Nam Le - The Boat

At exercise time I run with some of the others to the top of the hill. Running is good to stop the cold but bad for the hunger that comes after. The day is white and clear and cloudless. From the top of the hill we can see another hill, and behind that, the ocean. The ocean is a darker blue than the sky. Behind the hill is the city. We are safe here. Then from behind the hill the warning sounds. The sound is weak, then strong, like the wind. We look over the hill and over the ocean. I do not see anything when a boy says, There's only one. Everyone knows the cowardly Americans drop bombs only when they have hundreds of planes, grouped like geese, when the sky sounds like heavy thunder. When it is a single plane, says Big Sister, it is either taking photographs or dropping handbills. The plane passes far away to our left. Takai, a tall sixth grader, tells a group of third graders to be China, then some others to be Americans. The rest of us organize ourselves into His Imperial Majesty's forces. Like Father, I am in the Fifth Division. Evacuation! At Takai's signal, our enemies drop down to their bellies and put thumbs in their ears and fingers over their eyes, just like we have been trained in school. The rest of us pick up stones and clods of dirt and throw them at the enemy. We charge and fall on them with our knees and elbows and bamboo swords. One hundred million deaths with honor! Defend every last inch of the Fatherland! Big Sister says this, taking the words from the radio. Father looks at me instead of her. The soft rain runs down his hair and down his face. Everything is the same color in the rain. One hundred million deaths with honor! I say after her. We are fearless. Pilots of the Imperial Air Force transform themselves into human-guided missiles and crash into the enemy, sacrificing their lives for the Fatherland. I lie dead on the ground, looking into the deep blue sky, overwhelmed with a glorious feeling of happiness. Kana kana kana . We will defend our nation through all eternity! Some of the children are crying. I am filled with such love for my nation I forget my hunger and nearly cry too.

The radio is sick again that night. It coughs and wheezes. Behind this is the small noise of the weak ones trying to hide their weeping. Outside, the wind comes in from the black bay and over the city into the hills. When we were evacuating, the truck stopped on the top of the first hill and we looked down behind us and the city looked like an empty rice bowl with a piece broken off where the ocean was. The Temple is dark and silent except for the radio and the small sniffing. I lie on the straw mat and think of Big Sister. It is the holidays and she lets me come with her to mobilization. She has recently joined the Young Women's Volunteer Corps and the Students' Patriotic League by over-telling her age. We do not tell Mother. We catch a streetcar to Fujimi-cho where there are hundreds of students and some soldiers gathering around a large building. It is hot. Big Sister insisted that we both wear our padded air-raid hoods and now the sweat from my neck runs down my back and the backs of my knees. A man from the Volunteer Corps approaches Big Sister and gives her a basket. His shirt is open and the skin beneath it is the color of concrete where the dust sticks to his sweat. He does not check her nametag. When he smiles at her she looks away from him for too long, the way a cat does, and I realize they know each other. This is little turnip. Mayako, I correct. I prefer Mayako too, he says, bending down. It's a strong name. See over there? Watch this. He jogs back to the building and picks up one end of a long two-handed saw. Someone holds the other end. Someone cries out from the roof. Clay tiles and paper doors fall to the ground. Dust rises up and through it Big Sister's face is full of light. She is explaining it to me, the demolition, the need to create fire lanes, but I am more interested in watching her friend's arms as they work — left, right — across the beam, exactly the same speed as the man on the other side of the saw. Everywhere things are falling. More cries, and two soldiers climb to the tops of two ladders with ropes trailing behind them; then, when they climb down and walk away from the building, ten, maybe twelve, men pick up the two ropes and all of them strain toward the street until both ropes are straight. Big Sister holds my hand. The building groans like a tree, shivers, then falls into itself with an enormous noise. Isn't it glorious? she says. The air fills with dust. Cover your eyes. The Fatherland, a voice cries. If the building was a tree it would have died. All things come to kami , Father says. He is alone in his Shrine garden in the city. Is it one of the eight million kami now? I will ask Father. I will ask Mother on the next Visiting Day to ask Father. The idea excites me, and I try to keep the loudness in my head.

Mayako? It is Tomiko. Yes? Do you hear the warning? It is nothing but the wind. It is the wind, I say. We are safe here, says Yukiyo. You will be safe there, says Mother. My son is gone and my eldest daughter wants to follow — you are my heart. If I die, at least my heart will still be alive.

I am safe here, Big Sister says to Mother before the evacuation. They are in the kitchen and I can hear them from the outside yard where I am trapping cicadas. You are permitted to go, says Mother. You are of the age, Sumi. You will go with your sister. But I am safe here, says Big Sister. What do you mean, safe? — every night there are the warnings. But no bombs, says Big Sister — the planes fly over the city but do not bomb us. There are bombs, says Mother. My friends know students mobilized at the central telephone office, says Big Sister. In Kobe there are bombs. In Yokohama there are bombs. In Nagoya there are bombs. Tokyo, says Mother. Yes, in Tokyo. But not here — we are lucky here. What of the handbills the Americans drop? Mother asks. On the farm Tomoe tells everyone the American handbills look like money. But on one side only. What is on the other side? It is forbidden to read them. Her father works in the Mitsubishi shipyard in Eba and picks them up without looking at them and delivers them to the Prefectural Office. We are safe here, says Big Sister. I will stay. Her face is white, even through the dirty kitchen window. Your father will decide, says Mother. Yes, I say in the darkness to Tomiko, we are safe here. Then the wind picks up and I imagine I can hear the engines of a B-24 behind it. Father taught me the difference between the sounds. It will also depend on how high they are, he said. The natsuzemi cicada says ji-i-i , the higu-rashi sounds like a bell: kana kana kana , the minminzemi makes the sound of the lotus sutra. Do you hear that? It's a plane. The wind blows under the door and across the rows and rows of mats and I am back inside the dark Temple. It's your belly, I say to Tomiko. The radio coughs. Tomorrow I will find wild herbs to eat with my potatoes, whispers Yukiyo. And my mother said she will bring me more pickled apricots next Visiting Day. I lie back and put my hands on my belly and listen to the wind. It sounds like dry grass moving. I breathe in and out — one, two, one, two. The best and most rare cicada, Father says, is the tsukutsukuboshi , which sounds exactly like a bird: chokko chokko uisu.

Mayako. Mayako? Chokko chokko uisu .

White rice — bowlfuls of it. Eba dumplings with ground wheat and mugwort grass and sugar and lots of sugar. When the Fatherland wins the war we can eat anything we like. Heaped bowls of silvery white rice. Be patient, says Mother. Waste is the enemy, says Big Sister. Big Brother holds out his dagger and on the tip there is a big stewed white radish. Good-bye, little Mayako. He looks like the man in the photograph.

The soybean rice is cold. When I open my mouth the cold air of morning comes in. Be filial to your parents, we chant together, affectionate to your brothers and sisters; as husbands and wives be harmonious; as friends true; bear yourselves in modesty and moderation; extend your benevolence to all . Tomiko and I gather flax in the hills behind the Temple. The day is bright and still cold. Kites and carrion crows fly around us. The crows are evil spirits with black eyes and I am frightened. Karasu ni hampo no ko ari , Mother says. The young crow returns its filial duty and feeds its parents. Don't be frightened, child of my heart. When I tell Father he smiles. The proverb is from China, he says. China is our reviled enemy, I say. The Chinese are godless bandits. He looks away from me for a long time like a cat. Yes, he says. I look for the flower stalks of butterburs and field horsetails and dig up pine roots. The cicadas say ji-i-i . Some of the boys go to the villages three hills away for potatoes. When they come back we go to the farm in the nearby village and work. The village boys tease us about our feebleness. Be careful or you will faint, city dweller. Be careful or your hands will blister, city dweller! See, she holds the shovel like a firecracker… be careful or it will explode. . pika don ! In the line of students everyone is older than Big Sister but she has the strength of two women, passing baskets of sand and rubble from hand to hand, left to right, without stopping. It is white-hot on the street. The air is still dusty from the dead building. Her face is shiny, full of Yamato, and often she looks at the man who moved the saw, left, right. At my old elementary school in the city we farmed the playground for sweet potatoes and eggplants and squash. Turn the soil over, one time, two times, three times. One time, two times, three times. Mr. Sasaki gives the same orders here. He is nice to us. Now my mouth is hot and dry. I am no feeble city dweller. I turn the soil with my spirit. One time, two times, three times.