Visiting Etajima, August 2011

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.