by John Okada
Mrs. Kumasaka sat next to her husband on a large, round hassock and looked at Ichiro with lonely eyes, which made him uncomfortable.
“Ichiro came home this morning.” It was his mother, and the sound of her voice, deliberately loud and almost arrogant, puzzled him. “He has suffered, but I make no apologies for him or for myself. If he had given his life for Japan, I could not be prouder.”
“Ma,” he said, wanting to object but not knowing why except that her comments seemed out of place.
Ignoring him, she continued, not looking at the man but at his wife, who now sat with head bowed, her eyes emptily regarding the floral pattern of the carpet. “A mother’s lot is not an easy one. To sleep with a man and bear a son is nothing. To raise the child into a man one can be proud of is not play. Some of us succeed. Some, of course, must fail. It is too bad, but that is the way of life.”
“Yes, yes, Yamada-san,” said the man impatiently. Then, smiling, he turned to Ichiro: “I suppose you’ll be going back to the university?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” he replied, wishing that his father was like this man who made him want to pour out the turbulence in his soul.
“He will go when the new term begins. I have impressed upon him the importance of a good education. With a college education, one can go far in Japan.” His mother smiled knowingly.
“Ah,” said the man as if he had not heard her speak, “Bobbie wanted to go to the university and study medicine. He would have made a fine doctor. Always studying and reading, is that not so, Ichiro?”
He nodded, remembering the quiet son of the Kumasakas, who never played football with the rest of the kids on the street or appeared at dances, but could talk for hours on end about chemistry and zoology and physics and other courses which he hungered after in high school.
“Sure, Bob always was pretty studious.” He knew, somehow, that it was not the right thing to say, but he added: “Where is Bob?”
His mother did not move. Mrs. Kumasaka uttered a despairing cry and bit her trembling lips.
The little man, his face a drawn mask of pity and sorrow, stammered: “Ichiro, you—no one has told you?”
“No. What? No one’s told me anything.”
“Your mother did not write you?”
“No. Write about what?” He knew what the answer was. It was in the whiteness of the hair of the sad woman who was the mother of the boy named Bob and it was in the engaging pleasantness of the father which was not really pleasantness but a deep understanding which had emerged from resignation to a loss which only a parent knows and suffers. And then he saw the picture on the mantel, a snapshot, enlarged many times over, of a grinning youth in uniform who had not thought to remember his parents with a formal portrait because he was not going to die and there would be worlds of time for pictures and books and other obligations of the living later on.
Mr. Kumasaka startled him by shouting toward the rear of the house: “Jun! Please come.”
There was the sound of a door opening and presently there appeared a youth in khaki shirt and wool trousers, who was a stranger to Ichiro.
“I hope I haven’t disturbed anything, Jun,” said Mr. Kumasaka.
“No, it’s all right. Just writing a letter.”
“This is Mrs. Yamada and her son Ichiro. They are old family friends.”
Jun nodded to his mother and reached over to shake Ichiro’s hand.
The little man waited until Jun had seated himself on the end of the sofa. “Jun is from Los Angeles. He’s on his way home from the army and was good enough to stop by and visit us for a few days. He and Bobbie were together. Buddies—is that what you say?”
“That’s right,” said Jun.
“Now, Jun.”
“Yes?”
The little man looked at Ichiro and then at his mother, who stared stonily at no one in particular.
“Jun, as a favor to me, although I know it is not easy for you to speak of it, I want you to tell us about Bobbie.”
Jun stood up quickly. “Gosh, I don’t know.” He looked with tender concern at Mrs. Kumasaka.
“It is all right, Jun. Please, just this once more.”
“Well, okay.” He sat down again, rubbing his hands thoughtfully over his knees. “The way it happened, Bobbie and I, we had just gotten back to the rest area. Everybody was feeling good because there was a lot of talk about the Germans’ surrendering. All the fellows were cleaning their equipment. We’d been up in the lines for a long time and everything was pretty well messed up. When you’re up there getting shot at, you don’t worry much about how crummy your things get, but the minute you pull back, they got to have inspection. So, we were cleaning things up. Most of us were cleaning our rifles because that’s something you learn to want to do no matter how anything else looks. Bobbie was sitting beside me and he was talking about how he was going to medical school and become a doctor—”
A sob wrenched itself free from the breast of the mother whose son was once again dying, and the snow-white head bobbed wretchedly.
“Go on, Jun,” said the father.
Jun looked away from the mother and at the picture on the mantel. “Bobbie was like that. Me and the other guys, all we talked about was drinking and girls and stuff like that because it’s important to talk about those things when you make it back from the front on your own power, but Bobbie, all he thought about was going to school. I was nodding my head and saying yeah, yeah, and then there was this noise, kind of a pinging noise right close by. It scared me for a minute and I started to cuss and said, ‘Gee, that was damn close,’ and looked around at Bobbie. He was slumped over with his head between his knees. I reached out to hit him, thinking he was fooling around. Then, when I tapped him on the arm, he fell over and I saw the dark spot on the side of his head where the bullet had gone through. That was all. Ping, and he’s dead. It doesn’t figure, but it happened just the way I’ve said.”
The mother was crying now, without shame and alone in her grief that knew no end. And in her bottomless grief that made no distinction as to what was wrong and what was right and who was Japanese and who was not, there was no awareness of the other mother with a living son who had come to say to her you are with shame and grief because you were not Japanese and thereby killed your son but mine is big and strong and full of life because I did not weaken and would not let my son destroy himself uselessly and treacherously.
Ichiro’s mother rose and, without a word, for no words would ever pass between them again, went out of the house which was a part of America.
Mr. Kumasaka placed a hand on the rounded back of his wife, who was forever beyond consoling, and spoke gently to Ichiro: “You don’t have to say anything. You are truly sorry and I am sorry for you.”
“I didn’t know,” he said pleadingly.
“I want you to feel free to come and visit us whenever you wish. We can talk even if your mother’s convictions are different.”
“She’s crazy. Mean and crazy. Goddamned Jap!” He felt the tears hot and stinging.
“Try to understand her.”
Impulsively, he took the little man’s hand in his own and held it briefly. Then he hurried out of the house which could never be his own.
His mother was not waiting for him. He saw her tiny figure strutting into the shadows away from the illumination of the street lights and did not attempt to catch her.
As he walked up one hill and down another, not caring where and only knowing that he did not want to go home, he was thinking about the Kumasakas and his mother and kids like Bob who died brave deaths fighting for something which was bigger than Japan or America or the selfish bond that strapped a son to his mother. Bob, and a lot of others with no more to lose or gain then he, had not found it necessary to think about whether or not to go in the army. When the time came, they knew what was right for them and they went.
W
hat had happened to him and the others who faced the judge and said: You can’t make me go in the army because I’m not an American or you wouldn’t have plucked me and mine from a life that was good and real and meaningful and fenced me in the desert like they do the Jews in Germany and it is a puzzle why you haven’t started to liquidate us though you might as well since everything else has been destroyed.
And some said: You, Mr. Judge, who supposedly represent justice, was it a just thing to ruin a hundred thousand lives and homes and farms and businesses and dreams and hopes because the hundred thousand were a hundred thousand Japanese and you couldn’t have loyal Japanese when Japan is the country you’re fighting and, if so, how about the Germans and Italians that must be just as questionable as the Japanese or we wouldn’t be fighting Germany and Italy? Round them up. Take away their homes and cars and beer and spaghetti and throw them in a camp and what do you think they’ll say when you try to draft them into your army of the country that is for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? If you think we’re the same kind of rotten Japanese that dropped the bombs on Pearl Harbor, and it’s plain that you do or I wouldn’t be here having to explain to you why it is that I won’t go and protect sons-of-bitches like you, I say you’re right and banzai three times and we’ll sit the war out in a nice cell, thank you.
And then another one got up and faced the judge and said meekly: I can’t go because my brother is in the Japanese army and if I go in your army and have to shoot at them because they’re shooting at me, how do I know that maybe I won’t kill my own brother? I’m a good American and I like it here but you can see that it wouldn’t do for me to be shooting at my own brother; even if he went back to Japan when I was two years old and couldn’t know him if I saw him, it’s the feeling that counts, and what can a fellow do? Besides, my mom and dad said I shouldn’t and they ought to know.
And after the fellow with the brother in the army of the wrong country sat down, a tall, skinny one sneered at the judge and said: I’m not going in the army because wool clothes give me one helluva bad time and them O.D. things you make the guys wear will drive me nuts and I’d end up shooting bastards like you which would be too good but then you’d only have to shoot me and I like living even if it’s in striped trousers as long as they aren’t wool. The judge, who looked Italian and had a German name, repeated the question as if the tall, skinny one hadn’t said anything yet, and the tall, skinny one tried again only, this time, he was serious. He said: I got it all figured out. Economics, that’s what. I hear this guy with the stars, the general of your army that cleaned the Japs off the coast, got a million bucks for the job. All this bull about us being security risks and saboteurs and Shinto freaks, that’s for the birds and the dumbheads. The only way it figures is the money angle. How much did they give you, judge, or aren’t your fingers long enough? Cut me in. Give me a cut and I’ll go fight your war single-handed.
Please, judge, said the next one. I want to go in your army because this is my country and I’ve always lived here and I was all-city guard and one time I wrote an essay for composition about what it means to me to be an American and the teacher sent it into a contest and they gave me twenty-five dollars, which proves that I’m a good American. Maybe I look Japanese and my father and mother and brothers and sisters look Japanese, but we’re better Americans than the regular ones because that’s the way it has to be when one looks Japanese but is really a good American. We’re not like the other Japanese who aren’t good Americans like us. We’re more like you and the other, regular Americans. All you have to do is give us back our home and grocery store and let my kid brother be all-city like me. Nobody has to know. We can be Chinese. We’ll call ourselves Chin or Yang or something like that and it’ll be the best thing you’ve ever done, sir. That’s all, a little thing. Will you do that for one good, loyal American family? We’ll forget the two years in camp because anybody can see it was all a mistake and you didn’t really mean to do it and I’m all yours.
There were others with reasons just as flimsy and unreal and they had all gone to prison, where the months and years softened the unthinking bitterness and let them see the truth when it was too late. For the one who could not go because Japan was the country of his parents’ birth, there were a thousand Bobs who had gone into the army with a singleness of purpose. In answer to the tall, skinny one who spouted economics, another thousand with even greater losses had answered the greetings. For each and every refusal based on sundry reasons, another thousand chose to fight for the right to continue to be Americans because homes and cars and money could be regained but only if they first regained their rights as citizens, and that was everything.
And then Ichiro thought to himself: My reason was all the reasons put together. I did not go because I was weak and could not do what I should have done. It was not my mother, whom I have never really known. It was me, myself. It is done and there can be no excuse. I remember Kenzo, whose mother was in the hospital and did not want him to go. The doctor told him that the shock might kill her. He went anyway, the very next day, because though he loved his mother he knew that she was wrong, and she did die. And I remember Harry, whose father had a million-dollar produce business, and the old man just boarded everything up because he said he’d rather let the trucks and buildings and warehouses rot than sell them for a quarter of what they were worth. Harry didn’t have to stop and think when his number came up. Then there was Mr. Yamaguchi, who was almost forty and had five girls. They would never have taken him, but he had to go and talk himself into a uniform. I remember a lot of people and a lot of things now as I walk confidently through the night over a small span of concrete which is part of the sidewalks which are part of the city which is part of the state and the country and the nation that is America. It is for this that I meant to fight, only the meaning got lost when I needed it most badly.
Then he was on Jackson Street and walking down the hill. Through the windows of the drugstore, the pool hall, the cafés and taverns, he saw groups of young Japanese wasting away the night as nights were meant to be wasted by young Americans with change in their pockets and a thirst for cokes and beer and pinball machines or fast cars and de luxe hamburgers and cards and dice and trim legs. He recognized a face, a smile, a gesture, or a sneer, but they were not for him, for he walked on the outside and familiar faces no longer meant friends. He walked quickly, guiltily avoiding a chance recognition of himself by someone who remembered him.
* * *
—
Minutes later he was pounding on the door of the darkened grocery store with home in the back. It was almost twelve o’clock and he was surprised to see his father weave toward the door fully dressed and fumble with the latch. He smelled the liquor as soon as he stepped inside. He had known that his father took an occasional drink, but he’d never seen him drunk and it disturbed him.
“Come in, come in,” said the father thickly, moments after Ichiro was well inside. After several tries, his father flipped the latch back into place.
“I thought you’d be in bed, Pa.”
The old man stumbled toward the kitchen. “Waiting for you, Ichiro. Your first night home. I want to put you to bed.”
“Sure. Sure. I know how it is.”
They sat down in the kitchen, the bottle between them. It was half empty. On the table was also a bundle of letters. By the cheap, flimsy quality of the envelopes, he knew that they were from Japan. One of the letters was spread out before his father as if he might have been interrupted while perusing it.
“Ichiro.” His father grinned kindly at him.
“Yeah?”
“Drink. You have got to drink a little to be a man, you know.”
“Sure, Pa.” He poured the cheap blend into a water glass and took a big gulp. “God,” he managed to say with the liquor burning a deep rut all the way down, “how can you drink this stuff?”
“Only the first one or two is bad. After
that, it gets easier.”
Ichiro regarded the bottle skeptically: “You drink all this?”
“Yes, tonight.”
“That’s quite a bit.”
“Ya, but I finish.”
“What are you celebrating?”
“Life.”
“What?”
“Life. One celebrates Christmas and New Year’s and Fourth of July, that is all right, but life I can celebrate any time. I celebrate life.” Not bothering with a glass, he gurgled from the bottle.
“What’s wrong, Pa?”
The old man waved his arm in a sweeping gesture.
“Nothing is wrong, Ichiro. I just celebrate you. You are home and is it wrong for me to be happy? Of course not. I am happy. I celebrate.”
“Things pretty tough?”
“No. No. We don’t get rich, but we make enough.”
“What do you do with yourself?”
“Do?”
“Yeah. I remember you used to play Go with Mr. Kumasaka all the time. And Ma was always making me run after you to the Tandos. You were never home before the war. You still do those things?”
“Not so much.”
“You go and visit them?”
“Once in a while.”
He watched his father, who was fiddling with the letter and avoiding his gaze. “Many people think Japan won the war?”
“Not so many.”
“What do you think?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I read, I hear, I see.”
“Why don’t you tell Ma?”
The old man looked up suddenly and Ichiro thought that he was going to burst out with laughter. Just as quickly, he became soberly serious. He held up the thick pile of letters. “Your mama is sick, Ichiro, and she has made you sick and I am sick because I cannot do anything for her and maybe it is I that is somehow responsible for her sickness in the first place. These letters are from my brothers and cousins and nephews and people I hardly knew in Japan thirty-five years ago, and they are from your mama’s brother and two sisters and cousins and friends and uncles and people she does not remember at all. They all beg for help, for money and sugar and clothes and rice and tobacco and candy and anything at all. I read these letters and drink and cry and drink some more because my own people are suffering so much and there is nothing I can do.”