It was then that I first saw she actually was perplexed She was honestly in doubt. She fumbled a moment, and said, “It’s difficult for me to explain, but several times here in Japan I’ve wondered whether you would ever make a better husband than your father.”
“What do you mean?” I gasped.
“You know. Everybody knows your father lives for one thing. The Army.”
“Is that bad?”
She ignored my question and said, “I’ve had a weak and terrible feeling, Lloyd, that the day would come when you would think of me as your father thinks of your mother.”
Suddenly the water I had dived into was bitter cold and I asked, “You think there’s something wrong with my father?”
“Frankly, I do,” she replied. “The way he’s content to leave your mother walled up within a circle of a few close friends, there in Lancaster, while he plunges off to the wars. That isn’t good enough for me.”
I said, “We better get our feet on the ground and get some things organized.”
She accepted my suggestion. She opened the car door and stepped into the street. “Good idea,” she said.
We dismissed the chauffeur and wandered aimlessly along the streets of Kobe until we reached the water-front where the great Inland Sea of Japan has from the most ancient times provided an anchorage for roving ships and their rich cargoes. Eileen studied one of the dark vessels and said, “I came to Japan because I wanted our marriage to start right. I’m younger than you are, Lloyd, but I’m just as smart. And I think I’m just as brave. I want to be with you … in all kinds of weather.”
“I don’t get what you’re talking about,” I pleaded.
“About us. No, I’ll be honest About you.”
“What’s about me?”
“I’ve never told you this, Lloyd, but nine months ago I visited your mother. I was driving through Pennsylvania and stopped off. I was appalled at the loneliness in which she lives … in which she’s always lived.”
I felt weak. I knew what Eileen was saying was true but nevertheless I protested, “Mother wants to live that way.”
“Nonsense! No woman wants to live anyway but body and soul with the man she loves. Your mother may be a fine sport about the way she has to live, since she has no other choice … Lloyd, tell me this. That time I followed you down to the air base in West Texas … Why were you so scared?”
“I was worried about you.”
“What about me?”
“Well …”
“You mean … my reputation?”
“Well, yes.”
“Rubbish, Lloyd! The reason you were scared stiff was that you discovered you had on your hands a girl who would insist upon sharing your full life. Well, you were right. You could never tuck me away in a corner of Lancaster.”
I felt blood rising into my throat and said dizzily, “I think I’d better take you back to the hotel.”
There was an ugly moment of silence—which I now know I should have broken with a rousing kiss—and when I did nothing Eileen said dully, “I guess you’re right. Which way is the officers club?” We walked in gloomy silence for a few minutes. Then she said, “Lloyd, dear. Don’t get little-boy sorehead about this. It’s of absolutely fundamental importance. Please think about it.”
“About what?” I shouted.
“Don’t lose your temper. About the fact that half a marriage isn’t good enough for either you or me. I’ve got to have a man who loves me with his whole heart. Go ahead and become the greatest general in Air Force history. But love me too.”
“Damn it, I do love you,” I protested as the lights of the hotel appeared around the corner.
“Sure you do, in a cold, partial little way. Let’s think about this for a few days.”
Suddenly I was fighting to get married and I said, “I thought you came to Japan for a wedding.”
“I did, but I’ve got to marry a complete man. Not just the shreds that are left over after he’s led the important part of his life somewhere else.”
I was infuriated, not because of what she had said, but because she had seen so clearly the kind of man my father and mother had made me. Rationally my father had decided it would be good for him to marry a general’s daughter who had a ready-made family life in Lancaster. She wouldn’t be an encumbrance and she might prove to be a help. Now I was reasoning the same way. Marry Eileen because she was from a military family and would understand Air Force ropes without a lot of civilian argument. She was beautiful and, as she had proved tonight, plenty smart and courageous. She would be a catch for any man and I wanted her, but she was right when she said that I did not come to her with a whole heart. I knew what she was talking about, for I knew that I had never loved her in the absorbing way that sawed-off Joe Kelly loved his Japanese girl.
But this was the big point: I wanted to learn. In my heart I knew that my parents’ way wasn’t good enough and I wanted Eileen to help me find something better.
So I took her in my arms and gave her what we called “The Unconditional Surrender,” a kiss so long she had to beat on my arms for air. When I put her down she laughed that wonderful golden grin of hers and said softly, “For the first time I have the feeling we’ll work this thing out.” Then she kissed me in the ear and whispered, “You act a lot better than you talk.” And I do believe everything would have turned out all right if it hadn’t been for what happened the very next morning.
THE BIG GIRL: “It’s no fun to be a Stateside reject watching cute Japanese girls getting all the American men.”
Before I got out of bed Private Joe Kelly called me and said, “Well, Ace, this is Saturday!”
“What about it?” I asked drowsily.
“Ace, I’m gettin’ married!”
I couldn’t focus for a minute. Then I said, “Well, congratulations.”
“Ace,” the little gangster shouted. “Don’t you remember? You’re gonna be my best man.”
I started to say, “Gee, Kelly, I have an appointment …” but he was on my team. Wreck that he was, he belonged to my squadron. So I said, “I’ll break the appointment, Kelly. Where’s the big event take place?”
I walked down to the grubby building in which our consul had his offices and was amazed to find four G.I.-Japanese couples waiting to be married. Any man under such circumstances instinctively looks at the girls to see if there are any he would take for his wife, and believe me there was none I would care for. Katsumi, Joe’s girl, looked exactly like her picture: big round face, high cheeks, thick black hair and small eyes. When she smiled during the introductions I saw that like most Japanese girls she had in front a big gold tooth.
“We’re gettin’ that changed,” Joe said with some embarrassment.
Katsumi was uncertain whether she should offer to shake my hand or not, so when I extended mine she collapsed in agonizing giggles and popped her left fist over her mouth. Her knuckles were bright red from chapping, and as I studied these girls I wondered why it was that our G.I.’s—even though we’d been ordered not to use that word, it crept in—always seemed to marry the ugliest girls and never the pretty ones we saw at Takarazuka.
It was a dismal morning. Since Joe’s marriage was third in line I watched with mounting disgust the spectacle of American soldiers marrying whatever girls they had been able to pick up. I was ashamed at having been drawn into this sordid spectacle and was looking down at my fingernails when a bright voice called, “Are you Major Ace Gruver?” I looked up and breathed relief, for it was an American girl. She was oversize, but I was glad to know there were some American girls still alive.
She whispered, “I’m a secretary here.”
“Interesting job, I bet.”
She shook her head. “One marriage after another.”
“Don’t they know they can’t take the girls home?”
“Sure they know. But what I wanted to see you about is that I have a kid brother who is crazy about airplanes. He told me if I ever met a real jet pilot, to get his o
ttograft. I want your ottograft!”
She led me into her inner office where she gave me a sheet of paper to sign then added another. “Maybe the kid’ll be able to sell this one at a fancy price—like a baseball glove.”
“What I don’t get,” I said, “is why the Government allows these marriages in the first place.”
“The Government is smart. Public pressure back home insists the men be permitted to marry, so the Government does permit it, then washes its hands of the whole affair.” She showed me a form which each G.I. had to sign, on top of all the others, and it was about the frankest and most brutal I had ever seen. Kelly, for example, acknowledged that he was outside the law, waived his legal rights, said he would look after the girl on his own account and stated in writing that the Air Force was in no way responsible for his wife. At the bottom he swore that he was in right mind and that he had signed before witnesses.
“But these guys go right on?”
“Day after day.”
“Why?”
“That’s not a fair question to ask me,” she said somewhat sharply.
“You work here.”
“All right!” she said. “Would you call me pretty? No, nobody would call me pretty. I’m a plain Jane who couldn’t get married in America so I came out here where there were plenty of men.” She laughed at herself in a delightful, horsy sort of way and said bitterly, “They stamp us ‘Stateside rejects’! Sure, there were lots of men when I got here. But the damned Japanese girls had them all.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Like a soldier told me,” she explained. “He kept saying, ‘You American girls wouldn’t understand.’ ”
“Understand what?” I asked.
“The men all say these Japanese girls do something for them.”
“Like sex?”
“Not sex. I’m not bitter any more so I don’t charge it up to sex. Didn’t you notice?”
She showed me a wedding ring and said, “The man I finally got had been in love with a Japanese girl for two years. Said frankly he knew I’d never be half the wife she would have been.”
“Then why did he marry you?”
“Said I’d fit in better in Denver.”
She went to her purse and pulled out a wrinkled photograph. “My rival!” she said in obvious amazement. Before looking at the picture I could guess that the girl probably looked a lot like Katsumi. Red face, round features. The American secretary stared at the picture and said, “To me she looks absolutely ugly. I stole this picture when my husband burned the others. I keep it as a reminder that I must be a good wife.”
“Where’s the girl now?”
“She committed suicide.” She placed the damaged photograph back among her junk and assured me, “It all happened before I met Gus. I had nothing to do with the suicide.”
The door opened and the consul hurried through. “We’ll be ready for the next one in a couple of minutes,” he said. “You the witness, Major? Go on in.”
The girl led me into the office from which he had come. It was bleak with a writing table, a Bible, a portrait of President Truman and a coat rack. “This is where the foul deed takes place.” She laughed. “I’m always one of the witnesses and it’s beginning to tear me apart because every G.I. who comes into this room has the same look in his face that my husband gets when he speaks of his Japanese girl.” She hammered the table and cried, “Damn them all! They all have the same secret.”
“What?”
“They make their men feel important. I try to build my husband up—as a wife should. But with me it’s a game. With these ugly little round-faced girls it isn’t a game. It’s life.”
The door opened and Katsumi came in, followed by Joe Kelly. They expected to see the consul ready to marry them and Joe shrugged his shoulders at me and asked, “They figure out some new way to louse me up?”
The secretary asked, “How long they been messing around with you, soldier?”
“Please, lady! Not soldier! Air Force.”
The secretary said, “If the body’s warm it’s a soldier.”
The consul came in and started arranging papers. He was a young man with balding hair, a strained look and very big feet. His hands were awkward with the papers and he was irritated when he saw Katsumi. “You must wait outside,” he said sharply.
Obediently, Katsumi left. Joe started after her but the consul told him to stay, so Joe said to me, “Ace, don’t leave her alone at a time like this.”
I went and sat with the little girl while we heard Joe shout at the consul, “ ‘Yes, damn it all, I’ve read the papers. Yes, I understand I’m forfeitin’ all rights. Yes. Yes. Let’s get the thing movin’.”
“I’m only asking you as the law demands,” the consul said.
“And I’m only tellin’ you that Congressman Shimmark told me I could go ahead and get married.”
I hadn’t known it before, but apparently State Department men are just as scared of Congressmen as generals are, because right away the door opened and the consul said brusquely, “Come in, Miss.”
He lined the couple up before the desk, had them sign still some more papers, then conducted a brief ceremony. He was mad at Pvt. Kelly, dismayed by Katsumi and fed up with the whole affair. It was an ugly ceremony performed with grudging spirit and I was ashamed at having been witness to it.
But as I looked up from my embarrassment I happened to see Kelly’s face as he bent down to kiss Katsumi and in that instant the ugliness in the room vanished and I had to bite my lip. The horsy American secretary wrote something in a book and wiped her eyes, while the consul said to Kelly, “You understand that you have surrendered numerous rights in this matter?”
Kelly couldn’t take any more. He looked at the consul and his nose twitched. “You son …” he began and I knew that the consul was about to get the full Kelly treatment, which is about as profane as anyone can get. But Katsumi, already the wife, quietly took her husband’s hand and said, “We go now, Joe.”
Joe collapsed like a ruptured balloon. He looked at me and said, “It’s hell to be married. Take it from me, Ace.” Then he asked, “Ain’t you gonna kiss the bride?”
I was unprepared for this and must have betrayed some shock for I could see Joe cringe with bitter humiliation when he realized that I had absolutely no desire to kiss that big mouth with the bright gold tooth. I, in turn, wanted to drop through the floor for having insulted a member of my own squadron at such a time. Mine was the last in a long line of insults administered by his nation, his commanding officers, his consul and even his religion. In my defense it had never occurred to me that anyone would actually want to kiss a yellow-skinned Japanese girl. You fought the Japs on Guadalcanal. You organized their country for them in Kobe. You defended them in Korea. But it had never crossed my mind that you kissed them.
I took Katsumi’s big face in my hands and said, “The secretary told me Japanese girls make wonderful wives. You be a good wife to Joe.” Then I kissed her. It was repugnant, but at the same time I felt that I had in some trivial way helped one of my men marry the girl he loved.
“Good luck, kids,” I said.
“Thanks, Ace,” Joe replied.
When they left the consul said, “Such marriages are dreadful mistakes. We do our best to prevent them.”
“Do you succeed—very often?”
“You’d be surprised. We make the paper work so cumbersome a good many of the young hotheads lose steam. Actually we’ve helped forestall some inevitable tragedies.”
“You didn’t have much success with Joe.”
“We see everything here. Fights, tears. But if a boy’s had the gumption to write his Congressman we know he’s determined to go ahead. Now all Joe has to do is get his Congressman to pass a special bill and he’ll get Mrs. Joe into the States. Frankly, between you and me, I hope he succeeds. But it’s my job to paint a gloomy picture.”
The secretary stepped out of the room to call the next couple and the consul whi
spered, “Take that girl you just saw, my secretary. She’s married to a G.I. with whom I had some luck. He was going to marry an extremely ordinary Japanese girl, but our paper work and delays brought him to his senses.”
“What did you say to him?” I asked.
“As I remember, he was from Denver and I simply asked, ‘If you take this girl back to Denver will she fit in?’ ”
“What happened to the girl?”
“You saw her. She works here. My secretary.”
“I meant—what happened to the Japanese girl?” I wanted to hear his explanation.
Before he could reply the secretary brought the fourth couple into the office and the consul droned, “You understand what you’ve signed?”
The young man, a sailor, stood on one foot then the other and replied with studied patience, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”
The girl was just as ugly as Katsumi and I started to leave, but the consul called me back and said to the sailor, “How would you like to have Ace Gruver be your witness?”
“You Ace Gruver?” the boy asked.
“That’s right.”
“I’d be proud,” the boy said. He turned to his girl and spoke to her in rapid Japanese, using his hands to indicate airplanes in combat. The girl looked at me, giggled furiously and clapped her hand over her gold-crowned teeth.
It was this same well-meaning consul who got me into my big trouble, for when he turned in his weekly report on G.I. marriages to General Webster he must have mentioned his surprise at seeing me as Joe’s witness. At any rate the general called me into his office and stormed, “I’m astounded that you should lend yourself to such a thing—especially since you know Mrs. Webster’s and my objection to fraternization.”
“This wasn’t fraternization, sir. It was marriage,” I said.
“To a Japanese,” he stormed, spitting the words out.
“The kid’s from my outfit in Korea, sir.”
“All the more reason you should have tried to save him from such folly.”
“I did try, sir.”