheek on the stone. Think about how cool it is, how good it feels. Don’t think about anything else. But unconsciousness did not come to release her again, and she was aware of everything, everything she had lost.
When Granny finally stopped screaming, Michiko could hear Kazue Obasan talking to the little girls, quietly begging them to live. She imagined that Granny had gone back to the tatami room and was sitting with the little boy at her side.
Michiko was still there when Shotaro arrived. He took her hand and asked what had happened. When Michiko couldn’t speak, he went inside, not even bothering to announce himself. He was back quickly. He picked Michiko up and carried her off.
Shotaro was by her side when she awoke the next morning. When she struggled to get up, he held her down gently and said, “No, no, stay put. You’re safe. Starting from today, I am taking care of you.” His eyes were full of concern, his attention fully on her. Knowing that what he said was true, she slipped back into the illness and into sleep. The fever came again and held her in its grip.
He was by her side every time she awoke. She came to understand that she was in the shed behind his aunt and uncle’s house. When she was well enough to ask how long she had been there, Shotaro said, “Three days so far. It’s the last day of July.”
The next day she asked if his aunt and uncle minded that they had a guest, and he said, “Don’t worry. I’m taking care of you. You’re my guest. And from tomorrow you start eating.”
During the heat of the next day, as she lay in the cool, dark shed, she was aware for the first time that the old wood was still dank with the smell of the yams and potatoes that had been stored there in happier days. She moved her right arm slowly; it was neatly and expertly bandaged. She looked at it with surprise and saw bruising that extended far beyond the edge of the bandage. She reached her arm out and was running her fingers over the nubs and ridges of the wall when she heard Shotaro open the door.
“I thought you’d be better today. I’m glad I was right.” She turned toward the doorway, eager to see his face. The sunlight hurt her eyes, but as he closed the door and moved next to her in the tiny space, she tried to smile, wondering if her muscles were working.
“It’s so good to see you smiling.” Leaning close, he said, “Yes, you are better, and it is time for you to eat.” He had tea and scraps of food.
Day by day she slowly healed and improved. She was able to sit, to stand, and to walk short distances. He was always there, even when she didn’t know she needed him. She loved the warmth in his voice, in his eyes. He was the reason she was alive, her antidote to loss and sorrow. He was her world.
The first time she was strong enough to leave the shed, they stood in a soft evening twilight. He began to tell her the news of the last few weeks. “Early every evening, after I was sure you were asleep, I came out here. In the last fading light, the planes would pass overhead. They were like flocks of birds—so many you couldn’t count them. Usually they were so high I couldn’t hear them, and watching them pass in pure silence was somehow even more dreadful than hearing the roar of engines. Sometimes one of them would catch a ray of the last light in the sky and gleam, soft and silvery, before passing on, into the dark and towards the cities. Those moments were so quietly beautiful they’d take my breath away. How can I think that? I’d say to myself. They’re bombers on their way to their fearsome work. Watching them every evening made me so, so sad. I’d stand here wondering how I could bear any more of this. How I can live the rest of my life remembering just what I have to remember now?
“It rained after the bombing in Osaka, so the fires didn’t last, and I was able to go home the next morning. All I found was a sodden pile of rubble where our house had been. It was like that for about a ten-square block area. I wouldn’t have known where I was but for the empty burned space that had been the bamboo grove that stood behind our garden. My parents loved to sit there in the evening and listen to the cicadas and the trees knocking against each other.” He paused, and Michiko thought he was finished, but he added, “I’d heard about the stench of charred flesh from the other hospital workers. I was spared that,” before he fell silent.
Michiko did not know how to respond. She was overwhelmed with emotion, with the power and the pain of memory—his, and her own. All she could do was murmur his name. Only after she had said, “Shotaro,” did she realize how intimate they were and how far in the past all proprieties and formalities were.
“But you, Michiko, are why I know I can bear this and how I’ll be able to bear what is to come. We can do it together.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You know you can’t trust most of what you hear, but Nishizawa-san has been quiet, and her brother the mayor is too busy writing reports to Tokyo to answer anyone’s questions. I think the rumors are true that there have been fire bombings, assaults so intense that whole cities have burned. I think only Kyoto has been spared. It is much worse than those isolated raids like the one that killed my mom and dad. Osaka, and Nagoya and even Tokyo are flattened. The official radio reports of ‘light damage to property and only a few reported casualties’ are garbage.”
Suddenly cold, Michiko shivered and swallowed a sob. He pulled her close to him, and said, “Don’t be afraid. It has to be over soon. We’ll start anew, the two of us. You’ll be with me always.” Starting that night, he slept next to her in the shed.
A few days later, he told her he had heard stories about some strange new bomb that had completely obliterated Hiroshima and said there were rumors that Nagasaki had met the same fate. The next morning when he returned from an early-morning foray searching for food, he said, “Michiko, today’s the fifteenth of August. Do you think you’re strong enough to walk awhile? It’s important.”
As he led her slowly toward the center of the village, he explained about the broadcast. The mayor had set up a radio on a chair outside his front door. They stood in the crowd of villagers. Not caring what anyone thought, they leaned against each other listening to the unimaginable, to the strange thin high voice exhorting them to endure the unendurable and bear the unbearable.
They were the first to leave. Many of the older people were still kneeling or bowing low before the radio; most of the villagers were just standing still in shock. For those able to move beyond shock there was fear as they tried to understand what had happened to them, what had happened to Japan, and what the future would bring. Shotaro took Michiko’s arm, and they walked through the village. Rather than turning onto the path to his aunt and uncle’s house, Shotaro steered her up the hill behind the shed. They picked over the rough terrain together. Michiko stumbled at the top of the climb, and he was reaching to help her when he stumbled himself and leaned on her to take the weight off his bad leg. They reached the crest of the hill in each other’s arms. Michiko looked up to realize they were in the clearing where she and Keiko had first seen Shotaro; at that same moment, she saw Kazue Obasan and the graves.
The midday sun fell mercilessly on the clearing. There was no mystery, no atmosphere, nothing but the scars of the turned earth. Michiko felt Shotaro’s embrace tighten. Kazue Obasan and her son were on the other side of the clearing, heading toward the Kawamura home. Kazue Obasan glanced back at the noise and then turned, bowed, and stood motionless looking at them. When Michiko, choking on a cry, started toward her, she shook her head almost imperceptibly. The little boy too had turned. He stood next to Kazue Obasan, staring, his face flat and blind with malice. Kazue Obasan reached for his hand and pulled him gently onward on the path.
“No,” said Shotaro, “she can’t stop. You know she can’t stop. She has to go back. Let her go in peace.” He put both his arms around Michiko and pulled her close. She buried herself in him, closing out the sun, the heat, the loss. When she was steady, he said, “Darling, we have to go. Come with me to see my aunt and uncle.”
Still holding her in his arms, he turned her around so they faced back toward his aunt and uncle’s house. “Come with me to say goodbye. Then we have to get ready. We’re leaving for Osaka tomorrow.”
Michiko opened her eyes, reached for his hand and started forward. As they went down the hill, a small breeze they couldn’t feel stirred the tree tops; she heard the bamboos behind the clearing knock against each other.
13. SAM
Chitose, 1945
“It’s not true. Say it again and I’ll hit you. ”
The army sergeant looked at me directly for a moment before he turned his eyes aside and lowered his head. “Go ahead, but it’s still true. Look around.”
I couldn’t find any words. I turned away, but had to steady myself before I walked back across the platform to the train and the waiting cadets. They had slept on the ferry, tired from roughhousing all day through the long train journey, but I had sat up, troubled by the tough crossing from Aomori, rumors that the straits were mined, and thoughts of enemy bombers. At Sapporo I had marched them quickly to the waiting train that would take us to Chitose and ordered them to stay in their seats. I had gone back to the platform to find out what was happening, why Sapporo Station, which should have been bustling, felt so dead.
It’s not true, I thought. It can’t be true. The Emperor can’t have spoken on the radio. Unconditional surrender is impossible.
When I got back to the train, I said nothing, not even to Utsumi. We started up soon enough. During the trip through the Hokkaido countryside, I sat silent, thinking. They have vast resources; but we have spirit, we will never surrender. They even seem to have a new special bomb, but the reports are that damage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was minimal. We have our people, our strength, our courage. Like these three hundred young men we’ll shape into warriors.
It was dark when we arrived in Chitose. After we loaded the baggage on trucks and organized the cadets in formation, we marched them to the base. I was relieved that the sentries at the gate gave a perfectly normal salute. Business as usual.
We dismissed the cadets in front of their barracks. Utsumi, Morita, and I headed for the Officers’ Mess. Opening the door and stepping inside, we knew the war was over. The officers, in their uniforms, sat silently at the tables, their heads bowed. I hesitated, but brought myself to do my duty. “Lieutenant Junior Grade Imagawa, arriving from Kasumigaura Naval Air Corps. Three officers and three hundred cadets, Sir.” The commanding officer acknowledged my report with only his eyes. The others didn’t even seem to notice us.
The next morning, the Commander called all the officers together and told us that he had no orders, no idea what we should do or how we should do it. He left us on our own to decide.
When the Commander left, we agreed easily and unanimously—we would keep training. We took the cadets up for drills. And in the air, swooping and banking over the deep northern forests, we forgot. We soared on spirit. But the third morning, the mechanics were lounging around when we arrived at the hangers. “Get the planes ready!” I yelled, angry at their lack of discipline.
“We can’t. The carburetors have been taken away.”
“By whom? To where?”
“The chief mechanic. We don’t know where, Sir.”
When we found the Commander he told us that he had orders that all flights had to cease, but that was all he knew. We would probably be demobilized in a few weeks, and all he could tell us was that we had to keep order. Again, how was up to us. We had to figure out how to keep the cadets occupied.
Utsumi and I sat up that night talking. “We can’t have them play volleyball all day and sing all night,” I said.
“Well, we could read to them.”
“So now we’re kindergarten teachers,” I exclaimed.
“No, no, we could read something wonderful, strong, something with, I don’t know, hope.”
“Utsumi, what am I going to do with you?”
“What about Musashi Miyamoto?”
“Utsumi, what am I going to do with you, you genius?” The seventeenth-century samurai tale had been retold in an immensely popular novel by Eiji Yoshikawa and had also been a radio serial. Everyone knew the story and loved its sweeping historical themes. “Not only is it perfect, it’s long. It will keep us busy for quite a while. It’s settled. Reading in the morning, baseball and volleyball in the afternoon, and reading again after dinner.”
The cadets loved the story. As a youth, Musashi, a wild loner, alienated everyone in his hometown except the beautiful Otsu. He grew even wilder and more rash after his attempt to be a samurai and his defeat at the Battle of Sekigahara. A Buddhist monk, Takuan, proved to be Musashi’s salvation. In one of the story’s most famous chapters, Takuan caught Musashi, tied him up and hung him from a tree. Somehow the experience of being suspended in the tree until Takuan decided to release him opened the door to self-awareness for the angry young man. Under the monk’s tutelage, Musashi studied martial arts, learning self-control, discipline, and true courage. He ultimately achieved great fame as a swordsman.
As Utsumi and I worked through the complex tale, we discovered that we were hams. The cadets enjoyed our acting as we assumed the roles of lords and ladies, warriors and merchants, villagers and farmers. The sports competitions went well too. And we still kept up our earlier tradition of singing, but now we did it at night after we had finished our reading aloud sessions. At the end of many of our evenings I thought about my Sundays at the Grahams—the layers of sounds and the harmonies of the naval hymns really did give me a church-like feeling. I felt that these times were precious and sacred in a way that had nothing to do with religion.
Without the harsh discipline of training, we all had fun, and Utsumi and I realized we appreciated the cadets as individuals—very young and very vulnerable individuals—something we had never allowed ourselves to do during the relentless training process. We found ourselves looking forward to our reading sessions and our conversations with the young cadets. After a week or so, we asked permission for something that would never have occurred to us before the end of the war. We were pleasantly surprised when Commander Fujita agreed. “Yes, Imagawa, you and Utsumi can take beer from the Officers’ Mess to the cadets in their barracks in the evenings. Alcohol is the last thing we want to turn over to the Americans when they arrive. Just be sure to go easy, and keep the cadets in line. Remember, they’re still under-age.”
Commander Fujita summoned all the officers early the morning of September 5. “Orders have arrived,” he said. “Demobilization will begin in two days. You will all go home. There’s a lot to be done before then. Get your men and start immediately.”
We destroyed everything—Navy fashion, with discipline and in a completely orderly fashion. We collected weapons, ammunition, equipment, uniforms, bedding, training manuals, records, reports, and even extra bales of rice and crocks of miso, and lit huge bonfires.
Utsumi and I were in charge of dismantling the planes; we supervised the mechanics and our cadets. When they finished, the stacks of the parts were satisfyingly neat, but inspecting them, I mourned for the beautiful planes that had taken us aloft. But as I thought that, I realized that the cadets—so young, and so eager just three weeks ago to fly those planes to their deaths—would not have to be mourned. They would go home to their families.
When we finished with the planes, I returned to my quarters. I didn’t care anymore that I was supposed to burn all “classified” photos. I was packing my memories from Mie, Izumi, Wonson, and Tokyo when the summons came from Commander Fujita. I went without concern or curiosity to his office.
“Imagawa, you’ve been promoted. As of September first, you a
re Lieutenant Senior Grade. Congratulations.”
As I tried to recover from my confusion, he pinned on the new cherry blossom pins. I was thrilled when he addressed me by my new rank.
“Lieutenant Senior Grade, be sure that you get your charges home safe, and take the initiative I’ve seen you demonstrate into the next phase of your life. We need inventiveness—and great courage—for the difficult tasks that lie ahead for Japan.”
“Yes, Sir. Commander, thank you for this honor and for the honor of serving under you.”
When we left the next day, I had my severance pay in my pocket—fatter because of my new rank—and twenty cadets in my charge. We marched to the station, where a train waited. The Hokkaido woods sped by, and when we reached the ferry it was still early in the day. This time the crossing was easy, the straits calm. But Aomori Station was chaos. Civilians and soldiers milled about. The stationmaster was under siege. I used my best powers of persuasion, but my three cherry blossoms didn’t make much of an impression. Finally, I wangled the information that a “special” would leave at midnight; it would link up at Akita with an Osaka-bound express. I dismissed the cadets, without any doubt that they would obey the order to be back by eleven-thirty p.m.
They were fully assembled exactly on time, and with our naval discipline, we managed to get on the train and get seats. All that five-minutes-before training was still paying dividends. Exhausted from the long day, we slept long and well. When we awoke in the morning, we found the aisles crammed with soldiers—the officers and enlisted men indistinguishable since they had stripped themselves of their insignia—and discovered that we had gone only two stations south on the route along the Japan Sea coast. We didn’t reach Akita until noon, and from there on the train was even more crowded. The journey ground on, slowly, slowly, slowly. Several times when I awoke, I found that the train was marooned on a siding. We were hungry, and the few stations where bento box lunches were available were the scenes of mad scrambles.
A Thousand Stitches Page 18