The Purple Heart (44 page)

Mr. Tanaka pointed to a
picture of four Japanese American men who were standing side by side in front
of a barrack. The second man from the left was a man in his mid-twenties,
judging from the picture. It was always so hard to judge the age of an Asian
person, thought Aiko. People would still sometimes mistake her for a college
student. But the man’s eyes were firm and piercing, and exuded a sense of
youthful confidence. The smile also projected a sense of cavalier friendliness
that would have made any girl swoon. His brushed back hair was thick and he had
broad shoulders. Aiko immediately knew that that was her grandfather.

“You see the family
resemblance, don’t you?” asked Mr. Tanaka when she saw the glint of recognition
in her eyes. She looked at him and nodded. Mr. Tanaka turned his attention back
to the picture and continued. “The young boy on the left was Kenji. The man
standing next to your grandfather was me in my younger days, and the taller man
on the right, that was Akira.”

Aiko looked at the picture
more closely. Kenji was everything that she had envisioned. He was a young,
slender kid with spiked hair and a youthful grin showing his slightly crooked
teeth. Peter was slightly shorter than her grandfather, with his parted hair.
He looked more like a college student than a soldier. On the other end was
Akira, who had the same build as her grandfather, but his hair was short and he
had almost a thuggish look about him. His eyebrows angled more than the rest of
the men, which made him look almost conniving.

Mr. Tanaka pointed to
another picture, showing Aiko’s grandfather posing for the camera. It was a
picture of him at Camp Shelby, and he was only wearing his military pants and a
white tank top. Aiko couldn’t help noticing her grandfather’s physique. He had
a rifle straddled across the back of his upper shoulders and hung his arms
lazily from each end. He was definitely in the prime of his life, full of youth
and vitality.

“Tea is ready and I have
few things to nibble on before I prepare dinner,” said Mrs. Tanaka as she
carefully entered the living room.

Aiko turned and quickly
offered to help but was politely told to make herself comfortable on the couch.
Aiko obliged and sat down on the couch as she smoothed out her skirt. Mr.
Tanaka sat down beside her on her right as Mrs. Tanaka sat on the other side of
Aiko.

Mrs. Tanaka poured out the
green tea and offered a cup to everyone. Aiko acknowledged Mr. and Mrs. Tanaka
in appreciation and sipped her tea. Like any doting grandmother, Mrs. Tanaka
entreated Aiko to sample some of the treats she had laid out, an assortment of
cookies. Aiko smiled and picked up one of the cookies and took a bite.

“Aiko, show my wife Joey’s
drawing,” said Mr. Tanaka.

“Oh yes, of course. It’s
what started everything isn’t it?” said Aiko as she reached back for her purse.
She carefully pulled out the folded drawing as Mr. Tanaka pushed back the tray
on the coffee table to make room.

Mrs. Tanaka peered over and
looked down at the drawing to admire the work of her grandson. Mr. Tanaka began
talking about the drawing as his wife listened.

“Joey is so talented at
drawing. The soldiers. The blown up machine gun bunkers. Look at how he
captured so much of my story to him, just like I’ve told you. This was a
terrible battle. It was the worst part of the war I ever saw.” There was a
moment of silence as Mr. Tanaka reflected on a thought before he looked at
Aiko. “It was also the day your grandfather died.”

There was almost a sense of
guilt in his face. Aiko instinctively reached out for his hand to offer
comfort. She looked at the drawing, and then looked back at him with a weak
smile.

“I’m sure my grandfather
appreciated everything you tried to do for him as Joey had drawn,” said Aiko.

There was a puzzled look on
Mr. Tanaka’s face. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Aiko pointed to the scene
in the drawing and said, “Well here, you’re trying to apply a bandage on my
grandfather.”

Mr. Tanaka looked down to
where Aiko was pointing and he suddenly asked, “Didn’t Joey tell you the story
about this scene?”

“No, he didn’t. I just
assumed from the drawing you were trying to apply a bandage and…”

Mrs. Tanaka suddenly looked
at her husband and interjected with a stunned looked, “The letter!”

Aiko was utterly confused
as she looked at Mrs. Tanaka’s wide eyes and then she turned her head to Mr.
Tanaka, who bore the same look. He suddenly said, “Oh my God! I totally forgot!
Excuse me, I’ll be right back!” Mr. Tanaka said anxiously.

Mr. Tanaka quickly got up
from the couch and hurried out of the living room and disappeared down the
hallway.

Aiko looked at Mrs. Tanaka.
She gently took Aiko’s left hand with both of hers and said, “Aiko, that’s not
a bandage. That’s a letter that your grandfather wrote for your grandmother.”

A sudden chill shot down
Aiko’s spine. Now she suddenly realized the importance of the scene.

Mr. Tanaka came back into
the room and in his hand, he had something wrapped in what looked like a clear
plastic Ziploc bag that had turned somewhat opaque with age. He carefully sat
down and held it in front of him. Aiko looked on, enthralled. Inside the bag
was a wrinkled envelope with a yellowish tinge left by the passing of time. The
entire envelope was covered in dark brown splotches, which were more heavily
concentrated on the right side. In the center was writing in faded blue ink. As
Aiko looked closer, she could see that it read, “To my dear Minami Satoh.”

Mr. Tanaka handed the
letter over to Aiko. She took it gently in her hands, treasuring it as if it
were a priceless artifact. She was holding in her hands the last letter her
grandfather had written to his true love–the contents of which had been sealed
away since that fateful day when her grandfather sacrificed his life for
America.

“This all happened so
fast,” said Mr. Tanaka. “I’ve had this letter for so long I just didn’t see the
connection between it and you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Tanaka,”
said Aiko as she continued to look down at it.

“I’m sorry I never
delivered it. I didn’t even get a chance to finish my story, and what had
happened to me after the war that prevented me from sending the letter. But now
that you have it, you can deliver it to your father, Ichiro.”

Aiko gently ran her index
finger along the top edge of the envelope as she felt the plastic rub along the
fibers of the envelope underneath. Aiko then looked up.

“I think my grandmother
would appreciate this more,” said Aiko.

There was silence and Aiko
saw that Mr. Tanaka’s expression went from somber to shock. “Your grandmother
is alive?”

Aiko looked at him and at
first thought how silly he was to ask such a question. Then she realized to her
disbelief that she had forgotten to mention that her own grandmother was alive.
She was so caught up in hearing about her grandfather and letting Mr. Tanaka do
all the talking, she didn’t tell him anything about her own family.

“She’s very much alive, Mr.
Tanaka,” said Aiko cheerfully.

Another look washed over
Mr. Tanaka’s gentle face and it one was one of elation but there was also some sense
of shame.

“Minami… she’s truly
alive?”

“Yes, my grandmother is
alive,” said Aiko.

“I wish I could be there to
give this letter to her. It would heal one of the greatest open wounds I’ve
held since the war.”

Aiko then reflected again
on her absentmindedness, but she knew she couldn’t have anticipated this sudden
turn of events. She smiled at Mr. Tanaka and then handed the letter back to
him.

“I don’t understand,” said
a confused Mr. Tanaka.

Aiko looked into Mr.
Tanaka’s eyes. There was a hint of joy in her voice as she spoke. “Mr. Tanaka,
you can give it to her yourself–she lives in Santa Monica.”

It was a cool evening as
the breezes from the coast gently drifted their way into the house from the
screened patio door. Minami was gently dusting her living room as she spoke to
one of her friends on the phone. A smile always seemed to cling to her face.
She had let her platinum hair down that day, and it flowed lightly whenever the
wind caught it. Though it wasn’t black anymore, it was still full, strong and
surprisingly silky to the touch.

“It sounds like your
great-grandchildren are growing up so quickly,” said Minami. “No, I’m not as
fortunate, I don’t have any great-grandchildren just yet. No. None of the
grandchildren are married. The oldest just graduated recently and started her
first job. She called me this past Saturday and I had a wonderful conversation
with her. Yes. We talked for six hours. Hmm? About what? Odd that you should
ask, she wanted to know about Hiroshi. Yes, odd isn’t it? But I’m glad she
called, you know those young ones, so busy nowadays. They can’t spare the time
to see their grandmothers anymore.”

Minami suddenly became
alert to the sound of the doorbell, which was followed by a quick tapping on
the wooden door.

“Oh hold on, someone’s at
the door,” Minami said as she approached the door. She took the phone into her hand
and tucked the duster underneath her arm. The doorbell rang once more just as
she grasped the doorknob and swung the door open. Minami stood there motionless
as her granddaughter stood in front of her with a grin and then noticed the
older Japanese couple behind her.

“Hi Grandma,” said Aiko
sheepishly.

“Hello? Who is it, Minami?”
asked the loud almost nagging voice coming from the cordless phone.

Aiko’s grandmother slowly
raised the phone to her ear and said, “You won’t believe it, but my
granddaughter is standing right in front of me. I’ll call you back.”

Aiko stepped up to her
stunned grandmother and gave her a hug. Aiko’s grandmother was caught off guard
but hugged her granddaughter back as she tried to decide if this situation was
real. Aiko hugged her grandmother a little longer. She felt she had a stronger
connection to her from the last few days.

Aiko stepped back and then
looked at Mr. and Mrs. Tanaka. Her grandmother’s stare fell onto the two
strangers behind Aiko, who cleared her throat.

“Grandma, I want you to
meet Mr. Peter Tanaka and his wife Noriko,” said Aiko.

Aiko’s grandmother nodded
politely as did the Tanakas. For Mr. Tanaka, the butterflies in his stomach
were engaged in a fierce aerial dogfight. Not a word was spoken between the
strangers. Aiko’s grandmother knew she was getting older herself, and her
memory wasn’t what it used to be, but she usually never forgot people. Aiko signaled
to Mr. Tanaka to tell her grandmother who he was.

Mr. Tanaka cleared his
throat, straightened his shoulders and stood tall. “Mrs. Minami Satoh, I’m
Private Peter Tanaka. I served under your husband in the 442
^nd
.”

Suddenly Aiko’s
grandmother’s face went ghostly white. The statement hit her with such surprise
that she had to take a step back. Aiko quickly came to her side and offered her
arm as support, but Aiko’s grandmother quickly regained her composure.

“Oh my. Please excuse me,”
said Aiko’s grandmother apologetically. “Why don’t you come on in while I let
this sink in.”

Mr. and Mrs. Tanaka were
soon in the living room and sitting on one couch. Across from it was another
couch with a wooden coffee table between them. Mr. Tanaka was still feeling nervous.
He wasn’t sure where to begin. When Aiko had delivered the news that Hiroshi’s
wife was alive and that she lived in Santa Monica, he quickly ushered Aiko and
his wife into his reliable Honda and to the horror of his wife, floored it to
sixty miles per hour. A sudden sense of duty rose up from within him. He had to
deliver that last letter to the wife of the man who had saved his life. But at
that moment, finding himself in the home of Hiroshi’s wife, he felt out of
place. It had been many decades since he had ever done something so rash.

Aiko’s grandmother had
recovered and was in the kitchen making tea while Aiko explored the living
room. Her grandmother was right. Aiko hadn’t visited in years. Along the
shelves behind the Tanakas were pictures of the past that suddenly meant more.
However, there weren’t too many pictures from the dreaded wartime past. Most of
the pictures were from after the war and featured her father. There were
several baby pictures of Aiko, along with her two sisters and younger brother.
Then there were pictures of her grandmother’s two younger sisters along with
her brother.

Aiko’s eyes suddenly moved
away from the pictures and settled on a baseball glove that was sitting on the
top shelf. She almost didn’t believe it. She reached into the glove and her
heart jumped as her hand wrapped around what only her imagination envisioned
for her. She slowly removed her hand to reveal an old baseball. Could it be the
actual home run baseball that her grandmother spoke about? Aiko slowly turned
the baseball around, admiring the red threading and the leather when her eyes
became fixated on the blue cursive writing. It simply said “Hiroshi.” Aiko was
in silent awe as she held the home run ball with her grandfather’s autograph.

“I have tea ready for
everyone,” said Aiko’s grandmother in a welcoming tone.

With the help of Mr.
Tanaka, she gently lowered the serving tray onto the table as the ceramic cups
clinked lightly against one another. Aiko’s grandmother thanked Mr. Tanaka, who
sat back onto the couch. She then poured hot tea into the four green colored
glazed cups with Japanese characters running along its sides. She had just
placed the teapot back onto the tray when Aiko sat down next to her and brought
the baseball into view.

“Is this the famous home
run ball?” asked Aiko.

Her grandmother looked down
at the baseball, then at the baseball glove on the top shelf and back at Aiko’s
curious eyes. She smiled. “Yes Aiko, it is.”

Aiko’s grandmother gently
took the ball into her hand as Mr. Tanaka looked on. She turned it over to look
at Hiroshi’s autograph and smiled.

“Is that the ball that gave
Hiroshi his nickname?” asked Mr. Tanaka.

“Yes, it is,” said Aiko’s
grandmother proudly. Talking about the ball brought back so many memories.

“May I see it?” Mr. Tanaka
asked as he extended his open hand over the four teacups.

“Certainly,” Aiko’s
grandmother replied with a smile.

As she extended the ball
toward him with Hiroshi’s autograph facing upward, she said, “This ball saved
my life.”

Mr. Tanaka could read
Hiroshi’s name on top of the ball. His fingertips came in contact with the ball
and for a moment, those of Aiko’s grandmother as well when he said, “Hiroshi
saved my life.” The steam from the four cups below then suddenly enveloped the
baseball.

* * *

“Fuck! Get down! Get down!”
shouted Peter through the low, drifting fog as he cowered against the muddy
ridge, which was the only thing between him and the fortified machine gun nest
that was about twenty yards away. The bullets ate at the top of edge of the
ridgeline that he and Akira had thrown themselves up against as they marched
their way into the dark forest. Hiroshi was alongside them to their left with
two other soldiers. Their steady ascent into the dense forest of the Vosges
Mountains in France was laden with danger, behind every tree and beyond every
faint ridgeline. It was evening, but the thick forest had blocked out so much
light, it was difficult to tell if it was night or day.

Hiroshi pressed his back up
against the ridge as the darkness was lit up with bullets that sliced through
the air like fireflies whizzing by. The enemy mortars ignited above them in the
thick treetops, raining down fiery splinters of shrapnel. The screams of the
men who were caught underneath the falling masses of burning hell were
horrific, but their cries of pain were soon eaten away by the fire that gorged
on their wrecked bodies.

Hiroshi’s face was
splattered with darkened ash and dirt. When he inhaled, the singed air scorched
his very nostrils, and sometimes he wasn’t sure if he smelled burnt wood or the
flesh of his fallen troops. Hiroshi was one of the few commanders still alive
and in charge. Reluctantly, Hiroshi took command of the decimated company. If
merciless bullets weren’t appearing out of nowhere or fiery tree bursts falling
onto and killing soldiers, then there were the enemy mines. The Nazis had laid
thousands of them, and they anxiously waited for the chance to blow a man
apart. Some men had their legs blown off as they lay helplessly on the ground
yelling in agony, reaching down and feeling bloody stumps that ended in
shredded flesh and jagged bone.

It was a mine that had
given away Hiroshi’s and his men’s silent approach. They had made it up about
thirty yards, probably from sheer luck alone when a soldier to the right of
Peter stepped on a mine. Ueno looked down with a horrified face as the
well-known and dreaded sound of that single mechanical click snapped through
the air. Peter looked over in horror as Ueno looked at him and before he could
even take a step forward, the reddish and smoky explosion enveloped him and he
was no longer there. The machine guns opened up immediately. What was left of
Hiroshi’s company threw itself into the muddy ground along a ridge. This
afforded them limited protection.

Hiroshi breathed hard, his
heart pounding within him. He drew his legs inward in an effort to make himself
smaller. His clothes were wet from days of freezing rain that had trickled their
way down through the forest branches and drenched everything in the forest. But
the Nazis were dug in and had time to prepare for the elements. They had ample
ammunition and supplies. But the men of the 442
^nd
only had what they
could carry.

Hiroshi yelled out,
“Ammunition check!” He had already ordered one earlier, but it was the only
thing he could do at the time. They were down to their last bullets, grenades,
and one bazooka.

Hiroshi pulled out his own
rifle magazine. It was half spent and he had one more full magazine left. He
had two grenades left, and he was certain that the remaining men were in the
same dire situation. A soldier to his left had the last bazooka. They had used
many successfully against the enemy machine gun bunkers but with only one left,
he had to save it as a last resort. He looked to his men and they yelled out
their ammunition count as small fiery debris danced off their helmets. Hiroshi
then looked to Peter and Akira and they did the same. Hiroshi popped his
magazine back in and let out a breath.

“Fuck! What the fuck do we
do now!” shouted Akira as he crouched low and stared at Hiroshi.

Hiroshi met Akira’s gaze.
Up until that moment, Hiroshi always had an answer. Hiroshi turned to look down
the forest from where they came as it was ablaze in fiery debris that had
rained down from the treetops. The muddied terrain was also laden with deadly
mines and the remains of the 442
^nd
. Backtracking down the forest
slope wasn’t a great option either, as the men in the machine gun bunkers would
be able to pick them off easily. The Nazi position had them where they wanted: Trapped.
Bullets bore down on their position once more, and Hiroshi lowered his head and
then peered out from underneath the rim of his helmet into Akira’s glaring
eyes. Akira’s burning stare reflected the explosions and the bleakness of the
situation. Hiroshi then simply said, “I don’t know.”

* * *

Back at the prison camp,
Minami was finishing up dinner with little Ichiro, who was a little more than a
year old. He sat in Minami’s lap with a bib tied around his neck and he was
being quietly defiant about what was being fed to him. Minami’s mother sat to
her left, offering advice, while her father was chatting up a storm about his
fishing adventures to Hiroshi’s parents, who were sitting across from them.
Miho sat next to Minami as she chatted with Yuka and Yoshi, who were sitting
across from her. It was another regular night for Minami: Eating dinner with
her family. But now, she was a mother herself.

Little Ichiro protested by
bouncing his arms up and down. He seemed more interested in grabbing the eating
utensils in front of him than eating. As his eyes fixated on the cup’s handle,
Minami gently pulled his hand back and gently admonished him. But he would look
up with a wide-eyed, bewildered look, and then attempt to reach for the cup
again. Minami’s mother turned to her and offered some advice when Minami said,
“I think I’m going to take Ichiro home, Mom. I think he needs to be changed.”

“Okay, why don’t you do
that. We’ll be there soon after your father finishes telling the Satohs his
fishing tale,” said Mrs. Ito. “For the fifth time.”

Minami chucked silently and
bid everyone goodbye. Minami’s mother gave her little grandson a doting look as
she wiped the spittle from the ends of his mouth while Minami bounced him
gently up and down. He was still reaching for the cup’s handle that now teased
him from the table. Minami held Ichiro over her shoulder and walked away. As if
he knew he wasn’t going to succeed in getting the cup, he began to look around
at all the faces of the people still eating. She walked out of the chattering
mess hall and into a cool but cloudy night.