Little Boy yawns and pours himself another drink. His eyes are red from the late hour, the cigarettes and booze. “Can we go home soon?”
“I would sooner kill him than you,” says Masumi. “At least you know what you’ve done. You’ve got to live with it. What’s he got to live with?”
“Self-imposed stupidity,” says Fat Man.
“What?”
“Shoot me,” says Fat Man. “Right between the eyes. Make me look like that door.”
“If I kill you you’ll probably come back. Somewhere, some way. You’re not ready to leave yet. You’ll make a body from more Japanese. Perhaps a very ugly one.”
“Uglier than this?” says Fat Man, hefting his tits. “Uglier than this?” tugging at the mounds of his cheeks and his jowls. “And this?” holding out his arm and batting at the dough that hangs from his bones.
“You never know. You might become a brand new thing. You’ve been one before. Imagine the monster you could build for a body.”
Little Boy yawns loudly.
“If you won’t kill me, then I’ll kill you.”
“That would be okay,” says Masumi. “That would be fine.”
“Who are you?” says Fat Man. “Tell me or I’ll kill you.”
“You’re forgetting I have the gun.” She puts it to her own head, up against the ear.
Fat Man imagines the bullet going in one side and out the other unscathed, the medium grinning stupidly as it passes through her.
“Tell them your story,” says the medium, “or I’ll kill you.”
“When is your husband due home?”
“Masumi was a student,” says Masumi.
Masumi was a student.
Masumi studied English and French, with some necessary excursions into German, the three being so closely related. He was also capable of reading simple Spanish texts with the help of a dictionary.
Like most students at his school he read at least one book each day. Not simple books either. Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Bentham, Kant, Heidegger, Darwin, Nietzsche, and so on, all in their original languages. He kept a journal on every book he read and all the thoughts that came while he read them.
His older brother Hideki was a student as well, who focused on German and English, with some excursions to French. Because Hideki was in the next year, he and Masumi did not see each other often, and did not speak extensively. Hideki would sometimes give Masumi an envelope of the sort you might use to deliver a personal message. Inside there would be a typed partial list of books Hideki had recently read, and that Masumi must therefore read as well. There might be a brief note after the author’s name, a single word or a short phrase—“Spirit”; “Patriotism”; “Fear & Agony”; “The individual’s loneliness”; “The necessity of injustice”; “Horror”; “Need.” More often there was nothing.
Sometimes there were poems, haiku or other traditional forms, in which Hideki compared himself to the cherry blossom, the hummingbird, or the crane. There were frequent errors and unnecessary spaces in his typing. He crossed out the things he didn’t mean to write but they were still plainly visible.
Hideki was handsome. Hideki had large, broad hands and a strong face. He kept his hair cropped close to his head. He was popular and athletic. Masumi loved him and hated him as younger brothers do. He was aloof to Masumi. Masumi respected the distance he maintained.
Then there was the war. As soon as it began all the young men and the older boys knew they would die by American guns. The question was when. The emperor reminded the people of the cherry blossom. They reminded each other of the cherry blossom, and they reminded themselves.
One night Masumi went to Hideki’s room and knocked on the door very loudly. Hideki let Masumi in without question, closing his books and stacking them neatly. Masumi shouted how wonderful it would be to die in service of their country. Hideki said, “We should not have to die. We are the future of Japan. The nature of war is that it allows the fathers to wash their hands of their sons, and therefore the future.”
Masumi said it was the nature of war that it should lead to the Japanese future. Only once the Americans were humbled would history advance.
Hideki argued, with reference to Kant, that war was wrong.
Masumi said he would be proud to die for his country and become a cherry blossom.
“Even dignity,” Hideki said, “evades the strongest man in death.”
Masumi said a blazing death in war is not like a slow death in one’s bed.
Hideki agreed with this. He said, “It’s true that there are far fewer opportunities for pleasure in a gunfight. Our grandfather could still read as he was dying.”
Masumi argued reading was not the sole purpose of life, with reference to Nietzsche. Hideki interrupted him and said, “Why did you learn three languages and much of a fourth?”
“It allows me to better understand the ideas of others.”
“It doesn’t help you fire a gun?”
“It doesn’t.”
Hideki said, “Then why did you bother? You should quit the study of language and begin the study of guns. Then you can die more quickly, and therefore, more gloriously, with reference to the idiotic argument you are trying to advance.”
Masumi said he would leave the study of languages, then.
Hideki said he was a fool. He struck Masumi on his cheek. Masumi’s vision flared. Soon they were on the floor. Hideki’s knee was crushing the air from Masumi. Masumi pulled his brother’s hair. It went on like this for a long time. The fight ended when Hideki took a letter opener from his desk and pressed down Masumi’s head on the floor as if holding down a chicken for butchering. His eyes were narrow and cruel, his hand was very strong. The letter opener was textured on its surface by his fingerprints and palm prints, dots and ridges of human oils, and this made it seem heavy.
Hideki breathed in deeply. He considered the letter opener. He considered the neck of his brother, who flailed and pushed ineffectually at Hideki’s jaw and chest, trying to shove him off.
“No,” Hideki said. “I will let you do it your way.” He laid down the letter opener. He climbed off Masumi and pulled him up with both hands. Masumi never considered that he might want to kill Hideki for what he had almost done. He only loved Hideki in that moment, the hatred was gone from him, and he knew that there would be much to learn from this moment in future reflection.
He did not, however, apologize for what he’d said. Neither did Hideki.
After the fight they were cold to each other. They were not only aloof, but cruel, making themselves absent from each other’s lives whenever possible. When Masumi went home to visit their parents, Hideki refused, deciding instead to stay at school and study. He was reading the complete written works of Marx. It was, he said, more important than family.
Masumi’s father drank sake with him late into the night, and they talked of war, of when it would be Masumi’s turn to fight. Masumi did not tell his father how his brother felt because he knew that it would bring his father shame. Instead he agreed that it was good there were two sons in the family, as it increased the chances that one would survive. Masumi said, “I hope it is Hideki. He will make a good father.”
His father agreed. “You, though, might make a better husband.”
Hideki and Masumi were allowed to continue their studies for a longer time than they expected. They were being preserved, Masumi thought, because the military agreed with Hideki that the educated sons of Japan would be her future. They would be civic leaders, city planners, engineers, philosophers, and writers.
Hideki was making plans for a literary magazine. He was writing letters to a girl. No one knew her name, though some claimed to. He was, in short, beginning his life, rather than preparing to end it.
The other students behaved and thought very differently. Some took up risky behaviors, fighting with knives, espousing illicit or prac
tically-illicit belief systems, or, in one case, beginning an affair. It was only a rumor that two boys were sleeping together but the rumor didn’t die until one left for the war, where later he did die. Others settled for cigarettes and alcohol.
It was common to study the aircraft and other military assets of Japanese and foreign armies alike. Masumi read descriptions of the sounds the planes made as they flew overhead. He was especially interested in the “screamers,” German fighters with noisemakers in their noses that shrilled, striking horror in their victims. He was also fascinated by missiles, and the German super-guns, the former exceedingly practical, the latter gaudy and terrifying, wasteful in a way that made them seem somehow more immoral than other weapons.
Firebombing held no mystery for him. It was a stupid way to kill another person. No risk, no romance, only a city become an oven.
Masumi was taught it was shameful to surrender. It was beyond the pale. One of the first things the military taught him was how to shoot himself with his own rifle, planting its butt in the earth, putting the barrel in his mouth, and pulling the trigger with his foot. It was preferable to charge the enemy in a way that gave them no choice but to kill you. If they could not be persuaded to kill you, then you would have to do it yourself. Under no circumstances could a Japanese soldier be taken prisoner. There was nothing worse. When soldiers questioned these rules, they were savagely beaten. Most did not question the rules.
When it was becoming clear the U.S. would win, the Japanese began the kamikaze.
Masumi’s class was given a presentation on the necessity of victory and the power of the Japanese spirit. A plan was laid out before them, without euphemism but somehow still indirect, circular. The words were true but their tone was not true. It held hope. The plan was to take planes and fly them into American ships. This would make the pilots heroes. It would also, it was hoped, inflame the Japanese spirit, bringing courage to the surviving soldiers and fear into the Americans.
It would be strictly on a volunteer basis.
The students were lined up side to side, single-file, and blind-folded, so no one would be ashamed to raise his hand if he did not want to die or if he was afraid. Of course they could hear their fellows raise their hands when the call to service came. Masumi raised his hand not out of cowardice but because it was what he believed.
They took him to an air base and they trained him in flight. No one pilot got his own plane; they shared, swapping freely. It was therefore inaccurate to say Masumi was learning to fly his own coffin. This was, however, how he felt. It took the thrill out. And there was always the possibility he would die prematurely, whether from his superior officers’ regular beatings, or from crashing his plane during training. Some students did that.
Masumi lost weight. He took an interest in Communism, not as a movement but as an explanation of what had already gone wrong. From this high moral vantage he could see that history moved in its chosen direction at its own speed, and that there was little one could do about it one way or the other, with the possible exception of those lucky few who sped its progress. If he was very lucky then he might be one of those. It was his hope that his death would not only benefit Japan but hasten its becoming a Socialist state. Otherwise, if it did no good, then at least he knew his death could do very little harm. A superior officer found one of his Communist books among his things and put a knife to his throat. Masumi was prepared for this experience by his fight with Hideki, and also by the beatings, and also by his belief that he no longer cared if he lived or died. When the officer saw surrender in his eyes he spat on Masumi, saying he should put the knife into his own body if he loved his country.
Masumi did not see the point in dying if he could not kill an American or sink an American ship. The army had invested time and food and other resources in preparing him to do these things. It would be a waste to kill himself otherwise. He explained this in a calm, even tone. The officer let him live. He took the book, however, cutting out the pages with his knife, stomping them, and emptying his canteen on their ruins.
He came back to Masumi and broke several of his fingers.
Masumi’s parents wrote to him. They said they had learned where he was. They said they wished they had heard it from him. They asked had he heard from his brother. There were rules meant to keep a family from losing all its sons but sometimes the rules might not be followed closely, or there might be a mistake, especially as the military grew desperate. They asked him was he eating well. They asked him was he beaten often.
He wrote back to say he was fine. He was proud to die for their safety. He was not beaten excessively. He did not know where Hideki was.
The kamikaze were mostly ineffective. Many were shot down before they could reach their targets. Others hit their targets but did little damage. Some did sink their ships. There were announcements. The Americans were disturbed. That was something. Although sometimes it seemed they were laughing. Not frightened so much as amused.
Still there was a craze for kamikaze in the military. Every general felt pressured to create his own. The navy made speed boats loaded with explosives for the purpose, and frogmen who would swim to plant explosives on the undersides of ships. There was also the one-man submarine. It was about the size of a torpedo. You could barely fit one person inside it. He didn’t have a lot of air because he didn’t need a lot of air. He didn’t have a lot of fuel because he didn’t need a lot of fuel. The idea was you launched the submarine out of the torpedo tube. Then the pilot would ride it into the side of a ship.
There are a hundred ways to make a man into a bomb.
Masumi got a letter from his brother with a list of readings. There was a technical manual on a machine Masumi didn’t recognize. There was a history of Buddhism. Beside the technical manual’s name Hideki wrote, “A Son’s Resignation.”
Beside the Buddhist history, a word or short phrase crossed out so many times it was illegible. No poems.
It was time for Masumi to crash his plane. They gave him little fuel. He flew with a picture of his mother. His parents had sent it for that purpose. They had also enclosed a picture of a girl Masumi never met—one they said he would have liked. She was holding a paper fan over her mouth, peeking out above it. The paper fan was painted with pink blossoms. They said he could think of her as his reason. He left that picture in the barracks.
He meant to die.
He flew out until half his meager share of fuel was gone. There was nothing on the water to crash into. He returned to the base. They broke his arm and made his eyes swell shut.
Two weeks later, when he had healed enough, they sent Masumi up again. Again, he meant to die. He imagined his death as the one that would turn the tide. He would sink a destroyer or perhaps a carrier. As the water rushed into the hull’s breach, so would the Japanese empire rush into American soil, leveling the movie theaters, the malt shops, the liquor stores, the pornography rackets. They would destroy all obscene art and low culture. As a result, two hundred years from now, the people’s revolution would be made real. The happy offspring of a Japanese-American union would parade golden and wise. They would spin noisemakers and play rustic arrangements of “Ode to Joy” and other fine humanist works. They would never know who made it possible—which diving plane, which sinking ship.
There were no ships. No targets. Masumi returned home and threw himself on the ground. His chin scraped the pavement, and he bled as they kicked him on his legs and stomach, careful this time to avoid the arms. He bruised and tendered. His skin was marked up a spectrum of yellow, red, blue, purple, black. They said they would send escorts next time in spite of the expense. This was becoming necessary more and more often. He wondered if they would shoot him down if he turned back. Wouldn’t it make more sense to kill him once he’d landed the plane, so someone else could use it? The Americans were already taking down enough Japanese planes.
Masumi never flew again. Before he got
the chance, there was a raid on his base. American planes strafed their hangars, destroying everything. Many died.
After Hiroshima, after Nagasaki, after the surrender, after the emperor’s voice went out over the radio announcing the surrender, Masumi was allowed to go home to his family. He found his father drinking sake, staring at the wall. His mother read poetry in bed.
She said she was glad Masumi was home.
She said she had missed him while he was at school.
She said, “Hideki is dead.”
The army had sent them a box a month before. Inside the box was a bag of money, a notice of Hideki’s posthumous promotion, and a written description of his death. There was also another box, smaller, wooden.
“I can’t look inside the smaller box,” said his mother.
“How did he die?” asked Masumi.
“Your father has the letter.”
Masumi asked again how Hideki died.
“He was piloting one of those baby submarines,” said his mother. “Apparently it was a test run. They put it in the water. It never came back up. They say it sank very quickly. They say he must have drowned or, if he was lucky, simply run out of air, passing out before the water breached.”
Imagine your brother in a submarine. He cannot move his arms or legs. He sees through a sort of bubble on top of the tube. He is sinking deep into the blue until the blue becomes black. His lungs fill with water or they empty of air. He cannot feel his limbs. He only sees the blue so blue it’s black, and then the insides of his eyelids, and then the black. Wonder how and when he knew he was dead, that he had really crossed the threshold, that he was done. Wonder if he ever knew.
“We got more money because he died the way he did, because they promoted him,” said Masumi’s mother. It would have been the same for Masumi. He would have been promoted too. “Your father took the money and bought sake. He hasn’t gone to work. Yesterday someone came to check on him. Your father threw a bottle at his head.”
Masumi went and sat with his father. After a long time, his father seemed to notice him. “You’re home.”
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