By the time I stepped out of the radio shop I was a boy no more. Men were standing in the streets, intently reading special editions of the paper. Fist-sized letters leaped off the page to punch me in the face: ‘Empire Declares War Against America and Britain’; ‘Navy Attacks Honolulu: Two American Ships Sink in Pearl Harbor’. War had been raging during my entire life; one war began before another was completed, in Manchuria, in China, in the Pacific. But this new war was different; it squeezed the life out of my fellow citizens. The elementary schools were renamed National Schools. Men altered the lapels on their suits, converting them into nationalist uniforms. Private gatherings were proscribed and goods were rationed. The oden plant began to produce food only for the military, and the suit factory began to make military uniforms. Children, taught that even a small nail would become a bullet and pierce the heart of an enemy soldier, scoured their houses for any scrap of metal to donate at school. Air-raid shelters were constructed from sandbags on street corners, though trams continued to run from one sandbag-piled shelter to another as if nothing had changed. Like a parrot, the radio continuously spat out news of victory from various places in the Pacific — Rangoon, Surabaya, the Dutch East Indies. The slogan ‘Wait for what you want until the day of victory’ burned in my ears. I desperately waited for victory, looking forward to the special food distribution that came with good news: sugar, beans and sweets, which would paint our grey hearts with colour. Drill instructors barked terse commands at us as they marched around the school yard. We began with close-order drills and first aid; by the end of the term we’d learned bayonet skills and marksmanship, how to identify American bombers, as well as different evacuation plans depending on the sound and smoke colour of various bombs. We never loosened the gaiters around our ankles; with the fiery belief that we were suffering along with soldiers on the front and in honour of the dead, we resolved that we would dash to the front if called. Our school uniforms could serve as military uniforms at a moment’s notice, but we didn’t think that would actually happen. Although we gathered at Kyoto Station Square to send off with cheers upper-classmen entering the military, we didn’t believe that would ever be us. We still thought of war as unreal, something far away.
But fate is fair in its dealings.
One summer day before the end of the term, when I had just turned seventeen, a red note flew in like an air raid and combusted my life. I was in our bookshop, immersed in Oliver Twist, when I heard the glass door slide open and a man call my name: ‘Watanabe Yuichi!’
His low, gloomy voice shattered my daydreams. I closed my book and came out to the front of the shop, staggering a little in a dream-like trance. The postman, in a nationalist uniform, glanced at me before sticking his face into his mailbag. He flipped through his bundles of letters. I could tell he was trying to avoid my eyes. How many boys’ gazes had he had to avoid? Boys who trembled, as though they were awaiting execution, as though they were young deer caught in a trap. After a long interval he looked up, his face expressionless, and held out a sealed letter and an inkpad. I pressed my thumb on the inkpad and stamped his mail-receipt log. He didn’t meet my mother’s eyes, either. He turned around woodenly. On the envelope were the words ‘Japanese Imperial General Headquarters’. They reached out, grabbed me by the throat and throttled me. I found a red note inside.
Time of assembly: 6.30, 27 March, Showa 18
Place of assembly: East side of Kyoto Station Square
I couldn’t breathe. That was when I realized that words, not bullets or bombs, were killing the soldiers dying in battle. One line of text was powerful enough to turn the world upside down and destroy lives; boys became soldiers, were shipped to the front and were thrown into battle. I dropped the Dickens novel, not because I was afraid of death, but because I was suddenly afraid of words. My mother, who had been sewing up bindings, let out an almost imperceptible sound; red droplets of blood spotted her thumb. She was trying her hardest not to collapse in the face of despair.
Months later, early on the morning I was to enlist in the army, I rubbed my newly shaved head and thought about my father, who had walked along this path before me. Just like that day when my father went off many years ago, a black train puffed out steam and a military band played a martial song. I wasn’t afraid. Nor did I feel it was unfair that I was to become a soldier. I just worried about my mother, who was too small to open the heavy gate over our shop front by herself every morning.
After training I was assigned to be a guard at Fukuoka Prison. High walls, sharp barbed wire and cold bars enclosed my future. My youth was incarcerated in a brown uniform. I was strictly isolated from books. No text was allowed. Staid directives were the only things to read, and the only words I wrote were in the log detailing my rounds. Hungry for words, I read everything I could lay my hands on. I devoured incarceration logs, punishment records, directives and administrative documents, even the entrance and exit signs. But they were merely dead words that couldn’t move me. My soul was perpetually malnourished. I wanted to encounter a living, vibrant line of prose. But that was a luxury not afforded a soldier in wartime.
That was how I walked into war — as though entering dreamland. I wanted to return to my former life. I wanted desperately for the war to end so that I could toss my military uniform aside, replace it with a school uniform and read Stendhal. But I didn’t know when that would happen, or whether the war would ever end. I didn’t know that, instead of the school uniform, I’d be wearing prisoner’s garb when the war was finally over.
CONSPIRACY
The inside of the workroom was damp with sweat. Together the prisoners repaired and dyed military uniforms and clothes. This indoor workroom was reserved for skilled long-term prisoners. The less fortunate suffered outdoors in the cold, willing their frozen bodies to make bricks, haul materials on their backs, push wheelbarrows and shovel the cold earth. Any talk during working hours was forbidden; if caught, the prisoners would be beaten within an inch of their lives. Even a brief pause caused work to pile up and invited beatings from the guards. They died from torture, the cold and disease. Families were given ten days to claim the corpses. If nobody showed up, their bodies were donated for research. The squat hill outside sprouted a cemetery for those unclaimed bodies; as the war grew intense and the number of prisoners increased, the cemetery grew in tandem.
The prisoners tasted their only freedom during outdoor break time from four to five in the afternoon. Exhausted Koreans grouped together near the wall, seeking the wan rays of the sun. They murmured endlessly among themselves, secretively, turning the yard into a noisy marketplace. This ruckus always made the guards tense; those manning the checkpoints made sure to keep their machine guns loaded. These prisoners insisted on their innocence, telling stories to each other. Although they were thieves and thugs and crooks and spies, they had a visceral understanding of each other’s sense of injustice; they all believed that they’d been caught in cunning Japanese traps and falsely accused. They raged in despair.
I walked along the wall, watching the group clustered together. They were all troublemakers; quick fists were a source of power within the prison. I was well aware that prisoners frequently attacked guards. When unpopular guards were on duty, they purposefully picked fights and disabled machines in their work unit, despite the certainty of beatings and solitary confinement. They quietened down when I approached, gripping the hilt of my club. ‘I’m Watanabe Yuichi! I am the investigator assigned to uncover Sugiyama’s murder. You better cooperate.’