The Street of a Thousand Blossoms

  “Wait here for me,” she told Aki. “I promise I won’t be long.”

  “Where are you going?” Aki held on to her arm and only reluctantly let go.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Haru hurried back to the river and climbed down the embankment to the ditch under the bridge, her hands throbbing with pain. She had to see if the old man was all right, and to thank him for saving her. She bent low and peeked. Tucked in the corner, Haru could see he was still sitting there.

  She called out hello.

  When the old man didn’t answer, she inched closer to see if he was all right. Only then could she see his eyes were wide open as he stared blankly out at the river. The fire had just touched his body, but she imagined the heat or smoke might have overcome him first. Her body could have easily been lying there beside his had she not had the impulse to leave, to find her mother and Aki. Haru bowed quickly in respect and turned to run back up the embankment as fast as she could.

  “What do we do now?” Aki asked, still clutching the charred headgear, strangely calm, standing amid the devastation.

  “We go home,” she answered. Haru didn’t know where else they could go. There was a chance her mother had found her way back home, and, if not, surely her father would come back for them.

  They began to walk and then they ran.

  The Valley of Darkness

  Hiroshi had just fallen asleep when the first siren went off, startling him awake. His heart raced, and he instinctively knew this time it was something more than a usual air raid. It was the middle of the night; usually the sirens went off just after dawn. Kenji must have felt it, too, for he was up from his futon by the end of the siren’s first wail. Kenji’s ankle was still tender, his limp still pronounced since returning from Imoto just four days earlier. Hiroshi watched him grimace as his weight landed on the foot. His grandmother had cried the day Kenji returned. The grandson they had sent to the countryside to be safe had been in more danger than they were in Yanaka.

  Ever since his brother’s return, Hiroshi felt a change in him, and saw it in each quick, assured gesture. Unlike the shy young boy who left, Kenji exuded a newfound confidence.

  “Ojiichan?” Hiroshi asked.

  “I’ll help them down to the shelter,” Kenji answered, hobbling quickly out of their room.

  “I’ll get everything else,” he said, grateful that his brother was back to help. He gathered the furoshiki of meager supplies, the water and the first-aid kit, the cloth headgear his obaachan sewed for them, and one more thing this time, a fan for his grandmother to move the air when it became too thick and still. During the last air raid, he had watched her close her eyes, chanting something between her lips as she swayed from side to side.

  They spent most of the night and morning huddled in the backyard air-raid shelter, cramped and stiff but otherwise unharmed. The air became so thick and solid Hiroshi thought they would suffocate. Relentless explosions shook the ground. Dirt sifted from the earthen walls around them as the planes droned overhead. All Hiroshi could think was that they had saved someone the trouble of burying them. And when they were able to emerge at last from their shelter hours later, it was into a fragile silence. Later, they would learn the greater shame of having survived a night in which so many had died.

  Yanaka had been spared once again. Just as the area had been left virtually untouched during the Kanto earthquake of 1923, the winds had blown the firestorm in other directions. Hiroshi remembered the story his ojiichan told them when they were boys, how the temples surrounding the Edo castle were moved to Yanaka for safety after the earthquake. And when the roar of the planes finally vanished and the ground stopped shaking, the thick, acrid, smoke-filled air hovered, clearing just enough to see in shadows that the temples still stood. Hiroshi wanted to know what god had protected Yanaka from the firestorm. What gave them the right to live when so many had perished?

  The day after the firestorm was eerily quiet. It was as if the entire world surrounding them had turned to ash. Hiroshi went against the wishes of his grandparents and volunteered for the committee to help clear away the dead, with hopes of notifying their families and giving them a proper burial. How could he not help? he asked his grandparents. Before March 10, 1945, Hiroshi had never seen a dead body, now they lay all around him—some like blackened statues still in sitting positions, others with their skin melted away from a heat that burned like a furnace, leaving only fragments of bone in dust. The flames that had been swept forward by the winds left no escape for anyone caught in the storm. Amid the rubble, Hiroshi also found small miracles—some bodies untouched where they fell, or a wayward cloth helmet and baby’s sock that hadn’t burned.

  The air was still thick and smoky as the neighborhood committees scattered in groups of four or five, his led by a man named Iwada-san. Hiroshi began coughing, his eyes burning from the smoke. One man, whom he recognized as the father of one of his classmates, passed out white handkerchiefs for them to tie around their mouths. They walked silently down the road toward the Onagigawa River looking like bandits. Once green and tree lined, there was nothing left on either side of the road. As they approached the river, it was as if the once lush landscape had been wiped clean, the blank surface covered in gray ash like snow. All that was left was the charred stone bridge. Hiroshi heard the water flowing below the embankment then saw the burned bodies that lay along the slope, while other bodies floated in the river. He heard one committee member, an older man, say that those who ran toward the river were trapped by a wave of fire, which suddenly had surrounded them from all directions. Many who jumped into the river to escape the fire were asphyxiated by the smoke and burning air. The man nudged one of the bodies with his foot and stepped quickly back when a large piece of the charred leg broke away. Hiroshi knew that so many bodies would never be identified.

  It made Hiroshi sick to his stomach as he worked furiously to retrieve the swollen and bloated bodies from the river. He climbed back up, half-soaked, and retched on the bank, but knew that if he stopped, he would never be able to continue. He held down his next bout of nausea and faced his fear, or it would always return to haunt him. A sudden movement down by the side of the river caught his eye, a woman’s body floating against the bank, her clothes caught on some branches. Carefully, Hiroshi made his way back down the embankment until he reached the body, her back burned to the bone. When he turned her body over, her face was distorted, blackened and bloated but not burned. He checked to see if her name and address was sewn into her clothes as they’d all been instructed to do. And there, on the inside flap of her jacket, were the characters that told him her name was Noriko Tanaka.

  Destiny

  Hiroshi’s unmei, the destiny his obaachan had told him about as a boy, came to light on that day when all else was steeped in darkness. It was Iwada-san the head of his search committee, who recognized the name Noriko Tanaka as they gathered to identify the multitude of dead found by the Onagigawa River. Hiroshi hadn’t known his heart could hold so much sadness, and wondered how to keep it from bursting. That morning, he had found the body of Tanaka-oyakata’s wife, though he didn’t know it was the great sumo coach’s wife at first. There were so many dead and dying, so many nameless bodies. But it was her face that struck him as he turned her body over, bloated in death, yet strangely calm. He tried to wipe her face of ash and dirt, picked the debris out of her hair. Even when he discovered the name sewn in her jacket, he didn’t make the connection to Tanaka-oyakata, thinking only what a terrible loss it was to the family waiting for her to return to them. Her body was wrapped in a sheet and lined up among the dozens of others until her family could be reached.

  It wasn’t until Hiroshi and Iwada-san entered the still smoldering Katsuyama-beya later that afternoon that it was confirmed that Noriko Tanaka really was Tanaka-sama’s wife. The oyakata stood before him, a big, defeated man. With him was a pretty girl Hiroshi assumed was his daughter, with her hands wrapped in white bandages like two thick
gloves. Her dark, piercing eyes peered out at him from behind Tanaka. He looked away, his throat sore when he swallowed.

  “Tanaka-san, if you could come with us to identify the body. We’ve set up a medical tent down by the river,” Iwada-san said softly.

  “Hai,” Tanaka answered. Without saying another word, he bowed low to Iwada-san.

  “It was Hiroshi-san who found your wife’s body,” Iwada said, bowing back.

  Hiroshi watched Oyakata-san’s lower lip tremble. His daughter stood there, her bandaged hands seeming to weigh her down, while tears streamed soundlessly down her cheeks.

  Tanaka-sama touched Hiroshi’s arm and bowed low to him. “Domo…,” he began, his voice breaking. “Domo arigato goziamasu, Hiroshi-san, for finding my Noriko.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Hiroshi said, bowing back. He wasn’t sure Tanaka-sama heard a word he said, or remembered him to be the young recruit whose sumo career had been cut short by the war. The wind had picked up again, a sudden rush of smoke swept by, and he heard the little girl whimper, step forward and raise her bandaged hands as if to protect her father. Tanaka put his arm around the little girl’s shoulders.

  Once outside the gate, Hiroshi turned around to see that the main house still stood, but all he saw left of the Katsuyama-beya was one building, darkened by fire.

  Everything else was gone.

  9

  Voices

  AUGUST 1945

  The voices told what had happened after the atomic bombs fell, like the whispered words of ghosts. Can you imagine a wind so strong that it ripped a man’s face away where he stood? Can you imagine how internal organs exploded, clothes and bodies burst into flames, disintegrated on the spot? Can you envision a mushroom cloud formed by smoke and debris that could be seen for miles by the naked eye, followed by a black rain falling, black tears they called it, radiation spreading in its wake? Those who died were the lucky ones, the voices continued. Those who lived through it would never be the same.

  Nine days after the atomic bombs fell, on August 15, Hiroshi and his family knelt in front of the radio and heard the static, high-pitched voice of the “divine god,” their imperial emperor, for the first time. Hiroshi was stunned; it was the calm voice of a mild-mannered man who sounded more like a scholar than a leader. The voice said the war “had not turned in Japan’s favor,” and they must now “endure the unendurable, and bear the unbearable.” Hadn’t they already lived through the unbearable? Died for it? It was the voice of a man who spoke in formal, stilted classical phrases, a voice that sounded very far away from the Japanese people.

  Part Two

  Ah, summer grasses!

  All that remains

  of the warrior’s dreams.

  —Basho

  10

  Shadow Figures

  1945

  Fumiko Wada hurried down the crowded alleyways to wait with other women in food lines that grew longer with each day of the occupation. At sixty-three years of age, she fought to keep her anger and sorrow at bay. The number of lives lost abroad and at home was staggering. And in the end, what was it all for?

  The first three months after Japan’s surrender in August were heavy with despair, the sky a thick, smoky blanket that wouldn’t lift. But by early November, the air had become an icy chill. Fumiko feared a long, cold winter and stayed close to home, urging Hiroshi and Kenji to do the same. But it wasn’t just the despair and destruction that disturbed her about this new postwar Tokyo. She edged past another pair of cigarette-smoking, gum-chewing, chocolate-giving gaijin soldiers who patrolled the streets. Fumiko loathed these towering men with their strong smells and loud voices, the panpan women who entertained them, and the gang-run black market, which charged exorbitant prices for food and goods. Even with the blackout curtains taken down, the slit trenches filled in, and the nightly scream of air-raid sirens silenced, the Japanese people still went hungry. They moved through the streets like shadow figures, and it felt to Fumiko as if another kind of war had just begun.

  Despite the Allied forces’ steady presence, Fumiko was lucky if she could bring home a bit of rice mixed with soybeans, or powdered milk, or eggs for Yoshio and her grandsons. Food remained scarce, government distribution chaotic, and the high prices on the black market forced most people to survive on watery soups, sweet potatoes, the roots of plants, acorns, insects and rodents, and a type of steamed wheat bran bread that was formerly fed only to cattle and horses. People were still dying daily from starvation. Each time Fumiko bit into the coarse, bland bread, she imagined what Ayako would say. “It isn’t even good enough for cattle and horses!” Then Ayako’s laughter would fill Fumiko’s mind as it used to fill the small room behind her friend’s bakery.

  One day, Yoshio simply refused to eat the bran bread anymore. “It upsets my stomach,” he said, preferring to pick at the boiled sweet potato in his bowl. Hiroshi and Kenji were cleverer; she knew they pocketed the bread, most likely to feed the stray dogs. She didn’t think it was possible for them to lose more weight after the war, but they became shadow figures like all the rest. When Fumiko felt the bread lodge drily in her own throat, she had only to remember her friend’s sweet, light kasutera, the thin, loaf-sized sponge cake, and her mouth would water.

  She often thought of Ayako while she waited in the food lines, and her sorrow ran even deeper than her anger. She felt as if her breath were squeezed out of her. Three months past the surrender, Ayako was still missing. Ayako-san, along with her daughter and grandson, had moved to Hiroshima to stay with relatives until the war’s end. After the bombs were dropped, Fumiko could only wait, praying that they’d been spared. Each morning she braced herself, fearing the news she waited for day after day. Had Ayako gone into the other world where her two husbands and lost child waited for her?

  Sometimes, Fumiko felt Ayako’s loss was unbearable, a current that flashed through her body, growing more severe as the days passed. Some nights she lay still on the futon, so as not to wake Yoshio, and she wondered if he could feel that current surging through her or hear the slight hum that grew louder each passing week. When she closed her eyes, images of Ayako, Mikiko, and little Juzo flickered through her mind, keeping her awake. The following day she moved through the world in a daze, dozing wherever she sat down.

  Fumiko glanced at the long, hopeless food lines and kept walking, no longer cringing at the loud American soldiers who took up most of the walkway. She ignored them like a dip in the road and slipped past, her sandals click-clacking as she went about her own business. “Slow down, Mama-san, what’s the hurry?” a soldier called out, but she just pulled her kimono tighter and walked faster, shaking his voice away.

  She kept walking until she neared the train station. She thought of returning home and making Yoshio walk with her; it would do him good to get out into the fresh air, but she could already hear him say to her, “I see all I need to see from here.” But the sky had cleared to a pale blue, like an open door that suddenly made her feel courageous. She held her head high and looked clearly around for the first time in a long time. With so many buildings destroyed in the bombings, it was a miracle that so many train lines were still running. Fumiko marveled at the crowds of people hurrying in and out.

  The faces she saw changed as she entered the train station, no longer just anxious women waiting in food lines, but beggars and soldiers, vendors and the homeless who had nowhere else to go. On the platform, Fumiko found herself pushed by the hordes as a train rattled slowly into the station. People crowded off and then on, pulling her along as they boarded.

  Downtown Tokyo near the Sumida River looked like a wasteland. Where tall buildings once stood, Fumiko saw only rubble for miles around. Occasionally, a lone building stood, like the last can on a shelf. No space had been wasted, however. Flattened and bombed-out areas had already been turned into vegetable gardens. On every block were notice boards with handwritten sheets of paper that described missing persons. When the wind blew, they looked like hundreds of white
flags flapping up and down in surrender. The homeless families increased in number as she walked along the downtown streets, their scant belongings tied in bundles beside them. Stories of the displaced spread through every household as war widows and orphans wandered the streets begging for food. “Anything, anything,” they whispered, forcing her to look away. And yet, the most heartbreaking faces Fumiko saw were those of Japanese soldiers who had returned from war, having cheated starvation and death, only to find their homes incinerated and their families missing or dead. With nowhere to go, they roamed the streets aimlessly, dazed and despondent like phantoms, still dressed in their ragged uniforms. She was furious at a government that would abandon its soldiers. Fumiko longed for the suffering to end as she walked slowly down the ravaged streets going nowhere in particular. She looked upon the bleak city in ruins, hoping against hope that it might someday be rebuilt.

  Shelter

  After the surrender, Hiroshi stayed close to home as his obaachan wanted him to do. But a few weeks later, when the call came for volunteers to help fill in the slit trenches that had been dug for defense purposes, he was more than happy to sign up. The occupying forces hoped to quickly erase any outward signs of the war. Hiroshi was just thankful for the pure, physical work of digging; it made him wake up each morning and shake off his stupor, the listlessness that slowed his movements. He wanted nothing more than to work his muscles again until they ached, until his clothes became stiff with dirt and sweat. He wanted to draw long, slow breaths in hopes that the air around him might lighten his heart and mind. At eighteen, he could do little else for his devastated country but fill in the slit trenches he had once helped to dig. Every day there were new rumors of food shipments coming in, of buildings that would be resurrected, and of schools reopening, but week after week, everything remained in flux. By the end of November, Hiroshi was sure of only one change: the long, narrow scars by the side of the roads had all but disappeared.