A Thousand Stitches (10 page)

“Margaret, I simply won't let you do that again by yourself,” said Reverend Graham. “And we'll talk about it more later. For now, give me that tray. You finish the tea. Take your time. Pull yourself together.”

The Reverend strode back into the room with the tray. “See how clever Mrs. Graham is. She found some cookies for us to have with our tea. Tell me, Sam,” he said as he sat down, “how are you?”

“I'm fine. I'm sorry to be here when I'm so sweaty and dirty.”

“Nonsense, it's great to see you. It's been so long since we went hiking. You and I don't get much of a chance to talk anymore. What are you doing downtown today?”

“I'm taking a break from studying. I started taking walks in the afternoon and realized that Bancho is a great place to exercise.”

“Why so much exercise? Isn't the walking enough? Don't tell me you miss the calisthenics and all those drills now that you're finished with Matsuchu.”

“No, it's not that. I'm just trying to prepare for the physical exam.”

“The physical?” said Mrs. Graham as she walked into the room with the teapot.

“Yes, for the Naval Academy. I'm taking the exam in November. I really want to do well.”

“I see,” said the Reverend. He stood up, took the teapot from his wife, added it to the tray, and took her elbow to help her onto the sofa. “Sam, when did you decide on the Academy?”

“Really last year when my friend Masao came home for a visit.”

“Masao Kato?” asked Mrs. Graham. “Such a handsome boy.”

“Yes, I realized what a great opportunity it would be. A career. And my duty as a Japanese. Last year Mother and Father said no, but now at least I'm taking the exam. It's a long shot, but I want to give it my best.”

“Sam,” said the Reverend, “you're brave and ambitious. We will always wish the best for you.”

“And we'll pray for your safety, my dear,” said Mrs. Graham.

I don't remember what I thought about as I walked home. Maybe about what Father and I would have for dinner. Maybe about how many chin-ups I'd be able to do the next day.

I entered
the Regiment Gate with anxiety and pride. The physical was first. I was pleased that I did well. Those who didn't were sent home immediately. There was no point in letting them take the written exam. After lunch at the Regiment, the candidates took the exam in one of the barracks, which had been arranged like a huge classroom. I found the math part of the exam particularly difficult and was sure I had failed as I turned my papers in. As I left the Regiment I saw a few of my friends from Matsuchu in a group outside the Regiment Gate. I just waved and called, “Have to get home. They're waiting for me,” and didn't stop. I wanted the solitude of the walk back to Ishii by myself.

The results came before the end of the year. I didn't pass. I was not surprised, and I think Father was secretly pleased. I know Mother had been displeased that he had let me take the exam. But now, with her experiences as a war nurse, I suspect she had come to accept that military life was inevitable for her only son. She heard my news about the Naval Academy on one of her rare weekend visits home. She said, “So, it's Matsuyama Commercial College for you now, my dear.” That night, she and Father sat up after I went to bed. I heard her telling Father about a new patient she had at the hospital that week. He had stepped on a land mine somewhere in China and lost his right arm, his left hand and most of both legs. She described how the nurses had to do everything for him. “His mother is supposed to arrive this weekend,” she said. “I'm glad I won't be there to see it.”

I went back to studying, took the Matsuyama Commercial College exam, and passed. I was finally going to be a college student. My terrible, drifting
ronin
year was over.

Matsuyama, 1941–1943

Matsuyama Commercial College,
“Kosho,” for short, was founded in 1923. Even though it was still a new institution when I began my studies there in the spring of 1941, it was already one of Japan's leading business colleges. On our first day that prestige was brought home to us when we learned that Kosho had accepted only one of every seventeen applicants; it made me feel a little better about failing to qualify for Matsuyama Higher School, but I wondered how long it would be before I felt comfortable. I didn't know anyone sitting near me in the auditorium. I was painfully aware of having been a
ronin.
It made me think of my first day at Bancho.

I struggled with classes new to me: economics, business administration, bookkeeping, civil law, and logic. But I did well in English and chose German as my second foreign language. Kosho emphasized an international outlook: because we were preparing for careers in trade, the assumption was that languages would be essential. The physical and military education familiar from Matsuchu continued. I signed up for basketball; the military training wasn't difficult after my
ronin
efforts to get myself in shape for the Naval Academy exam.

Kosho's faculty had a full complement of academic characters. Our English teacher was Professor Takahashi. We focused on business letters and stories in English. Professor Takahashi often gave me the job of reading aloud and explaining vocabulary items he knew the other students would have trouble with. On a few occasions, I suspected that he wasn't all that sure of the words himself, but I didn't mind. He was a nice, easy-going teacher, really a bit of a dreamer. We read Mark Twain, Dickens, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century essayists. Classes were always pleasant. And often we didn't even get to the business letters or the English stories or essays. Professor Takahashi was himself a poet. He chatted away about his hobby during class time. By the time I was at Kosho, Matsuyama's
haiku
tradition was fully familiar, and Professor Takahashi introduced us to his own ideas that built on that tradition. He loved to talk about “free style”
haiku.
Sometimes, when he was lecturing on “business English,” he would interrupt himself and recite a free style
haiku
. Then he would say something like, “I came up with that one last night, just as I was about to fall asleep. What do you think?” Not being much of the poetic type, I thought it was silly, but kept my mouth shut and let someone else answer.

But one day, Professor Takahashi's poem reached out and grabbed me. In English, it goes something like:
Wherever you go, you see grass, green and growing.
I sat in the Kosho classroom with the light streaming through the tall windows, listening to Professor Takahashi's words.
Yes, exactly. How true.
A wonderfully succinct and poetic way to counter
tonari no hana wa akai—
the neighbor's flowers are red—or, in English,
the grass is always greener
.… I thought of Raymond Weill for the first time in a long while. I thought of the grass in front of our Cedar Avenue house and the grass behind our Ishii Village house. Yes, grass is grass. And, I thought, kids are kids. I could feel myself running around the playground at Raymond Weill, at Kimmon, and at Bancho. I was the same kid running around in the three different places. And years later, as I traveled as an international education consultant, I thought of Professor Takahashi and recited his poem to myself, in Madrid, in Rome, in Tehran, and even one lonely night in Riyadh.

At the beginning of my second year at Kosho, we were astonished one day when Professor Kagawa, an economics professor, showed up in our German class. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “I am here at the request of President Tanaka. Unfortunately, Professor Lenz, who was supposed to teach this class, has not been able to travel to Japan, due to the war situation. So, on we must struggle. And I'm afraid it will be a struggle. I haven't done anything with my German since my own student days. But let's plunge in and see what we can do.” Plunge we did, and struggle he did. He often had to stop to wipe his sweaty brow and ended each class with thanks for our patience, an exhortation to do our homework, and a promise of a better time next class. I don't think we learned much German, but we respected him for the efforts he made and had great affection for him because he was so good-natured. The next year, he left to take a job at a school in Taiwan. On his journey there, his ship was torpedoed. All onboard perished.

The last of the memorable Kosho characters was Professor Hoshino, the legal expert who taught us Jurisprudence. He was known for his liberal thinking and his sharp wit. Occasionally, as he lectured on a legal point, he would say something like, “That's what the law says now, but you never know what will happen once ‘you know who' takes over.” He was referring to General Tojo, who was then a member of Prime Minister Konoe's cabinet. When I think about it now, I realize that these were probably the last days that liberals like Professor Hoshino could make remarks like that in public.

The everyday deadening influence of the
kempetai
and
tokko,
the military and civilian thought police, were still in the future, at least as far as regular folks knew. I didn't think much about what he said, one way or the other. But the drumbeats of wider war grew louder my first year at Kosho. Not the familiar war, not the “incidents” and “necessary occupation” of China, but intimations of the great Pacific war to come, the war that would take Professor Kagawa's life and the lives of so many others. It was that summer that we began to hear about the “
ABCD
” line—the alliance of the Americans, British, Chinese, and Dutch. Radio reports and the newspapers detailed how these countries were working together to thwart Japan's access to petroleum, rubber, and bauxite, the natural materials we needed from Southeast Asia.

The
summer of 1941, as the radio and the newspapers blared news of this sort at us day after day, my dream of the Naval Academy returned. Masahiro Yoshimatsu, who had been two years ahead of me at Matsuchu, had also gone to Kosho, but he transferred to the Naval Academy after his first year. Once again, I ran the justifications through my head: my parents wouldn't have to pay, I'd get a quality education, and I'd be doing my duty. That seemed more important every day, as the news reports increased in seriousness and drama. I somehow got another application, but I kept it hidden. One day, when I was home alone, I started to fill it out. When I got to the box for my birth date, I finally read the associated small print at the bottom of the page. I was crushed to learn that I was two months too old. Only applicants born on or after November 1, 1922 were being considered. I ripped the form into tiny pieces and put the pieces in my book bag. I didn't want Father to see them in the trash when he came home from the factory. I didn't want to have to explain. When I think about it now, I can only assume that that form and all the others I filled out in the years to come just asked for date of birth and not place of birth. The fact that I was born in the United States and still a U.S. citizen never came up.

I was eighteen when I started Kosho and turned nineteen that summer. Even through the pre-war tensions of the summer, we enjoyed ourselves as college students. I was still a year under the official drinking age, but drinking parties were a regular event. No one thought to stop us; even the police turned a blind eye. Many of my classmates also began smoking openly. I think the only reason I didn't was because Father was such a heavy smoker, and I had always been bothered by the smell of tobacco. The hated restrictions of Matsuchu were gone. We could, and we did, go to coffee shops and movie theaters. The only reason we didn't go to bars and restaurants was that we couldn't afford them—and we were still a bit intimidated by the high life that such establishments represented.

Sometime that summer the Grahams left, evacuated first to Kobe, where the U.S. Consul was assembling groups of Americans, and then by ship to the West Coast. They were there one week, gone the next, but I don't remember doing anything special to mark their departure, other than climb, one last time, to the top of the Castle with Morgan.

What
I remember better is my climb the same day with Michiko. When I was finally a college student, years after our giggly walks to school on
Okaido
, I would stop in the Shizuyama's shop and chat with Michiko as I made my selection. Small change and small talk.

When I got up my courage to move beyond the small talk, I used those memories of the walk and the pleasure of seeing each other across the street. Talking about those days and laughing about them with her, I was eventually able to persuade Michiko to go walking with me one Saturday when she finished closing up the shop. Three other Saturday walks followed that year. We took sweets from the shop, ate them as we walked the length of
Okaido,
crossed the main boulevard, and climbed the hill to the Castle to watch the last light fade from the Inland Sea.

We always talked about our school days and laughed at our memories of the
Okaido
promenade. As the sun set on the day I had already climbed the Castle hill with Morgan in the midday heat to watch the old cannon from the Russo-Japanese War be shot off at noon, my muscles burned, but I didn't care. Standing with Michiko and watching the Inland Sea glow, I was perfectly content. The whole world was just me and Michiko. Although we did see each other a few times over the next two years, our excursion that day had a valedictory tone that had somehow escaped me as I dealt with the Grahams on their last days in Matsuyama. I wonder now if the anti-foreigner rhetoric of the day had infected me. Maybe. Or maybe my feelings about the Grahams were so complicated that I didn't allow myself to feel them. Or maybe my all-too-clear feelings about Michiko are the only ones strong enough to survive all the time and events since those days, some of them flowing over and past me, some of them carrying me along.

As we walked back down from the Castle, the cool breezes caressed us, the last of the light melted away, and we both knew that this time—or sometime soon—could be our last time together for a long while, if not forever. I would soon be drafted, and, as a healthy, young, unmarried woman Michiko was likely to be conscripted. By the time I walked Michiko to her front door, night had fallen. Walking home, I thought of the years ahead of us, years of service and struggle to achieve victory for our nation, knowing that I would have my memory of our time together to sustain me. That evening shimmers for me still.

Early
the morning of December 9, I was listening to the radio with Father as we ate breakfast. Since General Tojo had become Prime Minister in mid-October, the broadcasts sounded more and more ominous every day: diplomatic rebuffs, military advances, reports on economic conditions. And that morning, the announcement, when it came, broke all the tension of the year. It was official and serious, and the language was neutral until the end of the message:
Here is a special news bulletin. This is a special news bulletin. The Imperial Navy entered into a combat situation with the United States today at dawn in the Western Pacific. This is a special news bulletin. The Imperial Navy entered into a combat situation with the United States today at dawn in the Western Pacific. Banzai!!

“Hooray,” I shouted and jumped up from the table. As I hopped about the room, I yelled at Father, “We did it! We finally did it. Hooray.” Shouting
“Banzai”
at breakfast certainly didn't please Father, but I was very excited. He half smiled at me, and sat watching until I sat back down to finish eating. All he said was “Now it's really going to be a long time before Mother comes home.” When I put my rice bowl and chopsticks down, he got up slowly from the table and began to get ready to go to work. I felt then absolutely, completely, unquestionably Japanese, but was glad that Father had never seen the ripped-up pieces of the Naval Academy application. I wondered what he thought of what had happened to his son, the San Francisco kid.

My
second year at Kosho began in the spring of 1942. During the vacation before the school year started, I had decided to drop basketball club. I was at best an indifferent guard. The first day of classes, one of the military officers assigned to Kosho stopped me in the hall and asked if I would be interested in organizing a horseback riding club now that I had free time. How did he know I dropped basketball, I thought as I stood in the hall at attention and said, “Yes, of course, Sir. I'd be honored.” I didn't know a thing about horses; I had never ridden and never thought about it. But I had always been impressed by the beauty of the horses in the cowboy movies I loved. Thoughts of Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, and Johnny Mack Brown floated through my head, along with snatches of some of the cowboy songs I remembered.

It didn't take me long to get together a group of about ten. We were all complete amateurs, but our enthusiasm was high. On Sunday, the officer took us to the Matsuyama Regiment. Since the Regiment was infantry, they only had about a dozen horses. The officers rode them in parades and the few who lived in private residences off the base rode them to the Regiment. But the horses needed more exercise. That was where the Kosho Riding Club came in. The officer introduced us to Mr. Oichi, the stable master.

When Mr. Oichi realized what complete beginners we were, he started that first day showing us how to saddle and bridle the horses and how to wipe them down and groom them after exercise. The next Sunday, we were allowed to ride the horses around the Regiment compound a bit. In the following weeks, we progressed from trotting to galloping, and over the course of the year even to steeplechasing. But always confined to the Regiment's grounds. The army was getting free assistance with the exercise of the horses and doing a little indirect recruiting with us, but Mr. Oichi couldn't be talked into letting us ride the army horses through the town. He said that his superior officers simply wouldn't allow it, but I wonder if that was really just his own judgment, because he had guessed that our real motive for wanting to take the horses out was nothing more than a desire to show off.