The enemy has for the first time used cruel bombs to kill and maim extremely large numbers of the innocent.

Emperor Shōwa, August 12, 1945

#

We smiled at their defeat, our Cheshire teeth bared in photographs as we gripped the skin of our fellow man—our brothers in arms.  Japan surrendered; the war was over, and the elation was intoxicating—another victory for the United States, another tick in our column.  We should be so proud.

The first of our occupation forces arrived three weeks after we dropped the Fat Man and Little Boy, setting up camp for an interminable stay by allocating empty residences and making them suitable for living.  For us, post-war life was cherry: shifts, R&R, shifts, R&R—we were nearly nine to fivers.  Us Americans had decent lodgings, three squares, and the best women Japan had to offer.  Sure, it wasn’t home, but we weren’t at war.  The dying part, mostly, had passed, and a sense of normalcy returned. 

Once the Instrument of Surrender was signed and accepted, I was grounded, hanging up my wings for the duration of my tour.  “Ol’ Starbuck will fly again,” my buddies promised—but it didn’t matter: orders were orders, and soon I would simply be Read Monroe again.

I was stationed in Tokyo, a city haunted by both the dead and the living.  The buildings were just as hollow as the people surrounding them.  The tinder box that was Tokyo had been torched into near oblivion—save for the financial district where we soldiers set up shop.  I passed ghosts every day, whether from the GHQ, my apartment, or elsewhere—they were inescapable.

I left the GHQ at the end of my shift on a late night in July, stepping out into Tokyo’s financial district, now known as Little America.  The place almost made you forget how architecturally fucked this country was.  It felt like a dream sometimes, walking amongst strong, standing buildings—I relished in the façade; I needed it.  I unbuttoned my shirt, pulling it off to expose my white tee once I rounded the corner, and moved out of sight of the GHQ.  The air was sticky, and its moisture dampened my skin.  I folded my regulation khaki shirt over my arm as I strolled the congested streets, heading into the Ginza district.  I kept my hands tucked in my pockets as the local children were adept at picking pockets.  If the kids weren’t stealing, they were selling or shining.  My first month here, I found myself without a dollar to my name as I tried to pay a vendor for my lunch, so I learned to nod politely at them and move the hell on.

It wasn’t just the children I’d grown familiar with.  Women of the dark, or panpan, sauntered the streets in their swing dresses, MaryJane heels, and sunglasses—hair curled and lips painted.  Farmers continued to work the land, converting patches where buildings once stood into fields (the crop they grew was enough to feed a few, not a nation).  Even the Yakuza were commonplace. 

I passed widows and wives who waited in line for hours to buy food, their hair ratted and clothes torn.  They hid their faces when you looked at them, turning away or shading their eyes with dirty palms.  Pedestrians gave a wide berth to the paled and coughing.  Diseases were widespread—just open a medical book and stick your finger at something.  These people were the hardest to look at.  My mother died when I was young, the Flu—I don’t remember much of her, just the coughing and her sweaty, waxen countenance.  Looking at some of these people, I could only think of her, of how I couldn’t help.

I broached one of the many entrances to Ginza’s yami-ichi, a vast open-air market spreading across blocks.  Anything could be purchased here: food, liqueur, goods, panpan—if you wanted it, they had it for the right price.  I paused at the edge of the market: my chest felt tight and heart thumped like hummingbird wings.  As I took in a long inhale of air, I glanced to my left: the Red Cross arranged for hundreds of long strips of rectangular paper to waterfall from clotheslines, each listing the names and descriptions of a missing person or persons.  To the unlearned eye, it looked like a bunch of nonsense—the painted ebon script that carried the life of a lost stranger were the silent cries of those doomed to wonder, potentially forever.  I lowered my head when I exhaled and stepped forward.

Rice merchants rattled uncooked grains across the bottom of a tin plate, luring in hungry consumers.  Some sold clothes that were intact or lightly patched, the seller showing off both sides of a garment for all who passed.  Deeper into the market, one could purchase pilfered military equipment and electrical goods—the items were propped on wooden crates, tiered and stacked with efficiency.  A mother fumbled with her pocket change as she paid the inflated price of barley while her small child held the hem of her skirt.  The vendor shook his head, rambling as she pleaded back.  I bent down to tie my boot near them, catching the eye of the child.  I winked at him; he didn’t respond.  From my pocket, I pulled a yen bill and slipped it into the hand of the child.  He looked stoically at the bill and then at me.  I glanced up at the mother, nodding my head in encouragement.  The child looked to the bill once more, then tugged his mother’s skirt.

I kept on, passing a vendor with an unusual amount of pots and other miscellaneous cookware.  The smell of roasted fish wafted, drawing me to the stands with fresh food.  I squeezed past two men in street clothes who were agitated over something—they hardly noticed me.  An elderly man at the market sold a decent sake, so I bought my usual bottle from him.  As we made our exchange, my eyes drifted to the vagrant curled up in the crook of a rundown building.  His tattered clothes tented his emaciated frame, and the blend of grime that patched his skin blended with dark hair sprouting from scalp and jaw.  No one spared concern or even change for the man, a veteran of the Japanese Imperial Army.

The Imperial soldiers that could live with defeat trickled in over the course of years and, upon stepping back onto their native shores, they were met with either indifference or hostility as the distinction between gunjin (military men) and gunbatsu (the instigators) existed no longer.  They were all the same: relics of a failed military campaign and the only ones left for the people to take their anger out on.  Men like this vagrant reminded me of home.  When I was eighteen, I went to New York with some friends, driving cross country through corn fields to skyscrapers.  We got lost one night, trying to find our way back to our car after spending the day exploring—walking like Theseus in a labyrinth of steel titans.  It was that day we stumbled upon the Bowery: home to seedy dime-house theatres, second-hand clothing stores, and an endless amount of down-and-outs.  People here were either scraping by or lying flat on the concrete.  Alcoholics, bums, WWI veterans (sometimes one man would be all three), they a dime a dozen.  We welcomed them home, even if we didn’t help them.

At the yami-ichi, I watched as men in street clothes nodded in agreement with one another.  They marched over to the veteran, still lying peacefully on the stoop and yelled at him.  I could make out the gist of what they were saying; they were drunk, and the slurring made translating difficult.  One of them spit on the veteran, wetting his cheek, who hardly moved—too tired to defend himself.

From the other side of this scene, three Japanese men in fine black suits with white shirts watched the exchange.  They were not hungry and desperate, nor were they selling—no, these men belonged to the Ueda faction of the yakuza, and they ran the market here.

Without thinking, I approached the attackers, grabbing one gently by the shoulder.  He jumped out of my grasp, spun around, and gaped at the sight of me.  His friend, unaware of my presence, kicked the veteran, his anger blinding him.  This one I pushed, though he was not startled: he pulled his arm back and swung with all his might to strike.  I pushed him into the wall before his fist could make contact and hollered at them to leave, which they did, glaring at the veteran one last time before scurrying off.

My skewer had dropped to the ground in the confrontation, now coated in dirt.  The smell of it must have reached the veteran as his nose twitched, pulling him into an upright position.  Before I could say anything, or even pick up the soiled skewer, he nabbed it—digging his yellowed teeth into the grimy flesh.

I continued my walk until I reached the end of the street where a young woman served tea for anyone who wished to partake.  She had a collection of pots—some new, some old, and brought a different one with her every day.  My chest tightened again and heart thundered.  I was always too anxious to see her, and the sight of her caused me to slow.

Some days, her brother brought her a pink Japanese rose to wear in her hair—other days, she didn’t.  She would tuck the stem behind her left ear, and I always approached from her right—sometimes unable to see it until I came close.  I pushed myself to walk faster so I could have my answer—my eyes shifting back and forth between her and the way forward.  I nodded at her as I passed, turning the corner with an uncontrollable smile on my face.

#

My body lay spread across the futon as my lids slowly fluttered open.  I could have slept longer, but the sudden awareness that I was naked and alone jolted me into full consciousness.  The shitty, flat futon was the only piece of furniture in the modest-sized bedroom, and the shoji had been left open.

I lifted myself into a seated position, sliding my legs off the futon and in front of me.  My skin was slick with sweat, wet from scalp to toe from this damn humid heat.  I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead, clearing the slate for more perspiration.  The diluted moonlight filtered in from the opaque lattice windows, casting a blue film over the oak bones of the kominka.  I reached for the discernible lump on the wooden floor, separating out the items of a black suit with a white shirt.  The right corner of my mouth rose and fell from a flash grin.  My own clothes were a couple feet away in their own pile—too far to touch the black suit.

The sound of my bare feet against the floor was deafening as I wandered naked into the equally sparse and empty doma.  The silence echoed the promise of privacy, of comfort and security.  Few things remained in the kominka—the art had been ripped off the walls, and the heavier furniture, such as the dining table, had been left to be coated with dust.  All the beautiful history of the family that once lived here had been stolen away—all except the land.  The kominka stood solitary on a vast field of greens that sloped into a soft hill, overlooking the thousands of twinkling lights that were Tokyo.  People rarely travelled this road in the middle of the night.  The distant neighbours kept to themselves and thieves knew there was nothing left to loot.

From the doma, I could see Sasaki Kuro sitting body bare with one leg hanging off the engawa, a bottle of sake by his side.  My feet led me to him without request, and I took a seat beside him.  He kept his eyes pointed forward, staring out into the evergreen country.  Every time I saw him, I discovered something new: his body, painted with ink from neck to wrist to ankle, was blanketed in ancient tales that spoke of beauty, magic, and pain.  It was a shame that the image of the long, curved body of a sweeping dragon or of a defiant fishing boat swirling a maelstrom were marred by scar tissue.  Long-healed blade wounds stretched across his chest, arm, and back—but it did not make him less desirable.  The one I’d yet to notice was of a brown stallion with a black mane leaping across his waist.  My fingers ached to feel the touchable blacks, tender blues, and blood reds—to feel the colour of a thousand generations.  The geisha on his shoulder stared at me with her ghostly face as I tilted my head, my lips hovering over his skin.  I reached around, grabbed the bottle of sake, and shook the few sips at the bottom.

“I hope you brought some,” I said, taking a swig.

Kuro remained fixed on the dark: though his eyes signalled distress, his mouth was too proud to admit it.

“This reminds me of home,” I told him.  The vast sea of green was reminiscent of the pastures that extended for miles around my family’s farm.  “My grandad used to break horses.  He tried teaching my pops, though he never had much interest in it.  So, Grandad taught me.”  The panoramic emptiness sent pangs coursing through me; the nostalgia sickened me—not because I wanted to go back but because I wasn’t sure I wanted to.  I always felt at home in a place I didn’t belong—and, though I was born and raised in Kansas, I never lived there.

“I never liked that word,” I went on, “‘break.’  It seemed violent—and that’s not what I was doing.  I was connecting—learning about them and they about me.  No, I wasn’t breaking them.”

None of my words could usher a flicker of sentimentality from Kuro.  He held true, so I changed the subject.  “Every thought about fixing this place up?”

“It would not be the same,” he replied, his voice low and gaze unchanging.

“It’s a shell.”

Kuro tilted his head to aim a derisive glare at me: “You Americans—the only way you know how to fix things is with a gun.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk,” I scoffed.  “How many of those scars did you get ‘fixin’’ things?”

The bones in his back and shoulders stretched as he stiffened his already perfect posture.  “I do what is right and honourable.”

“And I’m not honourable?”

“If you have to ask, you know the answer.”

“If you’re Mr Morality, then why the hell are you spending time with riff-raff like me?” I asked, sliding off the engawa and onto the grass.  I knew he wouldn’t answer, but his silence didn’t sear any less.  I walked further out while remaining close enough for him to hear me.  “I wear the uniform, but I am not them.  I didn’t—”  I took a deep breath, swallowing the words on my tongue.  “I don’t look at you and see a gangster.”

“I am not ashamed of what I am.”

“I’m not either,” I replied, my voice small and low.  “Then what is it?  Let me fix it.”

His tongue clicked.

My face scrunched in confusion.  “That’s what people do.”

“No, that is what you do,” he spoke, each word becoming sharper than the next.   “Fix—you must fix everything, help everyone, save everyone.”

“And what the hell is wrong with that?”  I asked, exasperated.

Kuro’s eyes never left me; he watched me as I spiralled on the grass, dizzying myself trying to—

I waited for him to answer.

“When were you planning to tell me?”

An honest person wouldn’t have arrived at an answer as quickly as I did.  “I wanted to tell you; I just… I didn’t know how.”

“The man who speaks four languages didn’t know how to tell me he was leaving,” Kuro replied facetiously.

“You’re right,” I nodded, “I should have told you.  Would you believe me if I said I didn’t want to say ‘goodbye’?”

“No,” he replied coldly.  “You get to go home.”  Kuro grabbed the bottle and raised it towards me: “Congratulations,” he said, taking a long swig—stood up and headed back inside.

I stretched my fingers around the back of my neck until they touched and interlocked.  “Fuck.”

I chased after Kuro, leaping onto the engawa, and sprinted into the doma, expecting to have to search for him.  He stood facing the wall left of the entryway where the rectangular pale shadow of a missing wall ornament glowed in the darkness.  There were a few of these scattered about the kominka—the ghosts of a past stolen in the night, but none were as defined as this one.

“I’ll stay,” I offered.

“No.”

“Then come with me.”

He remained silent.

“Why?”

Kuro continued to stare at the empty space—transfixed.  He raised the bottle in a robotic motion, bringing the lip to his chin, and made no motion to drink.  I stepped lightly, coming around to check his face, to understand what was happening to him, but I could not.  The horror he wore on his face was strange to me and, as much I wished to, I could not alleviate him.

“My mother was a picture bride,” he said, “sent to America at seventeen.  She married her American husband, had her two fat, American children, and lived in their big American home.  The only thing she brought was a kakejiku.”

I glanced at the rectangular space on the wall, knowing where the kakejiku once hung.

“When my father died, she returned her body to Japan with us and the kakejiku.”  He paused.  “She wandered the house morning to night—her hair unbrushed, skin sallow, and eyes black.”  Kuro raised the bottle again to his lips, pausing to whisper into the opening of the nearly empty container.  “Tsumi.”

“Tsumi?”

“Losing her husband made our mother vulnerable to evil spirits, and she carried them here, in her body.  No one could help her; she was lost.”  Kuro walked briskly away.  I followed him down the hall, back to the bedroom, where he set the bottle down and began to redress.

“What happened to your mother?”

Kuro paused, staring off, his fingers holding the buttons of his shirt.  He kicked my clothes over to me.

I closed the space between us, my steps measured, and set my hands around his face.  “We are not our ghosts.”  I brought my forehead to his.  Kuro’s breath came in uneven waves, and his hand continued to hold the door.  I exaggerated my steady breath—in and out, in and out—until I aligned his with mine.

“Get out of my house,” he whispered.

“I don’t want to leave,” I said.

“And I do not want you to stay.”

My body recoiled—retreating from the touch of his honest desire.

“Okay,” I said, nodding as I redressed.  “Okay.”  And left.  

#

Two weeks later, I was shipped back to Pearl—received an honourable discharge, medal—the end.

From Pearl, I purchased a one-way ticket to San Diego and got a job in city hall working as a clerk during the day.  In the evenings, I took classes at the local college and, on the weekends, I strolled the incongruous neighbourhoods, spoke with some of the residents—the houses were marks of several generations (Victorian domes, colonial colours—new, old, and older), simply time standing side by side.  They were reminders that all things end.

Eight months after discharge, I secured a slot on a fishing vessel and ventured out into the Pacific.  The Paris Ranger fit twenty-seven men comfortably; there were thirty-three.  It wasn’t glamorous, but it paid better.  Some of the sailors reviled the pungent slime that glossed our skin and garb; some didn’t think much about it.  When the weather wasn’t favourable, the waves would curl up and crash over the side of the boat, bathing us in the cold blue.  I loved the smell of the ocean—its salty fragrance still registered as foreign.  We had a stream that snaked through our land—it didn’t smell like anything, nor did it have the darkness of unfathomable depths.  On the Paris Ranger, and when I’d fly, I’d look down and imagined being swallowed by the sea.  Work, no matter what kind of work you did, was messy. 

The monotony of expectation soothed me: net the fish, drag ‘em on board, case them, offload them, repeat.  Thirty-nine men worked aboard the Paris Ranger—myself being one of them.  Some of them had served, some of them didn’t—who knows; we never discussed it.  Some of the men talked about their families; others, the work; and a few didn’t care for chit-chatting at all—net, drag, case, lift.  We did twelve-hour shifts for however long it took to fill our quota, slept, showered in between, and ate occasionally—repeat, repeat, repeat.  You don’t think much, and do at the same time.  You’re alone, and you’re not.

I spent sixteen months on the Paris Ranger, then returned to Japan.

The country was very much the same as it had been when I left a couple of years ago—but I was different.  Without my uniform, the locals paid me no mind, and my former brothers-in-arms treated me as one would any other stranger.

On the day of my arrival, I made a straight path for the Sasaki house.

The cab hummed along the empty road, lurching me about the backseat at high speeds.  We rolled towards the crest of the hill as the sun descended beyond the horizon, casting a warm glow on the wooden structure. 

“これだよ” (This is it), I said.  The driver pumped the brakes, and the small, square-ish electric vehicle skidded to a halt.  I had pressed my hands on the dash, bracing myself.  He made incredible time from Tokyo to here—almost made me wish I had walked.

“ありがとう” (Thank you), I nodded, getting out of the car.  The moment after the door clicked shut, I spun—“Wait!” I yelled, latching onto the door handle as the car jerked forward a couple feet, pulling me with it.  He slammed the brakes again and eyes darted at me with a pitch of annoyed confusion.  I opened the door and bent over to retrieve the small, thin, and rectangular brown paper-wrapped package lying on the floor of the passenger side.  It seemed to be intact.  I closed the door, silent—the driver wouldn’t suffer any pleasantries.  His foot hard against the gas pedal, he sped off down the road.  Godspeed, I thought.

It seemed that rural areas could not change, only destroyed.  Sure, the leaves transitioned and flowers budded, blossomed, wilted, and faded, but the foundations were the things of infinity.  I faced the kominka, unsure of how time had touched her on the other side of the door.  Each step I took up to the stoop caused my heart to beat a little faster while my fingers gripped the edges of the package.  It didn’t sound like anyone was home, but Kuro was the quiet sort, so I raised my fist and lightly rapped on the wood.

The wind rustled the leaves and commanded the long grass to bow—whispering a song of spring in the green.  Birds swept overhead, gliding in and out of the tree line.  I waited—no noise came from inside—perhaps he wasn’t home.  No, I told myself, and knocked again, harder this time.  Still, nothing.

I took the first path around the left side, towards the back of the house, keeping my footsteps light.  The low scratching noise of a record player casting a pianic grew the further I went.  As I rounded the corner, I could see four wooden posts about four feet high sprouting from the ground; they held up a ceiling of canvas that draped down on three sides.  Inside the tent laid a futon, surrounded by stacks of books, and outside burned a freshly fed fire in a modest-sized pit.  In addition to the new campsite, a lush garden with various fruits and vegetables sat to the right of the kominkan—a marked improvement from when I was last here, yet inside looked exactly as when I left it.

I approached the engawa, stepping up and into the doma.  The empty space on the wall seemed larger somehow and brighter.  It demanded my attention; I couldn’t take my eyes off it.  I knew that something once hung there even though I had no memory of it.  The paper crinkled in my hands as my fingers tenderly rubbed the surface—reminding me why I came.  I turned around: Kuro stood on the engawa, barefoot; he wore dark slacks, blue tee, and was as stoic as ever.

“こんにちは,” (Hello) I said with a small smile.  “I know you probably don’t want me here—and I’ll leave if that’s what you want.  Just came to give you this.”  I raised the brown package, showing it to him. 

He approached, his steps measured, looking over the package.  I extended my arm, offering it, and he took the thing, weighing it in his hands as he turned it over.  Kuro began peeling back the paper without making a single rip until it revealed the backing of a picture frame.  He pulled off the rest, dropping the wrapping to the ground, and turned the thing over.

His eyes didn’t know what to make of it at first, then, after a second, his eyes widened, and his stoic mask warped into recognition.  Heartbreak, happiness, and love collided across his face as he examined the thing.

Kuro looked up at me then back at the frame, tracing the pattern of the grain with his fingertips.

The tears remained gathered at his lids but would not flow as they were neither droplets nor grief of joy.  Everything he felt in that moment pooled to the precipice, evaporating before they could mark him as anything but free.  Kuro wrapped his arms around me, still holding the frame, and held me tight.  I returned the gesture, bringing my left hand to his neck and stroked his hair.

“I love you,” I said.

“愛してます,” he replied.

“What does that mean?”

“I thought you spoke Japanese,” he chastised.  He sighed in disbelief before summoning his sincerity to say, “I love you.”

I closed my eyes, breathing his words into my body.  “I knew what you said, just wanted to hear you say it again.”

He tittered into my neck, his shaky breath beating a song against my skin, and I squeezed him tighter—absorbing every detail of this moment so that I would never forget it.

#

Kuro made dinner that night, and we caught up, sharing our lives from the last couple years.  The empty frame hung on the formerly empty space on the wall—it wasn’t large enough to fill the pale void left by the old kakejiku, but it was something.

After dinner, we sat out on the engawa, drinking sake, talking, and staring up at the stars until the fire burned into mere embers.  We remained there with each other: tearing, laughing, talking, touching—just damn living until the end of time.