One day, about the time that the war was entering its really desperate phase, a man dressed in a kind of military uniform came to our house in Nishikata Street and handed me conscription papers and a schedule listing the days I was required to work. I discovered that from the following day I would have to report on alternate days at a base in the mountains behind Tachikawa. In spite of myself, I found myself in tears.
“I suppose a substitute wouldn’t do?” The tears kept flowing and I had begun to sob.
The man answered firmly, “The Army has work for you, and you yourself must go.”
The next day it rained. An officer delivered us a sermon as we stood lined up at the foot of the mountain. “Victory is a certainty,” he said by way of preamble. “Victory is a certainty, but unless everybody does exactly what the Army orders, all our plans will be thwarted, and we will have another Okinawa. We want you without fail to do every bit of the work you are given. Next, you are to be on guard against one another. There is no telling whether spies have been planted among you. You will now be working in military positions just like soldiers, and we want you to exercise every possible caution not to reveal to other people under any circumstances what you have seen.”
The mountain was smouldering in the rain as we stood there, close to five hundred men and women. We listened with all due reverence to his address, in spite of the drenching rain. The unit also included boys and girls from the elementary schools, all of them with frozen little faces on the verge of tears. The rain went through my coat, penetrated my jacket, and finally soaked through to my underwear.
I spent that whole day carrying baskets of earth on my back. The next time at the base I tugged ropes in a team of laborers. That was the work I liked best.
Two or three times while I was out working in the mountains I had the impression that the schoolboys were staring at me in a most disagreeable manner. I was shouldering baskets of earth one day when a couple of them passed by, and I heard one of them whisper, “Think she’s a spy?”
I was astonished. I asked the girl carrying earth next to me what made the boy say such a thing. She answered seriously, “Perhaps because you look like a foreigner.”
“Do I? Do you also think I’m a spy?”
“No,” she answered, this time with a little smile.
“I am a Japanese,” I said and couldn’t keep from giggling at the obvious silliness of my own words.
One fine morning which I had spent hauling logs along with the men, the young officer suddenly frowned and pointed at me. “Hey you. You, come here.”
He walked quickly toward the pine forest, and I followed him, my heart pounding with nervousness and fear. He stopped by a pile of timber just brought from the saw mill, and turned around to me. “It must be very hard working that way every day. Today please just watch over this lumber.” He spoke with a smile, flashing his white teeth.
“You mean I should stand here?”
“It’s cool and quiet, and you can take a nap on top of the pile. If you get bored, perhaps you’d like to read this.” He took a small volume from his pocket and tossed it shyly on the boards. “It isn’t much of a book, but please read it if you like.”
It was called Troika. I picked it up. “Thank you very much. There’s someone in my family also who likes books, but he’s in the South Pacific now.”
He misunderstood. “Oh, your husband. South Pacific. That’s terrible.” He shook his head in sympathy. “At any rate, today you stand guard duty. I’ll bring your lunch box myself later on. You just rest without worrying about anything.” With these words, he strode off rapidly.
I sat on the lumber pile and began to read the book. I had read about half when the crunching of his boots announced the officer’s return. “I have brought your lunch. It must be very tedious being here alone.” He deposited the lunch box on the grass and hurried off again.
When I had finished the lunch, I crawled up on top of the lumber pile and stretched out to read the book. I read the whole thing through and nodded off. I woke after three with the sudden impression that I had seen the young officer before, but where I could not recall. I clambered down from the pile and was just smoothing down my hair when I heard the crunching of his boots again.
“Thank you very much for having come today. You may leave now if you wish.”
I ran up to him and held out the book. I wanted to express my thanks, but the words did not come. In silence I looked at his face, and when our eyes met, mine filled with tears. Then tears shone also in his.
We parted without words, just like that, and the young officer never again appeared at the place where I worked. That was the only day I was able to take it easy. From then on I went every other day to Tachikawa to do my stint of hard labor. Mother worried a great deal about my health, but the work actually made me stronger than ever before, and even now I am, at least, a woman who is not particularly distressed even by the hardest labor in the fields.
I said that I hate to discuss the war or hear about it, but now I find I have told all about my “precious experience.” But that’s about the only memory of the war I ever feel the slightest inclination to relate. The rest might aptly be summed up by the poem:
Last year nothing happened
The year before nothing happened
And the year before that nothing happened.
Idiotically enough, all that remains of my war experiences is the pair of sneakers.
The mention of the sneakers took me off again on another digression, but I should add that although wearing what may be called my unique memento of the war and going out into the fields every day helps to relieve the secret anxiety and uneasiness deep in my heart, Mother has of late been growing weaker day by day.
The snake eggs.
The fire.