Hooper’s War Read online

  Naoko paused. More tea.

  “The only good of it all was that our work was seen as important, so we qualified for the best food. We would smuggle out bits of meat to share with the neighbors. Mother loved her books, father his poetry and his chess. They were better people then than we have become.”

  “Did you say chess? American chess?” I said.

  “Well, the western version of chess, yes. I think it is still one of the few things you Americans have not claimed to have given to the world,” Naoko said. There was the set, the pawns and knights on the board, black, and white, the paint worn off the tops of each piece.

  “At first I did not realize father let me win and that mother was pretending when she would make fun of his ‘losses.’ I miss them both now, very much. No matter, anyway, it will be light soon. I must wash my hands and make the rice for breakfast.”

  “You haven’t really said how they died.”

  “They were killed by a stray mortar round.” Naoko brushed aside a tear before her face hardened. “Like every child, I always feared losing my parents. Now they are gone, killed by someone unforgiven. I do not even know who did it or why. I doubt he knows he killed them or why. Hooper-san, look at my hands. They are stained only with your Jones-san’s blood. I can make them clean. Your soldiers killed my family. You cannot wash that away, ever. This whole terrible war, all I have done is translate old newspaper articles.”

  “You translated the sports pages? The funny papers? How’s Orphan Annie doing?” I said.

  “Do not mock me. I could not refuse orders. My superiors wanted those stories so they could better defend Japan,” Naoko said.

  “Defend Japan,” I said.

  “So my father deserved to die, is that what you are saying, Hooper-san? Are your parents wrapped in quilts in the back garden? If they are not, quiet yourself, Lieutenant Hooper of the United States Army. Or go outside, and tell your tales to the dead until you feel better about what you have done. But fine. We are practical people. If you want me to cook for you, here, cut the rotten bits out of these potatoes. We will have them with the rice.”

  “You cut up the potatoes. That’s woman’s work,” I said.

  “It is only woman’s work if you can get a woman to do it,” Naoko said. “We all need to do different things now. As you say in English, ‘don’t you know there is a war on?’”

  She had the taste of a smile for the first time. I removed my boots for the first time. And picked up a potato.

  Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, Naoko’s House, 1946

  I COULD SEE IT now, like the fireflies we used to catch when I was a boy in Ohio. They’d go into a jar, the air would get used up and their lights would go out. I knew what was coming, even if they didn’t. It wasn’t really blood draining out of him anymore, it was time.

  “Lieutenant? Am I gonna die?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so, Jones. Hey, I even saw you looking at Naoko. Jeez boy, leave some clothes on her,” I said.

  “I wasn’t tryin’ to be rude, I just wanted to… to remember what a girl looked like,” Jones said. “Besides, sir, I seen you looking the same way at her. Hey, you wanna see a picture I carry with me?”

  With much difficulty Jones put his left hand in his pocket and brought out a little leather wallet. It had thick stitches around the edges, and was embossed with some Western scene. You could buy them anywhere back home, cheap as spit.

  “See sir, I don’t have a girl. I sorta pretended about ‘Jenny’ around the fellas so they didn’t make fun of me. Look, sir, it’s me, in the picture. See, that’s me when I was eight, wearing a cowboy hat. And that’s a real pony. But it’s a toy gun.”

  “Can’t be you, Jones, cute kid like that,” I said.

  “It is, honest. See, my mom wrote the date on the back and everything,” Jones said, smiling with his eyes. “Um, Lieutenant, I’m feeling really dizzy.”

  “What should I do?” I said.

  “Can you call me Alden for a while, sir?”

  “Okay, Alden. You’re from Oklahoma, right?”

  “Tulsa. Well, near there. Sir, I’m getting cold.”

  He was hard to hear, whispering now, but not because he wanted to. I don’t think I’d ever been that close to a man’s face before. I saw soft hairs above his lip, the kind you have for a few years before you need to shave.

  “You much for praying, Alden?”

  “Sometimes, sir. Not sure God always listens,” Jones said.

  “He’ll hear you,” I said. I looked to Naoko.

  “If God listened, I don’t think I’d be like this now,” Jones said. He looked away. “I wanna be older. I got a dog at home older than me.”

  Former Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Retirement Home, Kailua, Hawaii, 2017

  I SQUEEZED HIS HAND 70 years ago.

  We each owe God one death, somebody wrote, and Jones paid his tab. I did not cry. There would be other deaths. I was made solemn by this.

  Naoko touched my hand, and her fingers guided me to close Jones’ eyes. I lifted him, leaving his indentation on the quilt. It is Japanese custom, Naoko said, to wash the body, so Jones would go to whatever afterlife he was destined for clean, the way he came in to the world; we cry at both ends of life, she said. She tried to undo the buttons of his uniform, but it was difficult, so I used my jackknife to cut off the layers of GI-issue wool. I pressed too hard at one point, and nicked his skin, which still drew blood; Jones had not yet turned that drained gray they do. Without thinking, I said, “Sorry, Jones.”

  It was then I cried. I cried for Jones, I cried for Marino, I cried for Polanski, I cried for Laabs, I cried for goddamn all of them.

  Something that started deep and only found its way out as a sound I never knew was there, rage, not sorrow. At one point it had gotten easier to watch men die, but now it had gotten harder. I should’ve been crying for them when they were still alive but I thought time would always be there.

  There had been so many futures and none of them would ever happen now. That was what I was responsible for. Time ended for the dead, but stretched out all to hell for those unfinished lives, the place where a father sits with his cigar poking an orange hole in the dark, where a wife wearing a man’s t-shirt cries dreams of slow dancing with her husband again in the kitchen.

  They’re not necessarily people I’d have chosen to know, and I didn’t cry because I missed them. I had no idea whether they were good people back in real life. I didn’t want to make them all into something other than whatever they were, and then weep for that. I cried because I was there and they were dead and I was less sure than I was a day earlier why that happened.

  Naoko was gentle. She directed me to wrap Jones in the quilt he’d lain on. It was still warm. We placed his body outside, with her parents, and Jones would be cremated alongside her own. The town held the bodies until the skies looked overcast enough that they could risk a fire without the American planes zeroing in. The pilots wouldn’t know they were bombing people already dead.

  The fire will do away with their bodies, Naoko said, and give their souls to the wind.

  Chapter 9: Smoke

  Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, Naoko’s House, 1946

  THE COLD AIR RUSHED in from the dark ahead of Naoko. I watched the last bits of snow melt against her hair as she returned from seeing the cremation fire take her parents, and my soldier.

  “We believe ‘Although the form of a flower has scattered, its scent lingers on,’” Naoko said, as much to the house itself as me. “Your Jones-san is at peace. No one knew he was not Japanese; the dead belong to no one. The ceremony was quick, not what we normally do, but this is war, and as a poet my father enjoyed wrote, unnatural vices are forced on us. Still, it was almost beautiful, the orange embers rising into the night sky. They reminded me of the fireflies I saw as a child over the rice paddies those summers ago.”

  NAOKO CAME BACK FROM the kitchen with a ceramic flask of sake she had warmed in a hot water bath. She was
almost embarrassed to be seen drinking, she said, but explained the rice wine had belonged to her father, and it seemed good something of his was comforting her now. The cups were small, smooth on the inside and rough and unglazed on the outside. The sake tasted sweet to me, not like any of the liquor I’d had before. It was warm all the way into my belly, and even more so as it filled my head.

  “What will you do after the war, Naoko?” I said. There was something deep in the back of my mind I was trying to find against the pull of the sake.

  “What after? Your war ends when go home. Your mother has kept your room tidy for you, has she not? You will just walk through the door and throw your war pay on the bed. Your dog is there, safe in his own small house, yes? This is not even real for you, Hooper-san,” Naoko said.

  “But you’ll be at peace.”

  “There will be no more bombs, yes. But our men will become black marketeers living off your discarded cans of food, and our women will sell themselves to survive. Already in the marketplace we are hearing a new word, pansuke, a terrible name for the women who are willing to go with the American soldiers; even among prostitutes there will be a new depth of disgrace. This all will leave scars that need much time to heal, long after you are eating meatloaf and your awful mashed potatoes and gravy again. I hope I have the strength to survive the peace alone.”

  “Alone? You won’t get married once this is all over?” I said.

  “Hooper-san, how much more American could you be, talking about that at a time like this?” Naoko said. She set her cup down in a way that made the question into an exclamation.

  The sake fumes in my head cleared. I knew now what that thought was I’d been trying to catch. Someone can get used to mashed potatoes and gravy, can’t she?

  Her voice sounded different too, as if she had found something sweet tucked in her cheek by surprise. “You have been in love, Hooper-san?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Yes.”

  “Living in fear, it was easier to forget a past ever existed. But having sent my parents on, perhaps I can make myself feel better by talking. So what is the girl’s name, the one you ‘maybe’ love, Hooper-san? Is she a chubby girl from Ohio?”

  “Her name is… not important now. And it doesn’t take that much time to fall in love, right, when you know you’re in love?” I said.

  In the pause she refilled both of our cups. As I sipped from the edge of mine, Naoko drunk deep from the center of hers.

  “This war, Hooper-san, it does not allow a broken heart to mend, only tire.”

  We were seated on the floor, using small cushions pushed close together on the straw mats, my weight now entirely in her world. I had grown comfortable without chairs. Naoko shifted, sitting up, before tucking her hands under her. She was no longer looking at me. It was as if she could see something no one else could inside the cup.

  Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, Naoko’s House, After Midnight, 1946

  “HOOPER-SAN, THIS DAY… it is late, but I must relax. Perhaps a bath. Do you know what a luxury that is? I have not had a hot bath for, well, for I do not remember. It felt selfish earlier to be comfortable. It will mean a lot now. And whenever you last bathed, it was also a long time ago, and we have spent too much time dirtying our hands in the worst of things,” she said. “Do you know how our Japanese bath is done? The water will be mercilessly hot, and you slide down until it is up to your chin. When you leave to sleep, you will take the heat with you. Who knows, you may even dream of that girl you are in love with. It is required in Japan for the guest to bathe first. The water is hottest for you, Nathaniel Hooper. Did I ever call you that before? Your first name, Nathaniel? Strange it would come out now. Perhaps it is the sake.”

  My name sounded like she was experimenting with how it felt in her mouth. She wanted then to know why I was named Nathaniel. I explained it was after my father, and that opened the gates for me to tell her what I’d kept to myself. My dad had been a soldier, wounded in World War I, and no matter how much he discouraged me from joining up, I wanted to be him, injuries and all if necessary. When he stood straight, even in his farm clothes, it was as if he was still in uniform. I wanted to look into a mirror and see just that, instead of having to deny the reflection. I wasn’t drafted; I entered this war because I wanted to.

  It made little sense to her; soldiers in Japan had no choice. She brushed off my confession, saying, “We have a task ahead of us and it is already late. It will take time to heat up enough water. Nathaniel.”

  AS I PEELED OFF my uniform, sand from the Ashiya Beachhead trickled out from inside pockets. I tried to gather it up and stuff it back in, but it scattered all over the floor. I hadn’t been out of my clothes since I’d landed in Japan. My naked body felt unfamiliar to me.

  In Japan, you washed outside the tub, sitting on a small stool and dipping a wooden bucket into the hot water to rinse off. There was a drain in the floor. One bit of soap, or one bit of dirt, in the bath ruined the water for the next person. When I was sure I had washed away enough, I slipped in to soak.

  With the bathroom’s sliding door closed, I could feel the darkness, deep. The cold air brought up towers of steam. The tub was cedar and gave off a scent. The warmth crawled up me, like ivy on a building, pins and needles in my legs, my chest, arms and neck. I knew every drop of water as they wrapped around me, and tasted the air. As my eyes adjusted, the moonlight through the window made the surface of the water black, so I could see only the mountains of my own knees rising out of the sea. The water could keep secrets.

  There was a shush of the door as Naoko entered the room. She put a finger to her lips, quieting me before I could draw breath to speak. My chest contracted as if the bath water had turned frigid. She slid the small metal clasp home like a gasp, locking the door against something in the empty house.

  Naoko stood still, her face puffy from crying, watching me, waiting for something I couldn’t begin to understand. The darkness protected her as she moved deeper into the room. Without a sound, she peeled off the layers she wore against the cold, and sat on the small wooden stool to wash herself. I could make out the curve of her shoulders, the stubborn roundness her buttocks retained despite the lack of food. But as she stood, her ribs betrayed her, standing out in relief. Her skin was translucent without the vitamins her body needed, and her neck showed itself thin as she lifted her hair. She did not speak; we were here together, but we were not.

  I had never seen a woman naked, and burned to learn the shape and feel of her. I was perhaps the only serviceman in the history of warfare who was frightened enough by the hygiene lectures to sit out the paid treats of Honolulu. Naoko put down her washcloth, and abandoning the moment’s pause, entered the tub. Her legs breaking the surface of the water made ripples, like when a stone is thrown, that crossed the gap between us. The water spilled over the side, looking thick as honey. I felt the sound as it touched the floor and watched it mix with the sand I’d left behind. Hunger had sunken Naoko’s breasts and hollowed her belly. She was utterly beautiful.

  “Mo nani mo kamo wakaranaku natte shimattan desu. Tada sabishikute, sabishikute. Watashi wa do yatte ikite ikeba ii no. Tsurakute mune ga harisake soo nan desu.”

  “Hooper-san, I do not know how to say these things in English. Perhaps it is not for us to understand together,” Naoko said.

  The sound as I lifted my hand out of the water to touch her was unwelcome in the silence. You can’t choose what you want, only what you do.

  “I felt so many terrible things in this war, I cannot feel any more tonight. I want to cry but I cannot let myself. I want to be alone but I cannot. The rest, I do not know how to say it, we say ishin denshin. It too does not translate.”

  “Try.”

  “As best I can say is that it means ‘what the heart knows’ but I think a better way to understand it is that there is much said in silence,” Naoko said. “Or maybe it describes a kind of sadness, like you feel as summer is ending, and you want it to last just one more day
.”

  Naoko’s sobs were sharp against the frost etched on the outside of the window. The wind was finding a way in, pressing us, something unseeable but very real.

  “I think it’s snowing outside,” I said.

  “I cannot see the snow. I could not feel wet even in the rain,” Naoko said. She paused. “Shhh now. No more words.”

  Chapter 10: Fire

  Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, Naoko’s House, Early Morning, the next to last day, 1946

  SOMEONE CONTINUED TO POUND on the door, even as Naoko slid it open. I watched from the kitchen as he shook off the snow. He set his rifle down only long enough to remove his boots. He spoke to Naoko in Japanese.

  “Sergeant, I am sorry, but I was only a moment ago asleep,” Naoko said. “May I ask, are you from north of Kyoto?”

  “Do you mock my stupid country boy’s accent? Wait… My God, Naoko? Answer me, or I will know I am still unconscious.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, Eichi. I never saw you again, I never heard from you. I could not know what happened to you,” Naoko said.

  “I was sent to the countryside for my safety not long after you moved away, and the war came for all of us,” Nakagawa said. “I opened my eyes only an hour ago inside the Nishinomiya train station. I saw Corporal Takagi’s dead body stuck to mine. I have no idea how long I had been out, but glancing at Takagi’s frog-belly white face it had been some time. I could feel pain, so knew I was alive, very much so. I needed to find better shelter en route back to Japanese Army lines, and saw this house… and you. But wait, I believe I have something I am obligated to return. I have carried it a long way.”