Chapter 31: CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

"Fumie, I've been waiting one, whole, long week. Now will you tell me the story about you and Mike after you got married?"

"Ha, I guess you've left me with no choice." She leaned back in her chair as she usually did when she was remembering something that had happened long ago. "Hmm . . . where to begin?"

"How about with what you and Mike lived on?"

She nodded."Yes, I guess that would be as good a place as any to start. Well, the day we graduated and got married, the president of our college asked me if I would continue teaching my Japanese classes. But this time as full-timer, with more sections and even an advanced section, accredited and with a salary -- sort of his wedding present to us, I think. I accepted immediately, of course."

"But you only had an AA. I thought you needed a BA at least, if not higher to be a full time teacher at a college, like you required me to have."

"I asked the president precisely that same question. And he told me that the uppity ups on the Board of Trustees for the L.A community colleges were in a state of turmoil about that. Some wanted the community colleges to become up four year universities and be able to grant B.A.s. Which meant all faculty members would have to have at least a B.A. to be a faculty member. Others were insistent that a community college was precisely that. And therefore only two years, with some faculty members having only an A.A. as part of that community." Then she smiled. "He also told me that as president, his job was really that of a pencil pusher with a fancy title. And he was going to push all his pencils as hard as he could to make sure I could stay with him as a full time faculty member no matter what. Because my classes were becoming quite popular and would meet the foreign language requirement to get an A.A."

"I'd say that was one hell of a pencil pusher! So what about Mike?"

"Well, even with only his A.A., he could still get a full time job that he somewhat liked and paid rather well. But what he really wanted to be was a public high school History teacher -- both World and American -- and for that he definitely needed at least a B.A."

"But if he was working full time, how could he go to a four year college at the same time?"

"Night school. It would take him much longer, of course. But in the meantime we could still live a very happy life together."

"And just what kind of life did you have?"

"Well, we found a small house, a real house -- not just an apartment in one of those ridiculously identical 'dingbat' two or three story apartment buildings with four or six walk ups and a garage that were becoming quite popular then -- with a rent we could afford with our two incomes in a rather nice, middle class neighborhood that was still fairly close to my college and his job. I was even able to join a group of Japanese war brides that met every Wednesday so we could speak Japanese together and cook and enjoy our favorite Japanese foods. Mike and I had even started talking about having children after he got his B.A. and a job at a public high school."

"Sounds to me like you two were really living the American dream."

"Yes, it was a wonderful dream . . . . If only it had lasted."

"So what happened? Did you two have a fight or something?"

"No, we were truly happy."

"So what did happen?"

"That God damned, mother-fucking Vietnam War! That's what!"

She saw my shocked expression. "See, I told you I could make even your ears burn."

And burn they did. Not because of the language itself, which John and I often used when we were 'off duty' from teaching strictly 'proper' English. But because Fumie was using it. And her expression of anger verging on rage, mixed with out and out hatred, was something I had never seen in anyone's eyes, let alone Fumie's.

"I hate war! All wars!" With that same expression of anger mixed with hatred in her eyes. "First there was World War II as you call it. The Pacific War as we Japanese call it. It robbed me of all my three brothers. They were drafted one right after the other. Always with the delivery to each of his 'red telegram' and the deliveryman shouting the mandatory 'Congratulations!'"

"But Fumie, didn't you tell me your youngest brother was your favorite because you were so close to each other in age? But you were only in middle school then. So, wasn't he too young to be drafted?"

She shook her head. "By then the Military government was drafting all men between the ages of fifteen and sixty. So as soon as he turned fifteen he was drafted and ordered to report immediately. He at least came back to us. But in ways, I wish he hadn't."

"Why not? I mean, he was your favorite, wasn't he"

"Because he came back missing his right arm, right leg, right eye and gangrene was setting in."

"Jesus!"

Her eyes began to mist up with remembrance. "Maybe it would have been better for all of us if he had just been killed in action instead."

"But Fumie, that sounds kind of cruel of you."

"Not when there were so many other badly wounded soldiers coming back from the front. There was simply no room left for him in any of the hospitals. We had to tend to him in our own home -- which I told you had been burned down and was only partially repaired. And without any medical supplies to treat him with."

"Well, you could still give him some sort of care, couldn't you?"

She shook her head again, tears now forming in her eyes. But still with that look of anger mixed with hatred. "There was almost nothing to be had. Everyone was starving, there was so little to eat by then. What scant rations the Military government allowed us, stores rarely had in stock. Whole families had to spend their entire day scrounging around the countryside to get enough food of any kind for that one day's meal. We gave him whatever little extra food we had, but it was not enough. He died from starvation and lack of proper medical treatment for his gangrene in a little more than two months."

I nodded. "I can see why that would make you bitter."

She began wiping the tears from her eyes with her handkerchief. "That's not the worst part. It's what he told us about what happened to him after he reported for duty. They wouldn't even give him a uniform because by now they were reserved for the 'elite' troops only. Even before Pearl Harbor, the Military government had forbidden the making of any fabrics for us civilians and ordered us to wear monpe -- baggy pants that I hated -- instead of kimono. Anyway, they gave him all of three days training using a wooden rifle instead of a real rifle, saying he would get a real rifle when he arrived at the battlefield. But when he and the many others like him arrived at some godforsaken tropical island in the Pacific that none of them had ever heard of, the officers there ordered them to take their rifles off dead soldiers' bodies -- both American and Japanese -- and to take the ammunition belts off those dead bodies as well to match those rifles."

"Things were getting that bad?"

Fumie nodded. "Even we girls in middle school were taught in Physical Education how to sharpen bamboo poles into spears and ram them through straw targets made to resemble American soldiers. And got badly beaten if we didn't ram them completely through the targets."

"My God! Things were really bad by then? But what happened to your youngest brother after he got to the battlefield?"

"The Americans were closing in from three different directions. So the commander ordered a banzai totsugeki -- what you call a 'Banzai Charge' with the first assault by the new, untrained and mostly unarmed troops, like my youngest brother, to be followed by a second assault using the elite troops who had parachuted in earlier."

"I have the feeling the first assault didn't go very far."

"My brother said most of them were mowed down before they could charge fifty meters. He was lucky that he was only badly wounded."

"What about the assault of the elite troops?"

Again anger and hatred flared. "It never came! My brother thought it was because there weren't any elite troops to begin with."

"But how did he get back to Japan?"

"Well, if I understood him correctly -- he was in such bad condition because of his gangrene that at times he was incoherent -- the American soldiers came, looked over all the bodies and thought my brother was dead. Just as he was pretending to be. So they left him alone. By then the Japanese soldiers had been pushed back almost to the seashore and my brother still had one leg and one arm he could use to excruciatingly drag himself to the shore where there was a troopship waiting to take all the Japanese soldiers back to Japan to be reassigned. But the whole way back, his officers -- who had stayed behind during the charge -- kept cursing him for not having committed harakiri as a true samurai would have done. As if they were true samurai themselves, instead of the true cowards they were."

"Harakiri? With only one arm and leg? And his left ones at that! But that would have made it impossible for him to slice up his stomach enough to commit suicide!"

Fumie nodded. "But that's how fanatical the Military was becoming by then."

"Well, what did you learn about your other brothers?"

"The Military government did send us the ashes of my oldest brother to put in an urn but refused to tell us anything about how or where he was killed. 'Top secret' they insisted."

"What about your middle brother? Did they send you his ashes, too?

"They only told us he had been killed. Period. So there was nothing left of him to put in an urn. And we had no Tokonoma family altar left after the fire bombings to put the urn in."

"Well, at least you could have your youngest brother cremated and have his ashes placed in an urn, couldn't you?"

More tears forming in her eyes, "The crematoriums were out of fuel. And we couldn't have afforded the wood, even if we could have found some place that was still selling wood. All we could do was have him buried in a large common grave, without even being able to put up some kind of marker in remembrance of him. By then I hated the Military government so much, I was almost happy when we lost the war."

"But Fumie, you started by saying you hated the Vietnam War, not the World War."

"I said I hated all wars."

This time I looked at my watch. "We're really running late. Do you want to wait until next week? I mean, I'd really like to hear about what happened to Mike. But you seem like you're pretty upset right now. So if you want to wait . . . . "

She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. "No, no, thank you, Dave. I think I'd rather get it over with now. Just give me a minute to pull myself together."

Submitted: October 07, 2023

Romance romance japan gaijin travel-in-japan japan-1970s

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B Douglas Slack

Good cliffhanger, Ken. I own a great anime movie, which has similar scenes it it, called "Grave of the Fireflies." It is a horribly sad movie, but also sends a powerful anti-war message. One cannot watch it without being affected in some way.

Can't wait for the Vietnam segment.

Bill

Thu, October 26th, 2023 6:50pm

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Bill,

Glad to hear you found it affecting. It was some of the most difficult writing I've done so far on this novel. I could find lots of statistics, strategies, etc. about the war in general on Google, Wikipedia, etc. But nothing about how it affected each individual dead soldiers' loved ones on either side. I'm sure each family's story in unique. Ditto for Vietnam.

Ken

Thu, October 26th, 2023 7:36pm