Above the East China Sea: A Novel (40 page)

“Remember all our moon-viewing parties?” I asked, simply to change the subject.

“That isn’t until the middle of August. I won’t live long enough to—”

I cut her off before she could speak the unthinkable. “Remember
Anmā
’s
muchi
? How she mixed rice with black sugar and her purple sweet potatoes, then steamed the dough in fragrant ginger leaves?” My mouth watered thinking of the special treat.

Even Hatsuko couldn’t resist the delicious memory. “Then we would tie a few of the bundles onto a long string and hang them from the eaves of the roof to ward off evil spirits?”

For a moment, we were not wet and hungry and scared, and flies, mosquitoes, fleas, and lice weren’t chewing away at us, and we didn’t smell worse than our goats ever had. We were beloved daughters, clean and fresh in the
yukata
s that Aunt Yasu had woven for us from the softest, finest banana fiber. Our stomachs were full of
Anmā
’s
muchi.
And we were gazing at a moon that promised us the best harvest we’d ever had, while one of my uncles played his
sanshin
and sang a song about the beauty of Okinawa.

At the foot of the hill was the road to Makabe. The fat moon transformed it into a ribbon of silver that we would follow to safety after a bit more rest. Far up ahead, we caught sight of the platoon of soldiers I had lied about, telling Hatsuko that Nakamura was among their ranks. We watched them for a moment. The moonlight gleamed dully on the few bayonets they had left. Just as they were about to disappear from sight, a bomb exploded directly on them. For a split second the blast of the bomb was so bright that it outshone the moon and we saw silhouetted soldiers flying to their deaths. Not one of the soldiers rose from the spot where he’d been thrown; they were all killed, the entire platoon.

Though we no longer fooled ourselves that we would find safety, we had no choice but to keep moving south, toward Makabe, toward the end of the island. At least we would have the protection of our army there. With a weary sigh, I stood, prepared to move my sister forward by force if I had to.

Instead, to my surprise, Hatsuko jumped to her feet and whispered
to me, “Those soldiers blowing up, that was a sign. It was a sign that Nakamura isn’t meant to die yet. He wasn’t in that platoon as you thought, because the gods are protecting him. Our destinies are intertwined; I can feel it. You were right; he
is
waiting for me. There
will
be an explanation.”

Hatsuko’s eyes glittered as she told me to hurry. I didn’t say anything about how grotesque it was to think that all those young men had been slaughtered simply to send her a message. Instead, I pulled out the padded bonnets that our mother had made for us and tied one on her head and one on mine. It no longer mattered how I kept my sister alive, only that I kept my promise to
Anmā
and did it.

THIRTY-NINE

Just before dawn, I managed to find the crumbled remains of a bombed-out bridge. We wriggled into the hollow formed between two large chunks of cement and, though water trickled beneath our hiding spot, soaking us through, we felt safe. After resting for a few hours in the damp spot, neither of us could ignore the rumbling of our empty bellies. We hadn’t eaten since leaving Haebaru, and it was far too wet to make a fire to cook part of our ration of rice.

By scurrying out of hiding for brief periods, I managed to find some locusts, a lizard, and a handful of sweet potato leaves to eat. Though Hatsuko gagged eating bits of lizard and locust, I promised her that tomorrow we would cook the rice and have a proper meal. Thinking of the rice to come and Nakamura waiting for her with an explanation allowed her to swallow. The food quieted our complaining bellies enough that we slept for several hours, then continued on when night fell.

We reached Makabe at dawn the next day and found dozens of other Princess Lily girls. We were overjoyed to reunite with Sachiko and Miyoko. Mitsue stood apart from the others, averting her eyes when Hatsuko glanced her way. We had only a few short minutes before the
sun rose and enemy soldiers would be able to see us. I led Hatsuko and the other girls to the main hospital cave. Centuries of rainwater had carved the entrance, a vertical hole in the ground. There would be a safe place to sleep and food waiting for us within its dark depths. Outside the entrance to the cave, wounded soldiers moaned in pain on stretchers. Their comrades who had risked their lives to rescue the fallen begged the guards to let them in.

“You may enter,” a guard told the soldiers. “But you must leave the stretchers behind. There is no room for them.”

“Don’t worry,” I assured the brave soldiers who had risked their lives to bring the wounded to safety. “As soon as we are admitted, I will bring help for those men.” But when Hatsuko and I stepped forward to enter, two guards blocked our way.

“We are Himeyuri girls,” I informed him. The girls behind me nodded. Some of them called out their names or the names of their teachers. But the guard did not move.

This time when I spoke, I used the crisp tone I’d heard Japanese soldiers adopt when they addressed those of lower rank. “Let us in immediately. We work with the hospital as student nurses. We are needed inside. Your superiors will be quite angry with you if you don’t admit us and these wounded men.”

The guards glanced at each other and muttered,
“Kawaii,”
the Japanese word for “cute.” As they laughed, the taller of the two grinned.

Feeling the weight of being responsible now not just for Hatsuko, but for all the other Princess Lily girls who had joined us, I cried out forcefully, “The sun is rising! You must let us in! The bombing is going to start! We will all be killed!”

“No one else is getting in here,” the grinning guard said. “This is for hospital staff only.”

“But we
are
hospital staff. Do you see this blood?” I pointed to a brown splotch on my collar. “This is from a soldier whose leg I helped amputate. Now let us in so that we can find help and carry these men out here to safety inside.”

“No more room. All filled up. There are already so many of you Lily girls down there that they’re calling it the Cave of the Virgins.”

The shorter guard grunted out a laugh, then ordered, “Move on. No more virgins needed here! But you.” The guard pointed to the stretcher bearers. “You soldiers, you can come in.” They moved forward, and the
guard barked, “Without the stretchers, you idiots. What did I just say? There’s no room.”

Far behind us, like a train in the distance, the droning of bombers setting off on their deadly mission came once more. I grabbed Hatsuko’s hand and shoved my shoulder against the guard to knock him aside and let us in. Instantly his hand closed around my throat. His companion cocked his rifle and pointed it at Hatsuko. The first guard choked me long enough to show that he could kill me if he chose to, then he thrust me out, bawling, “Japanese only! The rest of you, you Okinawans, you are on your own. Now get out of here before I shoot you all!”

But we couldn’t move. We were too stunned by this ultimate betrayal. We were being denied shelter, turned out into sure death in the Typhoon of Steel. The able-bodied soldiers shoved their way past us and entered the cave.

An instant later, I was thrown forward onto my face by the percussive impact of a bomb exploding behind us. There was a white flash, and fragments flew past us with a throaty, angry buzz. We screamed as gravel and rocks bludgeoned our backs.

A large stone hit my head with a force that might have been deadly had it not been for
Anmā
’s bonnet. Debris rained down, battering the unshielded, wounded soldiers until their moaning stopped and they lay silent forever. Their comrades who had risked their lives saving them huddled inside the cave and wept.

The instant the barrage stopped, Hatsuko and I clambered to our feet. Mitsue and Miyoko lay motionless on the ground. Sachiko, the fastest runner in our group, writhed in agony, the white of bone and brain showing through the blood that sheeted her face.

Hatsuko and I went to help our friends, our cousin, but a fast-approaching roar stopped us. “More bombers are coming,” I said, dragging my sister away. “The next one will kill us!” We joined the few other student nurses who had survived and bolted toward the nearest cave opening we could find. Here too Japanese soldiers lunged at us with bayonets, driving us away.

“Why don’t you just kill us right now!” I screamed. “That’s what you’re doing! You were supposed to protect us! We nursed you! We brought you water! We picked maggots from your wounds!”

The next flight of approaching bombers clouded the sky to the north
so completely that I knew we would never survive their devastation. I was commending my soul to our ancestors’ care when a Japanese soldier’s head popped out of what I thought was a pile of dead brush that had blown against the side of the hill.

“Hurry,” he called out in a shrill voice, pushing the camouflage away to reveal the opening to a cave that descended straight down into the earth. The kind soldier pulled us into the cave, and we clambered down into its depths just as the first bombs dropped. Though the hole in the earth was already packed so tightly with other refugees that we all had to stand, we were happy to do so, for none of us would have survived the barrage that roared outside.

“Katsuko?” a voice called out in lull in the shelling. It was Natsuko, searching for her little sister with the rhyming name. In the darkness of the cave, we all picked up the cry and called out for Katsuko. But Katsuko didn’t answer. Natsuko, unable to believe what this meant, said, “She was right behind me. She was always right behind me. Someone, please help me find my little sister.”

As an explosion that made the earth around us rumble drowned out the rest of her words, my sister found my hand and squeezed with a strength I hadn’t felt from her in too long. I clung to it through that long day of destruction. All around us, girls weak from hunger and thirst fainted. Whispers reached us that three girls, wounded by shrapnel and weakened by malaria, had died and that there was not enough room for them to crumple to the earth. We were all packed in so tightly that I too remained upright even when I fell asleep.

At nightfall, though the bombing didn’t stop, we flooded out of the cave, driven from safety by thirst, hunger, and the desperate need to relieve ourselves. Since all the other girls had finished off the meager rations of rice they’d been given in Haebaru, Hatsuko and I had to find a private place to cook and eat ours. If we shared what little we had there wouldn’t be enough to sustain any of us.

Outside, we rushed away from the cave and eventually found a sheltered spot in what had once been a stable. It had been raining all day, though, and Hatsuko said, “We’ll never find anything dry enough to build a fire and cook our rice.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I answered. From around my waist, I untied the tube of money
Anmā
had given me so long ago and used
a wad of the bills to light a small fire. It was just large enough to boil the water I had scooped out of a bomb crater in the lid of my mess kit. As we waited for the muddy liquid to boil, I reached into my satchel for our rice. It wasn’t there. We emptied every bundle we had and clawed frantically through every scrap they contained. The rice was gone.

“Someone must have stolen it,” Hatsuko concluded. Packed in as we had been, I never would have noticed the slither of a thieving hand. We waited for the water to boil and cool; then, because thirst was clawing at our throats, I poured us each a cup of the foul, oily stuff.

I held my cup up. “Here’s to the most expensive drink we’ll ever drink.” Hatsuko didn’t laugh at my joke, and I choked down the water in silence.

As we squatted there, I took stock of our situation: We had no food. No clean water. And no safe shelter. The Japanese army had turned us out to die. The
ketō
would be arriving soon with their flamethrowers. I imagined the flames licking into our hiding place like the tongue of a voracious dragon. I imagined the last sounds I heard on this earth being Hatsuko’s tortured cries, and I announced, “We’re going home.”