by Anita Heiss
‘Who’s that?’ Marj says, getting up quickly and changing the subject. ‘Someone’s out there, again. Fred! Fred!’ she squeals. ‘Oh, where is that useless man?’
Joan and Mary are on their feet with Marj at the window, hoping it’s not Hiroshi.
‘You do go on, Marj, always seeing things and hearing things,’ Joan says, trying to move Marj away from the window.
‘It’s Claude!’ Mary exclaims. ‘He’s smoking! He does it every night, hiding, I’ve seen him but didn’t want to dob on him.’
‘Well, I guess he’s old enough,’ Ivy says. ‘All the other men do it.’
‘I’m sure his mother wouldn’t approve.’ Marj sits back down and picks up her cards. ‘And I’m sure she’ll be hearing about it soon enough.’
Joan and Mary look at each other, hearts beating fast.
9
Hiroshi was at university when Japanese troops entered Peking in 1937, invading China in an attempt to dominate Southeast Asia. His father spoke passionately about how Japan should be the world leader, that even though they were a small cluster of islands, Japan was strong. His father fully supported Japan taking over other countries to increase its power and Hiroshi was sad when he realised his father wasn’t concerned about his only son going to war.
At university, Hiroshi and his friends talked about Japan signing the Tripartite Pact and asked each other why Japan joined the Axis alliance with Germany and Italy – questions that were never really answered.
When a former general of the army, Hideki Tojo, became prime minister, his followers included Hiroshi’s father, and Hiroshi became more nervous about the war. When Japan attacked the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, his father was more than pleased that the strike sank many ships. Hiroshi’s mother cried, though, because she knew her son would go to war. Hiroshi’s father was proud to see his son off to die in a war that would, he believed, see Japan become a world leader. He flexed his muscles just like Japan flexed its military muscle, and he laughed at news reports about the destruction of Pearl Harbor.
In the shelter behind Mary’s hut, Hiroshi sees his father’s pride in one frame and in the next he sees other men from Shikoku Island. They are all on a ship on their way to the war. He is at war. He is in New Guinea and he is fighting for food, the food his government has not sent to sustain them as soldiers. He sees men bloodied and dying, dropping from gunshots. He is tired, aching from crawling in and out of trenches, from carrying his own body as well as those of injured Japanese soldiers. He is so tired when the Allies attack, he can’t move. He can’t fight. He looks around at his countrymen, all too injured or sick to save themselves from capture. Save themselves from the enemy. Some are begging to be killed. Some are biting their tongues off. Hiroshi’s ears are filled with the sounds of grown men screaming in pain, yelling in anger, crying with shame and fear.
Hiroshi wakes with a startle and throws up. He is drenched in sweat and riddled with anxiety as he tries to shake off the nightmare. It’s the same violent dream he has had over and over again.
As Hiroshi sits in the dark, he sobs like a child. The fear of war and the weight of witnessing so much death falls heavily on his entire being. His body feels drained of life although he is still breathing. For the first time – without thoughts of Mary to soothe him – he wishes he had died in New Guinea or, better still, he wishes he could turn back the clock to before the war was declared, before Japan had become involved. Back to where the dread of the unknown did not destroy his sense of peace or his sanity.
‘I hope my sons never have to go to war,’ Hiroshi says as he and Mary sit with their feet almost touching. He is wearing new pants and a clean shirt Mary delivered the day before, courtesy of Father Patrick. Joan had told the priest there was a visitor in need of trousers and a shirt. It wasn’t really a lie, she told herself, as Hiroshi was a visitor and was in need of clothes. She did, however, set herself some penance that night, saying ten Hail Marys, an Our Father and a Glory Be to the Father, for good measure.
‘I was taught honour before shame. I had to say it out loud all the time,’ Hiroshi says, as if such a statement is like a friendly greeting. He is not sad, he is not maudlin, he is simply thinking about the future life of the sons he hopes to have one day.
Even though she has heard Hiroshi talk about honour and shame before, Mary still listens to his words because she believes he is wise, that he will do whatever he sets his mind to and that his sons will have a hero for a father. She is in awe of the man in front of her. He appears to be emotionally strong, like her father and Uncles, like the Elders she has gained much of her knowledge and history from. And he is gentle and wise like her mother.
‘It is difficult in my country to have ideas that are different from the majority.’ He is talking to Mary, but he is also saying out loud for the first time things he has thought for many years, opinions he could never share back home. Words that are so incredibly private to him – he is surprising himself with being so open, so honest with a young female foreigner. ‘Japanese people are forced to think and act the same. Wa wo motte totoshi to nasu,’ he says, then translates: ‘Acting with harmony is of the utmost importance.
‘We should all agree in public, not be against each other. A person, a man, may have had a dream when he was young but it was beaten out of him.’ Hiroshi is talking about himself, about his own dream, about wanting to be a poet, to use his university education to be creative, but knowing that the national conscience and expectations meant otherwise.
Mary looks at the man she is falling in love with. She wonders how the world can be so cruel. How governments can send innocent men to fight wars that never really have a winner. How can one country lock up another country’s citizens as prisoners in compounds like the one in Cowra? Her Uncle Kevin said the Japanese were doing brutal things to the Australian soldiers. How could that be true when Hiroshi is so gentle? Mary doesn’t want to believe it. None are better than the other, regardless of what her Uncle has said, but she could never say that out loud to the Elders.
She doesn’t allow herself to think long about what the Nazis have done to the Jews, but she knows enough to realise it has been horrific. She has overheard enough conversations in the Manager’s house to know that the war in Europe is ugly. She knows that war is ripping lives apart, and there are men just like Hiroshi from many different countries feeling the same grief and trauma. She is grateful only for one thing that war has achieved: it has brought Hiroshi to her.
Hiroshi looks at Mary. She looks away, trying to think of something to say, something that isn’t too gloomy.
‘Is it the same here, Mary, can you have dreams? Can you be different?’ Hiroshi is hoping that at least outside of his homeland people have the freedom to dream, to live autonomously.
‘This is such a big question, Hiroshi. Of course you can dream in Australia, and we mightn’t have to go to war training camps, but it is still hard to make your dreams come true, especially if you are Aboriginal.’
‘What kinds of dreams do you have?’ Hiroshi wants to escape into the dreams of someone else just for a little while and experience a world removed from his own.
‘I dream about being able to live and work wherever I want to and not have to do as Mr Smith says. And I want to go back and finish school.’ Mary has thought about all this before and is grateful for the opportunity to express herself without sounding unhappy with her lot, or ungrateful, because she knows her parents have given her the best life they can within their power. She doesn’t want her parents to think she is not thankful for all they have done to keep their family together, but she does dream about the future and what might be possible for her as she gets older.
‘I dream about marrying the man I fall in love with without the Manager or the government telling me I can’t.’ She blushes, because she knows she is young, she knows that no one will ever understand that she has feelings for a Japanese soldier. She knows that he might not even love her back, but right now she can’t imag
ine that she will ever feel like this again about another human being. She wonders if this is how her parents felt when they first met.
Hiroshi’s eyes twinkle at her words about marriage, and his glance sends a rush through her body, which makes her blush again. She swallows and composes herself, and turns serious, hoping he has not noticed any change in her. ‘I dream about having the same rights as white people, so I can live a full life.’
Hiroshi wishes that the woman he is closest to right now could have all her dreams come true. She is the woman who has brought light into his daily darkness. The woman who has saved his sanity and his soul and, most importantly, his life. She has given him flickering moments of joy simply with her smile. He wants to be able to bring some happiness to Mary’s life and wonders how it is possible with the regime she and her family live under, and the fact he remains a soldier on the run.
‘Is this dream possible, Mary?’
‘My Uncle Kevin says if we want to have what white people have, all the rights they have to go places and do things, get married, live where they want, or even to have just a little of what they have, then we must assimilate. There is a government policy to try to make us be like white people.’
Hiroshi looks confused.
‘It means we must act like white people. We must be more like them, even though we look like this.’ She runs her hands over the dark skin of her cheeks. ‘But we will always be treated like we are Black, even if we try to pretend to be white.’
Hiroshi frowns.
‘I don’t want to be like a white person, I want to be me but treated in the same way as white people are. But to get the same things we must not act Aboriginal any more. Whatever that means,’ she says.
‘But I don’t understand.’ He still can’t fathom what Mary is talking about, what she is going through, what kind of life the people walking around above him are living, having only spent minutes above ground when he first arrived, and a few moments each night when he empties his bucket in the lavatory.
‘Twenty years ago, the Manager actually expelled people from Erambie because he said they were too white to be treated as Aborigines under the Act. That means they weren’t dark enough to be treated badly.’
‘What is the Act?’ Hiroshi asks. Even with his good English, he is finding it hard to follow the complexity of Mary’s words, while Mary is finding it difficult to explain what it means to live under the Act of Protection. Nevertheless, she continues with the same fire in her belly that she knows both her parents have, and most people at Erambie have too.
‘Where we are, this place Cowra, it is in the state of New South Wales,’ she says, ‘and there is some government policy just for Aborigines who live in this state and it is called the Aborigines Protection Act. If we want the rights of white people we can apply to be non-Aborigines and get something called an Exemption Certificate.’ Mary motions to form a square.
Hiroshi nods then asks, ‘What does this certificate do?’
‘If you get the certificate, it means you do not have to live under the Act or the rules that most Aboriginal people live by.’ Mary is not completely sure she understands the policy herself and she certainly doesn’t know why it exists. She is trying to remember all the details her father and her Uncle Kevin and the other Uncles have shared around the kitchen table when they have their meetings, or when they are just there yarning and drinking tea.
‘What can you do that’s different if you have this certificate?’
‘With the certificate you can vote, you can drink alcohol legally and you can go wherever you like. You can talk and socialise with other people.’
‘You can’t do that now?’ Hiroshi can’t imagine any people not being free to live in Australia as they choose.
‘No, most of us here can’t do that as freely as we’d like to. Some of the old people say we are like prisoners in our own home. We have a lot of people here now, we are strong and can be united against the Manager, but at the end of the day, he still has control over our lives.’
‘But the certificate sounds good then?’
‘No,’ Mary says, ‘it also means you cannot see your family, you have to leave the mission and if you get caught socialising with other Aboriginal people who don’t have the certificate, you can go to jail.’
‘Is that true? The laws say that?’ Hiroshi’s eyes are wide.
‘One woman from here got the certificate and went to Sydney to work and when she wanted to come home for a funeral she had to get written permission from the Manager to do so. But this is her home, Hiroshi, and all her family live here, and she needed permission to come home. This is just wrong, wrong.’ Mary stands as if she is about to leave. Hiroshi stands too.
‘I don’t understand how a piece of paper can make you be something else? How can it change your life so much?’
Mary begins to pace, explaining to Hiroshi the reality of her own existence, of the existence of all the people in her world that has made her agitated. ‘If you get the certificate you can get a pension, and an allowance when you are pregnant. Black people don’t get these things. We should get the same things as the other people in town.’
Hiroshi shakes his head in disbelief. ‘This can’t be true! I believe you, of course, but how is this true?’
‘It’s true,’ she says. ‘There’s even separate toilets at the theatre.’ She stops short of telling him that the goonans are only segregated until they hit the main pipe and then they integrate into the sewerage system. She wonders what the white people might think about their poo mixing with the Black people’s poo, but she doesn’t really think that much about it, and she certainly doesn’t want to share that thought with Hiroshi.
‘This is crazy,’ he says, confused that a country that treated him so well at the camp could treat its own people so badly. ‘This paper changes all that? Changes the way people treat you, and how you can behave? But you are still Aboriginal. A piece of paper can’t change that.’
Mary sighs. ‘We still look the same, think the same, know the same and understand the same history that has led us to where we are today. And that is what makes us still Aboriginal.’ She takes a deep breath, exhausted by what feels like schooling. None of the talking will change anything about her lot, other than the man she has feelings for coming to a better understanding of who she is and the life she leads.
‘This certificate system is ridiculous then,’ Hiroshi says.
‘Yes, it is. But if you get the paper, it means that you are free of some discrimination. And that’s why some Aboriginal people get it. It makes life easier for them.’
‘Will you get this paper?’ Hiroshi wants his food angel to have an easier life than she appears to have with the Smiths.
‘No! My parents will never let us have dog tags,’ she says sharply, then sees the confusion on Hiroshi’s face. ‘Most Blacks call the certificate “dog tags”, which is not a very nice phrase; some people call them “dog licences”, because having the certificate is like being a pet who must be registered. But my parents say you can never trade your identity for anything. And my dad says if it means you have to cut ties with your family and forget who you are, then he will never get it. That if we have to give up who we are as Aboriginal people to get jobs then we will just not work. I want to go back to school and learn more, and I want to work, Hiroshi, but not if getting the certificate to do so means I have to say I am not Aboriginal.’
Banjo is at work but it’s just him and Fat Bobbo alone, early in the morning. The sun is high and Banjo is swinging his hammer, dripping with sweat. Fat Bobbo is nursing a hangover and hasn’t picked up a tool yet.
‘The Japs are crazy, they’ll do anything,’ Fat Bobbo begins, launching into a rant. ‘Kill the enemy, kill each other and kill themselves.’
Banjo can’t help but look up and ask, ‘What the hell are you on about?’ He just wants to work today, finish the job, get paid and get away from the laziest man he’s ever known.
‘When the Allies in
vaded Saipan, the Japs reckon thousands threw themselves off high cliffs. They call it a mass suicide. That’s just crazy, they’re all crazy, we can’t have that kind of crazy yellow peril here.’
Banjo hopes the conversation is over because it’s taking his concentration and he has to finish the barn by the end of the day or he won’t get paid. But before he gets to even plane down a piece of wood, Fat Bobbo is off again.
‘You know they ate some of our soldiers too.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Banjo says, thinking back to what Kevin had said the day they found Hiroshi, or the day he found them.
Fat Bobbo is adamant. ‘It’s the truth. Everyone knows the Japs ate the dead Australian soldiers at Kokoda, and then they started eating their own.’
Banjo shakes his head. ‘I don’t believe it! I never saw it in the paper – where’d you hear it?’
‘Listen. Their government never sent them food, they were fighting the war and for food and when they killed our men they ate them cos they were hungry! We can’t have Jap cannibals here in Australia. We’re not cannibals.’ Fat Bobbo has broken a sweat and is red-faced.
‘The fact is, Japs, Chinks, Gooks, they’re all the same. Asiatics, that’s what they call them. Doesn’t matter, they’re all a threat and we must fight against them. The yellow peril is real.’
‘I’ve got work to do, even if you don’t.’ Banjo ends the conversation but he feels trapped, thinking about Kevin’s comments again and how everyone had dismissed him.
‘Joan, did you hear?’ Marj is at the door as Joan is scrubbing the floors.
‘Hear what?’ she says, standing up and holding onto her aching back.
‘June was hanging out the washing and her youngest gootha was crying and crying and making a hell of a racket, but June, you know, she just wanted to get the linen on the line quickly. And then all of a sudden the littl’un stopped and when she went to have a look, well, Lord, strike me dead if I tell a lie, she said a Jap was rocking the pram.’