Hokkaido Highway Blues

I tried to talk Yoshi into a reprise of the “Gamora Monster Theme Song,” but he was too tired, so I performed an encore of “Blue Suede Shoes” instead. Then it was back to the albums and a photograph of a nondescript beach and a dull blue ocean. “Guam?” I guessed.
    “Saipan.”
    “Why would you want to go to Saipan?”
    The smile on Mr. Nak’s face shifted ever so slightly. “To see my old place. I go to Saipan before, many years ago. In the war. American Army captured me, in Saipan.”
    “Well, look at the time,” I said, turning to Yoshi for help, but he had nodded off. “I really should be going.”
    “I am only guy alive from my platoon. Imagine. Everybody dead in Saipan.” He spoke with the same blithe voice he used to describe his lonely mama fish coming home to a house without children. “Have some more saké,” he said.
    Yoshi woke up with one of those sudden body jerks that are always so disorienting and frightening. He looked about the room, smacked his lips drowsily, and then stumbled off to bed. Mr. Nak filled my glass. The tenor had changed.
    “We said, ‘Die for the Emperor. Banzai! Banzai!’ You know banzai? It means, ‘Live ten thousand years, Emperor.’ We study to be soldier. Everybody promise, ‘Die for Emperor!’ I thought it’s just to be polite, you know? But no, the other men, they believed it. Imagine. They said, ‘Now we must die.’ We are in a cave, you know, like a hole. Almost no trees. Everything fire, only ash.” He kicked back his drink and his face became flushed. “We had no bullets. So I thought, time out. It’s over. We tried hard, but we are lost. My friends”—he cleared his throat—“they began to sharpen sticks. They want to charge machine guns. Sticks against machine guns. Imagine.”
    “I saw Hell,” he said. “Not in other world. On this world. In Saipan. Eight hundred American ships made a circle around the island. Every day the bombs falling. We hid in caves. A baby was crying and a Japanese soldier took it away—so Americans don’t hear it. Killing a baby. Can you imagine? On the cliffs, families—soldiers, mothers, everybody—jumping into the rocks. Now they call it Suicide Cliffs. Many people die. Today, it is popular for tourists. Nice sunsets, that cliff.”
    He filled his cup. “I remember,” he said. “I remember Hirotsu-sensei, a schoolteacher. He was captured early, in the village. The Americans bring him out at night over loudspeaker. He says to us, ‘Come out. Nothing will happen. Come out. Don’t do the suicide.’ But soldiers inside the caves are angry. They say teacher is a traitor. And they... they began to make circles. Small circles, close together, around a grenade. Then they pull the pin.” Another drink, sloppier than before, another quick toss back and another wipe of the mouth. “I stayed behind. I didn’t charge. I didn’t do suicide. I surrendered.” Suddenly his face wrenched in pain and the words came out in a cry of anguish. “I surrender!” Then a smile. “Just like that. That is how I say it. I surrender.”
    His wife sat in perfect silence, her eyes on her hands, her hands on her lap.
    “Bobby,” he said to me, “I wasn’t ready to die that day, you know? On such a little island, far away from home, my family. I was eighteen years old. Not even a man, and now die?” Another drink, the same ritual. “In school, back in Japan, I study to be architectural engineer. So they send me to Saipan, to make barracks and schools—and prisons. Only eighteen. I wasn’t ready to die that day. You understand?”
    “I cleaned my uniform but still it was dirty. In Japan to be dirty is the most bad thing. We must be clean, for our pride. I was Japanese, but my clothes were dirty. We ate weeds. No rice to eat, just weeds and sugarcane. Maybe sugarcane save my life. Maybe sugarcane should be Nakamura Family Symbol!” Big smile. “I became skinny, you know, like a stick. Ha.” But the laugh wouldn’t come. It turned to wind somewhere in his chest. “I was young once. Before. In Saipan.”
    “I really should be going,” I said.
    “I expect they will do bad things to me, the Americans. We hear they are demons, like how Momo-taro fought, but real. You know Momo-taro? He is a little guy, he is born from a peach. Little guy, but he fights big demons on an island. It is very popular story, Momo-taro. But it is just a story for children. The Americans are not demons. And we—we are not Momo-taro.