Wounded Tiger

by T Martin Bennett

  Getting to the top of the stairs, he looked over a nearby news rack, bought a newspaper, and stuck it under his arm.

  After his time with Kanegasaki a year earlier, he had interviewed others who were with him at the same relocation center to learn more about the girl who served them, Peggy – and they all confirmed the same story. Fuchida was convinced she had a kind of genuine love that had stopped the cycle of revenge, but he couldn’t understand where it came from. Certainly no one could love like this on his own. There had to be a secret.

  “Read about the Doolittle raider who was a prisoner of war!” a man yelled out in Japanese over the crowd. “Free pamphlet on the Doolittle raider!”

  Fuchida looked for the source of the voice and saw a hand in the air holding up a piece of literature next to the bronze statue of Hachiko, the dearly loved Akita memorialized at the Shibuya station. As he made his way toward the sculpture, he saw a Westerner handing out the leaflets, smiling.

  From the day he first heard of the Doolittle raid, Fuchida held a respect for the fellow airmen who risked their lives to carry out the daring raid. He walked up and nonchalantly took the paper and read the Japanese title, “I Was a Prisoner of Japan.”38 He was curious.

  Stepping to a nearby low, stone wall, he found an open spot to sit and read the brief story of Jacob DeShazer.

  Later, holding onto a ring suspended from the ceiling in a streetcar, he wondered if what had happened to Jacob was the same thing that had happened to Peggy. Jostled with the other passengers as the streetcar took a sharp turn, he mindlessly scanned the row of ads posted above the windows of the streetcar across the ceiling; ads for beer, women’s clothing, cigarettes, and an ad for a new book, I Was a Prisoner of Japan.

  At his stop, he made a bee-line for the nearest bookstore and was relieved to see the book displayed in the window. He never would have considered reading it if it were by just any American, but this was a man whose exploits he admired.

  Fuchida pushed his wheelbarrow beside the rows of tall barley in his field and came to a stop, his German Shepherd faithfully by his side. He glanced back at his house, then sat beside a tree on a simple bench, pulled the DeShazer book from his bag, and found his bookmark.

  By the end of the week, he had followed Jake on his journey from his anger after Pearl Harbor through his time as a prisoner in China. It was an engrossing and unusual story. What had happened to Jake seemed very much of a mystery to him, but Fuchida felt that Jake seemed to have much in common with the girl at the camp.

  He scratched his dog under the chin and thought that someday he’d like to get a Bible and see what it was all about, but not now. He had no interest in religion, per se, just a curiosity about what turns a person from a mind of war to a mind of peace. MacArthur’s dream of peace was just that, only a dream. But Jake’s story – well, that was real.

  Chapter 125

  December, 1948. Tokyo.

  In an overcast mist, Jake clutched his year-old son, Paul, as he carefully stepped down the stairs with Florence toward the dock from USS General M. C. Meigs, a twin smoke stack converted troop transport. Seeing the crowds pressing in, calling out his name, and flashbulbs popping, he turned to Florence with the expression of a little kid, “Gee, I wasn’t quite expecting this.”

  Their ocean voyage had begun at San Francisco, the very port he had once departed from on a mission to kill Japanese in revenge. The journey had given him time to contemplate about what may lie ahead for him. Six years earlier he came in the name of war, now he came in peace. The war was over, yet another had begun – a war of ideas. He wondered how the Japanese people would view him, and how his wife would adapt to this completely different culture. At least for now, things seemed good.

  “Mr. DeShazer! Welcome!” a Japanese man and his wife said in English. “We loved your book! It was wonderful!” Jake nodded shyly. “Well, thank you. I’m glad you got something out of it.” Others crowded in to shake his hand. Jake hadn’t given much thought to the little pamphlet he wrote that was translated into Japanese, but he learned that over a million copies had been printed and distributed all over Japan. Everyone was curious about the man who loved his enemies and had now become their friend.

  Out from under the rain in a part of the covered area of the dock, Jake stood behind a small podium clustered with oversized microphones and surrounded by dozens of standing reporters. He had taken off his hat, but still lovingly held his little boy, who was mesmerized by the event. Jake gave his attention to another question from a journalist who spoke in English.

  “What happened to you? Didn’t your captors spit on you and beat you?” he said from the front. “So, why would you want to come back here?”

  Other journalists quickly nodded in agreement, pads and pencils in hand, and turned to hear Jake’s response.

  “I don’t have any bitterness toward the people who mistreated us,” Jake said plainly. “I feel sorry for them. They didn’t know any better way to live. At first I thought God would help me love good people, but wouldn’t expect me to love the mean ones.” He looked down and stroked his son’s head, then looked back up.

  “But that didn’t sound right, and I remembered what I read, that Jesus said to love your enemies and to do good to those who mistreat you. God was patient with me and forgave me, so, I’m just doing the same for others. Pretty simple, really.”

  Some reporters shook their heads but all took notes furiously.

  Three months later.

  Jake threw his coat over the back of the sofa and slumped into a kitchen chair while Florence fed Paul. A dangle of hair stuck to his sweaty forehead. “Do you realize that in the last three months I’ve spoken at over two hundred places? Two hundred?”

  Florence gave a brief grin without looking.

  “I’m happy for the opportunities, but ... sometimes I feel like I’m just not getting anywhere. I don’t know if I’m getting through to people. Most just listen and smile and nod. I can’t tell what’s really going on inside their heads, in their hearts.”

  Taking advantage of every opportunity to tell his story to packed, curious crowds, Jake enthusiastically spoke at department stores and community centers, constantly traveling to churches, to public schools and Buddhist centers, telling his story to everyone and anyone who would give him the chance to talk.

  Florence wiped a washcloth across Paul’s face and glanced at Jake. “I know you’re tired, but I’m so proud of you, honey.” She got up and pulled out an envelope from between some books and removed two sheets of folded paper. “Listen to this. I had to get it translated for you.”

  Jake stoically held out the crust of a piece of toast to little Paul, who grabbed it and began sucking on it.

  “This is from a young lady. ‘Thank you very much for coming to our town. While you were talking I cried very much. The Japanese were cruel in their treatment of you and I saw you had a great deal of hatred for them. They were ignorant and unreasonable in the way they treated you. I have no words to apologize to you. Please forgive us.’”

  Florence looked up for a moment. Jake still had no expression on his tired face. She kept reading. “‘But you have already forgiven us and came to Japan to help us. I could not keep my tears from falling when I saw the love that God had put into your heart. I had been a very evil girl. I told many lies, but now I am sorry.’”

  Florence flipped the page over and glanced at Jake gazing at the floor.

  “‘I had been working at a factory to support my three brothers and my parents who were sick and I was very discouraged. I tried to kill myself three or four times, but I couldn’t go through with it. I didn’t care about myself or my country and soon I was becoming sick.’”

  “‘I had always hated God, but through you, I was born as a child in the heavenly kingdom. Now the Lord is my light and my shield and I’m not afraid anymore. I’m full of hope for the future and I even started taking classes at the university. Thank you very much for what you have done. I hope that I
can hear you again. Please give my kindest regards to Mrs. DeShazer. May God bless you.’”

  Florence wiped her cheek with the back of her wrist and sat down beside Jake. “So you see? All those thousands of seeds you’re scattering?” She put her hand under his chin and looked into his eyes. “Some are starting to grow.”

  Chapter 126

  Spring, 1949. Tokyo.

  Inside a small store with shelves packed to the ceiling with books, a gray-haired vendor behind the counter shook his head at Fuchida, standing on the other side along with a growing line of impatient people behind him.

  “No Bibles, sorry,” the vendor said peering through his glasses. “If you’re looking for Christians, I think there’s a church –”

  “No, no, no. I’m not interested in that.” Fuchida scratched his head in frustration. This was the third store he’d visited with no luck. “I just want to understand how Christians think, why they act like they –”

  “Sorry, we don’t have any Bibles. Next?”

  Since he was not far from the Shibuya train station, he decided to go by the Hachiko statue with the distant hope that perhaps the man he saw might be there again and be able to help. As he approached the area of the statue, he saw a Japanese man in a black suit with a gentle smile beside several boxes stacked up, holding a small, black book in each hand.

  “Man shall not live by bread alone!” he called out. “Get your Bible – food for your soul! No book in the world can compare with it. Read it for yourself, thirty pages anywhere, and you’ll see.”

  Fuchida walked nearer to the man. He was interested, but something inside him felt like testing him. “You speak of a God we can’t see.”

  The man let his arms drift down. “Yes, and we wait patiently for him to return again.”

  Cynicism was written across Fuchida’s face.

  “Like Hachiko,” he said gesturing to the bronze casting, “who waited faithfully and loyally for his master every day for eleven years at this very station, we, too, wait for our master.”

  Fuchida, and all Japan, for that matter, knew the story of Hachiko well. The beloved dog of a university professor, the Akita had waited daily at the station to greet him when he came home from his job at school. One day the professor died, but Hachiko continued to come to the station, waiting for his master each day for the following nine years. He was a living example of absolute faithfulness and devotion and was loved equally by children and adults who came to know him at Shibuya station. Newspaper articles spread his fame and moved the hearts of people everywhere.

  “But his master never returned,” Fuchida replied, “How do you know yours will?”

  The man leaned forward with a kind glint in his eye and replied, “You don’t know him, do you?”

  Feeling uncomfortable, Fuchida dug into his pocket. “How much?”

  “Three yen.”

  Fuchida was a little surprised and even suspicious. “Why so cheap?” He found the right coins, dropped them in the man’s outstretched hand, and reached for the book.

  “It doesn’t cost much to purchase,” he said as Fuchida grasped the book. But the vendor kept his grip on it, and looked Fuchida in the eyes. “The true cost is in following.” They both held still for a moment, then the vendor released his grip with another disarming smile, reached into his box and grabbed another Bible, and held both hands up again. “Read any thirty pages of this book and you’ll know it’s true. Test it and see for yourself!”

  Chapter 127

  Spring, 1949. Nagoya.

  Amayo sat finishing lunch with a female friend on a warm afternoon. It had been eight years since her fiancé had been killed at the refinery and the war had left few eligible men, so she remained alone. They sat on a matted area of an open-walled restaurant. The café featured a traditional thatch roof and lay beside a luscious garden of rocks, ferns, and an array of flowers around a tiny, bubbling creek leading to a pond.

  “But they gave the promotion to another girl because she flirted with the boss,” her friend complained. “So did I, but they didn’t give it to me!”

  Amayo shook her head in disgust. “My boss is a pig. I would never even want to flirt with him.”

  As Amayo refilled her teacup, her friend drew out a newspaper and carefully unfolded it in front of Amayo, observing her reaction. “Amayo – have you seen this?”

  She looked down at the paper. “What?”

  “A man from America will be speaking at the garment factory this Friday. He’s one of the Doolittle raiders ... who bombed Nagoya.”

  Her eyebrows furrowed as she seized the paper and intently read the headline and skimmed the article.

  “He was the bombardier ... the man who actually dropped the bombs on our city that day.” The friend waited as Amayo contemplated the photograph of Jake DeShazer, the first she had ever seen the actual assailant.

  “He’s the one who killed Kenji.”

  Amayo looked up as the blood rushed to her face. The muscles in her jaw tensed as her eyes filled with tears and she quickly turned, looking out at the water pouring over the rocks. She breathed harder. Every day for years she had awoken thinking only of Kenji, and went to sleep in tears longing for him. She felt robbed of her future, of her family, of all her hopes and dreams. What she loved most had been stolen forever.

  Her friend broke into her thoughts. “It’s the chance you’ve waited for.”

  Amayo’s face slowly darkened. The love she’d lost was gone forever, but justice had finally come within her reach. After a long pause, she spoke quietly as if only to herself. “At last.” She slowly gazed across at lavender wisteria in full bloom, cascading from the leafy branches of a nearby tree and whispered. “I will have this one, last pleasure.” She looked back with piercing eyes. “I swear it!”

  Candles her only light, Amayo knelt in a white silk kimono at her closet door and slid it open. From a dark recess, with trembling hands she drew out an inlaid wooden box and gently carried it to a three-mirror vanity that sat on the floor, and knelt down before the mirrors.

  Her face expressionless, she stared at herself in the flickering gold of the candle light, then picked up a tiny cut-glass bottle of perfume, removed the stopper, inverted it onto her finger and touched behind both ears and once again looked at herself.

  Her eyes fell to a framed portrait of her and Kenji. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply and leaned her head back in one, last, imaginary embrace, drifting to a world that could never be.

  Opening her eyes again in the near darkness, her eyes rested again on the photograph. Leaning against the frame was a worn, red origami crane – with her faded name on it written by Kenji years ago. She reached out as she had done a thousand times before and lovingly stroked it with a single finger. There were no more tears to cry. She was left only with pain.

  Amayo sat uprightly and looked down at the wooden box between her and the mirror. With both hands on the lid, she swallowed hard and calmly opened it revealing a white cloth, which she slowly unfolded exposing a bone-handled knife. After studying the carved handle and pointed blade, she lifted it before her face and twisted it, observing the candlelight as it reflected off the polished metal into her eyes.

  Looking past the blade, she caught her face in the mirror – hard, emotionless, determined. She continued to stare at herself and gently lowered the blade, and whispered, “For you, Kenji,” unable to hold back two tears from trickling down her cheeks.

  The next morning, she walked along the roadway toward the garment factory, clutching a purse to her chest, eyeing only the walkway a few feet in front of her as a streetcar rumbled past.

  Lifting her head, she could see people gathering at the doorway of a building up ahead, chosen because of its large warehouse area that could be used as a makeshift auditorium.

  As she continued along a fence line, the song of a Blue-and-white Flycatcher caught her attention, bringing her to a stop to admire the black-faced glistening bluebird as he sang his song. The bird seem
ed unafraid and turned toward Amayo and sang his song again, a long series of chirps.

  What were the faint beginnings of an unconscious smile quickly turned into a hard countenance. “I’ve made up my mind,” she breathed out. “I’m not turning back.” She started off toward the meeting leaving the bird to sing out his appeal one last time, and flutter away.

  “Welcome!” the woman at the door said with a broad smile. “Please come in!” Amayo stoically nodded as she was channeled down a hallway among others into a back warehouse. She hunted for a seat near the front, on the end of a row where she knew she could quickly lunge without being stopped by anyone. Though the seats were filling fast, she found what she was seeking in the second row in an aisle seat, very close to the center and the microphone stand.

  Though it was a cool, spring day, she wiped her forehead with a folded handkerchief and looked around behind her at the growing audience. Then she saw him. Her heart began to pound. He was standing there, shaking someone’s hand, smiling. She shuddered, detesting him from head to toe. Beside him she saw some American woman with a baby. Amayo unconsciously nodded. Soon, this woman would taste what she had been forced to drink for so many years.

  Glancing around surreptitiously, she reached into her purse and gently wrapped her fingers around the knife handle to assure her it was in the best position, then withdrew her hand.

  The meeting came to order and, after introductions, Jake was soon into his story.

  “... and things didn’t turn out like I had hoped. I had to accept the cards I was dealt.”

  Amayo had no concern or interest in what he had to say. His Japanese wasn’t very good, but she could understand what he was saying.

  “In one of the jail cells, we were packed in like animals and I remember watching the guards beat a Chinese woman. She hadn’t done anything wrong. They beat her badly and I had to ask myself, why were the Japanese so full of evil and hatred?”