Access Full Guide Download Save. Featured Collections. Japanese Literature. Chapters Character Analysis. Important Quotes. Essay Topics. Overview The novel dramatizes thestruggles of twenty-five-year-old Ichiro Yamada as he returns home after two years spent in prison. Unlock this Study Guide! Internet Archive's 25th Anniversary Logo. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest.
Sign up Log in. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Now, two years older, he was even more of a man. Christ, he thought to himself, just a goddamn kid is all I was. What the hell have I done? What am I doing back here? Best thing I can do would be to kill some son of a bitch and head back to prison. It was thoughtful. The eyes confronted Ichiro with indecision which changed slowly to enlightenment and then to suspicion.
He remembered. He knew. Ichiro wanted to say yes. He wanted to return the look of despising hatred and say simply yes, but it was too much to say. The walls had closed in and were crushing all the unspoken words back down into his stomach. He shook his head once, not wanting to evade the yes but finding it impossible to meet them…. Shit on you. Surprisingly, Ichiro felt relieved. As he stooped to lift the suitcase a wet wad splattered over his hand and dripped onto the black leather.
The legs of his accuser were in front of him. God in a pair of green fatigues, U. Army style. They were the legs of the jury that had passed sentence on him. Beseech me, they seemed to say, throw your arms about me and bury your head between my knees and seek pardon for your great sin. The war had wrought violent changes upon the people, and the people, in turn, working hard and living hard and earning a lot of money and spending it on whatever was available, had distorted the profile of Jackson Street.
The street had about it the air of a carnival without quite succeeding at becoming one. A shooting gallery stood where once had been a clothing store; fish and chips had replaced a jewelry shop; and a bunch of Negroes were horsing around raucously in front of a pool parlor…. He walked past the pool parlor, picking his way gingerly among the Negroes, of whom there had been only a few at one time and of whom there seemed to be nothing but now….
It was her way of saying that she had made him what he was and that the thing in him which made him say no to the judge and go to prison for two years was the growth of a seed planted by the mother tree and that she was the mother who had put this thing in her son and that everything that had been done and said was exactly as it should have been and that that was what made him her son because no other would have made her feel the pride that was in her breast.
He looked at his mother and swallowed with difficulty the bitterness that threatened to destroy the last fragment of understanding for the woman who was his mother and still a stranger because, in truth, he could not know what it was to be a Japanese who breathed the air of America and yet had never lifted a foot from the land that was Japan. Mama tells him. Makes no difference. It is the war that has made them that way. All the people say the same thing.
The war and the camp life. Made them wild like cats and dogs. It is hard to understand. And in this hate for that thing, he hated his brother and also his parents because they had created the thing in their eyes and hands and minds which had seen and felt and thought as Japanese for thirty-five years in an America which they rejected as thoroughly as if they had never been a day away from Japan.
He showed me all the pictures he had taken in Japan. He had many of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I told him that he must be mistaken because Japan did not lose the war as he seems to believe and that he could not have been in Japan to take pictures because, if he was in Japan, he would not have been permitted to remain alive… I told him that what must really have happened was that the army only told him he was in Japan when he was someplace else, and that it was too bad he believed the propaganda.
Then he got so mad his face went white… It is not enough that they must willingly take up arms against their uncles and cousins and even brothers and sisters, but they no longer have respect for the old ones. If I had a son and he had gone in the American army to fight Japan, I would have killed myself with shame.
The mother was crying now, without shame and alone in her grief that knew no end. And in her bottomless grief that made no distinction as to what was wrong and what was right and who was Japanese and who was not, there was no awareness of the other mother with a living son who had come to say to her you are with shame and grief because you were not Japanese and thereby killed your son but mine is big and strong and full of life because I did not weaken and would not let my son destroy himself uselessly and treacherously.
Bob, and a lot of others with no more to lose or gain then he, had not found it necessary to think about whether or not to go into the army.
When the time came, they knew what was right for them and they went. And some said: You, Mr. Round them up. Time would ease the rupture which now separated him from the young Japanese who were Americans because they had fought for America and believed in it.
And time would destroy the old Japanese who, living in America and being denied a place as citizens, nevertheless had become inextricably a part of the country which by its vastness and goodness and fairness and plentitude drew them into its fold, or else they would not have understood why it was that their sons, who looked as Japanese as they themselves, were not Japanese at all but Americans of the country America.
In time, he thought, in time there will be a place for me. I will take my family to visit the family of Freddie, whom I have just left as I did because time has not yet done its work, and our families together will visit still another family whose father was two years in the army of America instead of two years in prison and it will not matter about the past, for time will have erased it from our memories and there will be only joy and sorrow and sickness, which is the way things should be.
And, as his heart mercifully stacked the blocks of hope into the pattern of an America which would someday hold an unquestioned place for him, his mind said no, it is not to be, and the castle tumbled and was swallowed up by the darkness of his soul, for time might cloud the memories of others but the trouble was inside of him and time would not soften that.
For a brief moment Ichiro felt a strange exhilaration. Kenji had two years, maybe a lifetime if the thing that was chewing away at him suddenly stopped. But he, Ichiro, had stopped living two years ago.
Give me the stump which gives you the right to hold your head high. Give me the eleven inches which are beginning to hurt again and bring ever closer the fear of approaching death, and give me with it the fullness of yourself which is also yours because you were man enough to wish the thing which destroyed your leg and, perhaps, you with it but, at the same time, made it so that you can put your one good foot in the dirt of America and know that the wet coolness of it is yours beyond a single doubt.
The mother collapsed limply to the floor and the father, propelled by the painful blow, collided against the wall. For long moments he stood between therrl as the anger drained out of his body.
He watched his mother rise and go out to the store, her face once again calm and guileless. I'm sorry, Pa. I know. Then he sat down and offered the bottle to Ichiro. The whisky was ugly tasting but it helped to relax him. He looked at his father, who seemed about to cry. Forget it, won't you? I'm sorry. It just happened. Ichiro felt better. I'll go nuts sitting around. It will take time. Where do they live? He was. On Nineteenth.
Small, yellow apartment house on the south side. I can talk to him. I won't need all that. Go to a movie with Freddie. Eat someplace nice. Have a good time. The small apartment house on the south side was not far from the bus stop. He saw it the minute he got off the bus. He climbed up the shaky stairs and consulted the mailboxes, which told him that the Akimotos occu- pied 2-B.
He knocked softly and waited. When no one answered, he pounded more heavily. It was the door to 2-A that opened. A plump, young Japanese woman peered into the hall and asked not unkindly: "What you want? He lives here, doesn't he.? Her housecoat was baggy and dirty and unzipped down to her waist. A baby cried far inside.
He always sleeps late. You can pound on the door until he hears you, or," she grinned at him, "you're really welcome to come sit in my place and wait. Freddie's a good friend of mine. You come with him, okay? Finally he heard noises deep inside the apartment. Footsteps padded reluctantly toward the door and the latch snapped. It's Itchy. They let you out!
About time, I say, about time, I say, about time. He wore a rumpled T-shirt and nothing else. Ichiro took the other's hand and they shook warmly. How've you been, huh? Whatcha been doin'? What have you been doing? Been out pretty near a month, haven't you? You know what I mean. I've been worried. Got some? I've got to know. That's what I've been tellin' 'em. I got my life to live and they got theirs. They try to tell me somethin', I tell 'em shit.
I'm doin' fine. Why for? You and me, we picked the wrong side. Doesn't mean we gotta stop livin'. I been havin' a good time. I didn't rot two years without wantin' to catch up. The alley was littered with rubbish and he saw a cat pawing through a trash can. He wanted to talk to Freddie, who used to be a regular worrier.
He wanted to get under the new protective shell of brave abandon and seek out the answers which he knew were never really to be buried. It's eatin' my guts out too. Is that why you come to see me? You miserable son of a bitch. Better you shoulda got a Kraut bullet in your balls. I sat here on my fanny for a whole week, thinkin'. And I come to a conclusion. Same place yours are. He chuckled, disappointed because Freddie offered no hope, but at the same time relieved to be assured that he was not the only one floundering in heavy seas.
I stayed there all day until the old man came home. I'm the guy what used to be so damn particular about dames. She's nothin' but a fat pig. Can't get enough of it. Bet she gave you the once over. Don't push your luck. Me, I don't give a damn. In the rneanwhile, I got somethin' to hang on to. She don't care who I am or what I done or where I been. All she wants is me, the way I am, with no questions. Me, I been out and around. I seen Kaz one day. Used to shoot megs together.
That's how long I known him. He's goin' to school on the G.!. He was glad as hell to see me. Stuck his hand out, just like that, kinda nervous like. He said somethin' about bein' in a hurry and took off. That's how it is. Either they're in a big, fat rush or they don't know you no more. Great life, huh? What'd he do? Spit on you? Six months he was in the army. You know that? Six lousy months and he wangled himself a medical discharge. I been hearin' about him. You just come. I want to look around by myself.
You know how it is. Maybe catch a bus and ride all over town. I feel like it. Buzz me on the phone. It's in the book. We guys get together every Friday for poker.
We can sure use a sixth hand. Who else? I'll straighten out. How much time you need? Wise up, Itchy, wise up. He had gone to seek assur- ance and not having found it had not increased his despair. Freddie was waging a shallow struggle with a to-hell-with-the-rest-of-the-world attitude, and he wasn't being very successful. One could not fight an enemy who looked upon him as much as to say: "This is America, which is for Americans.
You have spent two years in prison to prove that you are Japanese - go to Japan! Was it possible that he, striding freely down the street of an American city, the city of his birth and schooling and the cradle of his hopes and dreams, had waved it all aside beyond recall?
Was it possible that he and Freddie and the other four of the poker crowd and all the other American-born, American-educated Jap- anese who had renounced their American-ness in a frightening moment of madness had done so irretrieva- bly? Was there no hope of redemption? Surely there must be. He was still a citizen. He could still vote. He was free to travel and work and study and marry and drink and gamble.
People forgot and, in forgetting, forgave. Time would ease the rupture which now separated him from the young Japanese who were Americans because they had fought for America and believed in it. In time, he thought, in time there will again be a place for me. I will buy a home and love my family and I will walk down the street holding my son's hand and people will stop and talk with us about the weather and the ball games and the elections. I will take my family to visit the family of Freddie, whom I have just left as I did because time has not yet done its work, and our families together will visit still another family whose father was two years in the army of America instead of two years in prison and it will not matter about the past, for time will have erased it from our memories and there will be only joy and sorrow and sickness, which is the way things should be.
And, as his heart mercifully stacked the blocks of hope into the pattern of an America which would someday hold an unquestioned place for him, his mind said no, it is not to be, and the castle tumbled and was swallowed up by the darkness of his soul, for time might cloud the memories of others but the trouble was inside of him and time would not soften that.
He was at Fourteenth Street where Jackson leveled off for a block before it resumed its gradual descent toward the bay. A bus turned into the stop and he hurled himself into it. There were plenty of seats and he was glad for that because he could not have suffered a crowd.
Sitting next to the window and glimpsing the people and houses and automobiles, he gradually felt more at ease. Not until the bus had traversed the business district and pointed itself toward the northeast did he realize' that he was on the same bus which he used to take every morning as a university student.
There had been such a time and he vividly brought to mind, with a hunger that he would never lose, the weighty volumes which he had carried against his side so that the cloth of his pants became thin and frayed, and the sandwiches in a brown grocery bag and the slide rule with the leather case which hung from his belt like the sword of learning which it was, for he was going to become an engineer and it had not mattered that Japan would soon be at war with America.
To be a student in America was a wonderful thing. To be a student in America studying engineering was a beautiful life. That, in itself, was worth defending from anyone and anything which dared to threaten it with change or extinction. Where was the slide rule, he asked himself, where was the shaft of exacting and thrilling discovery when I needed it most?
If only I had pictured it and felt it in my hands, I might well have made the right decision, for the seeing and feeling of it would have pushed out the bitterness with the greenness of the grass on the campus and the hardness of the chairs in the airy class- rooms with the blackboards stretched wall-to-wall be- hind the professor, and the books and the sandwiches and the bus rides coming and going.
I would have gone into the army for that and I would have shot and killed, and shot and killed some more, because I was happy when I was a student with the finely calculated white sword at my side. It is like being pulled asunder by a whirling tornado and one does not think of a slide rule though that may be the thing which will save one. No, one does not remember, and so I am not really to blame, but-and still the answer is there unchanged and unchallenged - I did not remember and Freddie did not remember.
But Bob did, and his friend, who talks of Bob's dying because the father wishes it, did, and so did a lot of others who had no more or no less reason than I. The bus stopped at the corner with the fountain lunch where he had had many a hamburger or coke or black coffee in cups that were solid and heavy but did not hold much coffee.
From there he walked naturally toward the campus and on up the wide, curving streets which soon branched off into countless narrow walks and drives among countless buildings of Gothic struc- ture which had flying buttresses and pointed arches and piers but failed as authentic Gothic because every- one called it bastard Gothic with laughing familiarity as though the buildings were imperfect children of their own.
As if he had come to the university expressly for the purpose, Ichiro went directly to the offices of the engineering school. He found the name Baxter Brown on the wall directory and proceeded up the stairs to the assistant professor's office in a remote corner of the building which was reached finally by climbing a steep flight of stairs no more than twenty inches wide. Brown, grayer and heavier, sat behind a desk impressively covered with books and journals and pa- pers.
He gaped at Ichiro in that vague, suddenly alert way that one instinctively manages when startled unex- pectedly frorn a dozing mood.
The professor wrenched himself out of his chair and carrle forth energetically with extended arm. It's been some tirne since I was one of your students. I knew the rnornent you stepped inside. Let me think now. No, no, don't tell me. Ichiro Yamada. Another minute and I would have had it. How are you, Mr. Lot of you fellows coming back. Everything all right? Tough about the evacuation. I really hated to see it happen. I suppose you're disturbed about it. Not too much, that is. Who wouldn't be?
Families uprooted, businesses smashed, educations interrupted. You've got a right to be sore. And you've proved it. That outfit in Italy. Greatest there eyer was. You were there too, I suppose? Interrogating prisoners I bet. You see-" "Sure. We can't all get in. I was in the first one myself. Did some consulting work for the navy this last one, but as a civilian. Still, every bit helps. Good to see you're thinking about coming back to the university.
It'll probably take me a little time to adjust myself No point to it. It'll come back in no time at all. You just pick up where you left off and you won't have any trouble. I've talked plenty of fellows out of repeating courses because they think they've forgotten so much and, you know, they all come back and thank me for it. You fellows are older and you've matured and you know what you want. Makes a whale of a difference, I'll tell you. You haven't forgotten a thing-not a thing.
It'll be there when you need it. Take my word for it. What were you in? Double E? Big opportunities in any branch. Too bad you're late for this quarter. Drop in any time. Outside the office and alone again. That wasn't the way I wanted it to happen, he thought. What happened'? He was nice enough. ShooK hands, talked, smiled. Still, it was all wrong. It was like meeting someone you knew in a revolving door, you going one way and the friend going the other.
You smiled, maybe shouted' 'Hi" and then you were outside and he was swallowed up by the building. It was seeing without meeting, talking without hearing, smiling with- out feeling. We didn't talk about the weather at all only that's what it felt like all the way through.
Was it him or was it me? Him or me? He or I? Brown or Itchy? It wasn't Brown, of course. Brown was heavier, his hair grayer, but he was still Brown of the engineering school of the university of the world of students and slide rules and he was Brown then and now of that tiny office with the books and papers which was cut off from the rest of the world by the narrow stairs which one would not think to climb unless he was six and curious and thought that the stairs led to the roof and the big blue sky.
No, Brown is still Brown. It is I who reduces conversation to the inconsequential because Brown is of that life which I have forfeited and, forfeiting it, have lost the right to see and hear and become excited over things which are of that wonderful past. And then he crossed the street and did not look back at the buildings and students and curved lanes and grass which was the garden in the forsaken land. He felt empty and quietly sad and hungry.
He was halfway through his second ham burger, sitting on the stool at the counter, when Kenji placed a hand on his shoulder. At least, what's left of me," said Kenji, shifting the cane from his right to his left hand and shaking with Ichiro. So Kenji had gone too. Or had he? He hoped that it was an automobile accident or something else that had brought on the injury which necessitated the cane and inspired the remark.
We can talk," he said, displaying his hamburger. I go when I feel like it and most of the time I don't. How about you? Just looking around. You've probably been walking around the campus, trying to catch the same smells and sounds and the other things which you've been thinking about all the time the government kept you away from Seattle.
Is it still the same? Can you start back to school tomorrow and pick up just where you left off? Ichiro felt he should ask about it but could not bring himself to do so. The new Oldsmobile was parked by a meter with the flag up to indicate that the time had expired.
There was a ticket on the windshield, which Kenji removed with the rubber tip of his cane. The pink ticket floated down and under the car.
Ichiro sniffed the new upholstery and touched a finger to the shiny, spotless dash. Uncle Sam. I got this for being a good patient. The car responded beautifully, the power in the engine throwing the vehicle forward with smooth effort.
Ichiro looked out at the houses, the big, roomy houses of brick and glass which belonged in magazines and were of that world which was no longer his to dream about. Kenji could still hope. A leg more or less wasn't important when compared with himself, Ichiro, who was strong and perfect but only an empty shell.
He would have given both legs to change places with Kenji. Ever hear of the Silver Star? Ichiro felt drawn to the soft-spoken veteran who voluntarily spoke of things that the battle- wise and battle-scarred were thought not to discuss because they had been through hell and hell was not a thing which a man kept alive in himself.
If Eto had been a brave man, if Eto had been wounded and given a medal, he would have dramatized his bravery to any and all who could be cornered into listening, but he was not a brave man and so he wouid never have gone into battle and displayed the sort of courage of which one might proudly speak.
There was no trace of the braggart as Kenji con- tinued: "A medal, a car, a pension, even an education. Just for packing a rifle. Is that good? If it isn't too painful. Talking about it doesn't hurt. Not having it doesn't hurt. But it hurts where it ought to be. Sometimes 1 think about killing myself. Sometimes it scares people. You got angry right away and 1 want to know why.
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