Hiroshima Read online

  After the war I mentioned that afterimage to Dad’s younger brother Uncle H., and staring at me with surprise, he muttered: “You remember that? Toddlers never forget what they see.” Mom, Uncle H., the relatives: they all thought it shameful that the Nakazawa clan had produced a thought criminal, so they kept us children in the dark about the fact that Dad had been detained. Uncle H. became his guarantor, and he met Dad at the jail on his release. That was October 1941, fourteen months after Dad was detained.

  Dad’s return home after his release from jail is seared onto my retinas. Wearing kimono, he was hunched over, fingers to his teeth, his expression filled with bitterness. Dad’s teeth were all loose. When we ate, he tried to use bowl and chopsticks, but his fingers didn’t cooperate. Food lay scattered all over his place at the table.

  I can’t forget the words Dad muttered in mortification: “Inside, they give you food with no salt, and you get so that your hands and fingers stop moving. No pickles.” In jail back then, they removed salt from the food they gave detainees. Remove the salt, and people’s energy and muscles atrophy, and they stop functioning. If you’re active in jail and cause problems, the authorities worry that they’ll be in trouble. He’d had this diet for over a year, so of course his teeth grew loose and his muscles atrophied. Dad came home utterly debilitated, but Mom looked happy as she tried to cheer him up.

  It was always there in a corner of my mind, the thought that I wanted to learn what Dad’s jail life had been like. Years later, I had a visit from a woman in the same theater group as Dad. The instant she saw me, she said, “Without a doubt! You’re the spitting image of him!” This woman, S., was shocked that I resembled Dad so exactly.

  According to S., her most vivid memory of jail life was on January 1. They were all let out of their isolation cells, lined up in the corridor, and the whole theater group sang favorite antiwar songs. The guard was considerate: while they sang antiwar songs, he abandoned his post and took no notice. He must have sympathized with Dad’s theater group and thought well of them. After her release, S., too, had had bitter experiences. When talk of marriage arose and the day of the marriage interview approached, the other side always called things off. Like serpents coiling about S., the detectives of the thought police kept up their surveillance; to teach her a lesson, they broke up all her marriage negotiations. They continued to spread rumors about her, that she was a wicked woman; they even treated her family harshly, leaving bad memories.

  S. spoke of Dad as if she were leafing through the pages of a fond past. Dad was great in the spotlight reading his lines; when he’d got married, she had thanked Dad for all he’d done for her. The leader of Dad’s theater group had been held in Yoshijima Prison, awaiting trial, until Japan’s defeat in 1945.

  For the fourteen months Dad was detained, Mom had faced great worries about money. With us young ones to feed, she earned money working for all she was worth at the painting of clogs that was the family business. I spoke to the young boss of the guild that handled clogs then; he said it pained him to see Mom at that time—she was so haggard. Her technique wasn’t great, so he couldn’t give her much work, but he couldn’t simply stand by silent. So he’d sent work her way behind his boss’s back. But she hadn’t produced good stuff, and one time his boss caught on and thundered at him not to send orders Mom’s way. Throwing herself on the mercy of her parents, Mom got money to live on. Frantic, she raised us.

  Don’t Die a Dog’s Death!

  There is another vivid memory from November 1941 burned onto my heart. Mom’s younger brother, Uncle Y., resplendent in the uniform of a naval officer and grasping his military sword by its white handle, appeared at our home looking stern. I liked Uncle Y. He was very attractive. I’d told Mom that I wanted to be like him when I grew up. Uncle Y. often came to visit us. When I had a cold or at other times, he’d take off his short sword and let me play with it. I can’t forget the heft of the short sword and the feel of its polished blade.

  That day Uncle Y. climbed with nervous step up to Dad’s workroom on the second floor and, a serious expression on his face, listened to Dad. That tense atmosphere came across to me, young as I was. I’d gone up with him. Dad unsheathed Uncle Y.’s sword, stood the blade upright, and stared at it. Oppressed by the extraordinary tension, I sat beside Dad and stroked the remarkable white sword. And I compared Dad’s grave expression with Uncle Y.’s. I always wondered, “What was that all about?”

  After the war ended, I learned from Uncle Y., who’d been repatriated, and understood the reason for the tension. Uncle Y. was set to leave from Kure harbor on a submarine to be in the front lines of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, as Japan plunged into the Pacific War. That day he’d come to pay a final farewell to Dad and Mom. The image that lingered, of tension, was because life and death were at stake.

  Soon after Uncle Y. set sail, Mom grieved. “Y. died in battle. I felt closest of all to him.” She greatly mourned his death. When told that Uncle Y., handsome man, had died, I was stunned. But days later, I remember going to see Uncle Y. at Kure Naval Base accompanying Mom, who was ecstatic—“He survived!”

  According to what Mom heard from Uncle Y., the submarine on which Uncle Y. embarked got almost as far as Pearl Harbor, rammed its bow into the mud of the seafloor, got stuck, and couldn’t take part in the attack. The air inside the sub turned humid and suffocating, and with their whole bodies drenched in sweat, the crew tried desperately to free themselves. But the bow wouldn’t come free, and they all figured they were dead. Uncle Y. was chief engineer, so his responsibility was especially grave. Fortunately, as he was trying desperately to escape by backing the sub out, the bow pulled loose from the mud of the ocean floor, floated free, and the crew tried to take part in the attack. But the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was already over.

  After the war Uncle Y. visited us in our hut, and he often said to us brothers, “Your father was a great man!” I hadn’t had the faintest idea why he was great. It was from Uncle Y. that I first learned of Dad’s thinking.

  Uncle Y. said, “I was the model gung-ho militarist young man.” He was a believer, without the slightest doubt: “I would have died happily for the country, for the emperor; Japan was the eternal land of the gods; it was only natural for a ‘son of Yamato’ to offer up his life to that land of the gods.” Forcing a smile, he said he was the model male conforming to the mold of patriotic education. With a flourish, this Uncle Y. said to Dad, “I’m off now to take part in the Pearl Harbor attack. I’ll die a splendid death for the country, for the emperor.” Dad glared at Y. and said angrily, “Down with the emperor system! This war is wrong. Japan will surely lose! Don’t die a dog’s death!” Dad went on and on, arguing about how terrible the emperor system was, speaking earnestly about its structure, and arguing about the process whereby the Japanese people, bound hand and foot in the coils of emperor-system fascism, were plunging into war.

  When Uncle Y., a firm believer in militarism, heard, “down with the emperor,” whom he had thought a god, he thought his head would explode. Stunned, he left for Pearl Harbor. Against all odds, he survived, and with Dad’s words always in mind, he avoided exposing himself to danger. When, under fire-bombing by B-29s and strafing by Grumman fighter planes, he was running about at Kure Naval Base, he thought to himself, it’s happened just as Dad said it would, and he understood just how prescient Dad had been.

  But I found it hard to talk with Uncle Y. He had lived a long time amid the din of submarine engines, so he spoke in a very loud voice, and it was tough for me, listening—I felt I was always being yelled at.

  I figured Dad had given that advice only to Uncle Y., but I learned years later from a visit by S., one of the young men who were in and out of our house, that Dad gave them the same advice.

  S.’s call-up notice came, and his dispatch to “Manchuria” (now northeastern China) was set. He came to take his leave, and Dad told him, “Down with the emperor system! Japan will surely lose this war, so don’t
throw your life away!” and Dad made him listen in detail about the process leading from the structure of emperor-system fascism to defeat. S., a militaristic young man, turned white with shock. But when he got to Manchuria and saw Japan’s situation, it was as Dad said. He realized that Japan’s home islands would be beaten hollow, and he sent frantic letters to his family living in the center of Hiroshima. There was censorship in the service, so he couldn’t write what he wanted. He could write only, “Get out!”

  S.’s family was puzzled to read all the letters saying, “Quickly, get our possessions together and evacuate from Hiroshima to the countryside.” There must be some reason their son was always writing from Manchuria telling them to get out. They gathered their possessions and evacuated. Soon after the family evacuated, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. S. listened to Dad’s warning, so the lives of his family were saved, and his cherished collection of books didn’t burn up, and he was grateful to Dad—that I learned when he came to Tokyo and visited me. I’d had no idea how much influence Dad had exerted over the young men.

  Dad was antiwar. I remember the song popular among children—“Mr. To¯jo¯, Mr. To¯jo¯, Mr. To¯jo¯, great man.” When we sang it, Dad glared fiercely at us, took us up to the second-floor workroom and angrily told us: “That guy To¯jo¯ you were singing about just now is a bad guy. Don’t sing that song!” Dad couldn’t excuse To¯jo¯ Hideki, prime minister when they pushed the war. At the time I couldn’t understand why Dad was so angry.

  “Traitor’s Kid”

  For me, “head of the neighborhood association” resonates unpleasantly. Since Dad had been released from jail, the head of the neighborhood association began to appear at our house for one reason or another and got into big arguments with Dad. To my child’s mind, it was very strange that at each visit Dad and the neighborhood association head fought like cats and dogs. On the other hand, it was fun, too, to watch them fight.

  When the head of the neighborhood association came to our door—“Anyone home?”—and climbed from the entryway up to Dad’s workroom on the second floor, Susumu and I would be downstairs looking up the staircase, scoping out the situation and thinking, “Now the fireworks will begin.” Gradually, the conversation grew agitated, and when Dad snarled, “Get out!” the neighborhood association head hurried down the stairs, burst out the entryway, and ran off. Chasing and arguing, Dad came after him. The scene was both diverting and strange.

  After the war I learned that the head of the neighborhood association functioned as the lowest level of governmental authority. It was his role to make sure Dad, who’d been jailed for a thought crime and released back into the neighborhood, wasn’t speaking or acting “seditiously.” Dad was unapologetically antiwar in thought and deed, so to come to remonstrate with Dad to “be careful what you say and do” was to start a major argument. The neighborhood association head feared he’d be blamed if the neighborhood produced a criminal. Today, too, the neighborhood association system is being revived, and I get really angry when the local boss becomes head and comes around to lecture people arbitrarily. They built the fascist order wrapped in pretty talk: “Improve human relations, make the neighborhood happy. . . .” I think we should be leery of the neighborhood association system.

  People extended their spite for Dad, their dislike of Dad, to daughter Eiko, too. The scene comes back to me clearly. Here’s what happened.

  In the rays of the evening sun, the houses are dyed red, the mountains turn into a black silhouette, and soon the sky will be dark. Looking up at the sky, Mom seems worried and mutters to Dad and me: “Hmm. . . . Eiko’s late. Something must have happened. All her classmates are already home. What’s up?” Uneasy, she kept looking up at the darkening sky. Dad, too, began to worry and said he’d go to the school to get her. Just then, Eiko appeared, and we were all relieved. Mom asked Eiko why she was late. Silent, Eiko shut herself in her room and wouldn’t come out. Soon we heard her faint sobs, and as they consoled the weeping Eiko, Dad and Mom found out why.

  That day at school a classmate’s money had gone missing. Eiko sat in the seat next to her and was suspected of having stolen it. She was taken to the teachers’ room, stripped to the skin, and questioned. No matter how often she pleaded her innocence—“I didn’t take it!”—the teacher wouldn’t believe her. He blamed her—“You took it. Confess!”—and she was kept in the teachers’ room until late. Red-hot mad, Dad dashed off on his bike, heading through the dusk for the school.

  That day Dad didn’t come home until late. I don’t know what Dad said at school, but when he got home, he was angry, as if still not satisfied. He said to Mom: “They give a child a scar she’ll never forget! The principal and that teacher—I really told them off!” Dad asked the teacher, “What evidence do you have that Eiko stole it?” The reply: the missing money had turned up in the classmate’s notebook. She’d forgotten where she’d put it, then reported the money stolen. The teacher had suspected Eiko had taken it. Dad had a short fuse, so he was undoubtedly really angry. Afterward I heard from Mom that the teacher remembered that Dad was a thought criminal who’d been in jail and disliked Eiko, the “traitor’s kid.”

  Next day Dad encouraged Eiko, who was off to school, “Hold your head high!” Then he said, “I’m off to the school once more; I’ll give that principal and teacher a talking to!” Not listening to Mom, who tried to stop him, Dad set off for the school. Even to my child’s mind, Dad was tenacious, dependable.

  Days of Hunger

  Toward the end of 1944 Hiroshima suffered severe food shortages, and every day was a struggle against hunger. To eat our fill of white rice, we thought, would be the greatest good fortune; white rice haunted us even in our dreams. Each day we held bowls filled with sodden soybeans; we pushed the soybeans aside and searched first for the grains of rice—that soybean-rice was horrible to eat. The soybeans clunked against each other in our mouths; no matter how hungry we were, they were hard to swallow. Yet even that might have been okay if we could have eaten our fill, but it was always a single bowl and an empty stomach.

  Under the wartime controls, everything was rationed, and Mom’s job—making ends meet, dealing with our hunger—was huge: scarce soy beans, potatoes, kaoliang, dehydrated potatoes, squash, vegetables, fish. She made dumplings by pulverizing soybeans in a grindstone, and she tried all possible edibles. We wanted to cry from hunger and blame Mom, but watching Mom, even we children knew we couldn’t do that. Mom continued to work at getting food. When Blackie, our cat, brought home a fish or a sparrow, Susumu and I were green with envy and chased Blackie up onto the second-story drying porch. Every day was a day spent searching for food—“Isn’t there anything to eat?”

  I relished nothing so much as eluding Mom’s eye, sneaking a hand into the rice tin, grabbing a handful of raw rice, then hiding out with Susumu and eating it. With Susumu, I immersed myself in clandestine joy: I chewed the kernels of rice, and the sweet juice filled my mouth, white liquid dripped from both sides of my mouth. I wiped it away with my wrist. Soon Mom noticed that the rice was dwindling and put the tin on a high shelf I couldn’t reach, and our joy—stealing and eating raw rice—also came to an end. Mom must have realized we were stealing and been sad she couldn’t feed us enough. Gently, sadly, Mom said to me: “The rice in the tin—everyone’s life depends on it, so don’t open it unless I give you permission.”

  If we learn, via the kid’s grapevine, that “the stew at ——— Restaurant today is so thick chopsticks stand upright!” we brothers get excited, grab food coupon and bowl, hurry to the restaurant, and take our place in the line. In a great vat a fluid bubbles, stew containing a very few grains of rice and some chopped-up vegetables and white radish; one coupon lets us buy only one bowlful. We wait a long time for our turn, finally getting together and setting our chopsticks upright in the bowl of stew; we stare intently as the chopsticks fall over slowly and give off shouts that are close to shrieks of pain.

  If the chopsticks fall over slowly, t
hat means the stew is good. The normal stew looks like dark liquid, nothing more, and if you stand your chopsticks upright, they fall right over. When we get hold of thick stew with lots in it, we’re as happy as if we have the devil by the neck. We head for home, sloshing the stew back and forth in the bowl, opening the lid and breathing in the smell any number of times, and thinking, each one of us, how lucky we’d be if we could eat this all ourselves—and this is a meal for the whole family.

  About twenty minutes by foot from our house was Eba, the end of the trolley line. Just this side of the stop was the army’s firing range, a broad field. A tall embankment had been thrown up left and right to stop bullets, and tall poplars had been planted. When the wind blew, the branches moved in unison, and the sound of their leaves carried all over. That firing range field was also where grasshoppers swarmed and bred. After Eiko came home from school, we went often, the two of us urging Eiko on, to hunt grasshoppers. We took a bag, hunting grasshoppers till the evening sun set, cramming the bag full. Then happy, singing at the top of our lungs the words of the song, “The evening sky clears, the autumn wind blows, the moon sinks, crickets chirp,” we headed for home. We transferred the grasshoppers we’d caught to a bucket and let them sit overnight, so they’d cough up reddish-black leaf juice. And then we began to make a meal of the cleaned grasshoppers. Splitting bamboo into thin pieces, we made spits, impaled a dozen grasshoppers, painted them with soy sauce, and fried them over the charcoal stove. A delicious smell came wafting. Carving spits with the big kitchen knife we used for cutting vegetables, Susumu cut his finger and cried, “Ouch! Ouch!” But when he bit into a batch of fried grasshoppers, he danced a jig and ate and ate.