Winter and the Waning Days

A

t school the following day I informed my friends of the honor that had come to me, and the news spread rapidly. Once again I was someone important, the center of attention. During lunch period I barely had time to eat my sushi cakes because so many people were clustered about, pressing me with questions.

“Did the captain come right to your home?” Someone asked. “Yes,” I replied. “In fact, he stayed for two hours and had dinner with us?”

“Uso!” Someone exclaimed. “Honto?”

“Yes, honestly!” I said. “I’m not lying.”

Kenji Furuno, one of the better glider students, plied me with ques­tion after question: “Did he just come right out and ask you? I mean, what did he do? Did he tell you that you had to join?”

“He asked me, of course,” I said. “Naturally, we discussed the matter at some length with my father.”

“What did the captain say, though?” Kenji persisted. “Did he just come right out and say, “Will you please be so kind as to honor the Imperial Army Air Force with your presence?’“ Several students laughed excitedly.

I failed to join them, however. Kenji had suddenly become rather inferior, along with the rest of them. “Captain Mikami told me that I had been chosen to serve his Imperial Majesty and our great country.”

“Yes, but didn’t he even give you any time to decide?” another student asked, “Not even an hour or two?”

Almost unconsciously, I eyed him as the Captain eyed me the night before. His smile wavered. “Would you need time to decide something like that?” I challenged.

“Well. . . I guess not,” he answered lamely.

Tatsuno had been listening quietly without comment until now, merely eating his lunch. “I don’t think anyone would turn down an honor like that,” he mused at last. “I doubt if anyone would even dare to.” Often his reactions seemed those of someone almost elderly, his tone and expression perhaps as much as the words themselves. “Myself, I want to be a pilot like my brother, more than anything else in the world. Even so, when you think about it. . . . He paused for some time. I mean, after all. . . he might never come back.”

“That is true,” I admitted. “To die for one’s country is the greatest of privileges.” The words of my father. I wasn’t sure I fully believed them, but they sounded impressive and certainly enhanced my prestige in the eyes of my friends. Everyone was silent now, either staring at the floor or out the windows. Then the bell rang. It was time for afternoon classes.

I went through the remainder of my school day in a kind of trance, as if I had somehow been set apart from the world. Old Tanaka sensei, our instructor, the students—even the desks, books, and the drab walls.

. . everything seemed a bit strange and remote. I was seeing and listening as though from a different sphere. Somewhere out in the pale afternoon a plane was droning, the sound barely perceptible yet persistent. Inces­sant. At times it seemed only a vibration, an echo in the memory, but it made me tingle.

When it was time for glider training, I participated with renewed determination, performing every act with perfect confidence and preci­sion. Abruptly, I decided that from then on I would make no mistakes during glider flying—not a single mistake, however, insignificant. This habit of perfection would become so well established that within a few months I would fly propeller driven aircraft just as perfectly.

Yes, I would become the ultimate pilot of pilots. I would shoot down a hundred enemy planes, and the time would come when the name Ku – wahara would resound throughout Japan. On the Emperor’s birthday I would be chosen to perform remarkable aerobatics in the skies over Tokyo while millions of people far below cheered exultantly. Later I would be escorted amid great fanfare across the green moat and arching wooden bridge. I would gaze down at the lily pads, the elegant, snowy swan and huge listless carp the color of gold and lime. Then I would enter the palace of the Emperor—the Grand Imperial Place where the Emperor himself would present me with the Kinshi Kunsho, the coveted medal of honor after the Order of The Golden Kite.

Such fantasies were fading as Tatsuno and I returned home in the evening, enjoying the sound of our woodengeta as we scuffed and shuffled up the winding road among the pines. Eventually, perhaps guessing my thoughts, Tatsuno remarked, “You know, Yasuo, if you weren’t my best friend I would be very envious right now.”

After a moment’s silence I replied, “I’d give anything if we were going in together; that would truly make it perfect.” I rested my hand upon his narrow shoulder, and we clopped along together. “But it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you should get the same chance before long.”

Tatsuno shook his head. “Oh, I don’t really think so,” he said. “After all, look who you are! You’re the national glider champion!”

“Yes, but what kind of an air force would we have if they only chose glider champions?” I asked. “Besides, you really did well. You went to the finals, didn’t you?” He merely shrugged. “Didn’t you?” I prodded and began shaking him back and forth, trying to pull him off balance. “Didn’t you?”

Suddenly I pushed the long visor of his school cap over his eyes. “Didn’t you?” Laughing, he grabbed for my own and I ducked. Then we were cavorting along, laughing and grabbing, shoving each other, our wooden geta clattering loudly along the paved street near home. “And you’ve got the best grades of almost anybody in our school—right? Right?”

“Yes,” he laughed, “except you!”

It was almost dark by then, and we parted at the gateway to our yard. I entered my home to find Mother hunched over a large book at

the dining table. Food was cooking on the hibachi, and it smelled very good, but she did not seem happy. Her reply to my hello was subdued. I looked at her curiously. “Is Father home yet?”

“No.” I could barely hear her.

“Is he still at work?”

She shook her head. “He will not be home tonight.”

Then I understood. It was never easy for her, even after all the years. Her veined hands closed the book, and she gazed silently at the cover— Tale of Genji. “My mother gave me this book when I was a young girl,” she said. “I still remember almost all of it.”

Sitting beside her, I spoke with great hesitancy: “No one could ever take your place, Mother. You know how much Father cares for you.” “Oh yes,” she replied, unable to conceal the note of bitterness. But I am not so young any more—not like his darlings, his Kimiko and his Toshiko, and all the others. She laughed even more bitterly. “There was a time when your father never looked at another woman, nor was he the only man who thought I was beautiful.”

“You are still beautiful!” I exclaimed. “I think you are the most beautiful woman in the world!”

“Reddening faintly, Mother replied, “I must think my Yasuo-chan is a full-grown man now, talking such foolishness.” Then she kissed my cheek. “It’s really nothing to worry about. Nothing has changed, and your father will return as usual tomorrow or the next day. Besides. . . .” She arose, attending to her meal. “I will always have my children. They are my greatest joy.”

There was nothing more to say. It was aJapanese male’s prerogative to have his mistresses, as long as he could afford them, and my father was the richest man in Onomichi. Although true geisha are not prostitutes, some are available as mistresses to men of sufficient means, and my father kept one of his own in nearby Hiroshima, an alleged ravishing beauty of marked talent in the dance and such stringed instruments as the koto and samisen. This I had learned from my older brothers long ago, the “unspoken secret” of which everyone was well aware.

So it was that whenever my father went away, except for legitimate business trips, which were almost always quite lengthy, my mother con­tinued meekly about her responsibilities in the home as was befitting a wife in such circumstances. Her comments in that connection, in fact, were highly atypical and probably stemmed from her anxiety over my impending departure and realization that I would soon be caught up in a great war, the most devastating conflict in history.

In any event, I actually enjoyed my father’s absences most of the time. Not that I didn’t love him, but rather because I felt less restrained when he was away. They afforded me an opportunity to be with my mother and sister, to be the center of attention. As the weeks faded, and the time approached for my departure, in fact, I took ever-increasing comfort from being alone with them.

It was Tomika above all, though, who made the prospect of leaving poignant. She had been the ideal sister, even defending me against the occasional teasing and bullying of my older brothers when they were still in the home. Tomika, as well as my mother, washed and ironed my clothes, cooked my favorite meals, and fondly indulged my every whim.

Often, as the time drew nigh, we wandered by the ocean, along the cold sands that smelled of salt and fish and seaweed. On those rare days in January when the sun parted the clouds we gathered shells and listened to the quiet puttering of junks in the harbor. Even when the weather was cold, men and women bustled about in long dingy shacks along the shore, smoking fish and preparing them for the market. Aged people in the main, crinkled and brown, in tattered clothing, hunched there on the beach, at work with their nets.

I had never known their privation or gone shoeless and half clad like their children and grandchildren, but there seemed to be some­thing pleasant about that life, about its utter simplicity that suddenly was exceptionally appealing. At times we would watch as those fisher people spread catches of tiny, shimmering fish to dry on woven mats, later collecting them in baskets. When sunlight warmed the beach they occasionally rested long enough to dig their bare toes in the sand and visit. Their voices and laughter were always mild—at one with the cries of the gulls and surging of the waves.

There was a timelessness and serenity about those ocean people that made the war seem rather remote. True, the enemy was bombing our homeland, but the immediate area had thus far gone unscathed, and occasionally even now, war was something that happened only in books and movies.

This same peace prevailed as we strolled the mountainside, viewing the terraced farmlands. Now, in mid winter, the terraces and paddy’s were bleak and lifeless, but with the coming of spring they would explode a brilliant green. The rice would quest higher and higher from the muck that gave it birth, never losing its brightness until the time of harvest. Meanwhile, the mountains, cloaked in their own dense foliage, would brood ever darker as the summer moved on.

Now, however, all of nature was drab and gray, and my three months had fled with disturbing abruptness. Suddenly I realized that the time with my family and friends was nearly over, perhaps forever. Within only a few days I would depart from Onomichi and very possibly never return.

On an afternoon near the end of January Tomika and I sat in my upstairs room gazing outward upon the wintry landscape. The pines of the hillside were patched with slowly wreathing mists. I would be leaving the next morning, and the sense of finality simmered in my stomach with a mild burning sensation. My hands were slightly tremulous. To­morrow! Excitement and anxiety roiled steadily throughout my entire system, even the capillaries of my skin.

Our back yard itself was blurred in mist, the rough-hewn gray stone of our family shrine invisible, the heavy wooden torii forming the gateway to the road barely discernible, its bright orange surface dull and muted like the waning of hope.

“I wish it were summer,” I sighed. “Then we could go hiking, even take one more swim in the lake.”

“Hai,” Tomika said and nodded. “I wish it were always summer.” After a long silence she spoke again. “How can this be?” I glanced at her puzzled. “Why must people fight and hate each other?” Her words and expression had never been more imploring or distressed. “Is this really possible? People endlessly killing each other? People who actually hate us? Want to destroy us?”

“Why not?” I answered sadly. “We hate them. Don’t we want to destroy and conquer them?”

“I don’t want to destroy and conquer anyone.” Her voice was sor­rowful, almost ancient. “I just want people to live in peace. I want them to be kind to each other.”

“But how can we live at peace when the western powers are stran­gling us?” I asked. It was a doctrine we had been taught in school, the conviction of our father and countless others. The West had long domi­nated so much of the world that Japan had no opportunity to expand and was gradually being stifled.

The Americans themselves were, in general, an objectionable people. Mongrels in reality, large, ungainly people, many of them obese, with pallid skins and strange hair. Red hair, some of them! I had never seen a red-haired American, very few at all, for that matter, but I had seen photographs of them in magazines. A greater number, in fact, had yellow hair. Hana ga takoi, big noses, on top of that! Worse still, some of them were almost black, having originated in dark and forbidding places such as Africa and South America.

The whole situation seemed highly unnatural, indeed, downright sinister. Furthermore, most Americans were greedy, prodigal and lazy, wallowing in undeserved luxury. Their soldiers were savage and guttural­voiced, yet also cowardly when their lives were in jeopardy as my father had assured me.” Do you believe what they’re saying about American Marines?” I inquired. Tomika eyed me quizzically. “That they have to kill and eat their own grandmothers even to become a Marine,” I said. “That’s the main qualification.”

“No,” Tomika replied firmly, “that’s ridiculous! No one, not even an American, would ever do a thing like that.”

“Well,” I said dubiously, “that’s what some of them are saying at school—even old Tanaka-sensei in our history class.”

No doubt the average Caucasian view of Orientals was just as ex­treme in some ways. In the American view we were yellow-skinned, slant-eyed monkeys, dwelling in paper houses. We possessed no spark of originality and could only copy what others had the ingenuity to invent. Our soldiers—indeed every Japanese, Japanese Americans included—were considered sneaky, treacherous and fanatical. “Dirty Jap,” was one of the more popular epithets.

At times I still wonder how much such forms of ignorance and preju­dice among virtually all peoples have contributed to war throughout the ages.

In January of 1944, however, I did not ponder such matters very deeply. I had been reared to believe that the Imperial Way of Righteous­ness and Truth was the best way—the only way—and that ultimately, despite great obstacles, it would envelop the world. For indeed, it was divinely ordained to do so. In time all nations of the earth would be united in a vast hierarchy with Japan at the helm, but unfortunately such a condition could not obtain without war. The greatest blessings sometimes demanded the greatest sacrifice.

Furthermore, the population of our country was rapidly increasing with scant room to expand, and we were in desperate need of more terri­tory. Drastic conditions required drastic solutions, and consequently our assault on Pearl Harbor three years earlier had been a solemn obligation, action requiring immense courage and foresight.

Such was the prevailing doctrine, yet in reality I often felt much as Tomika did. N ow especially, I only wanted to live and let live in the most literal sense. Increasingly, in fact, I was becoming a split personality. Fear on the one hand, a desire for peace and sanctuary. Excitement on the other from my growing awareness that within a few months I could be flying, not a mere glider but rather an actual, bona-fide aircraft. Indeed, if I were good enough and very fortunate, if the gods were with me, a fighter plane. Already I was a hero in the eyes of my friends, but as fighter pilot I would experience even greater, more lasting, recognition.

Through with my studies now, I had bid goodbye to my teachers and classmates, having learned only a day earlier, that two more students from our school had been selected for training at Hiro. Better still, Tatsuno was one of them. He would not be entering the service for another two months, but both of us were delighted over what had happened. During my final days at home we were together frequently.

Our common bond with the Air Force had brought us even closer, closer in some ways than I was to my own brothers. When Tatsuno first gave me the good news I had clapped him on the back, exclaiming, “See, what did I tell you!” Tatsuno had only smiled shyly, the wise older man in the boy’s body, but it was impossible to disguise his excitement.

On my final day at home I went with him to visit some of our other friends then returned to spend the remaining hours with my family. Father was obviously proud and in good spirits, talking with me more intimately than ever before while Mother and Tomika prepared a special farewell dinner from the best rice and sashimi, sliced, raw fish fresh from the sea—along with a variety of other delicacies.

Before midnight I bade my family a good rest and crawled beneath my futon. For many hours, however, sleep failed to come. My thoughts were an ever-unfolding panorama of memories, visions of the future, and ongoing apprehensions. Above all, I feared that I would not be able to compete with the others in basic training. Most of them were older than I, at that critical stage of rapid growth when even a year or two could make a marked difference. Would I actually be able to keep up with them? Captain Mikami had said basic training would be “very enjoy­able” yet more and more I wondered if he had been speaking ironically. Stories were steadily mounting regarding the rigorous routine ahead, the harshness of the punishment for even the most trivial mistakes.

Half asleep, half awake, I tossed and squirmed for more than an hour, fearful that I would be exhausted with the arrival of morning. At last I began to drift off, aware that several aircraft had just passed over, purring steadily off, diminishing into the mysterious realms of night. Sit­ting there beside me, softly stroking my brow was my mother. Extending my hand, I felt the warmth of her own. In the darkness nearby came a faint murmur, and I knew that Tomika was beside her. Gradually my thoughts settled and sleep came.