Soldiers in Hiding (8 page)

Jimmy liked to remain within the confines of his house, but I found it hard to stay off the streets. Students like the ones I lived with were in evidence everywhere. Flags appeared, like the one the grandfather had, and businesses were booming.

I rode one day, on a bus, down around the Imperial Palace. I imagined the Emperor sitting somewhere inside, his aides all about him, maps of the United States staring down at him from his wall. What would happen? I wondered. How long could such a war last?

The people around me were full of goodwill toward each other, and nobody was uninvolved. Barbers about town were busy shaving heads. Trucks with loudspeakers roamed here and there, giving information to the general public that the family and I had gotten from Ike the day or the night before. By the beginning of the new year the Japanese had beaten the British at Singapore and the Americans in Manila. “Asia stands united,” our loudspeakers told us, “and will stay that way. From this day forward the western world will have to pay for the pleasures that it takes, for the natural and human resources that it has, until now, taken from us at will.”

Ike's grandfather was with Jimmy in the garden and had shaved half his head by the time I walked in one evening. “Good,” he said, “you're next.” The ward had received its orders.

Kazuko came out with a large framed photograph of Ike in her hands. She held a camera. “We're going to make an altar,” she said cheerfully. “Ike and Jimmy, and your photo too, Teddy. We'll have a shrine to the sacrifices you all are making.”

Jimmy was sitting silently again, very serious, so I said nothing. What was the use? When he finished with Jimmy the old man motioned to me, so I sat down in his chair, my feet among Jimmy's black droppings, and watched as Kazuko positioned her husband in a solemn pose, his American-made clothes still clinging to him. Jimmy's cheekbones were high and he looked
smaller without his hair. The camera she used was one we'd brought from the United States, and as she clicked away with it I could feel my own hair joining Jimmy's. Here the war had upset every household; I wondered what was happening in America.

That same evening, after we lost our hair, Ike came to the house and we left for the middle school playground and the beginnings of the real war. Kazuko and her mother and grandfather walked with us, talking, taking turns telling us how glorious it would be, how the radio said the American fleet was already beaten and that the rest of the war would be merely a mop-up, a claiming of lands, an administration. Pictures of Pearl Harbor were posted everywhere, and it did look bad. Could it be true? Could Japan really be winning?

At the edge of the playground the families of all the soldiers fused together, swaying as a single body, kimono colors blending. The officer in charge, a man named Nakamura, shouted through a megaphone, over the straight faces of the new recruits, and as he spoke silence settled in.
Glory
was one word I recognized. The honor to die in battle does not come to every generation. The Bushido spirit, between conflicts, is a sleeping tiger, but is born of us on this playground here today. Stand straight, young men, and remember the word victory. Some of you will die, but the rest must go on, not even taking time to regret that your lives still linger within you. The code of the Bushido cannot wither, only our flimsy flesh can do that, so do not worry.

On and on the officer spoke. He was the commander of the unit to which we all would be attached, and he liked what he saw. Jimmy stood as straight as those next to us, so I tried standing straight too. I was afraid. I could no longer see Kazuko in the crowd around us. The poor and private streets of east Los Angeles came to mind and for just a second I began to cry.

“The wooden soldiers of the rice nation will be sorry to have challenged us,” said the officer, “for we are a people who know the beauty and special glory of violent death! Throughout our long history we have fought according to our code, and we have never
been defeated! We are Japan! There is no other nation that, in anyway, resembles ours. We are Japanese! In this war we will be victorious for there is no other possible outcome!”

The crowd came together spontaneously, the soldiers and the spectators too.

“Banzai!” they shouted.

“Remember that our cause is an honorable one!”

“Banzai!”

“Remember Pearl Harbor and the glorious start it has given us!”

“Banzai!”

“Remember the Bushido and your Japanese ancestors!”

“Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!”

Everyone in the crowd raised their hands, fingers toward the clouds, shouting. Around the outskirts I could see the swaying civilians stretching skyward too. “Banzai!” Ike joined the chant and so did Jimmy and I. The air was electric, the urge to fight in them all. Once, quickly, I thought I saw Kazuko, her face tense, tears streaming. My skin was tight, raising itself into gooseflesh. I had the urge to speak in English, so I turned to Jimmy but held my tongue. I felt that to say something in English just then might mean my life, for English orders reality so differently that the whole spectacle might seem silly and I would laugh. When the speech was over we all stayed standing, waiting as men walked among us with instructions. The three of us kept calm, not saying anything to each other. There were buses parked along the far street, away from where Kazuko was, and as we walked toward them Jimmy didn't once look back, yet my head was constantly turned. As we boarded our bus I stuck my face up near Jimmy's ear and whispered. “Banzai,” I told him. “Remember your Japanese ancestors.” I kept craning my neck for Kazuko but the crowd was immense. Jimmy just sat there, not next to me but up next to his brother-in-law, in the seat ahead. The buses began to move before I was ready for them. They went in a direction I did not know, out into the endless city. Our
comrades were quiet, their hairless heads dimly shining. There was a corporal in the front who kept talking to us. We were going to train in some place I'd never heard of. We were heading for parts of Japan where neither Jimmy nor I had ever been.

 

LONG AFTER JIMMY AND IKE AND I FINISHED OUR TRAINING, long after we'd been assigned to a unit and left Japan, I got a letter from Harry, my father, his last. The letter came through Kazuko, tucked deep within one she'd written to Jimmy, and the danger of it was that it was written in English. We were in the Philippines and there were American prisoners everywhere. We were members of a backup unit, and our job was to set up local administrations, to keep the people under control, to let them know that the rules were to be obeyed and that we'd come down swiftly upon the heads of violators.

Amazingly, Ike had been true to his word. He had kept us together throughout it all. Ike was a sergeant, and whenever he had to take someone on a small neighborhood patrol with him he chose the two of us. In certain sections of these little towns, we'd worry about snipers. The Japanese weren't very popular with the Filipinos. The Americans had been occupiers too, but apparently of a variety less rigid, less repulsive to the native population. There were very many bands of mountain guerrillas, and though the invasion was over, though the Japanese victory was secure, many of our men had been killed and we weren't taking any chances.

It was on one of these patrols, on one of the dark mud streets, that Jimmy took the letter out and gave it to me. We almost never spoke English, but when he handed it to me he said, “This came. Kazuko took a great chance getting it to you.”

The envelope was creased and bent but it was mail, and it was from home. Father had written the address in Japanese and, who knows how, had found some way to post it. As near as I can remember, it was February when Jimmy gave me the letter.

I stepped into a poorly lit shack, a little store where
townspeople could buy bits of things, ingredients for the making of a meal, a notebook, a little candy. The woman who ran the store was silent when she saw me. She kept her back against the wall, her eyes on my uniform, on the big gun that I carried.

I sat at a square table and she immediately brought me tea. This is what the letter said:

The woman who owned the store was watching me carefully and as soon as I finished my tea she brought me more. When I stood to pay for it she waved me away. Jimmy and Ike were just outside the door.

“Did you tear it up?” Jimmy asked.

When I'd finished the letter I'd been surprised to think that my father had never meant much to me. It was always my uncle whom I'd looked up to, my uncle, the city man. But I didn't want to tear up the letter. I asked Jimmy if he wanted to read it, but when he declined I kept it tucked inside my shirt.

“They're fighting in Europe,” I told him. “They could all be dead by now.”

 

REALLY, THE LENGTH OF WORLD WAR II WAS DECEIVING. It began very quickly but ended in a casual way, and many times. Historians might say that after the battle of Midway the war lost any of the suspense it had, but though the Japanese were defeated they held on everywhere, dug in, kept the propaganda of virtual victory alive in the hearts of the citizens at home. And in 1942 all was still undecided. The prisoners we held were skinny, in some cases, emaciated. Jimmy and I began to be known for our English-speaking ability. With Ike telling us what to do, we began, very occasionally, to interrogate, to ask the captives to tell us what they knew of the movements of their troops.

There were night patrols constantly. Major Nakamura, the same commander we'd had since leaving Japan, had told the commanding general in Manila that he would be responsible for taking care of the guerrillas that were in evidence all over the region where we were stationed. He had groups of us standing against the jungle wall, easily visible in the light of the pale moon. A few of us were killed every week.

Ike was in charge of Jimmy and me and we had a certain section to patrol. The store where I had first read my father's letter became our headquarters. Stores of this kind were called
sari-sari
stores, and were everywhere. The woman who owned the
store had grown a little used to us, and I tried to convince Jimmy that if we kept going there she would hear us speaking English and would get a message to the guerrillas not to try to kill us. The back wall of her store was against jungle so thick that nothing could penetrate it. Each time she looked over at us from the far wall where she leaned I smiled and tried to say something nice. “How are you tonight?” or “You should accept payment for the tea you give us.” One night I walked up close to her and said, “We won't be here long, you know. The war is almost over and soon you'll have your Americans back.” But she hardly ever answered.