The Samurai's Daughter (5 page)

“My father was just a baby during the war. He didn't hurt anyone, but still, I'm very sorry for what his country did in the Philippines during the war. I know the military was rather…harsh.”

“Miss Munoz, you were saying that Hiroko died because she saw something,” Hugh said. “What was it she saw, some atrocity? An act of violence?”

“It was always violent. Didn't I tell you that already?” Rosa clicked her tongue and looked at me. “No, I tried to explain before. I'm not sure of the English word, what was it in? Got…”

“What was in what?” Hugh asked.

“I'm not sure of the English—”

She broke off at the sound of glass shattering. I went to the window and looked out, but saw nothing. I said, “Probably someone dropped a beer bottle.”

“Or worse,” Hugh muttered, and snapped off the tape recorder. “I'm sorry, Miss Munoz, but we'd better go. I didn't intend for this to be a formal interview, anyway. I'll come back to continue with the translator on the twenty-seventh. And I'll do my best to find a repairman to fix your stove.”

“I can't afford that—”

“I'll pay.”

She nodded, looking satisfied. “What's his name? I don't open the door to nobody I don't know.”

Hugh looked understandably blank, so I jumped in. “It will be someone my mother uses. I can telephone you with the name.”

“Okay. That would be good, because my landlord doesn't do
anything about the stove. He says appliances are provided in as-is condition.”

“It's my sincere wish that after we've won the class action, you won't ever need to worry about that landlord again,” Hugh said. “You'll be able to move somewhere quite comfortable.”

Rosa waved her hand tiredly. “I won't hold my breath for that.”

“Don't, then,” Hugh said. “But because of your willingness to speak out, it's going to happen. Thank you. And merry Christmas.”

“Do you have a card, Hugh?” I asked. “Let me put down my name and my parents' address and phone for her, just in case.”

After I'd scribbled my name on the card, I handed it to her.

She studied it carefully. “Shimura. I know this name.”

“Do you?” I paused. “There are a lot of Shimuras around. The ones here aren't like the ones you might have known in the old days.”

She shook her head and repeated, “I know that name.”

Who was he? A soldier who hurt you?

But I was afraid to ask her those things, and it was time to go. My question would have to wait.

When we'd escaped the sad, beaten-down building, I turned to Hugh. “I'm sorry for being so grumpy earlier. I understand why you wanted me to meet her.”

Hugh squeezed my hand. “As you can guess, she had some hard times during the war. I heard it all for the first time a few hours ago, with a translator at my side. It was so bad, Rei, she still bears a grudge against the Japanese. But not you, Rei, I'm sure of it—”

“Tell me what happened to Rosa,” I said. We'd reached the car, and I quickly unclicked the remote-controlled lock so that we could get in. I wanted to get out of the neighborhood as fast as I could.

“Forget her name, Rei. I didn't mean to let it out.”

“It's not your fault. I read it on a bill on the table.”

“I see. Well, just keep it between the two of us, all right?” Hugh shot me a wary look. “In 1942, when the Japanese invaded the Philippines, Rosa was thirteen. She was the daughter of a rice farmer living in a village in the southeastern section of the country. As the Japanese moved through her village, her entire family was killed. She was spared because she agreed to join a group of girls who worked at a brothel that served the Japanese forces.”

“Comfort women,” I said. The word was a Japanese invention—an innocuous title for the most horrible kind of work around. Comfort women were kidnapped from Korea, China, and the
Philippines and forced to serve anyone in the Japanese military who paid for them. The brothel owners applied the fees the comfort women earned against their living expenses, and of course, the women never earned enough to win their freedom.

Hugh sighed heavily. “Rosa, being so young, had a particularly terrible experience. She submitted to fifteen men a day, everyone from regular privates to the medical officer supposedly in charge of her welfare. The women were customarily allowed a few days' rest a month because of menstruation, but because Rosa hadn't begun, she never had a break.”

“She told you that? Oh, my God.” We were stopped at a red light, so I took my hands off the wheel and put my face in my hands. I understood why Hugh wanted to file a class action on the behalf of all these brutally abused people—but I knew that the class action could easily fail. In the last few years, a group of comfort women had pressed the Japanese government to pay reparations, but the government refused to do it. Some concerned Japanese citizens had set about raising funds to give to the comfort women survivors, but the gesture hadn't been appreciated by most of the women. They wanted an admission of government guilt. I reflected that if the Japanese government—the sponsors of the military—didn't feel enough guilt to compensate the women, who else would? And would the comfort women accept money from anyone other than the government?

Hugh touched my shoulder. “The light changed.”

I put my foot hard on the gas, since this was one of the steep sections of California Street and I was desperately afraid of falling backward. When we were securely moving ahead, I told Hugh to continue.

“Finally, she escaped through the help of one of her officer-customers who felt sorry for her, paid off her supposed debt to the brothel, and found a spot for her at a Japanese company operating in another part of the Philippines. She wouldn't have to provide sexual services, just hard labor. She said that even though she had less physical strength than the men, because of what she'd been through in the brothel she had learned to turn off mentally when bad things were happening. The male slaves had a harder time
with it. A number of them went insane or committed suicide, or simply succumbed to death. She only knows one male survivor from her group who's still living, the man we mentioned whom I hope to find in Tokyo. Apparently he was blinded. I assume he's living in as desperate a situation as she is.”

“Okay, I understand there are a number of these people who were hurt during the war. But I know the Japanese government is standing behind a peace treaty it signed after the war that indemnifies it from actions. Who's going to give Rosa all this money you're hoping for?”

“Some of Japan's largest companies. There's a modern electronics company that sixty years ago used Rosa and her friends to work in the mines, and another company—it's an overnight delivery service now—that used the shipping line it owned in those days to transport the slaves. The list goes on. And we're optimistic the Japanese companies will be easy to hit, given that there is a precedent of successful class actions filed against German companies that used Holocaust victims as labor.”

“But Germany's different from Japan,” I pointed out. “Their government was also willing to pay reparations to the family of concentration camp victims. It's a country that admits war guilt freely. Japan doesn't.”

“Do you think the Germans would have admitted guilt if they hadn't been pushed?” Hugh's voice rose. “The point is that America never pushed Japan for justice; for political reasons, the U.S. government refuses to do it. But lawyers don't have those boundaries. They can take up the fight for social justice—”

“And cash,” I said. “You aren't doing this pro bono, are you? You hope to make pots of money for your firm in Washington, just as Charles Sharp does for his firm right here.”

“Are you saying this, Rei, because you don't want me to do it?”

I was quiet, remembering Rosa's face. “No. But you've got to admit there's more than goodwill motivating you.”

“Certainly. Just as your father doesn't only practice to help the underprivileged, but to own and furnish a house that rivals a minor estate. And you, my dear, charge your clients more than enough to keep a roof over your head and MAC lipstick—”

“Enough, enough, we're here,” I said. I stopped the car in the driveway in front of the hotel, and a parking valet moved quickly to attention.

“Are you sure you want to come up and meet them?” Hugh said in a low voice as we got out.

I took his hand in mine. “Yes. I won't put them on the spot, because that wouldn't be fair to you. But count on my listening carefully and giving you my private opinion later on.”

 

As we passed a hotel doorman in a sharp navy uniform, I was flooded with nostalgia. How much the same, and how different, the hotel seemed now that I was no longer eighteen. I'd been frightened by the doorman's once-over then, worrying I wouldn't be allowed in to go up to the famous bar on the fourteenth floor. I'd made it there, but had been carded and left in disgrace.

In the softly lit bar at the top of the hotel, we checked our coats. I stood next to Hugh, looking out at the sprinkling of people at the intimate tables that ringed the room. There weren't many people having drinks at a hotel on Christmas Eve. As I'd expected, most of them were casually dressed tourists. My little black dress would make me look like a lounge singer, or worse. We had to go halfway around the restaurant before Hugh spotted his party—a Caucasian man in his fifties wearing a proper business suit and a younger Asian-American wearing a sweater and khakis.

“So glad you could join us,” the older man said, making a gesture of half-rising for us, but not coming up all the way. Hugh shook his hand and that of the younger man.

“Charles, Eric, this is Rei Shimura. Darling, I'd like you to meet—”

“
The
Rei Shimura?” the Asian-American interrupted Hugh in mid-sentence.

I turned from Charles Sharp, whom I'd been blasting with a megawatt smile. Who was this other person who knew my last name? He looked too young to be one of my father's acquaintances, but he didn't look like anyone I remembered from Berkeley.

“Rei, may I introduce Eric Gan,” Hugh said in his iciest, most BBC voice—as if he'd seen Eric's inspection of me, and been
annoyed. “He's providing language interpretations for the interviews I'll be conducting while in town.”

I looked more closely at the young man, who had black hair snipped in a close, trendy hairstyle around his angular-featured face. He was just a few inches taller than I, and looked the way I imagined my brother might—if I'd had a brother.

“I guess you don't recognize me,” Eric said.

I smiled politely as I raced through all the associations that made sense. Eric Gan. The name was familiar, definitely part of the memory bank. He was too young to be one of my parents' contemporaries. He could only be someone I'd studied with, or known socially, or—then I got it. Eric Gan. I'd practically forgotten his name, because it had been so long ago.

“Eric! From ALL Japanese class!”

“Yeah.” Eric turned to the others. “We were both in Mrs. Yamada's Japanese class for years. We had an independent study project together when we were fourteen.”

“That's right, so we did. Oh, Eric, I'm sorry I didn't recognize you right away. It's been so long, and you're, well, a
man
now. And a multilingual lawyer at that.” I beamed at him.

“Oh, I'm not an attorney. As your
boyfriend
said”—Eric gave Hugh a playful glance, emphasizing the word—” I'm just an interpreter. When you and I were at ALL together, I was just doing Tagalog, Japanese, and Mandarin, but I went on to pick up Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Bahasa Malaysia—”

“Bahasa Malaysian. That certainly is impressive,” Hugh said, pulling out a chair for me.

“Bahasa
Malaysia
, not Malaysian.” Eric wrinkled his nose at Hugh. “It's a subtle thing, but that's the way foreign languages work.”

“Ah, the waiter's here. Let's order our drinks,” I said hastily. Eric always had had a snide side to him—that's why I'd never been close to him, though we'd experimented a bit in our early teens. I ordered a wine spritzer, since I was driving home, and Hugh ordered his usual whisky with water on the side. When the waiter departed, Charles Sharp asked me what ALL was.

“The Asian Languages League,” I said, settling back and feeling
grateful for his diplomacy. “It's a nonprofit that was formed in the early seventies by Asian-American families who wanted their kids to have exposure to the languages of their heritage. It was also a bridge to all the Asian immigrants coming in.”

“Let me make a note of it,” Charles said, taking a small notebook from his breast pocket. “ALL. That could be a good source to notify about our services for potential plaintiffs—”

“My father's the group president right now. Hugh can talk to him about it.” Feeling cheered by how well things were going, I sipped my spritzer. I'd have liked to have another, but I knew I was going to have to be more careful about drinking than I was in Japan. There, I never drove; here, I was in command of my mother's SUV.

“Dr. Shimura's quite a guy. Have you met him yet?” Eric turned to Hugh.

“Yes, in Washington a month ago.”

“They called him the daimyo back when we were kids. Still do, probably.”

“‘Daimyo'?” Charles Sharp asked, giving Eric a slight frown.

“A daimyo is a Japanese lord, the kind of guy who had the samurai at his beck and call, who in turn extorted money from the peasants.” Eric took a hefty swig of his beer. “You should have seen Rei's father during the league's annual fund-raiser. My mother kept the phone off the hook for most of December, she was so afraid of being forced to give up more than she could afford.”

“That doesn't sound like my father. He was completely mild-mannered,” I protested.

“Think back to a certain Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1986,” Eric said, winking at me. “I'm sure Rei remembers, but she might not want to talk about it.”

“What a good memory you have, Eric,” Hugh said. “With your attention to detail, I'm going to expect the translation work to be world-class.”

“Eric's top-drawer,” Charles Sharp said with an edge of irritation. “He's done about a dozen survivor interviews for us already, and there have been no complaints.”

“Will Eric be following Hugh to Japan to assist with the interviews there?” I asked, knowing what I wanted the answer to be: No.

“Probably. After all, he's a trusted member of our team.”

“Thank you, sir,” Eric said, then turned to me with a smile he must have thought was seductive. “Guess you can show me around Tokyo in the off hours, Rei.”

“We'll do our best,” I said faintly. “I'm sure that once home, I'll be as busy as Hugh is. I'm working on a history project and I have an antiques business on the side…”

“Oh, really? I collect Asian antiques,” Charles said. “Where is your shop?”

We chatted on about the business I'd set up hunting for pieces that people dreamed about, but couldn't find. I tried to say enough to steer the conversation away from the dangerous territory where it had been, but not so much as to seem like an egomaniac. At last, I said, “Enough about me. I'm interested in hearing the long-range goals of your project. Hugh hasn't told me much, but I sense it's going to take some terrific teamwork between his firm in Washington and yours.”

“Yes, we're relying on Hugh and his understanding of the Japanese psyche to help us along in Japan, just as Eric is so useful with Tagalog speakers. I understand the interview with the potential plaintiff went very well. I'm looking forward to seeing the transcript,” Charles said.

“I'll have it for you by the time we meet again,” Eric said.

I waited for Hugh to mention that he had some new details from the tape he'd made during our recent visit, but he didn't say anything. Then I remembered that my voice was on the tape. Maybe he didn't want to reveal that I'd been along on the visit. I wished Charles would say more about the case, but I had to be sure I didn't reveal that I knew more than was proper.

“So, what are your plans for Christmas?” Charles Sharp turned his gimlet gaze on me.

“Well, I'm visiting my parents here for the week. The goal is to give them and Hugh a chance to get to know each other.”