Visiting Etajima,
August 2011
A
scorching hot day. I leave for Etajima, where you had the secret training
of
the Pearl Harbor attack. A fifteen minutes’ ride on a high-speed ship
carries
the inhabitants’ daily life; a middle aged man reading a magazine,
Friday. The announcement for the
tourist sounds way too cheerful, talking
about
the island’s great nature, but remaining silent from telling its history.
Getting
on a shore, I start walking toward the hill, where your school was.
Sweat
falls in drops on my back. Nobody’s walking but riding the bus, I guess,
but
you didn’t ride it either, right? Just before I get to the school, there’s
a
house, where it used to be a lounge for naval boys. The owner, a midlife
woman
glances up from her book and says Hi, and
goes back to reading again.
Upstairs,
I see a sailor uniform and text books— and a replica of the compass
with
all the names of foreign countries and cities of Japan for daily prayers
for
parents. The original might have sunk or was burnt and molten, just like
how
the world was going to be.
Walking
around the school a guide tells me there
was no airstrike during the war,
and
lets me touch the bricks of the Student Hall. A single brick cost more than
a guy’s daily wage then. He says proudly. I smile
wryly and touch orange bricks,
which
have no scar, like a baby’s cheek;
too
smooth to tell anything about the warfare— and I guess it’s just too far
away
from the Pearl Harbor, great uncle; I see the sun setting over the bay
now,
and try picture you standing with your full height—but no, there’s too
much
backlight and you just glow blurry.
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