The Purple Heart (45 page)

When she arrived at the
barrack with Ichiro, she gently opened the door and walked quietly back to her
family’s unit. Half of the unit’s original dwellers had moved out to pursue
other opportunities afforded to them by the United States Army, such as
harvesting sugar beets. It left her family more than ample room to spread out,
and Minami took the right corner of the barrack with her parents across from
her. The entire barrack had undergone a transformation: More building supplies
had been shipped in, which allowed the families to decorate their units to
resemble something livable.

It was quiet in the barrack
as she pulled back the curtain to her unit. She fumbled for the string for the
light overhead when Ichiro, who had wanted to grab onto something all night,
found it first and yanked on it. The string snapped and its frayed end
gracefully twirled downward toward a giggling Ichiro. But the violent yank also
made the light bulb flicker and suddenly burn out.

“Oh Ichiro! Not again,”
Minami said as she lifted Ichiro out in front of her. The string covered his
head and he giggled mischievously as he firmly held onto the end of it. Minami
laughed at her little boy. He was more naughty than nice sometimes. She tried
to take the string from him, but little Ichiro playfully resisted. She then
gave up and laid Ichiro in his crib. He was still the cutest thing ever. His
hair was starting to grow out. He looked down at his new toy, that length of
string, and Minami wondered how fun it would be to be distracted by the most
mundane things all over again. She checked his cloth diaper and found that it
was slightly wet.

Minami fumbled in the
darkness for a new diaper and changed Ichiro, who was too distracted by the
string to resist. After she pulled up his little pants, she admired him again.
He had her nose and mouth but his father’s eyes and chin. He was the perfect
blend of Hiroshi and herself, she thought. Ichiro then yawned as his eyes
blinked a few times. His baby eyes looked up with aloofness at his mother. A
small baby’s yelp escaped from his mouth, and he tossed the tangled string to
the side. Ichiro looked up again with his wide eyes that reflected the soft
moonlight that seeped in through the upper windowpanes. There were a few more
blinks as his eyes finally closed. Minami watched Ichiro quietly fall asleep,
as all his energy dissipated away from him. Minami smiled, gently pulled up the
blanket over him, and collected the string.

Then unexpectedly, low
thunder from afar rumbled, which caught Minami’s attention. How odd, she
thought, as the night sky didn’t give any indication of an impending
thunderstorm. She made sure once more that Ichiro was warmly tucked in.
Stepping a bit to the left of the crib, Minami sat down on the far end of the
bed where the small night table was. On it was Hiroshi’s baseball glove with
the home run ball tucked inside of it. The baseball bat was leaning up against
the left side. A candle that had burned down more than a third of the way sat
on the windowsill. Minami slid open the drawer, took out a book of matches, and
lit a match. The flame emerged and danced in the still night air, bulging
outward to its full bulbous form. She lit the candle’s blackened wick, which
slowly came to life. The candle watched its flaming dance reflected in the
window. As she did every night, Minami would light the candle for Hiroshi as a
way to light his way home. She had kept Hiroshi’s most personal items on the
table and every beautiful letter that he wrote was kept in the drawer. It was
peaceful how the gentle candlelight cast itself over the baseball glove and the
butt end of the bat. Minami let out a quick sigh and watched the flame perform
its solitary dance.

* * *

“Fucking A! Didn’t I tell
you this was a suicide mission?” lashed out Akira as bullets seemed to pierce
every word from his mouth that flew into the air. “I told you those white fucks
don’t give a damn about us! And now! Now they want us, the Japanese American
troops, to go rescue one of their white battalions that got themselves lost in
these fucking woods! Let’s not be delusional! They didn’t send us in because we
were the best and we could do the job! We’re in here because we’re expendable!
There’s a whole other battalion of white soldiers back there, I don’t see the
army sacrificing them!”

Hiroshi stammered back,
“Akira, shut the fuck up! It doesn’t matter. We’re here and we have to do as we
are ordered!”

“Hey fuck you! Oh Sergeant
Satoh who doesn’t know what the fuck to do now,” responded Akira as he glared
at Hiroshi. “Serves them right, the 141
^st
for fucking getting lost
up here. Shit, didn’t they see the ‘no trespassing’ signs put out by the Nazis?
They’re called
mines
! Damn, we were so caught up in proving ourselves,
to be so fucking obedient to the fucking white men that we lost our common
sense when we should have rejected this mission. Court martial would be better
than this. And now we can’t even fucking get that!”

“Talk of insubordination
will not be tolerated!” responded Hiroshi angrily as a mortar exploded high
above and in front of him, raining down a fiery splintered wreckage a few feet
away. Peter was listening to the entire exchange, but the hell around him
distracted him. He pressed himself into the muddy ridge as if he wanted to melt
right into it. Everyone lowered his head, and then Akira looked back up as
Hiroshi glared at him.

Hiroshi quickly peered over
the ridge. He could make out two machine gun bunkers and ducked back down just
as hungry bullets flew right over him, taking bites out of a tree behind them.
His heart pounded as he assessed the situation. He tried to formulate a plan
when Akira’s contemptuous voice caught his attention once more.

“Insubordination! Are you
out of your mind! Look around you! We’ve lost more than half of our men! I’m
telling you, we’ve been sacrificed. They don’t care if we’re coming back alive!
For all they care, a dead Jap is a good Jap no matter if he’s an American! I
didn’t sign up for this bullshit assignment, and I’m sure not going to risk my
life for a dumb-ass white boy who got himself lost in this forest filled with
Nazis!”

Suddenly, Akira got down
flat on his stomach and scurried around Peter as he looked at Akira in shock.
Hiroshi yelled back at him, demanding that he maintain his position. Hiroshi
aimed his rifle at the fleeing Akira and placed the back of Akira’s head into
his sights. To his left, he could see Peter mouthing the words ‘no!’ In war,
desertion was punishable by death and as the commanding officer, he could
follow through on that punishment.

But Akira was right. This
wasn’t war anymore. It was a suicide mission. Hiroshi grudgingly lowered his
rifle and exhaled. Akira wasn’t even aware of what was transpiring behind him
as he deserted his friends.

* * *

Minami watched the flame
sway silently and was almost mesmerized by it. It would sometimes grow upward
and then it would settle back down. It almost had a moody personality, she
thought. A smile crept over her face as she rose up and took a step to the left
when lightning sliced through the air illuminating the room for a moment. She
then heard a footstep behind her and turned to meet her parents.

“Ichiro pulled down…”
Minami suddenly froze as she was suddenly face to face with Kiddache.

He stood over her with an
expressionless face. His face was pale and had almost a ghostly look to it. The
faint moonlight cast an odd bluish tint, accentuating his crooked nose.
Suddenly, he gripped a surprised Minami by her shoulders and pulled her closer
as he peered into her stunned eyes. Then he spoke lowly, “Did you miss me you
Jap bitch?” He then violently shoved her forcefully against the wall just as
thunder roared from the sky above. Minami grimaced in pain as her body recoiled
from the impact. She took a step forward to steady herself.

Kiddache seized Minami by
the shoulders but she regained her composure and pounded on his chest, which
proved to be more of an annoyance than anything else to Kiddache. He firmly
gripped each of her wrists and held them together in one hand as she then
launched a volley of desperate kicks at his legs. She began screaming but it
was drowned out by another thundering boom. Kiddache’s face was becoming flush
with anger but he was also smiling. He was enjoying this. He backhanded Minami
and the force sent her falling onto the end of the bed. Minami winced as the
burning sensation spread across the right side of her face. It was followed by
a stinging pain from the back of her head as Kiddache yanked her hair forcing
her into a kneeling position as he slapped her on her other cheek sending her
crashing to the floor.

Minami lay there on her
stomach with her hands in front of her. The slap stunned her but the impact of
the fall rocked her body. Kiddache looked down at his helpless and wounded
victim. He stood over her as he watched her lithe body between his legs. Minami
felt a firm hand on her left shoulder as fear gripped her. She was forcibly
flipped over onto her back and faced a mocking Kiddache. He suddenly sat on her
stomach with his full weight. She struggled once more by swinging wild punches
at him but he restrained her and held her hands together above her head. He
looked down at her as she tried desperately to struggle, but he was too strong.

“I’ve been waiting for this
day for a long time. Oh how I missed you,” said Kiddache tauntingly. “You
should be flattered, you were the first one that caught my eye, you know. You
never forget the first and you would have been my first if it weren’t for your
damn boyfriend who interrupted us that night. He broke my nose and then I got
transferred to another camp. But I’m back now, but not before I had my way with
two other Jap women in the other camp. They really loved me, let me tell you.
They were good little submissive Jap bitches. But you on other hand, you’ve got
a little fight in you. I can respect that. The way I see it, as we’re killing
all the Jap men over there and arresting all the ones here, someone’s got to
fuck their women. That’s a job I wouldn’t mind volunteering for.”

A swelling anger rose from
deep within Minami as she glared back him. “You’re disgusting!” she blurted.
Kiddache laughed as his head reared backwards and when his blue eyes settled
back onto her face, there was a malevolent determination in them. He suddenly
grabbed at the front of Minami’s dress and ripped it open and buried his head
into her partially covered breasts as he reached down at the lower part of her
dress. Her pleas for help were once again drowned out by the thunder.

* * *

Akira disappeared into the
smoke-choked darkness. Hiroshi couldn’t believe it. Akira had deserted them.
Peter sunk his head low once more as debris rained down on their position. His
eyes fixated on Hiroshi’s eyes and saw something reflected in them. It was
undeniable anger as his brows narrowed in deep deliberation.

Hiroshi then had a
desperate idea. He turned over to his right and yelled at the two soldiers.
“Bazooka to the one on the left and cover him!” he said as the two men
acknowledged him as they readied themselves. Hiroshi then turned to Peter,
“Peter! Take my grenades, your last grenades, and throw them at the bunker on
the right, I’ll cover you!” Peter acknowledged Hiroshi and unclipped his three
remaining grenades. He then looked up as his heart pounded. Hiroshi extended
his last two grenades and Peter took them.

The Nazi position had to be
one of the last ones, Hiroshi thought. Or at least that’s what he wanted to
think. If they turned back, it would allow the Nazis a chance to regroup and
refortify their positions, and Hiroshi and his men may end up right back where
they left off. If they could just take out this last bunker, maybe they could
finally break through the Nazi lines and make it to the lost battalion who had
dug themselves into the eye of the hellish storm. He looked down the slope of
the forest, which was strewn with the bodies of Japanese American soldiers, and
he gritted his teeth as his eyes welled up with angry tears. They can’t die in
vain, not so many of them. He snorted back the warm smoky mucous, formed of
rage, then looked at the two soldiers with the bazooka who nodded to him. He
looked at Peter, who also nodded, as his finger was ready on two grenade pins.

“Now!” yelled out Hiroshi.
The four remaining men of the entire company rose up. The soldier on the left
aimed his bazooka and launched it toward the left bunker as the soldier on the
far left provided cover fire. Peter tossed two grenades at the bunker on the
right and quickly reached down and tossed two more as well. The bazooka sailed
directly at the left bunker, lighting it up as ammunition in the bunker also
ignited. The grenades successfully exploded in front of the bunker on the right
in two successive explosions but to Hiroshi’s dismay, the machine gun continued
firing unabated. The grenades were no match for the fortified bunker. Peter
tried to duck but a bullet pierced him in the left shoulder, sending him
spinning flat onto his stomach in pain. Hiroshi was able to get down and yelled
to the two other soldiers to do the same. But the man closest to him wasn’t as
lucky. A bullet tore through his left shoulder, sending him onto the second
soldier. That soldier stepped backwards, trying to catch his falling comrade as
the dreaded sound of the mechanical click was heard.

For a moment, Hiroshi’s
eyes lit up in horror, as did the soldier in the back. Their eyes met and then
the mine exploded blowing apart the soldiers’ bodies. Blood and body parts were
hurled toward Hiroshi, who had turned away just in time. He closed his eyes as
he didn’t want to see the horror of his men blown apart before him. His body
cringed as he felt the shredded flesh splatter onto his back. He instinctively
pressed his body into the dirt of the ridgeline as he could feel the bullets
from the last machine gun hunting for him.