The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (23 page)

Throughout the fall and winter, Uncle Toki sent them out to the far field to collect anything they could find to feed the military horses, any shrub or weed that had withstood the winter. Now, as spring approached, grass was scarce even though the skies had cleared in the past week and brought the sun’s warmth.

“Be careful,” his uncle warned.

Of what?
Kenji thought. He was safely in the countryside.

“More and more people are coming from the cities,” he added, answering Kenji’s silent question. “They’ll do anything for food. You can never be too careful.”

They walked farther out into the fields, away from the row of trees where the grass hadn’t sprouted to an area that received more sun. Hideo threw his cloth sack over his shoulder and reasoned the grass would be longer there, and, if not, the weeds certainly would be. They walked farther out, the open space always loosening their tongues and putting them at ease.

“It must be much different living in Tokyo,” Hideo said. “With so many more people.”

Too many
, Kenji thought, but answered, “Yes, it’s very crowded. But the city’s exciting.”

“And the schools must have many more students?”

Kenji nodded.

“I hope to go to the city to study later,” Hideo added. “What do you want to study?”

“Engineering.” Hideo smiled.

Kenji smiled back. “I’ll show you around Tokyo. And you can meet my brother, Hiroshi. He’s a formidable wrestler.”

“Sumotori?”

“Hai.”

“Then I’ll be welcomed everywhere in Tokyo with a famous
sumotori
as my cousin. And you? What do you want to do, Kenji-chan?”

Kenji hesitated. He hadn’t said the words aloud or told anyone that he wanted to be an artisan; only Hiroshi and his grandparents understood his desire.

“I like art,” Kenji answered, “and the theater.”

Hideo readjusted the bag on his shoulder. “My father always says that it’s hard to create something out of nothing. That’s why art is truly a gift.”

Kenji was surprised to hear Hideo quote his father, a sullen man who hadn’t said ten words to him since he had arrived.

Hideo seemed to pick up on his thoughts. “If you’d met my father before the war, you would have met another man. Do you know that all the pottery in our house was made by him?”

Kenji was amazed. Even his cousin’s respect and admiration was unexpected. Then he remembered the lovely raku vase in the hall. He never guessed that Uncle Toki had made it. He couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like to lose not only his arm but also his art. In that instant, Kenji realized that the war had taken away much more from his uncle than just flesh and bone.

Out in the fields, it was difficult to fill both sacks with anything but weeds, so Kenji strayed farther. He stopped pulling when he heard a distant, low buzzing. For a moment he felt immobilized by the faraway hum, a sound he knew all too well from Tokyo, where he always made a mad dash for the air-raid shelter. He wanted to believe that warplanes would never be flying so far out into the countryside, that they would leave Imoto untouched, as his aunt had said. But the drone grew louder. He dropped his cloth bag and looked up to the sky, shading his eyes against the sun. At first, in the glare, he didn’t see anything, but then, just beyond the horizon he spotted the dark shadows approaching. Two planes. This far away from any city, they were most likely on reconnaissance missions. Uncle Toki had warned them to be careful, but he never expected planes. Kenji waved and yelled for Hideo to take cover but he was too far away to hear. He turned and ran toward his cousin as the roar of the planes grew closer, and he felt their enormous dark shadows swallow him as they flew overhead. He looked up and caught a glimpse of the American flag on the tail of one of the planes.

He prayed it wasn’t worth the pilot’s time to return and chase down two teenagers. In the distance, he saw Hideo running toward the trees that bordered the field. Kenji’s heart pounded as he struggled for breath and paused long enough to see one of the planes circle in the distance and return in his direction.

“Run,” Kenji shouted, “run, run, run!” He wasn’t sure if he was saying it aloud or in his head, but he knew Hideo had a good chance of making it to the trees even if he couldn’t. He suddenly felt as if he were Kenji the ghost again, with all the kids in the yard chasing after him. He heard the thunderous roar of the plane come closer, its engine sputtering behind him just as he heard the footsteps of his classmates within reach of grabbing his shirt. Kenji ran faster, turning back to see the plane banking and coming in low, but his foot struck a depression in the ground and buckled under him. The pain in his ankle was sharp and excruciating as he fell to the ground. On his back, he faced the oncoming plane, the way he should have faced his classmates all those times before.

The plane angled in so low Kenji saw a goggled face behind the
windshield. He saw the sparks fly first—quick flashes of light from the guns, followed by the rapid popping noise as bullets thudded across the ground and kicked up a dry storm of dirt in two straight lines rippling toward him. Lightning first, always followed by thunder. In that split second, Kenji knew he’d have to get his body between the stream of bullets or roll to the side before they reached him. He rolled just as the bullets careened past him. Kenji covered his head with his arms against the spray of dirt and rocks as the shadow of the plane roared over him. He looked up as the bullets chased Hideo into the trees before the plane pulled upward. As soon as it vanished into the clouds, Kenji pushed himself up. He could barely stand. His ankle throbbed but he didn’t think it was broken. He hobbled as fast as he could; he dragged his foot toward the direction he’d last seen Hideo, praying that his cousin had made it to the safety of the trees. The plane hesitated, then flew off rather than circle and drop down for another round of strafe. Kenji stopped and sank to the ground. From the corner of his eye, he saw Hideo running toward him.

Later, aside from a badly twisted ankle and minor cuts and bruises, Kenji and Hideo were otherwise unhurt. Kenji wondered if that American pilot had had any real intention of killing them, or whether it had been just sport? Sport, he decided. The thought made him sick to his stomach. Now he knew that even the countryside of Imoto wasn’t safe from the storm.
The swelling in my ankle has gone down and I can stand on it again. I’m going home, where I can be of some help to my family
, he wrote a week later, the night before he boarded a train and returned to Yanaka, not five days into March.

Haru had kept her word to Aki. By the first days of March they were sent home to Tokyo, replaced by another group of students evacuated to Ikaruga. For the six months they’d been in the countryside,
Haru never told Aki how much she missed home and wanted to return. She hated the strict teachers and long hours working at the factory making mosquito nets. But she had to be strong, to help her younger sister endure what she herself could barely stand.

The moment they arrived home, Haru breathed a sigh of relief. Aki ran from room to room and out to the sumo stable, hugging her parents and wanting to be picked up as if she were a little girl again. Haru wanted to do the same, but something stopped her. In the months since she’d seen them, her parents had aged years, especially her mother, who appeared pale and gaunt, her once black hair now sprinkled with gray. Darkness had fallen over her father’s beloved sumo stable; the constant search for food, the weekly visits from the neighborhood associations, and the death of one of her father’s young
sumotori
, Makahashi, who had been killed in the Philippines, where another wrestler had had his leg amputated, had taken their toll.

When Aki followed her father out to the
keikoba
, Haru took the chance to speak to her mother.

“Okasan
, is everything all right?”

Her mother touched the back of her hair and laughed nervously. “Of course, why do you ask?”

“You seem so thin,” Haru dared to say.

“We are all too thin,” her mother answered. “It would be strange if I weren’t thin during this awful time.”

“Hai, but—”

“But what, Haru-chan?” her mother interrupted. “What are you saying?”

For the first time, Haru heard fear in her mother’s voice, and saw it in her beautiful, dark eyes. She glanced away from Haru and waited for an answer.

“Nothing,” Haru replied. She wanted to ask her mother when this awful war would be over, but Haru felt some fragile thread might break in her mother if she asked too many questions. Like Aki, she wanted life to return to the way it was, when their days were filled with noise and laughter, when her father’s teaching voice and the rough grunting noises of the
rikishi
at practice meant her father was doing what he loved best. Back when the reception room
was filled with gifts her father used to receive—tins of fish eggs and dried beef, expensive foreign chocolates, bottles of sake and whiskey—and her mother’s days were filled with her dance class and afternoon teas with friends and there were no fears.

“Shall we make some tea?” her mother asked, suddenly smiling again.

“Hai,”
Haru answered, happy to see the mother she knew and loved back again.

Still, something in the air made Haru feel heavy, as if some great weight were slowly descending on all of them.

Three days later, a cold north wind blew all day. Before the war, a strong March wind meant the excitement of kites rippling high in the sky, an assortment of red, yellow, and green colors in all shapes and sizes. Haru remembered her father taking her and Aki to the park, along with two of his youngest sumo students, teenage boys who appeared just as excited as they were. The winds were so strong, her father had carried Aki most of the afternoon—afraid that she might be blown away, he had teased. The two students controlled the kites, their weight a solid anchor against the blowing wind.

Now the wind only made Haru feel restless and uneasy, as if something bad might ride in on the tail end of it, and there were no more
sumotori
left to anchor them down. She was only too happy to fall onto her futon that night and end the day.