1000 WORD EXCERPT

Saburo Sakihama
Every morning before leaving for school, I'd climb up to the strongest branch on my favorite deigo tree to watch the small fishing boats return with their morning catch. That morning, instead of the peaceful white vessels, I was astonished to find thousands of enemy ships floating on the East China Sea like hordes of poisonous jellyfish waiting to sting their unsuspecting victims. And if that wasn't shocking enough, some of the ships were pointing their huge guns in the direction of our tiny village of Shioya. Collecting my wits and the two rice balls I'd planned to eat for breakfast, I jumped from the tree and ran back to my house as quickly as my twelve year old legs could carry me.

After calming me down, mother ordered my sister and me to gather the family papers and load whatever else would fit into our wooden cart. We scrambled to pile all of our worldly possessions into the wagon until a shell landed on a neighbor's house killing the entire family. Fearing we'd suffer the same fate, mother decided we must leave immediately. "Never mind the pictures," mother shouted. "Saburo and Keiko, get behind the cart and help grandfather push. I'll get the front."

As we struggled to push and pull that heavy wagon across several sweet potato fields and rice paddies toward the distant mountain and our cave, the cart behaved more like a stubborn mule than an inanimate collection of wooden boards and iron wheels. To lighten the load, we dumped half the cargo. Approaching a wide creek, grandfather figured that the only way we could forge the stream was to unload all of our things, disconnect the wheels and carry the wagon over the creek. Young and skinny; I wasn't much help, but I did what I could.

With a kilometer to go before we reached our cave, mother thought it best that we stop and rest until sunrise.

"Grandfather. If you make a fire, I'll prepare a pot of miso soup," mother offered.

Using the wood my sister and I had gathered from a nearby bombed out house, Grandfather built a fire. Just as the sparkling embers started to fly, something in the sky screamed in terrible agony before exploding the nearby earth into thousands of pieces of flying metal, dirt, and rocks. While grandfather frantically tried to smother the fire, my sister and I threw the blankets and other things we planned to use at the campsite into the wagon and, with mother leading the way, pushed it as fast as our arms and legs could move. Although no more shells exploded near us that night, I stumbled over something soft and mushy causing me to cut my hand on a sharp object. When mother reached down to help me, we discovered that I'd fallen over the mangled body of what appeared to be a woman. There was no way of knowing whether she was young or old. We regretted that we had no time to pray or bury her. We knew that if the enemy heard us, we would end up just like that poor soul growing out of the dirt like a twisted white radish.

The stream of brilliant sky torches helped us find our way to the safety of our cave, where a few hours later, grandmother, auntie, and my cousin joined us in the dugout. Father and my older brother, Seiji, and uncle Genji were serving in the local guard leaving only grandfather and me to perform the men's chores such as collecting buckets of water and placing tree branches in front of the entrance to the cave.

"Obachan. What is happening out there? Did you see our soldiers?" I asked.

"All I can tell you is that the Americans are everywhere," grandmother replied.

"But what about the Japanese Army? Are they throwing the enemy back into the sea?" Grandfather asked.

"I don't think so," my aunt reported. There were no signs of our soldiers anywhere."

The light from the flickering candle revealed puzzlement on the faces of grandmother and grandfather. I'd seen that expression before. But this time, they weren't searching for reading glasses or a misplaced book.

"Except for the enemy shelling our villages and the thousands of American ships, I didn't see any fighting." Grandmother said.

"Saburo. Your hand is bleeding! What happened to you," my grandmother said.

"Please don't worry grandmother. It is nothing. It doesn't even hurt," I assured her. I thought of the times when I came to this place with mother and my aunt to help dig the cave. Afraid that the poisonous habu snake would bite me, I always waited a few minutes before following the women into the cave. At that moment, I was ashamed for behaving like a coward, I promised myself to never again hide behind the courage of others. Although the battle was only a few hours old, everything in our lives would never be the same again. Our home, friends, Yamada Elementary School and our feeling of well being had evaporated as quickly as the morning dew, but I had to be brave and not complain.

My newly found resolve got its first test when mother discovered that in our haste to flee from the exploding shell, she forgot to fetch the food container. Things looked pretty grim until grandmother cried, "Look what's in my pack. I have a baked sweet potato!"

I couldn't understand how grandmother could still look regal with her silver hair protected from the dust by a colorful scarf and wearing grandfather's plaid shirt along with a pair of baggy trousers. Instead of the geta grandmother usually wore, covering her tiny feet were a pair of rubber athletic shoes. Certain that nothing bad would happen to us as long as our dear Obaachan was with us, for a moment or two, I forgot about the horror of the deaths of our neighbors and the half-buried dead woman.

An Okinawan Odyssey
Harvey P. Getz




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