Ashes for the Family Shrine

A

t seven that morning I awakened. Toyoko was sleeping serenely, and I dressed quietly. Before departing I knelt beside her, gaz­ing into her countenance. They say love blinds one to the defects of the beloved. Perhaps so, but I had never, from our first encounter, recognized any defects with Toyoko, inwardly or outwardly. To me, she was very near perfection.

She was wearing her white nightgown, one with delicate lace on the neck, throat, and hemline, and those high burnished cheek bones were glowing more strongly as the morning light expanded. I had never real­ized how long and thick her eyelashes were, how intensely black, yet the growing light was turning her hair to tints of auburn. Her breasts rose and fell gently with each breath, but now I only felt an ineffable tenderness.

Lying there in the lap of slumber, she looked very much like a mere teenager. Only the very faintest lines at the sides of her lips and outer corners of her eyes belied that illusion. In that final moment, I could hear the sound of her breathing, the soft, slow inhalation and exhala­tion. Even the sound of her breath was perfect. Suddenly it seemed very

important that I imprint her entire image within my soul, etch it deeply there forever.

Bending over her, I placed my cheek ever so gently against her own, barely traced my lips across her brow. For an instant Toyoko stirred, her own lips forming the faintest smile, happiness and sadness, wistfulness and mischief, secret things woven from the depths of a dream. Then I arose with infinite caution and left, casting a final backward glance. Sliding the door shut carefully behind me, I descended the stairs with utmost stealth to keep them from creaking.

The streets and lanes were quiet at that hour, largely untraveled, and clouds were digesting the eastern sky, gradually excluding the light. In the fields and between the houses, tiny whirlwinds captured dust, dried leaves, and bits of paper. A cold front was moving in from the ocean, bearing the odor of dead kelp and fish along a stretch of backwater. It was one of those rare summer mornings, those curious reminders, even in the midst of heat and greenery, that winter will come again.

Nearing the base, I felt the empty tingling in my loins, that inchoate sense of excitement and dread that marked the onset of another mission. Once again, the escort flight, fighter protection and monitor to the demise of my companions. It was a strange calling, and with the completion of each fateful journey, my spirit inflated more fully with apprehension, indeed, with a sense of doom. Fate would play its unassailable hand, and I was caught up in it, along with my companions, like bubbles on the incoming tide.

Who would it be this time? I wondered. Another fifteen or twenty men, but lately I hadn’t been checking the names. It seemed better that way. Somehow, I had convinced myself that as long as I did not view a name on the roster, it did not exist, just as people tell themselves they are not ill until condemned by a doctor’s diagnosis. In any event, I had no close friends there at Oita except for Tatsuno and Nakamura. It was better that way.

At the base entrance, I held out my pass to the MP, a mere formality now, and he waved me on with barely a glance. The place was beginning to vibrate, and overhead, almost out of sight, a plane cried. I walked faster. It was almost time for formation.

The formation was over promptly with the usual, now sometimes suspicious, “all present or accounted for” reports from our flight leaders to the commanding officer. Next, I hastened to the chow hall, planning to eat quickly and give my fighter a final inspection. I was more cautious in this regard than most, almost punctilious, always wanting to be sure that the mechanics had left nothing undone. At least I was confident by now in my own flying ability and was determined not to leave this world because of some trivial oversight. When I left the world it would count for something.

Months of grueling practice were behind me—a series of dog fights, mostly hit and run affairs on our part, but several battles worthy of the name. No longer was I the green and timorous pilot of that first encounter. I now had two enemy planes to my credit, and at Oita I had been promoted to corporal, a rank not easily attained then by Japanese enlisted men. Now, grim though the task might be, I was an escort, lead­ing and protecting our Kamikaze, defending them against the enemy to that final, fateful dive, then returning to give my report. That was my job. Who else, I asked myself, had a more important one?

And at night. . . there would be Toyoko. Toyoko had said she loved me, and that was enough. She had promised me that the war would end before it was too late, and I took refuge in those words. Never mind that they were tendered in the crucible of emotion, in a moment of desperation. Still, I clung to them, strongly immured in the household of denial.

That was the only way by now that I could survive psychologically. Yes, yes—something would happen to save me. Not only would the war end in time but something highly extraordinary would occur. Occasion­ally, in fact, the feeling pulsed strangely at unexpected moments, even within the onset of my dreams. It was a kind of prescience that gener­ated a strange effervescence throughout my veins, my entire epithelium. Even now, though, my moods fluctuated. Doom still hovered and often overflowed the boundaries of my little sanctuary.

Today, in fact, it was encroaching strongly. Today Nakamura and I were flying together. I had spotted him in the chow hall, ahead of me in line and followed him to a table.

“Yai, tomadachi" I said and roughed his head playfully. Simply an infor­mal greeting, an effort to release tension. “Seen Tatsuno this morning."

Nakamura glanced up at me, but the familiar grin was gone. “Yes, I’ve seen Tatsuno,” he said.

“Well, what’s the matter? Where is he?”

“Getting ready,” he answered.

I felt the sudden chill but hoped for the best. “Going with us? Escort now?”

“Going with us—yes. Escort-no.”

Something filled my chest like cold sludge. “He’s lucky,” Nakamura said. “No more worries, not after noon today. You and I. . . we’re still waiting, still on the tines of a pitchfork.”

I placed my chop sticks on the table very carefully as if that simple act were of utmost importance. “When did he find out? Why didn’t someone tell me earlier so I could have at least been with him?”

“It only happened yesterday,” Namamura said coldly. “And you haven’t exactly been the most available man in the world this past month. You should try reading the orders sometime, Kuwahara. You don’t want to miss your own.”

“Really?” I retorted, angry over my very guilt. “So what are they going to do? Shoot me?” Then, riddled with contrition, I bowed my head, eyelids clenched and locked my hands together. “You’re right. I haven’t been a friend to him at all lately. Not to you or anybody else.” Fiercely I bit my knuckle. That was the only thing I could tolerate for the moment, my teeth cutting into the skin and bone.

“I did try to tell you, incidentally,” Nakamura said. “Went to your girl’s apartment about ten, but you weren’t there.”

“We were down at the beach “

“Nice! Lots nicer than being with—”

“Stop it!” I banged my fists on the table and grated my chair back, igniting glances of surprise from those nearby. Then I stood, leaving my food untouched, and blundered my way out of the chow hall. Everyone, it seemed, was staring at me. Where was Tatsuno? I had to find him, tell him we’d go down together. To hell with waiting for orders. I’d cover him all the way, end this madness together. My dearest friend would not go alone.

Without realizing it, I was running, hearing Nakamura’s voice yet not hearing it. Three hundred yards to Tatsano’s barracks, and I was

running at top speed, feeling the blood pound in my temples, hearing my breath rasp in my lungs, vaguely aware that the intense physical con­ditioning of basic training had diminished somewhat. Then, abruptly, I stopped. Tatsuno and his company of the damned would not be in their barracks now; they would be undergoing their final briefing.

Bleakly I turned and shambled off toward my own barracks. Two hours before takeoff time—an hour before my own briefing. Nothing to do but wait. I wouldn’t even check my Hayabusa now, not until time to go. It would either fly or it wouldn’t. All was in the hands of fate.

Nakamura was waiting when I entered the barracks, lying back on one of the bunks, hands locked behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He sat up at my approach, and I settled down beside him, hearing the springs squeak. “Don’t feel bad, Yasbei,” he mumbled. “I apologize for what I said because Tatsuno wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise. Not for you. You’ve found somebody worth spending time with, all the time you’ve got left. I was just envious.”

“But I haven’t even seen him for a week,” I said. “Do you know how long he and I have known each other?”

He nodded. “Ever since you were about four years old—Tats told me. But what good could you have done him hanging around here? None of us know when its coming. We’d probably just be getting on each other’s nerves.” He shrugged. “I haven’t seen him that much myself. He’s been up to the mountain, visiting that priest you told us about.”

For a long time we remained there. Silence, except for a faint and constant ringing in my ears like the sound of a distant locust. “I have a strange feeling about today,” Nakamura mused. His words were scarcely audible. “Today maybe we’ll all go down, one way or another. Pay our debt to the Emperor.”

Somehow the remaining time passed, more as though it had suddenly evaporated. A blank space, a void without dimension or recollection. Then Nakamura and I were there on the airfield, suited up, ready to fly. Sixteen pilots all told—four of us escorts, the remaining dozen never to return. They had grouped now for final directions before an officer holding a large map of the Pacific.

Minutes later it was time for the last formation, and we all stood at attention, hearing the parting words of our commanding officer. From the corner of my eye I could see Tatsuno, but he didn’t look quite real, more like a pallid facsimile of the person he had once been. His spirit had perhaps already gone like the wind among the lanterns.

Around the shaved skull of each Kamikaze was bound a small flag, the crimson rising sun directly over his forehead. These departures were never conducted in a perfunctory manner. Instead, there was much ceremony, toasts, valiant speeches—most of which I had already almost learned by rote.

Boys and girls, drafted from school to work on the base, were permitted to assemble with the squadron on these occasions. Among the fringe of onlookers several girls began to cry then grew quiet as our commanding officer, Yoshiro Tsubaki prepared to address us. His voice commenced in a kind of nasal whine, droning on and on, mingling with the heat waves, occasionally descending to somber guttural tones. . . then, at last, reached its conclusion: “And so, valiant comrades, smile as you go. . . There is a place prepared for you in the glorious and esteemed presence of your ancestors, where you will attain unto everlasting honor. Samurai of the skies. . . guardian warriors, we bid you sayonara"

Now, at last, it was time to sing the parting battle song:

“The airman’s color is the color of the cherry blossom.

See, oh see, how the blossoms fall on the hills of Yoshino.

If we are born proud sons of the Yamato race, let us die,

Let us die with triumph, fighting in the sky.”

So now, at last, the final toast, the sake glasses raised and the resurgent cry: “Tennoheika Banazai! Long live the Emperor!"

Our Kamikaze are saying sayonara now, laughing and joking ner­vously like student athletes before a race. Climbing into their obsolete aircraft—antiquated fighters, even trainers. The old planes don’t matter greatly. After all, it is their final trip as well.

The smiles? Perhaps they will remain on some of those faces to the very last. For others, the smiles will die as they settle into their cockpits. Perhaps for some, very few, the serpents of fear won’t strike until the en­emy ships appeared. And what is courage? A question I have never fully resolved. Who, in fact, is the most courageous—the man who feels the least fear or the man who feels the most and still fulfills his obligation?

But now, there is only one man, a very young one, little more than a boy. Yes, now with Nakamura, the two of them walking toward me. He does not look real, his face pallid, almost transparent. Yes, yes—the spirit has gone ahead. His body will mechanically but faithfully fulfill its duty. What a strange and haunting smile carved upon that waxen visage, the secret perhaps to some immense enigma that the rest of us have yet to fathom.

Tell him! Tell him! Tell him you’ll cover him all the way, that you will die together! But no, that is not what he seeks, and something strangles any words. Your time will come soon enough, Yasuo Kuwahara, the time that fate has ordained. That is right. By repeating those words, I retreat from the groundswell, the sorrow and the guilt. I am no friend, though; I haven’t been for weeks. No friend. And never once has he presumed to tell me the truth.

The lead in my chest is solid now, crushing. The words emerge pain­fully under much pressure. “Tatsuno. . . I—” We reach out, and our hands clasp fiercely, but despite the heat of the sun his fingers are cold. Of course, of course; the spirit is elsewhere. Nakamura, a better friend than I, accords us this final moment.

“Remember, Yasbei. . . .” the words came, almost subliminally it seemed. “How we always dreamed of flying together?”

“Yes,” I said. Our gazes had blended inseparably for the moment. The ultimate searching of souls.

“Well,” he murmured, and the smile increased. “It has come to pass. We fly together today.”

“Yes.” Muscles on one side of my face were twitching. “I will follow you soon, all the way. Perhaps this very afternoon.”

Then, unexpectedly, he extended the other hand. It was wrapped in a meager bandage, and the bandage was turning red. “Here, Yasuo—take care of this for me. It is not much to send, but you know what to do.”

Swiftly, I looked away. Tatsuno had just given me the little finger of his left hand.

Our Kamikaze almost always left a part of themselves behind—a lock of hair, fingernails, an entire finger—for cremation. The ashes were then sent home to repose in the family shrine. There in a special alcove with the pictures of their ancestors. Once yearly, a priest would enter that room to pray.

The first motors were beginning to cough and rev, and suddenly I flung my arms around Tatsuno crushingly as though somehow I might preserve him. Preserve, at least, all that had gone before, all that we had meant to each other. For that instant we clung together on the edge of a great chasm. Then we broke apart, and somehow, following another blank space, I was seated in my Hayabusa, fastening the safety belt, feeling the controls, adjusting the goggles on my forehead. The entire base was grumbling now on the brink of departure.

I checked the prop mixture, pressed the starter button, and one cylin­der caught in a high coughing explosion, then another and another. The motor surged ravenously then adjusted in a steady, powerful roar. One by one, we were moving out—lethargic, winged beasts awakened from their lairs. Uno, a veteran of five kills, was in the lead, and I was close behind— signals coming laconically from the control tower. Already the onlookers were in another world, withdrawn. A ring of sad faces and waving hands, fading as the prop blasts hurled sand, bits of straw and paper.

The commanding officer, the remaining pilots, the students, the mechanics come to bid farewell to the ships they had nurtured for a season. . . all shrinking now as the air field fell away beneath us.