A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding Read online

  We got off the tram and walked toward Yamazato school. Down by the river, some boys older than Hideo crouched in the shallows and searched for eels. They prised stones from the riverbed and looked for their catch. A few yards farther on, where the river was deeper, another boy, stripped to the waist, threw a rock tied with string into the water. Two of his friends dived down. They came up gasping and one of them held the rock aloft in his hand. We arrived at the school gates and I handed Hideo his lunch box of buckwheat and okra which I had managed to grow in the garden. He loved to bite into the green vegetables to the white hollows of flesh inside, hold them up and declare, ‘Look, a star.’ He reached up and pressed hot fingers against my cheek. I told him, ‘Work hard, Hideo-chan.’ I put my hand over his and we smiled at one another and leaned forward until our foreheads touched. ‘I promise, Grandmother.’ Our morning ritual. ‘I’ll collect you later. Dried cod for dinner tonight.’ He made a sour face. ‘Or whale ham if I can find some.’ He smiled at this. I watched him walk through the school gates. I did not say goodbye, I did not say I loved him, but I hope he knew how loved he was, how loved he has always been. This is Hideo Watanabe. This is my grandson.

  • • •

  I was nearing the tram stop when the air-raid sirens began. The city had been spared the air raids experienced in Tokyo, the incendiary bombing so dense even the rivers were ablaze, but the week before fifty bombers had targeted the Mitsubishi shipyard, steelworks and the medical college hospital. Thankfully Yuko had not been working there at the time and Kenzo had laughed off the danger at his workplace. A woman, with her baby strapped to her back, glanced up at the sky. I did the same but could see no planes. She asked, ‘What do you think?’ I thought just for a moment that I should go back to get Hideo but I reasoned the teachers would take the children to a shelter if the sirens continued. ‘We’ll be safe,’ I told her and she nodded her agreement. As I took a tram back up the hill the all-clear rang out across the rooftops. I was due to help collect empty charcoal bags, which would then be delivered to City Hall for recycling. I calculated if I worked for two hours, I would have plenty of time to get a street car back down to Urakami to meet Yuko.

  Two incidents made me late for her. I wonder now if I meant to be? I was terrified by what she might say and how I would respond. These thoughts distracted me as I worked with a young widow, Tukiko. She pulled a wooden cart while I knocked on doors calling out for the bags. We had designed the route so we would finish close to my home. Tukiko would then head on to our neighbourhood association to make her delivery. When we were done I noticed my hands and shirt were stained with soot so at 10.30 a.m. I ran back to my house to change my clothes and wash off the dirt. By the time I closed our garden gate, it was probably 10.45 a.m. As I turned on to the main road, I saw the tram about fifty yards in front of me coming to a standstill. By the time I reached the stop, the street car was halfway down the hill. I checked my watch. It was 10.50 a.m. Yuko may already have been inside the cathedral. She had come to follow Shige’s Catholic faith and would often go there on her work break. The next tram would be along in fifteen minutes. I knew I would be late but also that she would wait for me. I remember I turned and saw a sign advertising tinned fruit in the window of the grocery store behind me. I wanted to buy some for Hideo and checked my ration book before heading into the shop. And so I was paying for a tin of mandarin oranges when a new light flooded our world. Those who dare to ask me how I survived pikadon are rewarded with the same answer: a sweet tooth. My humour unnerves them. The truth is less glib. Nagasaki saved me; its geography contained the power of the explosion to a third of the city, mostly the Urakami district and part of downtown. The harbour, the historic area and the centre were shielded by the higher ground around the river. While those beautiful hills, thick with green trees, nesting kites and outlying villages narrowed the bomb’s range, they also intensified its force. Although I was too high up, too far away, too sheltered within that dark grocery store, I was close enough to know what the end of existence sounds like.

  I had never heard such a noise before. It felt as if the world’s heart had exploded. Some would later describe it as a bang, but this was more than a door slamming on its hinges, or an oil truck thudding into a car. There can be no word for what we heard that day. There must never be. To give this sound a name might mean it could happen again. What word can capture the roar of every thunderstorm you might have heard, every avalanche and volcano and tsunami that you might have seen tear across the land, every city consumed by flames and waves and winds? Never find the language for such an agony of noise and the silence that followed.

  I was thrown backwards into a pile of wooden crates, a small window above the door shattered and sprayed shards across the shop, cracks ripped across the wall as if it were ice tapped by a hammer. The shopkeeper emerged from behind his counter, blood running from a gash above his eye. We stared at one another, too scared for some seconds to leave the sanctuary of the store. He held out his hand and I reached for him. We picked our way through the upended shelves and crates and those tins of fruit. We emerged into a cloud of red haze and heat, blinking in the dust that filled the air. This was pikadon: flash and bang. A new word for the new world that greeted us. The sky seemed to be on fire. A group of people had gathered at a clearing next to the laundryman’s shop. We joined them and looked down to what we could see of the city below, too confused to speak in those first moments. We must have known it to be a bomb, or bombs, but how could man alone do this? How could that be possible? A black fog clung to the ground but through breaks in its cover we saw an unimaginable sight. Urakami to the east of the river looked as if some god had stamped down on it, over and over again, kicked the debris away into the air and then moved on.

  What survivors saw differs in the telling. To some, the explosion was like a giant pulsating chrysanthemum, a thousand boiling clouds of purple and cream and pink, or it was a giant tree ablaze, shooting high into the sky, or yes, it was shaped like a mushroom, collapsing into itself and then rising away. I can’t tell you what I saw. I was looking to where the cathedral should have been. I could see the terraced hills behind where farmers had sliced into the land, but nothing else. When did I decide Yuko was dead? In that moment. At 11.03 or 11.04 a.m. I looked to Hideo’s school, about a mile away from the cathedral, and tried to make out the U-shape of the building. I turned to the shopkeeper and said, ‘My daughter and grandson are down there.’ His silence felt like an executioner’s blade wet from the kill. Eventually he said, ‘You should go home, wait for them.’ How could I go home? How could I wait for them not to return? I was a mile away from the edge of the bomb’s reach. ‘If I walk, I can get to the school in under an hour.’ The shopkeeper looked at me, suspicious. ‘There’s nothing you can do. Don’t go.’ I shook my head, refusing to accept his judgement. Instead I ran down the hill toward Urakami. At first the world seemed normal; the buildings, the banks, the street stalls, they were familiar. But then I entered a landscape so alien my nightmares could not have dreamed such terror.

  Should I speak of the horrors that I saw? They still seem so unreal to me. The tombs of the city’s cemeteries had been blown open and the dead walked among us. Shards of glass carpeted the ground and barefoot children ran over these splinters, their feet shredded and bleeding. Some had strange patterns etched on their exposed skin. There was a man with a broken jaw held in a silent scream. I passed a woman who was sitting on the ground trying to breastfeed her baby. The woman held the bloody rags covering her child up to me. ‘Help my son, he won’t feed.’ All hope was lost for the child. Rain started to fall, gritty and black. Much later I would learn this was what made my gums bleed and clumps of hair fall out in the days that followed. An old man stumbled out of a house and held a broom aloft. ‘Crush the enemy,’ he shouted over and over again. The nearer I drew to the school the less human the creatures left alive became. Their flesh was black or red raw, like the skin of a ripe pomegranate, th
eir feet were bare. Shoes had melted into the asphalt, still hot underfoot. A woman ran past, naked to the waist, her skin dragging behind her like a cape. Faces were swollen horribly by burns. The smell of burnt flesh and charcoal choked my nostrils. Other wounded people lay where they had fallen. One girl, about five years old, sat in the dirt, her left foot gone. ‘Water,’ she called out, but to my shame I did not stop.

  Everything seemed to be burning or burnt. The hemp trees were alight and a charred body hung from one of the electricity poles. The heat from some of the fires was so fierce, I had to find other routes, doubling back, trying to find a way through the flames. What to say of the baked street car, the tram tracks twisted up into the sky, the charcoal statues inside? The carcass of a horse lay on the ground, as delicate as a burnt log. Yet more bodies were floating on the surface of the river. They must have run there to cool their scorched skin. I felt as if the world had been turned inside out. This had to be hell. Finally, I reached the gates of the school.

  A blast had punched holes through the main building and fire had taken hold of what was left. Little of the smashed outhouses remained. The playground was littered with children who must have fallen as they played. I looked upon these blackened forms and thought Hideo surely to be dead then. Other people, parents presumably, searched with me. None of the bodies seemed alive, but perhaps I made a mistake? I don’t remember a boy with a burnt face; I’m sure I don’t. I shouted Hideo’s name and I thought maybe he had run to one of the shelters the teachers had been building. I walked beside the rice fields and came across another charred lump and beside those remains was a magnifying glass, warped by heat, and then what looked like a necklace dipped in fire. Identity tags. I rubbed clear the black grime with my fingers. His name. Hideo Watanabe. My grandson. This happened. This I did not imagine. Deranged with hope I thought just for a moment he too had survived. I screamed into air-raid shelters already full of those who had crawled there to die, but no one answered to his name. I ran back to the schoolyard and knew I could not leave. To go would mean he was gone. A boy dressed in the uniform of the Student Patriotic Corps asked if I needed help. What can a grandmother do when she knows her grandchild to be dead? She does what she must do: she believes that he is still alive.

  ‘I can’t find my grandson.’

  He pulled out a notepad. ‘What’s his name? I’ll put him on the list. We’re looking for survivors.’

  ‘Hideo Watanabe. He’s seven.’ I watched the boy write on paper smeared with dust and blood. How could this one young boy find my lost one? When would Hideo be looked for? Where could he have gone? Desperation made me hope that Yuko had decided not to meet me but had stayed at work. ‘The medical college hospital?’ ‘Gone,’ he said. ‘Try Michinoo train station. They’re taking the injured there.’ I started to head off. ‘Mitsubishi?’ He didn’t know. Some of the factories had tunnels and if Kenzo had made it to them, he might be safe. I knew if he had survived, he would also be looking.

  On the ruined streets that led to the station more wounded, so many, were making their way along the tracks to the station office. Some had wrapped crude bandages around their cuts and burns and broken limbs. The more seriously injured were carried in sheets, or on planks or carts. Despite the numbers, after the roar of the bomb and the screams of its victims, all was quiet. Footsteps, cartwheels, babies made no sound. The sky turned an impossible colour, a morning light or the shadows of dusk, I could not tell. I looked for the birds that soar above the city but there were none. Where had they gone? And then I understood the sky must have swallowed them. Later I saw a black kite alive on the ground, its feathers burned away, scalded wings flapping as it tried to take flight.

  At the station, noise returned. People begged the defence corps troops or medics who passed them, ‘Take my son, help my wife, save me.’ They grabbed at the too few doctors as they tried to tend the wounded. Nurses tore strips of cloth and smeared castor oil on exposed burns. One young woman, her uniform wet with blood, stood up, turned away and fainted. I wished death on some of the people I saw to end their suffering. I could not tell if they were man or woman; I could not make out eyes from ears or mouths; so many cried out for water until their moans of pain became whimpers followed by nothing. At some point, there was a screech of iron and a train arrived, its carriage doors flung open. The doctors began to point to people to load up first, presumably the ones more likely to survive. I don’t know how long I searched, but when I could no longer stand the sight of all those bodies I made my way back through the streets, past those too injured to move from the spreading fires, until I reached home. I sat in our kitchen and waited, hoping someone, anyone, would walk through the door.

  Darkness had fallen when I heard the crunch of gravel on our garden path. I waited, my blood racing, and a ghost walked into the room. Kenzo was white from head to foot. His hair and suit were covered in plaster dust, his eyes bruised, his fingernails were bleeding as if he had been scraping away at the walls. I ran to him. ‘It’s you?’ He nodded and held me in his arms. He checked me over. ‘You’re safe? Are you hurt?’ I told him I was unharmed. He glanced to the shadows of the rest of our house. ‘Are they asleep?’ I could not speak, I could not say the words. He slumped against the sink, his back to me, his hands grasping the stone rim.

  I touched his shoulder, felt the warmth of him. ‘Did you go to the school?’ He said nothing. ‘Yuko was at the cathedral. I was on my way to meet her.’ He gripped the sink tighter. ‘What do we do now?’

  He closed his eyes, defeated by the question. ‘We need to rest. We’ll look again when it’s light.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kenzo.’

  He turned his head to look at me. ‘Why?’

  ‘I should have gone back for him.’ I shook my head. ‘The air-raid warning, I thought it was a false alarm, I decided he would be safe with his teachers.’

  He pulled me toward him. ‘This isn’t your fault, Ama.’

  I tried to stop them but the tears came then. My heart felt crushed by the kindness of his words. ‘Tell me he’s somewhere safe, Kenzo. Tell me he’s not scared, tell me he’s still alive.’

  Kenzo held my face in his hands, made me look in his eyes. ‘He’s alive until we know he’s dead. They both are. Yes?’ How could I tell him otherwise? He took my silence as agreement. ‘We’ll check in the morning. I’ll go to the medical college again, visit the shelters. It’s too late tonight. The fires are still burning. But I promise you, Amaterasu, I won’t give up until I find them. I promise you that.’ He took my hand and led me through to the living area. We sat on the floor and listened to the radio in the dark. A newscaster spoke of the Russian invasion of Manchuria. The USSR had struck only hours before the bomb fell. Japan was at war with another enemy.

  ‘Turn it off,’ I said and the voice crackled away to nothing. ‘Why Urakami? The schools and houses?’

  ‘The factories.’ Kenzo began to pull off his jacket. ‘The ordnance works are gone, the steelworks and arms plant are badly damaged.’

  ‘But you survived?’ One sharp nod and then he put his head in his hands, ashamed by his tears. We embraced, my body too small to soak up the sobs that made his shudder. The shipbuilder and his wife saved, the city’s children and their mothers gone.

  We woke before dawn, ate sour millet, looked for photographs of Hideo and Yuko to take with us to Urakami Dai-Ichi Hospital. We thought survivors might have been taken there. I tied bedsheets to my back and we made our way through roads scattered with bricks, metal beams and chunks of plaster. Shards of buildings smouldered across the flattened landscape; skeletal girders and the odd chimney stack twisted up into the sky. People were picking through rubble, some on their hands and knees, and when an elderly woman picked up a blackened skull, I realised they were searching for bones. The cremations had begun for the bodies not yet consumed by flames. Volunteers loaded corpses onto carts or piles of wood. A woman near them was gathering a
shes in her hands and placing them into an empty can of powdered baby milk.

  When we arrived at the hospital only its exterior red-brick wall remained but doctors had set up a ward outside in the yard. Some canvas shelters had been raised to protect patients from the sun but others lay on soiled blankets or the bare ground as the morning heat took hold. We handed over the bedsheets to a nurse too pale with lack of sleep and asked if we might search for our missing among the patients. She took my hand, her voice gentle. ‘Some of them are very badly hurt, do you understand?’ I nodded and she turned to Kenzo. ‘I’m afraid we’re having to dispose of the bodies as quickly as possible.’ She patted the sheets in her arms. ‘This is most kind.’ We checked as best we could and then wrote Hideo and Yuko’s names on a list that had been pinned to the entrance sign of the hospital. Others had left their own messages: ‘Have you seen my parents, Aito and Nana Narita? Last seen in Urakami’, ‘If Goro Saito sees this, please go to your uncle’s home in Shimabara’ and ‘Lost: two children aged eight and six, called Yoshi and Akatsuki Yamada. Please contact Shinzo Yamada at Omura Naval Hospital.’

  We left the hospital and walked toward the stump of the cathedral. Kenzo squeezed my fingers. ‘Should we check?’ The stone entrance and some of the circular windows on the facade had survived the blast but the rest was rubble. I turned away. ‘There’s no point.’ Instead we walked for hours past more attempts at first-aid stations, more pockets of fires, until late in the afternoon when Kenzo stopped beside a child’s body, a girl maybe, covered his eyes with his hands and began to weep. I stood on tiptoes to place my cheek against his own. ‘Let’s go home, we’re tired. We should eat.’ He shook his head. ‘I need to go to the factory. You rest. I’ll keep looking.’