Above the East China Sea: A Novel (21 page)

“Mind where you’re going,” the
juri
snapped at me, and I jumped out of the way of a motorcycle. A Japanese naval officer, splendid in his sparkling white uniform and peaked hat with its black patent-leather visor, sat in the sidecar, serenely observing the passing scene. A class from the Shuri Boys Prefectural High School approached. They were dressed in long-sleeved white shirts, crisply ironed white pants, and white shoes. They wore black ties and their hair was neatly combed and shone in the sunlight. When the boys passed, the fragrance of sandalwood and mandarin oranges hung in the air behind them.

“Careful, you’ll catch a fly.” The
juri
laughed at me for gaping, open-mouthed, at the handsome boys. The
juri
stopped and studied me. “Well, aren’t you going now to high command headquarters to join your fellow Princess Lilies?”

I glanced at the chaos around me with no idea what direction to set out in.

The
juri,
seeing my confusion, said, “Come along; follow me. Even a very,
very
smart girl can get turned around in Shuri.”

As I followed her farther into the heart of Shuri, the town on the outskirts of Naha that I had visited so often became more and more unrecognizable. Gone was the peace I’d always found strolling the sleepy streets canopied by banyan trees. The sound of horse hooves slowly clopping against the cobblestones and the jolly cries of vendors were replaced by the harsh voices of commanders barking orders at soldiers marching past in crisp lines, by the sputter of motorcycles and the rumble of truck engines. Where once the air had been perfumed with the fragrance of vendors’ papayas, pineapples, mangos, and bananas, now a pall of diesel fumes enshrouded the town.

We approached what had once been a shady park with stone benches for resting beneath a thicket of ancient Ryukyuan pine, some of them said to have been planted during the reign of King Shō Tai, and I found that all the trees had been cut down. The barren field, trampled now into mud, was surrounded by a tall barbed-wire fence with loops of razor wire at the top. Inside were rows of crude, hastily constructed huts, each one with a door that opened at the top like a stable. All the doors had a number on them; most were shut. At the few open ones, women stood looking out, like horses waiting to be fed. Their faces seemed made of stone, statues with no expression at all.

Outside the fence, a line of soldiers—low-ranking ones in baggy uniforms, crumpled, sweat-stained caps, and dirty leg wrappings—waited beneath a sign that read, “Welcome Soldiers of a Holy War.” When each man’s turn came, a sergeant gave him a number and pointed to one of the doors. Clasping his number, the soldier would hustle over to the appointed stall, step in, and both sections of the door would be closed behind him. Two briefly unoccupied women exchanged a few words in a language that wasn’t Okinawan or Japanese.

“Korean comfort women,” the
juri
informed me. “Don’t stare; they’ve been brought here to keep you Princess Lilies pure.”

I didn’t understand why her tone was so harsh, and she gave me no time to ask as we hurried on to an area where there were no civilians at all. Everyone was in uniform. Suddenly I recognized what had once been the home of Okuda Seitoku, who’d become the richest man on the island by selling lumber to the Japanese. I wondered what had happened to him, since his vast, Western-style mansion now had a magnificent flagpole out front with the rising sun whipping in the wind at its top and a sign that identified it as the headquarters of the 32nd Imperial Army.

“You, Okinawan whores, you aren’t allowed here!” A skinny guard with snaggled teeth braced his rifle across the
juri
’s chest, barring our way.

In perfect, high-class Japanese without the slightest trace of an Okinawan accent, the
juri
responded, “And you, you ignorant, cat-toothed bumpkin who smells of his own shit, you had better step aside immediately if you know what is good for you.”

The guard’s face purpled with fury, and he spoke in a hissing whisper that boiled with rage: “You have insulted a soldier of the emperor. You have insulted the emperor. You will be executed.”

As soldiers, bayonets pointing at us, closed in, I cursed myself for being so stupid as to fall in with a crazy woman; there was no hope of running away this time.

TWENTY

The
juri
whirled on the soldiers and demanded, “What are you idiots doing? Do you dare impede my passage? Move aside immediately or I shall be forced to report your insubordination to”—she pulled a pass from the sash of her kimono, and with a theatrical elegance handed it to the cat-toothed guard as she pronounced the name—“General Chō.”

The look of horror that dawned on the guard’s face froze into wide-eyed terror as he read the signature at the bottom of the
juri
’s pass.
Holding the pass with the sacred signature above his head, the guard prostrated himself at our feet. The other soldiers followed suit. The
juri
plucked her pass from the guard’s trembling fingers, stepped around the cowering figures, and led me away, tossing over her shoulder, “I detest bullies, don’t you?”

A road, so new the asphalt was still black and sticky, led us to a massive construction area. Through the clouds of dust raised by dump trucks, I saw an army of Okinawan workers streaming in and out of a building guarded by soldiers in khaki uniforms, rifles slung over their shoulders, who glared fiercely at all who approached.

The workers were a mix of men in loincloths and women in baggy trousers, all with cloths tied over their mouths and noses to keep out the dust. They left the building tottering beneath the weight of baskets filled with large rocks balanced on their heads with only a coil of thin cloth as a cushion. One after another, the laborers dumped their loads onto a huge pile, then turned around and went back to the building, holding their now-empty baskets.

“Well, here we are,” the
juri
said, stopping behind a pile of discarded stone. “Just show the guard your Himeyuri ID card and you’ll be admitted.” She watched my nervous expression for a moment, then added, “Or you could simply slip in with the work crew.” She smiled; I hadn’t fooled her.

“How did you know?”

“No real Princess Lily girl would ever speak to a woman like me. It was one of the first things our Japanese teachers taught us.”

“You …”

“Were a Himeyuri girl?”

Instead of answering, she folded back the inner collar of her kimono and revealed the distinctive lily brooch pinned there. Turning to leave, she said to me, “Don’t ever let them make you forget that you are
Uchinānchu.
The blood of kings runs in your veins.” With the slightest of bows, she disappeared in the dusty haze. The last I ever saw of her was the pink cherry blossoms at the end of the long silver pin in her beehive bun bouncing gaily behind her.

Before I could be noticed, I pulled the
furoshiki
from my satchel and tied it around my face so that only my eyes were visible, then hurried to the stone pile, snatched up a discarded basket, stuck it atop my head,
and fell in with a crew entering the work site. The Japanese guards, seeing only the bracket on my head and my round face and brown Okinawan skin, barely glanced my way as they waved me in.

Once inside, we all funneled into a single narrow line and descended down a steep staircase carved into the limestone and lit with naked bulbs strung up above our heads. The stairs plunged farther and farther into the earth until we were deep beneath the ancient capital. When we had descended twenty meters beneath the surface, we arrived at a main tunnel. I glanced around and my mouth dropped open in astonishment, for stretched out in front of me as far as I could see was a vast underground kingdom.

Side tunnels with plastered walls and polished concrete floors fanned off in every direction from the main one. Soldiers on vital missions marched briskly past stooped laborers. I followed the crew I’d entered with. We passed large rooms filled with officers bent over maps. Okinawan boys my age and younger, members of the Blood and Iron Student Corps, stood at attention nearby, waiting to serve as couriers. An officer called for a boy, snapped a message into his hand, and he bolted away to deliver it. In a kitchen area with a chimney dug up through the ground, a red-faced cook bent over a large kettle that wafted the delicious odor of boiling rice. Room after room was stacked with sleeping planks, a vast barracks large enough for hundreds of men.

Farther on was a dispensary, a roomful of typists, and, most astonishing of all, a telephone switchboard with operators wearing headsets pulling out and plugging in cords. And all of it was buried deep in the earth, safe from American bombs. As this marvelous warren hummed around me, I knew then that my mother and the
juri
were wrong and that Hatsuko and my father were right: The Japanese Empire
was
unconquerable.

I shivered as a thrill of pride ran through me at the thought that I, too, might be allowed to be part of this magnificent enterprise. Even if I had to do it as a rock carrier, I was determined that I would serve our emperor. For a moment, it appeared that this was exactly what would happen. The crew came to a halt at the end of a tunnel that rang with the clanging of picks striking rock as men burrowed farther into the earth. The workers scrambled to refill their baskets with the loosened stones.

I gently slid my basket to the ground and was backing away when a squat sergeant wearing a cap too small for his melon-shaped head stopped me and, wagging his finger at the student’s satchel strapped across my chest, demanded, “What are you doing here?”

I didn’t know whether to answer in my best Japanese or to prove that I was nothing but a local laborer by speaking in
Uchināguchi.
Even though I decided on Japanese and was answering in his language, the impatient sergeant made a face, stopped me, and said, “Never mind. I can’t understand your Okinawan gibberish anyway. You must be one of the new Himeyuri girls straight off the farm. You are in the wrong wing entirely.” Speaking slowly, as if to a not-very-bright child, he gave me directions, adding, “And don’t get in the way. There are a thousand soldiers down here serving the emperor. Don’t disturb them!” I nodded my head and hurried away before he could demand my school papers or notice that I wasn’t wearing a lily pin.

Though I tried to follow the sergeant’s directions, I quickly became lost in the labyrinth. To hide how bewildered I was, I would straighten up every time an officer, his heels clicking smartly on the concrete floor, right hand resting on the hilt of his sword, strode past. If he was especially handsome, I wondered whether he might be Hatsuko’s lieutenant.

I was at a loss as to how I would ever find Hatsuko without revealing that I was an intruder, when a group of girls passed by, all neatly dressed in sailor blouses with the brooches of the Princess Lily students gleaming on their chests. I followed them to a large ward where a class of more than a hundred students watched a nurse with a name band tied around her right arm that identified her as Head Nurse Tanaka. A heavyset Japanese woman with a deep voice and a sallow complexion, Head Nurse Tanaka was demonstrating how to inject salt water into a tangerine. I searched frantically for Hatsuko’s face, but there were so many girls crowding around the nurse I couldn’t find my sister.

Head Nurse Tanaka clapped her hands sharply and all the girls immediately fell silent. “We have no time to waste today. We must finish our lesson quickly, because the photographer is here to take portraits for your records. So let us begin without—”

Head Nurse Tanaka saw something in the doorway that caused her to stop and come to rigid attention. All the girls followed suit when an
Imperial officer strode into the classroom. He was tall and slender with the bearing of a prince and, when he conferred with Tanaka, he never once removed his white-gloved hand from the hilt of his sword. This had to be the famous Lieutenant Nakamura. I searched the crowd even harder for Hatsuko.

Head Nurse Tanaka clapped her hands sharply and called out, “Girls, attention! Our liaison officer, Lieutenant Nakamura, has been kind enough to leave his far more important duties for a moment and deliver a message to us. Because your backward country never developed a system of dams and reservoirs such as we have in Japan, water supplies are running low.”