Dust of Eden (7 page)

room, away from the land of his birth,

away from Seattle, away from us,

quietly surrounded by the only thing he brought from

home: roses.

Dear Jamie,

Thank you for your letter.

Grandpa would have loved the news

about the cherry blossom tree.

Tell your father that Grandpa always

appreciated him for taking care of the house.

I never thought that he would die.

I never knew how much it would hurt.

I would be doing my homework,

and suddenly, I think Grandpa is lying

on his bed like he used to,

and I would start to tell him about my day

until I remember that he is gone.

And all this sadness, all this grief

comes rushing out, and I cry.

And there will be no one around

so I go to Grandpa’s bed,

and lie down and I can smell him still:

the smell of earth and dirt and a little

bit of rose. And I cry and cry

until I can’t breath anymore

and I think I’m going to die

and I don’t care if I do.

Jamie, I never knew I could hurt so much.

Mina Masako

Dear Mina,

This is a letter I can’t send to you, but I am writing to let you know that I am alive. Even now, I’m surprised that I lived after two weeks of hell through mud and rain and bullets. They told us that the Germans had fortified the hill, and that our battalion was supposed to take it. We’d been crawling on our stomachs through the mud, marching through the rain, fighting, fighting for the past week and half, and now, they want us to fight, again. Lieutenant Kawahata didn’t say anything when he got the message, but just said, “Boys, we’ve got another job.” One by one, the boys shot through the barren landscape between us and the hill, and one by one, they got shot down. Like toy soldiers being flicked off a board. Like I used to, when I was a kid. Shig fell screaming. Kaz fell. Bob fell, they all fell, littering the ground, some so quiet, some screaming for help. One by one, my friends fell, and the only thing I could do was to keep the artillery shells going, aiming at the hill where snipers might be, until finally, Kot got through—he’s always been the fastest and the smallest, and shot down the closest sniper. The path became clear and opened up. The zigzag through the earth seemed impossible. I was shaking, I was scared. So goddamn scared. Then Lieutenant Kawahata shot through the zigzag, then one boy after another, following the impossible zigzag toward the hill, following Kot’s path while I kept pumping shell after shell on the impossible hill. And it became easy. We all made it through, though we lost half the boys that day. It was our first real victory, but I felt as if we had lost this whole stinking war. With Kaz gone.

Really gone. Shig may have to live with one leg for the rest of his life. When the Germans surrendered with their arms raised high, holding a white flag, they weren’t at all how I imagined them: hard, cruel, tall and monstrous with cigars clamped between their jaws talking about how they wanted to shoot babies and old people. Instead they were boys like us, teenagers, tired, scared, dirty, and looking almost relieved that their war was over, for now, that they could rest their bone-tired bodies in the POW camp. But this war, for me, will keep going until the war ends, or until I die, whichever comes first. And I don’t want to die like Kaz, left in the middle of the field screaming until we couldn’t hear him. By the time we got there, it was too late. He died all alone. I don’t want to die like that. I don’t want to die at all. It’s a beautiful night tonight. Boys and I are in a small village in Italy, right near the French border, drinking wine and smoking. No one is saying much. But I think we are all thinking the same thing: we don’t want to die; we want this war to be over. Most of the time, we are walking or fighting or cold or hungry, but in times like this, when it’s all quiet, I tell myself that I’m fighting for you, so that you don’t have to walk down the street ashamed of who you are, so that you can be free, but I don’t know what that means. I so goddamn wish that this was a dream. When we wake up, we’re all back in our house, not the camp, but our house, in Seattle, with Mom and Dad and Grandpa and you.

Your brother, Nick.

The sky without Grandpa

is empty.

The room without Grandpa

is unfamiliar.

Life without Grandpa

has no laughter.

Roses are dull. Birds no

longer sing.

Our family is torn apart:

Nick is away,

fighting the war,

Father is quiet

in his sadness,

Mother doesn’t talk

as much as she used to,

and I feel

more alone than I have

ever felt.

Dear Mina,

This is not a letter you will ever read.

This is a letter I will never send you.

Today, we opened the gates of hell.

As we approached the camp,

scarecrows, or so we thought, began to cheer,

and we knew then, that these weren’t scarecrows

or skeletons, but men so skinny their clothes

barely hung on their bones. More of them came out,

limping, ghost-like, wearing identical

striped shirts and pants. None of us could

speak. We’ve never seen anything like this—

this nightmare—in our lives,

not in a battlefield,

not in the villages we marched through.

One old man sat slumped against a barrack,

his eyes barely open. I thought he was old

until I saw his face; he was my age,

though most of his teeth had rotted,

and his body was so skinny he weighed less

than you do. It was snowing

but he did not seem to care.

I forgot how cold it was. When I reached

over, he opened his eyes, so slowly, and smiled.

Then he sighed, and fell into my arms.

Just like that. And died.

This is hell, Mina, where men die as soon

as they are freed. This is hell when men do

this to each other. I never thought anything like

this was possible. I can’t close my eyes; instead

of this place, I see the camp back

home, where you are, surrounded by barbed wire,

by guard towers, just like here, and you and Mom

and Dad as skinny, and horrible-looking,

as these men. They call this place

Dachau. This is hell. I don’t know what war is

anymore. I don’t understand anything. Is there

anything left to live for?

Your brother, Nick.

A photo of sailors in the newspaper,

smiling widely.

A man swoops a woman down to the ground, kissing

her like they are in the middle

of a dance.

A photo of New York filled with so many flags

and people that all the buildings

are hidden under the cheers I can’t hear.

Waves of flags, American flags

all in midair. Still.

A picture of a fat Italian man—Mussolini—

hanging upside down

from a lamppost somewhere in Italy.

Next to him are two more bodies, one a woman

and another a man.

A picture of German soldiers with

their arms raised high, their eyes

downcast. A little girl with a white flag

and an American flag, smiling.

The war has ended. Nick can come home.

A woman killed her baby

today because she was

afraid of leaving the camp.

Her husband wrapped

the baby, her head

as soft as a rotten tomato,

and begged the doctors

to fix her. The baby

was dead. The mother

was afraid of leaving.

The day the bomb fell on the city

of Hiroshima, the sky here was so blue

that it hurt the eyes. The roses

like beggars, waiting for water,

as men and women crouched on the ground,

blinded by the sudden flash.

The day the bomb fell on Hiroshima, I was sitting

on the porch with Father, looking at the gravestone

that sits lonely in the middle of the roses,

wondering if Grandpa made it safely

to the otherworld, like they said all Japanese spirits

do when they die. They take 49 days to travel

through the otherworld, and then they come back here.

Where we are. Just to say that they are alright,

that they have seen the otherworld, and that it is going

to be their new home. Just to say, they care.

And it has been more than 49 days, and Grandpa must be here

amidst the roses, maybe even sitting

next to me. On the day the bomb fell, a lark scooped

down from the sky, landed on a rose,

sang a keening note, just one, then flew away,

breaking the sky into pieces.

We packed everything

we have into the trunks

and bags and crates

and closed the door

behind us. Father says

that we do not need to lock

the door. There is no

one to see us off.

The camp is deserted,

it’s a ghost town,

a place lonely after the carnival.

There won’t be school in the fall.

People have left already,

packing their worries

and their hopes that everything will

be the same when they go

home. Not go
back
home,

but to go home. After

three years, no one

goes
back
, they
go.

Dad dug up Grandpa’s roses

and transplanted them

into pots, some cracked,

some small, some big, and the rest have to

survive on their own—

though spring will never

come and no one will

dig them out.

We have dug up Grandpa’s

bones; like his roses,

we have packed Grandpa.

We are leaving our three

years behind. We are leaving

Minidoka, back to Seattle.

The streets throughout Seattle are the same

with people busily going about

their business as if nothing had ever changed.

My mother sings to herself.

The neighborhood is still the same,

with trees lining the block both left and right,

trees so bright red and yellow they hurt

my eyes. Our driveway is the same,

just as we left it, and my cherry blossom

tree stands with its bark gnarled.

Father honks the horn; Mr. Gilmore

waves from his window, and comes

out smiling,
Welcome home, welcome

home
. The third step to the front

door still creaks tiredly. The windows

are boarded up. Mr. Gilmore hugs Father

tight; Father hardens, then relaxes,

and puts his arms around Mr. Gilmore’s

small round body. Jamie comes out

from the house, she runs down

with her arms open,

she rushes toward me, taller, blonder,

crying,
Mina, I missed you so much!

And I start running, forgetting the hurt,

the ache I carried. I open my arms

and we hug each other, tight, never

to let go, finally our broken halves

becoming one, inseparable.

Dear Mina,

I am now stationed

in Tokyo to help with

the Occupation. That

came as a surprise,

but they needed Americans

who can speak

Japanese, to translate.

I had nothing else to do

in Europe, anyway.

Some boys told us that

when they went home

during their leave,

some honkies harassed

them. Even Lieutenant

Kawahara, with his purple

heart and all, was told

to get his Jap

ass out of the bus.

I figured America isn’t

ready for me yet, so maybe

I’ll try Japan.

Tokyo is exactly

like Dresden or Nuremberg:

completely bombed, destroyed.

You can see Tokyo from

one end to another,

it’s so flattened out, so

black and burned.

Kids a little younger than

you run after us, yelling

chocolate, candy, please,

while people wearing rags

walk around, tired, exhausted,

but they seem almost happy, too.

It’s pretty bad:

you see kids, three and four years old,

sitting on the street alone.

Some of them are dead,

but people just ignore them.

No one can help; everyone’s hungry.

So I take these kids to orphanages.

I give them as much money as I can to

help them get through.

For the first time in a long

while, I feel like I am doing

something good, something besides

killing and…well, killing.

These kids call me
Oni-chan,

big brother, and I think of you.

It’s strange to be here;

everywhere, I see people

who look like me,

who look like Dad and Mom,

but to them, I am American.

Maybe it’s the way I walk,

maybe it’s my bad Japanese,

maybe it’s my uniform,

but I don’t look Japanese to them,

and I don’t
feel

Japanese. I know, more

than ever, I’m just an American,

pure and simple.

Your brother, Nick

When I was growing up in San Francisco in the 1980s, our doctor was a second-generation Japanese American named Dr. William Kiyasu. He was a gentleman: he wore a bow tie and he was always kind and compassionate. My mother told me later that his family was in an internment camp during World War II. His story stayed with me, and when I was writing
Dust of Eden
, I kept thinking of Dr. Kiyasu and how he had endured a dark period in American history.