But today, with spring softening the breeze and the birds abundant in the yard, he finds himself compelled to visit the papers. After all these years, it is a wonder they have survived, slightly yellowed but otherwise intact, and he places them on a workbench he keeps outside the shed. In this light, the pages are clear, and the familiar misnotations have the power to jolt him, once again invoking the face of the woman, her wide eyes and gaping mouth, silenced by the wet sound of the fetus slapping the slop bucket. For days he had smelled it, the sweet scorched scent drifting beneath the common odors of cooking and laundry and disinfectant, and he inhales, filling his lungs, as he steps back into the shed, pausing to appreciate his rake and shovel, the long-handled hedge shears now corroding on the wall. Reliable for so many years, there is comfort in this decay, the evidence of a life granted the luxury of natural decomposition. He untangles a rope, empties the crate of his papers. The rope is sturdy, as is the crate. He drags them to a spot beneath the arching cedar and sets the crate’s open face squarely on the ground. He briefly wonders if his colleagues will meet this year. He hoists the rope, faces the wall. Once again creepers have scaled it, their dark leaves ruffled by a breeze eager to spread the fragrance of the neighborhood’s peach and plum blossoms. He grips the rope; the crate wobbles, and while I never tested the precise time it takes for air to be absorbed by the lungs, the brain to starve of blood, and the body to cease its struggle to save itself, I am hoping that, in that duration, I will be able to wrest from myself the snatch of consciousness necessary to remember once more my sister and those ducks that swam in the pond back home.
THE LAST BULWARK
OF THE IMPERIAL EMPIRE
October 28, 1944, 09:00
A fly landed on his face. His skin, caked with mud, grime, and the occasional scab, offered plenty of options, and it climbed up his chin, pausing at the corner of his lips, assessing the sore that had ripened there, a soft puddle pooled in the crack chapped by the heat that had long since drained his canteen. He blinked; the white tropical sun swarmed his pupils; he heard the flap-scrape of the split-toed jikatabi dragging in front of him; and he was marching again, the smoking shoreline strobing behind him, specks of vultures circling the sky like kites.
October 28, 1944, 15:13
By last count, they were down to two thousand men, a quarter of their original regiment. And aside from the makeshift guerrilla units they’d left behind to stall the enemy, they were retreating eight kilometers inland, away from the coastline where they’d taken their stand nine days ago, when the sea, emerald and spotless, heaved up a city: a fleet of several hundred enemy warships abuzz with planes. There had been no warning, all communication having sputtered out more than a month ago, leaving them to carry out orders that may or may not have become obsolete. Their mission had been simple: to harness the energy of eight thousand men to erect a human wall so impenetrable that any invading force would shatter against it. In short, their task was to transform themselves into the fiercest Niō to guard the Empire’s southernmost gate, and all they’d done in the six months since their arrival was dig, hammer, and hoist, the pride of being the last bulwark of the Imperial Empire forcing them to overlook even its latest broken promise: the thin meals, already reduced to twice a day, now cut to once as they endured the mockery of their shovels and pickaxes ringing high and hollow against the cold rocks and coral reefs. From the start, everybody had known the Empire would lose control of the sky and sea, but they never expected a city to appear, the approaching mass configured to not only defeat but obliterate them.
Their air unit was the first to engage. Forty planes, meticulously hidden around the island, rose to meet several hundred enemy fighters. Led by the last of the Empire’s aces, the unit did well, each pilot downing an average of three enemy fighters before plunging, evanescing in the green-blue sea. An hour later the first wave of naval bombardment commenced, the unrelenting roar ripping the air, spraying up sand, hacking down trees, boring holes the size of craters well beyond their first line of defense. They couldn’t believe the discrepancy, their carefully conserved rations of fuel and arms laughable against the barrage. The ground rocked, trees erupted, bodies plumed; he ducked and rolled, his body airborne one moment, tumbling the next, only the miraculous yank of a platoonmate saving him from the engulfing soil.
October 28, 1944, 17:25
Tonguing his canteen, he scavenged for moisture trapped in the grooves along the rim. In this heat, water did not stay where it was needed, and his heart thrummed, a low, darting beat. There was no wind, no clouds, the uninterrupted sun splitting his skin, agitating the soft creases of his armpits, the softer folds of his groin, the softest webbing between his toes. Many were discarding their footwear, preferring the searing earth to the wet abrasion of canvas on raw feet, while others retrieved them, unable to endure the rocks perforating their soles. Gripping his American M1 pried from a corpse, he leveraged his gait, fighting to stay with the men around him, aware that his life depended on his ability to keep up with military time.
At last they stopped to wait for nightfall. Now and again a Grumman fighter streaked the air, but it no longer roused the few hundred men collected here, under the shade of these trees benevolently scattering the day into scraps of insignificant sky. Until now, morale had been decent, all of them having unexpectedly held out on the coast, troubling the enemy who had had to make several attempts before securing a foothold on the beach. As the front edged back, its scraggly line began to crumble, but they’d still held together, shifting their attacks from day to night, dynamiting tanks, grenading encampments, plundering tins of enemy food. Now and again, thoughts of surrender floated up, but they were gunned down by chattering M2s. When the order to change course finally rippled through them, they’d heaved together and begun marching, dragging themselves to the edge of this clearing fifty meters wide, its shimmering grass dappling with shadows as schools of enemy scouts trawled the area.
Leaning into a tree trunk, he resisted the lure of the soft grass swaying below him. Many had already succumbed, bowing into the earth, while others slumped about eyeing one another’s mess tins. In front of him, a large man with a broad back was picking at a wound, his knees jerking as he dug out bits of shrapnel welded to his flesh. Behind him, a teenager with a crusty face cried for his mother. Somewhere someone lit a cigarette, and the gray smell caused a small commotion. Caught in the babble, his mind flitted and twirled, alighting on ghostly faces he tried to push away—his anxious mother; his imperious father—the occasional shock of buckling knees jarring him awake. At some point, he felt his arms droop out of their sockets, his knuckles brushing the cool grass.
Then dusk: the narrow twilight bristling with mosquitoes. In the hushed sky, a damp breeze picked up, stirring the shapes of the living, who clattered over those who couldn’t or wouldn’t move. Up front, the highest-ranking officer took command, hurrying soldiers across to the intact line of trees, beyond which a mountain loomed, breathing darkly. One by one, the men slipped away. When his turn came, he hustled with his group; the trees closed in; night morphed around him. Fumbling for the shoulder in front of him, he tethered himself, projecting his senses outward. The dark slowly settled. Soon the men fell into a rhythm, their shuffling lull broken only by the snap of branches and the occasional voice of the lost and panicked barking out in the dark.
October 30, 1944, 01:59
They were met by gas lamps: the retrenchment brigade. Stationed here for their final stand, they’d readied a trough of water and packets of reserved rice. Ahead, a field table had been set up, two clean-faced officers squabbling over who should get credit for what portion of the battle, the Army or the Navy. Collecting his share of the last Imperial rations, he made his way to a tree, near which a fire was popping, a ring of men warming their mess tins. There were no familiar faces, but the men opened their circle and offered him what looked like lizard. Adding his food to the fire, he peered at the hap
py light flickering around him. As a child, he’d hated bonfires, the way they’d furrowed the faces of the people he knew, revealing something sinister. Only his mother had appeared unchanged, the wavering shadows merely crumpling her face, showing the pleading look she got whenever his father reprimanded him. It stifled him even now to think of them, though he wouldn’t object to his mother’s winter nabe, the fish and vegetables that had nourished the broth. He lit a cigarette. It had been five days since he’d last pampered his lungs, and it pleased him to discover that the Golden Bat, far inferior to the Mikasa, repelled the mosquitoes just as effectively.
November 2, 1944, 11:45
The enemy charged with a force unstoppable by makeshift booby traps and rigged 89s. The mountain quaked; a confetti of human limbs. In the scramble he took a hit, a white explosion midway between his ankle and knee. The pain was shattering. When he coalesced, he was surprised to find himself moving, his pumping elbows propelling him forward. Most landmarks were gone, but he spotted a cave occupied by three men thrown together by the fray. Having combined and recombined many times, the men did not refuse him, but it was clear that each man’s survival had been thrust on himself. Still, a tentative companionship developed, their brisk exchanges—enemy position, changing weather conditions—shifting to a cautious sharing of anecdotes before he took the plunge and offered his name: Tanaka. The other three responded immediately—the brawniest, Yamada; the handsomest, Maeda; the tallest and highest ranked, Kimura—each taking turns sharing the contents of his pockets: a puff of cigarette, a cap of water, a taste of dried squid.
“Where did you get this?” Maeda asked, sniffing the squid.
“Granny’s technique,” Yamada replied, watching them savor the miracle of protein and salt. Yamada, it turned out, was a fisherman’s son. “Bet the last time you had anything decent is when we torched that village. Or did you miss that banquet?”
Tanaka remembered the raid, the sludgy dream of moving through the burning hamlet weeks ago. He had no idea Yamada had taken part. He himself had been recruited for it in the middle of the night, enticed by the lure of a meal, but he never figured out who had organized it, or how many had participated; it wasn’t anything anybody talked about.
Maeda swallowed the squid but said nothing.
Kimura peered out of the cave. “Gentlemen, clouds are gathering. Get ready to go uphill.” Kimura had functioned as a scout when they still had a function.
Tanaka retightened his tourniquet. Nobody had acknowledged his leg.
November 3, 1944, 07:04
The enemy, refreshed, stormed. Bodies piled up. Sunlight punctured the treetops, and a drowsy haze drifted through the mountain depths, its canopies breached for the first time by light. Seizing the island’s water source, the enemy tapped the villages, arming the men raging to avenge their plundered fields and wives and daughters. The Imperial Army staggered; banzai cries flared. Now and again, parallel cries echoed from the enemy’s side, but nothing slowed its advance. The Imperial Army buckled and fell, scattering its men into a tunnel of caves soon to be smoked out or dynamited or buried. Those who escaped broke out in fever, while others lost themselves in the jungle maze. Biding their time in the scooped darkness beneath a cliff overhang, the four banded men discussed a rumor Kimura had heard about boats supposedly hidden around the island. They argued and strategized, Tanaka’s fear spiking as his leg warmed and festered, a hot primordial pool.
November 4, 1944, 23:20
Night again, and his wound acquired a new presence, its glittery pain illuminating it like the inside of a geode. He was beginning to sweat, shivery ripples skimming his skin like a breeze. Outside, the wind combed through the leaves, shaking out sounds that scuttled across the cave floor. Occasionally, flares popped, machine guns tutted, but even these had become intermittent. By now they were all accustomed to the fact of death, but the thought that he would die, cease to exist, terrified him. Like everybody else, he too had pledged his life, bragging of the exploits that would earn him a spot among the heroes enshrined in Yasukuni, but his bluster, rousing at the time, mocked him now. In the nineteen years of his life he’d never felt so material. Beside him, his companions were reminiscing about the girls they’d liked, first at school, then at the comfort stations, their voices, initially soft, turning lurid as they passed around stories, fondling details and names, the words fluttering and combining. Haruko, Haruko, Haruko. The one girl he’d slept with, a girl from the comfort station in Luzon. Slight and shiny-eyed, she’d reminded him of a grade school crush he’d never got over, and, for days, he’d prepared himself, what he’d say and do. But primed for deployment, he’d been so keyed up, the longed-for sensation so new, he’d failed to contain himself, the rapture coming too soon, the mix of surprise and embarrassment making him strike out. He’d never hit a girl before, and the contact, blunt and sickening, wobbled his gut, scooping up his balls. He’d apologized right away, but Haruko, probably beaten many times, had shrunk from him, trembling his hands so badly he couldn’t do up his drawstrings. He’d vowed to return the next day, and the next, until he’d proved to her that he wasn’t like the others, but he’d been shipped out the next morning, an age ago.
November 5, 1944, 01:12
His leg was a pulpy larva the size of a ripe papaya. At one point, Yamada cradled his head and said, Drink. And he drank, the swampy water sliding down his throat like an eel.
Another time, Maeda pushed something warm and chewed into his mouth, and he ate.
Still later, Kimura brought his mouth to his ear, but by then he was going, then gone.
November 5, 1944, 03:47
The theater of war has many back doors. Sometimes they’re revealed to a foot soldier, accidentally.
November 10, 1944, 18:00
He stood on deck, hazy islands rising around him. Ahead, Yamada and Maeda were leaning on the railing, their absent companion, Kimura, winking in the gap between them. So far neither had been forthcoming about what had happened, but he’d gleaned that Kimura had located one of the fishing boats indeed hidden around the island.
Turning into the breeze, he marveled again at his presence, his scrubbed skin and stitched leg surreal in the sunlight. Even his pain was contained, its borders clean, purified of all traces of the caves and of the long craggy hike he didn’t remember to the fishing boat now lashed to the side of this cruiser, the sole survivor of a chain of battles that had recently expelled the Empire from the Philippine Sea. It was miraculous their boat had intersected the cruiser. Then again it was no more miraculous than the fact that he hadn’t been left behind.
Trading places with Yamada, he raised his binoculars. Out here, the water was green, its shifting surface, at once monotonous and beguiling, advantageous to those who lurked beneath it. Every lookout devised his own way to resist the dazzle, but, even so, he found his attention slipping among the waves, the rhythmic lull drawing him back to the island, all his comrades left there to be slaughtered like dogs. As Imperial soldiers, they’d stood by their fate, the honor of saving their families, saving their country, saving Asia, entrusted to them; that he’d been plucked from this destiny was a humiliation he couldn’t apprehend, and his anguish, riddled with the guilty pain of relief, wound a noose around his heart. Why had he been spared? The waves rocked and lapped; the faces of his former platoonmates iridesced, as delicate as soap bubbles. Like them, he should’ve become a god, not a ghost clinging to borrowed time. And yet, whenever his mind roamed to his leg, he felt his chest flood with the shame of secret gratitude.
November 12, 1944, 08:00
In the military hierarchy, power is absolutely asymmetrical.
December 4, 1944, 21:00
Off the coast of Formosa, they were transferred onto a merchant marine vessel conscripted by the Sixth Fleet, the Navy’s submarine division. Destination undisclosed, they knew only that they were headed to a naval outpost in the bowels of the Bungo Strait. On dec
k, he fished out a cigarette, enjoying the open air and water still under Imperial jurisdiction. Three hours ago, enemy torpedoes had sunk two of their transports, a total of 1,000 men, 220 enemy prisoners, and 1,100 tons of irreplaceable fuel, weaponry, and food lost to the sea. Surely it was another sign that he’d been spared for a reason, everything he’d done—running away at fifteen and falsifying his name and age to enlist—part of a grander plan. In fact, thinking back, it was obvious the gods had ensured his passage, and he cringed at how he’d spent his adolescence cursing fate for giving him a father who’d disdained the military so absolutely he’d vowed never to sign the consent form Tanaka had needed to join up. Ironically, it was his father, a proud and vocal doctor, who’d ended up paving Tanaka’s way, getting himself arrested for forgetting the omnipresent ears pricked to catch any unpatriotic inflection. Tanaka, only six at the time, never forgot the policeman who’d burst into their home and slapped his father blue before hauling him away. It was this policeman Tanaka had approached nine years later when his father refused to sign the consent form, and it was this policeman who’d presented him to the right recruitment officer. The policeman had liked that Tanaka, needing a new name, asked if he could take his: Tanaka Jirō. It was one of the best moments of his life, and Tanaka, remembering this now, breathed; peace spread around him like a summer skirt.
Inheritors Page 13