Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

The words “U.S. base” should have made a country girl like me want to run and hide, but I felt only mildly surprised. My parents were of course concerned. They didn’t have the money to send me to high school—and, even if they had, I doubt if it ever would have occurred to them to give me a high school education. While it wasn’t like the old days, and most parents now wanted their children to get an education, they believed that finishing middle school was all a girl needed. My sister and I took it for granted that we would start work right away. But my parents were not so poor that they’d want to send us to Tokyo just to have fewer mouths to feed and get some extra cash; they would have liked me to get a job in a factory or find some other work nearby rather than go so far away.

So it fell to Uncle Genji to convince them. He assured them he would take full responsibility for me, adding that I should be making enough to send them some money every month. “It doesn’t look as if we have much choice, does it?” My stepfather sighed. He seemed guilty about the relief he felt. For her part, my mother made no effort to hide her relief. Even I could see that my inability to get along with my stepfather exasperated her.

SO THAT’S HOW I left for Tokyo.

Uncle Genji was waiting for me on the platform at Ueno station. I followed him as we changed from one train to another, until finally we got to a station so basic and countrified it didn’t seem possible it could still be in Tokyo. The dusty road we walked along was surrounded by barren land that stretched out to the horizon. His house, however, where I was going to live, featured all the conveniences of city life: running water, an indoor toilet, and a wood-floored kitchen on the same level as the rest of the house—no more cooking on packed dirt. It’s hard to believe, when I think of it now, but those basic things were thrilling to me, the little country girl.

I had learned only a few English phrases going to classes at the base when I found myself working during the day for a first lieutenant and his family, as their maid . Their entire house, I heard, had been imported directly from America, from the building materials down to the windowpanes, curtains, and furniture. The place was bright—almost too bright—and was filled with appliances I’d never even imagined: a toaster, an oven, a refrigerator, a washing machine, all shiny and smooth.

It was as if I had been thrown into life on the moon. Everything was so strange that I don’t think I felt the surprise I might have. Only later did I learn that you need a minimum of knowledge and experience to be truly surprised by something. For the next two years, I worked every day in that officer’s quarters, where the electric fans were on all day in summer and the Nichrome coil in the space heater glowed red all day in winter. By contrast, power outages were the norm just outside the base fence. I wasn’t mature enough to understand the extravagance of it all. It was only when my time there was almost up that the phenomenal prosperity of the base finally came home to me.

The one thing I was aware of, and just enormously grateful for, right from the beginning, was how much food there was. I grew up in the mountains, where we thought of a bowl of the thick noodles called hoto as a treat. We hardly ever ate freshwater fish, much less fish from the sea, which was strictly for special occasions. I hardly knew what meat tasted like, since we almost never had it. But at the base, for lunch every day, I got to eat food I’d never even laid eyes on before—ham and sausages and all sorts of nourishing-looking things. On top of this, a big bag of sugar was on a kitchen shelf, within easy reach. When I peeked inside and saw white sugar glittering there in all its plenty, my knees went weak—pure white sugar, not the brownish kind O-Hatsu used to put in hot drinks for me. I think that was one moment in my time on the base that came close to ecstasy.

And just as I failed to recognize all that the base had to offer, I remained blissfully ignorant of its temptations. The base was actually quite a strange place, now that I look back. Not all the maids on the base were girls from nearby farms by any means. Many of them had the polish of a city education and were comfortable wearing Western clothes. Rumor had it that one of the women who spoke fluent English— they weren’t just maids —even came from an old aristocratic family. All of us were aware that we’d be less marriageable if people knew where we were working, yet young women still flocked there. They must have had their reasons, or else were just restless, risk-taking types. On the base, discipline was strictly observed, but once you stepped outside, the atmosphere was bawdy, filled with signs of loose living. The temptation to misbehave was strong because you could have a good time with the GIs after work or on weekends and even earn some extra cash. Fortunately I was still too young—only fifteen years old—and such a late bloomer anyway that I didn’t put Uncle Genji in the position of having to be all that vigilant.

My uncle lived near a station called Nakagami, three stops from the Tachikawa base on the Oume Line. Mixed in with the cheaply built new houses in the area were a few older ones scattered about. Uncle Genji earned quite a good salary compared with most people then, so he rented one of those larger prewar places, and sublet the extra rooms. A couple of women called for some reason “onlies”—mistresses of American soldiers, who had worked their way up from streetwalking—were apparently among his boarders, but with his niece moving in, he threw them out. When I arrived, a black soldier and his Japanese wife had one wooden-floored room and a spacious eight-mat tatami room. A war widow who was alarmingly skinny and pale lived in another four-and-a-half-mat tatami room; she’d left her child with her parents and was also working as a maid . We all shared the kitchen, toilet, and bath, except for the black GI, who showered at the base.

In addition to renting out the spare rooms, Uncle Genji had had a woman living with him. All the different pots and pans in the kitchen were one sign, but also, when I came, it seemed he was in the middle of getting rid of this girlfriend. One night, a woman showed up with a heavily powdered face and a limp kimono, its collar greasy from wear. She asked him for money, and the two of them started shouting. I realized later that she must have been the one who’d been living there. She seemed to be desperate. She kept on pestering him. He had the sort of callousness that’s necessary, probably, in a man who carries on with lots of women; he stood his ground and flatly refused to give her any. I heard him shout, “I’d rather give money to a dog!” When she finally left, he told me with a scowl still on his face to scatter salt at the front door—an old custom to purify the place. Not long afterward, another woman in a kimono, probably a geisha of some sort, started coming over. This one wasn’t slovenly like the other one. She used to come in and say the most ordinary, domestic things—“Did you find that rubber hose I was looking for, boss?”—in a shockingly husky voice.

Other people came by, looking for advice from the “boss.” Some were his friends from before the war; others were cooks or waiters he supervised at the mess. I couldn’t get over it, that this was one and the same person as the uncle who had lived with us. The building he worked in was also a splendid affair, with the Stars and Stripes flying high over it and armed MPs standing guard at the entrance. Someone like me would never have been allowed to set foot inside. My uncle spoke fairly fluent English; once in a while, I saw him leaving the base in a jeep, chatting with an officer. Knowing the guards wouldn’t search him in those circumstances, he used to smuggle out bottles of whiskey or packs of cigarettes which he sold on the black market.