Westward Lies the Sun

A novel by

Robert H. Kono

Chapter One

The day was calm on Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains, a two-hour plus drive from Redondo Beach, California. A slight breeze blew in from the west but hardly stirred the surface of the water. The sky was cloudless and the sun shone warmly on the lake and surrounding landscape—the mountains, trees, the small town of Big Bear. It was early summer, too early for the main crowd of tourists to come flocking to the lake but not too early for good fishing.

Greg Sonoda, a Sansei Japanese American, sat in the boat with his two young sons,

Brian and Craig who were twelve and ten. Greg had stopped the boat near the shoreline to eat their lunch. As they munched on their sandwiches, they watched an osprey circle overhead, then plunge into the water to scoop up a trout.

“He caught his lunch,” observed Brian.

“It was a big one, too,” Craig said.

“And it looks like the kind of trout we’ll be catching as soon as we finish eating,” said

Greg.

“Are we going to troll or fly cast?” asked Brian.

1 “Both,” said Greg. “We’ll troll the greater depths toward the middle of the lake and toward the end of the day, we’ll fly cast the eastern shoreline where there’s bound to be big ones.”

“Can’t wait to tie into a big one,” Brian said.

“Me, neither,” Craig said.

“I recall that Craig caught the biggest one last time we were here,” Greg said.

“Yeah,” Craig said. “That was a whopper, eighteen and a half inches!”

“You just got lucky,” Brian said, ever competitive with his younger brother. “The one I lost was bigger than yours.”

“But you lost it,” Craig said. “You never boated it.”

“Today I’ll catch the biggest one, you’ll see.”

“Maybe I’ll get lucky again…skill is what counts, and I have the mojo.”

“You’ll need your mojo when we go deep-sea fishing one of these days,” Greg said.

Craig whooped. “Boy! I’ll catch the biggest fish you ever saw. When are we going?”

“Don’t know—yet. Some day, soon I hope. Depends on what’s going on at the office. Hard to break away…maybe on my sabbatical, in the South Pacific somewhere. I always wanted to explore the South Pacific ever since I read Blue Capricorn.”

Greg poured out some OJ from a plastic liter bottle and passed the cups around. As he was sipping his drink, he thought about the slander suit he was writing a brief on, how intractable it was and how becoming a lawyer had been a totally unexpected turn in his life.

“I wonder if you’ll ever find the Masamune sword, Dad?” Brian said, referring to the conversation they had as a family the night before.

2 “I showed you a picture of it because even if I don’t find it within my lifetime, I want you two boys to take up the banner and look for it no matter what.”

“What’s so special about it?” Craig asked.

“It’s a family heirloom. It’s been in the Sonoda family for centuries and my father snuck it in when he emigrated to America in the early 1920’s.”

“And it was stolen from us?” Brian said.

“That’s right. While we were in the concentration camps, thieves broke into our house and ransacked it and somehow found the Masamune hidden in the wall. My father took pains to conceal it as well as he could but the thieves were too clever. They must have seen the boarded over area and decided to break in.”

“It’s been a long time since you came back from the concentration camps,” Brian said. “How come you’re just now beginning the search for it?”

That was a long story, thought Greg. He had initially given up hope. As the only sibling residing in the U.S., he felt it was up to him to seek its whereabouts rather than his older brother who was in Japan but despaired in the wake of discovering how many cherished things had been looted when they returned from the camps. Not only had they been incarcerated by their own government but the general citizenry had plundered their personal belongings as well. It was a blow that took him a long time to recover from. But recover he did with a vengeance. It took a sojourn in Japan to rekindle an enthusiasm for life and putting things in order. The idea of looking for the Masamune had been with him for a long time now, but it was only recently that he was able to finance the search. He posted a

$10,000 reward for the whereabouts of the famous sword. He was just beginning to spread

3 the word along with photographs of the blade to the various dealers, the notable one being

Samurai Sword International in San Pedro.

In reply to his son’s question, Greg said: “I suppose it’s because I didn’t have the leeway to offer a reward for the discovery of the Masamune—yet. It’s a long story of waffling between letting bygones be bygones, the war, the camps, the ransacking, and recovering something of our family’s past. It’s a matter of dignity and honor, Brian.”

“It may be gone forever,” Craig said. “You may never find it. What then?”

“Then I want you to pick up the ball and look for it after I die. And you may want your offspring to do the same. It’s the striving that counts.”

“What’s that mean, Dad?” Brian asked.

“It means a noble goal is always worth striving for, even if you don’t attain it, because the striving is its own reward. Remember that.”

Brian balled up the plastic sandwich wrapping and tossed it into the lunch sack. He stood up and stretched.

“I’m ready to go fishing,” he said and picked up his rod.

“Me, too,” Craig said.

Greg finished the last mouthful and bent around to start the motor. With its growling sounds penetrating the surrounding stillness, Greg pulled up the anchor and pointed the boat toward the deeper water close to the middle of the lake. In a few minutes the boat was cruising along at trolling speed as the boys stripped out their lines. They were experienced fishermen, accustomed to both trolling with worms and fly fishing. Greg manned the motor and did not fish. He reserved the fun for later in the afternoon when they would anchor off the shore and fly fish.

4 As they were cruising under the warm sun, Greg’s thoughts turned to the slander suit that had been dumped into his lap. He had become acquainted with the prominent LA businessman, Henry Miyamoto, who wanted to sue a white man by the name of Dick

Simpson for defamation of character. It seems that Simpson, a business rival, had started rumors about Miyamoto to the effect that he was the illegitimate son of a Japanese army general, who had been sought by the Tokyo War Tribunal for having committed atrocities against American POWs during WWII and that he was a degenerate playboy in Tokyo with ties to the yakuza. All lies, said Miyamoto. He was born in America and never even been to

Japan. He wanted to take Simpson to court to clear his name. But the problem was that

Simpson did not specify Henry—Henry Miyamoto. He merely spread the rumor about one

Miyamoto presumably in the United States and Miyamoto was a common Japanese surname.

It could have been just about anyone, in the United States, Japan—or the entire world. Being a business rival of Miyamoto’s, he apparently meant to slander Henry but that would be hard to prove in a court of law. And Henry Miyamoto was adamant; he wanted his day in court.

Greg had tried to point out the difficulties to him but to no avail. There was bad blood between the two although they had never met and there was no common meeting ground, as far as Henry Miyamoto was concerned.

Greg was low-man on the totem pole at Crossett, Bigelow & Tyler, a huge law firm based in LA with offices all over the world, and he was often handed the more onerous cases—much to his chagrin. He sometimes wondered why he wanted to become a lawyer in the first place but he knew why. He chuckled inwardly. It was his wife’s doing…her and her mellifluous voice. It was such a soft, gentle voice that Greg longed to match it with a face.

She was a legal assistant at CBT’s LA office and he met her when he inquired about a

5 summer office job while going to UCLA. He got the job mainly due to her insistence. When he showed up for the interview, he met the voice and was not disappointed with the match.

She was beautiful. Her soft brown eyes looked gently into his and there was a stillness of a quiet soul in their depths. He fell immediately in love with Caroline Lister.

But…he had had to put the brakes on his feelings. This was the 1950’s and interracial marriage was not acceptable yet. His own people frowned upon it. There was the feeling that marrying a white woman only meant that one was trying to elevate oneself out of the underdog status…the snootiness factor. And the white majority would only look down on such a union, making sure they would stare them out of existence. Many states had anti- miscegenation laws on the books and racial hostility was still high. Better to just blend in and not rock the boat. But his heart was not in it. He wanted freedom of choice.

At UCLA Greg majored in Anthropology. He had also taken Japanese Language courses with the idea that he would someday do research on a small farming village in Japan, his father’s birthplace. He wanted to delve into his ancestral roots and trace the history of the village and to see how it prospered, how the people lived and how the general culture influenced their lives. His father was an Issei, a first generation immigrant, and his mother, a

Nisei (second generation) which made him a Sansei (third generation), although he tended to be intergenerational. His father, Tomoyuki Sonoda, spoke little English and his mother,

Jean, didn’t speak Japanese. They communicated haltingly and often used him as an intermediary. He grew up bilingual and provided an effective bridge between the two. His mother refused to learn Japanese, saying she was an American and English was her mother tongue.

6 A degree in Anthropology would normally lead to a PhD and to teaching, but Greg did not want to teach. In fact he did not know what to do with the degree, other than having a vague desire to understand how the Japanese culture impacted on the villagers and thus understand how Japanese-ness affected his consciousness as an American. It seemed that two polar opposites were pulling at him, threatening him with confusing choices, choices to become either a Japanese or an American or to become something else—like himself. As an entity who understood both countries, he figured he could straddle both countries culturally and still remain Greg Sonoda, but it was no easy task as the two worlds of his mother and father clashed. With the outbreak of WWII and the mass evacuation from the West Coast, they were thrown into concentration camps, a violation of their civil liberties as Americans, there to question their loyalties to Japan or America. By and large the Japanese Americans chose to be loyal to the United States (after all, they were Americans) but a number of them branded themselves as disloyals when they refused to answer a rigged questionnaire speciously separating the loyals from the disloyals. Then there was the Fair Play Committee movement at the Heart Mountain, Wyoming camp where Greg was interned along with his mother. (Tomoyuki had been arrested by the FBI and county sheriff the night of Pearl

Harbor and sent to separate detention centers.) The insistence of the Fair Play Committee on reinstituting their civil liberties as Americans before they would agree to be drafted caused widespread repercussions. The members of the movement were tried and convicted of being draft dodgers and spent time at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary until pardoned by President

Truman.

Going into Anthropology was Greg’s attempt to understand his own background better. What he was good for as a person was beyond him at the moment. He wanted to do

7 many things: start a business, make a lot of money, write a novel. But he had to get his military service out the way first.

After graduation he enlisted in the Army and took officer training at the U.S. Army

Intelligence Center, Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He was then dispatched to Japan where he acted as a bilingual aide to the head of Provost Marshal Liaison Office in Tokyo. It was there that he tied up with his older brother, Dan Sonoda, a sporting goods manufacturer.

Greg gunned the motor after having the boys reel in their lines and made for the shore for a pit stop. Relieving themselves among the trees, the three got in the boat again to make their way across the lake. The sun was going down and its last rays were warming the shoreline. It had been a splendid day, Greg observed, looking up at the sky which was clear except for a bunch of cumulus clouds to the west, and the trout had been cooperative. Now he was anticipating catching a few big ones fly-casting and brought the boat to a stop, dropping anchor in the shallower eastern half of the lake. When he had rigged his pole and tied on a Light Cahill, he made sure Brian and Craig were ready to fly fish themselves before making the first cast. There were rises all around them.

Greg didn’t have to wait long before he caught a fish. There was a stir in the water and Greg raised the tip of his pole sharply. He had hooked into a large one. Stripping in the line carefully, he brought the fish to the side of the boat where he deftly netted it. It was a handsome 12-inch rainbow trout. Just then both Brian and Craig caught one and Greg netted them and brought them in. Craig’s measured 14 inches, Brain’s only ten.

“Looks like I win again,” Craig cried.

“Day’s not done yet,” said Brian.

8 They cast their flies again and repeated the process, false casting and shooting their lines toward the shore. The caught a few more but soon the fish left the area.

“Looks like we spooked them,” said Greg.

“Yeah, all that thrashing around did it,” said Brian.

“Let’s move to another spot, there’s still time,” said Craig. “I’ll catch a bigger one yet.”

“Braggart,” Brian said.

“Naw, just fact,” Craig said.

“I think we have enough fish, boys,” Greg said. “Counting the fish you caught trolling, I’d say we have two limits.”

“Don’t you want to fish some more, Dad?” Brian asked.

“I’d like to but it’s getting late and we should be heading back,” Greg said.

“Phooey!” Craig said.

Greg yanked on the starter and motored toward the dock in the distance and upon reaching it expertly guided the boat to its berth. They got out and trundling their gear, fish and belongings, they made their way to the car where they deposited their loads. In the car they broke out some snacks to tide themselves over till a late dinner at home where the boy’s mother, Caroline, awaited them. It would be a two-hour drive back to Redondo Beach and that would put them back home around seven. Greg started the car, a late model Toyota

Camry, and left the parking lot to enter the highway that would take them to CA-210 W.

Then it would be a straight shot home.

9 Chapter Two

Caroline Lister was the love of his life. He later learned that she had vouchsafed for him at the initial interview for a summer job at Crossett, Bigelow & Tyler. He was able to work closely with her the entire summer and breathe in her presence—as from afar. Though they sometimes shared a table in the downstairs cafeteria during their breaks, Greg felt awkward with her, a Japanese in the company of a beautiful white woman. There were stares from passersby and the neighboring tables. He himself wasn’t bad looking, standing over six feet with strong eyebrows and chin and bright, intelligent eyes. He was muscular and athletic, having played tennis at school since he was a child. They talked about his plans for the future in Anthropology; he loved listening to her speak in her mellifluous voice.

His Japanese-ness was a stumbling block. He felt culturally rough around the edges, as though the concentration camp experience which had turned him into a second-class citizen was an albatross around his neck and would remain there for the rest of his life. The experience compelled him to be 200% American—an impossible psychological drag. He had grown up on a farm near Torrance before the evacuation, his older brother, Dan, having been sent to Japan before the war for his education. Dan had lived with their grandparents on the island of Shikoku, fought with the Japanese army in China and upon his return to Japan turned his attention to manufacturing sporting goods. On the farm Greg worked hard as a youth and learned to drive a tractor when he was just eight, often relieving his father,

Tomoyuki, so that he could ply his other job as a fisherman working out of San Pedro.

Somehow the family, along with his mother, Jean, working as a domestic, managed to make both ends meet during the Great Depression and put food on the table. With the payment of

10 the loan on the farm and fishing boat taken care of, they had little left over but managed to save a good portion of it toward Greg’s college education which in Tomoyuki’s mind was

Greg’s ticket out of financial misery. Get a college education and find a good job, he often told Greg as young as he was. So Greg was all geared up to go to college to follow his father’s dream (Tomoyuki himself had had only a fourth grade education in Meiji Japan) but he did not major in the sciences or engineering which was his father’s first choice. Instead his followed his instincts and enrolled in Anthropology, the better to study his own consciousness of what it meant to be a Japanese in a land which was dominated by

Caucasians. He was torn between two cultures and needed to figure out which one he belonged to, the Japanese or American. Studying anthropology seemed to be a way to understand his roots and ancestry while affording him an overall view of what it meant to be an American.

His was a 200% commitment. But he couldn’t eclipse his Japanese consciousness.

Try as he might. As a child, he of course wore American clothes, ate American food as often as he could (he always ordered an American dish when they went out to restaurants), read

American books (mainly comic books, however, aside from school textbooks). He listened to Fibber McGee and Molly, Fred Allen, the Shadow on the radio. But he went to Japanese school after regular school hours and learned a little Japanese; he learned about the culture mainly. So when the evacuation order came through, he felt as though he were being punished for thinking like a Japanese, not enough like an American, and liking things

Japanese. After the camps he was a gung-ho American—with a nagging kind of undertow.

He could never break out of the cultural mold.

11 He wanted to date Caroline but couldn’t see where it would lead. A dead-end, one in which they would simply part as friends? He had fallen in love with Caroline, but was it a kind of puppy love? One which was shallow and only skin deep? He would have to get to know her better—get to know himself better. One part of him said, yes, this is the woman he could love for life, the other part said, who are you to reach for the stars?…you’re just a racial underdog. Better not get your hopes up too high lest you’re shot down. On the other hand, hadn’t the concentration camps sparked a desire in him to be free, free of the barb wire fence around his soul, free of racial constraints, free as the white man? Such a freedom would require him to delve into himself as an individual, as a singular human being who was able to stand on his own two feet, but he had no model to follow, no Nisei to pattern his thinking after, for they all appeared to think alike in an ocean of shared presumptions. One of the presumptions was that being alike made for security (the herd instinct), that the nail that sticks out gets pounded down. Greg was willing to be pounded down, for according to his way of thinking, the nail that gets pounded down is precisely the one that holds the structure (of society, of the relationship between the races, of racial goodwill) together in an orchestration of beliefs, idealism and personal will.

He felt as though he were a pioneer or explorer, out to hack his way through the wilderness of the identity question. Perhaps every human being felt the same way at the outset: the need to define oneself as an individual. He was no different. He even went so far as to want to change the world from a world that could incarcerate 120,000 Japanese and

Japanese Americans at the drop of the hat, stripping them of their civil liberties in the name of war hysteria to be sure and on the pretext of race…you look like the enemy, therefore you are the enemy…to a world that was more equitable. As in any wilderness, the terrain was

12 unknown and dangerous, fraught with inner and outer pitfalls, with wild beasts bent on attacking and destroying one, with instances of trial and error. One may advance in a certain direction only to hit a barrier that causes one to find another route to the resolution of the question. But one thing is certain: once a person is embarked on the exploration, the search for an answer is never-ending. It will haunt the mind until one finds God.

In two hours, Greg, Brian and Craig were back in Redondo Beach. They unloaded their gear and stashed it in the garage and made their way into the dining room, famished.

Caroline had set the table and now began serving up the food. They set the creel of fish on the kitchen counter; Greg would clean them afterwards.

“And how was fishing?” she asked in her mellow voice.

“Fine,” Craig said. “I caught the biggest one, a fourteen-incher. It was a fat one.”

“That’s good,” she said. “And you’ll probably catch a bigger one yet next time.”

“You bet,” Craig said.

They set upon their meal hungrily with little conversation to interrupt. Caroline looked fondly at the three of them, proud of the men in her life. The two boys were going to be tall and handsome like their dad. She herself was five foot six. She had dark brown eyes and her straight auburn hair hung shoulder length. Her soft, gentle smile revealed a straight row of teeth. Like an old-fashioned mom, she plied them with more food when their plates were empty. She didn’t want any of her men to go hungry.

“Gary called,” she said to Greg, “and said the poker game was being moved to

Sunday night.”

“That means we’ll have to cut it short and quit around midnight,” Greg said.

“Instead of an all night session?”

13 “Right. Something must have come up.”

“Mondays, you always go in early,” said Caroline.

“So I’ll have to quit by midnight.”

After dinner Greg called Gary Simmons who was his buddy since the Fort Huachuca days. They took officer training together and were shipped out to Tokyo at the same time, but Gary went to his military intelligence job in Korea with the Eighth Army while Greg began his job as an aide to the colonel heading Provost Marshal Liaison Office, using his

Japanese language skills as an interpreter and translator.

It turned out that Gary had stomach cancer. He would be in another part of the country consulting with a naturopathic doctor to seek an alternative treatment. Gary was a great believer in naturopathic medicine and had been in excellent health until his recent diagnosis, having exercised prevention by taking a number of herbal supplements. But he would be damned if he was going to submit himself to the ravages of chemotherapy and radiation, the standard forms of treatment after surgery. He believed in the body’s ability to heal itself. He was flying back late Saturday. Though the diagnosis was unsettling, Gary managed to take it in stride, being a tough-minded individual who always tried to see things as they were, not as they should be. He was very much a man who was given to the present rather than the future and lived according to the dictates of whatever the current conditions were in any given situation, be it business, financial or medical issues. Greg said he would be seeing him and hung up.

On the last Sunday of the month, they all gathered at Greg’s house to play poker.

There were four of them: Gary and Greg, Bill Terada and Hank Mochizuki. Bill was the same age as Greg (45) and was one of his contacts in Tokyo; Hank was from the same camp

14 in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and they knew each other. Caroline served them up some sushi treats to go along with their beer and retired to the living room where she watched TV.

The foursome sat at the dining room table.

“I heard the bad news,” Bill said to Gary.

“Yeah,” Gary replied, “it could be worse. It could have metastasized, but it hasn’t.

It’s in its early stage.”

“It’s funny that you couldn’t find a doctor in this area,” Hank said.

“I wanted to consult with the top doctor in the country and had to fly to Baltimore, but he referred me to a naturopathic specialist here and I’ll be contacting him tomorrow.”

“Gives you a lot to think about,” Greg said.

“Yeah, it does. Too many things…everything. How long have we been meeting for poker? Ten years, thirteen years? In all that time none of us has gotten sick. We’ve been as healthy as horses and rightly so. We’re still young and are supposed to enjoy good health.

We don’t smoke, we watch what we eat—within reason—and we get our exercise. In spite of that, I come down with stomach cancer. It’s not right. I’m only forty-eight, for God’s sake.”

“There you have it,” Greg said. “It’s the spin of the wheel.”

“And where the ball falls, no one knows,” said Gary. “It could have happened to any one of us. Not that I’d wish it on anybody. But life has a way of throwing you curves.”

“We’re too young to be philosophers,” Greg said, “but too old to not have some healthy premonitions.”

“Too young to think about death?” Gary said.

“Something like that,” Greg said.

15 “As kids we’re fascinated by death,” Gary said. “We accept it for what it is—a termination. Our pets die, our grandparents die, a classmate’s parent dies. It’s a permanent goodbye. It’s only when we get older that we turn it into something metaphysical and ask questions like where does the soul go after death. Do I go to heaven or hell? We’re hardwired to believe in a good place or bad place and everybody would want to go to a good place. Which begs the question: what do I have to do to go to a good place?”

“In other words, is there a God who rewards good deeds?” said Bill as he popped a sushi morsel into his mouth and washed it down with a swallow of beer. He began shuffling the cards and dealing them.

“Right,” said Gary, “is there a God to begin with? That’s the 64 trillion dollar question. Does God exist as a separate entity or is He a figment of the imagination?”

“If he’s a figment of the imagination,” Hank said, “there must be as many gods as there are people.”

“Which makes the universe a very busy place, indeed,” said Greg. “But if there were a God, what good does He do, besides creating nature and the universe? There’s such a tussle between good and evil in the world that you wonder where God is in all of this.

Sometimes the ball falls on the good side of the net, sometimes on the evil side. It’s an ongoing battle with no winning side—ever.”

“Maybe creating all the immutable laws of nature and the universe is all God can do,” said Bill. He dealt out the cards.

“And let the human race seek its own glory or demise,” said Gary. “There’s something to be said for that view. But what if the universe came about by chance rather

16 than design? What if the universe were all a matter of luck? What if the universe were a free lunch? And all the life forms and their intelligence a matter of evolution?”

“Does the intelligent life forms include plants and insects?” asked Hank.

“You bet it does,” Gary said. “The insect-eating plants have to know when to clamp shut their trapdoors, and the insects have to know how and when to insert their eggs into a caterpillar, for instance. So the question is…can intelligence evolve? Yes, it can. It can evolve from the simple to the complex, from solving the problems of survival to abstractions.”

“But intelligence implies consciousness,” said Bill. “Where does consciousness come from?”

“That’s another big question,” said Gary. “Did it come from DNA and its progressive mutations serendipitously, evolving from the simple to the complex, or did it always exist?

And if it always existed, do we call it God? That’s the sticking point, it seems. Accepting consciousness will always be a matter of faith, but we know we have consciousness—we are either conscious or we are not—so it’s a no-brainer. The big question is whether there has been a greater consciousness all along, before the Big Bang, that generated the circumstances that led to the Big Bang—and all of creation. Or is the Big Bang not the singularity we think it is? Could it be that there have been innumerable singularities throughout the history of the universe—our universe and all universes. It could be that the Big Bang is just one in an eternity of Big Bangs and that there has been no beginning nor will there be any end.”

“It’s the master architect concept or the something from nothing concept that’s the conundrum,” Greg said.

17 “Who’s to decide?” Hank asked. “Each and every one of us? There would be as many gods as there are people, four billion and counting.”

“Therefore you have the rise of different religions and beliefs throughout history, “

Greg said, “and the human propensity to form cliques around a concept or an idea. It gives rise to all kinds of theologies and philosophies in all human endeavors, from Christianity,

Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam to social organization, politics, commerce and education, I’d say. There can be as many different ideas about human existence as there are people and not one of them is the true form, although people will cluster around the most seeming idea. But

I’m in a quandary. I can’t decide whether to believe or not…oh, I know that logically or intellectually one can posit a God—or not—depending on whether or not one accepts consciousness as the final criterion of reality. We all have consciousness but what is it? Is it a material thing born of the physical organ called the brain or is it extra-dimensional, outside of the brain? Is consciousness a form of energy that pervades all things or is it specific to living things such as plants, insects, animals? I don’t know.”

“Ah, all life is a mystery,” Bill said. “I for one accept the mystery in all its different aspects and lump it under one belief, a Christian God, the most available God in our culture.”

“Then you believe in Jesus,” Gary said.

“I do to be a Christian.”

“In spite of the fact that there have been many antecedents to virgin birth, miracles being performed, death by crucifixion or some other violent means?” said Gary. “You believe in a historical Jesus, then?”

“I do and I believe he is the Son of God.”

18 “More power to you,” said Gary. “I for one cannot believe in a Christian God, because if I did, I would have to accept all the machinations, cruelty, chicanery of such a

God.”

“Chicanery?” queried Bill.

“Yes, chicanery,” said Gary. “When God instructed Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his son, Abraham was all ready to do so when God stopped him and told him to sacrifice the ram standing in the nearby bush instead. God changed his mind in an orchestrated regimen of deception as practiced on a poor father.”

“But that was a mere test of faith,” said Bill.

“A test of faith?” said Gary. “It was more like a direct order that Abraham could not refuse. Orders are orders in any regimented society and Abraham had to go through with it sincerely. And what about original sin? If God is all-knowing, he must have known about

Eve’s proclivity to fall for the serpent’s suggestion that she eat of the forbidden fruit and her tempting of Adam to eat of it also. Why would he then instruct them not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, knowing as he did of their weakness? Why place a great temptation in their way? Could the parable of the Garden of Eden be construed as a psychological tale in that the human writers of the Bible deliberately began the holy book with a form of thou- shall-not dictum which can only be expected to be violated? The writers knew a thing or two about human nature and psychology as do all the writers of all the holy books in the world.”

“And all the books ever written are all different,” Hank said, “coming from individual minds as they do. We’re all different as people, each and every one of us.”

19 “And yet we’re the same,” Greg said, shuffling the deck to begin dealing the cards.

“Underneath it all we have the same aspirations, hopes and dreams in spite of our cultural differences.”

“So what do I hang my hat on?” Hank asked. “What should I believe in? A man has got to believe in something.”

“A belief may be the last evolutionary thing there is,” said Greg.

“Meaning?” said Hank.

“Meaning that in this day and age rigidity is out and flexibility is in,” said Greg.

“You’ve got to remain flexible—in all things—in order to survive and flexibility leads to the evolution of thinking and beliefs according to the circumstances that arise.”

“I guess that means each and every one of us has got to make up his own mind,”

Hank said.

“That about sums it up,” Greg said and called out to his wife in the other room.

When she appeared, he said, “Honey, would you mind filling the plate with some of the goodies we bought?”

“Sure thing,” she said and opened the fridge door. She took out a long Wisconsin sausage and began slicing it, placing toothpicks into each slice, and brought the platter heaped with a mound of crackers to the table where the men sat. “Will there be anything else, messieurs?” she intoned comically. “You’ll have to get your own beer.”

“Thanks, honey.”

“You’re welcome,” she said and kissed Greg on the cheek. She left the room to return to her program.

20 “How do you do it, Greg?” Gary asked. “My wife would tell me to get it myself, to quit ordering her around. You have Caroline trained like a Japanese wife.”

“Nope,” Greg said. “She’s every bit American as the next woman. She just dotes on the men in her life. She likes to spoil the devil out of us, especially the two boys. I couldn’t ask for a better mother.”

“And it spills over on to you,” Bill said.

“You’re a lucky man,” Hank said. “My wife has me running all kinds of errands all the time. Sometimes I think she just makes up things to get to keep me running.”

“You’re an easy touch, Hank,” Gary said. “You’re too soft-hearted and you like to do things for other people.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Hank said.

“And maybe that’s why your wife married you,” Bill said.

Greg checked his watch. They had another hour and a half till curfew. He cut the cards and watched as Gary deal out a hand of Texas Hold’em. When Greg won the hand with a flushn

,he paused and said, “Help yourself to the beer. There’s everything from Heineken, Gordon

Biersch, brewed right here in LA County, Asahi, Sapporo and Kirin.”

“Have you always been partial to Kirin?” Bill asked. “I’m an Asahi man myself.”

“I have been since I returned from Japan, ages ago, it seems,” Greg said. “But occasionally I’ll have a local brew, if only to support the economy.”

Greg used to drink Kirin exclusively while in Tokyo. His brother Dan who drank nothing but introduced him to the beer and Greg was taken by the clean crisp taste. He would have a bottle or two with his dinner and when he went to bars and nightclubs he would

21 imbibe the brand—always the same. His metabolism was so perfect that he never put on any weight but remained a muscular 175 pounds which wasn’t so bad for a six foot two inch man.

His brother had wanted him to become a partner so that he could try to penetrate foreign markets for sporting goods. Dan would have him traveling throughout Asia with

Japan as the home base, but Greg couldn’t see himself settling in the country and making himself a life there, although at one time it had become a distinct possibility, not in the field of business but in his chosen field of Anthropology.

22 Chapter Three

Tokyo, 1956: During a slack period of work at the Provost Marshal Liaison Office,

Greg took time off to visit Prof. Shoichi Higa, Chairman of the Department of Cultural

Anthropology at Tokyo University, armed with a letter of introduction provided by his professor at UCLA. He had been stationed in Tokyo for about a year with PMLO but didn’t have a chance to break away for a visit which he looked forward to in connection with his research into Kasagi Mura in Ehime Prefecture. He wanted to understand the culture and mindset of the villagers in order to understand the background of his own consciousness as a

Japanese and what had impelled his father, Tomoyuki, to give up the traditional occupation of a farmer. He sought the life of an adventurer only to settle down as a farmer in his adopted country. Wasn’t that some kind of come down? For a high-spirited youth to settle down into farming had to be a step down in his own mind. What kind of aspirations did

Tomoyuki have? Greg would never know, his father having died a number of years back.

They had never communicated much. He only knew that he worked in the forests, in fisheries, the railroads and mines in the United States as a bachelor before the war. But he had never had a real education which he wanted for his sons.

Prof. Higa was a diminutive man standing about five foot two. He was about 60 years old and wore his hair long. He had a strong jaw and a bulbous nose. He looked at

Greg through kind eyes and read through the letter of introduction.

“Ah, yes,” he said, “Prof. Pike. How well I remember him from a symposium we both attended in Montreal five years ago. Can it be that long ago? Yes, I guess it can. Glad to make your acquaintance.”

23 “I’m glad to make yours.” They spoke in Japanese.

“What can I do for you?”

Greg told him of his interest, as an anthropologist and as a person of Japanese ancestry.

“A very laudable undertaking,” the professor said. “Seeking one’s roots is very much a modern trend. In Japan genealogical studies are a science and an art. We always look for ties with the imperial family or with nobility and sad to say where they don’t exist we tend to make them up.”

“That reminds me of my father’s attempt to trace his roots back to an earlier emperor before the Mongol Invasion.”

“Ah, yes. The Mongol Invasion and the inception of the concept of kamikaze which had saved Japan in the past. There was no Divine Wind to save us from defeat during WWII.

The A-bombs ended the war for good or for ill. It saved millions of lives, true, but at what a horrible expense. As a veteran I can think of death on the battlefield but to have the lives of so many people snuffed out instantaneously is inconceivable, but I can’t blame America.

Don’t let this out, but I feel we were a nation of barbarians to have treated the Chinese civilians and the American POW’s the way we did. And then there was Unit 731 and their experiments conducted on live human beings. A shameful history of an otherwise civilized people. We share the same burden of guilt as the German people who have been more forthright about their atrocious past than we. We have yet to admit guilt of the atrocities we committed. Don’t tell anyone I said so, though.”

Greg felt a little uncomfortable that Prof. Higa, a noted scholar in his field, should have unburdened himself and put the onus of remaining silent on him, but he felt gratified

24 that such a man of eminence should have bared some of his innermost feelings on the subject of the A-bombs and Japanese wartime atrocities to him. Maybe it was the scholar’s way of reaching out to an American for an understanding of what it meant to be a Japanese caught in circumstances beyond his control. Had he taken a different position on the issue of the A- bombs, whether they should have been used or not, Greg would have had to point out that it was Japan who started the war, but that would have elicited an acrimonious response. In effect it would have said that it was the United States who provoked the war by her sanctions imposed on oil and other natural resources vital to Japan’s survival, which would turn into a discussion of whether or not Roosevelt was right in demanding that Japan get out of China before the sanctions could be lifted.

“I won’t breathe a word about your true feelings,” Greg said, again flattered that the man should have confided in him.

“As a Nisei what are your feelings about Japan?” the professor asked.

“I’m not strictly a Nisei,” Greg said. “I’m intergenerational. I’m essentially a Sansei, a third generation natural born American since my mother was Nisei, but I think it makes a difference being intergenerational. I see both sides or all sides, the Issei, Nisei, Sansei, at the same time.”

“But what are your feelings?”

Deciding to be forthright, Greg said, “I feel the lure of things Japanese. I have ever since I was a child…all the cultural goings on and all that. My father being a Japanese I can’t help feeling Japanese myself but my mother was completely American, so that aspect of my makeup has come to dominate me. I am an American with Japanese leanings culturally speaking and I live, think and breathe as an American.”

25 “How do you like Japan?”

“I love it here. I get to use my Japanese and go sight-seeing. Eating Japanese food is also a plus.”

“A man like you must have a sweetheart or two.”

Greg thought of Caroline Lister and felt a pang of loneliness. He had not had the guts to ask her out on a date—yet—but had been writing to her ever since his Fort Huachuca days and she had responded in the most friendly fashion. In her latest reply which he received just several days ago, she said she was taking night classes at UCLA in her legal field in the hope of becoming an executive secretary and she met a young man with whom she had struck up an acquaintance. Greg felt immediately jealous. He was compelled to picture her with someone else, a rival, and he wished he were on hand. But he wasn’t. He could only wish from afar, ambivalent, torn by the question of identity and feeling inferior. His feelings of inferiority stemmed from the concentration camp experience and the depravation of his rights. It was a psychic blow to the mind of a child to have something as big as the government, someone as stupendously important as the President of the United States of

America condemn one to imprisonment. As a child racism was something experienced viscerally, not intellectually. He did not have the intellectual capacity to field any of the questions dealing with racism. Racism went straight to the feelings and the predominant feeling was one of being and feeling inferior. And he had tried to make up for his inferiority complex by excelling in everything he did, whether in sports such as tennis or in academics.

In sports he was the high school champion and in college academics he was elected to Phi

Beta Kappa, an honor which he held dear to his heart since his father had only a fourth grade education.

26 “No, I don’t have any,” he said finally.

“Then you must meet my daughter,” the professor said. “She just finished college with a degree in English Literature and speaks fluent English. I know you speak Japanese well, but English is your language of choice.”

Greg hesitated, thinking of Caroline. Then he thought there was no harm in meeting with the daughter and striking up an acquaintance just as Caroline had done on her end. He wondered about his own sense of possessiveness. For God’s sake, he thought, he hadn’t even dated her yet. She was her own person, free to do as she pleased. But another part of him wanted to hold her back and down.

“That would be fine,” he said. “I’d be happy to meet her.”

“It’s settled then,” the professor said happily. “I’ll give you a call to see when it would be convenient for you to have dinner with us.” He flipped over Greg’s meishi, his calling card, and extracted one of his own.

“Fine,” Greg said.

“Let me write an introductory note to a colleague in the Education Faculty at Ehime

University in Matsuyama. He may be able to give you some pointers in your research. He’s not an anthropologist—they don’t have such a department at Ehime-dai—but he knows a lot of people in the field and he may be able to put you in touch with a local person.” He scribbled a line on his meishi and handed it to Greg who thanked him.

Greg then took his leave of the professor and out of politeness said he looked forward to his call. He returned directly to his billets in Washington Heights, a bachelor quarters located near Shibuya. Washington Heights was a compound for American military personnel in Tokyo and on one end housed families and on the other bachelors in large two story

27 buildings. It neighbored Meiji Shrine, an oasis of green in the midst of densely packed residences. He walked down to a hollow where the Officer’s Club was located and went into the bar to have a drink. He was foot-loose and fancy free in the megapolis of Tokyo, which offered every delight to assuage the desires of any young man, but he kept himself on the straight and narrow because of his love for Caroline and his wanting to save himself for her.

About two weeks later Prof. Higa phoned Greg at PMLO and asked him if he was available that weekend for dinner at his place in Meguro, but Greg had to tell him that he would be in Shikoku for ten days, researching his background in Kasagi Mura. He had contacted Prof. Tomio Kawakami at Ehime University and would be having dinner with him one evening in Matsuyama. Greg was scheduled to leave by train that weekend, but he said he’d be available in a couple of weekends after he got back. The professor told him that would be fine and to come by then.

Greg got on the train at Tokyo Central and began the slow ride to Osaka where he would have to switch trains to get to the ferry that would take him across the Inland Sea to

Takamatsu in Kagawa Prefecture. Then would begin another slow ride to Matsuyama where he was to meet Prof. Kawakami at his office. It was the days before air service between the cities and the trains that stopped at each local station were the only means of transportation.

The trip would take three days. It was 1956 and Japan was still recovering from the ravages of WWII.

The countryside of Japan whisked past the train windows. The ubiquitous rice paddies quilted the landscape and provided a picturesque scene with Mt. Fuji rising in the background. There were many small towns clustered together near the train stations and in the outskirts of the big cities, the rural areas took on a verdant clamor of distinction. The rice

28 paddies and patches of vegetables all lent their green to a patchwork of squares, a panoramic quilt speeding past the window. He boarded a ferry at Okayama, spent the nighttime crossing sleeping with a crowd of others in large tatami room, and boarded a local train at

Takamatsu the following morning after getting a bite to eat at a restaurant.

Arriving at Matsuyama after half a day’s travel, Greg got off the train and proceeded to Ehime University campus by taxi. He alighted at a gray concrete building and inquired about getting to Prof. Tomio Kawakami’s office. He tapped on the slightly ajar door and a voice said come in.

Seated was a man in his 50’s with thin set lips below a longish nose and with large eyes peering through a pair of glasses. Prof. Tomio Kawakami stood up, a full head shorter than Greg, and they introduced themselves, shaking hands. Greg gave him Prof. Higa’s meishi.

Reading the note, the professor said, nodding, “Ah so. He wants me to put you in contact with someone locally. You are researching your background?”

“Yes, I am. I plan on going to my father’s birthplace and visit relatives and see what they remember about him as a child and youth. And possibly other people, as well.”

“And where is your father’s birthplace?”

“Kasagi-mura in Higashi Uwa-gun.”

“That’s near Unomachi, the town where I come from. My, it’s a small world. I grew up there and know the area well. There is a famous shrine in that village where the people go to be healed. The Sonoda’s are the original inhabitants of the region and they are to be found everywhere throughout the valley.”

29 “I have a cousin there, in Kasagi-mura. One uncle is still alive and should remember my father well.”

“The Sonoda’s are an illustrious clan. They are in the history books, one whose name was Michiari Sonoda was a hero in the Mongol Invasions of late thirteenth century.”

“And they became landowners after the samurai were disbanded during the Meiji

Restoration.”

“That’s right. They accumulated land, the fields of the large valley and the forests in the mountains. They were a wealthy clan to begin with but fell on hard times during the economic upheavals of the Meiji Era. Many wound up working the land they had owned and became farmers.”

“The economic downturn was the reason for the immigration to the United States for many of the Japanese, but my father was the adventurous sort and he went to America more for the fun of it.”

“There seemed to be many famous men in the Sonoda clan who were risk takers.

Takekichi Sonoda started a sake brewery in Osaka and the brand is still a favored one in

Japan today.”

“Yes, and I heard of one who became governor of Ehime Prefecture during the

1920’s, Tomoaki Sonoda.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” the professor said, checking his watch. “My, it’s getting to be that time. I have reservations for us at the famous Goshiki Honten. You will enjoy our local

Ehime cuisine, especially the taimeshi, I’m sure. Shall we be getting along?”

They left the building and hailed down a cab cruising past the front gate. They drove a short distance to Sanbancho near Castle Hill and walked into the restaurant. It was not yet

30 crowded and they sat near the front windows. The waitress came by and asked if they were interested in drinks. The professor said, yes. He asked Greg if he had a preference and Greg said he liked Kirin, so the professor ordered a large bottle. He said Kirin was his favorite.

“Mine, too,” said Greg.

They engaged in small talk. When the waitress came back with their drinks, she took their orders: two taimeshi, a large order of Matsuyama-zushi and Botchan dango, for dessert.

“Before I forget,” the professor said, taking out a meishi, “I want to write a line of introduction to Ms. Fumiko Tachibana in Unomachi. She’s a school teacher there and is the unofficial historian of the locale. You’ll find talking to her most enlightening, I’m sure. She was a student of mine.”

Greg took the card and thanked the professor. In their conversation, he mentioned why he was doing research when the professor asked him if he were going to publish his findings.

“No,” said, “I don’t intend to publish, although that would be a desirable thing if I were going on to a PhD, but I am researching my family background simply to understand my roots better and to understand my father who emigrated when he was 15, just a boy who wanted to see the big wide world.”

In time the food came and Greg’s mouth watered in anticipation. The taimeshi— crumbled sea bream with seasoned rice and shredded seaweed—looked and smelled delicious. He dug in and was not disappointed. The taste was exquisite. During his stay in

Japan so far—it had been nearly a year already—he had come to eat Japanese food more often than not but occasionally would partake of a nice juicy steak at the Washington Heights

31 Officers Club’s dining hall. Those occasions were few and far between as he caught a bus outside the gate of the compound to go to Shibuya to eat sushi, one of his favorite foods.

Next came the Matsuyama-zushi, a colorful array of raw seafood which reminded

Greg of Edo-mae zushi with its variety. It was similar but different and he relished the taste.

To top off the dinner, the waitress bought them Botchan dango, three skewered colored rice dumplings filled with red bean paste, taken after the novel—Botchan—written by the famous author Natsume Soseki who taught at a local higher school around the turn of the 20th

Century. The meal was a satisfying affair and Greg looked forward to more local fare.

He said goodbye to the professor at the restaurant, thanked him again and made his way to a hotel located near the train station. He was going to hop on a train early the next morning to make his way to Unomachi, laying aside some time to sightsee in the environs of

Kasagi-mura to see what his father’s childhood had been like and to visit what relatives there were in the area.

The next morning he boarded a loaded train that started in Takamatsu and endured most of the four-hour journey south standing up. But he was lucky enough to get a seat—a straight-back cushionless affair—at Yawatahama, a port city just before a long tunnel into the

Higashi Uwa-gun valley. It would be another hour before he arrived in Unomachi.

The train station at Unomachi was a single-story rural-type of building with a cast iron potbelly stove sitting in the middle of the waiting room, now unstoked because it was still summer. The station master’s office and ticket window were partitioned off with an outer and inner door. The platform was soon cleared of passengers getting on the southbound train and the station master lowered his raised hand to pronounce “Hassha” and

32 the train was on its way again to the intervening towns and villages to end its run at the terminus of Uwajima.

Greg booked a room at the ryokan within walking distance of the station, deposited his single suitcase and went outside to hail a cab. He instructed the driver to take him to

Unomachi High on the outskirts of the town and they sped off down the dusty unpaved road where housewives had spread ladles of water on the dirt to keep the dust down and keep it from entering their homes which lined the main road. In time he entered the campus comprised of two large two-story buildings, paid the driver and made his way to the main office. There he was told the number of Ms. Tachibana’s office.

As luck would have it, she was in. It was close to one and she was eating her obento.

He bowed and introduced himself in Japanese. He presented Prof. Kawakami’s meishi which she read nodding, along with his own. She was strikingly beautiful.

“You must excuse me,” she said, “eating in front of you that way I am.”

“No apologies necessary,” Greg said.

“So you’ve come all the way from Tokyo.”

“Yes, have you been there?” he asked, knowing that many rural folk did not make it that far north.

“No, I haven’t. The furthest north I’ve been was Osaka and it was on a school excursion.”

“I see. I guess one big city is like just any other.”

“But to go to Tokyo is like going to another world.”

“Tokyo has everything, that’s true.”

“I will go someday, maybe after I retire which won’t be till many years from now.”

33 “Everything will have changed by then.”

“Change for the better I hope,” she said, closing the lid of her lunchbox and depositing it in her desk drawer. “What history of the locale are you interested in?”

Greg told her of his interest and that his ancestors were the Sonoda’s.

“Ah, the Sonoda Clan,” she said with a charming lilt to her voice. “I should have known you belonged to the illustrious clan. You are so tall. The Sonoda’s were known to produce tall offspring, very rare in Japan. They were the samurai who ruled the Uwa region ever since the Kamakura Era. They were the feudal lords, administrators and magistrates, scholars, teachers and village headsmen, the warriors who fought for the Tokugawa at the end and who protected the people from the bandits, the ninja and spies, the emissaries who represented the Uwa region in old Edo and who negotiated a peace settlement with Korea after Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion in cooperation with Yoshitoshi of the So Clan of

Tsushima. The Sonoda’s were great seafarers as well and they explored the South Sea isles since ancient times and were conversant with the goings on in the China Sea.”

“My father said that the Sonoda roots can be traced back to an emperor.”

“That is problematic. Every other samurai clan in Japan claims such a lineage but it is not necessarily true in spite of the genealogical charts that many families possess. The charts can be fabricated and often are.”

“But there’s no question that they were the ruling elite since the olden days.”

“Yes, they certainly were. But they fell on hard times after they opposed the Sat-Cho

Alliance that sought to topple the Tokugawa Shogunate. They sided with the status quo and paid dearly for it when the Shogunate was defeated by the loyalists and the emperor was restored as the ruler of the land. They lost their hereditary stipend from the landowners and

34 were forced to transfer their wealth to government bonds at a much reduced rate. They had already been weakened by Tempo famines of 1836 and the endemic innumerable peasant uprisings. Though they were encouraged by the government and given government assistance to start new businesses and go into trade, they were unsuited for such endeavors and many lost everything. They married commoners and became farmers and landowners and were heavily taxed, becoming more and more destitute. But some rose to prominence.”

“Like Takekichi Sonoda, the sake brewer of the famous brand Shoen, and the governor of Ehime Prefecture, Tomoaki Sonoda.”

“Yes, they are the two most notable men, but they are of course no longer with us. I don’t know of many Sonoda’s living anymore. There are two, well-to-do farmers in Kasagi- mura who are probably relatives of yours.”

“That would be Takanori Sonoda, a cousin of mine, and his father, Teruatsu. I’m going to visit them afterwards, tomorrow sometime.”

“I hear—“

“Yes?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but I hear Takanori is a little eccentric.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met him.”

“You know so much about the Sonoda’s and you never met him?”

“I’m a historian,” she said defensively. “I get my information from books mainly, but

I have to admit I’ve been put off by rumors of his eccentricity.”

“What do the rumors say?”

Ms. Tachibana hesitated, then said, “That he is crazy.”

35 “A lot of rumors start that way and it turns out the person is just different.”

“He howls at the moon when it is full.”

“I see,” Greg said and chuckled. “He is just crazy but not dangerous.”

“That may be so.”

“I guess I’ll just have to take my chances.” He had heard of much stranger things coming from his own countrymen, his fellow Americans. He got to his feet and extended his hand. Ms. Tachibana also rose and shook it. “Thanks for your time. I’m sorry this is a chance encounter but I’m due back in Tokyo soon and probably won’t see you again.”

“Perhaps when you visit our area again,” she said and gave him a beautiful smile.

“Perhaps.”

He left her office and walked through the building and out to the main gate where he turned to go out to the main drag. He had noticed a bus stop nearby when he arrived in a taxi and he joined a small cluster of locals waiting, judging that because of the size of the crowd the bus would soon come. He was not mistaken. In less than ten minutes an older vehicle scarred and in need of a paint job came rumbling down the dusty road and stopped. The passengers boarded and Greg followed suit, noticing the sign said “Unomachi Station.”

He alighted at the station and made his way to the inn which he entered, took off his shoes and went up to his room on the second floor. There he took off his suit jacket and tie and flopped down on the tatami mat to go over what he had learned about the Sonoda Clan.

He knew of no other Sonoda’s other than Takanori and his father, Teruatsu. They could probably tell him if there were any others alive. Eccentric or not he wanted to meet

Takanori. He also wanted to meet his uncle who could tell him more about his father who remained a puzzle.

36 Chapter Four

At Crossett, Bigelow & Tyler, Greg was encouraged to seek an informal settlement between Miyamoto and Simpson rather than submitting the case to sticky litigation. He went to visit Henry Miyamoto at his place of business, Miyamoto Nursery Outlet, the biggest in the region, rivaled only by Dick Simpson’s Nursery & More. Negotiating the traffic of downtown LA, he arrived at the business 30 minutes later in the outskirts of the county. The company was a complex of three large buildings on acreage that was very expensive and the space was covered with plants and trees. Greg strode into the office where a rotund man of medium height sat.

“Hello, Mr. Miyamoto,” he said and shook the man’s hand.

“You can call me Henry,” the man said.

“Right. Henry.”

“I’ve been on pins and needles,” Henry said, “wondering if I should go ahead with the slander suit or not, thinking that there must be some explanation for such an attack. But I can’t think of any. I’ve never done Simpson any harm nor have I said anything derogatory about him. After all he is a fellow Kiwanis, although we’ve never met, and we’re bound to respect one another. But why he should call me an illegitimate son with ties to the yakuza is beyond me. I’ve never even been to Japan and I can’t speak the language. Oh, I know enough to understand simple conversation but not enough to conduct a negotiation. I have to use an interpreter.”

“You said a friend told you what Simpson had said, that you heard it second or even third hand.”

37 “That’s right. An old Nisei heard it from a member of Kiwanis Club who overheard it from Simpson after a dinner party at the club.”

“And who is this old Nisei?”

“His name is Shin-ichi Takemoto. He is a friend of my father’s. A family friend and also a Kiwanis member.”

“How do you know he wasn’t referring to your father instead of you?”

“My father passed away last year.”

“So you assumed it was you.”

“Yes, of course, I’m his business rival.”

“How much do you want to sue him for, assuming that this case goes to court?”

“I’ve given it a lot of thought and I don’t want to bankrupt him. I just want to clear my good name. About one million dollars. It will probably be cut down, though. But what makes you think it won’t go to court?”

“It’s so circumstantial and slander is hard to prove. Frankly I’m here to mediate the case.”

“Meaning, settling it out of court?”

“Yes.”

“That’s fine if my name can be restored.”

“This may be a result of some misunderstanding. It often is in slander suits.”

“I would hope so. But you just can’t tell these days. You have to be prepared for anything. Anything. Like when we weren’t prepared for the concentration camps. The government betrayed us.”

“Yes, I know. I consider that past history.”

38 “I should, too. But I can’t. It’s always on my mind. The fact that we were trying to live normal lives after the Pearl Harbor sneak attack that outraged most of us—after all we were Americans—without succumbing to the verbal racist attacks, none of this registered with the authorities. The president just issued an Executive Order to have us West Coast

Japanese evacuated in the most goshawful climes in the world. 120,000 men, women and children. The incarceration was an affront to our rights as natural-born Americans. The problems the incarceration caused are enormous, from personally giving me an inferiority complex a mile wide to being paranoid at every racial slight whether real or not. I’ve labored all my life with such a complex and still haven’t gotten over it. When you’re treated in such a way as a kid, you can’t get over it, no matter how hard you try. I tried but it hasn’t worked.

I’ve tried to put everything into my business and built it up from scratch, saving every penny

I’d ever earned and worked hard for success. And I have succeeded. Beyond my wildest dreams but it was all due to my own good efforts—and a bit of luck.”

“But you still feel inferior?”

“Well, it’s a complex issue. I’m proud of myself and respect myself but I’ll always be in my own mind a second-class citizen. I try not to think of it in that sense, but it’s always with me. You should understand.”

“Yes, I do. It was a big issue with me, too, but I’ve managed by hook or crook to put it all behind me and consider the entire experience as past history. With me it was mainly a matter of making up my mind that I wasn’t going to let the incarceration destroy my life.”

“But the psychological effects are lasting.”

“Yes, they are. It’s called programmed psychological emasculation. Once you recognize it as such it can have no effect on you.”

39 “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Greg glanced at his watch. He still wasn’t close to negotiating a settlement but he did get the admission that Henry was only interested in clearing his name, that he wasn’t out to bankrupt Simpson, that his business did not suffer as a consequence. It was something to go on.

“I notice you get the St. Labre Indian School newsletter,” he said, pointing to a leaflet on the man’s desk.

“Yes, I contribute regularly to them.”

“It so happens that I do, too.”

“You do? Isn’t that something. It’s a worthy cause.”

“It is. The American Indians have suffered greatly, too much for a proud people. I’m doing what little I can to help. They’ve stuck to their cultural guns but are struggling with poverty on a daily basis and what it brings is nothing but misery. They need all the help we can give them.”

Before he left Greg got the phone number of Shin-ichi Takemoto and made it a point to call him that day. He said goodbye to Henry Miyamoto and got in his car to drive back to the office where he promptly punched in the number, so anxious was he to wind up the case.

When a man’s voice answered, he asked, “Mr. Takemoto?” and when the reply was in the affirmative, he identified himself and proceeded to ask him about what his friend had told him about Simpson’s derogatory remarks regarding Henry Miyamoto. It appeared that

Simpson had been complaining loudly about the Japanese and how they were trying to overtake everything economically and culturally, not only in the United States but throughout the world, when he mentioned Miyamoto’s name and calumniating him in no uncertain

40 terms. Greg asked him about the reliability of his friend who happened to be Caucasian and he said he had known him since before the war and had always been forthright and honest with him and, no, he held no grudge against Henry whom he respected as a fellow businessman and Kiwanis member. But apparently his friend, Takemoto said, didn’t want to tell Miyamoto directly and so knowing that he knew Henry told him instead. End of story.

Greg thanked him for corroborating the story and hung up. It was evidently a matter of hearsay but to clear up the misunderstanding which Greg thought was the case was another matter. He would have to give the case some thought.

Back home that evening, the Sonoda family sat around the dining table eating their dinner made up of a large pot roast with all the fixings—one of Greg’s favorite meals.

Knowing this prompted Caroline to cook it at least once a week and grind up the leftovers to make it into a sandwich spread mixed with relish which her men loved to have for their lunches. She spared no effort in cooking meals that pleased them and she often experimented with new recipes but kept several tried and tested ones constantly on the menu such as her own kind of fried chicken, marinated steaks and meatloaf. Occasionally she’d prepare makizushi as a side dish. They talked about what transpired that day.

“Brian got into a fight again today at school,” Craig reported.

“It was after school let out, near the bus stop,” Brian said. “And it really wasn’t a fight, just an argument.”

“You wanted to hit him, you had your fist cocked,” Craig said.

“That was just to intimidate him.”

“You were pushing and shoving each other.”

“Over such a trifle,” said Caroline.

41 “He asked for it,” said Brian.

“All right, what was it all about?” asked Greg.

Brian didn’t answer.

“He was called a name,” said Caroline.

“So what was it?” asked Greg.

“He called me a konketsuji,” Brian said. “He kept calling me that name, got in my face and kept repeating it. I never even heard of it before. I didn’t know what it meant until

I looked it up.”

“It’s a Japanese term for a mixed-blooded person,” Greg said.

“I know that now but it’s not like I’m a half-breed Indian that they show in the movies.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a half-breed Indian,” Greg said. “You should be proud of your dual heritage. It gives you a broader point of view of everything and makes you superior to the provincial racist types.”

“I am proud, but he kept getting in my face and I had to put up a fight.”

“Next time tell him to pick on me and not the name,” Greg said. “Insist on your own individuality. That ought to stop him.”

“You should have bopped him on the nose,” said Caroline, “to teach him a lesson.”

“I wanted to, Mom, but something held me back.”

“You were chicken,” Craig said.

“I wasn’t, either. I was just being discreet, cool-headed like Dad has always taught me to be.”

Greg smiled at his son. “Honey, are you advocating violence?” he asked jocularly.

42 “Only against a bully who asked for it,” she said.

“I think Brian made the right decision,” Greg said.

“Oh, I know he did,” she said. “It’s just that when you’re picked on you have to stand up for yourself and I wish he did bop him on the nose.” She smiled at both Greg and

Brian. “And you young man,” she said, turning toward Craig, “turned out to be a great tattle.

But thanks for telling me. I wouldn’t have heard of it otherwise.”

Greg helped clear the table and loaded the dishwasher. He proceeded to wash the heavy cast-iron skillet in soapy water, dried it and set it on the stove for Caroline to put away.

With the dishwasher churning away, Greg and Caroline retired to the living room while the boys went to their room to do some homework.

“I’m glad Brian kept his cool,” Greg said picking up the remote but refrained from turning TV on.

“Me, too,” Caroline said. “He’s growing up to be a discerning young man.”

“You didn’t really want him to resort to fisticuffs, did you?”

“Well, in a way, I did. When confronted with a bully you have to take action and what better way than to give him a dose of his own medicine. But I think Brian did well to contain himself. As you often say, darling, in the final analysis what counts is an amicable solution if at all possible and Brian didn’t know what he was being called, so he took the only way out. Do nothing.”

“It’s no fun being called names, I should know. I was once called a dirty little yellow-belly by a big white man at a bus stop restroom and I just excused myself to do my business, then left. I was just nine years old. But later I learned to always consider the source and I never let that incident nor other incident ever bother me.”

43 “Brian is going to have to do the same if his being called hafu (half) in a derogatory sense ever hits him again.”

“That’s true, I’m afraid, honey, because being hafu is a fact, a reality of life, but it is not the sum total of who Brian or Craig are. They are their own persons. They are not only cultural dualities but individuals in their own right who have minds of their own and can think on their own. At least that’s the way we are bringing them up. They are Americans, not hafu entities who are constantly in conflict within themselves, but solid multidimensional human beings who are monolithically American. That’s the only way to go in this confused world of ours where we are expected to be conflicted, wondering who we are and what we are good for. Those are questions everybody has to ask themselves regardless of their background or ethnicity but we have to make sure that both boys understand they have a good solid starting point by being hafu. They will naturally blend the two parts of themselves, the two cultures, the Japanese sub-culture and the culture of the majority, into one whole to make themselves into monolithic individuals. Let’s hope we can make it possible for them to grow up like that.”

“Yes, Dad, we know who wears the pants in this family,” Caroline said and took the remote from Greg to turn on TV. When the program came on, she sat back with a pleased expression on her face and watched. Her world was moving along smoothly without a single worry to plague her and she wanted to keep it that way forever, but she knew in the back of her mind to prepare for the worst, although she did not expect anything to happen. Their finances were in order and they were in good health. And they had an ever-growing circle of friends. “Your poker party is this coming Saturday, right?” she said.

“We’re right back on schedule and we having it at Gary’s house this time.”

44 “I’ll fix a plate of goodies for you to take with you.”

“Thanks, honey.”

“Any time, but you’ll owe me house duty when I have the girls over for gin rummy, cleaning up and serving us our drinks and goodies.”

“It’s a deal.”

They sat with Greg putting his arm around his wife’s shoulder, watching the program but Greg’s mind was disengaged. He was thinking of the slander case and how to resolve it.

He needed to confront Dick Simpson and wing it from there. It really all depended on what the man’s intention was.

That Saturday the foursome met at Gary’s house. Gary seemed to have lost some weight but otherwise looked fit. The ravages of cancer had not attacked his system yet and they all hoped he would stay on top of it and be cured. They sat at a card table in the living room where Gary brought out the beer and placed the plate of goodies that Greg had brought on a side table. Greg shuffled the cards and began to deal.

“How goes the treatment?” Bill asked. “I hope it’s making some difference.”

“I suppose it is, but it’s not fast enough to my liking. I guess I’m being impatient but

I hate being sick.”

“Is it very painful?” asked Hank.

“It’s getting to be sometimes. It comes and goes. But the herbs I’m taking seem to control the pain well. With no side effects which I like.”

“Are you going to have surgery done?” asked Bill.

“No, I don’t think so, although that’s the normal route. I’ve decided to enter the QW

Wellness Clinic and put myself on their regimen of vegetable and fruit juices. I hear they

45 have a 98% cure rate there. They say ‘Wellness’ there because they cannot advertise themselves as a cancer clinic. The oncologists would protest. But I believe in the literature they have provided and I’m willing to give them a try.”

“If it doesn’t you can always go back to the regular treatment,” Hank said.

“I doubt that Gary would,” Greg said, “knowing how once he makes up his mind about something, that’s it.”

“In a well-reasoned scenario, always,” said Gary. “I’m the look-before-you-leap kind of man and I’ve thoroughly researched the problem and come to the conclusion that what I’m doing is right. I’ve finally convinced my wife, too.”

“I sure wish you the best,” Bill said.

“Thanks,” Gary said, then changed the subject. “Any word about your sword?”

“Not yet,” said Greg. “It’s probably stuck in an attic somewhere forgotten or sitting in a showcase is some out-of-the-way antique shop. I don’t know when I’ll find it but I’m going to keep trying.”

“Being a family heirloom,” Gary said, “I can see its tremendous value. Besides that it’s a famous Masamune blade. I wonder how your father managed to smuggle it out of

Japan and into the United States.”

“I don’t know,” Greg said, “but I wasn’t even allowed to touch it as a boy. I watched my father nail it into a wall compartment in the basement before we were evacuated but the thieves must have known that the walled over portion was a hiding place of something valuable. They ransacked the whole house and all the valuables were missing. They were very thorough.”

“The government did it to you and the thieves did it to you,” Bill said commiserating.

46 “That’s right, a double whammy,” said Greg.

“Did you report it to the police?” Hank asked.

“Not in so many words,” Greg said, “but we included it under ‘Others’ because we were afraid of being accused of possessing unlawful contraband. We didn’t want to be seen as possessing a dangerous weapon.”

“You just can’t be too careful about such things in a police state,” Gary said.

“America’s a police state?” Hank asked.

“On the verge of becoming one,” said Gary.

“What makes you think so?” Hank said.

“It happened when you were thrown into America’s concentration camps,” Gary said.

“You were rounded up gestapo style and herded onto trains and buses into prison camps.

Your property, possessions and all weapons were confiscated. The only difference between

America’s concentration camps and the Nazi extermination camps was that you were not systematically butchered in gas ovens. In all other respects the same pattern holds true.”

“I still cannot believe that we live in a police state,” Hank said.

“We still have freedom of speech, that’s true,” Greg said. “But history will have to decide whether we continue to honor that principle to the very end. We’ll have to see.”

“Greg is right,” said Gary. “We speak our hearts but often not our minds.”

“I wonder why that is so?” Bill mused.

“Probably because we as a people are wishy-washy in our thinking,” Gary said, “and not given to intellectual pursuits. We are very anti-intellectual, preferring to follow fads and slogans and move about in unison like schools of fish rather than doing our own thinking for

47 ourselves. Certain ideas will take hold now and then and sway public sentiment as regards the economy, society and politics but they soon pass as though they were just passing fads.”

“I believe in our democracy,” Hank said.

“So do I,” said Gary. “So do we all. But it still needs to be worked at. We take too many things for granted and pay lip service to the notion of freedom and rights. We have to take responsibility for them as though they were our children. Each new generation must confront the same problems and rejuvenate their thinking along the lines of preserving our freedoms and rights. They need to do this to mold their lives around the concept of democracy. Only through an aware citizenry can we preserve our way of life—by the vote.

Our vote is our salvation and our weapon for change, but all too frequently we vote apathetically. That has got to change…so I say from my soapbox.”

“And we can bring about change by increments,” said Greg. “Small acts of courage often bring about the most lasting results.”

“Hear, hear,” said Bill, “like the reparations movement that is building up right now.”

“That’s right,” Greg said, “it’s like an unstoppable force. What with the congressmen and senators being educated about the unjust racist nature of the concentration camps, it won’t be long before they will pass legislation compensating the former inmates with a sum of money. That’s what we all hope for, compensation and an official apology. It’s now in the making and in the offing.”

“It won’t be long now before I can breathe a sigh of relief,” Bill said.

“And it won’t be long before we organize ourselves better,” Greg said, “to explore our own history. The heroism of the 100th/442nd and MIS guys demand it.”

“Too bad I was too young to join,” Hank said, “but the Korean War was my war.”

48 “And you were wounded twice and decorated for valor,” Bill said.

“The second one I caught in the butt,” Hank said. “That was because I was so cheeky, the nurse said.”

The men laughed and took turns betting and raising. They passed the plate of goodies around and quaffed their beer. The game was seven-card low-ball and Hank won and raked in the pot. It was a substantial addition to his cache. It was his deal and he played five-card draw Jacks or better openers. If nobody could open, they went low-ball.

“I’m thinking of investing in LaserBM which is just starting up,” Greg said, “and I’ve researched the company and it seems to be a well-financed and run company. I was wondering if you guys want to join me?”

“Do they have an exclusive patent?” asked Gary.

“Patent pending but it’s all but sewed up. That’s the latest word I have.”

“The stock market is something that scares me,” said Bill. “My dad lost everything in the ’29 crash and it put us on poor street until the evacuation. At least we got three square meals a day in the camps. Nothing to brag about food-wise but we didn’t starve like we could have if the war hadn’t come along. We were so poor and it was always feast or famine at our house.”

“We’re all children of the Great Depression,” Greg said, “having been born either just before or just after the crash. It was a rough time for everybody, the middle-class and the poor, that is. My father lost his business and took to becoming a fisherman, scraps metal collector and a part-time farmer on five acres we leased from a white man. We just barely were able to put food on the table. My brother Dan had already been sent to Japan to live with my grandparents, for his education, so there was only me, an extra mouth to feed. But

49 in spite of everything, the mounting anti-Japanese feelings among the whites, things were looking up for us when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. That was the straw that broke the racists’ backs and the rest is history.”

“History has a way of repeating itself,” said Gary.

“How’s that?” asked Hank.

“Well, the Japanese empire attacked us militarily at Pearl Harbor in 1941,” Gary began, “and now its economic imperialism is in full blast. They are taking away factory jobs left and right, making inroads into all aspects of our lives and they are here to stay, pure and simple. We might as well get used to the idea.”

“Without fighting back?” Hank asked. “There must be something we can do.”

“Like what?” Bill said. “It’s fait accompli.”

“Maybe we could raise the tariffs on imports or manipulate the currency,” said Hank.

“Easier said than done,” said Bill.

“I don’t know but I think the solution lies in our ability to stay in the forefront of technological developments,” said Greg. “New technology introduces new entrepreneurship.

It drives the engine of investments and the growth of the economy. It’s for that reason that

I’m interested in LaserBM. It’s an up and coming company on the cutting edge of laser technology and they have nowhere to go but up. I’m thinking of sinking a substantial amount in their stocks.”

“To the tune of what?” asked Gary.

“About $50,000.”

“That’s a pretty hefty amount to go just on a hunch,” said Gary.

“It’s more than just a hunch, it’s a shoo-in.”

50 “You seem pretty sure of yourself, Greg,” Hank said.

“I’ve researched the company and the trends and I think it’s a sound investment.”

“You can put me down for $3,000,” said Gary.

“I don’t know,” Bill said. “Like I said I’m leery of the stock market and have my money in real estate. Seems safer that way.”

“I have to have time to think about it,” Hank said.

“I’m going to contact my broker Monday morning to get the ball rolling,” Greg said.

“Good luck,” Bill said.

The four men played poker till the wee hours of the morning. Gary was visibly worn out by the time they quit but said that he had been looking forward to their game all month and couldn’t think of canceling it for any reason, let alone his being sick. His cancer was under control for the moment but not in remission which he hoped would be soon with his visit and stay at the QW Wellness Clinic.

Hank came out on top for the evening. He pocketed the proceeds, saying jokingly that he could now afford to buy groceries for his family and send his kids to college, his winnings that evening being substantial to the tune of $50. They played five dollar a raise limit and the pot would grow hugely. But the winnings if one person won consistently would amount to no more than $100. Bleary eyed but content they said their goodbyes (till next time) and left to go home.

51 Chapter Five

Renting a bicycle from a shop near Unomachi Station, Greg set out on a long ride to

Kasagi Mura, the birthplace of his father. He looked forward to meeting his cousin Takanori and his uncle Teruatsu. In spite of—or because of—Takanori’s alleged eccentricities, he looked forward to getting to know him. He assumed he was older than he because of the fact that his uncle was Tomoyuki’s older brother and must have had a family sooner than later.

He pedaled past the houses along the main street of the town, past the open fields of rice and vegetables spread out along the floor of the narrow valley and arrived about an hour later at

Iwaki Station where he asked for directions to Takanori and Teruatsu’s home. A thirty minute ride took him to a large farmhouse tucked in the crotch of the hills.

He alighted and pushed the bicycle into a large courtyard plush with a vegetable garden and rows of mulberry bushes.

“Gomen kudasai,” he called out at the veranda.

Momentarily, a thin-faced woman came out of the interior and knelt before him.

“Nan deshoo ka? (What is it that you want?),” she asked.

He introduced himself.

“Ah, Greg-san desu ka?” She called into the darkened house.

Her husband Takanori appeared on the veranda and quickly motioned him in. They exchanged bows.

“Yoo ko so,” he said. “Welcome.”

Greg took off his footwear and entered the house. He offered the bottle of scotch he had brought along and Takanori accepted the gift with thanks. The room was cool in the

52 summer heat and he rubbed his legs which were stiff from pedaling the long distance.

Takanori was a tall man, almost as tall as Greg, and slender. He had the Sonoda build all right. His delicate features were marked by a set of piercing eyes, a long nose and full lips.

He told his wife to bring them some sake. She left and soon returned with a tray holding a sake-filled choshi, cups and a dish of otsumami (snacks).

Takanori filled the two tiny cups and raising his said, “kampai!” as if they were old friends instead of two strangers, cousins to be sure, that had met for the first time.

Greg smiled at his cousin and responded likewise and sipped the warm liquid.

“You must stay the night,” Takanori said.

“I will, thank you, but where is uncle?”

“He is out in the fields working and I stayed home anticipating your arrival. Your letter said you would arrive today at our village.”

“I’m right on schedule.”

“When are you leaving?”

“A couple of days from now, after I do some sightseeing.”

“There are several famous sites in the valley. One is the shrine dedicated to our ancestors where even today pilgrims come to be healed. And there are the ancient dwellings in the hills and of course there is Hokezu Toge, the mountain pass that goes down to the Uwa

Kai which is a part of the Inland Sea.”

“I’d like to see all three.”

“I will accompany you tomorrow, but for now we will eat and be merry.”

“Sounds fine to me.”

53 “We will have a large sea bream bought this morning to honor your visit and we will drink lots of sake. Kampai!”

“Kampai.” Greg quickly downed the small cup.

“Have you read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand?” Takanori asked abruptly. He seemed eager to talk.

“Yes, I have, during my college days. I enjoyed The Fountainhead. You’ve read it?”

Greg was surprised at his cousin’s reading choice, that he was familiar with Ayn Rand in the first place.

“Yes. Ayn Rand has influenced my thinking about what it means to be an individual.

I don’t have a college education and I’m just a farmer, but I think a lot about being an individual caught in a conformist society. Individualism means freedom, freedom of the mind, heart and soul, and to be an individual means you have to take responsibility for yourself and your freedom—which goes against being Japanese. We don’t take responsibility for ourselves or our freedom. We are a conglomerate, a collective with a herd instinct that is governed by custom, rules and regulations. We are a regimented society and what freedom we have is expressed by fashion and mannerisms, never by original ideas.

Whereas in America, you are ruled by ideas of liberty and justice. Your social and political movements are all governed by your concepts of equality, equity and privacy which lie at the basis of individualism. But who would understand my views? My fellow countrymen certainly wouldn’t. But you understand what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” said Greg, perceiving that his host had been saving up on his monologue for a long time and only now pulled the plug. “But we take individualism for granted in

America, although racial underdogs like myself have to work at it.”

54 “How’s that?”

“Well, it means a lot of things for an underdog to become an individual, mainly with respect to self-acceptance. He has to accept himself first of all as a human being—“

“Why is that so difficult?”

“Because he belongs to a sub-culture, rather than the mainstream which by definition he always aspires to belong to. Accepting himself as a human being means he has to come up with his own definition of what it means to be human in order to compete with the mainstream version of him as an inferior underdog, economically, politically, socially and what not on down the line.”

“So it is impossible for a racial underdog to become an individual in your society.”

“Not impossible but difficult. Circumstances make it more difficult, internal and external circumstances, not the least of which is our own herd instinct, a stick-together kind of cultural mentality, which is only natural I suppose unless it is carried to the extreme.”

“How can it be carried to the extreme?”

“By casting out the truly original types of individuals on the pretext that they stick out too much, either by being extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad. It’s the-nail-that-sticks out-gets-pounded-down mentality.”

“That’s also true in Japan.”

“We tend to seek the mediocre, balancing the extremes, in everything in the United

States, except in technology and in the arts.”

“So I guess I’m saying that individualism according to our understanding of the West is not our cup of tea,” continued Takanori. “We are an island nation, not a vast open continent like the United States, and we are a densely crowded country and must live in

55 harmony with each other in a system of give-and-take. We have customs and conventions for everything under the sun and in that sense we are a very regimented society which made us prone to accepting the emperor’s edicts unquestioningly in fighting WWII. But I like

American individualism as expressed in the westerns. I want to be like that, the cowboys who ride and shoot and are so free. I go to Unomachi whenever they show westerns, John

Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda and the like. I really enjoy them and the wide open landscape which is so different from what we have in Japan.”

“I like westerns also. They are my favorite.”

“You must join me tonight. It is a full moon tonight. That’s when I go outside and bay at the moon, just like the wolves in the westerns on a high hill overlooking a valley. It is so liberating. After howling at the moon, I feel light and gay and all the load of living rolls off my back. You must try it, Greg-san.”

“I don’t know if it will have the same effect on me,” Greg said and chuckled at the notion of the two of them sitting side by side howling. The neighbors would probably think that Takanori was starting some kind of club.

“I’m thinking that farming is the noblest profession of them all,” Takanori said. “It has always been hard work, working from dawn to dusk, but we would have it no other way.

We work with Mother Earth and the seasons, we taste the sweat from our brow, we bear the aches and pains from work all in order to feed people, give them the basics of food which the world cannot do without. We are the first to suffer from the changes in the weather, the political climate, social and economic trends and famines. Wars and other upheavals of civilization have always hit the farmer the hardest. And yet we persist. Just like the weather.

The weather is always there and so will the farmer be as long as there are people to feed.

56 The farmer is the anchor of humanity and civilization. But we are the least appreciated and always the first to suffer. We are taken for granted but never complain.”

“Are your insights a burden?” asked Greg.

“Not in the least. I am liberated. But I regret being misunderstood by others such as my father who thinks I’m crazy. He often treats me like a misbehaving child which I am not, most certainly not. I howl at the moon to get rid of the misunderstanding.”

“And you understand yourself only too well.”

“Yes, I do. Complete understanding may not be possible, only in broad outlines can one understand oneself and maybe that is enough. I hope so.”

“May I ask if you are a religious man?”

“I am not religious. But I have faith in the power of spirits such as the spirits of nature. Nature is everything. It is capricious and whimsical as on stormy days. It is happy and lucid as on clear sunny days. It is mean and cruel as on blistering hot days. It is frigid and distant as on snowbound days. Nature is everything.”

“You should be a poet.”

“I’ve tried my hand at poetry, without much success, however. But are you religious,

Greg-san?”

“I can’t say that I am, although I’ve given some thought to God.”

“Only to yourself, then.”

“So far. I’ve been too busy with school, army life and whatnot to think much about

God.”

57 “But a thinker must confront the question of God sooner or later,” said Takanori. “I see God as the creator of nature but I can never be certain that He knows me. As me. I can only be certain of myself and me alone. I cannot be certain of anything else.”

“My father became a Christian after he arrived in the United States but we never did go to church later. He might have lost his faith after the war. He never did talk much about himself and that’s one of the reasons I have come to visit you, to find out about my father, and to ask Teruatsu what he remembers about him.”

“My father should be home shortly.” Takanori poured more sake into Greg’s cup and together they drank and ate the snacks his wife had brought in and placed on the table. It was fish cakes wrapped in seaweed or kombu. Greg was sure that the tidbit was reserved for special guests and was part of the regional cuisine of Ehime.

Teruatsu, a tall man of medium but muscular build, ambled into the courtyard, sat on the veranda to remove his boots and entered the six-mat room. When his eye adjusted to the interior darkness, he spotted Greg and bowed deeply.

“Greg-san desu ne,” he said.

“Yes, and I’m pleased to meet you,” Greg said and bowed. He judged his uncle to be around seventy. But he was a robust seventy, a man who still worked the fields.

“When did you arrive?”

“Day before yesterday, but I stopped by Unomachi High School to talk to Fumiko

Tachibana, the history teacher.”

“She’s the new teacher there, I hear. And I heard she was researching our clan but she hasn’t come by to talk to me yet.”

58 “Ah, well, yes. She may yet.” Greg recalled her voicing her reservations about meeting Takanori. Maybe she felt some ill omen might rub off on her if she had. As with people elsewhere, the Japanese had reservations about people who lost their minds, but Greg could vouchsafe for Takanori, the fact that he was anything but crazy. He was a brilliant intellectual given simply to a personal quirk.

“Greg-san brought us a bottle of Johnny Walker Black,” said Takanori. “Shall we try some?”

“Johnny Walker Black?” Teruatsu said quizzically.

“It’s a scotch blend of whisky,” Takanori said.

“How’d you know that?” Teruatsu said.

“I get all kinds of magazines and I read a lot. It’s one of the GI’s favorite.”

Takanori called out to his wife and she brought in a tray with three glasses and set them before the men. Then she sat a distance away from the table, waiting for further orders.

Takanori poured the whisky and the three toasted each other.

“That’s good,” said Teruatsu. “It’s different from shochu but good.”

“My father used to be a whisky drinker,” Greg said. “He dearly loved his whisky but he never got drunk. At least I never saw him drunk.”

“You wrote to tell us how he died, in a car accident, you say. That’s too bad. He was only forty-five, in the prime of his life.”

“As a youth, he worked in the mines, railroads, lumber camps of the Northwest, the canneries in Alaska and later, much later after he lost his business, became a farmer who had to settle down to raise two sons. That was during the Great Depression and times were hard and he wound up sending Dan back to Japan to be educated. Dan stayed in Japan, was

59 drafted by the Japanese Army and then went on to becoming a manufacturer of sporting goods, as you probably know.”

“Yes, we are aware of Dan’s success,” Teruatsu said. “He visited us a number of times in the past after he left the village and always gave us the impression that he was an up and coming star in the business world. He follows in the footsteps of our sake brewing pioneer, Takekichi Sonoda, who made the brand Shoen famous. In fact, that is the brand of sake we always drink.” He nodded to the sake containers on the table.

“What was my father like as a child?”

“Well, Tomoyuki was a wampaku kozo, a rambunctious child. He was the youngest of us five children—I am the oldest—and spoiled rotten. He got away with everything under the sun. He was my mother’s favorite. My, how she doted on him and excused his every infraction. He used to steal the drying persimmons off the rack, eat them and wind up with a bad stomach ache. He did this a number of times, especially when told not to, with always the same results. A bad stomach ache. You’d think he had learned his lesson the first time, but, no, he kept it up in spite of being spanked.”

That did sound a little like his father, thought Greg, when he recalled how he would perversely run up a debt by buying unnecessary equipment that he could not afford at the time for the farm. But he had been smart enough to put the equipment to work, building crops around it, and turning the farm into an efficient enterprise, one of the most successful in the area. In the aftermath of the crash of 1929, he had lost all his new equipment; the bank repossessed them. So it was back to manual labor for the family, a dawn to dusk venture just to put food on the table. But they were fortunate. They survived starving to death or becoming homeless.

60 “He used to be clever with his hands,” said Greg, recalling the numerous animal carvings, toys and other handicraft items Tomoyuki produced in the last camp, a family camp in Crystal City, Texas.

“He was clever at an early age. Around ten he made a bicycle entirely out of wood all by himself. The wheels turned and worked but he could not figure out how to work the pedals. So he had a neighbor kid pull him around while he rode in grand style. He was so proud of himself for having made the bicycle. He even put a bell on it and would ring it to warn anyone who came close.”

“He was the adventuresome sort as well,” said Greg, “judging from his escapades when he was a bachelor but to his credit he settled down after he got married and first began by making furniture, then investing his money in farmland leased under his sons names and sold to others. Because he was a Japanese alien he couldn’t own land on his own. That was the law in those days. The Japanese were discriminated against as were the Chinese before them. But things are better now.”

“Tomoyuki used to go into the hills and sleep there all by himself to tempt the foxes and badgers to bewitch him,” said Teruatsu. “He was just a boy. According to one of his stories, one time during the night a badger came out saying kun, kun, kun, making a sound like that, and pelted him with rocks. He said the badger would grab a rock with his front paws and use his hind feet to propel the rock. All he did was to throw the rocks right back at the badger to chase it away. He laughed his head off at his own antics. I don’t know whether to believe the story or not.”

The rural folk of Japan were superstitious about being bewitched by foxes and badgers, so much so that they made offerings to them by placing fish cakes and tempura, the

61 foxes favorite food, at the doorways. Greg had heard stories his father occasionally would tell him about a man in his village taking a bath in a night soil vat (human waste was used as fertilizer) saying Ii oyuu da, ii oyuu da (the bath water is just fine). He was rescued before he dunked his head under to wash his hair. The villagers found a clump of fox fur nearby. But his father, unable to speak English,, rarely communicated with his sons. He spoke only

Japanese and the language barrier weighed heavily upon his mother, Jean, who could speak only English. While he was in America, Dan was the go-between for the two, having picked up the language at the local Japanese school as did Greg later.

“My father had only a fourth grade education,” Greg said. “Earlier he mentioned that fact with pride. He was proud to have made it in life with just four years of schooling—“

“But later he regretted it,” Takanori broke in.

“Yes, he did,” said Greg. “Later after the crash he lamented the fact that we were reduced to poverty and had to work our fingers to the bones just to put food on the table and barely survive.”

“I’m sorry I never got an education myself,” Takanori said, “but work is work. I was needed on the farm.”

“But why was he allowed to quit school after just four years?” Greg asked.

“Four years was all that was required of a child during the Meiji Era,” said Teruatsu,

“and he was such a stubborn wampaku kozo that he insisted on staying out of school and working on the farm. He hated school and all the book learning. He always wanted to figure things out for himself. In that sense he knew at an early age which way he wanted to go and it was always his own way. I was already grown up by then and working on the family farm,

62 slaving away to meet the portion of the crops we had to give to the landlord. The other children were away at school and I welcomed the help. He was quite a worker.”

Greg had a better picture of his father now. He could see him growing up as a headstrong child in the farming village at the edge of the long valley which comprised

Higashi Uwa Gun (county), a child who was clever at making things, who already had a mind of his own at ten. What amazed Greg was the transition from that aggressive quality of mind to one of passively accepting one’s fate. It may have been that the Great Depression was a softening up blow, the fact that he had been prosperous one moment and in the next lost everything to have to slave from dawn to dusk just to keep from starving and becoming homeless. Things had begun to look up in the late 30s, however, his side venture as a fisherman taking off, but that was not to last long. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor came the knock on the door of the green frame house and two FBI agents and the county sheriff arrested Tomoyuki to incarcerate him in the county jail where he was tortured, then he was transferred to detention centers in the desolate hinterlands of the United States, all on the pretext that he possessed a fishing boat which could be used to contact nonexistent enemy submarines. When the war was over he came out a subdued, passive man, broken in spirit, no longer the aggressive, happy-go-lucky man Greg dimly remembered as a child.

“Had he always gotten his own way?” Greg asked.

“Pretty much so,” answered Teruatsu. “Our mother doted on him and he could do no wrong as far as she was concerned. She was getting on in years by the time she had him and he was the last child she could have, so she lavished her attention on him and let him get away with everything.”

63 “And grandfather didn’t step in?”

“Our father loved him only too well, too. He was a spoiled child.”

“How was he able to smuggle in the Masamune blade? Did grandfather Takatoki give it to him? He was only 15 when he emigrated to the United States.”

“He just took it. He later apologized in a letter, saying he took it to remind himself of his roots as a Sonoda, to never forget he came from the proud tradition of the samurai. We forgave him and wrote to him telling him to honor the family tradition by becoming a great person in the land of America. It came as a disappointment to hear that he was a mere farmer. We had high hopes for him.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a farmer,” said Takanori. “Farming keeps one close to Mother Earth and ties one to nature and the seasons. We are as part of life as the weather.”

Greg could see his cousin as a naturalistic intellectual—who seemed to know what he was talking about. At least he was convinced of the veracity of his insights, which was very rare among Japanese of his class but which was understandable given the fact that he was approaching thirty-five and had by now made up his mind about life.

“Let me show you our silkworm processing room,” Takanori said suddenly, getting to his feet. Greg downed the last swallow of scotch and got up to follow him. He ushered Greg outside to walk past a large patch of mulberry bushes—food for the silkworms—and he pointed out the variety of vegetables planted in the large garden. There were daikon (white radishes), sweet potatoes, carrots, egg plants, cucumbers, watermelons, squash, yama imo

(taro), burdock and tomatoes. They walked into a detached building.

64 There were several vats of hot water with silkworm cocoons floating on the surface and the overhead rack of spools were reeling the silk filaments. Takanori explained that the hot water killed the pupae and each one had to be brushed to find the end of the filament which then was spun, a very labor intensive operation. On their farm, not only did they do sericulture as did many of the farmers of the vicinity but they also grew rice and a variety of vegetables. The rice was sold to the government for rationing, a system that was a carryover from the war and still in effect, but they could sell as little or as much as they wanted to. Till a year before (in 1955) the government had a monopoly; the farmers had to sell all their harvest to the government. But not anymore…which, combined with their other crops, made a lot of farmers independently wealthy.

After dinner that evening, the three of them sat on the veranda, Takanori and Teruatsu smoking a kiseru, a minuscule pipe filled with tobacco, with Greg pulling on a Chesterfield, and they talked about the difference between life in the country and city, the city of Tokyo where neither of the men had ever been. To them Tokyo was like another planet and anyone who came from there or had lived there for a while was regarded with awe and curiosity.

The Japanese had always had a keen sense of the novel, so when they imbibed the scotch

Greg had given them it was like drinking the drink of another world—which it was literally.

They had probably never tasted scotch before.

By 1956 TV had not spread to the rural areas yet (there was radio, to be sure), but they had a telephone, the only one for miles around, which was a drawing point for their neighbors who apparently came to visit them on their bicycles and stayed for hours, their idyllic life punctuated by the local gossip. One story that Takanori mentioned was about a misplaced tsunokakushi (the bride’s horn-hiding headdress) that had delayed a neighbor’s

65 wedding ceremony interminably while the family attempted to purchase another one in

Unomachi only to find the store closed and the owner gone. In desperation they used a handkerchief as part of the headdress but picture-taking had to be delayed until a proper one could be found. The Buddhist priest was paid and the merriment followed anyway and all was properly forgiven the following day when the store was opened and the photo session could take place.

They sat on the veranda smoking and talking until the moon rose over the valley in all its glorious fullness. All three of them were quite tipsy by then, having imbibed both the scotch and Shoen sake, and Takanori got to his feet unsteadily, beckoning Greg to join him.

“Time to appreciate the moon and nature,” Takanori said.

Greg followed him up a path leading to the top of a high hill behind the farmhouse.

There they sat on a rock outcropping and looked out at the valley below them. The full moon lit up the entire landscape with a soft glow and hung above the trees and fields as a huge globe. Takanori passed around the tokkuri (sake container) he had brought along and they both imbibed the warm beverage, both of them getting noticeably drunker. Takanori talked some more about his love of nature, of fishing for funa (type of carp) in the river running the length of the valley, of traveling around the island of Shikoku in the off-season when farming was slow, although there was always work to do. Greg thought his cousin was a man that life had treated kindly until he began talking about his life as a soldier in the Japanese army during WWII. It seems that he was a guard at a POW camp in the Philippines with the rank of sergeant and he tried to instill in his men a sense of kindness toward the American prisoners which only provoked a nasty private to acts of unmentionable cruelty. It spread to the other soldiers under his command and no amount of moral persuasion (the fact that

66 everyone was an individual and human being in their own right) made any difference. The unruliness of his men—condoned, even encouraged by the high command—even found expression in their acts of sabotage of his meals, his person and his belongings, a form of harassment that continued well past the time when he gave up trying to reform them.

When Takanori finished his narrative of his military experiences, he reared up his head and began howling, as though to release the pent-up frustration he felt. He kept howling, sounding like a wolf in the movies, and motioned Greg to join him. He had an ecstatic look etched into his features and he howled loudly. Not to be outdone, Greg drunkenly raised his chin, stared at the moon and howled, extending the oooooo sounds out as long as he could, and took a deep breath and repeated the procedure. He felt instantly better and glanced at his cousin who was looking at him appreciatively. They wound up slapping each other on the back. Then after several more minutes of drinking, they got to their feet and made their way off the bluff to return to the farmhouse.

The next day they went sightseeing. First they went to visit the shrine tucked into the crotch of the hills nearby. It was a small shrine festooned with paper gohei (used in purification rituals) and had a tray with fruit offerings placed on it. A pilgrim on crutches and several other people were praying there. Takanori clapped his hands and bowed his head in reverence and Greg followed suit.

Next they got on their bicycles and pedaled to the outskirts of Unomachi to view the caves dug into the cliffs. It was too high to reach by ladder and Greg wondered how the inhabitants got to them. Apparently, according to Takanori, they used a system of rope ladders suspended from the mouths of the caves which they could take up after occupancy to prevent any incursion. Who the cave dwellers were was a mystery but judging from the flint

67 arrowheads and other artifacts they may have been the Jomon people, one of the original inhabitants of Japan, although they are usually associated with the hunter-gatherers who lived in the valleys.

Then they bicycled to Hokezu Toge, a mountain pass that led out to Uwa Kai, part of the picturesque Inland Sea. From the top of the pass, they could see the winding road lead down to several fishing villages, past vast orchards of mikan (tangerines known as iyo-kan and for their sweetness) and out toward the sea dotted with verdant small islands as in a landscaped garden. The sun was at its height and shone warmly on their shoulders and mopping the sweat off his face, Greg followed his cousin as they made their way back to

Unomachi to have lunch at a restaurant near the station.

They finished their meal and Greg returned the bicycle to the rental shop nearby.

Then they walked over to the inn where he collected his things and paid the hotel bill and they ambled leisurely to the train station. It would be another hour for the Takamatsu-bound train to arrive. He would be making the ferry boat connection around midnight. A short layover in Okayama and then it was a straight shot to Tokyo via a transfer at Osaka.

Takanori sat in the waiting room of the station by Greg, chatting about sundry things like taking a break from farming during the off-season and traveling to Tokyo to see him. It was a definite possibility, he said, if he could tear himself away from his work in Kasagi

Mura. The Sonoda roots ran deep and he reveled in making the pilgrimage around the 88 way-stations of Shikoku, a famous trek for Buddhists, although he was not a believer. He honored the religious traditions of the Japanese and their cultural heritage but he did not subscribe to any one set of beliefs. His belief was in nature and therefore he was a Shintoist

68 but not as an ultra-nationalist, an ex-military man given to extremism, but as a farmer, an occupation he took obvious pride in.

When the train arrived, Greg got to his feet and bowed to his cousin, bidding him goodbye. Takanori bowed and laughingly said that his next visit should also coincide with the full moon. Greg nodded, recalling the sensation of a release from everyday concerns, and smiled…not that he would perform the act on his own but he left open the possibility of joining his cousin again. It was a shared secret between them and whether his uncle Teruatsu approved or not, it bonded the two men.

Greg picked up his suitcase, waved before he went through the wicket and walked along the platform to board a middle coach. He turned and waved again and disappeared into the interior where he found a seat. Settling back on the straight-back wooden bench, he listened to the station master cry out “Hassha” and opened a Japanese magazine he had purchased at the station’s canteen. It was going to be a long uncomfortable ride to

Takamatsu on the hard wooden seats and he was going to have to make the best of it. He reminded himself to call Prof. Higa as soon as he got back.

69 Chapter Six

Dick Simpson, a rival of Henry Miyamoto in the nursery business, was out of the office for the moment and Greg was determined to see him during that day sometime and decided to call him right after lunch. He wanted to resolve the slander suit as soon as he could so that he could turn his attention to other matters. The case was up in the air as far as he was concerned in that Miyamoto had suffered no personal loss either in reputation or in his business. As a matter of fact it appeared, according to Miyamoto himself, that business had picked up. Greg didn’t know how widespread the rumor had become but even in the unlikely event that it had been spread by word and mouth far and wide, it didn’t appear that

Miyamoto had suffered at all, except for the sting to his pride.

Later that day Greg succeeded in contacting Simpson and made arrangements to see him at his office, stating that his errand had to do with Miyamoto and his good name.

Simpson sounded puzzled and said he would be waiting for Greg’s arrival. Greg strode into the offices of Nursery & More and shook hands with a man in his upper 50’s, a stout man with reddish features and graying on top.

“You said over the phone that I impugned the good name of Henry Miyamoto?” he said tentatively after the initial exchange of pleasantries.

“Yes, Miyamoto said he heard it third-hand that you slandered him, saying he was the illegitimate son of a Japanese Imperial Army general and had ties with the yakuza. He feared that kind of rumor might impact on his business since he does a lot of business with Japan and the local Japanese community.”

“When did I ever say such a thing?”

70 “About a month ago, at a dinner party at the Kiwanis Club.”

“At the Kiwanis Club dinner?” Simpson said with a vacant expression. “Ah, that must have been when I was in my cups—he said after a moment—after recalling the horrible treatment I received at the hands of Shimpei Miyamoto in their prison camps.”

“You didn’t mean Henry Miyamoto then?” Greg said relieved.

“No. And I didn’t know he was a fellow Kiwanis member. I’m new to the organization and I would never say a mean thing about another member, true or not.”

“What about this Shimpei Miyamoto, that is if you care to elaborate?”

“Well, I can talk about it now. I couldn’t for years and years after the war, the experience was just too personal and painful. I understand Shimpei Miyamoto was branded a criminal and the authorities are seeking his arrest, but he continues to elude them. I’m sure they’ll catch him in the end. Japan is too small to hide in forever. I try to keep in touch with the situation by reading the local newspapers I have sent to me and get translated and by writing friends, Japanese friends…yes, I have a few…in Japan. It was me who blew the whistle. Miyamoto, Shimpei, that is, is a monster, and after the dinner party when I had one too many and the hatred of the man was just too unbearable that I spouted off.”

He paused for a moment, then continued. “I’ve taken Christ as my personal savior. I really had no choice, the hatred was eating me up and affecting my health, so I attended a church gathering at my friend’s insistence and after several meetings, I invited Christ to come into my life and lo and behold it was like a miracle. The hatred just flew off of me and

I experienced peace like I had never known before, even before becoming a Japanese POW.

It has changed me completely and forever. Miyamoto may be a monster but I forgave him and that was the beginning of my new life.”

71 “I’m glad your burden has been removed,” Greg said simply and marveled at the ex-

POW’s resilience. The matter of the slander suit had been cleared up and Greg was eager to impart what he had learned to Henry.

He noted the Indian logos on a few newsletters spread on Simpson’s desk. “You contribute toward the Indian cause?”

“I do. Ever since my conversion as a born-again Christian, I’ve taken to giving to charity and among them is a lot of Indian organizations, such as the SW Indian Relief Fund,

St. Joseph Indian School, American Indian Education Foundation, to name a few. I was never much a giver—I was a taker—but all of that has changed.”

“I give to St. Labre Indian School in Montana, so does Henry Miyamoto,” Greg said.

“So Henry contributes to the Indians, too. I must meet him. It seems we have a lot in common.”

“After I tell him about the results of today’s meeting with you, I’m sure he will look forward to meeting you, too.”

“Before you leave, can I interest you in my special blend of coffee from Columbia?

It’s a treat. I’m in touch with an importer of coffee that caters to the high-end restaurants and the famous and wealthy and I get a fresh weekly supply. I guarantee it’s the best coffee you’ll ever drink and I’d be surprised to hear you say otherwise.”

Being a coffee drinker who had not had his quota for the day, Greg was curious and said yes, he’d like some, and Simpson went out to the outer office and filled two cups which he brought in. He set Greg’s down in front of him on the desk. A wonderful aroma filled

Greg’s nostrils and he took a sip.

“It is very good coffee, better than what I’m used to,” he said.

72 “Coffee has become an important part of my life ever since we were deprived of it during my POW days. We tried everything as a substitute but it was never the same. We tried roasting and grinding up peas, carrots, nuts, sweet potatoes, potato peelings, barley when we could get them but they never did work. The few Red Cross packages that made their way to us, when they weren’t stolen by the guards, contained coffee which were like gold. Coffee was the gold standard next to soap and cigarettes. It is something like rice in

Japan.”

“Talking about rice, California rice is one of the largest cash crops in the state,” Greg rejoined, “and is being exported throughout the world, as you know.”

“No, I didn’t. I know we grow rice in the state but as an export item, I didn’t know.”

“We Japanese revere the memory of Keisaburo Koda, one of the early pioneers of the rice industry in California. He belonged to the samurai clan in Fukushima and came to the

United States in 1908, wildcatting in the oil fields, starting up several canning companies then selling them and then settling on rice farming. He lost everything, all his equipment including the airplane he used to seed the fields with, in the aftermath of the evacuation, but he and his sons returned after the camps to start again and the Koda Farms are flourishing even today.”

“The concentration camps in America were a disgrace,” Simpson said. “I heard about the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team and their exploits in Europe fighting the

Nazis and about how they had volunteered from the camps while their families were still incarcerated and it blew my mind, to think that patriotism of that kind was so alive in minds and hearts of the Nisei in spite of our racist president ordering their removal from the West

Coast. Or was it because of the order? It probably motivated them to prove themselves by

73 volunteering. But I understand that a group of them who responded no-no to a questionnaire wound up being branded disloyals and sent to a segregation camp for disloyals and that a group of young men who refused to be drafted from the camps unless their rights were restored were sentenced as draft resisters and sent to a federal penitentiary. What a raw deal!

It was a travesty, a gross miscarriage of justice. I wonder what ever became of those men.”

“They were pardoned by President Truman and released from Levenworth in 1947.

Most of them faded into the background as anonymous entities, as you can well imagine.

Frank Emi, the leader of the Fair Play Committee at Heart Mountain…the camp in

Wyoming… lost his produce business in LA before the war. We used to go to shop there.

He came back to work as a postal clerk and start a famous judo club. The Japanese

American Citizens League wanted him charged with sedition for his refusal to be drafted.

There is a longstanding schism in our community over the issue since so many Nisei volunteered from the camps to serve in the military and the patriotic fever ran high among the more unquestioning Nisei and JACL hasn’t apologized for its stand and here it is thirty- four years after the war.”

“Do you think they ever will?”

“I’m hoping that they will. It would bring closure to a lot of things splitting Japanese

Americans these days. We could proceed to being a unified culture. Personal infighting and acrimony among the pro-Japan and pro-American groups arose as a consequence of WWII.

We’ve essentially become a people of fence-sitters who believe they are Japanese at heart and think we live in our country simply pay to taxes and vote in free elections.”

“Fence-sitters? I don’t see you as fence-sitters. I see you as a get-up-and-go people, willing to do what you need to do to get ahead in our society.”

74 “By fence-sitter I mean on a personal level, the level where personal development takes place. It appears that we are afraid to question ourselves or doubt ourselves as individuals.”

“Question oneself as an individual? I don’t do that, although I may question my judgment sometimes.”

“You were born an individual, Mr. Simpson. We Japanese Americans have to struggle with the concept.”

“It’s a cultural thing, then?”

“Yes, it is. Very much so.”

“How did you break out of the mold?”

“Well, it’s long story. But the short of it is that I’ve had to do my own thinking for myself, experiment with life and guide my own development as a person,”

“Something that we do naturally.”

“Yes.”

Greg finished the last of his coffee. It was a refreshing conversation he had with

Simpson. Other than with his poker friends, he seldom discussed the camps and his experiences in them, much less about his personal feeling regarding individualism, an issue that was ever-present in his life growing up. He had no choice but to confront the issue since the question of his identity kept impinging itself on his mind. Was he American or Japanese or both? If both, which side did he favor, his father’s side (the Japanese) or his mother’s (the

American)? There was no question but that he was an American, being born and raised in

America, growing up in the environment of the big city, eating the food, reading the books,

But there was the pull of being Japanese as well. And then there was the personal question

75 of who he was and what he was good for, a question that was universal. Who could answer that for him? Only he. So he lived his life as an individual and homed in on his own thinking regarding all and sundry. But he still maintained his ties as a Japanese American in cultural terms if not personal terms.

Greg got to his feet and bid Simpson goodbye and strode out to the Camry to leave.

He noted several customers examining the plants surrounding the office building and situated in the large acreage behind. It was not as large as Miyamoto’s business but evidently business was good, judging from the number of people. The parking lot was nearly full and people were carrying their purchases back to their cars and placing them in the trunks.

He returned to the office and gave Henry Miyamoto a call. After waiting for a moment while the receptionist transferred the call to his office, he talked with Miyamoto and described the exchange he had with Simpson with regard to the slander suit. Miyamoto breathed a sigh of relief, saying that he was glad it was a result of a misunderstanding, although he was certain at one point that he was the target. He explained it as a result of the flame of paranoia that had followed him ever since the concentration camps and every slight personal or otherwise found itself impacting upon his fragile self. That’s the problem with us

Japanese Americans, Greg said, we don’t have a strong sense of self, only a collective sense of who we are and what we are good for. It has helped us as a community to come together and stay together, a typically Asian thing, but it has not helped us develop personally strong selves capable of withstanding the fierce competition involving true individuals, except in the case of academic excellence in the professions.

Greg also told him about his discovery that Simpson was a contributor to the Indian cause and told him about his coffee predilection.

76 Miyamoto perceptibly brightened up over the phone.

“I must meet the man,” he said, “and try out his coffee. I’m always looking for a better brand than what I am currently drinking. And to think he’s contributes to the same cause.”

Greg said he would make arrangements to introduce them and after a few more pleasantries, he hung up and made it a point to call Simpson the next day. Then he turned his attention to a new case that crossed his desk, relieved that the slander suit had been settled without litigation which could have turned out to be lengthy and costly, with his client losing.

He didn’t want to lose a case, if he could help it.

That evening for dinner—a mini-celebration for his having resolved the slander case amicably—Greg and his family went to Suitei, a Japanese restaurant in Gardena. They ordered sukiyaki and watched as the waitress placed a large cooking pan and a couple of platters containing meat, tofu and vegetables on the table. She lit the natural gas-burning stove and began frying the meat, seasoning it with soya sauce, sugar, sake and water, and added tofu and the variety of vegetables. The aroma stimulated an appetite in Greg. When the ingredients began to simmer, she served them bowls of rice and eggs into which to dip the concoction before eating. The egg was customary but optional. They all had the egg. It helped to cool the ingredients and add flavor to them. Then they dug in.

“Well, how was school today?” Greg asked. “Did you both manage to stay out of trouble?”

“Peter and me are friends,” said Brian. “He doesn’t call me names anymore and I don’t have to urge to slug him. I told him that we were all Americans and come from different backgrounds and we had better learn to get along together. He thought about that

77 for a moment, looked me in the eye and said you’re right and shook my hand, just that simple, and we were friends.”

“Two Americans united,” said Caroline. “It’s a lovely world and you are going to have the best of everything, Brian.”

“Nobody ever picks on me,” complained Craig.

“Is that a bad thing?” asked Greg.

“I don’t get to fight back.”

“So you wish somebody would give you a hard time?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“If it’s yes, then you will want to slug him. If it’s no, then you will back off.”

“Not exactly.”

“Then how will you handle a situation if someone gives you a hard time?”

“I guess it all depends.”

“On what?”

“On the circumstances.”

“There you have it. Everything always depends on the circumstances. You can’t go around with a chip on your shoulder, looking for trouble, but you have to be prepared to meet it when it does happen. And answer the problem adequately.”

“What happens when you don’t have any choice?” asked Brian.

“When you don’t have any choice except to fight, make sure it’s always in the form of self-defense. Everything in the universe, everyone has the right to defend oneself from deprivation, oppression and persecution.”

“Is that why you became a lawyer, Dad?” asked Craig.

78 “Well, not really. That came as my training took over. I wanted to be close to your mother, so I went to law school after wrangling summer jobs with Crossett, Bigelow & Tyler and got on board after I passed the bar exam—with your mother’s help.”

“When did you fall in love with Mom?” asked Brian.

“I believe it was the time I first heard her voice over the phone. I couldn’t wait to see the face behind the voice.”

“And the rest is history,” said Brian.

“That’s right and it’s been a wonderful history.” Greg said and smiled at his wife as he picked out a piece of sukiyaki to dip into the egg.

Caroline basked in the glow. She didn’t regret her decision to lure Greg the first time she met him. Oh, he was still rough around the edges but of good mind and spirit which she prized in a man regardless of his ethnicity. With her silent manipulation after he returned from Japan, he had come around beautifully and she prided herself as the maker of men. Her two sons were growing up to be men of their own accord, each with a potential all their own which she would guide and develop.

After dinner they went to see a movie, Rocky II. They bought a couple of tubs of popcorn, candy bars and soft drinks and found seats in the darkened theater. Watching the commercials and trailers, they dug into their snacks and washed them down with swallows of their drink. When the movie came on, Greg noted that Sylvester Stallone hadn’t changed a whit since the making of the original Rocky in 1976, three years before. As Rocky Balboa, the actor came out as a glistening Apollo with his torso rubbed with olive oil and in his fighting trunks. With his arm around Caroline’s shoulders, Greg settled back to enjoy the

79 movie. The moviemakers had things down pat: the music was stirring and militant, the gym was appropriately grungy, the fight scenes were edge-of-seat realistic.

On their way back home from the cinema, Caroline asked Greg if their monthly poker session was going to be that Saturday at their place and Greg said yes, it was, since it was at

Hank’s place last time. There was a hiatus of two months while Gary underwent treatment at the QW Wellness Clinic.

“What kind of goodies should I prepare?” she asked.

“You don’t have to make anything, honey. I’ll order a platter of sushi, it’s always a hit. The guys can’t get enough of it.”

“I’ll just curl up with a good book, then.”

Saturday came and the four men sat at the dining room table, taking their accustomed places. Gary was looking wan. He had lost a little weight but looked remarkably fit otherwise, considering the fact that he was battling a deadly disease. Greg shuffled the cards and dealt. They played five-card low-ball.

Helping himself to morsel of sushi, Gary said, “I’ve had to drink upwards of 15 glasses of juiced vegetables and fruit a day for about a month. That’s all I got. Couldn’t eat anything else, wasn’t allowed to. But the tumor shrank and the cancer is in remission all due to the fact that I’ve been feeding the healthy cells in my body and not the cancerous ones.

This is all without surgery or chemotherapy or radiation, none of that standard deadly treatment that has a very low rate of survival.”

“You seemed to have hit a plateau during the last month or two,” Greg said.

“I have and the trend is upward which I’m thankful for. I’m going to survive this one by hook or crook.”

80 “I’ve been praying for you, Gary,” Bill said.

“Thanks, buddy. Every little bit helps.”

“And I’ve been sending good thoughts your way,” Hank said.

“Same here,” Greg said and looked at Gary, his longtime friend from their Fort

Huachuca days. “And they say sushi is good for cancer.”

“You’re kidding,” Gary said, smiling, and glanced at Greg.

“I am. But I consider sushi good for whatever ails you, be it a hangnail or the blues.

It’s just good stuff. Comfort food.”

“Hear, hear,” Bill said.

It was Hank’s turn to shuffle and deal. As he dealt a game of seven-card stud, he commented on the fact that LaserBM was moving up in the market and asked if he should sell or hold.

“Why don’t you hold for a few more months and wait and see,” counseled Greg who had gotten all three of them interested enough to invest in the company.

“Could go higher,” Hank said.

“Could, and it most likely will,” Greg said.

“And if it doesn’t?” Bill asked.

“Nothing is certain, certainly not in this world, but I think I’ve latched onto a sure-fire thing. The only troublesome thing about it is that it is patent-pending. They don’t have the product socked in yet.”

“When will they?” Bill asked.

“I don’t know,” said Greg. “I hear they are having problems with the patent pending.”

81 “What kind of problems?” Bill pressed.

“It’s not clear yet.”

“Well, I hope it all works out,” Hank said. “I have $5,000 riding on it.”

“I have well over $200,000,” said Greg, “and I hope so, too.”

They played on in silence, each caught in their own thoughts. While concentrating on poker took up only part of his mind, Greg was thinking about God who was in his thoughts quite often of late. He didn’t know why except that he wanted to communicate with his father, the way he never had the chance to while he was still alive, his life being cut too short too soon. He wanted to know more about how he thought, what made up his beliefs, and why he had settled down to becoming a farmer instead of continuing on with his furniture business in which he had aggressively sought out clients—which had been more his style than farming. Could it be that he gravitated toward nature and wanted to merge with the seasons as Takanori had, romanticizing the role of a farmer? But no, that could not be so, for he had emerged from the Depression and WWII and the incarceration a beaten man. He had gone into working the soil because that was the only livelihood open to him, and he had worked at various other jobs on the side.

But Greg didn’t believe he could break through the barrier between the living and the dead, assuming that the dead lived on in some form in the beyond. Did they or didn’t they?

If they did, that meant the transmigration of souls was for real and there was a place called heaven or hell. If they didn’t, what did that mean? That there was no heaven or hell? That the souls of man or consciousness died with the death of the brain? If the brain was the beginning and end of all that we know as the soul, what really happens after death? Nothing?

82 Poof and that’s it? What about the energy that keeps a person alive? Call it spirit energy, for want of a better term. Does this spirit energy die with the death of the brain or is it released, freed of the body to join a reservoir of spirit energy somewhere in the universe since according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics energy can never be destroyed, only transmuted. Does that mean energy is the soul of every form of life? What about inanimate objects such as rocks and minerals as opposed to organic living matter? Are the rocks and minerals dead or alive? In one sense they are dead in that they are not responsive like the myriad life forms but in another they are alive in that the atoms and molecules are in constant motion and they respond in chemical reactions.

Such thinking led Greg to the very threshold of knowing God as the master architect of everything seen and unseen in Nature and the universe. It was unavoidable. His own thinking led him to believe in the existence of a form of a god as the master consciousness that began it all. It was not by chance or serendipity that life occurred, although both played a role in the grand scheme of existence. It was a matter of Intelligent Design merged with chance and serendipity that propelled evolution, the engine behind everything in the universe, from the atoms and molecules, to the swirling gases, to the universe and us.

In view of all the suffering, diseases, birth defects, upheavals and turmoil in the world, what is God’s relevance? On a personal level, national level, global level? When everything seems to be going well, when there is peace and harmony in life, when one can expect to have three square meals a day and a full belly, what then? Does God need to be worshipped? When everything is in chaos and disharmony and ill health rules, is God to be reviled? Or is gratitude in order in the first instance and true personal grit the second?

Where does that leave God? Can we live without a consciousness of God? To be an

83 awakened and aware individual, can we legitimately stray away from the concept of God? If we do, are we not blinding ourselves deliberately to God’s immutable laws that govern the universe? It would be a blinding that would put one out of touch with oneself, for to know

God one must know oneself and vice versa. And to know oneself is one of the most difficult if not impossible tasks one could undertake in life, for one’s potential is limitless and will lead to a mere inkling of what lies in one’s future, if at all. The future is a blank slate in most people’s lives, to be met with courage and optimism. That is all that is left after all is said and done and that is quite enough, to start all over again if need be. And God is ultimately unknowable because of one’s limitless potential which pushes the frontier of self-knowledge infinitely into the evolution of the future.

Complete knowledge of oneself may not even be possible, for when and where does the search end? It is never ending. The search for the self is a quest that will take one through the throes of hell and high water and may never be complete, giving one only a partial glimpse of one’s depths and shallows. To be satisfied that one has discovered the limits to one’s potential as a human being is to close the door on the most basic impulses of being human, for we as humans are exploratory animals and with curiosity giving impetus to our inquiries, we will stay the course until the end of our days, given a certain kind of propensity toward self-inquiry. Those who do not inquire may condemn themselves to a life unexamined and in a way deny themselves the glory of self-knowledge which may or may not be challenged every step of the way. Whether the attempt at self-knowledge is worth the effort is problematic, for it can be fraught with pitfalls, but for some people it is both imperative and conducive to the building of character. For the rare and humble souls who hue to the dictum of “Yea, yea, oh Lord, nay, nay, oh Lord” in all that they do and think and

84 who surrender their will to what they perceive as the Greater Will, they may reap the bountiful harvest of an overall peace of mind, heart and soul—which may or may not be challenged as life rolls on. For the few who manage to keep their lives simple, meditating on the simplicity of all things that come and go, they may enjoy a peace that is unsurpassed in a linear sense, but life is not linear but more a pattern of convolutions with ups and downs and many bumps along the way, some small, some large, that impinge themselves on the soul to make for a life that can be devastatingly brutal or inspirationally rewarding—sometimes both, at the same time—for the transcendent nature of one’s understanding of life can lead one to accept all things. In other words, that which is brutal can conceal the seeds of a redemptive acceptance of all of life’s vagaries. But in the final analysis maybe the self is not important to begin with.

The poker session progressed until the wee hours of the morning that Saturday and the men wearily stifled yawns and rubbed their eyes in an attempt to stay awake, but the need of sleep got the better of them and around four they called it a night. They got up, shrugged into their coats and left, leaving Greg to tidy up before he went to bed. He would sleep till noon and get up to begin the day, first by playing with the kids and then by helping Caroline with the household chores. He always reserved Sundays for the family and its activities.

Several days later Greg contacted Henry Miyamoto to set up a meeting between the two men. Miyamoto wanted to do himself proud in compensating for feeling the old inferiority complex come to the fore when he thought he had been slandered and said he’d like the three of them to meet at The Palm in West Hollywood for a steak dinner. The dinner was on him and Greg turned around and made the arrangements with Dick Simpson.

85 The threesome met at the swank restaurant and noted a number of celebrities seated at the tables. Upon meeting, the two would-be antagonists shook hands warmly after Greg introduced them. They ordered appetizers and drinks. Henry said everything was his treat.

Dick protested but relented when Henry pointed out it was due to his hasty misinterpretation of Dick’s comments that produced the unpleasant situation, although, as Dick said, it was all understandable.

While they munched on the seared ahi appetizers, the three talked about their common interest: contributions to the Native American cause.

“I’ve been contributing to the Indians,” said Dick, “ever since I took Christ as my personal savior which was as necessary as breathing because of my hatred toward Shimpei

Miyamoto, my guard in the Japanese POW camps. It was because of his cruelty, his beatings and torture and torment. He killed several POW’s with his bare hands. We had no rights at all. We were lower than animals. In my mind, I was gouging his eyes out, ripping his throat out with my bare hands. It was literally eating me up. I couldn’t eat or sleep or enjoy life at all, the hatred was all consuming. But after I accepted Christ into my life, everything changed. I was free of my hatred. I was free of all desire for revenge. And I forgave

Miyamoto. He was a monster but one that I would not allow to eat up my life.”

“It must feel good to be able to start over again,” Greg said.

“It does. I used to be a taker and a hater but I’ve changed. I’m now a giver and lover and I wanted to show my conversion by contributing to the most unfortunate people around, the Native Americans. They have a proud tradition and culture, but they are economically destitute and live in dire poverty. They represent the Third World people in our own country and that is intolerable.”

86 “I contribute to the Indian cause because of the similarity of our circumstances,”

Henry said. “They were uprooted by our government and sent to reservations far from their homes and suffered great hardships. We lost all our possessions, including businesses and all of our inventories, and we lost the careers we were working toward in college when we were imprisoned in the concentration camps put up in the godawful desolate places in the interior

United States. By our own government. It was all due to wartime hysteria they say, but I say it was because of out and out racism. You look like the enemy, therefore you are the enemy.

We’ve come a long way since those days but racism is lying dormant. It’s still out there.”

“Racism looked for is always found,” Greg said. “I’ve managed to put it out of my mind in dealing with people.”

“You’re fortunate,” said Henry. “I have to be conscious of it all the time. Just thinking about how we’ve been marginalized by society has bound us together as a community. Oh, we have our differences, of course. For example, the No-No Boys who were branded as the disloyals and the draft resisters who were ostracized by the majority of

Japanese Americans. Although they are men who stood on principle, they haven’t been accepted back into our ranks and JACL hasn’t forgiven them.”

“It may take some time, but they’ll come around in the end,” said Greg.

“You sure of that?” asked Henry.

“We’re all in the same boat. We all shared the same experience. We’ve all been scapegoats of society. We share a common experience that binds us together whether we realize it or not. If only JACL had the foresight to see that they would forgive the perceived treasonous behavior of the draft resistors and the No-No Boys and smooth the way toward a

87 reconciliation. But that may take a few years. In the meantime, we have the reparations movement to crank up. That should unite us.”

“You’re seeking payment from the government?” asked Dick.

“Yes,” said Greg. “$20,000 per surviving ex-inmate of the camps.”

“Good luck,” Dick said. “That would amount to billions of dollars, I’d say, and in today’s economy Congress might balk at accepting your move.”

“If America still stands on principle, it will be approved, I’m certain,” Greg said.

“It’s going to be a long, hard climb uphill, though. But there’s bound to be resistance, of course, because of setting a precedent for other groups to sue the government for compensation. Like the Native Americans who were forced off their lands, the African

Americans who were forced into slavery and other mistreated ethnic groups.”

“And there’s enough mistreatment to fill a book,” said Henry.

“Not to change the subject,” Dick said and nervously took a sip of water, “but have either of you traveled to Japan recently?”

Henry shook his head. “No, I haven’t,” he said. “I’ve never been to Japan.”

“I was there during the late fifties,” Greg said. “I worked for the Army and was stationed in Tokyo.”

“I went back there recently on a visit with my family,” Dick said, “and was amazed at the progress made. Tokyo was burnt to the ground with the bombings, literally a wasteland from what I saw after I was released from the POW camps. And now it is a modern metropolis.”

“I had a fine time in Japan, traveling to the scenic spots throughout the country,” said

Greg. “But I know what you mean by the devastation.”

88 “I did a bit of traveling myself while I was there,” said Dick, “but I wanted to visit the former sites of the prison camps I was in and found them all right with the help of a guide but they were all built over and covered with apartment buildings or factories and not a trace of the camps remain.”

“That must have been a bit of a disappointment,” Greg said.

“Yes, it was. It’s not that I wanted to relive the experience, but I just wanted to see the former sites in the spirit of forgiveness and I wanted to see my former guards whom I had already forgiven but they were executed by the war crimes tribunal. Only Shimpei

Miyamoto had survived after being indicted as a war crimes criminal but he seemed to have committed suicide. This is 1979 and according to the information I have received, he died alone in a mountain hideout a number of years ago. His throat was slit. They assumed it was suicide, but maybe somebody else got to him first. So I went to Japan in vain. I was ready to forgive him and wanted to confront him.”

“Have you been back to Japan, Greg?” asked Henry.

“No, I haven’t, really, only on a short business trip. Not that I don’t want to, but my career and family keeps me here, although I have relatives in Japan. I write to them regularly, especially one in the boonies, an older cousin. He’s an interesting character. He’s a farmer, a self-educated one who is quite eccentric by Japanese standards. And there’s my brother. I also keep in touch with an anthropology professor at Tokyo University.

Anthropology used to be my preferred field of choice before I went into law.”

“What made you switch?” Dick asked.

“My wife-to-be. I fell in love with her the first time we met and couldn’t get her out of my mind. So I decided that in order to be close to her, I’d better get a job at the same

89 office. She worked as a legal assistant at Crossett, Bigelow & Tyler where I worked summers as a student at UCLA.”

“What did you do there as a student?” asked Henry.

“I was an office boy, running errands, printing briefs, serving coffee, a general jack- of-all-trades.”

“UCLA was my alma mater,” said Dick.

“What did you major in?” asked Greg.

“Landscape Architecture. I took the extension courses to get my certificate.”

“You missed out on student life, then?” said Henry.

“You might say that. But I was an older student anyway, home from the wars, so to speak. I had a lot of catching up to do and I had to plan ahead.”

“When did you start your business?” asked Greg.

“Soon after I received my certificate. I got a bank loan and started things up in the

50s and really got going in the early 60s. I’ve changed locations twice.”

“That’s about the time I got started,” said Henry. “The 60s. After the camps I worked in the fields as a farm hand, then I became a gardener, a landscape artist, and saved my money and opened my nursery business in 1962. I’ve been at the same location ever since. I never went to Japan but I was interested in bonsai and imported a lot of plants from

Japan as well as dwarf trees and the like since the very beginning of my business. I think I introduced the art of bonsai in the LA area, I can’t be sure if I was the first but I was among those who drummed up interest in the plants and the art form.”

“Speaking of art forms, roasting coffee is an art,” said Dick. “If you don’t roast it long enough, the bean is pale and the coffee is bland, roasted too long and the bean becomes

90 burnt and the end result is a ruined cup of coffee. You have get the roasting process down perfect to come out with the full-bodied flavor.”

“I understand you are quite the coffee connoisseur,” said Henry.

“I pride myself on knowing my coffee,” said Dick.

“And I can attest to the fact of the excellence of his coffee,” said Greg.

“For restaurant coffee, this is not bad,” Dick said and took a sip of coffee. “It reminds me a little bit of the Ancora brand.”

The waiter brought the check and Henry produced a credit card to pay for the meals.

After he signed the slip, the three of them rose and made their way out. At the entrance, they parted ways to go to their cars. A sunset seared the skies a deep pink and the next day promised to be free of rain as they got into the month of November. Greg got into his Camry and whistled a little tune, congratulating himself on a job well done in bringing the two would-be antagonists together.

91 Chapter Seven

In 1956 the snows would come late in Tokyo but in October the wind blew cold and

Greg alighted from the train at Tokyo Central Station after a long trip back from Unomachi.

Clad in only a thin jacket, he hunched against the wind as he summoned a taxi to take him back to Washington Heights. The city lights flickered past the windows as he passed through neighborhoods of shops, eateries and food stalls along the way. As he coasted to a stoplight in Shibuya, he noticed a line of white robed Japanese veterans, all amputees, sitting in a row beneath the elevated train line, begging for alms from the busy passersby who ignored them and just walked on.

He paid the driver and got out at the rear entrance of Washington Heights and walked to his billets. There he emptied his suitcase, setting aside his laundry for the maid to pick up and putting away his extra clothing. Then he went down to the mess hall for a late snack, wishing he had stopped in Shibuya instead but he had wanted to return to his billets as soon as he could for a snack, shower and bed. He was tired from his trip; it had been a long, uncomfortable train ride. But he was glad to have gone to meet the people he did and to delve into his family background. His father, he was sure, would have been glad of his interest in learning more about the family, especially himself, for as a self-centered Japanese, he wanted nothing more than to be known far and wide as an important man. But despite his personal ambition, he was little known outside his community and never did make a splash in the public mind—of any kind at all. He was a nonentity, an immigrant who had come to

America to seek his fortune like so many others, worked as a miner, on the railroads, in the canneries and in the forests, and saved enough money to open his initial business and then

92 went into farming—which was then wiped out during the Great Depression. The years that followed were not kind to him, either. He was an ambitious man whose ideas were bigger than his reach and he was given to designing and inventing useless products in a get-rich- quick scheme that never did work out. The war years, incarcerated as he was in detention centers, were brutal and he emerged from them a much subdued and unnerved man. Then he died in his mid forties in a car accident.

Greg wasn’t sure about his feelings toward his father. Their father-son relationship never did take off. Tomoyuki left both of his boys to their own devices and adopted a stand- offish attitude toward them. He sent Dan to Japan at an early age and forgot about him and as for Greg he never did communicate fatherly love. He was locked into his own world of macho-ism, too much given to bossing Jean around and beating her now and then to establish his authority. Growing up in Sonoda household was fraught with difficulties whereas things might have been very different if Tomoyuki didn’t have to demonstrate his machismo as much and as often as he did.

Calling from work the next day, Greg spoke with Prof. Higa and told him he had returned from visiting Shikoku. The professor invited him to dinner at his place the next weekend to meet his daughter and he agreed to come—but not without some initial reservations. While the professor’s intentions were clear (he saw in Greg a prime prospect),

Greg felt loyal to Caroline Lister because he had been corresponding with her ever since he graduated from college and entered the Army. The letters they exchanged were not exactly love letters, but close to them in that they skirted the propitious possibilities of a much closer relationship.

93 The next weekend, Greg donned his civvies—a dark suit and tie—for the Occupation people frowned on their erstwhile uniformed presence now that the peace treaty had been signed and followed the directions to Prof. Higa’s home in Meguro. Although the instructions were clear, he had to stop at the local koban (police box) to ask for directions.

He arrived at the house a few minutes earlier than agreed upon.

“Gomen kudasai,” he called out at the front door after stepping inside a gated garden.

Prof. Higa’s wife answered the door and ushered him inside. Greg stepped out of his shoes and entered a western-style living room complete with overstuffed chairs, a sofa, coffee table, floor lamps and a bookshelf filled with books. There he spotted a beautiful

Japanese woman.

“May I introduce my daughter, Michiko,” said the professor who was seated in an easy chair.

“Hajime mashite doozo yoroshiku (I’m pleased to make your acquaintance).” The two young people introduced themselves, bowing deeply. Greg took a seat in an easy chair opposite the comely daughter.

They exchanged pleasantries and talked about sundry things in the news that day such as the anti-nuclear student movement on the college campuses throughout Japan that was rocking Tokyo University. It appeared that the snake line of demonstrators on the campuses and in front of the Diet Building had prevented the normal comings and goings of students and politicians. Classes were cut and the lawmakers were kept out of their offices. As the only nation to have been A-bombed, Japan had been sensitized to the bomb-carrying U.S. ships and planes stationed in the country. The “Yankee, Go Home” slogans were

94 everywhere. Professor Higa said that his classes had been cancelled because of the riots and demonstrations.

When dinner was announced, they got up and entered a six-mat room that apparently was their dining room. Sitting on zabuton (cushions), they gathered around a low table set over a kotatsu (a hole-in-the-floor heater) and Prof. Higa’s wife began serving the food. She set a gas burner in the middle of the table, put an earthen pot filled with soup stock on it and began placing thin strips of beef and vegetables in the vessel. Adding a dash of wine to the ingredients, she continued to load the pot and soon had the concoction simmering. The professor plied Greg with drink. Both sake and beer were served.

“Have you had shabu-shabu before,” he asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Greg said.

“If you like oriental food, I think you will like it. It was brought in from China and introduced in the restaurants by Suehiro of Osaka in the early part of the century. In Chinese it’s called shuan yang rou, a type of hot pot. Shabu-shabu is a more faithful version of the

Chinese than sukiyaki and other Japanese nabemono and you can use all kinds of other meats like chicken, pork, fish, lobster and the like. But it is almost always cooked in an earthen pot which seems to affect the taste…which may all be psychological. It’s just that shabu-shabu and earthen pots go together unlike sukiyaki which is cooked in a metal pan.”

“I’ll have to order it next time I go to a restaurant,” Greg said.

“You can come here again to have it,” Michiko said coyly.

Greg didn’t know what to say. He paused for a moment, then said politely,” Ah, yes.

That would be fine, I’m sure,” without committing himself.

95 “They’re showing ‘Giant’ starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and Jimmy Dean at the Pantheon and I was wondering if you would like to go with me,” she said.

“Yes, well, let me get back to you on that,” he said.

“How about next weekend?”

“I’ll have to check my work schedule.”

“But surely you don’t work on Saturdays and Sundays.”

“Sometimes I have to.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Sometimes he had to accompany the colonel on an out-of-town trip. But he didn’t have anything planned for the next weekend.

He was stalling for time.

They fell silent. Then Greg tried to be conversational by broaching the subject of

Michiko’s interest in English literature.

“Are you going to teach English lit in a college?”

“So my father has been talking to you. I don’t know yet but I would like to.”

“What got you interested in English literature as opposed to, say, Japanese literature?”

“You might say it was the form of the novel. We have Genji Monogatari which was written early in the 11th century. It was the first modern psychological novel in the world, predating the English novel by seven centuries, but I have been interested in the range and scope of the English novel in terms of the different kinds of characters and the emotional play. We have the same in Japanese literature but so much of it amounts to ‘navel-gazing’ that there is no extrapolation of ideas, of society and the world. You can say the English novel is macrocosmic while the Japanese novel is microcosmic.”

“So you’re more interested in the social ideas contained in the novels.”

96 “Basically, yes. But I’m also interested in the culture of the western world. In Japan we have a blend of the East and the West in that we are essentially a Confucian society and adopted Western methods and thinking since the Meiji Era. Our taking to American culture after our defeat wasn’t all that surprising because of our erstwhile penchant for things

Western and besides whatever came from abroad was always novel and the Japanese people are given to novelties. We love new gadgets, fads and innovations.”

“Just like in America.”

“Yes, well, in America you have so many different ethnic groups that there is no shortage of new things to savor from foods to customs to language.”

“True. In America we are heterogeneous.”

“In Japan we are homogeneous. We have to be since we are such a cramped, small island nation. We have to have rules and regulations for everything, from personal etiquette to social and political customs to beliefs.”

“Since Japan is now a democracy, the people should be free to believe in anything, including individualism.”

“Ah, but things are not that simple. You cannot be an individual in Japan as you can in America. There are so many customs and conventions that inveigh against individualism in Japanese society. It is frowned upon generally speaking. Homogeneity demands that we all think alike. We are an island nation and order and harmony are paramount according to

Confucian thinking.”

“And in America we have wide open spaces that are conducive to the rise of individualism.”

97 “You might say that. We are so confined in Japan that we must all learn how to get along with each other.”

“And you can get on each other’s nerves as well,” Greg said half seriously.

Michiko laughed. “That is true. Excessive politeness can get on people’s nerves.”

“Just like excessive kindness.”

“It can turn insincere and lead to backstabbing.”

Greg was amazed at the degree of Michiko’s astuteness. She spoke her mind well for a Japanese woman, he thought. Of course, there were educated women in Japan who probably could discuss his pants off but she was unabashedly forward. He was both drawn to her forwardness—and repelled by it. It contradicted his notion of the demur quality of

Japanese women. Also there was Caroline Lister in back of his mind. Though they were drawn to each other, he knew they were both foot-loose and fancy-free and could always go their own way. But while he found Michiko’s directness a little offputting, he was still strangely drawn to it. And she was a beautiful woman. Why she had set her sights on him, he did not know. Her father must have done a good selling job, describing him as a likely suitor. He was tall and good-looking enough but he was totally American. A foreigner. The fact that he spoke Japanese must have added glamour to his aura.

He said goodnight to the family, telling Michiko he would call her about his schedule and left to go to the train station located not too far away. The transportation system was well developed in Tokyo—as it was in the other large cities in Japan—and he depended on it completely. By 1956 there was no evidence of the war devastation and everything operated with precision and efficiency. He got off at Shibuya and caught a cab in front of the station to return to his billets. Soon he would be receiving the late model Bel-Air he had ordered

98 from the States and he could drive anywhere in the country. The Chevrolet was a popular model and he was sure he could sell it for a handsome profit.

Several days later he met with his brother Dan who had come up from Osaka on a business trip. It was his fourth meeting with him since arriving in Japan and though they had been separated since childhood, they picked up the threads of brotherhood as if there were no breaks in between brought on by the war and being separated by a vast ocean. As they sat to dine at a Japanese inn where Dan was staying, Greg related to him his recent visit to

Unomachi and asked him what he knew about the Sonoda clan, their father in particular. But

Dan didn’t want to talk about their father; the less he thought about him, the better, he said.

Greg perceived his state of bitterness stemming from being isolated from the family, especially their Nisei mother, Jean, and sympathized with him but their father wanted the first son to be raised in Japan to become a Japanese and to carry on the family name there. In that sense, he was tradition-bound but still he didn’t repatriate to Japan after the war although he was given the choice by the U.S. government. He opted to stay in America, probably because he couldn’t countenance a defeated, war-torn Japan, certainly not the Japan of his youth. Besides the war had taken it out of him.

So the two brothers talked about their experiences growing up in two cultures. Dan had been brought up by his grandparents in Kasagi Mura. In spite of being born in America and speaking English, he was drafted into the Japanese army and served as an ordinary soldier in China during WWII. He was treated badly by his sergeant, Yasaburo Tanabe, who kept referring to him as a Yankee spy although he was only a child of six when he came to

Japan. He was given all the onerous duties the sergeant could think of and was humiliated in front of the others. He beat Dan with a shovel; he wasn’t allowed to strike back. Dan vowed

99 revenge. After the war, Dan tracked the sergeant down and pretended to obsequiously serve his needs. The sergeant went into the blackmarket business and made piles of money and established ties with the yakuza, with a fawning Dan ever at his side, doing his bidding and collecting the procurements. He became his personal secretary. The sergeant in time became a kingpin in the industry and didn’t go unnoticed by the police, a fact that was exploited by

Dan. When the time was ripe (when the sergeant was consummating a deal with the yakuza), he informed the authorities who raided the warehouse where the meeting was taking place and confiscated all the goods. It was a raid that broke up the blackmarket empire. The sergeant—never the wiser—received a long prison sentence and Dan went scot-free for his cooperation. With the proceeds from the sergeant’s blackmarket activities, actually a salary paid to Dan for being a personal secretary, Dan started his sporting goods manufacturing business. Baseball was overtaking the country and he first started by manufacturing bats, balls and gloves and eventually his business developed into the making of all types of sports equipment.

The inn provided entertainment and with the table cleared and a geisha presiding over it with a sake container in hand, the dancers entered and danced to the strumming of a shamisen (Japanese banjo), accompanied by a singer. The dancers dipped and turned, gesticulating with their open fans, as the singer intoned in a high, nasal voice a narrative about a young farming lass pining for her lover. Greg and Dan imbibed the sake poured by the geisha at their side and grew tipsy, lulled by the music and dancing. In time Dan got unsteadily to his feet and joined the dancers while Greg, an uninitiated novice in the cultural arts, remained seated and only clapped his hands to keep time. His brother was more a native than an American or Westerner and behaved as all Japanese males did: he was unabashedly

100 sensual around women, especially around professional entertainers, whereas Greg was more

Puritan and withdrawn. So when the evening wound down and Dan invited him to stay with him and bed a woman, Greg could only refuse, saying that it wasn’t as if he didn’t want to, it was just that he was too shy and had his scruples, his scruples being that he was saving himself for his true love. He didn’t say as much in so many words, just that he wasn’t ready for that kind of action. His brother called him a name which he didn’t catch but he was sure it was a derogatory slang term for a milquetoast but Dan laughed understandingly and plied him with more drink…which he accepted, being able to hold his liquor. Greg could always hold his own.

Parting with his brother that evening, Greg returned to his billets and retired for the night. He had strange dreams. One was where he was being chased by a bevy of naked women and though he ran away from them, he wanted to be caught, so he slowed his pace until they caught up with him. When he willed himself to submit to them, they turned and walked away, showing no interest in him. Instead they picked up a stray pup and lavished their attention on it, cuddling it and talking in cooing terms. Lucky dog, thought a dejected

Greg, to get all the attention. He picked himself up off the ground and walked from the scene only to be encountered by a beautiful Japanese woman who offered him a cool drink. He sipped from the dipper gratefully, for he had worked up a thirst (a cold beer would have been more appreciated). She then took him by the hand and led him to a banquet table under a large tree. The table was loaded with all kinds of goodies, including sushi (how’d she know it was one of his favorite foods?). Sushi was everyone’s favorite in Japan, so it was no stretch. He began to partake, marveling at the exquisite taste. And this time he was given his choice of drink. He washed down the mouthfuls with a cold one. After he was finished

101 eating, she beckoned him sensuously to come sit by her on the bench. He knew what the invitation would lead to and as he approached, she turned to face him. She had turned into a witch! The old ugly hag cackled in a high shriek. She was sure of her conquest. But Greg bolted out of her reach and fled the way they had come, back up the hill to the house in the village where his ancestors had come from. They had assembled at the house to query him why he had not succumbed to the wiles of the woman. After all she was Japanese and spoke fluent English and would make an excellent companion and he said that her intentions were unholy. Unholy? they said; since when did a woman’s intentions have to be holy? True enough, Greg said, but at least there should be a meeting of minds. A meeting of minds?

Since when has there ever been a meeting of minds between a man and a woman? True enough, Greg said, but there has got to be shared presumptions. Shared presumptions? Since when did man and woman share anything basic? True enough, Greg said, there would always be differences, but love should enable them to transcend any difference. Rightly so, they said. That is when the assemblage of ancestors disappeared and left Greg by himself.

The next day Greg called the Higa residence and told Michiko he would be tied up at the office—for some time to come—making it clear that he was not interested in her. He had to admit to himself that his interest lay solely in developing a relationship with Caroline

Lister, the woman whose voice had seduced him. He wanted to be by her side that very instant and decided upon a future course of action right then and there. He was going to go back to school after his tour of duty was over. To law school to become an attorney. It would be two more years before he could make the move but he may as well start making plans right now, sending out queries to the different law schools on the West Coast, especially UCLA. It was a course of action that felt right.

102 Greg and Bill Terada whom he knew from his intelligence contacts at Camp Zama met often over the weekends. Bill was his age and both were bachelors. That spring day they met at a bar in the back alleys of Ginza, the top shopping district in Tokyo. “Shinjin” was a well-known bar frequented by celebrities and politicians alike. It was where Bill conducted his work as an intelligence agent vis-à-vis his Japanese contacts. Greg met his

Japanese counterparts in law enforcement at the offices of the Provost Marshal Liaison

Office in Tokyo or at their offices in the government buildings. Occasionally he would accompany the top brass as an interpreter to soirees at Japanese inns when the Japanese government officials threw a party. Both Greg and Bill were from LA and environs but they hadn’t met until they encountered each other at a get-together at Camp Zama—a meeting of the US military intelligence.

Now at Shinjin the two men relaxed that weekend with their favorite drinks. The hostesses who sat with them typically drank sloe gin fizz, a weak drink that did not debilitate them.

They sat silently as though deep in thought, sipping their drinks.

“I’d like to know if there is a God or not,” Bill said abruptly. “I’ve been going to church ever since I was a kid and praying and all that but I can’t say God is real. What does it take to believe in God? A major illness or catastrophe? I know we tend to seek God in our darkest moments when all hope is lost, but I haven’t sunk that deep, in anything. You’d think the concentration camps were bad but all they were, to me, was a pivotal defining point of my life that determined my outlook on life. By looking at what they represent head-on in terms of a racist society, I can see the whole scope of the system under which we were born.

It helps to keep things in perspective.”

103 “We are first-class citizens with second-class mentalities,” said Greg.

“I always thought we were second-class citizens aspiring to be first-class Americans.”

“It’s the other way around. We are first-class treated as second-class to emasculate us.”

“Is it because we are in the minority?”

“Only partly. We have what it takes to be the equal of the white man, as do many other ethnicities in America, but the whites make sure the playing field is not level. It’s a matter of maintaining hegemony and you and I have to learn to live within those parameters.

If you step outside the current understanding of what those parameters imply, you’ll get whacked, politically, economically, socially and whatnot. That is why it is difficult for a true

American underdog to make it to the top. If your antecedents aren’t up to snuff, you don’t stand a chance. Democracy is a wonderful concept but ethnic upstarts very rarely stand a chance.”

“How’s that affect us? Are we upstarts?”

“Any ethnic underdog who does his own thinking for himself is an upstart, especially if he follows his convictions and dreams as an individual. In our case we have to couch our beliefs in cultural terms for we are seen as cultural animals which may or may not be true.

You can either grow into a culture or grow out of one. You can either join the ethnic herd or use the herd as a point of departure and stand as an individual. The successful individual will have a foot in both worlds.”

“I don’t think of myself as an individual.”

“How do you see yourself then?”

104 “As a Japanese American. And, yes, as a Jap. I’ve been designated a scapegoat of society because of the war and put into camps. I feel I’m a good-for-nothing piece of human shit to be treated in such a way, but of course I rebel against such a notion.”

“I felt the same way. I came out of the concentration camps with a huge inferiority complex, you know, a feeling of being downtrodden with the mentality of an underdog. But that feeling kept pushing me toward personal excellence and I excelled where I could—in scholastics. It gave me a sense of identity. I also excelled in sports and was a four-letter man in high school.”

“You’re lucky to have so much upstairs. Me, I was a mediocre student and thought I wasn’t going to get anywhere and that’s where the army saved me. I was drafted during the

Korean War and made to join intelligence, which suited me just fine, since I was able to use my Japanese language skills. It pays to know a second language. Kept me out of combat and put me in a cushy job. I’ve made a career out of it. But I’ve been thinking recently what’s it all amount to? I mean you’re born, you live and you die. Is that the sum total of our existence? To eat, sleep, screw, shit, and die? What’s the meaning of it all? Is there a God that can make sense of it all? I want to say there is, that’s my gut feeling that there is but where’s the proof?”

“I don’t know the answer to your questions, Bill. But I can tell you this much, that man’s quest for God is never-ending. Take the primitive tribes from any part of the world and you’ll find that their beliefs in the supernatural come from nature…the mountains, sky, rivers, trees, animals, you name it. They also come from ancestor-worship. They’ll deify it and worship it. We in the modern world have our own predilections. We believe in science and technology, in popular fads be it in social organization, religion or psychology. I’d say

105 there can be as many gods as there are beliefs and who’s to say any one is better than the other?”

“But what is a belief good for if it doesn’t answer the question, What’s it all amount to? Is the final question about whether we go to heaven or hell? The Bible makes it clear whether one goes to heaven and enjoys everlasting life or hell and burns in agony there. All one has to do is to be saved by Jesus. Jesus was given to the world by God as part of himself and in effect God died on the cross to save mankind from sin so that man could enjoy everlasting life. The Son of Man or Jesus is God and he died on the cross. Does that make sense? God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son…the son was him. How does that figure? Can the Creator die to save what He created? And He knew mankind to be sinful when He created him? They say the ways of God are unknowable and believers will accept that but I tend to be skeptical. I know my poor mind will take me only so far but when I have a question, I want it answered.”

“That’s why you’re in intelligence. No, God or Jesus dying on the cross is a theological question that doesn’t engage me, because as far as I’m concerned Jesus was a divinely inspired human being who died on the cross to save mankind from its sin due to his belief in human goodness and its potential. As a human being, Jesus voluntarily went to the cross.”

“You say human goodness but human beings are capable of every depravity under the sun. I mean, the nightly news is tame compared to the annals of crime literature. They can commit the most inconceivable acts imaginable. But they are also capable of acts of enormous kindness and compassion.”

106 “Which begs the question of good and evil in the world. There’s no question about good and evil co-existing within the human heart and that to be good one has to fight evil impulses, but the story of human evolution, particularly of spiritual evolution, is filled with details of circumstances beyond one’s control. In other words, happenstances happen and there’s nothing one can do about it. We can weather a situation or circumnavigate a problem but we cannot overcome or avoid chance. And we must prepare for change as we evolve into becoming the human we were always meant to become.”

“But what’s it all amount to? Living out one’s life as one sees fit is all very fine, but in the end, what can one say? That it was either meaningful or meaningless. I want my life to be meaningful, of course, but what do I do? Live a clean life and think clean thoughts—all the time? That’s not humanly possible. I can be good just for so long, then I suffer a relapse and go the opposite direction and regret it.”

“Chalk it up to a learning experience. I do,” Greg said.

“But when I regret something, I repent,” Bill said. “I want to lay it at Jesus’ feet and put it out of my head.”

“That’s one way of handling regret. You can’t let it fester in you, whatever you do.

But if you make a mistake like I have innumerable times, you have to learn from it and never make the same mistake again. Life is a learning process, a never-ending learning process, and when one stops learning, he might as well be dead.”

“And I’ll never learn, because I have the urge to tie one on tonight, spend an all- nighter getting drunk. Want to join me?”

“Not an all-nighter. Maybe just a couple of bars and then I’m calling it a night.”

“Always the reasonable one.”

107 “That’s my downfall, I suppose.”

“That’s a strength that can turn into a weakness,” Bill said and laughed.

“A weakness?” Greg said.

“Makes you less human.”

“I’ll have to take my chances,” Greg said and it was his turn to laugh.

They left Shinjin and barhopped, the last bar in Ginza being a small hole-in-the-wall affair with just a bartender and a madame. Bill joked with her as he gulped down a scotch- and-water. Greg downed his drink and did not order another. He had had his limit and felt comfortably tipsy. He bade Bill goodbye after they set a date for their next meeting in a week’s time. Leaving the small bar, Greg hailed a taxi to take him back to Washington

Heights.

In the winter months of the following year, 1957, Takanori paid him a visit, taking advantage of the lull in farm work. Greg picked him up in his new Bel Air at Tokyo Central

Station and drove him to a hotel near Washington Heights. Rather than stay at a Japanese- style inn, Takenori wanted to occupy a western-style hotel where he could sleep in a bed and take a shower just like he saw in the movies. He told Greg he wanted to see as many

Westerns as he could during his brief visit which spanned a weekend during which time Greg planned to take him to Atami, a hot spring resort south of Tokyo. When he had checked in,

Greg drove them to Ginza to see the famous department stores and that evening, after dining at a sushi shop, Greg treated him to a sampling of the nightlife in Tokyo. They entered a nightclub in the back alleys of Ginza. Greg deliberately chose Ginza because when

Takanori returned home he could brag of having visited Ginza, the most notable shopping

108 district in Tokyo and the most upbeat place to sample night life. But anywhere in Tokyo would have sufficed, because Tokyo was the mecca of the country.

The rotating mirrored globe reflecting multi-colored lights cast its moving spectral on the patrons and the walls and the piped in music loudly assaulted the ears. They were greeted with a high-fluted “Irrashai-mase!” (welcome) from a group of hostesses. They took a booth near the wall and ordered their drinks as well as drinks for the hostesses who sat by them.

Takanori ordered scotch—Johnny Walker Black—and water, telling Greg he had developed a taste for the liquor ever since he had finished the bottle that Greg had given him. He downed several drinks in rapid succession and soon his speech became slurred and in place of his studied standardized Japanese spoken in Tokyo, out came his thick Shikoku dialect which branded him a country bumpkin. But he didn’t seem to care and didn’t notice or feigned indifference when the women within earshot began laughing. He was bent on experiencing the moment of novelty, that of sitting in a big nightclub in the heart of Tokyo surrounded by beautiful women. When one of the women yanked on his arm and said she wanted to dance with him, he didn’t refuse or make excuses that he didn’t know how to dance. He just stumbled to the dance floor and gyrated crazily around with his arms spread out, singing a country ballad at the top of his lungs. Then he abruptly stopped and returned to his seat and took a large swallow of his drink. Clearly he was drunk and rather than having to deal with him after he passed out, Greg suggested they leave and to his surprise

Takanori agreed. Greg paid the bill and they left the nightclub.

“I get drunk so fast,” Takenori slurred. “I’m sorry. Spoil your fun.”

“No, you haven’t,” Greg said diplomatically. “We’ve had a fine evening. Now it’s time to get you back to the hotel.”

109 They got in the Chevy and drove back to the hotel in Shibuya where Greg helped the staggering Takanori to his room. He flopped on the bed and Greg removed his shoes and swung his legs over. Takanori begged him not to leave.

“I get so lonely when I am drunk,” he said.

Greg pulled over a chair to sit by the bed.

“What it is that I think I am someone else when I get drunk,” he continued, “like I am an American, an American cowboy or maybe one of the leading men who is making love to a beautiful woman. I yearn for the wide open spaces shown in the movies, like the plains in America, and the mountains and rivers that are so unlike Japan. The truth is I don’t want to be Japanese. But I don’t know what else I can become. I am a farmer and my people see me as a farmer, not as an individual with individual tastes and individual dreams. They do not understand me and think I’m crazy. They don’t accept me, only as a man who fought for the emperor, returned to his village and became a farmer, expected to behave like one. This misunderstanding is enough to drive a person crazy.”

“Maybe you should write all of this down,” offered Greg.

“Writing? I have no talent for writing. I don’t even like to write letters.”

“You want to express yourself but don’t know how,” Greg said. “And the Japanese are not given to self-expression, that is, to express one’s unique individuality.”

“We frown upon individualism.”

“And in expressing yourself, you have to appeal to the herd instinct.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“Perhaps it’s not humanly possible.”

“But I want to think anything is possible. If you can think it, you can do it.”

110 “You say you don’t want to be Japanese, but you can’t help it. You’re stuck with the identity.”

“Yes, I am stuck with it. But I want to be something else but cannot. I am forever

Japanese.”

“You’re a Japanese farmer, pure and simple. Perhaps you should start from there.”

“As a farmer, I work with the seasons, with nature, and I am content. There’s satisfaction in growing things and harvesting them. But when I watch American movies, when I read books or get drunk, I think I am someone else, something else. That’s when I think I can become someone else and do anything. I am only thirty-six and I have my whole life ahead of me. But as tradition would have it, I am stuck with being a farmer all my life.

Everything it seems works against my dreams.”

“Your dreams being, specifically?

“To be an individual, like a western cowboy. Oh, I know cowboys of the old west are history now, but I like their independence.”

“An independence that cannot be in Japan.”

Takanori heaved a big sigh and said, “I’m afraid not. I am forever Japanese.”

He yawned, stretched widely and turned on his side, facing away from Greg. He fell asleep. He was soon snoring. Greg got up and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. He left the hotel to return to his car and made a note to pick up Takanori early the next day to go to Atami. As he drove back to the billets, he thought about what concerned

Takanori, his loneliness and identity as a Japanese.

Greg could sympathize with him, given the fact that he himself had undergone a similar experience with his own identity crisis. In his case, the question was resolved by the

111 tussle between being a Japanese and American with the weight of the answer coming down on his individualistic side, his American side, with his Japaneseness being pronounced in cultural terms. It was a tenuous relationship, calling for constant internal adjustments which became a way of life.

The next day they drove to Atami, the famous hot springs resort town, and spent the day soaking in the hot springs and clad in yukata (a light robe held together with a sash) roamed the town to sightsee. The heat of the baths combatted the cold. It was a small seaside town with many hotels and restaurants. Their getas (wooden sandals) resounded on the hard pavement as they sauntered down the street. They returned to the hotel to enjoy a good seafood dinner. A couple of performers, a dancer and a shamisen player, came in to entertain them. They turned in early.

Back in Tokyo the next day, they went to see Bad Day at Black Rock, a western about a Japanese American interned in the concentration camps during WWII. After the movie,

Takanori told Greg of his feelings about his incarceration. He said he knew of their treatment because of the letters his father had written to his father after the war, and it had saddened him to learn that their government had betrayed them and put them into camps like a common criminal. He was not sure if he could serve his country if it had treated him in a like manner, although fervor for the Emperor ran high in his mind. But the war between

Japan and America brought brothers and cousins and relatives to fight on opposite sides.

Hopefully they would never meet in battle. But there were no guarantees in life and it could be that relatives wound up killing each other…a terrible situation. War was a terrible waste,

Takanori said, people dying for what? To advance several yards at such tremendous cost of human lives? To obey orders from stupid higher ups who knew nothing of fighting as it

112 turned out in his case in the Philippines? He was lucky to have survived. To return to the old way of life: farming. It was what he knew best. When he got out of the army, he was already too old to go to college and so he stuck to what he could do best with his life. But that didn’t quell his intellectual curiosity.

Greg saw his cousin off at Tokyo Central Station that evening and returned to his billets. He thought about his cousin’s dilemma and considered how lucky he was to be an

American who had a choice of what he wanted to become. He could become anything he wanted: nurseryman, professor, scientist, politician. Even a writer and thinker…only if one had the wit and courage. Nothing was gained without a fight.

That evening he wanted to write to Caroline, so he sat at the small desk and took out some stationery. He had been thinking of her a lot lately and hoped the feelings were mutual.

In his doubt, he conjured up all kinds of scenarios and managed to put himself in a deep funk so much so that he resolved to write a deeply felt love letter. He wrote of his feelings for her from their first contact and went on to say that she was the only woman who had ever interested him. It was love at first sight. He never mentioned that he felt he was an underdog in every undertaking which made him try harder in everything he did; but he concentrated on communicating his feelings to her. It was a letter from an erstwhile friend that turned serious romantically and he had to rewrite the letter several times to get it right. He mailed the letter the next day.

In as much time as it takes for a letter to be sent and then answered right away, about two weeks, Greg received a letter from Caroline, and he was elated and disheartened by her reply. Why hadn’t he told her of his feelings earlier, she wrote. She had become engaged to a man she had met at a party. Though the marriage date had not been set yet, it could be

113 sooner than later. When was he coming back? She would like to see him again. He read between the lines…she was still available. He wrote back immediately, saying that he was applying to various law schools (he described his lawyerly ambitions at length) and don’t give up on him, because his remaining two years in the Army would go by in a flash. He wrote two letters and mailed them the next day. He was going to inundate her with letters.

She answered immediately and thus began a letter-exchanging routine, each of them attesting to having similar feelings for each other. But what to do with her engagement? She found that her feelings for her fiancé were not as intense as they were for him, but she didn’t know how to break it off. Perhaps an opportunity would present itself. She longed to see

Greg again and was going to count the days and weeks till he got home from Japan.

The rest of the time spent in Japan was like floating in a dream, a dream of taking hold of Caroline’s hand as his wife, of preparing for law school at UCLA (he recently received an affirmative reply from them), of spending the weekends and his vacation time traveling through Japan, sometimes with Bill Terada, sometimes alone. Caroline had found a way to break off her engagement, so now the road was clear. It was simple enough: she told her fiancé that she loved another man. Greg couldn’t wait till the day of departure arrived and reviewed different scenarios of his meeting with Caroline again in his mind.

114 Chapter Eight

The October sun in Southern California was warm and the day was a balmy 70 degrees. The sky was clear with a smattering of clouds on the horizon to the west and

Catalina Island shone like a jewel in the blue sea. The pier at Redondo Beach was crowded with casual diners and fishermen who tried their luck off the side of the wharf. The surf which could be heard miles inland on a quiet night was calm, unlike the previous day during which time an unusual storm passed overhead and released much needed rain in the mountains.

It was a weekend and Greg helped Caroline in the garden. He trimmed a shrub and collected weeds from the vegetable garden which had produced a bumper crop that year of carrots, zucchini, and cantaloupes with only swiss chard yet to be harvested. Caroline, true to her farming background, loved to can the produce and have them over the winter months.

The annuals had gone to seed but the perennials still blossomed handsomely and thrived under her care. Brian and Craig were out front tossing a football. Both boys’ voices were changing; adolescence was taking over.

“Come on. Toss me a touchdown pass,” shouted Craig with a crack in his voice.

“You’ll just drop it,” Brian said huskily.

“Won’t.”

“You’ll see when I throw you a bullet pass.”

When Greg stepped around the corner of the house, Craig ran into him. He did not see his father, so intent was he on keeping his eye on the ball which he dropped.

115 “See. I told you so,” said Brian.

“I didn’t see Dad. If I had I would have caught it,” said Craig.

Greg picked up the ball and tossed it to Brian standing across the yard.

“You’re on your own tonight,” he said. “Mom has your dinners ready in the fridge, so all you have to do is nuke it.”

“Will do,” said Brian. “Where are you going for your anniversary?”

“Dunno yet. But it will be some place fancy. Your mother will protest that it’s too expensive as she usually does, but I’m sure she will enjoy it.”

“Wanna play catch with us, Dad?” Craig asked.

“Thanks but I have to shower and get ready.”

Greg entered the house and shucked off his clothes in the bedroom. He took a long shower, luxuriating under the hot water, and hummed a popular song, Hungry Like a Wolf, by Duran Duran. He was a fan of the British group. After showering, he got dressed and began rummaging through his mind for a romantic restaurant. Several local ones came to mind, but he finally settled on The Little Door, known as the most romantic in all of LA, though it was some distance away. He placed the call to see if reservations were required.

They were but as luck would have it they had an opening. It was a French restaurant but they also served seafood and steak.

Greg and Caroline drove to downtown LA in their new Camry. She looked lovely in her pale yellow chiffon dress and her hair tucked behind her delicate ears. She was wearing a corsage Greg bought for her. When they arrived at their destination, he gallantly rushed over to her door to usher her out and took her arm to guide her into the restaurant.

116 After their orders were taken, Greg leaned forward on his elbows and said, “Well,

Mrs. Sonoda, it’s been twenty years, twenty lovely years being married to the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“And I’m so fortunate to have married the most accomplished man in the world.”

“Oh, I’m not that accomplished,” Greg said modestly.

“But you are. You pulled yourself up by the bootstraps after your camp ordeal, excelled in school, put yourself through college where you became a Phi Beta Kappa, went to work for DIA in Tokyo, entered law school and here you are, the proud father of two teenage sons.”

“It was all due to your good efforts,” he said.

“Oh, I might have helped a little but not much.”

“I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t said yes.”

“A no answer wasn’t in the books.”

“I’m glad.”

“Me, too.”

“Remember our first date?”

“I remember.”

“And our first kiss?”

“Are you hitting on me, Mr. Sonoda?”

“I guess I am. Is that illegal? My being a lawyer, I have to ask that.”

“Not in the least bit,” Caroline said and smiled.

When her bouillabaisse arrived, she did not add any salt or pepper (to do so would have insulted the chef) but began to eat hungrily as the dinner was at a late hour. Greg had a

117 more traditional dish, more American than not: steak and lobster. The ambience of the restaurant was Moroccan and the outside lighted patio lent its charm to the interior candlelit house. For dessert Caroline had ciafoutis and Greg had café liegeois.

Back in the car, Greg took the long way home, driving along the shoreline and stopped at a store to rent a film called Blazing Saddles, directed by Mel Brooks, one of the foremost comedians of the day. They viewed the film at home and enjoyed a good laugh together. Craig and Brian watched it also. After watching the film, Brian flipped through the channels to tune into a program called TransCentury Update, a transhumanism documentary.

He was interested in its futuristic message of combining biology and technology as well as artificial intelligence to pave the way toward a better society and world.

During one of the commercials, Brian commented, “For our English class, we’ve been reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 and that got me interested in the transhumanism movement.”

“What’s so interesting about it?” asked Greg.

“It’s the wave of the future, my future,” said Brian.

“All they’re talking about is combining science with biology, something that’s been going on for centuries now.”

“But not in the way of making superhuman beings out of us. Just think, Dad. We’ll be able to run faster and jump higher and heal all illnesses with one injection. Of tiny, nano- sized molecular machines. They’ll be designed for specific tasks. Like muscle-building to strengthen the arms and legs or to reinforce the heart to put up with extra strain. I could become an Olympic-class weightlifter or a swim star or a track and field whiz. All with a single injection.”

118 “That’s dangerously close to a fix-all, cure-all approach to human life.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s incompatible with real life.”

“What is real in life? We can create our own reality.”

“So says each new generation.”

“So each new generation gets to have a new start.”

“New starts don’t seem to make any difference. There will always be wars and conflicts. In our own time, there was a world war followed by the Korean War and the

Vietnam War and now we are in the midst of the Cold War and the possibility of nuclear annihilation. We and the Russians have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out civilization and mankind several times over.”

“We must work for the higher ideal of peace.”

“Well said, Brian. You may well be the generation of peacemakers that the world needs so badly. But experience tells me that youthful idealism dies out by the time you’re middle age. Unless you are an extraordinary individual. Being an extraordinary individual carries its own risks, too, you know.”

“What could go wrong?”

“Anything. Everything. But you might get lucky and pull off everything you put your mind to. It’s worth a try. Anything is worth a try. You’ve got to give everything you put your mind to the good old college try. There’s nothing else in life to do, except to give everything the good old college try. As if your life depended on it. Then even if you don’t succeed you can look back and say you at least tried. To live your dream, whatever it may be.”

119 “But I don’t even know what I want to do.”

“Do what is right for you and for those that love you and you will never go wrong.”

“But what field should I go into?”

“That will become apparent in time. You have a long ways to go yet.”

“Maybe transhumanism isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. I mean it could backfire.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it could turn us into monsters. That single injection of nano machines, little molecular machines, could go awry and turn us into something we don’t want.”

“It’s an ethical question, all right, whether to turn ourselves into superhuman beings if that were at all possible with supercomputers for brains. I don’t think I’d want to be that way. The old-fashion way and the old-fashion me is just fine. I wouldn’t want to tamper with it.”

“But just think, Dad, what nanotechnology could do for mankind, my generation, if it were possible to produce superhuman beings who could live forever, hundreds of years at least.”

“That would be unnatural.”

“But what is natural and what is unnatural?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know at this point in my life.”

“Maybe we will control nature eventually and eventually the universe.”

“Whoa, there, Brian. There’s nothing wrong with thinking big but you’re talking science fiction now. Nobody can control the universe.”

“But we split the atom and control nuclear fission and science is discovering new ways to look at the atom and to synthesize new materials.”

120 “I think there’s a limit to what science can do and achieve.”

“Well, I don’t. We’ve been to the moon and back and we’ve sent probes into outer space. We’ve discovered the genetic code and we’re into gene splicing. It’s just a matter of time before we discover all the laws of the universe and master them.”

“A frightening prospect, indeed. Man at the helm of the universe. Man is such a finite being. He can’t even manage his own domestic affairs. Wars, riots, demonstrations, epidemics, violence everywhere and no end in sight for crime, and he can’t control his own nature. So how can he control the universe. He is not qualified to do so.”

“But you can’t keep him from becoming curious.”

“That’s a human trait that will see us in and out of trouble. It gets us into trouble and we become curious, curious and creative, to see if we can get out of trouble, like the A- bombing of Japan. True, we ended the bloody war and saved about two millions lives but look at what it did in terms of the human psyche. Just imagine. Hundred thousand lives snuffed out in an instant and where does all that consciousness go? Some religionists will say the souls of those who died in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks are in a limbo, a kind of spiritual purgatory, and that their consciousness joined God. But what if there were no

God and their snuffed out psyche recombined with nature? To produce, what? I’m not sure what. If mind influences matter, the instantaneously delivered death that produced dead consciousness could produce dead matter or substance that could plague mankind to the end of his days. All due to man’s tinkering with the substance of the sun—and Einstein’s famous equation. But man’s curiosity led him to split the atom and the war necessitated making the bombs. The consequence is one in which the only thing those opposing the bombing can do is to hold annual commemorations on the anniversaries and carry out protests. Which is not

121 a very creative way to address the issue. Curiosity and necessity got us into trouble; curiosity and necessity will see us out of the trouble. Pure and simple.”

“But science is limitless.”

“Science stops at the boundaries of the spiritual, Brian. Science stops where consciousness takes over. There’s no way science can bridge the gap between what is material and spiritual, because a state of mind cannot be replicated in the laboratory. I don’t care how many supercomputers you link up, you simply cannot replicate the human mind which is tied into the myriad kinds of personalities, the creative and the non-creative, to produce a host of individuated ideas. About life, what the meaning of life is all about, which direction relationships should go. It all depends on the ideas we have of existence, of personal existence, of ourselves, of other people, of institutions, of systems, even of our own minds.”

“Can science ever explain the spiritual?”

“Only in terms of consciousness, I’d say, because you either have consciousness or you don’t. If you have consciousness, you are alive. If you don’t, you’re dead. Just that simple. As far as understanding the spiritual goes, I’d say that science comes to a dead halt and religion takes over or the mindset that says energy and consciousness is everything.

How energy ties into consciousness is anybody’s guess. I don’t think science will ever answer that question. Just my thought, that’s all. Maybe your generation can come up with an answer.”

“Maybe we can, Dad. We ought to try.”

“That’s all we can do, is to try.”

122 So saying Greg got up to retire for the night. He said goodnight to Brian and went upstairs to change. Caroline was seated at the dresser, combing her hair and making ready for bed.

“Brian and I had quite a discussion on transhumanism,” Greg said.

“It’s all Greek to me,” she replied. “All I know is that it has to do with biology and human beings.”

“Yes, well, science involving human beings is progressing by leaps and bounds.”

“Speaking of leaps and bounds, you mentioned tonight of going on a vacation. It’s so sudden, Greg. We’ve been on mini-vacations all these years but what made you think of

Micronesia?”

“I read a brochure about the area and was fascinated by the culture and lifestyle of the people there. Also, reading Blue Capricorn piqued my interest in the South Pacific.”

“I don’t know anything about Micronesia. All I know is that I heard of the name.”

“We can read up on it.”

“All right. I can get some books out of the library.”

“Good. I promised Craig a deep-sea fishing trip a long time ago.”

“So now you’ll be able to make good on your promise.”

“That’s right.”

“When is the next poker session with the guys?”

“Two Saturdays from now.”

“I’ll make sure I have a good book to read to stay out of the way.”

“You’re never in the way, honey.”

123 “So you say,” she said and, rising to her feet, gave him a peck on the cheek. She then climbed into bed. “Thank you for a lovely evening, dear.”

“You’re welcome, I’m sure,” he said gallantly.

On the designated Saturday, the three men—Gary, Hank and Bill—gathered at Greg’s house to play poker and Gary brought a case of beer. Hank and Bill provided snacks and a large platter of sushi. They sat at the kitchen table to play some serious poker, having skipped a month because of Bill’s out-of-town travel.

“How’s the health, Gary?” Greg asked.

“OK. It’s been four years since I’ve been in remission. Another year and I’m home free.”

“Good to hear,” Greg said and raised his beer in a toast. “We ought to celebrate.”

“Any excuse for a beer,” Bill said.

“Hear, hear,” Hank said and touched bottles with the others.

They played a round of seven-card stud with Bill dealing. He shuffled and dealt out the cards, two cards down and one card up. The betting began.

“About LaserBM,” Greg said. “I’m sorry they went belly up. I thought the way was open for them.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about them,” Gary said. “What happened?”

“Yeah, what happened?” Bill said.

“Well, it seems there was a problem with the patent pending,” said Greg. “They didn’t have it sewed up and it turns out someone else had beat them to the idea, so they lost the case in court.”

“Wow, all that hoopla for nothing,” said Hank.

124 “I lost $200,000 on the deal,” Greg said.

“I lost all my investment,” Bill said, “but it was only $5,000.”

“Easy come, easy go,” Hank said.

“I was being conservative when I invested only $3,000,” Gary said. “But 3,000 is

3,000.”

“Right,” Bill said. “We should have looked before we leapt.”

“We did,” Greg said. “But we can only see so far into the future. Who knew somebody else beat them to the idea.

“Yeah, we did our due diligence but we still fell flat on our faces,” Bill said.

“It can’t be helped,” Hank said. “Shikata ga nai. That’s the way the ball bounces.”

“Shikata ga nai,” Greg intoned. “That’s what they said about the concentration camps and I still recoil from it. Makes one feel so helpless, as if there was nothing we could do about it.”

“There wasn’t a blessed thing we could do about it,” Hank said. “The government condemned us to them. And we had to take our orders from the government.”

“Still shikata ga nai goes against the grain,” Greg said. “True, we made some gesture of defiance in the form of the Fair Play Committee in Heart Mountain and we protested the draft when it reached into the camps, but the aftermath of it all was a court case and imprisonment in a federal penitentiary. Fine way to end what began as a democratic process.”

“Racism knows no bounds,” Bill said.

“Racism,” Gary began, “is a mental and spiritual disorder. I say that from the perspective of a privileged white man. I don’t know if I’m entirely free of it or not. I’ll

125 probably never know. It is so ingrained into our makeup. It is almost like a subconscious itch. You just gotta scratch it now and then. I see it in my relationships with blacks and I constantly have to remind myself that we are all equal and are brothers under the skin.

Which leads me to the idea of Oneness, that we are all one. Looks good on paper but to put that kind of thinking into practice is another matter.”

“We are all one under God,” Bill said. “We are all brothers.”

“And we are all so different,” Hank said, “because of our different cultures.”

“God takes differences into account,” Bill said. “God loves differences and loves the novelty of differences. You can tell that from nature.”

“And you speak for God?” asked Hank.

“I speak for myself,” said Bill. “Since I believe in God, have faith in Him, I think I can say that I know a little bit about His mind. After all, we are created in His image and we are in touch with Him.”

“If you say so,” Hank said. “But I have my doubts.”

“A doubting Thomas,” Gary said and smiled.

“You might say that,” Hank said. “Ever since I was a kid, a young kid in the concentration camps, I wondered what I had done to deserve the kind of treatment I was getting. Was I basically a bad person who had to be dealt a hand like that? Who’s the dealer? God or circumstances? Historical circumstances. The whole story is racism.

Racism is a mental and physical disorder, like Gary says. It riddles this society and it dictates our thoughts and feelings for or against. It’s a sick world out there. If we stray away from it, we run the risk of becoming out of touch with reality and live in a dream world. But

126 to be in touch with it constantly only breaks down one’s health. You need a vacation away from it now and then.”

“Speaking of a vacation, I’m planning on taking the family on a trip to Micronesia,”

Greg said.

“Going to do a little fishing?” Gary asked.

“You bet. And scuba diving. Combined with sightseeing, lolling on the beach and dining out as often as I can.”

“When are you going?” Bill asked.

“In the end of July. That’s the plan, at least.”

“That’s nine months off,” said Hank.

“Yes, and that’s plenty of time to plan and make the arrangements.”

“How long a vacation is it going to be?” Gary asked.

“Two weeks.”

It was Greg’s turn to deal and he shuffled the cards and dealt four cards each in a game of Omaha, a variation on two-card Texas Hold’em. As the pot grew, they opened more beers and chug-a-lugged them. Gary won the game and the deal went to Hank.

The poker game broke up at 3:00AM and the men wearily dragged themselves out the door to drive themselves home, promising to meet at Hank’s place for the next session. He was staying close to home, unlike Bill who had to frequently make lengthy out-of-town trips, and he said he would have champagne and dancing girls on hand to entertain them—on video, of course.

127 Chapter Nine

The jetliner touched down at Kolonia in Pohnpei, Micronesia. It was a rainy day and it had been raining off and on the whole month of September which was not unusual for the region. The people walked around without umbrellas or raingear, oblivious to the wet because the rain was intermittent and would soon cease and the sun would come out again to dry them off.

They took a taxi to Joy Hotel where they lugged their bags to the front office to pick up their keys. There they met a couple of Japanese tourists, a man and his wife, and Greg exchanged greetings with them. It appeared that in 1983 Micronesia was a well-established

Japanese tourist trap. The room they were to occupy for two weeks had two double-sized beds, a desk, TV and chairs and a bathroom off to one side—standard hotel appointment. It was clean and tidy.

Greg poured a glass of water from the pitcher and drank it thirstily. He had been munching on potato chips during the long flight and needed to slake his thirst. The boys flopped on the bed and stretched out, ready to snooze off their jet lag. Caroline placed her carry-on bag on the rack and turned on TV, wondering what they had to offer in Kolonia.

Since it was close to dinner time, the four of them discussed whether they should eat at the hotel or go to Arnold’s Restaurant which Greg had read about in the tourist guide. They decided to go to Arnold’s.

The ambiance at the restaurant was excellent with a view of the ocean through large, bay windows and the place was roomy and cheery. They sat at a table by the window, enjoying the view, and ordered their dinner along with drinks. Greg and Caroline ordered the

128 fish dinner and the boys ordered a pepperoni pizza, the good ol’ American standby. They must be glad to have their American tastes catered to half way around the world, Greg thought. When their food arrived, they attacked it with gusto.

“You’ll have a lot to tell your friends after we get back,” Caroline said to the boys.

“It’s an experience of a lifetime,” Greg said.

“That’s why Dad arranged it,” Caroline said. “He wanted you to have the experience of traveling abroad.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Brian said.

“I wanted to go to Europe instead,” Craig said. “I said so, but who listens to me.”

“We took a vote on it,” Greg said. “It was three to one.”

“You lost,” said Brian.

“Maybe next time, Craig,” Caroline said. “Maybe for our next trip. Isn’t that right, honey?”

“Maybe. I’ve always wanted to go to England. It’s the seat of our common law practices.”

“I’ve always wanted to go to France,” said Craig. “They’re the ones who helped during our revolution.”

“I’d like to go to Scandinavia,” said Caroline. “I want to sample their cuisine.”

“Grandpa was an Englishman who came from the Northwest, wasn’t he?” asked

Craig.

“That’s right,” said Caroline. “He emigrated to America after WWI and came out

West in 1919 to work as a lumberjack, then a farmer and settled in California after he got married. He worked as a restaurateur after he retired. He was the restless type and couldn’t

129 sit still for a minute, so he took his savings and sunk it into a restaurant in Alameda. He barely made it during the Great Depression, but he managed. I remember eating there often.

The food was so good. He was a good cook.”

“Did he make pizzas?” Brian asked.

“No. he didn’t at the time,” Caroline said. “They weren’t in vogue then as they are now. I’m sure he would have gone that route since it was an American family-style restaurant.”

She paused to take a bite of her dinner, chewing contemplatively as she pondered the past.

“Thank goodness for the restaurant!” she said. “We barely made it through the

Depression as it was. But people had to go somewhere to eat and they ate at Dad’s place because he had lowered the prices so low that it was practically cheaper to eat there instead of buying the food yourself. How he managed to do that and still stay open is a mystery.

Luck, I suppose.”

“It could have been because the food was good,” said Greg.

“Could be. But out of his meager profits he fed and clothed us and put a roof over our heads when so many others wandered the streets. Those were hard times. For everybody. I worked there as a waitress during my high school years after the Depression and war was over and off and on while I was going to college. Dad had sold it to another party by then.”

“My dad lost his business,” Greg said, “but went into farming which had been the kind of work he was doing while in Japan, before he came to the United States. Living on a

130 farm and growing our own food is what saved us. But he got too ambitious and lost all the farm equipment.”

“Mmm, this pizza is as good as Pietro’s,” said Brian.

“Pizza’s are the same everywhere.” Craig said.

“Not so,” said Brian. “There’s the thick Chicago style and the thin New York style.”

“They must taste pretty much the same, though,” Craig said.

“I don’t think so,” said Brian. “I think it depends on how much sauce and cheese they put on it.”

“Enough already, boys,” Greg said. “Tomorrow, we’ll go beachcombing and drive around the island to see the sights. We should take it easy for a few days until we get over our jet lag, then we can go snorkeling or scuba diving to see the World War II wreckages underwater. It should be a sight after over 40 years.”

“When are we going fishing?” Brian asked.

“We’ll go after we’ve thoroughly explored the island, in about a week’s time,” said

Greg. “First, we’ll go see the ruins of Nan Madol that go back to the 8th Century, right here on the island of Pohnpei. It’s located in the southeastern parts.”

“Aw, do we have to?” said Craig.

“It will be a cultural experience,” said Caroline.

“Why don’t you want to go?” asked Greg.

“I want to go fishing,” Craig said.

“We’ll have time to do that,” Greg said.

“I’m going to catch me a big tuna,” Brian said.

131 “First, we pay homage to the local gods,” Greg said. “It pays to know the local customs and observe them. That’s all part of cultural understanding.”

“But to just look at some broken down building—“ Craig said.

“We can go snorkeling, too, around the ruins to check out the underwater channels,”

Greg said. “Nan Madol was built on 11 square miles of coral reef, on 92 artificial islands, right by the edge of the mangrove-covered shoreline and because it was located on water all food and fresh water had to be brought in by boat. Sandeleurs was the name of the people who inhabited the buildings. They built the structures mainly from the 13th to 17th centuries and worshipped the sea. The eel was their sea deity and they would feed the eels the entrails of a turtle and save the meat for themselves, the priests, that is. The buildings were built of basalt columns, weighing as much as fifty tons, about 750,000 tons in total. How they got the huge basalt columns there without knowledge of pulleys, wheels or levers is anybody’s guess. The local inhabitants say they used magic to fly the huge blocks in place.”

“It’ll be quite an adventure to see the actual ruins of a people who lived long before us,” Caroline said. “I’ve always been fascinated by ancient ruins, like the time we went to

Greece. That was before you two were born but we toured the ruins of Acropolis, Parthenon, the Theatre of Dionysus and the other ruins and I was particularly inspired by our ancient roots. The study of civilization is a very worthwhile undertaking. It tells us quite a bit about our origins.”

“And it gives you a sense of time and place,” Greg said.

“Like where you belong at any given time,” Brian said.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Craig.

132 “Like where you belong in life,” answered Brian. “Life comes in stages. Isn’t that right, Dad?”

“Yes, you’re right.”

They finished their meal and returned to the hotel. Caroline turned on TV and watched the news in English. The weather forecast had it that there would be periods of showers for the week, typically clearing up by the afternoon with temperatures in the 80s.

The sea would be calm with no storms in sight, an altogether fine time for sightseeing and fishing. They turned in early, fatigued from jet lag.

The next day they had the hotel pack them an obento (lunch) and they rented a boat to take them to the southeastern part of the island. Greg gunned the motor and soon they were off, coursing their way along the mangrove-covered shoreline. In time they came upon the ruins and Greg felt the hair on the back of his neck crawl. His breathing had stopped as though he had been punched in the belly. Was it the atmosphere of the place or was he coming down with something? He glanced at his family but they seemed oblivious. They just stared at the ruins with a look of interest. He alone felt a premonition. Was it some kind of evil spirit and its influence pervading the site? Or was it just his imagination? He shrugged off the feeling and it disappeared just as soon as it appeared. He maneuvered the boat to a large outcropping of basalt columns and began to change in order to don the snorkeling equipment. The two boys followed suit. Caroline stayed on board, reading a book.

They explored the underwater channels linking the different buildings and spent a long time studying a chamber the size of a football field. It may have been a worship hall in which sacrifices were made, for there appeared to be an altar where the priests may have

133 presided. They swam on but had to surface and return to the boat, because their air tanks were empty. On board they toweled themselves down and sat to eat their lunch of rice, fish cakes and stewed vegetables.

After lunch they played in the water, splashing and horsing around. Caroline joined them and they spent about an hour having fun. Then they decided to alight on one of the islands to explore the above-ground ruins. Maneuvering the boat into position, Greg cut the throttle and glided to a stop on a large island opposite the shore covered with tangled mangrove.

“This is likely the living quarters of the commoners,” Greg said, indicating the large, commodious chamber. “From the looks of it, it appears to be a communal hall.”

“And the priests must have lived in the smaller buildings with many cubicles,”

Caroline said.

“That would be my guess,” said Greg.

“I wonder what they ate,” said Craig.

“Pizza, of course,” said Brian.

“No way!” cried Craig.

“I imagine they ate turtle, for one thing, but not eel,” said Greg.

After spending some more time on several other islands, Greg pointed the boat toward home and sped along the shore, keeping the jungle well within sight. They docked and got out and Greg stopped by the car rental agency to rent a Toyota Corolla. They piled in and made their way back to the hotel. Greg was going to drive around the island the next day.

134 Toward the end of the first week, they rented a boat again to go snorkeling offshore to see the sunken WWII ships and armaments which had become the home of coral reefs and numerous varieties of fish. Caroline had reluctantly joined them and entered the water with them. They descended to view the wreckage better and experience the wild colors and shapes of marine life in the shallow depths. The shapes of the ships had been changed by the proliferation of coral growing along any surface where they could gain purchase. The multicolored fish swam in and out of the broken portholes and hatchways. The entire scene was teeming with sea life.

Then came the day for fishing and both boys enthusiastically claimed to be the champion fisherman. Greg told them not to count him out. Caroline joined them in the boat, because she said she couldn’t see herself spending the time in the hotel room reading alone.

It was rare for her to join them on a fishing trip but she was going to make an exception.

Besides who was going to commiserate with Greg when he came out on the short end of the stick when it came to catching the biggest fish? The accolade usually went to Craig.

The sky had cleared early; the rain had ceased and the sun shone warmly. Greg pointed the boat out to sea and followed directions, according to the compass, to the best fishing grounds around the area. The island of Pohnpei receded into the background, until it was a tiny speck in the horizon. It was lonely on the high seas, but Greg gave it no notice, since he was looking forward to fishing. They prepared their lines and tossed them overboard to begin trolling for tuna—or whatever else might bite.

In short order, Craig caught a sizable bluefin tuna and Brian a smaller one. Greg had yet to get a bite. Craig whopped and hollered and Brian scowled his envy. Craig’s catch

135 must have been due to luck, because for the next three hours there was nothing except a small yellowtail caught by Brian. Greg caught nothing.

During the fourth hour, Greg’s pole bent viciously and he reeled in to biggest tuna of the day. Caroline congratulated him. In quick succession, Craig and Brian caught a fish, not quite as large as the ones they had caught. The three fishermen each caught another, making the total number of fish nine.

“There’s enough fish here to feed an army,” Caroline said. “Isn’t about time we head back?”

“You’re right, hon,” Greg said. “Let’s head back, boys.”

“Aw, a little while longer,” cried Craig.

“It’ll take a while to get back, so let’s start out now,” Greg said.

So saying, he weighed anchor and started the motor. The fish had been stored in a fish-holding compartment. Caroline was seated in the cabin of the large inboard with Greg manning the controls. The two boys were seated alongside the gunnels. Turning the boat around, Greg pointed the boat toward the distant island and noted that the sea had become choppy. The hair on the back of his neck crawled.

Halfway to the destination, there was a loud clunk and the motor died. Greg immediately thought of a broken shaft, and he lunged for the engine compartment cover and ripped it off. He didn’t know what he was looking at. He could tell where the distributor, spark plugs and carburetor were but that was about all. The boat began to drift away from the island.

The sea became choppier and the storm suddenly descended upon them. Gail-force winds began to blow, followed by a torrential downpour. Greg looked helplessly at the

136 engine but instinctively pushed the starter button again, out of desperation. Nothing but an empty, whirring and whining sound. There had been nothing in the forecast about a storm but the region was known to suffer from sudden weather change—which he had taken into account. But he had not anticipated anything like this storm which had suddenly and viciously come out of the west. And it wasn’t even typhoon season.

The rain came down heavily. Soon water filled the boat and sloshed around their legs. All four of them manned buckets and pots and pans taken from the galley to bail out the water. They worked furiously and wordlessly. Worry was scrawled on Caroline’s features but she said nothing. It didn’t dawn on the boys that they were in deep trouble yet, and Craig worked with alacrity but with a grin on his face. It was some kind of adventure to him. Greg’s expression was grim.

The wind blew ferociously and the sea became turbulent, heaving the boat upon the crest of a wave only to dash it down again, threatening to capsize it. But the boat remained afloat while they bailed it out. The wind blew them off course, away from Pohnpei in a southeasterly direction, toward the open sea. Soon the island disappeared below the horizon.

A hour later, the storm stopped as suddenly as it appeared and the sun broke through the clouds. They continued to bail, dumping the rainwater overboard as fast as they could.

Greg viewed the undulant sea with trepidation and checked the compass lest he had misread it the first time. No, they were drifting more east than south toward the open sea where Greg couldn’t recall any islands to make landfall. They were at the mercy of the sea. Greg was prescient enough to fill all the buckets, pots and pans with fresh water in case they were not rescued in due time.

137 They drifted for days without spotting any rescue vessel. By now the boys were somber, aware of the predicament they were in, and Greg comforted Caroline by indicating to her that they could last a long time on the open sea because of the water and food they had on hand. They all sat in the cabin, out of the sun, and lay down on the bunks to conserve energy. For their meals they cooked as much of the fish as they could and ate it once a day.

They rationed the water.

Once while drifting they thought they heard the drone of an airplane but they could not see it. Nevertheless, Greg shot off a flare in anticipation but there was no appearance of an aircraft.

They continued to drift in the same direction. Rubbing the stubble on his chin, Greg wrote down the events of the day in a log, keeping track of the days and what they did, especially their spirits. The general mood was one of optimism. They had enough to eat.

They ate the fish first, reserving the canned goods in the pantry for later, in case they needed them. The rationed water was holding. And they had protection from the sun that parched them.

Two weeks passed and they were drifting in an easterly direction now. Eating only once a day, their food supply was holding up but they were sick and tired of tuna. Their water was dangerously low; it had dwindled down to a few scoops on the bottom of the pail.

If they couldn’t replenish the water supply soon they would be in dire trouble. He had discovered a blue tarp in the storage compartment and spread it out, securing its corners with rope to the gunnels, hoping to catch any rainfall. But it did not rain. The sky remained a pellucid blue, without a cloud in sight, and the sun beat down mercilessly.

138 Several days later they drank the last of the water and Caroline sobbed wordlessly.

The boys lay in their bunks, stunned by the enormity of their situation, and Greg looked up at the sky anxiously, wondering if it was the end. But he did not give up hope. He tried to comfort his family, especially his wife who had grown wan and listless, by telling them that by some miracle he might be able to fix the radio. But he knew nothing about electronics.

With the battery dead, the radio was useless and he was helpless to fix it. His last and only call was a general SOS sent out the moment the storm had died down. He had stayed on line until the battery was drained and with the engine dead he had no way of recharging it.

They continued to drift, this time without water. Their situation had grown more desperate; they could not last without water. Greg looked up at the sky: not a single cloud marred its expanse. The blue stretched from horizon to horizon. Greg suddenly experienced a sinking of the heavy weight on his chest, a catching of the breath and the loosening of his bladder. They were all going to die! The realization sank in deeply and there was no shaking it. Without water they were doomed.

He lay panting in the heat, his lips parched and his mouth dry. He had run out of words of encouragement and the others remained mute, too overwhelmed by the situation.

They all lay on their bunks, waiting for the inevitable.

The boat began to rock. First it came imperceptibly like the gentle hand of a mother rocking the cradle. Then the boat began to bob and heave. Sensing a change in the weather,

Greg got wearily to his feet and staggered outside where he noted the wind had come up and clouds had formed overhead. Was it a squall brewing or a passing storm? Whatever was happening he thought he smelled rain in the air and peered anxiously into the sky. The sea grew rougher as the wind picked up and the clouds grew darker.

139 First the rain came down in a few drops, splattering on the tarp, and then it began to rain in torrents as though the heavens were flushing itself of unwanted water. Greg quickly roused Caroline; the boys were already on their feet, manning the pots and pans while Greg busied himself filling the buckets. Caroline, coming alive, was filling a dishpan from the tarp’s runoff. She was laughing now, vastly relieved that the sky had opened up and provided them with what they needed.

With all the implements filled with water and their thirst slaked, they stored the containers in the compartment and looked at each other jubilantly, Greg intoning the general sentiment that that was a close one. For no reason at all but with a fulsome heart, he said a silent thank you. Thank you to whom? To the powers that be or to luck? Or to a Supreme

Being? He couldn’t say. His whole being was simply filled with a sense of gratitude.

They ate sparingly of the canned goods and were niggardly with their water. They rationed themselves, for they had no way of knowing when or if they would make landfall on some remote island. Hopefully that island would have people living on it, a civilization with means to communicate with the outside world. But they continued to drift; they were in the middle of nowhere, lost in an expanse of open water. However, their spirits were high and

Caroline even led them in song. Greg filled in the time by writing in the log book.

Another week went by without spotting a ship or island. Their water was on the wane and Greg worried that they may not luck out again. Then he noticed gulls flying overhead and wondered about a possible landfall. But the gulls disappeared and he dejectedly gave up hope. Two days later however they appeared again and on the third day he thought he saw the faint outline of an island. As luck would have it they continued to drift toward it and it

140 grew larger until he could make out the tree-lined shores. The boys cried out that they were saved and Greg and Caroline hugged each other wordlessly.

The waves carried them to the rocky shoreline, right into a sandy cove. It seemed to be a small island, off the path of the trade routes. When the boat grounded itself, Greg half expected to see natives emerge from the trees, but the beach remain eerily uninhabited. They got out and pulled the boat further up on the beach. Greg immediately noted the coconuts growing on the palm trees. He pointed to them and the boys nodded. They were in weakened condition but said they would manage to climb the tall trees to harvest the fruit.

Greg told that could wait till later, after they established their abode. Making landfall successfully prompted Greg to organize his thinking in high gear and his first thought was to set up a lean-to to keep the elements off of them. They entered the trees and trekked through the jungle. He was also concerned about a fresh water supply. The best thing was to find a source and set up camp near it.

Brushing aside the undergrowth, they struggled to make their way through the jungle

for a couple of miles, exhausted and taking sips from a water bottle Greg had brought along. Soon they came upon a clearing at the foot of a mountain. It was a good spot to establish a camp but in scouting around Greg discovered there was no water supply, if indeed there was one on the island. With the mountain towering above them, he was sure there was a stream nearby and he had his family rest in the open space while he proceeded to scout around.

He entered the jungle again and worked his way toward the mountain, aiming for a steep crevasse. He was startled by a crashing in the underbrush and he caught sight of a feral pig dashing into the trees. If pigs could live on the island, there had to be water, he reasoned.

141 Perhaps the gouged out portion of the mountain concealed a stream, he thought, as he advanced toward it and sure enough he heard the charging sounds of water flowing. He made his way toward the sounds and found a small, rushing creek cutting through the floor of the lush growth. He kneeled on the banks to slake his thirst and proceeded to retrace his tracks—when he discovered he was lost. He was stunned for a moment, blaming himself for not marking the trail. The sameness of the jungle confused him.

Rather than stagger around blindly, he called out to his family. But to no avail.

There was no response. Only the birds erupted from the trees around him. Then he stuck his fingers in his mouth and blasted out a shrill whistle. There was no return signal. He tried again, taking in a lungful of air and let out a lengthy whistle. After a moment or two, there was a response in similar form. It was probably Brian to whom Greg had taught the art.

Relieved, Greg proceeded in the direction of the signal which he returned and was returned to him again. He broke the branches of the brush and trees to mark the trail to the creek as he made his way back.

When he rejoined his family, he clasped Brian around the shoulders and said he did well to return his signal and Brian said he figured that Greg was lost. Greg told them of discovering water and that the trail there was clearly marked; the branches had been broken and the ground stamped. They decided to make a camp in the clearing.

They made several trips to and from the boat to haul back mattresses, blankets, cookware, canned goods, matches, tarp and tools. Greg didn’t forget the log book. Then they set about making a lean-to, entering the jungle with kitchen knives to hack through branches and the underbrush. Greg worked with a Swiss army knife he always took with him on trips, camping and otherwise.

142 They worked tirelessly as a team and by nightfall they had a large pile of material stashed in the clearing. Greg started making the lean-to, just barely large enough to contain four mattresses, but could hardly see what he was doing because darkness had descended, so he had the boys gather twigs and branches and started a fire. By its light he was able to finish the lean-to, a shaky affair with the tarp serving as the roof. Then they had their sparse dinner, a meal eaten in silence, for it had been an exhausting day. Right after eating they retired for the night, slipping beneath the blankets and falling sound asleep.

All except Greg. He lay awake, pondering the events which had led them to the island, now a temporary safe haven. Judging from the existence of the pigs, the island could have been inhabited at one point. Does that mean that the inhabitants could return? If so would they be friendly? Could there be people on the other side of the mountain? And how long would it be before they were rescued? They were evidently off the regular trade route.

But he counted his lucky stars. They had survived the storms, the near foundering, the drifting without water. And the rains came exactly when they were so desperate. Was it luck or some guardian angel? He couldn’t tell. Maybe it was blind luck or maybe it was the

Divine Hand at work or both; maybe luck had to be present before God acted or He created luck. Greg didn’t know. There were some things in life that he would never know anything about, like whether or not God was a form of consciousness that touched off the Big Bang (a thought that had occurred to him earlier) or whether it was the result of quantum serendipity, in which case the harmony and chaos, stableness and chance, predetermination and happenstance and all the rest of the immutable laws governing the universe were an accident.

Hard to imagine. A universe without God was almost unthinkable, judging from the grandeur and predictability of nature. But what about the unpredictability of nature, the

143 haphazard eruption of volcanoes, the occurrence of cyclones and tornadoes and the incidence of earthquakes? It would all appear to be part of God’s character but of course man could not even begin to comprehend the mind and nature of God.

The next day Greg and Brian hiked through the jungle to go to the beach where the palm trees grew and Greg had his son shinny up the tall tree to harvest some coconuts which he carried by making a bag out of his shirt. Together they made their way back, taking turns carrying the heavy load and proceeded to break open a few when they returned to the camp.

They each shared the nutritious milk and white meat. Then they set out to explore the island.

But first Greg prepared a long spear just in case he came across a pig, which was highly unlikely but he was going to take advantage of every opportunity that came his way.

They followed the marked trail back to the stream, filling their plastic bottles with the clear, cold water, and made their way around the foot of the mountain. They broke the branches of the undergrowth and stomped the ground to make a trail to follow back on their return. Once they heard a loud crashing in the brush, although they couldn’t see anything.

The jungle was alive with wild pigs. Greg held his spear at the ready. But he didn’t think he would get lucky that day.

A couple of hours later, they came across another branch of the stream coming off the mountain and slaked their thirst and refilled their bottles. Soon they emerged from the jungle and stood on the southwestern shoreline of the island. They studied the tall mountain which stuck out above the canopy of the lush jungle and Greg wondered if it was worth climbing to set up a signal fire. He had to make the effort to alert the outside world of their accidental presence on the uninhabited island and the sooner the better. He decided to climb the

144 mountain the following day with Brian and he told him so. Brian said he would do anything he was told. He just hoped they would be rescued soon.

The water was shallow where they stood, so they waded out a ways to see what they could harvest off the floor of the sea, keeping in mind their experience of finding edible seafood off the shore of Redondo Beach. They discovered that abalone was abundant and so were sea snails; they even scared an octopus out of hiding. If people once inhabited the island, they left a veritable cornucopia behind; perhaps they all died off, for some unknown reason.

With their cache of food, they made their way back, scaring more pigs into hiding, and traced their progress through the jungle, following the trail they had made and crossing the stream twice before arriving exhausted back at camp. They set their gathered seafood on a large leaf and set about making a fire. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was beginning to set. It had not rained that day but the clouds bespoke otherwise.

Soon they had a crackling fire going and Greg pried the abalone out of its shell, pounded it with a rock and sliced thin strips to fry. He also set a pan on the fire to boil the snails, seasoning the food with a little salt which he hoarded as if it were precious gold. He knew the seafood would have provided enough salt so that their systems would not lack, but he was niggardly in its use because of its medicinal qualities.

They had a feast that night: abalone, snails, octopus and coconut. They saved the few canned goods for emergency. They were less tired than the day before and stayed awake, sitting around the fire, and with their bellies full talked about their chances of being rescued—soon.

145 “I don’t know how soon it will be,” said Greg, “but I’m confident some ship will see my fire and come and pick us up.”

“I hope and pray they will,” said Caroline. “I know I haven’t encouraged this family to go to church and I’m ashamed to say that I don’t pray regularly, but I am a Christian and I want to pray now.”

“I’ll join you,” Greg said.

“So will I,” Brian said.

“Me, too,” Craig said.

“We’ll pray as a family,” Caroline said. “That ought to add potency to our prayers if we pray together.”

“We’re sitting pretty right here with our food supply guaranteed,” Greg began, “and maybe we should just think of our being trapped here as part of our vacation and make the best of it while waiting.”

“It could be a long wait,” Caroline said.

“Could be,” Greg said, “but we should try to have fun while waiting. Explore the island, hunt pigs, consume the bounty of the island. It’s like a gigantic smorgasbord.”

“I wonder how big the island is,” Craig said.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Brian said.

“We’ll set out tomorrow,” said Greg, “and explore some more the northern parts, opposite the mountain after I climb it to get a fire going. It may be the day after tomorrow that we can go, depending on how difficult it is to climb to the top what with the jungle growth and all.”

146 The next morning Greg and Brian left their camp to climb the mountain. The underbrush clawed at their arms and legs but after an hour of struggling they reached the top and began gathering wood for a fire. The top of the mountain was rocky, the outcropping being weathered and eroded. Upon the fire, after getting it going good, they placed green branches which produced billows of dark smoke that could be seen for miles around at sea.

Greg scanned the ocean but could not see anything that resembled a ship. But in time he was sure the smoke signal would be spotted and they would be rescued.

They descended the mountain and made their way back to camp. After having something to eat, the whole family set out in a northerly direction to explore the rest of the island. They made good time by following a meandering stream through the jungle. When they came upon a clearing, they left the stream and followed what appeared to be a faint trail, made perhaps by pigs, Greg thought.

They followed the trail through the large clearing, rounded a bend and were startled.

There in front of them was the wreckage of a fighter plane, a P-47 Thunderbolt, Greg knew.

And not too far away was a make-shift shack. Rushing up to it, Greg peered into the dim, rudimentary abode, not expecting to find anyone alive but hoping, nevertheless. He found the skeletal remains of the fighter pilot. He crouched down and removed the dog tags, holding them up to the light streaming in from the entrance.

It read: James T. Peterson, Lt., USAF. He was the missing WWII ace who had shot down twenty-six Zeros over the Pacific and the son of the famous Senator Harold S. Peterson who had posted a reward for the discovery of his whereabouts. Greg recalled the media frenzy when the war ace went missing in action and was presumed dead, but Senator

Peterson never gave up hope. He was sure his son was alive somewhere; even if he wasn’t

147 he wanted information as to his demise. Now Greg had information that could lay the old senator’s mind at rest. If only he could get it to him. He looked with anticipation at the mountaintop, visible above the trees, to see the smoke still billowing up.

Upon examining the shack, Greg came upon Lt. Peterson’s diary and other personal items such as a knife, .45 ACP pistol without ammunition, flashlight with dead batteries and a pair of binoculars. He also found a compass which he immediately pocketed and a wristwatch. He removed what remained of the shirt and together with the trousers tied the bones into a bundle so as to take them with them when they were rescued. He secured the dog tags carefully in his pants pocket and buttoned it.

Upon returning to their camp, Greg sat cross-legged under the tarp and began reading the diary. It was something like his logbook, filled with details of the crash landing, his injuries, the daily life of a castaway, his setting traps for the pigs baited with taro roots.

There was no mention of people. The last entry was dated September 25, 1975 which meant he had been stranded on the island all alone without being discovered for thirty-two years.

Which also meant that his signal fires had not attracted any ship or aircraft in the vicinity.

The island was indeed off the beaten path. It said in the diary that his injuries—a broken leg and foot that never did heal properly—had prevented him from climbing the mountain to set a fire, a fire that he would have to keep going at least every other day. It reminded Greg of his task for the rest of the time they were trapped on the island.

It began to rain. At first it was a light drizzle but in time the dark clouds gathered overhead and unleashed a torrent that washed around the lean-to. The wind also blew and threatened to tear down the flimsy structure underneath which they all sought refuge from the weather. Undaunted Greg continued to read on and was fascinated by Lt. Peterson’s account

148 of the ordeal, his initial plight of trying unsuccessfully to set the bones of his leg and foot, his discovery of a source of the taro root, his first success in snaring a pig which led to an eating binge, so famished was he by the time he finally trapped the animal. The pig had always managed to stay out of range of the .45 pistol, sensing perhaps in its dim memory the image of a man armed with a weapon.

He also wrote about loneliness, a constant gnawing of emptiness at his vitals, the very center of his being where companionship resided with communal gaiety. His aloneness was like a curse and he would face east toward America and sing all the patriotic songs he knew and recite all the poetry he ever committed to memory. But in time that practice grew onerous and he commenced to talk to himself and reform speeches he had given in high school and college. One of the speeches was his valedictorian speech which he recast over and over again to cover his current moods as they applied to the war, politics, the international situation. He wished President Roosevelt would end the war soon and bring all the boys back home. And rescue him.

But the small island was bypassed. It was but a tiny blip in a larger ocean, forgotten and forsaken. The ships and planes of war must have passed close by any number of times but none stopped to investigate the island. Perhaps the island was cursed. There was evidence of people having lived on it at one time as ascertained by the presence of the pigs, but they had disappeared as though they were wiped out overnight, either by marauding pirates or an epidemic—or both. However, there was no evidence of people ever having lived on the island, no remnants of dwellings or a thriving community.

Lt. Peterson claimed to be an agnostic, neither affirming nor denying the existence of

God. In the first stages of his ordeal of aloneness he was self-reliant, taking pride in keeping

149 his mind and body in as good a shape as circumstances allowed. He shaved and religiously did his push-ups. He wrote daily in his diary, describing his day and his mood and thoughts.

He sang a lot until the sound of his voice became a tiresome reminder that he had no one to talk to, that no one would ever know how profound his loneliness had become.

He wasn’t always lonely. There were impossibly busy days in school, studying and prepping for exams. He did well in school, especially in college where he was top of his class. By nature, however, he was a loner. Growing up all by himself on a farm in Nebraska, he had no one to play with being an only child and entertained himself by making up stories of the plants and animals supported by the farm. The crops that were cut down and harvested sustained humankind and the animals they slaughtered provided meat on the table.

Everything about the farm was meant to sustain life. What about humans? What were humans meant for? Were they meant to slaughter each other in a war? Were they meant to die in accidents? Were they meant to succumb to illnesses? What are humans good for?

And who was to decide? The state? The individual? Or God?

His loneliness took on cosmic dimensions. It was as if when he peered into the heavens there was nothing but a vast void. Of nothingness. There was no sense of a presence. Could that be a reflection of his own state of mind? Was there something out in the universe that was beyond his perceptions? If it was, what good was an unknowable God?

What good was there to search the beyond, if there was nothing there? Only emptiness?

And what about the fine frenzy of seeking a belief within, in one’s search for God there?

One’s search could take one to hidden monasteries in exotic lands, to religious retreats, to interviewing spiritual masters or it could take one deep within oneself to seek a universe there, of inviolable truths that one knows is accurate in describing the concomitants of life,

150 for the original soul of man is knowing and wise. But can the spiritual richness attained by a man survive the onslaught of gross reality such as war and its attendant killing? Can it survive any kind of brutality? Or do the fine spiritual sensibilities flee in the face of corrosive reality? If so, how does one adjust one’s psyche to weather the buffeting circumstances?

But then something happened, Peterson wrote. His acute sense of loneliness, of being isolated and stranded on an uninhabited island, all alone with only the sound of his voice to keep him company, turned into something else. It turned into solitude and a sense of oneness with all things. With the jungle, trees, pigs, stream, birds, sky, clouds, rain, wind. The sense was one of vastness, an all-inclusive embodiment of all existence, of everything in the universe, and of the particularities of the tiniest things around him: worms, beetles, microbes.

He felt he was but part of the bigger totality, a small segment of a giant organism which was larger than the mind could conceive of but nevertheless a living, sentient part. He was a part of the grand breathing entity called Earth. He was one with nature and he was one with the people everywhere. He was no stranger to their wants and needs, their hopes and dreams and he wanted desperately to rejoin human society again. But his new-found ties to nature would have to keep him company in the meantime. He even thought he had discovered the numinous in solitude which was characterized by a stillness within.

Greg got to his feet to stoke the fire he had built after the storm. He continued to read by the light and came upon a portion in which the fighter pilot described his foot and leg getting better, perhaps a year into his isolation. Not being able to set the leg properly, he continued to limp and stagger about but the pain had gone away and now he was able to walk longer distances from his camp to hunt for food. Greg read aloud certain passages from the

151 journal, cluing his family into what to expect in the days to come. Caroline said since they had each other, they would not be so lonely but then she also said that while waiting they had to occupy themselves.

“By doing what?” asked Brian.

“By devising games,” Caroline replied.

“Games? I’m good at games,” said Craig. “Leave the game department up to me.”

“What do we do for tomorrow?” asked Brian.

“We make a game out of everything,” Craig replied, “out of climbing the mountain, hunting for taro roots and pigs, Everything, like word games and chance. I’m full of ideas.”

“Good,” said Greg. “I’ll leave it up to you.”

Greg continued to read. Peterson did not delve into what he meant by the numinous.

He just intimated that it was a huge feeling of something beyond that lay behind all the immutable laws of nature. Whether it was by design or luck, Lt. Peterson couldn’t decide.

In either case, the imagination was staggered. If it was by design, there had to be a God— which boggled the mind. If it was by mere chance, that is, all the harmony and chaos of the universe were like the toss of the dice and all things like the human body and its complexity functioned accidentally (a series of happy accidents), then that also boggled the mind.

Indeed, where did mind come from, where did consciousness come from (here Greg found a note struck that was consonant with his own thinking)? What is the link between DNA and the development of intelligence or consciousness of an organism, Greg wondered. Was that going to be the eternal conundrum? The Gordian Knot of the scientific community? What about spirituality? Did animals experience spirituality? If they had souls, they most certainly could, in their own way. Was laughter just an emotional response? Or could it also

152 be spiritual, as in a snicker, guffaw, belly laugh? Animals can laugh. Does that mean they have a vision of the ridiculous and sublime? Do they have a sense of humor? They certainly have a sense of playfulness. That this world is more interconnected than one can imagine goes without saying, Greg thought.

It took Greg well into the next day to finish reading the diary. In the last entry on that balmy September day in 1975, Lt. Peterson noted that he had to get up and trap another pig and refill his water bottle but did not have the energy to do so. He was feeling poorly, run down, out of steam. Perhaps in the morrow, he might feel better and rally as he had on so many other occasions. The entry ended on a hopeful note. He wrote “signing off…till tomorrow.”

“Till tomorrow,” mused Greg. What will tomorrow bring? He and Brian would have to climb the mountain again to set the fire and repeat the routine at least four times a week.

While their food supply would probably last the duration of their isolation, they still had to patiently trap or spear the pigs and to gut and clean them. And they would have to find ways to keep the meat from spoiling…cooking it all beforehand would put off the spoilage. It was going to be either feast or famine. But they had the offerings of the sea to subsist on also.

That night Greg slept uneasily, dreaming of Lt. Peterson’s demise a mere eight years ago. He had survived thirty-two years on the island, fending for himself, hobbling around bravely, refusing to believe that he had been abandoned and never would be rescued. How long would it take for the Sonoda family to be rescued?

153 Chapter Ten

It was well over eight months later and there had been no sightings. Once Greg thought he had spotted the outlines of a ship on the horizon but could not be sure. He nevertheless threw on extra green branches on the fire and kept the binoculars fixed on the sea but the viewing was hazy.

The Sonoda family was still intact. Their food supply held up and they were by and large still healthy with only occasional bouts of diarrhea which they cured by drinking lots of the pure stream water. Had they not been stranded, the island was a veritable paradise with plenty of food—coconuts, pigs, taro roots, seafood—to eat. But with each passing day Greg grew more pessimistic of any ship or airplane seeing their signal. Peterson had spent a total of forty years before being discovered by not rescuers but castaways, forty years spent being bypassed. The island was indeed off the beaten track and my not have even been charted which was hard to believe since it did have evidence of people once having lived there.

They had run out of matches and now used the fire starter salvaged from the pilot’s survival kit. They laboriously started the fires using the flint and striker and kept them going by relying on the remaining embers. But every other day Greg and Brian climbed the mountain to set the fire. Caroline and Craig stayed in the camp or gathered the harvest from the ocean. Their clothes were in tatters and Caroline did the best she could repairing them with the sewing kit she always had in her purse which she took with her wherever she went.

Coming down the mountain that late March day, Greg slipped and fell and gashed his calf just below the knee. He broke the offending branch sticking out of the ground which he had broken previously in clearing a trail and tossed it out of the way. The wound bled

154 profusely; it was a deep gash. He bound it as best he could with a handkerchief and hobbled back to camp after washing the wound out in the creek. Caroline took one look at the wound and decided to sew it shut. Bruises and scrapes were her department of concern ever since her boys were little (and there were many falls when they were growing up), so she took immediate charge and ordered Greg to lie on his stomach under the tarp and began applying stitches. Greg was aware of the possibility if infection in the tropical climate. He stoically withstood the pain.

But in the matter of days, the wound began to fester and his leg began to swell and broke the stitches. The pain was excruciating and a yellow-green pus began to ooze out.

Something had to be done or else Greg would have to cut off his own leg, since it was clear that gangrene had set in. The only thing he could think of doing was to soak the leg in the clear, pure water of the creek flowing nearby.

He staggered to it, crashing through the underbrush, assisted by Brian and sat on the banks with his leg immersed. He felt an immediate relief. The hot leg cooled off and his fever went down. He came back to the spot where the creek eddied around a bend and created a deep pool into which he plunged his injured leg and spent hours there, three or four times a day.

In a week’s time the improvement was evident: the swelling had gone down, the putrefaction had stopped, and the wound was closing. The healing waters were miraculous.

Perhaps they were responsible for Lt. Peterson’s leg recovery and his longevity on the island, keeping him healthy till the very end—until he literally wore out.

It wasn’t till a month later that Greg’s wound was completely healed. He considered himself lucky. Or was it something else looking after him? It was something that was

155 always at the back of his mind. A guardian angel, perhaps? If there were such a thing.

There were times in his life that he was convinced there were. And now was one of those times, although he didn’t discuss it with anyone, not even with Caroline. He was still tentative, however. It was as though admitting such would open the floodgates to a full- blown faith in God and he felt he wasn’t there yet. Perhaps he never would be, such were the questions that kept cropping up; for instance, the question of good and evil in the world where good people always suffer at the hands of the evil in a never-ending cycle in which tyrants start wars of aggrandizement and cause misery throughout the world. Oh sure, the pendulum swings and the good seem to triumph over evil only to have the same cycle and pattern repeated again and again throughout history. Are we becoming wiser in terms of getting along with each other? Or are we always going to have to seek an enemy? If not each other, then what about the extraterrestrial aliens in the end?

Extolling the curative qualities of the stream water, Greg had his family consume close to a gallon a day as a preventative measure and the Sonoda family remained healthy.

They trapped the pigs using taro roots as bait, as described by Peterson in his diary, and once more Greg even succeeded in spearing one. They harvested food off the seafloor and Brian and Craig took turns climbing the coconut trees to collect the fruit. They ate well and

Caroline even put on a few pounds which became her, since she had always been on the thin side.

Greg and Brian climbed the mountain and discovered that the fire was still smoldering, so they blew on a single ember to see if they couldn’t bring it alive. They took turns. While Brian was on all fours blowing, Greg searched around for bunches of dry grass just in case they couldn’t start the fire. But Brian let out a whoop finally and motioned Greg

156 to put the grass on the now-glowing ember and soon they had a roaring fire going. They broke branches to place on the flames; Greg sawed through a stout limb with the wire-saw— part of the survival kit—and carried it to the fire. The smoke billowed copiously skyward on the somewhat breezy day. The sky overhead was clear but the clouds on the horizon began to gather; it looked as though a storm was brewing. Greg trained the binoculars on the distant horizon, making a 360 degree sweep, but could see nothing except the surrounding undulant sea, heaving and breaking into white crests. The wind picked up and the clouds gathered at the horizon began drifting toward the island. They were in for a storm. Judging from the increasing speed of the wind which carried the scent of rain, it was going to be a big one.

Father and son descended the mountain quickly and made their way back to camp where Caroline and Craig awaited their return.

“I see you got a good fire going,” Caroline said.

“The credit goes to Brian,” Greg said.

“They could probably see that for miles around,” she said hopefully.

“If they’re out there,” he said.

“You haven’t given up hope, have you, darling?”

“Nope, honey. Never say die.”

“That’s why I love you, Greg. You know when to lie.”

“Lie? To you and the kids? Never.”

“I read your journal.”

“That was months ago, Caroline. I just had a spasm of doubt. It was just a spasm but it passed as all bad feelings do. But after I healed my leg in the miracle waters, my optimism

157 returned and whenever I feel doubt creeping up on me, I think about soaking my leg in the stream and waiting patiently and lo and behold the bad feeling passes.”

“I wish it were that simple for me, but things never are.”

“You’re a woman, that’s why.”

“Sometimes I wish I were a man.”

“That would be a loss to the human race.”

Caroline smiled: “It’s good to hear you say that.”

The storm blew in earnest. The trees shook and the rain drenched the island. The flimsy lean-to folded and collapsed. Greg salvaged the tarp and spread it over the bedding.

They huddled together at the mercy of the elements, soaked to the skin. The temperature suddenly dropped and they experienced the coldest day of their sojourn, but it was not cold enough to be excruciating. They shivered, nevertheless, in the unaccustomed chill. Greg looked at the mountain; the fire had not gone out. It was still smoldering and emitting smoke. They had built a huge fire and placed logs and green branches on it.

The storm had lasted for about an hour. When the wind died down, the blue sky returned as suddenly as it had disappeared in the dense clouds and the sun shone through to dry off the land. Steam began to arise in the jungle. Miraculously, the fire still burned in spite of the rain. They had built a large enough of one that withstood the downpour. But

Greg decided to check and stoke the fire again to its state of emitting plumes of smoke. He took Brian with him.

For the second time that day atop the mountain, he scanned the horizon with his binoculars but to no avail. It was as it had been every time he scaled to the top: do a sweep of the sea with a degree of hope, then with tempered dejection reconcile himself to another

158 day of abandonment. But they were together as a family still, healthy with plenty of food to get them by and in relative good spirits. It could have been otherwise. Any number of things could have happened. They could have broken a limb; they could have fallen ill with at least some kind of gastrointestinal ailment besides an occasional bout of diarrhea , but, no, they remained healthy, almost disgustingly so. It could be attributed to the miracle waters they drank of copiously on a daily basis. It must have contained all kinds of nutrients and had an antiseptic quality. He wondered how the original inhabitants (for surely there had to be people there) could have left such a paradise. It had all the food one could want and the curative waters to boot. It was a small island but it was self-contained. Perhaps disease had wiped them out or for some other reason they were compelled to leave. But there was nothing to attest to their presence.

After they restarted the fire and had it roaring with the flames leaping five, six feet into the air, they piled on green branches to produce the billows of smoke that would hopefully attract the attention of a passing aircraft or ship. Then they descended the mountain.

That night they played a card game with a pack discovered among the survival items that belonged to the airman. His bones lay in the corner of the tent which Greg had rebuilt after the storm and his dog tags were stored in a tin can placed on top of the pile. When the

Sonoda’s were rescued, Greg had every intention of delivering the son’s remains to the senator. Lt. Peterson was a hero and deserved a hero’s burial in the land of his birth. He also would hand over the journal to the father to help him understand how his son had transpired all alone on the deserted island, alone for so long before dying.

159 The next day Greg decided to explore the southern part of the mountain and took the family with him. They followed the trail they had made on their previous excursions to the mountain and the sea shore and broke a further trail southward through tangled brush. They stumbled upon an ancient trail through the bushes and followed it up the side of the mountain. They reached a ledge, the entranceway to a small opening of a cave which they entered without hesitation, although Greg thought it might be a refuge for the pigs that populated the island.

Inside it was dim but he could make out a cavernous abode filled with an altar of sorts and paintings on the wall. There had been people on the island after all. And he had stumbled upon the remnants of their world. He had no way of ascertaining how ancient their world was, only that it was old, perhaps going back to the Stone Age, judging from the implements strewn about on the floor.

Further into the large cavern there were slots cut into the sides of the walls, apparently spots where the inhabitants slept. Greg discovered a single skeleton covered with the shredded remnants of fabric. He just knew there had to be people on the island. But there was only one skeleton. Where were the others? Surely there was a colony of people who lived here. Their whereabouts was a mystery. Perhaps the single skeleton was of a person who had held out after an epidemic of some kind had wiped out the colony and he was the last to succumb.

They explored the entire cave intrigued by their find and scoured the floor, looking for clues of writing but found nothing except some stone artifacts. Surely the island had a name, Greg thought. He would have to do research once he got back to civilization and find out all he could about Micronesia and the South Pacific. He decided to announce his

160 discovery to the archeologists at the university. Perhaps they could shed some light on the remnants of the far-off settlement. He picked up a hand ax as a evidence of his find, to show to the university people—after they were rescued. “When” they were rescued, not “if.” Ever since his leg was healed, he felt his optimism growing and now in spite of the long days stretching into months his feeling that they were going to be rescued soon kept growing. He was positive that one day their fire would be spotted and they would be found. There was no alternative but hope. As long as they had their health and could hold out, sticking together as a family, they could persevere indefinitely. How long they would have to was anybody’s guess. But it would not be much longer, Greg thought. It had better be soon, because he was running out of space in his log book.

The four of them left the cave and traced their way back to the camp where they settled in to prepare dinner. It was a combination meal of pork and seafood, their usual fare.

Although their diet tended to be monotonous, no one complained and Caroline gave thanks before each meal for the bounty provided them by Providence. She hadn’t been particularly religious before their isolation on the island, but now she sang all the hymns she knew and diligently said her prayers to a God she had barely thought about before.

“Halloo, halloo,” came the shouts.

It was the morning of 16th of May, 1984, ten months after they had been cast adrift and came ashore on the island.

161 Greg awakened immediately and wondered if he was dreaming. Had he really heard shouting in the distance. Then came some more shouts. He got up quickly, pulled his clothes on and aroused the others.

“We’re saved!” he said.

Soon six sailors came into view and Greg and his family rushed up to greet them, shaking hands and hugging them. They were all talking at the same time.

“They saw your smoke signal a week ago,” said the ensign, “and reported it to Pearl

Harbor. It took us this long to get under way and get here.”

“Who saw the signal?” asked Greg.

“The airliner that was knocked off course by that terrific storm.”

“What’s the name of this island?”

“Dunno. It’s not on the charts.”

“A not yet discovered island? In the South Pacific?” said Greg incredulously.

“Seems so. How long have you been stranded here?”

“Ten months and three days. Exactly.”

“Wow! How’d you survive?”

“By living off the land…as well as the sea. Nature provided well. And there are an abundance of pigs.”

“I know. We stirred a few out of the brush as we followed the trail to your camp.

How are you doing? You all look well.”

“We’re doing fine.”

“You’ll have to give this place a name. After all, you discovered it.”

“Hmm. I haven’t thought about that. The waters here have curative powers.”

162 The men gathered up their things. Greg told the ensign about Lt. Peterson’s remains and they carefully transported the bones to the launch which was moored alongside the wreckage of the boat Greg had rented in Pohnpei. He would get the coordinates and report the whereabouts of the wreck.

On board the warship from Pearl Harbor, they were given a thorough medical exam and were declared fit to travel back to the United States. But first they had to file a report at headquarters, giving the authorities the essential details of their ordeal on the island, what happened to their boat, the circumstances of being adrift.

The media was on hand en masse. CNN and all the other major networks clamored for an interview. The newspapers were also represented. It was already leaked that Greg had discovered the remains of a WWII ace and that he was the long lost son of Senator Peterson who was retired and living in Maryland. But Greg did not divulge any details, deciding to let the senator know of his son’s diary and to let the senator give out any information he so desired. Greg, however, decided to write a book about his and his family’s ordeal on the island and base his narrative on his journal and his impression of being stranded. In retrospect the sojourn on the island was like an extended vacation; there was enough food to see them through, the water had curative powers and he had discovered the remains of an ancient civilization, a secret he would divulge generally only in the writing of his book. Of course, he had to contact the archeologists to get their take on the remnants he had seen, the notable artifact being a stone hand ax he had retrieved from the cave and several bones from the skeleton.

They flew back to LA, there to be greeted by the local TV networks and newspapers and treated like minor celebrities. The next day they were interviewed by KABC, KNBC,

163 KCBS and KVCR, a PBS affiliate in their Redondo Beach home and Greg repeated what he had told the naval authorities at Pearl Harbor, that they had been adrift for nearly a month in a boat after a vicious storm, landed finally on an uninhabited island and discovered the remains of Lt. James T. Peterson, son of the famous senator. The collecting of his bones was done on impulse; Greg figured that with the possession of the bones of a war ace with twenty-six kills to his credit who survived thirty-two years all alone with a broken leg, some of the luck that attended his life would rub off on him—and hasten the day of their rescue.

But their isolation was marred by constant doubt and characterized by a fierce battle between hope and despair, although in between bouts the plentitude of food helped assuage the plunge into the deeper depths of desuetude where feelings lost all purpose. In retrospect, the island was a paradise. Other than a few storms over the ten month period, the last of which brought rescue, the Sonoda family fared well…they remained healthy and were by and large always in good spirits. Caroline had comforted them with her singing, Craig with his game inventions, Brian with his consistent help. They were a close knit family.

Before the interview, Greg received a call from his office and he told them he would be back at work in a week’s time, that he was in fine health as well as the rest of the family who were fine, considering their ordeal, and that—jokingly said—he had just come back from an early extended sabbatical. Gary, Hank and Bill called one after another to welcome him home and congratulate him on coming back from the dead. They had given up all hope after he was lost in the storm; they thought that the boat had become swamped and sank and they all had drowned, never to be found. Gary said, jokingly, he should have known better than to give up on Greg and his family’s survivability, given the Sonoda”s weathering of financial ruin: LaserBM had tanked and went under, taking their $200,000 plus investment

164 along with it. Bill said he prayed every day for their survival at first, then said a prayer for their souls in heaven, deciding they must have perished at sea when no word was received to the contrary. Hank just sighed his relief, that his old friend and his family had survived against all odds and not only survived but came back home healthy and fit. On TV the night before, they appeared dressed in Hawaiian attire and Greg looked particularly fit. They were all browned by the sun and looked none the worse for wear. Greg attributed it to the water.

Hearing of its miraculous properties, Gary immediately suggested a business proposition: bottle the water and sell it. They would make millions. Ever the entrepreneur, thought Greg delightedly—always looking to make a buck—quintessentially American. I’ll think about it, he told Gary, but we have to determine who the island belongs to. Then move from there.

The next few days were spent cleaning up the house, turning the utilities back on and catching up with the bills. They spent their first meal together around their dining table with a collective sigh—and a prayer. Caroline insisted on it. Praying had become a habit during their long stay on the island and it only seemed the most natural thing in the world to engage in. She thanked God for their surviving the ordeal, for their good health and disposition and for all their friends who called and stopped by to welcome them back.

By the time the week was up, they were still in a daze, adjusting to their former life after their long sojourn in isolation. Greg had flown to and from the Maryland home of

Senator Peterson to deliver his son’s journal to him and told him of collecting his bones and personal effects to save him the trouble of locating the island to retrieve them himself. The old, white-haired senator, bent by age and worry, thanked Greg, took the journal with trembling hands and immediately opened it at the first page. He seemed deeply engrossed, so Greg excused himself and left for the airport to seek an earlier flight back to LA. No

165 mention was made of the reward; it was a substantial amount. But he was sure that the senator would remember it sooner or later.

166 Chapter Eleven

The first order of business was to take the hand ax and bones to the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA for further analysis. Upon examining it, the professor said it was an unusual find for Micronesia in that he wasn’t aware of the onset of the Stone Age there.

But it was definitely a relic of the Stone Age. How it got there or when the original inhabitants arrived is anybody’s guess, he said, but they could come to a closer estimate after carbon dating the bone fragment that Greg had also collected.

Life returned to normal. During the following months, Greg was invited to give a number of talks to school groups and travel clubs about his castaway experience. He based much of his talk on his journal, filled with the scribbling of a pen and when that went dry with a pencil. Each time he gave his talk, his journal sparked awake afresh the sentiments described in it from the despair he felt in the beginning of their ordeal to the elation he felt when he realized the blessing of the food source to the settled-in hope of rescue. His family held together throughout and survival was a cooperative issue. He was sure he would not have remained in as good a spirit as he did were it not for Caroline’s constant upbeat attitude, although in the beginning they had despaired of an early rescue, but she had fought her depression to emerge strong and faithful to such an extent that she seemed to glow from within the longer they were trapped. Now she was utterly content to returning to the role of a housewife, much to Greg’s amazement. He thought that she would have wanted to share the limelight in becoming a celebrity of sorts, but, no, she was content to pick up where she left off, cooking the meals, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, as though nothing had happened. Thanks to her resiliency, life returned to normal for the Sonoda family. That was

167 what she wanted: to bring normalcy back into their lives in the face of the near disaster in which the entire family could have been wiped out.

Greg decided to write a book about their experience. In short order, he set about typing the manuscript in his spare time in the evenings and during the weekends. (He named the island, “Endurance,” thought better of it, since it focused on his own fragile trait, and called it simply, “Sonoda Island.) He wanted to set everything down on paper while his memory of the events were fresh in his mind. He consulted with Caroline, Brian and Craig about their impressions and what they recalled of their isolation, what their worst and best feelings were and what they thought of their overall experience as far as their being individuals were concerned. Did they come to understand themselves better, as did Greg?

What were their inclinations about their predicament? Had they ever had doubts about their survival and being rescued? They hadn’t talked about their experience on the island, not directly to each other, but now that they were safe and sound once again, they could go over the experience in recollection and give vent to their impressions.

In six months’ time, Greg had completed the first draft and proceeded to revise it, cutting out a lot of deadwood and having Caroline and his boys add to it. He began approaching the publishers and had no trouble drumming up interest. Several bid on the book. He chose one, signed a contract with the promise to deliver the finished manuscript within a year’s time. The first draft came relatively smoothly; it was short on description in that he tended to skip over portions of the experience, but when Caroline pointed out the minutiae of daily life, he remedied the situation by including her concerns in the manuscript, the result of which produced a much more complete and richer account of their stranded life on the island. In his revisions, he included passages dealing with his views on life, God,

168 society, the universe that came from his daily ordeal, a thoughtful philosophizing that encapsulated his thinking up to that moment in his life. He realized that his impressions of such subject matter were a question of the evolution of his thinking which was bound to change as time went on. Who knows but what his impressions of God and life might not change—drastically, if at all? He allowed that much leeway in his life at least. The question of God was never very far off the horizon of his consciousness. It was always on the peripheries.

When the manuscript was complete (when he was satisfied it was ready to go), he submitted it to the publisher, only to have it returned within a month with the note that there was far too much philosophizing and that it should concentrate on the direct experience of being stranded as title suggested: “Marooned.” But the whole point of the book, in Greg’s estimation, was precisely one’s search for God, for one’s soul. What could be more important than that? He insisted that the passages be kept in, but the publisher said that the book would less salable. They went back and forth for several months until Greg said he would sue the company if they reneged on the contract. Finally the publisher relented and told Greg they would accept the manuscript as submitted.

The book came out in 1986 and was an immediate bestseller. Greg started to rake in the royalties and became a rich man. On weekends in between workdays, Greg was on the road to sign books and give talks to church groups and book clubs. His was a busy schedule, flying off to different cities, often alone but sometimes with Caroline who was loath to leave their boys behind, although the could take care of themselves.

The next year Marooned won the National Book Award. Greg was a national celebrity, more in demand now that he gained national recognition as a literary figure. He

169 thought about giving up his job to devote his life to writing (he could write well) and dreamed of writing fiction, of becoming a novelist. Now that he had his foot in the door, his dream did not seem that farfetched. He talked it over with his wife and boys. Caroline and

Brian cautioned against it. Craig was all for his father becoming a novelist. He enjoyed the attention he was getting at school. Greg called his brother Dan in Japan and asked him his opinion and was told that he had but one life to live and it was up to him to decide. That was no help. He talked to his friends; they all said, whatever. It was entirely up to Greg and he cast about looking for an answer. He could write; there was no question about that. He kept putting off a decision and weighed the pros and cons and decided to talk to one of the more successful writers in the area.

The name of the novelist was Pete R. Hartman. Greg looked him up, contacted him and made an appointment to see him after telling him his problem and that he needed an expert opinion. As a lawyer, Greg was always seeking the opinion of other lawyers of his firm before trying a case. It was no different in this instance.

He drove to Santa Monica and entered a well-kept neighborhood of stuccos and bungalows. He walked up to a small, neat house with a somewhat casual front garden and knocked at the door. It was answered by a short, stocky man in his 60s with bright blue eyes and a mustache and goatee. He was wearing a open-necked short-sleeve shirt and a pair of faded dungarees. Greg came dressed casual.

“Hartman, here,” he said. “And you must be Greg Sonoda.”

Greg affirmed that he was as he shook his hand.

“Come on in and sit down,” he said. Then he called within: “Agnes, we have a guest.”

170 Agnes came out of the kitchen where she had been baking something as evidenced by the floor streaks on her apron.

“How do you do?” she said pleasantly. “I’m Agnes. And you must be Greg.”

“Yes, I am,” Greg said.

“Come into my study and sit,” Hartman said. “Would you like some pie, Greg?

Please don’t say no, because Agnes would be highly offended. She makes the best pecan pie in LA.”

“I’d love to try a piece.”

“Well, what do you want to know about writing that you already don’t know?” asked

Hartman.

“Anything you can tell me.

“I’ve read your book and I can say it is very well written and I don’t say that lightly,

‘cause I’m a pretty harsh critic when it comes to writing.”

“Especially of his own works,” said Agnes as she carried in a tray bearing their coffee and pie. “I just assumed you would like coffee with your pie, Greg. I have some green tea if you’d like.”

“Coffee is just fine,” Greg said. He turned to Hartman: “Ever since the success of

Marooned, I’ve been thinking of making writing a full-time career but I remain undecided,

I’m waffling, because I do have a successful career as a lawyer and to chuck it in favor of a pig in a poke makes me wonder if I’m such a dreamer that I can make it as a novelist which is what I want to become.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ll be fifty-five soon.”

171 “Generally speaking, that’s kind of a late start, although I know writers who have started after their forties and made something of a go of it, not stupendously great, but nevertheless made a name for themselves.”

“You’ve made it to the New York Times best-seller list several times,” Greg said.

“Ah, yes. And the last one nearly killed me…all that traveling for talks and book signings. A very tight schedule in a multi-city promotional campaign. But you’re familiar with the routine. If it were just for the money, I wouldn’t do it, but it is for the love of writing that I put myself through it all.”

“I suppose you have to be well-motivated, to throw yourself into writing and the devil take the hindmost.”

“I’d say you have to be willing to sacrifice your home—mortgage it—and possibly your family if you really want to get into this business and succeed, especially at your age.

And there’s no guarantee of success. You may try for years and years and have nothing to show for it. You got to have an overriding love of creativity and lots and lots of discipline to even make it to first base…if you’re lucky. And even after you have everything right, there’s no guarantee of success.”

“How many hours a day do you work?”

“Normally around four.”

“And how many pages do you crank out.”

“I average about three or four pages a session.”

“Then comes the rewrite.”

“I wait till I’m finished, then I will go over the manuscript.”

“With a jaundiced eye, no doubt.”

172 “You said it,” averred Hartman. “You have the experience, already having produced a singular work.”

Hartman finished his pie and took a sip of coffee. Greg ate only half of his and laid it aside…it was too sweet for his taste. But he ate another mouthful anyway. He didn’t want to appear rude and not finish the touted pecan pie. He washed down the sweetness with a swallow of coffee.

“Well, I’m in a quandary,” Greg said. “I know I have the talent but as you say I may be too old to tackle a young man’s game. I don’t want to go the route of losing my home and certainly not my family or my health and I know venturing into the field may indeed call for such a sacrifice but I don’t know if I’m willing to take the chance. I’d like to say that I’m too astute to let that happen to me, but I can see the possibility just lurking around the corner.”

“You already have a established career as a lawyer,” Hartman began, “and you have all the potential of living a comfortable life, watching your children grow up into a responsible adulthood and keeping your family intact. You wouldn’t want to sacrifice all that for what might amount to a pipe dream.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Greg agreed.

“If I were you, I’d stick to lawyering, make your reputation in that field, and after retirement, sit down and write your magnum opus. It will give you something to do in your idle years.”

“But will I still have the urge? I could be so worn out by work by then as to not have the vim and vigor anymore to write or produce anything.”

173 “It’s a chance you’ve got to take. You can keep the juices going by writing a little bit now and then, like on weekends, to produce a book or novel or a volume of short stories. Let me ask you: Have you done much reading?”

“I’m always reading something, a novel or a book that interests me. I let my interests guide me.”

“That’s a good habit to cultivate.”

“I suppose by the end of my law career and beginning of my retirement, I will have a sense of direction.”

“That’s a distinct possibility.”

Greg took another sip of the coffee, then finished it off.

“Well, I won’t take up any more of your time, Mr. Hartman—“ Hartman waved his hand. “Er…Pete. Thanks for all your valuable advise. You have helped put everything into perspective for me. But I do have lingering doubts.”

“You’ve been bitten by the writing bug—big time. You couldn’t help it. The stupendous success of your first book is not something you can get over quickly. But believe me you’d be saving yourself a lot of heartache, writer’s block, lack of a sense of originality, debts and whatnot, especially if you start out now, although I can appreciate the dilemma you are facing now. Just be patient with yourself.”

“I will, and thanks again,” Greg said.

Greg got in his car and started to drive home. He was momentarily dejected by his giving up so easily on becoming a novelist, such was the fervor that had built up from his literary debut, but he was basically the cautious type who always looked before he leaped and now his thinking began to lead him in the direction of putting off a decision until he could

174 determine whether he had it in him to sustain himself and his interest in the long haul. It could merely be a matter of his riding a high for a period of time since Marooned was published and succeeded in being hailed as one of the best books written in 1986—a heady affirmation of his ego and verve as a writer. It also could have been the rush he felt when he confronted an audience expounding on his views that had maturated during his and his family’s ordeal on the island, about life in general and God in particular. In the darkest moments of doubt and dread, he had wondered if there was a God to begin with and begged the question when he injured his leg and was convinced he would have to cut it off if the infection got any worse. But his good sense (or was it divine direction?) told him to soak the leg in the clear, cold water of the stream to keep it clean and free of the debris of suppuration.

They had a good food source as well and never did run the risk of starving. And in retrospect the sojourn on the island was like an extended vacation, albeit an unintended one, stretching out deviant from their original plans to explore Pohnpei and it environs. That they should have washed up on an uninhabited island a thousand miles off course had all the makings of a master plan gone awry (their original intent was to spend only two weeks in Micronesia) but sans all the terror they experienced, their sojourn was passed in a familial embrace of togetherness, understanding and personal growth. And Greg had a bestselling book to come out of it to boot. Life couldn’t be better.

But he was faced with a delicious dilemma: to go into writing or chuck it—for now.

He reasoned that he could always continue to write in his spare time, on weekends and holidays, or whatever time he could set aside in the evenings. He could write short stories or work periodically on a novel or two while lawyering and pursuing a legal career for which he had trained. It was a battle between what was reasonable and dream-inspired. Was he too

175 old to dream? It was essentially a young man’s dream. But caution behooved him to choose to stay in his career, to enhance his investments, work for his pension, see the kids through college and adulthood, and live the good life. Reason won out.

“I can have my cake and eat it too,” he told himself. “I’ll write on the side and maybe

I’ll publish or maybe I won’t but after I retire I should be able to hit the road running and have something to occupy myself. I think that’s a plan, Have my cake and eat it too.”

By the time he reached home, he felt much better. What had been hanging fire for months now was decided: he would put off writing his magnum opus until after he retired which was less than two decades away. With a heavy load off his shoulders, he decided to call his friends together for a poker session which had been put off a couple of months due to his being busy. He felt relieved now that the big decision had been made.

On the night of the poker session, Greg ordered the usual huge platter of sushi and had in hand a copious supply of beer, everything from Heineken, Gordon Biersch, Asahi,

Sapporo to Kirin. Because it had been a while since they played, Greg had a huge hankering to cross gambling strategies with his friends and see who could out-bluff whom but the problem was that the foursome had played together for so long that they knew each others gambling instincts and could easily guess what kind of hand the other possessed. A dollar bet meant a pair or just hope; a two-dollar bet meant for sure a pair; a three-dollar bet meant possibly three-of-a-kind or a stab in the dark; a four-dollar bet, a come-on bet signifying anything from a full house or straight flush; and a five-dollar bet, a sure indication that the hand was sure to be a winner…except that it often occasioned the bluff in which three-of-a- kind could take the pot. That kind of bluff didn’t happen too often. When it did it brought

176 opprobrium down on the head of the bluffer who had to feign contrition as he raked in the pot—with glee.

Gary Simmons was the first to show up. Caroline let him in. Then in rapid succession Bill Terada, Greg’s erstwhile sidekick from his Tokyo days, and Hank

Mochizuki, his fellow inmate from the Heart Mountain camp, came striding in. Caroline brought out the sushi platter and set it on the kitchen counter as the men seated themselves, first helping themselves to their choice of beer from the fridge.

“How goes it with the famous writer?” asked Gary with a hint of envy. “I read your book and it held my interest from beginning to end.”

“Same here,” Bill said. “You really can write, although I’m no judge myself. The most writing I do is letters and they’re all short letters. My Japanese is better than my

English.”

“Yeah,” said Hank, “my brother who is a college graduate can write well but I’m a dunce…I can write an engineering paper but that’s it.”

“I still get calls to speak on our experiences,” said Greg, “but the novelty has worn off and I’m afraid that the book…it’s still selling well, I’m not that concerned…it’s going to turn out like yesterday’s newspaper headlines—here today, gone tomorrow.”

“It’s obviously more than a story of being marooned on an inhabited island,” Gary said. “Your theological insights may make it stay on the bestsellers list for many more moons. I can’t say I agree entirely with all your arguments…I’m waffling between being an outright atheist and a confused believer…but you make some cogent points about God whispering to you over your shoulder. Where do some of our impressions come from?

When we are in a quandary and have urgent questions, where do the answers come from? If

177 we have the knack of asking the right questions, there always seems to be an answer and it’s always right on. Where does that ability come from? From our subconscious as the materialists would say or from our spiritual self as those who are spiritually oriented say?

And who informs the spiritual self? God? Or is it some inner wisdom that has always been there? So what’s the difference between the two, whether it is of divine origin or some kind of inborn, a priori knowledge? I don’t know. It seems I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. But my faith is not for sale. I’m not going to sell out to some cheap marketing scheme just to rack up some kind of score.”

“Hear, hear,” said Greg. “I agree with you completely.”

“Draw for deal,” Bill said and drew a card.

Hank won the draw. He chose Omaha, a variation of Texas Hold’em, and began dealing four cards to each player. The betting began.

As the game worn on, the conversation turned toward the more mundane matters of daily life. Brian Sonoda had already graduated from college, and his brother, Craig, was a top student of his senior class at USC. Both were taken with transhumanism, a popular concept of mankind governing its own evolution through technology in all aspects of the life of the mind and body, except that Craig took the opposing view which can be summarized as toting the messier version of life, where life was left open to chance—human chance. Both stances evinced the different outlooks and personalities of their holders.

Greg talked about reinvesting in LaserBM again, saying that the LA company had succeeded in getting a fast-and-firm patent, unlike the last time, when it nearly went under due to a premature patent-pending move. Greg had lost $200,000 in that deal but was sure that this time around his investments would pay handsome dividends. Anyone interested in

178 getting in? he asked. They all said no, that they had already been stung once and once was enough. But this time, it was a sure bet, Greg said. No thanks. Greg shrugged and dealt the cards. With the sale of his bestselling book, he had money to burn. In fact, the money he earned from his book went into his boy’s college and trust fund and into his retirement account. Everything was looking up, since being rescued off the uninhabited island. Life had taken a head-spinning turn.

“Is Caroline feeling OK?” Gary asked.

“I dunno,” said Greg. “She looks a little peaked. Might just be the flu. She’ll be

OK.”

It was Bill’s deal. He decided to play plain Texas Hold’em and Bill, sitting opposite him, opened. It was a dollar bet. Aha, just a pair, a low one, or just a low hand, Greg thought. He upped it a dollar. He had a pair of aces in hand. When the flop turned up another ace, he bet another dollar to keep the interest going, build the pot in anticipation and keep the action going. There were no raises. The turn showed up a pair and the bet was for two dollars; Greg upped it one. The river exposed a nondescript card, but Greg had aces over kings and he bet five dollars, the limit. Hank and Gary folded. It was between him and Bill.

He was sure his hand was the stronger, so he bumped him three. Bill bumped him back and

Greg followed suit and bumped him for the last time. Then they showed their hands. Bill had a full house also but it was queens over kings. Greg had won handily just like he supposed. It appeared that Bill hadn’t paying attention to the group’s betting patterns; either that or he suspected Greg had a flush since three hearts were showing.

“No remissions, Gary?” asked Greg.

179 “Nope, knock on wood. I went back to QW Wellness Clinic the other day for a checkup and they gave me a clean bill of health, the third time around. I’m cancer free. But it’s going to be several more years till I’m out of the woods.”

“Good to hear,” Bill said.

“No news is good news,” Hank said.

“I know you’re not supposed to talk about them,” Bill began, “but do you have any big trial coming up?”

“You’re right. I can’t talk about them, but I have several big ones in the works. The most sensational one is about a black family suing the city over police brutality. It’s bound to hit the media. You can follow it there.”

“Are you the lead attorney?” Bill asked.

“No, I’m just part of the team on behalf of the plaintiff.”

“All the work and none of the glory, eh?” said Gary.

“Something like that.”

The poker party broke up around midnight. It put a capstone on the week’s activities since the next day was a Monday, a workday that demanded that one toe the line again to repeat another week of work—and play. Greg loved to call it a day around 5:00PM and drive home to home-cooked meal, embracing his wife and catching up on the day’s events with his two boys. Brian was working on his postgraduate degree in the Intellectual History of the

United States and a minor in Philosophy. Craig wasn’t even sure he wanted to remain college, but he put forth the effort. He was more the foot-loose-and-fancy-free type of youth who could very well have wound up a hippie during the sixties. But he was smart; he just didn’t take intellectual matters seriously. He was more geared toward dreaming big dreams,

180 maybe even following in the footsteps of his father by becoming a writer. He would often lean back in his chair at his desk with his hands folded behind his head and stare at nothing for long periods of time. Some casual observer who did not know him might have said that he was spaced out, but nothing could be further from the truth, for he was always thinking and composing a piece of writing in his mind, be it a poem or a novel.

Toward the end of summer, both Dan and Takanori Sonoda, his country cousin came to America to visit. Greg had been corresponding with both diligently throughout the years, and they finally agreed to visit him. He met them at LAX. They arrived together on JAL in the evening.

Other than meeting with him a number of times during his stay in Tokyo, Greg hadn’t seen his older brother, Dan, since he left Japan in 1959 and Takanori a couple of years earlier. They hadn’t changed much in the intervening years except of course they were older and showed their age in the number of wrinkles around the mouth and eyes. Dan had put on weight and though he was around the same height as Greg he outweighed him by about twenty pounds. His features were squarish, like their father’s, whereas Greg had an oval visage. As usual Takanori was somewhat stooped, due to the hard labor involved in the

Japanese mode of farming and the laughter lines around his mouth had deepened. When they met at the airport for the first time in over twenty-eight years, they both embraced Greg.

Greg took them to a Marriot Hotel near his place and deposited them there for the night, promising to stop by the next morning to begin sightseeing in LA and environs. He also promised to take them fishing at Big Bear Lake one day. They were in the country for a week. Greg had arranged that their visit take place around his vacation time.

181 The next day Greg took his guests to the Griffith Observatory to have a leisurely look-see around, enjoying the view of surrounding LA, and in the afternoon visited the Getty

Center with its display of fine arts and gardens. They were exhausted by late afternoon, so

Greg drove them back to the hotel to retire early.

The following day he took them to see the Battleship USS Iowa which was one of the companion ships accompanying the Battleship USS Missouri where the documents of the surrender of Japan were signed under the watchful eye of General Douglas MacArthur, the

Supreme Allied Commander. USS Iowa figured prominently in the battles of the South

Pacific and Japan and was known to the Japanese in its own right. Dan and Takanori toured the ship with great interest. After that visit the trio went to Japantown to visit the Japanese

American National Museum where they were exposed to the Japanese American evacuation during World War II and its aftermath, the concentration camps and the postwar resettlement of the Japanese who returned to the area to pick up where they left off. That evening they went to Yamashiro Hollywood, one of the top Japanese restaurants located in Hollywood

Hills Hotel in Hollywood Heights. Greg beamed with delight as he knew he had made the right choice of their dining out, for he perceived the Japanese would want to gravitate toward their own cultural proclivities even when they traveled abroad. They always wanted to know where to get a good Japanese meal. Caroline and the boys accompanied them and they were enchanted with the ambience, the great central garden and the other appointments of the restaurant. There was nothing more pleasing to a Japanese than to experience a taste of their homeland when traveling abroad.

On the fourth day Greg took them fishing. Big Bear Lake was crowded that late summer day but having arrived early Greg was able to secure a boat and the five of them,

182 including Brian and Craig, piled in to begin fishing with the idea that whatever they caught that day would go toward a fine trout dinner for all the following day. Caroline purposefully did not join them, saying that the fishing trip was meant for the men to bond, and she would stay at home and pick up on her reading. She wasn’t feeling that well. Just a feeling of malaise, she decided. She was content to putter around the house, call a few friends over for a game of gin rummy, or simply to take the dog out for a walk. Ever since their rescue from the island, she had become a wife and mother even more content to taking a back seat to the interests of her menfolk, thinking that though their religious beliefs had not deepened as a result of their ordeal on the island, hers had, and she began to see a vast order to the universe that bespoke a benevolent hand at work—a steadying hand—to resolve all issues concerning life and death. It was a belief that brought peace to her mind and heart as she prayerfully accepted each day as it unfolded.

As they trolled, Greg asked his brother when he would like to visit a sporting goods manufacturer in the area. Maybe for a few hours in the next day or two came his reply. All he wanted to do was to show that his trip was business related to get a write off on his taxes, and the visit to the manufacturer need not be long. It was just a formality.

“Did you want to start exporting your goods?” Greg asked.

“Not really,” Dan said. “I’ve found that the domestic market is now enough to keep me busy and the competition is fierce enough to keep me concentrating on supplying the locals.”

“I’m glad you came to visit,” Greg said.

Dan grunted and Takanori said: “I’m happy to be here and visit my cousin. Writing letters is fine but seeing a person in the flesh is much nicer. It’s been such a long time,

183 Greg-san. I was beginning to think you were a ghost in a foreign land, if it weren’t for your letters and pictures you sent.”

“Same here,” Greg said. “I’m glad you and Dan ‘materialized’ in America.”

“Talk about materialize, “Takanori began, “I keep seeing the ghosts of my mother and father in my dreams, the scene of them seeing me off to war, waving the Hino Maru flag, standing on the platform until the train was out of sight. I never saw my mother again. She died while I was fighting in the South Pacific. I had to take over the farm as soon as I was discharged and did not have the opportunity to go to college to become a teacher. I always wanted to get a higher education…to keep developing my mind. But I read all kinds of books and journals, so you can say I am a useless educated farmer who wants to teach but ends up plowing the ground. It has been so for generations of the Sonodas, ever since they were demoted from the samurai class and became farmers.”

“As you know Greg, I got my start in the business through my connections with the yakuza,” Dan said. “That bastard Yasaburo Tanabe gave me such a hard time in the military that I just had to get even with him and I did by turning him in to the police in the biggest blackmarket raid in those days. Wiped out an entire warehouse and sent him to prison for a long time. He never did wise up. But my association with the underworld organization rubbed off on me anyway. Ever since those days, there’s been one yakuza individual who has been dogging me and he comes around regularly to make himself known and to intimidate me into paying a nuisance fee, a personal fee, to guarantee that he won’t bother my family or my business. The yakuza don’t miss a bet for a shake-down. Since I’m in business, he expects a large amount of money. I don’t miss it, so I pay him. It’s good insurance and I’m able to conceal the expense under miscellaneous expenditures.”

184 “The Sonoda’s are a proud people,” Takanori began. “They would never allow people to take advantage of them, because those who try to always wind up paying for their bad judgment in one way or another. Take one man who cheated me out of my rice allotment to the government back in the late 1940s. He wound up dying a miserable death a short time later at an early age. You might say that was a coincidence, but I say it was karma at work.”

“We have the Sonoda guardian angel working for us,” Greg said.

“Something like that,” Takanori said. “You like to put things in Christian terms.”

“I do. Can’t help it. It’s part of being American. We think in terms of God, Jesus, demons and angels. It’s part of our nature and part of the mental climate, whether we believe or not.”

“And do you believe in God?” Dan asked.

“Uh…I do and I don’t. I suppose. I do in the sense that there has got to be a Creator who designed our magnificent universe, life and everything in it, but I don’t know if He cares about us or not. They say He is love and that He loves us, but that could just be wishful thinking, something we cooked up in our minds. I guess I’ll never know or be sure.”

“Nature does not care and nature is god,” Takanori said. “You just have to get used to nature and bend according to the wind. If you bend you will never break.”

“But nature is the end result of creation,” Greg said. “Nature did not create itself.”

“I suppose that is the difference between Christianity and Shintoism,” Takanori said.

“Yes, I guess it all boils down to a matter of opinion.”

“Ten men, ten minds,” Dan said.

185 Brian and Craig had fish on at the same time. They netted two handsome trout and put them into the container. In rapid succession, the men were reeling in sizable fish—they had drifted over a school. They trolled across the lake. Guiding the boat toward the opposite shore, Greg introduced them to the art of fly fishing. Dan and Takanori mastered the rudiments of casting and were hooking fish in no time at all—to their delight. The fish container filled rapidly.

Arriving back home in the late afternoon, Greg immediately began cleaning the fish—some were over sixteen inches long—wrapped them in saran wrap and placed them in the freezer. There were much more than could be eaten the next day for dinner, but Greg figured they could have a number of trout dinners—one of his favorites—later as well.

When he was finished, he grabbed himself a beer, to follow suit with Dan and Takanori, and went into the living room where Takanori was watching Gun Smoke. Brian had tuned in the channel when Takanori asked to see a western. Although he did not understand what was being said, he watched the program intently. Caroline busied herself in the kitchen, preparing their dinner.

“Why can’t we have the fish for tonight?” she asked. “It’s either that or the steak I bought.”

“That’s fine, honey,” Greg said. “We can have the steak tomorrow.” He asked Dan and Takanori and they said that would be fine.

“Might as well cook them while they’re the freshest,” Caroline said.

“Right. Suits me just fine.”

“I know how much you love trout.”

“Me, too,” Brian and Craig said.

186 After the meal was done, Greg helped with the dishes, cleaning the scraps off and placing them in the dishwasher. Caroline said she was tired and was going to take a long bath and call it a day. Greg kissed her as she turned to leave the kitchen. She coughed sharply, waved her hand wanly and left to go upstairs. Greg returned to join the others in the living room. The boys had since gone to their room.

The next day, after dinner, Greg drove his brother and cousin back to the hotel to pick up their bags, check out of the hotel and took them to LAX to catch a late flight back to

Japan. He waited with them until it was time to leave and he embraced them—an uncharacteristic Japanese gesture—and waved goodbye. He returned home, concerned about

Caroline.

187 Chapter Twelve

The Masamune blade, the family heirloom that was stolen, was finally found.

Samurai Sword International, the outfit Greg had contacted to locate the sword, tracked it down at an auction in Kentucky. It had been stored away in an attic for all those years, collecting dust, and finally saw the light of day when the owner passed away and his heirs found it. Having it examined and authenticated, they decided to advertise it and then sell it at an auction, hoping to bring in top dollar. It cost the company agent $25,000, such was the value of the renown Masamune blade.

Greg was overjoyed. He had the sword in his possession again—and that’s what counted. To have the heirloom back in the family. He wrote a check out for $50,000 to cover the cost of retrieving the sword plus expenses and a bonus. The company representative beamed his appreciation and told Greg their doors were always open to him at any time. He went away satisfied and Greg mounted it on the wall of the living room so that it occupied a dominant position in the room where upon entering, it was the first thing that struck the eye. It was in fine shape; not a single rust spot on it. Evidently, the previous owner had gone to the pain of oiling it every so often. On the mantle were lined up Greg’s collection of netsuke (miniature carvings used to close pouches in samurai Japan),.

“Can I touch it,” Craig said reverently.

“Sure,” Greg said and reached up to remove it from the peg. “But be careful.”

Craig drew the blade and gripped the sword in both hands, assuming a samurai stance. “Wow,” he said. “Now I’m ready for war.”

188 “Let me see that,” Brian said and gingerly took the sword from his brother. “Yeah.

Wow. It sure feels like it fits my hands and body. It’s so well balanced.”

“It was made by a master craftsman who knew his business,” Greg said.

“Now your ancestors can rest in peace,” Caroline said. “It’s finally home.”

Greg replaced it on the wall and stood back, admiring the sword and feeling the blood of his ancestors rush through his arms and body.

That evening Greg’s friends gathered for their monthly poker session. When Greg had to answer the door himself, they asked about Caroline and he told them that she had retired early.

“Nothing serious, I hope,” Gary said.

“I don’t know,” Greg said. “She hasn’t been feeling well. It’s been several weeks now and I’ve suggested that she see the doc but she just pooh-pooh’s it, saying it’s just a passing thing.”

“I hope so,” Bill said.

“Doesn’t she get a physical, not that it’s any of my business,” Hank said. “But you’d think something would show up.”

“I think she’s due for one,” Greg said. “I’ll find out.”

They took their usual positions around the kitchen table, Gary on Greg’s left, Hank to the right and Bill, opposite.

“Hey, I got the Masamune blade back,” Greg announced. “I always knew it was just a matter of time.” He gave them the details of locating it. “It seems the last owner got it as a gift from his son who said the original owner was a Japanese Imperial Army officer, who bought it in the South Pacific…a fabricated story to make the sword sound appealing. Well,

189 the final recipient who was a WWII vet latched on to it and kept it. In the attic, of all places.

Now it hangs in an honored spot above the mantle. That’s where it should have been all this time.”

“It’s like finding a needle in a haystack,” Bill said.

“I’ll say it is,” Greg said.

“You must have had faith that it would be found eventually,” Bill said.

“I always did,” Greg said.

“That’s what I like about you, Greg,” Gary said. “Never say die.”

“Something like that.”

“I remember the time in officer’s school at Fort Huachuca where we had our finals on field intelligence gathering and you aced it after staying awake all night to catch up on your reading and that’s after spending an entire day helping a fellow officer out who had just lost his wife and spending half the night getting drunk with him. Now that’s what I call esprit de corps.”

“Yes, those were the days,” Greg said.

“Why didn’t you stay in the service?” Bill asked.

“Wanted to stretch my legs and see what else I was good for.”

“How about you, Gary?” Bill queried.

“Pretty much for the same reason, except that I had to support my mother and the rest of my siblings after my father died and there just wasn’t enough money left of an officer’s pay after having to support a wife and two kids, so I quit the service and started a business and I’m happy to say that I did very well, well enough to be able to play poker with you all.”

“Hear, hear,” Hank said. “I’m doing well to hang on to my job as an engineer.”

190 “And I’m the only one who is foot-loose-and-fancy-free, after retiring after 30 years in the government, a GS-14,” Bill said. “Say, who’s bet is it? I think you opened, Gary.”

Gary put in a dollar and continued to deal out the cards.

“Anybody want another beer?” Greg said, as he got to his feet and opened the fridge door. He grabbed the platter of sushi and passed it around.

For some reason, Greg didn’t feel like talking about God, although the topic often came up during their poker sessions. It was usually Greg who brought the issue up and Bill who was a believer seemed to welcome the suggestion. But tonight Greg held back. Why, he didn’t know. It could be that he was still full of himself what with the success of his book and his brief but deep foray into the possibility of his becoming a writer. Or it could have been his profession as a lawyer lent itself to corrosive insights that led to a kind of cynicism regarding the frivolous, always self-serving nature of most of the litigations. He found that to maintain a balance between the material world of man and the spiritual world to be an onerous one, and he’d just as soon veer toward the everyday, mundane thinking of the unenlightened as not, for it seemed to be the easy way out, easy in the sense of not having to jockey around presumptions that may or may not having anything to do with outside reality.

Or maybe it was a case of things being the same—political shenanigans of the Iran-Contra incident, the Cold War and nuclear bomb testing, American troops in Honduras—in spite of good intentions on the part of the citizenry who only want to live in peace. It could have been any number of things that made for Greg’s hardened heart, for the present moment, at least. Tomorrow may evolve into something else. What that might be was beyond him. But he always wanted to leave things open-ended, for who knew what adventure lurked just around the corner?

191 The poker session ended in the early hours of the morning and the men yawned and shrugged into the coats and said goodbye. Greg was behind most of the night but on the last hand played his cards well and came out $20 ahead. He wearily turned out the lights and climbed the stairs to go to bed. Caroline was sound asleep and he tiptoed into the room to change noiselessly into his pajamas.

He confronted Caroline the next day. “Honey,” he said, “please go see Dr. Burns.

We need to find out what’s bothering you.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Greg,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a mild headache, at other times I get diarrhea and feel I’m falling apart. Some days it’s not there, so I keep putting it off.”

“Time to go see Doc.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I know I am. Call him right now.”

Caroline did call. She said the appointment was for day after tomorrow. She then turned wordlessly to go into the kitchen to begin preparing dinner, although it was only mid- afternoon. She mildly resented Greg’s harsh tone of voice, but she knew he assumed his authoritative stance whenever he was highly concerned. She nevertheless resented it. She was feeling vulnerable. She needed female companionship.

The next day she called her friend Dorothy who lived several miles away and drove to her house late that morning. Dorothy was tall and slender, a statuesque blond, whose husband was also an attorney acquainted with Greg but did not gravitate in the same circle.

He worked for a different firm. Caroline by contrast was shorter than Dorothy, on the slender side, and had auburn hair. She entered the living room and plumped herself down on the sofa.

192 “What is it, Caroline? You look peaked. Aren’t you feeling well?”

“Matter of fact, I’m not, and it’s been going on for months. I just can’t seem to get ahold of myself. It’s nothing specific except for the occasional headaches and runny bowels…it’s nothing I can put my finger on. But it’s been hanging on and Greg ordered me to see Dr. Burns. He’s right, of course.”

“Is everything all right between you two?”

“Oh, yes. Everything is fine in that department. I just get out of sorts…too easily these days. And that’s just not like me.”

“I was wondering about you when we gathered to play gin rummy the other day.”

“I just needed somebody to take my hand and tell me everything is going to be OK.”

“You’ve come to the right place. Welcome to Dot’s Counseling Service.”

“If that’s what I need.”

“Let me put on some tea water.”

Dorothy left the room to go to the kitchen. She could be heard rattling the cups and saucers. Caroline looked around the well appointed room which had a few magazines spread on the coffee table but was otherwise neat and clean.

“Do you feel up to chairing the Social Justice Committee at church this winter?”

Dorothy asked.

“No, I’m afraid not. I’m just not feeling up to it. Sorry.”

“Maybe you’d just like to volunteer.”

“Maybe. We’ll see.”

They talked about the up coming march in front of city hall to protest the exploitation of migrant workers in California and how they were going to push the councilmen to agree to

193 a pro-workers agenda. Caroline was keen on the subject, being an advocate of the Cesar

Chavez movement. She felt the backbreaking work done by the migrants deserved recognition and a raise in wages and living standards. Since she was well-off and a house- bound housewife, her attention gravitated toward those less fortunate and her taking up the issue of the farm workers was a natural. So much of their food that found their way to the tables of America was due to the work of the migrants, the invisible factors in the opulent lifestyle of Americans. She felt they had earned a better status in society. They had been exploited too long.

They discussed their children and how fast they were growing. Dorothy had a son and a daughter and said they were hard to keep up with.

“I know what you mean,” Caroline said. “Brian who’s a postgraduate takes after his dad and has a Type A personality, always on the go and curious about everything. He’s been into Transhumanism and spouts off scary stuff like artificial intelligence merging with the human body to produce an improved breed of men. As if that could alter the course of human events. But Craig, who’s a senior in college, is like a dreamer who likes to write and he will read for fodder for his ideas. About life, humanity and the like.”

“I wish my kids were talented, but they’re not. They’re into athletics which they may outgrow, I don’t know.”

“You don’t seem to want them to be athletes,”

“Not really, I want them to be scholars but Derek said anything is fine with him as long as it’s a profession. In a way, I suppose he’s right. You have to be good at something and so far they’re good at athletics. What do you want your boys to become?”

194 “I have no idea, anything is fine with me. Oh, I suppose I want them to enter a noble profession like a physician or a professor, but it’s really up to them. As far as tendencies are concerned, I suppose Brian is headed toward a postgraduate scholarship, he may become an intellectual, a professor of American Intellectual History, and Craig a writer. As long as they love what they are doing, then I suppose anything is okay..”

“Yes, indeed.”

Caroline finished her cup of tea and rose unsteadily to her feet to leave. She said goodbye to her friend, got in the car and drove back home.

At the doctor’s office, she waited and turned over in her mind the events of the weekend: Saturday, a regional championship game at USC where Craig played forward.

Both he and his older brother, Brian, were into athletics, the latter the reigning tennis champion at the school. Caroline attended most of their games, ever since their grade- school days; she hardly missed an event. Now she picked up a magazine off the coffee table and leafed nervously through the pages. She didn’t understand what was wrong with her and it had her worried. She wasn’t one to get sick—ever. And when she did feel out of sorts, it usually wore off in a few days. But this time the mysterious condition hung on. What was it, she thought. It was some kind of persistent malaise. She had tried to self-diagnose by going to the library and poking around, but she couldn’t pinpoint any illness and in time she became afraid it was something serious and would require a drastic change in her lifestyle.

But Dr. Burns was competent and would surely find the answer; she was just afraid that it might turn out to be something pernicious. Just her intuition.

195 When her turn came up, she sauntered into his examination room with a forced airy attitude and awaited his appearance. She waited fifteen minutes and began checking her watch…what’s keeping him, she wondered impatiently. She crossed and recrossed her legs, checking the interior of the antiseptic room. The regular fixtures: an examination table, sink, soap, a container of tongue depressors. Then the doctors knocked and entered.

“Ah, Caroline Sonoda!” he said cheerfully. He was of medium height, middle-aged, and had the beginnings of a pleasantly round belly. He pushed up his glasses on his prominent nose and regarded her quizzically with startlingly blue eyes. “How are you feeling today?”

Caroline described her condition. She added that she had trouble sleeping as well, suffering from a form of insomnia which had her tossing and turning—carefully, so as not to disturb Greg—until the wee hours of the morning.

“Judging from what you are saying,” the doctor began, “it could be any number of things or a combination of things. We’ll have to run some tests to narrow things down, but tell me what you have been doing.”

She told him about the normal routine she engaged in: keeping house, running errands, attending the boy’s games, having guests over. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“But about four years ago, wasn’t it, that you survived a traumatic episode on that uninhabited island?”

“That’s right.”

“I remember examining all of you after you got back. You were all in surprisingly good health. It was the curative properties of the water, your husband told me.”

196 “That might be so. We had plenty to eat, too, pigs and what we could harvest from the sea. But it was the same thing day after day, not that I complained. I’m not one to complain.”

“From where I stand, you all seemed to have survived in fine fettle in spite of the trauma. I read your husband’s book, by the way, and enjoyed it quite a bit. His philosophy is a very enlightening one. It certainly made me think.”

“I’ll tell him that. He’ll appreciate it.”

“Otherwise, your health is good?”

“Otherwise, I’m fine. But this condition has been hanging on for several months now, and I’m concerned. Concerned enough to procrastinate, I’m afraid. It was my husband’s insistence that I see you. It brought me here today.”

“We’ll run a battery of tests and get to the bottom of this. I’m glad you came in,

Caroline. Please bring a sample of stool also.”

“Why stool?”

“All that pig you ate. Could be a case of trichinosis, we’ll see. Or it could be some other kind of parasite.”

“I feel it’s something worse than that. I read up on trichinosis during my research.”

“Don’t be concerned yet, Caroline, until all the lab work is done. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

After being dismissed, Caroline went to the lab and had several vials of blood drawn.

She would deliver a sample of her stools later. She then drove back home and told her family what all transpired at the doctor’s office that day at dinner.

197 “Trichinosis?” Greg said. “That’s what I read up on while doing research, but it’s been close to four years ago and you’d think the symptoms would have appeared sooner.”

“That’s what I thought, too.”

“We’ll have to wait for the lab results,” Greg said.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Craig said. “Everything will turn out fine.”

“I hope so.”

“Yeah, everything will work out, you’ll see,” Brian said.

By the end of the next week, Dr. Burns called to tell Caroline that all the tests turned out negative, that there was no indication of trichinosis or any other parasitic infestation as her symptoms seemed to point to: headaches, diarrhea, muscle aches, nervousness. Since the symptoms did persist, he said it might be psychosomatic, a delayed reaction to her ordeal on that island. If the symptoms didn’t go away in another week, he could suggest the name of a psychiatrist if she didn’t know one herself. She said she’d wait and see but was more concerned than ever that her intuition of her condition being more than physical was an accurate assessment. She didn’t know a psychiatrist but she put it off, even after a week had passed, hoping for another kind of solution. She discussed her dilemma with Greg who agreed with her: a different solution was in store, because he knew from experience working on such cases in his law practice where mental stability was at issue that many troubles resulted from a visit to a shrink’s office. They were too eager to prescribe medication as a first approach to an illness that could be defined as such in their diagnosis handbook. Stay away from shrinks was his maxim. Medication that affected the brain turned people into zombies, regardless of the type.

198 As the weeks progressed, Caroline’s symptoms grew worse. Her headaches and diarrhea and sleeplessness all increased as did her muscle aches and nervousness. They all noticed her hands shaking at the gin rummy sessions she had in her home. Just the other day

Dorothy commented, taking her aside in her kitchen, that her friends were concerned and wanted to help but did not know what to do. What was her problem, Dorothy wanted to know. Caroline couldn’t point to anything specific. She had nothing to worry about in their daily life, they had survived the LaserBM debacle and were financially well off again, they had recovered the Masamune blade, the long-lost heirloom, and Greg was finally made a partner of his law firm. All things were looking up. Dorothy said it might be a backlash of her trauma of being marooned on that island for so long. Not as long as thirty-two years,

Caroline said, alluding to the ordeal of Lt. Peterson. She couldn’t imagine what he went through all that time all alone with a bad leg to hold him back. In his log book he wrote about his search for faith in God and how he had opened his mind and soul to life and all its concomitants, including that of being stranded and isolated, and he seemed to have kept up that search for the duration until his poor body could no longer take the daily toil of having to fend for itself. He just wore out. Caroline could picture him struggling to maintain his sanity and occupy his time with small activities, such as foraging for food, sewing to repair his clothes, scrounging around for firewood. What his final thoughts—unrecorded—were no one would ever know. Did he keep the faith? Or was his final desuetude too much to handle? Caroline could only imagine. She empathized with him, to such an extent that his story was both inspiring and unsettling in the most basic sense of the word. She had taken his experience to heart and wished there was a heaven where the good lieutenant could finally find peace and repose.

199 The months passed and Caroline did not improve. She had lost weight and was now frail and aged beyond her years. She became bedridden and relied on the boys to make the meals and fend for themselves. Greg was almost beside himself.

“We’ve got to do something to help Mom,” he told the boys at the dinner table.

“But what?” asked Brian.

“We’ve seen the naturopaths to no avail,” Greg said. “Maybe seeing a psychiatrist is the only option left.”

“But that would be a death sentence,” Craig said.

“We may have no choice,” Greg said.

“Anything is better than this,” Brian said.

Greg stared at his cup of coffee, picked it up absently, then put it down without sipping it.

“I’ll go up to Mom and tell her it’s time to see a shrink,” Greg said. “I have a name picked out.”

“So you’ve been thinking about it, too,” Brian said.

“I say there’s got to be another way,” Craig said.

“Time to bite the bullet,” Greg said and got to his feet.

He quietly entered the bedroom. Caroline was sleeping on a separate twin bed that

Greg had arranged to get so that she could rest full time without being disturbed.

“Honey, let’s see Dr. Pendleton,” Greg said. “He’s a psychiatrist recommended by a partner at the firm. It’s long past time when we have to get a handle on your problem.”

To his surprise, she readily agreed and Greg immediately picked up the phone to call the doctor’s office to make an appointment.

200 They had but a short wait at Dr. Pendleton’s office and confronted a trim and fit man in his early forties whose handshake was warm and friendly. He had a pleasant air about him; his office with its pastel green walls elicited good feelings. The chairs and office fixtures—light tan—and the dark green potted plant were all designed to set the patient at ease. Greg found the atmosphere to be pleasant—almost too pleasant. Caroline had tried to make herself up that morning but her brightly painted lips contrasted sharply with her wan features.

Greg dove right in and described the progression of Caroline’s illness and what they’ve done to try to answer her problems so far, from her diet to sleep patterns and sleeping pills to seeing naturopaths. The doctor shook his head slightly when Greg mentioned naturopaths. Greg also mentioned their experience on the island (the doctor had read his book) and how Caroline had been influenced by discovering the remains of Lt. Peterson and reading his log. She had become a woman of faith during their ordeal and was influenced by the lieutenant and his search for God which apparently saw him through all the years he spent alone. He seemed to have had no choice, Greg said, for it was a case of either believing or losing one’s mind. How so, the doctor asked. Greg answered: For the reason that rather than relying on himself solely for his existence he could count on something external to himself, something outside himself to help him retain his mind and keep himself intact. That outside source of help was God and it has always and traditionally been God. It was a case of depending on an outside source of assistance that transcended one’s own puny sense of self, a self that could be easily overwhelmed by events, such as finding oneself utterly alone. Life is stacked against the individual, is that it, asked the doctor. In one way it was, but it was always up to the individual to decide his own fate and it is not up to God to make that choice

201 but oneself—always. Caroline said that she empathized with the lieutenant, felt his isolation and agony acutely and wished her faith was as strong and enduring. Then she fell silent and let Greg do the rest of the talking.

Dr. Pendleton wound up prescribing a powerful anti-psychotic medication and when the hour was up he rose perfunctorily to his feet after making an appointment for the next week. He bid them goodbye and impatiently glancing at his watch waited for Greg and

Caroline to depart.

They stopped at a grocery store to buy a roasted chicken for dinner, so that the boys did not have to prepare anything that evening, and drove patiently through the traffic to go home. Brian and Craig were already there. As soon as they entered the house, Caroline made a beeline for the kitchen to get a glass of water. She could not wait to take the pill, she was so desperate for relief. Just the idea of relief put her in a positive frame of mind and momentarily she felt lighthearted with a bounce to her step as she put the groceries away.

But when the pill took effect, it was like a veil had been pulled over her brain and everything in her mind became foggy. She had to go upstairs and lie down. She was in that position when dinnertime came and couldn’t get up. Greg brought her dinner up to her; sitting up, she took a few bites, then fell back on her pillow. Every thought was like it was wrapped in cotton. She was fuzzy-minded. She had lost her sense of self and was terrified. She told

Greg what was happening to her. He was alarmed.

He said: “If that’s what one dose will do to you, think about what more doses will do: You can’t take anymore.”

Caroline said: “Maybe it’s a fluke, and I reacted badly…maybe it’s a matter of getting used to the medication.”

202 “Not from what I hear,” said Greg and began pacing the room agitatedly. “What the hell can we do!”

“Pray,” suggested Caroline.

“Not that I’m knocking your faith, honey, God knows that we needed it on the island but this calls for some other kind of solution.”

“But what?”

“I don’t know yet,” Greg said, “but I know it has got to do something with that island…either it’s cursed or blessed or both, I don’t know…cursed is more like it…probably what got the original inhabitants, especially that last one we found in the cave.”

“I wish it were a simple case of trichinosis,” Caroline said.

The next day, out of desperation, she took a second dose—with worse results. She was zonked out. Unable to stand, she crawled up the stairs to their bedroom and fully clothed fell upon the bed like a zombie. She was that way when Greg came home. She had been wide awake, her eyes focused on the ceiling.

“We’re canceling our appointment with Dr. Pendleton,” Greg said. “I’ll call the first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll call,” Caroline said.

“If you remember, honey. I’ll call and give them a piece of my mind for giving my wife poison like that.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, darling. Your piece of mind can be quite devastating. Let me call.”

Greg relented, knowing the truth of her statement. “OK. Go ahead.”

203 The next day, she punched in the number and spoke to the receptionist who asked her how she was feeling. She told her: Lousy, and tell the doctor thanks for nothing. She was angry with the results of taking the medication and wanted him to know it. She cancelled the next appointment and abruptly hung up, still wanting to talk to the doctor to give him a piece of her mind. Perhaps she should have let Greg make the call, but, no, Greg would have insisted on talking to the doctor and not settle for an appointment cancellation with the receptionist. She didn’t know where the anger had come from, she normally was pleasant with people. Maybe the pills affected her feelings as well. Of course, they did, she thought.

If they affected the brain, they would affect the emotions. She was loathe to dump the expensive pills down the toilet, but she did and flushed them down with an angry push of the handle. With satisfaction she said aloud: So there, take that , as if getting rid of a nemesis.

Greg and Caroline decided to talk their way through to a solution. They analyzed their feelings about being trapped on the island and what that meant to them in personal terms and in terms related to their faith. They retraced the genesis of their ordeal, beginning with the storm and becoming helplessly adrift and wondering if they were going to survive or eventually die of starvation and thirst. They had to ration their food and water which had held out until they hit the uninhabited island where they found abundant sustenance: pigs, seafood and water. They were never in danger of starving. Could it be that Providence had a hand in their good fortune. Caroline thought so, Greg was less sure but tended to think that they were indeed being watched over, judging from the trend of events, from the onset of the storm to their landing on the island. Her take on their experience was one in which God was present in different forms on different occasions, from their discovery of Lt. Peterson’s wrecked plane and his remains to their finding the prehistoric cave which had held skeletal

204 remains. And with each passing day on the island her faith grew. When she read about the lieutenant’s abiding search for God, it bolstered her own faith and made God all the more real to her. She seemed to have empathized deeply with the lieutenant in his devastating isolation for so many years and taken on his personal pain. Perhaps that degree of empathizing lay at the root of her current physical and mental problems; perhaps she was taking on the lieutenant’s ordeal and making it her own. But the circumstances were entirely different. She was not isolated or suffered from a broken limb; she had family and friends and activities to engage her. She had not experienced loneliness. The very fact that she was exposed to another human being’s dilemma may have been cause enough in her sensitive soul to react in the way of suffering physical problems. That conclusion seemed to help a little; it eased the distress. But it was only momentary.

In the days that followed their talk, Caroline’s condition worsened. Her sleep was no better and her diarrhea turned into incessant dysentery. Her headaches persisted; they were even more severe and forced her to lie down for the better part of the day. She developed vertigo to go along with the headaches and her days continued in misery. But she would not go back to Dr. Pendleton, nor would she ever take those nasty pills again.

“That damn island is cursed!” cried Greg finally, unable to contain himself. “We brought back a curse!”

“Now, Dad, there’s no such thing as a curse,” Brian said. “As if malevolent spirits could cause evil to a person. It’s all in the mind.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Greg said.

“That’s right,” Craig said. “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“Maybe something in the lieutenant’s journal is bothering Mom,” Brian said.

205 “It was intense reading all right,” Greg said. “We discussed it but nothing specific stood out, just his goshawful loneliness. He wrote of loneliness as if it were almost a physical thing, a physical presence. I hope to never experience such a thing.”

“Maybe that physical sense got transferred to Mom when she read it,” Brian said.

“Could be, Brian, but I say the island is cursed,” proclaimed Greg.

That night as they were lying in bed trying to go to sleep, Greg said to her across the room : “Maybe we should consult a paranormalist, you know, something like a psychic, to remove what could be some kind of curse that goes along with that island. Who knows but what an ancient curse lurks there and that was what wiped out the original people. I know, I know—he said, when Caroline protested—seeing a psychic and listening to her mumbo- jumbo may not be the way to go at the problem, but we’ve tried everything else and we’re at our wit’s end. There must be a solution out there somewhere whether it’s a combination of talk therapy and some better kind of medicine.”

“I’ll never take any of those anti-psychotic pills ever again,” Caroline said.

“I’m not suggesting those kinds, but a more gentle variety, like I don’t know what.

What is out there? I don’t know. There could be hundreds and thousands of different kinds of medicines or supplements. But you need relief now and I’m so sorry, honey, I just can’t come up with any solution.”

“Talking about Lt. Peterson seemed to help.”

“I think Lt. Peterson should be the focal point of our discussion, how you’ve identified with his dilemma and felt his loneliness.”

“That was initially, when I first read his account. I haven’t really gone over it in my mind since, only now and then I think about the island and its isolation.”

206 “Enough to bring back to you in full force.”

“Perhaps.”

“I’m at the end of my rope, darling.”

“You’ll find an answer if there is one, I’m sure of it.”

“You have such confidence in me.”

“I know.”

“But I don’t have that kind of confidence in myself. Your faith in me sustains me.”

“I wish I could say the same thing about my faith in God.”

“Me, too, and my patience is gone. I want an answer now…no more hand-wringing.”

“And that’s not like you.”

“I’m completely stumped.”

Greg turned out the lamp by the bed and turned on his side to try to find sleep. He tossed and turned for about an hour until he fell into a troubled sleep. He dreamed of demons and angels fighting a monumental battle over the soul of a helpless little girl who was being brave and uncomplaining but very much wanting to be released from the tormenting situation. The little girl first appealed to the demons that only laughed at her and tortured her all the more; then she appealed to the angels only to be told to stand aside while they took care of business. They told her the salvation of her soul was their business and the devil had sent his minions to plague her and try to get her to recant her faith in God. She claimed that her faith was intact, that she would always believe in God, no matter what, in spite of the machinations of the devil, no matter how hard the going was to be, but she wished they would stop fighting over her. She would never have any peace. The demons told her that

207 they were part of her and her urge to comfort the lieutenant and that she could not serve two masters. She never had any such intention, she claimed, and began to cry.

That was when Greg awoke with a start. He shook his head, wondering about the shaking. Was he that frightened by the dream? Then he realized the whole room was in motion. Caroline sat bolt upright.

“Oh my God! An earthquake!” she cried.

“My God!” Greg echoed. “Is this the big one?”

He leaped out of bed and helped Caroline up. Without bothering to put on their robes, dashed out the door and called out to Brian and Craig who were just then exiting their bedrooms. All four of them managed to clamber down the stairs. Greg made a beeline for the gas line and turned it off at its source and stumbled toward the front door. The trick was to get outside so as not to be pinned under the falling debris. They seemed to have enough time, otherwise, the other choice was to lie down beside any support like a bed or sofa and hope the angular space in between would save them.

As Greg was about to dash out the door, he saw the Masamune blade fall from the wall. Not bothering to retrieve it, he joined his family in the yard. They held each other until the shaking subsided. It lasted about five minutes. A eucalyptus tree across the street toppled over. When the quaking stopped, they checked each other for injuries and finding none, they reentered the house.

Inside the pictures on the wall were askew, the floor lamp was knocked over and in the kitchen several cabinet doors had sprung open and cans of beans, spaghetti, corn and boxes of breakfast cereal had spilled out. Other than that nothing else was amiss or broken.

“Whew!” Greg said. “That was a close one!”

208 “Yeah,” agreed Craig, face flushed with excitement. “At least a 6.5.”

“Hardly,” said Brian calmly. “More like a 4.”

“Whichever, I’m glad we survived,” Caroline said, her voice strong. It was almost as if she had found her voice again, after so many months of talking in a low whisper due to her malaise that had taken all her energy out of her.

Greg picked up the Masamune blade off the floor. It had become unsheathed. He delicately replaced it in its scabbard, marveling at its pristine, unrusted condition after so many centuries, and rehung it on the wall. He started to retrieve his collection of netsuke

(small carved figures used on a drawstring) which had fallen from the mantle. By them lay the slashed picture of Fudo-sama, a Buddhist demon guardian of the gateway. The force of the earthquake had shaken the blade off its keeper so violently that the unsheathed katana had fallen on the picture at just the right angle to slash the demon to pieces. It was as if it were manipulated by its original owner, Tsukahara Bokuden, the master swordsman of yore, with the sole intention of sacrificing a lesser deity. A demon netsuke lay in the corner of the room, intact.

Caroline’s improvement was astounding. Three days later she awoke bright and cheery and full of energy, as awakening from a nightmare. She insisted on making a big breakfast for everyone…everything in the proverbial book: eggs, any way the men wanted, ham or sausage links or bacon, hashbrowns, juice, coffee, cocoa. No cold breakfast cereal for them that morning. She was ravenous. It was as if she were preparing for such a first- meal-of-the-day ever since she took ill, waiting for her day of victory over a mysterious malaise. Though her faith had worn thin over the months, it didn’t disappear entirely and she was sure she would get well and not just a little better. Hers was a total recovery—and then

209 some. She was ever more energetic and alert than she had ever been. Greg and the boys were overjoyed to have her back.

Greg was equally astounded by the coincidence of the earthquake, the slashing of the demon guardian’s picture, and Caroline’s recovery. His analytical mind couldn’t wrap itself around the happenstance. It could have been a mere serendipitous event. Or it could have been Providence. God’s efficacy? Who knows, he thought. Who would ever know? He just gratefully accepted the outcome, just as he was grateful for their rescue from the island.

210 Chapter Thirteen

Caroline’s condition kept improving as the days went by. She had lost a lot of weight during her ordeal but she was regaining what she had lost and soon was back to her normal self. She began to sing a lot more…the tunes of the 50s when she was in her teens and early

20s. It brought back memories of Greg’s youth also and he found that her ebullience communicated itself to him in the form of humming. Humming brightened his day and during the intense moments of the workday at the office, he hummed almost audibly to relieve the tension and it worked. It was a technique he applied periodically throughout the day. Making the humming barely audible to himself signaled his mind to relax and put things into perspective. He was very happy to have Caroline back and he wanted to do something big to celebrate. But what he thought. He and Caroline could go on a world tour but that would probably mean waiting till the next sabbatical to allow them enough time.

Where could they go for a couple of weeks?

It was spring and a good time to travel; they weren’t busy at the office. But he laid the issue aside and thought to mention it during the next poker session. See if the guys could come up with an idea. The foursome had gathered at Greg’s place that Saturday evening with the usual sushi platter sitting on the counter and the array of different kinds of beer.

“I’m glad to see Caroline back to her usual self,” Gary said. “She had all of us concerned there for a while.”

“Yeah,” Hank said. “It looked pretty serious.”

“It was,” Greg said. “It had us stumped. As I told you, we went to see a shrink as the last desperate resort and that experience turned out to be a disaster. Not the shrink himself

211 who was professionally pleasant and all that, but the medication. It poisoned her and didn’t do a bit of good.”

“He probably prescribed a zombie-maker,” Bill said, upending his bottle. “I read somewhere that pills like that can drive a person to suicide.”

“I’m glad we never gave it a chance,” Greg said.

“And God sent you an earthquake,” Bill said. “When you called to tell me what had happened with your samurai sword, I couldn’t help but say a prayer of thanks to God.”

“Well, I’ll never know, will I?” Greg said. “If it was indeed God’s hand in this, He certainly works in mysterious ways. Does He have a plan for each and every one of us?

I wouldn’t know. No one could know. Just assuming He does will always beg the question.

Perhaps He does and we will never know, because we’re not supposed to. Perhaps there is no plan, just connections and interpretations, like, was finding the legendary Masamune blade serendipitous—to be made available in the dramatic cure. Did God send an earthquake just powerful enough to shake the sword off the wall and angle it just perfectly enough to slash the picture? I don’t know. The blade is not called ‘Onimaru’ for nothing. It was wielded by the ancient master swordsman, Tsukahara Bokuden. Perhaps he is the real demon killer.”

“I say it was all coincidence,” Gary said. “Accidental. Serendipitous. I can’t believe in a God that would produce both the good and the bad, the cure and the illness. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Greg shrugged. It was a fool’s errand to try to make sense of the world. It was all he could do to hold it together at work. As an attorney he depended on his logic to see him through the cases he dealt with but human nature provided him with all kinds of surprises as

212 when a man would drop a suit because he had a change of heart—which was rare and unusual, since the deciding factor usually had to do with money.

“I’ve been thinking about celebrating Caroline’s recovery,” he began, “in some big way like not just a fine dinner out or a concert but something bigger like a world tour but I can’t manage something that big right now time-wise. Any ideas?”

“A celebration, huh?” Gary said.

“You could go to Japan,” Hank said.

“I thought about that,” Greg said. “It’s on the back burner.”

“Or you could have a nice, relaxing week at a dude ranch here in the United States,”

Bill said.

“A possibility,” Greg said.

“You could go back to Greg’s island for a vacation, a real vacation this time,” Gary said.

“That’s creepy thought,” Greg said.

“Look at it this way,” Gary said and laid his hand face down. “You mentioned you thought the island was cursed but you now have an anti-curse agent, your Onimaru sword. If your sword can do something like that, you’re protected from any curse. And this time around you can really lay claim to the island, so to speak, give it a name and vacation in style with no concern for food or water. What do you think?”

“It’s a thought all right,” Greg said. “The Cotsen Institute at UCLA did the carbon dating and determined that the bone fragment that I brought back date to the late Stone Age and made an expeditionary trip to the island last year to do further research and they’re still studying their findings. They keep me up to date. But I understand that the Micronesian

213 government hasn’t done anything about the island. They themselves say it is cursed and would sooner deny that it even exists let alone claim ownership for it. So I guess it just sits out in the middle of nowhere, out in the vast Pacific, like an orphan.”

“Maybe you could adopt it,” Gary said.

“What would I do with an island thousands of miles from nowhere, sitting all by itself? It’s too far off the beaten path for tourism, although it is some kind of paradise all by itself.”

“I know it is too far away,” Gary began, “to make a commercial venture out of the water supply there. You say it has magical properties but that hasn’t been determined. It could be that it merely was a source of good clean, fresh water. And the only way to get there is by boat.”

“Over a thousand miles from Pohnpei,” Greg said.

“That would be some vacation,” Bill said, “but going back to a source of trauma could be iffy.”

“This time we’ll be prepared.”

“With Onimaru,” Hank said. “That was some miracle.”

“Yes, it was,” agreed Greg.

“And we could use some miracles,” said Bill.

“Hear, hear,” Hank said.

“Speaking of miracles,” Gary said, “what’s this I hear about LaserBM taking off again?”

214 “That’s what I hear,” Greg said. “After taking that shellacking when the outfit lost its patent case, I swore off investing ever again but when I heard of its comeback, I had a change of heart and invested a little in it again, cautiously this time. I’ve gotten good returns so far.”

“Let’s hope it keeps going,” Gary said. “I have a little in the pot. Can’t keep away from the investing game, something like the hair of the dog that bit you, though I’m not addicted.”

“Talking about the dog,” Hank said, “I need another beer.” He got up to go to the fridge to withdraw a bottle.

The game wore on with each man taking turns winning the pot, so that when they were done for the night none of them had lost very much. Greg came out $30 ahead. They shrugged into their coats to get ready to depart around 3:00AM and left in the driving rain.

Gary had the furthest to go but Hank and Bill lived about six miles away. They agreed to meet at Bill’s place for the next session.

Spring spread its greenery throughout the city and Craig was preparing to graduate from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Southern California in the fall. Brian was finishing up his graduate work in the History Department of UCLA. His erstwhile interest was in Transhumanism. Greg made up his mind to take the family to the isolated island in July for his allotted two-week vacation. With Onimaru’s protection, he was confident of weathering any curse that might linger since ancient times.

They left for Pohnpei in the latter part of July. Shortly after landing on the island,

215 Greg chartered a sizable yacht to take them to what he dubbed Sonoda Island. He told the captain of the yacht of his antecedents there. The captain recognized his name and features from the best-selling book he had written. He was famous in Micronesia—as well in the world. The Micronesian government still didn’t want to have anything to do with the island, so Greg laid claim to it. He was now personal owner of an island paradise.

It took nearly two days of constant cruising to reach Sonoda Island. They closed in on the familiar cove and motor launched to the beach where their gear, supplies and a radio were deposited. The captain was told to come back for them in ten days time when Greg would contact him by radio. Greg and family and a crew member carried everything along the faint but familiar path to the interior of the island. Shortly after they established camp, erecting a tent and canopy, they went to find the wreckage of Peterson’s aircraft and there it was in the middle of a clearing, just as they remembered it, moldering and rusting in the elements. The downed P-47 Thunderbolt was a graphic reminder of the great, terrible war.

It was like a memento of their second home.

The pig population hadn’t diminished. That evening Greg shot one, butchered it in a practiced manner and filled a small fridge run off a generator with meat. They dined on pork, prepared in the familiar fashion by Caroline who used nothing but herbs to season the meat. They washed down their meal with the clean water carried to the camp from the nearby stream and Greg could swear he experienced an upsurge of energy sweep through him after the first gulp. If that didn’t suggest its magical properties, he didn’t know what did.

He next day they harvested the sea food off the floor of the surrounding ocean and had a grand feast of abalone, crab, octopus, clams and shellfish. Being stranded on an island of such resources was no hardship; it just tested their ingenuity at survival.

216 They climbed the mountain to take pictures of the island and the surrounding sea.

Their cameras went everywhere with them, and they took pictures of the stream, the trees and forests, the clearing and their campsite, the wreckage, the pigs and everything else about

Sonoda Island, including the caves.

They entered the caves one afternoon to explore them further and noted that the

Cotsen Institute people had pretty much wiped the place clean. There was nothing left in the large, cavernous room. On a hunch, Greg began tapping along the walls, beginning from one end and working toward the other. Nothing. He worked his way and toward the middle he hit a hollow spot. Aha, he thought, so there is a hidden chamber. Dare he break through? It could be that the foul air was poisonous. Was he willing to take the risk? His usual caution as an attorney took hold of him. He would be disturbing millennia of slumbering in dark secrecy. What secrets did the other side of wall contain? Was it just a burial chamber, to be left undisturbed? He didn’t know—and he would never know unless he broke through.

He consulted the rest of the family. Brian said to leave the ghosts alone and do nothing, Craig said, “Sure, go ahead, and see what’s on the other side,” and Caroline said anything he decided was fine with her, so on the strength of the vote, Greg decided to go ahead. He got hold of a large rock and began pounding the wall. The moment he broke through, there was a loud whoosh and the air gushed out as in a giant exhalation. Greg backed away from the nondescript stale odor. But it wasn’t poisonous. Just momentarily unpleasant. He broke the hole large enough to gain entrance.

Stepping through the opening, he played the flashlight upon the walls of the smaller room and was astounded. The walls were covered with paintings of all kinds of animals, from the horses, cows, tigers to birds, insects and pigs. Lots of pigs. After all the tens of

217 thousands of years, the paintings and their colors still held fast. They may have predated the cave paintings discovered in France. Excitedly, Greg and the others took pictures of the paintings and the stone bowls set upon an altar. The sealed off room may have had religious purposes, Greg thought, and he took pictures of the ceiling as well, for it also had paintings drawn upon it. The Cotsen Institute people were going to be excited with his find, he knew, and probably would sponsor another expedition to the island, now known (as registered with the Micronesian government) as Sonoda Island. The discovery was one for the books.

He hoped that disturbing the atmosphere of the room would not diminish the paintings what with letting in the moist air of the island, which may have been the reason for sealing off the room to begin with. But Greg was willing to chance it and leave the room open for further exploration by the institute. He could just see the headlines: “Stone Age

Artists Discovered in Micronesia.”

The rest of the time spent on the island was consumed by a hike around its entire perimeter enabling them to discover an even better cove on the west side for embarking and disembarking—a fact that they made a note of for their next trip. And they continued to feed off their harvest of the ocean and the pork produced by the initial kill. They ate well and several times dragged their sleeping bags out into the open to sleep under the star-studded skies.

Although the possible curse placed on the island by the vanished race might have been disturbed by Greg’s breaking into their inner sanctum, he wasn’t concerned, for he was convinced that Onimaru protected them all. No one reported feeling any different, no sweeping feeling of malevolence or even a subtle hint of a psychic disturbance. So they went

218 about their business—with a weather eye cocked. Especially Caroline, although her faith in the Masamune blade grew stronger with each passing day.

The time came to radio for their ride back to Pohnpei and on the tenth day of their vacation several crew members pushing hand trucks appeared at the camp site (much as the

Sonoda family rescuers had done years past) helloing and announcing their arrival. They broke camp, packed everything up and with the family’s help moved all the gear and remaining supplies to the cove where the yacht awaited them.

Due to the current, it took a little longer getting back to Pohnpei, but they made it in ample time to catch their flight out, with a day to spare. They spent a night at Joy Hotel where the staff remembered them from their previous visit and greeted them as the world- famous author and his family. They had even read his book Marooned. For dinner that last night in Pohnpei, they went to the erstwhile Arnold’s where the boys once again ordered their favorite pizza.

“You’d think that after making such a trip you’d at least order their famous seafood dinner,” Greg said.

“Naw,” Craig said, “we can always get that in LA.”

“So can you get pizza, even better than this,” Brian said.

“So why’d you order pizza here?” asked Craig.

“I dunno,” Brian said. “Maybe to stay in touch.”

“Be honest,” Craig said. “You just had a huge hankering for pizza.”

“Not as huge as yours. I know pizza is one of your favorite foods.”

“Does anybody want to try a bite of my delicious mahi-mahi?” Caroline asked.

Everyone declined.

219 The next day they caught their flight back and one transfer and fourteen hours later they were back in their familiar stomping grounds. They entered their abode and as soon as they deposited their luggage on the floor, Greg had everyone gather in the living room where he took down the Masamune blade off the wall, unsheathed Onimaru and passed the blade several times over their bodies. “Better safe than sorry,” Greg said. He was never one to take anything for granted.

Greg had prints made of the copies of the pictures he had taken of the cave paintings and took them to the Cotsen Institute of Archeology at UCLA. The amazed scientists there pored over the prints, never suspecting cave art to come out of so remote and isolated an area in the middle of the Pacific and they were hard put to classify the paintings and talked about establishing a new category entirely. At any rate, Greg was given credit—which he shared with his family—for the discovery. Not only had he survived being marooned on Sonoda

Island, encountering its healing waters, but he had also discovered an ancient art form that stood alone in the annals of cave art. In due time, Greg and family were to receive a commemorative plaque for the find and mention of his name in the American Journal of

Archeology.

As they were wont to do every so often, maybe three times a year, Greg, Henry

Miyamoto and Dick Simpson would get together for a meal or share a moment out of their busy lives. This time the two would-be litigants and Greg whom all shared ties with Native

American charitable giving in that they were long-time contributors to its cause decided to meet at the Japanese Gardens at Van Nuys. It was a bright autumn day and the Japanese maple did not disappoint: its flaming red-leafed branches waved in the slight breeze. The three men sat on a bench by the pond and they partook of the picnic lunch prepared by

220 Greg—more to the point, by Caroline who packed the basket with her favorite recipe of fried chicken and potato salad. Greg also brought along a small cooler filled with beer.

“Any more slander cases come your way?” Simpson asked, chuckling to lighten the question.

“I haven’t had the excitement of confronting one since that near disastrous one that

Henry was about to bring against you,” Greg said.

“Yes, it could have been disastrous,” Miyamoto said, “and nasty.”

“Such cases always are,” said Greg.

“So how has time treated you?” asked Simpson.

“Well,” Greg said and went to describe the events following the publication of his book, Caroline’s illness and miraculous recovery after the earthquake. He also mentioned their second visit to the now designated island Sonoda Island and their discovery of the cave art which sent rumbles through the archeological world.

“You’ve had an exciting year,” Miyamoto said.

“You might say that.”

“Me? I went on a trip to Japan, my first trip there. I decided to visit the land of my ancestors with my wife and stayed there for ten days and visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I can’t say I agree with the dropping of the A-bombs but I can’t say I disagree either, because

Truman had a war to end. It’s true that the Ruskie entry into the war struck a major blow to

Japan’s strategy but I think the shock value of the bombs is what finally brought about

Japan’s unconditional surrender.”

“And it was the first time Japan ever surrendered to a foreign power in its long history,” Simpson said.

221 “They beat back the Mongol invasion twice with the help of severe typhoons,” Greg said.

“Kamikaze. They dubbed the typhoons as the Divine Wind and called their suicide pilots with the name, hoping that they would turn the tide of the war,” Simpson said.

“It was not to be,” Greg said.

“It was a hopeless situation,” Miyamoto said.

“Yes, it was,” Greg said. “Japan was running on empty the last couple of years, fighting on with nothing but the Yamato spirit which they believed would sustain them.”

“But against the reality of America’s military might, it let them down…it wouldn’t come through for them,” Simpson said.

“And look at Japan now,” said Miyamoto. “It has rebuilt and changed itself into an economic powerhouse.”

“But the bubble has burst,” said Greg. “The real estate meltdown brought the economy down and things are now stagnated with no prospect of relief in sight.”

“They’ll probably just repeat what was successful in the past, like running up their exports, and let it go at that,” Simpson said

“And leave themselves open to the vagaries of the marketplace,” Greg said.

“How’s your brother weathering the downturn?” Miyamoto asked.

“I talked to him just the other day,” Greg began, “and he says that business has hardly felt any impact at all. He figures that sporting goods will always be in high demand, although the competition is fierce, but there seems to be enough for everybody to go around.”

“Does Dan still feel like an American?” Simpson asked.

222 “He does and he doesn’t,” said Greg. “He doesn’t because he isn’t given occasion to think like an American in the hustle and bustle of Japanese life but in his quiet moments I think he does. After all he was born American and the early years of one’s life are the most formative. He still speaks English and uses it to good advantage. He studied at a high school, a Marianist Catholic school, that taught in English.”

“But you said he served in the Japanese military,” said Simpson.

“He did,” replied Greg. “He could have had a cushy job in intelligence with his language skills, but he had a falling out with his superior officer who hated his guts as a transplanted Nisei/Sansei. He received an American education and was outspoken and did not respect top-down Japanese authority. Japan was totalitarian, after all. So he got sent to the frontlines in China. His sergeant there treated him badly. Probably got word from the higher ups to give him a bad time.”

“And he opted to stay in Japan after the war,” Miyamoto said.

“He did.”

“But didn’t he have dual citizenship?” Miyamoto asked. “Most Niseis there did.”

“He did have dual citizenship,” Greg said, “but he chose to remain in Japan where he had spent most of his life and was acclimated to its culture, because when you think about it

America was bound to be a strange foreign land to a man who emigrated to Japan as a six year old.”

“And he’s done well for himself,” Miyamoto beamed, a point of Japanese American pride.

“He drives a Cadillac and has a hilltop mansion,” said Greg. “I’d say he’s done well for himself by any measure.”

223 “But is he happy?” Simpson asked.

“I leave that up to him to decide,” Greg said.

“But how can he not be happy, sitting on top of the world as he does?” said

Miyamoto.

“I imagine he has his moments of doubts,” Greg said.

They finished their lunch and washed down the food with swallows of the chilled beer.

“Thank Mrs. Sonoda for a fine lunch,” Simpson said. “I don’t recall when I had a tastier piece of fried chicken.”

“Same here,” Miyamoto said.

They got to their feet and strolled toward the entrance to the gardens where they had parked their cars. They got in and drove off. It was a Sunday afternoon but the freeways were busy with drivers returning for the weekend. Greg was in no rush. He eased into the right hand lane and followed the flow of traffic. He would be home in about an hour, time to spend the rest of the day with his family and perhaps to take them out to dinner obviating the need for Caroline to cook dinner. In fact he wouldn’t think of it, not after all the work she put into making such a fine picnic lunch.

224 Chapter Fourteen

In 1992 when Greg was 60, he decided at long last to take Caroline and the boys to

Sonoda Island on his sabbatical rather than a round-the-world trip. He would spend the three months during the summer when Brian, who was teaching, and Craig, now engaged in his plumbing business, could join him and Caroline. He intended to settle the island permanently and had instructed a local Pohnpei man to procure the necessary equipment and material to build a house for their long-time sojourn and ship everything to the island to have it ready for him when he arrived next in Micronesia.

They flew to Pohnpei and rented the same yacht to take them to their island. Greg had the men load on the compact solar electrical generator that he bought in the United

States. His home away from home on Sonoda Island was not going to be some cheap affair; he intended to live in style. The four of them would build everything from scratch and enjoy all the pleasures of being latter-day pioneers.

After a two-day journey, they laid anchor off the west cove which was more convenient in terms of getting to the clearing and began unloading the supplies. They motor launched to the beach and saw that a trail had already been worn through the vegetation by the workmen who had unloaded the building material and carried it to the designated clearing. Carrying the boxes and supplies, they followed the trail and shortly found themselves in the clear spot coming in from the west side. Their old fire pit openly welcomed them but in short order Caroline would be cooking on an electric range, as soon as the house was built and furnished. The material was stacked near the center and covered with a large blue tarp.

225 The next day after a night spent under the clear skies they set about work. Greg spread the blueprint out and began driving stakes into the ground to build the house according to the plans he had brought along. It would be a simple, one-room house with portioned off spaces. Nothing fancy, just the bare necessities. There would be no indoor plumbing; the john would be an outhouse, just like in the days of the pioneers. They all set about work. The pigs could be heard grunting in the bushes; one curiously stood at the edges of the forest, regarding the goings-on.

In a week’s time with the four of them putting in 16-hour days, they had completed a sizable one room house, an outhouse and a sheltered eating area accessed from a side door.

They made their own bedsteads upon which they unrolled their sleeping bags. From the leftover lumber they made chairs and tables which reminded Greg of the early days in the concentration camps when the men had to scrounge through the woodpiles looking for lumber suitable to build furniture for their rooms. With the solar generator in operation and a battery backup system they had electricity to refrigerate, cook and read by. The outside fireplace so essential to their erstwhile survival was kept so that they could enjoy a bonfire when sitting outdoors. When the house was ready to occupy, Greg cut the red ribbon

Caroline has prepared for the occasion, pronouncing the house “Sonoda Mansion.”

The next thing they did was to run up a large flag on top of Caroline Peak. The flag was made with four interlocking purple circles embroidered on a white background.

At long last Greg was able to settle down and work on his manuscript. It had been hanging fire for a long time now ever since he thought of delving into the question of looking for God as though it were a detective story. His thoughts about God were strictly an extracurricular activity, a thought exercise that took him away from the legalese of his

226 existence and freed up his mind for larger issues dealing with the universe. He liked the balance. He was going to write a layman’s book as an outsider to the theological question of whether there was a God or not. It energized his mind to think of a larger issue other than that which dealt with legal niceties, the ins and outs of the question of law, all of which tended to narrow his interests to a specific problem at hand. In his out-of-office mind, he was forever considering the broader ramifications of living as an anthropologist would, delving into questions of where the individual fit into society and even of what his relationship to God was, for in his mind all questions led to the ultimate one: how does God fit into one’s life? It appeared to Greg a never-ending quest.

As his fingers raced over the keyboard of his laptop, he focused his thoughts on the task at hand but part of his mind was on his brother Dan’s illness. Dan was suffering from cancer of the esophagus and was having a hard time swallowing his food. Greg was concerned. It had been almost a year now since the cancer was detected and part of the reason for settling Sonoda Island and building a shelter there was to have Dan come and stay to avail himself of the healing waters. Dan was to arrive at the island the following week.

The arrangements of his coming were made far in advance, before Greg and family ever left

California, since the traditional treatments were not working and Dan’s condition was only getting worse. Though an ocean separated them and they communicated frequently—mainly through telephone conversations. Greg felt close to his older brother. Always had, for some reason. It could simply have been the fact that Dan was his older brother, his only brother, and he fantasized as a child playing with him and learning about life and things from him and the intimacy in spite of distance—or precisely because of it—caused a closeness to develop even if it were only in his own mind. He wasn’t sure about Dan’s feelings toward him as a

227 younger brother but judging from the warm reception he received whenever they met, Greg assumed the feeling of closeness was shared. On Greg’s part there was nothing he wouldn’t do for his older brother, who was now in distress, to make up for his father’s decision to send

Dan to Japan as a child. Greg knew how lonely he must have felt being away from family and having to adjust to a foreign way of life. Part of his concern came about when he learned

Dan had been conscripted into the Japanese Army during WWII and he knew his treatment as a Nisei had to be less than sanguine. Technically speaking he was not a Nisei but a Sansei since their mother was a Nisei, but he was not one to quibble.

Before Dan’s arrival, the days were spent harvesting the food off the floor of the ocean and butchering a pig to stuff into the fridge. Canned goods, mainly consisting of vegetables, lined the shelves; the Sonodas ate in style and found the variety of ways to prepare the food endless—and appetizing. They played cards at night, discussed what went on in their lives (their ambitions with regard to careers, how money was important and unimportant, how big a family they wanted), and generally just absorbed the great fires they would build at the end of the day. Caroline said Greg would have to figure out a way to pipe water in from the creek to avoid the trouble of having to fill the cistern by hand. Greg who carted the bucketsful of water agreed: it would be easier and handier. Craig said he’d figure something out. But the initial attempt to settle the island had been completed.

Dan arrived ten days later. Greg was surprised at his brother’s appearance. From an erstwhile robust frame hung a gaunt skeleton…Dan had wasted away. He hadn’t been able to eat, he explained, and he couldn’t hold his food down. He subsisted on gruel and other soft foods. Although he was in no condition to travel all the way to Pohnpei and then make the trip to Sonoda Island, he had finally agreed to come—at Greg’s insistence. Greg had

228 faith in the healing properties of the stream’s clear waters so much so that over Dan’s protests that he was too weak to travel and that he just as soon die in Japan he urged him to come for the all but certain cure. He had brought Takanori with him. The two of them had been dropped off at the west cove where Greg met them, as arranged through the radio messages. The three of them slowly made their way to Sonoda Mansion.

Upon their arriving, Dan collapsed in a chair under the outdoor shelter. It was late in the afternoon. It took a minute for him to catch his breath. Then he got to his feet to say hello all the way around as Caroline, Brian and Craig introduced themselves to both Dan and

Takanori. As was the Japanese custom, Takanori had brought gifts to offer them all. As soon as they were all settled, Greg immediately began Dan’s treatment. He offered him a large glass of water.

“Oishii,” Dan said. “This is the best tasting water I’ve ever had.” He drank the whole glass and Greg refilled it. He drank it and shook himself. “Don’t give up on me, not yet, because I haven’t,” he said with strained bravado.

“So this is the famous island in your book,” Takanori said. “I read it as soon as it was translated into Japanese and told everybody in my village about your being marooned.

You’re quite famous in our area.”

“All throughout Japan,” Dan said. “I’ve named a baseball bat after my brother.”

“So every time someone hits a homerun, he can say it was Greg’s mojo,” Takanori said, taking a sip of water, then downing the whole glass. “Very good.”

Greg told them of the miraculous properties of the water when tested against the gangrenous wound in his leg and when the whole family had come down with dysentery in the early stages of their ordeal. He said he had no doubt that it would cure Dan’s cancer.

229 “How about my joint pain?” asked Takanori.

“Probably good for that, too,” Greg said.

Caroline detached herself from the group to go inside to prepare dinner and the boys set about digging up taro roots. After catching up on the news dealing with their lives in

America and Japan and the political and economic situation in which Japan languished following the bubble collapse, Greg, Dan and Takanori got to their feet to make the short trek to the site of the downed fighter piloted by Lt. James Peterson, the famous ace of the Pacific

War. His lonely survival after the war rivaled any story the Japanese had of its soldiers.

Marooned covered his story. Greg’s brother and cousin now had the chance to view the wreckage of the plane that had wreaked havoc in the skies. Greg knew they would be curious and he lost no time in showing it to them.

With Dan shuffling behind him, aided by Takanori, Greg led the way to the plane, holding back the lush undergrowth to allow them to pass. They soon came upon the site.

The aircraft remained where it had fallen, a proud war machine flown by a young intrepid

American officer who had spent decades surviving alone on the uninhabited island. Both

Dan and Takanori were familiar with the story, having read it in Greg’s bestselling book.

Both men laid their hands on the plane with a reverent pause, Dan saying that war was always futile and nobody wins in the end and that there were only memories of bitterness.

Takanori agreed. He had been wounded in the Philippines and since it was only a flesh wound he fought on, but in spite of his changing bandages often the jungle heat caused it to become infected and in desperation he applied moss and mud as a poultice and he pulled through without losing his leg. Asked by a surgeon where he had gotten the idea, he told him that he had seen it in a movie once. Dan was never wounded. But he suffered from

230 survivor’s guilt and said now it was all catching up with him. Greg tried to argue him out of the notion, without success. He sensed that his brother’s self-defeating attitude was probably part of the cause his not healing so far. He insisted that he change his attitude, that his arrival on the island marked a brand new start in his life. Dan only grunted.

“Lt. Peterson was a very brave man,” Dan said. “Was he a Christian?”

“I don’t think so, he never said as much in his diary,” Greg replied. “But I think he believed in a Creator. He often wrote about the oneness of all things. It was the challenge of circumstances that he had to deal with.”

“After all those years, he just wore out, like you said in your book,” Takanori said.

“Yes, I think that was the case, a simple wearing out,” Greg said. “There was no way out of the situation. He may have tried to start a signal fire…I saw remnants of a fire. But he probably gave up. The island is too far off the beaten track and there was no one in a thousand mile radius to see any signal. That must have gotten to him.”

“I’m surprised that he survived as long as he did,” Dan said. “How he kept up hope, then to live without it after so long after losing it is inconceivable. We have our own example of a soldier surviving for 30 years after being left behind and the two are truly dedicated warriors. Belonging to opposite sides.”

“That goes to show you we are much the same,” Takanori said. “Different culturally but same underneath. I always wanted to make such a statement, but who listens to a mere farmer? I wanted to become a teacher but had to take up farming after I got out of the army.”

“And you are a successful one,” Dan reminded him.

“Successful, maybe,” Takanori replied tentatively.

231 “But not a very happy one,” Greg commiserated. “And you have to console yourself by howling at the moon.” He patted Takanori on the shoulder lightly. “I will join you on our mountain.”

“Do you have sake?” Takanori asked incredulously.

“As a matter of fact I do.”

“You’ve thought of everything,” Dan said.

“I like to think so. Although there’s no full moon now, we can still climb the mountain and howl our heads off.”

“You’re making fun of me,” Takanori said.

“Not at all. Howling for the sake of howling puts me into a liberated mood. It’s an elixir for the mind and heart. I highly recommend it. I’ll tell Caroline and the boys to join us.”

“We can form a chorus,” Dan said and chuckled. He surprised himself and lightly chuckled again. “Maybe the water is working on me right now.”

“Do you feel any different?” Greg asked.

“I feel better.”

“We must have you drink more. The more the better,” Greg said and started to go back. His brother and cousin patted the plane one final time and followed.

Back at Sonoda Mansion Greg dipped some water out of the cistern and filled several glasses, taking one himself after handing the water to the other two. They drank thirstily. He refilled Dan’s glass and encouraged him to drink more. He wanted to see that Dan always had a glass in hand. The more of the healing water he had, the faster the cure. He was sure about its miraculous powers.

232 They dined on pig and seafood matched by canned greens, all prepared a la Caroline style. Everyone ate hungrily, their appetites spurred on by the sea breeze. Even Dan ate voraciously, but he was slow to swallow each mouthful which he chewed diligently. His esophagus was still giving him problems. Of course, it would, thought Greg. An afternoon of drinking the water would not be enough time. In time, he thought. In time. But Dan asked for seconds upon finishing his meal.

They all sat around the large picnic table, eating and conversing with Greg doing most of the talking since Caroline and the boys did not understand Japanese. Greg interpreted and told them about the parts of their background which he had not related yet.

He also mentioned Takanori’s proclivity of howling at the full moon, how it liberated his mind and heart.

“We’re all going to try it,” Greg said.

“No way,” Brian said, raising his collegiate hackles. “I’d feel so silly. Besides I don’t think we’ll be able to see a full moon while we’re here. It’ll probably cloud up.”

“We’ll just have to wait and hope for the clouds to clear,” Greg said.

“I think it’s a cool idea,” Craig said. “What made him think of it? Was it the war?”

Greg interpreted, although he recalled what Takanori had told him.

“No, it was not the war,” Takanori said, “although I wanted to cry out in some way while I was a soldier. Not to be done. It was the westerns made in your country. It was the lone wolf howling against a full moon, that image of loneliness and freedom, that impressed me. All that vast landscape, so much space, and the cowboys roaming around free.”

“Takanori should have become a poet,” Greg said, interpreting his remarks.

“But my place in society is as a farmer,” Takanori said, “and I am a good farmer.”

233 “We have the lubricant,” Greg said and produced a large bottle of sake.

“I think it’s a lovely idea,” Caroline said. “It seems you’ve already tried it.”

“I have,” Greg said to her. “It’s good for the inhibitions. Loosens something up inside.”

“It doesn’t hurt to be a little tipsy, either,” Caroline suggested.

“No, that’s the whole point of stocking sake on this trip,” Greg said.

“I never tasted the stuff,” Craig said, “but I’m rarin’ to go.”

“If Mom is going,” Brian said, “so will I. Just to keep her company.”

“Sure, sure,” Craig said. “You just want to try out the sake.”

“Did I say that?” Brian queried.

“You didn’t need to,” Craig said. “You’re a lush.”

“Look who’s talking,” Brian said.

“All right,” Craig said. “We’re both lushes.”

“Not quite,” Brian said.

The manuscript hung fire. That night Greg got up from tossing and turning, his mind full of what he wanted to write about, and sat at the kitchen table in front of the laptop and began to keyboard his thoughts. They came in racing torrents. What were his ongoing impressions of God? They seemed to change or develop from day to day, week to week. He was awed by nature—and its fury. The roiling sea, the wind and the bending, yielding trees.

The scudding clouds and the crashing waves. The radio reports of the great damage done by the periodic typhoons. When all was placid, it seemed that even breathing came easier

234 amidst the calm and one could marvel at the reddish hues of the sunset. There had to be a

God who created the universe and all that was in it, from the galaxies to human life. A creator God, who may or may not have been eternal and who one day decided to create. He created principles and the immutable laws that govern all of nature—mathematical laws.

From his mind, he created all things. Some might ask who created God, as if that had an answer. Perhaps no one. Perhaps God is eternal and always was. One day he decided to create our universe just as he created all other universes. The Big Bang started it all in our universe and all the pieces fell into place as determined by God. And it all worked perfectly.

Not a single degree of angle or temperature off. The universe held.

And life formed. A single cell organism and its DNA gave rise to consciousness.

(How consciousness arose is the eternal conundrum.) But that consciousness harnessed to the mind of God grew and developed and nudged along the evolution of the single cell organism to develop into myriad forms of life that we see today, after transitory species have come and gone. We are all part of our antecedents and the end product of our evolution is our self awareness and hence our angst. We dare to see in God an answer to our angst, acknowledging that we are made in the image of God, and seek God’s love as we seek our own, for love lies at the bottom of all there is and gives rise to understanding. Understanding is always dependent on love. Angst and understanding go hand in hand. Angst without understanding is dumb suffering; understanding without angst is sterile.

Greg was on a roll in his thinking. His mind raced along smoothly as sentences followed one upon another. He thought about all the books he had read and tried to isolate out the ideas churning through his mind but without success. He had paraphrased automatically all the information, digesting it in his own way to make it stick to his bones.

235 His quest to access God was more like pursuing a beacon of light emanating from beyond his immediate perceptions and sometimes he would stumble, as he did now that he reached the end of a thought. Sometimes the going was smooth: when he was on a roll the words came easily. At other times when the sentence was complete and he had to make a transition, he found the pause pregnant with possibilities.

Now in the dead of the night with everyone asleep he paused to regroup his thoughts, his mind urging him into realms of theological questioning. As a layman on a quest. He was speculating for the sheer joy of it, delving into the nature of God, whether God was a feeling

God or whether he was all sterile consciousness. But how could consciousness be sterile to begin with? If we are made in God’s image, that is, if we are an extension of God’s mind, a product of evolution (the nudging along of a developmental upward spiral), then are we not expressing God’s mind in greater or smaller ways throughout our entire lives? The Greater

Self is always in touch with God, the Lesser Self with ego concerns. The Greater Self or the

Holy Spirit maintains the intrinsic contact with God; the Lesser Self always listens to smaller material interests of physical needs and wants. But it is incumbent upon the two to work together to make an organic whole. One cannot overemphasize the Greater Self and its concomitants at the expense of the Lesser Self without endangering the entire organism as in exaggerated asceticism nor can one go in for indulgence of the Lesser Self against the

Greater Self and lead a life of hedonistic pleasure without destroying the all-essential balance. Sterile, no. The consciousness is too fecund to be sterile.

He put the period at the end of the last sentence, marking it in his mind as a dividing point upon which to build the next segment. Always leave something fresh behind to act as a leavening agent for the next sequence. It seemed to work for him. He was experienced

236 enough of a writer to know where to leave off. It was also due to his experience as an attorney: he could move with ease from case to case, having compartmentalized the contents to such an extent that it all fit within the filing system he had in his head.

He stopped keyboarding the manuscript, stretched and made ready for bed. His brother and cousin were snoring lightly in their sleeping bags and the two boys were breathing evenly and were deeply asleep. Gingerly slipping in between the covers beside

Caroline so as not to wake her, he stretched once more, turned his head on the pillow and was soon fast asleep.

In the days that followed, Dan grew visibly stronger. He was able to swallow better and his appetite increased to a point where he was asking for seconds at every meal. He was gaining weight and in no time at all put on about 20 pounds. What had been a skeleton had fleshed out into a fit, well-built man. He said everything started to taste good and he kept up drinking a gallon or so of water a day. Takanori was also helped: his arthritis had all but disappeared.

Greg taught his brother and cousin how to play gin rummy and the six of them sat around the kitchen table and began to play cards. Dan and Takanori caught on quickly and played skillfully. The conversation turned toward them.

“My only daughter,” began Takanori, “has been teaching literature at Waseda

University for about three years now.”

“What kind of literature?” Greg asked.

“American.”

“What made her choose that field?” Greg said.

237 “I told her to. She wanted to study British literature to begin with, but I told her to expand her vision and think continental-style rather than island-nation style. And that seemed to expand her view.”

“Now she has your vision of the wide-open spaces of America that you love so well,”

Greg said.

“Yes, that’s exactly why I suggested she go into American literature. The wide-open spaces. Tairiku-gata (continental-style).”

“You’re more than a farmer,” Greg said.

“I try to keep up with the world.”

“Which means what?” Dan asked.

“Meaning, I read broadly.”

“So do I,” said Dan.

“Like what?” asked Greg.

“Like many, many trade journals.”

“Trade journals do not exercise the mind,” Takanori said.

“But they promote my business and that is the main thrust of my life—my business.”

“More power to you,” Greg said.

“But what about your mind? Don’t you need to develop it?” Takanori asked.

“Sure. Business acumen.”

“What do your sons think?” Takanori asked.

“They think as I do. Make money and live well.”

“Is that all there is?” asked Greg.

“That’s all there is. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you die.”

238 “There’s got to be more to life than that,” Takanori said.

“What about the spiritual element?” asked Greg.

“The spirit always follows what the body does,” Dan said.

“Explain that,” Greg said.

“You see, the body is born and needs to grow and its demands are met willy-nilly. In other words, it needs to be fed. When starving, the spirit itself cannot sustain it. It requires food and with food it can continue life and life is nothing except food. You are what you eat and the body demands sustenance. Without the right kind of nourishment, the body is stunted or diseased and the deformed or sick body cannot develop the proper mind. Without the proper mind, you cannot even begin to have a proper spirit. So, to have a proper spirit you must have a proper mind and to have a proper mind you must have a proper body.”

“But the spirit leads the body,” Takanori said.

“How do you know that?” said Dan. “When an infant grows up, it is all body. The body takes over everything and it directs the spirit to fulfill its needs. Its needs are the greatest single issue in its existence. To fulfill its needs, it will go to any lengths. We are all bodily instincts and nothing more.”

“What about art, music and the human imagination?” asked Greg.

“What about religion?” asked Takanori.

“They say God is behind everything.” Dan began. “That includes the arts and sciences. But the human brain is behind everything. It’s the brain of mankind that is propelling his evolution, of everything. We have evolved to this day because of the magnificence of our brain. We’ve guided our evolution, the evolution of our organizations and institutions, by fits and starts to achieve the scientific and technological status of today.

239 It is all due to human intelligence. It’s all due to the brain we have. And the brain is part of the body.”

“But what about consciousness?” Greg asked.

“Consciousness is part of the brain. Without the brain, you can have no consciousness.”

“There have been cases where people born without brains can have consciousness,

Greg said. “They remain alive and can function.”

“I never heard of such a thing,” Dan said.

“And what about the amoeba and jelly fish?” said Greg. “They don’t have brains, and yet they remain viable as biological entities.”

“And what about plants?” Takanori asked. “They certainly have consciousness.

They know when to sprout, grow and ripen, like the rice crops I plant. But they don’t have brains.”

Caroline broke in and asked for an interpretation. Greg apologized for neglecting her and the boys and gave them the gist of what they had been talking about. Caroline said that

God was in everything. He was the energy that brought everything alive and put everything into motion…from the clouds, wind, sun, plants, animals, us. The atoms and everything that made up the atoms were all in motion. They were vibratory…with the energy of God.

Everything was in motion. What appeared to be solid was a matter of perception, for great universes of spaces were between the atoms in spite of appearances of solidity. Take the trees, rocks, ice, water, tables and houses, for instance. It was all a matter of perception.

Brian weighed in by commenting that he didn’t know about God in that he was an agnostic and the whole universe as we know it could all be serendipitous: an outcome of

240 fortuitous accidents. Who knew but that the mind and its evolution could not orchestrate the development of life itself? And who knew that DNA didn’t give rise to a state of consciousness whose sole purpose was to fight for survival? It was the Darwinian survival of the fittest and indeed life was a case of bloody tooth and claw.

“I disagree,” Craig said. “It may seem life was a case of the survival of the fittest, but how about mutual cooperation among the monkeys and ants. They seem to point to a social organization that is beneficial to all members. Cooperation, that’s the key. And as far as

God is concerned, I don’t know. I like to keep things open-ended. God may be the

Consciousness that started it all. On the other hand, it may be only our own minds telling us that, as Dad mentioned. I think keeping things open-ended is the way to go.”

“I agree,” Takanori said when Greg interpreted Craig’s remarks after being prompted.

“No one can know what God is up to. He could be a wild spirit like a whirlwind or a trickster like the tanuki (fox). Maybe He’s like nature. Unpredictable.”

Greg confronted his brother and spoke in Japanese. “So what does consciousness have to do with the brain? We’ve established the fact that consciousness or mind can exist without a brain. So where does this consciousness come from? “

“I don’t know. Must come from DNA, I suppose.”

“DNA is just a blueprint,” Greg said. “It has no ability to adjust to the environment.

Epigenetics or the study of adaptations…I read a book based on research…says that the brains of an organism is located in its cells, more specifically, in the cell membrane that allows an adjustment for environmental factors. It formulates an organic response and is responsible for bodily responses. The mind, in other words,, is outside the nucleus of the cell.”

241 “Ah so,” Takanori said, “that means God can be outside the brain.”

“Logically speaking, yes,” Greg said.

“God can be nature,” Takanori said.

“I suppose so,” Greg said. “He can be a part of everything. He can be DNA, RNA, the cell membrane, the environment, nature, the weather, rivers, trees, animals, us—He can be everything.”

“And so who made God?” Dan asked. “If everything had to have a beginning, who made God?

“Nothing made God,” Greg said. “God is, always was and always will be. God is eternal. He always existed. He is beyond time, which is a human construct. My speculation.”

“But everything has to have a beginning,” Dan said.

“Everything temporal,” Greg said.

“Meaning everything that can be killed or must die or be destroyed?” Takanori asked.

“Yes.”

“God can be destroyed,” Dan said.

“How?” Takanori challenged.

“By chasing Him out of our thoughts. By refusing to think about Him and ignoring

Him. By being indifferent.”

“To one’s own detriment, however,” Greg said. “How blind it is to shut off the source of our life.”

“Our life is the result of biological evolution,” Dan said. “There is no external source of life. We are all products of our own evolution.”

242 “But why do we hunger after God?” Takanori said.

“Some people do, some people don’t,” Dan said.

“I think when we look into the heavens on a starry night or observe nature and its beauty, we can’t help but be moved to wanting to know more about the Creator and His creation,” Greg said.

“But what if the universe and everything in it were by chance and accident?” Dan asked.

“Nothing in the universe could have been by chance or accident,” Greg said. “The harmony and order balanced by chaos and disorder could not exist without a creative force that has orchestrated all things at exactly the right angle, rate of speed, temperature, gravity and whatnot with allowances for the death of stars and black holes.”

“Who is to say the universe is not by chance?” Dan said. “I say the Big Bang was spontaneous and a chance occurrence and the evolution of the universe and life was accidental. After many fits and starts over billions of years, things have settled down to a stable form. That’s all.”

“That leaves no room for God,” Takanori said.

“So we are on our own,” Dan said. “We must take responsibility for ourselves and our world.”

“We must take responsibility because we are stewards,” Greg said.

“Which church do you belong to?” Dan asked.

“Officially, the United Church of Christ,” Greg said, “but we’re not regular church- goers. Nature and life are our cathedrals.”

243 “It is good to belong to a like-minded group,” Takanori said. “I feel I am all alone in my quest to belong to nature.”

“No other farmer thinks as you do,” Greg said.

“That’s right,” Takanori said.

“So you believe in God,” Dan said to Greg.

“Yes, I do,” Greg said. “I have to. That’s where my mind has led me.”

“My mind has led me in the opposite direction,” Dan said.

“That appears to be the case,” Greg said, disappointed that his arguments did not register.

The days sped by and Dan continued to improve. He could swallow more easily now;

Takanori said he felt good enough to run up the mountain. It was still a half-moon that hung in the night sky, so they had a small wait to go. In the meantime, Greg took Dan and

Takanori on a tour of the cave and the inner chamber of paintings which had so stirred the people at Cotsen Institute of Archeology. He told them how he happened to discover the cave and inner chamber and the subsequent sensation his discovery had provoked in the archeological world. How the Stone Age travelers had managed to land and populate the island was unknown. And they had brought the pigs, now feral, with them. There was no history on the island. Only a legend in Micronesia that it was cursed. Cursed or not, it was a second home to the Sonodas. With the protection of Onimaru, no curse was powerful enough to overcome the efficacy of the blade. Maybe embedded in the legend was a story of the proper person taking over the island, the qualifications being one of having the proper background. Greg’s lineage was impeccable. He came from a long line of samurai, the erstwhile ruling class of Japan, the land of his ancestors. And he owned the Demon Blade.

244 Dan and Takanori were awed by the paintings on the walls of the cave. Many of the pictures were of the pigs, but there were some depicting horses, mammoths, reptiles as well.

It may have been that they were recollections of things past, of animals seen and hunted in the eons past on the continent before their migration to the island.

At any rate, their appearance on the island may have been tied in with the Nan Madol civilization back on Pohnpei and maybe the inhabitants were the ancestors of the Sandeleurs, the local ancient people there. There was no indication that they worshipped a deity on the island, so the elevation of the eel to the status of a god in Nan Madol culture could very well have been an evolution over time. That there was a spiritual inkling that grew throughout the eons points to the acceptance of a power beyond the senses, beyond mankind. Nature—its tumultuous patterns of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, errant weather—must have provided the impetus for the unfolding of the growing spiritual part of man, thought Greg. The awesome, unpredictable, untamable happenstances of nature would have seemed to be the hand of God at work. And naturally certain animals with observed characteristics were claimed to have supernatural powers. As there were many different kinds of animals, there came to be different kinds of gods. And as mankind progressed, the number proliferated and included man as a deity endowed with extraordinary powers. There were too many gods, as it turned out. Too many idols to worship. And the pendulum swung in the direction of monotheism and the terrible vengeful God of the Old Testament—only to yield to a more compassionate God in Christ. Jesus was the softer God who preached love and performed miracles of healing.

When the moon was full, they ventured up the mountain. Dan was strong enough to make the climb and Takanori found his new limberness made climbing easy. They set out

245 with the large bottle of sake; each of them carried their own glass. The night air was cool and with their flashlights they picked their way up the path they had originally made when going up the mountain to light the signal fires. A long time ago, it seemed. Reaching the top, they sat under the large, fluttering flag with the entwined four circles. A slight wind caused the flag to furl and unfurl. The ground was damp from a recent rainfall. Greg poured the sake.

After imbibing a glassful, he told them about Takanori’s method of howling.

“You just don’t rear back and howl. You have to put your whole mind, heart and soul into it. It’s not just from the throat up but from the belly up. You put your whole self into it. You pretend you are that lone wolf on the edge of a cliff in the desert, a wolf who belongs to nature and is laying claim to his life, the wonder of life, and to his world. The whole universe, in fact. He howls to claim his place in solitude. In his state of loneliness as the only wolf qualified for the moment to howl in freedom. Just let go and liberate yourselves.”

With his legs crossed and his hands propped on his knees, Takanori led the way. He tilted his head back, his face turned toward the moon. He took a deep breath, then let out a long drawn out howl.

“Oooooo.”

The others followed suit. Tentatively, at first, then gaining in crescendo.

“Oooooo.”

Brian giggled once or twice, muttering, “This is silly.” But he gamely participated.

“Oooooo.”

Caroline was still tentative, but she was all heart and joined in.

246 “Oooooo.”

Craig was the one who was really into it. He even wagged his head, shaking it right and left, as he howled.

“Oooooo.”

Dan was the loudest. He howled lustily, as though he defied the cancer to get him.

“Oooooo.”

Greg matched Takanori in the seriousness of attitude—but not too much. He had a smile on his face between howls.

“Oooooo.”

They continued to howl for a good 15 minutes. Their combined howls must have echoed throughout the entire island. The night air vibrated with the howling. Had there been a wolf within earshot he surely would have responded. The cloudless night was perfect for viewing the moon and the slight breeze must have carried their collective howling for a distance over the surrounding sea.

“That was salubrious,” Greg said.

They all agreed. Their eyes were gleaming.

They all got to their feet and picked their way down the trail off the mountain to return to Sonoda Mansion.

Soon it was time to leave the island and return to civilization—such as it was. It was the only world they knew and their traveling to Micronesia and into the past was but an interlude—albeit a stimulating and relaxing one at the same time. They had now to return to

247 their lives after a summer spent on Sonoda Island, their home away from home, and pick up where they left off, Greg, his career as a lawyer, Brian and Craig, their respective work,

Caroline, her involvement in the civic clubs, and his brother and cousin, back to their lives in

Japan. Dan was all but cured. He looked and felt healthy and fit and carried with him a supply of the saving water to keep up the regimen with the promise of getting more whenever he wanted to, whenever he could make the trip. Sonoda Mansion and all its amenities were open to him, as well as to Takanori.

They all got on the yacht that slept eight passengers, large enough to accommodate them and all their belongings, and spent the two days cruising back in high luxury, dining sumptuously and relaxing in the sun on deck. It was late August and the weather was still good. The typhoon season hadn’t hit the region yet. In the idle hours, Greg worked on his manuscript. It was progressing nicely, but he had no idea how it would end. He usually didn’t begin a work unless he had an ending in mind, but where his search for God would lead, he had no idea. He was getting into deeper water. But how difficult was it to write a layman’s theology, a pedestrian look at God from the depths of ignorance? He was about to find out. However much he disqualified himself from the task of seeking God, thinking that he was just a common man with perhaps an uncommon need to probe the mystery of God, the ultimate source of anguish and joy, he felt lifted by his extracurricular mission of discovering what it meant to strive for a final understanding. Was the significance of his search the answer to the question of “What was God” or was it the striving itself? If it was the striving, the question would never be answered, for perhaps God could never be understood. Perhaps the mystery of God would forever remain a mystery. And perhaps the process he was putting himself through was one in which mankind enriched itself. Indeed,

248 mankind would be much poorer in every respect without accommodating the question:

“What is God?”

249 Chapter Fifteen

Several weeks after their return from Sonoda Island, Greg invited his friends over for one of their ongoing poker sessions. The usual platter of sushi was awaiting them, as was a fridge full of all kinds of beer. No expense was spared in making the poker sessions as pleasurable as possible, this time including a platter of one of Greg’s favorite foods: Chinese barbequed pork. With all the food ready at hand, the foursome, which included Gary

Simmons, Bill Terada, Hank Mochizuki and Greg himself, sat around the dining room table this time, so as to hold the different platters of food close at hand, and began playing.

Caroline was watching TV in the family room.

“It seems you had a great time pioneering on that island of yours,” Gary said.

“Right,” Greg said. “Had the cabin built and all systems on go in a week’s time,”

Greg said.

“Probably wore you to a frazzle,” Bill said.

“You’re no spring chicken anymore,” Hank said.

“Nope. I thrived on it. The whole family did. It was all that clean air and special water that sustained us.”

“I hope you brought some back home with you, the water, that is,” Gary said.

“I did. What ails you?”

“Nothing in particular. Not right now. It’s just that being sixty-three is a pain. I worry about the cancer coming back.”

“Not to worry,” Greg said. “If it does come back, you can fly out to Pohnpei, hop on a boat and partake of the healing waters.” He proceeded to describe his brother’s cure. Gary

250 was impressed. He went on to talk about what they did during the summer, how they explored the cave and its art, examined the wrecked P-47 Thunderbolt and engaged in

Takanori’s howling session. Gary treated it as a joke, saying that a howling wolf just didn’t stir him to see freedom in the landscape the way it had with his cousin.

“Maybe that was his way of trying to reach God,” Greg said.

“That would be a strange way,” Hank said.

“I would think so, too,” Gary said. “Prayer, yes, but—“

“Did you feel closer to God?” Bill asked.

“I don’t know,” Greg began. “It’s all part of a bigger scheme as I see it, of life, its expression and everything we think and do. It all seems to fit together.”

“It all depends on how you look at things,” Gary said. “You take Joe Blow and put him through the paces and what he winds up believing is going to determine what he is and what he does. That goes for every human being on Mother Earth. How does he look at things? Through rose-colored glasses? Through a glass darkly? And he may come up with a two-and-two-makes-four universe or makes-five universe which doesn’t make any sense at all. I think most of us live in a makes-five universe. The rest of us strive to understand the universe as makes-four.”

“And those who strive will continue to strive,” Greg said.

“So where’s the problem?” Bill said. “God created the universe and everything in it.

Period. End of discussion.”

“But the good and the bad are always out of balance,” Hank said. “The good and the bad are always at war. There’s never any peace. Everything is cyclic.”

251 “Hank is right,” Gary said. “Everything is cyclic. Did God set the pattern? Did He create good—and evil? Does He allow evil to prevail at times? What has God to do with evil? Is evil a human construct? Are people naturally good? Why is there such evil in the world? It’s all a cosmic conundrum.”

“A conundrum that will endure,” Greg said.

“I beg to differ,” Bill said. “God set everything up in the Good Book. There’s no mystery. God created the universe and everything in it, including us, and damned us for our iniquitous ways. But then he provided us with a savior to save us from our sins, assuring us a place in heaven, There we will go after we die to be with Him forever after the second coming of Christ who will descend from heaven to judge us. QED. End of story.”

“That’s all too simple,” Hank said.

“Life is simple,” Bill said. “You just make it complicated by your confused thinking.”

“I envy you,” Greg said. “You live according to what you believe.”

“Darn right, I do,” Bill said.

“My mind won’t stand still long enough to resolve the question,” Greg said.

“The question being?” Bill said.

“Is there really a God and does God care?”

“I thought you believed in God,” Bill said.

“I do…in the Judeo-Christian sense. But the question remains: ‘Is there a personal

God?’ I’m still not sure. The jury is still out on that one. I’m still looking.”

“The eternal questor,” Gary said.

“I guess I am,” Greg said.

252 “Me?” Hank began, “I just let the questions lie. Don’t bother my head over them.

The big questions pop up, then die down. Is there a God, isn’t there a God, what am I good for? What is it all about? All that sort of thing. I don’t know and frankly I don’t care. I just let life dictate the circumstances and go with the flow. Like my becoming an engineer seemed to be the right thing to do. After a while all the pieces fall into place and I don’t have to bother my head about the big philosophical or religious questions. My attitude is:

‘Where’s the beef?’”

“There’s something to be said about your attitude, Hank,” Greg said.

“Yeah,” Bill said.

“Where’s the beef, indeed,” Gary said. “After a lifetime of trying your damndest, you can always confront the cosmos and say, ‘Got any complaints?’”

“Right,” Hank said. “That’s why I look forward to these poker games. The whole universe holds together when I eat and drink and play with my friends.”

“Hear, hear,” Greg said.

“Yeah,” Bill said.

The poker game lasted until one in the morning when they all packed it up and left for home. Caroline had retired earlier but had read past midnight. Now Greg tidied up after them and make ready for bed. The next day was going to be hard work day. He didn’t have to continue to work for Crosett, Bigelow & Tyler because of the income he received from the royalties from Marooned, but he had no way of knowing what the future held, so he continued to work with the idea of earning a handsome pension at the end. In the meantime, he kept on working on his book dealing with a layman’s theology for modern times, exploring the issue of God for the sake of assuaging his own religious curiosity and spiritual

253 growth. He was driven not by guilt or any form of self-flagellation but rather by a quest to know. He wanted to know in his mind and heart the truth of God. Was God a fairy tale or real? And what was real? His faith was real enough, but was the object of his search real— or not?

In the months that followed, the manuscript gained a momentum of its own and Greg spent more time on researching the topic—the quest for God and a post-modern relevance— casting his findings in a broad fashion to make a pragmatic point in layman’s terms. He wanted to clearly elucidate the question of the relevance of God in his own time, for his own generation, so that anyone, a lay person or an erudite expert, could obtain a sense of discovery and direction. The research he did in comparative religions, in current theological trends and in the evangelical movement provided the impetus for his prodigious thinking on the essential matter: Did God care? About humankind? About the individual? About history?

How about the Holocaust when six million of His chosen people were murdered?

Where was he then? If ever a people needed help, it was then. When an attempt to assassinate Hitler was made, He could have stepped in and made it succeed. Instead it failed and though the room was demolished, Hitler was merely shaken. He survived. Does this mean that God condones evil? Is unable the prevent it? Will not interfere in mankind’s affairs? Will always allow history to run its course? And let the pendulum swing as it will?

It would appear that God is an indifferent cosmic force, allowing atrocities to take place and unwilling or unable to interfere. What does that say of God’s supposed omnipotence and omnipresence? Where are you God when I need you?

254 Start with the undeniables. For those who are so disposed, there is a spiritual hunger to know God, to embrace Him and open up to Him like a wildflower in the field. Even for those who are not inclined to entertain thoughts about God, there appears to be occasions when they are struck by a unique experience which precipitates a quest for God. In Greg’s case, it was a buildup to the point of wanting and needing to know. He needed to know the contours of what constituted God, in the universe, in human life, in nature. His mind was always referring back to the Creator. His was the need to know.

The undeniables included the making of something from nothing. There had to be a beginning. Just as a house has to have a foundation, life has to have its building blocks which are its atoms and molecules, the units of all physics and chemistry. We refer to God as the progenitor of all things, a cosmic force that initiated the Big Bang. God was the prime mover, but the question arises, Who made God? To Greg’s way of thinking, God was (is) eternal. God has no beginning or end. God always was or is. And what had ensued is all a product of God’s mind, for consciousness does move matter. But that was as far as Greg’s own mind could take him. Was God like a watchmaker? Only to set things in motion and allow things to take care of themselves? Or was He concerned, in small ways and big ways?

Judging from his own life so far, Greg could only say that God was interested in him getting the best deal possible out of life in toto. In spite of all the setbacks, God was always there to make sure the outcome was a step forward in his life rather than a step back, judging from the concentration camps, his struggles to grow up, being marooned and the curse-breaking

Onimaru, the demon blade, the family heirloom.

To follow the quest wherever it would lead him was the source of his adventurous mind, for his thoughts of seeking God was no less an adventure than say an exploration of a

255 jungle to find a rare animal or an archeologist’s search for the missing link. The who, what, why, where, when and how all applied to his search. His was like a maze to explore; nothing was taken for granted. The battle between good and evil…was it endemic, inherently part of human nature or did God allow it? Or did God throw up His hands at the ongoing drama, letting it play out on its own accord? Or was the battle always fraught with a lesson, however public or private the affair? And God was the ultimate teacher, always teaching by example.

So the onus was on mankind, thought Greg. What have we learned? In the short run and in the long run. In the short run: Have we learned to withdraw our cocked fist in the heated moments of life? Or do we unleash it, as in going to war? In the long run: Have we learned to love one another as we would ourselves? Or does self-hatred still batter down the doors of decency and cause violence in word and deed? It would appear that man is an eternal student, having to learn how to grow up and accommodate the other with each new generation and having to learn the same lesson over and over again. Perhaps with artificial intelligence and its transhuman interface, wherein the human brain is linked to its computer counterpart, the learning process will be shortened and not made necessary, if the stage of marrying brain and machine ever does take place. Another something to consider in our evolution. What God will become and be then is the question facing future generations. In our exponentially superior intellect, will we recognize our spiritual selves as needing to be nurtured or will our understanding of the spiritual part of ourselves be surpassed by machine understanding? Will the search for God intensify or fall by the wayside? Will faith itself be called into question?

256 These were the questions that pummeled Greg’s mind. He delved into the major religions and studied their theology, ascertaining what God meant to different people in different cultures. He found a common theme among them: compassion and gratitude. But the sentiments founded in one’s worship of God did not seem to transcend cultural proclivities and lead to any permanent ecumenism, judging from the supposed Islam brand of active terrorism. That there are religious wars to begin with suggests that the I-and-Thou dichotomy is entrenched in our very nature and it will require much soul searching and good thinking to surmount our differences. It would be an act of the proper will and good intelligence which are in short supply in the world—in any age.

It was fall, the leaves were turning and the scenery around Big Bear Lake would be spectacular. This time Greg wanted to go alone, although he usually went with Brian and

Craig—when they were in town--or the poker gang. This time he wanted to concentrate not so much on his beloved fishing as on his quest. He would bring along his laptop to continue the manuscript.

That weekend, the drive into the San Bernardino Mountains was a languid affair; traffic was not heavy. The flaming reds and golds and browns bordered the way up to the lake which was nestled in a hollow among the hills. Greg stopped the car and proceeded to the dock to rent a boat for the day. The sky was clear, the sun was out with the billowing cumulus clouds marching across the blue expanse. Altogether it was a good day for contemplation—and writing.

He got into the boat, started the motor and cruised toward the center of the lake where he had a 360 degree view of his surroundings. Only perfunctorily did he cast a fly into the placid lake stirred lightly now and then by a faint breeze. He would pick up the pole only if a

257 fish struck, but his attention was on the manuscript. He broke open the laptop and began typing, pausing now and then to check his notes and let his thoughts maturate. In between stints at the computer, he’d pause and look up and examine the quiet surroundings. Other boats began to collect on the lake, mainly along the west shoreline where the early morning fishing was good. The sun was warm on his neck and back and he removed the thin jacket he had been wearing.

He explored the question of God’s love of His children, His creation. Where did

God’s love begin and where did the lessons start? God’s love begins with life; God is life and life is the teacher. Life can be a walk in a park, but more likely it is like rafting down a turbulent river: rough water, then calm stretches and more rough water. Some people are caught in the rough parts longer than others; other people are able to remain in the calmer parts. But we all have to play the hand dealt to us and it is the wise man who accepts his lot and works within it. We can’t all be a sheikh but we don’t all have to remain a beggar either.

The depth of God’s love may be unknowable, for we are mere mortals, but when one opens one’s mind and heart to God, it is like opening the floodgates of a dam, releasing a measure of love needed at any given moment. Except on rare moments, God does not overwhelm. He knows our frailty, that we can absorb only so much at a time. For those who experience an epiphany early in life, the ensuing time can be fraught with difficulties. Rarely does the experience of life lead straight to success, except on lucky occasions. There is such a thing as luck and each piece of luck is a blessing and calls for a sense of gratitude.

Gratitude is the gateway to heaven.

A fish struck, but Greg was too late in picking up the pole. He recast the fly after a few false casts to dry off the fly and settled back to typing.

258 The day wore on. The clouds had been swept away; there remained a few wisps. But the breeze picked up and made the floating fly bob up and down. The colors of the surrounding hills challenged one’s sense of seasonal change; how could the chill of winter follow such a glorious afternoon?

Greg continued to ponder. What about Jesus? What role did Jesus play in the cosmos? Jesus was undoubtedly an historical figure who strode among mankind at one time in history and was such a charismatic person that he cannot be ignored. Jesus, an enigmatic figure. A divinely inspired human being, upon whom all the lines converged—of lineage, personality, cosmic force—who was a healer, performing medical miracles, and a spiritual teacher and who, as Greg’s big brother, went to the cross, there to die to save Greg from himself, for Greg was a self-doubter, always putting himself through the harsh traces, examining himself under a microscope, often castigating himself for his mistakes. Christ saved him from himself. In a way, Bill Terada and he were on the same page: Bill was a fundamentalist and Greg, a Christian humanist. They both believed in Christ but in different ways—which was fine with Greg.

Sitting alone in the boat, Greg made fine progress on his manuscript that day.

The day was waning. What was he going to do with the manuscript? Get it published? He knew it would be difficult, for he was not a noted scholar or theologian—just an attorney who wanted to somehow place God in the lives of his contemporaries, to make God relevant again and to open a discussion of God at a time when God was dead or moribund. Short of publishing the manuscript, Greg thought he could put together a blog and share his ideas on the Internet, which could have more of an effect among the reading public than publishing a hard copy which might not be well-received—so he thought.

259 The sun was setting. The westerly sky had reddened into a band of layered crimson, reflected off the belly of the accumulating clouds, and the horizon was ablaze with a color that rivaled the brilliance of the deciduous trees surrounding Big Bear Lake. After reeling in his line, Greg closed the laptop and started the motor. He had caught nothing that day. That was all right. He hadn’t come out to fish. He had come to spend the day by himself in contemplation and writing and he was satisfied with the progress he had made.

Arriving at the dock, Greg shrugged into his jacket, retrieved his gear and laptop and made his way back to the Camry. It was close to six and the shadows of the tall trees fell across the road as he sped back home. It would be a two-hour drive, not long but long enough to work up an appetite for a late dinner with Caroline, who said she would wait for his return to dine together.

260 Chapter Sixteen

Several years later, Greg brought up the subject of going to the island for their vacation. Caroline balked and said that they didn’t want the trip to become boring which it would have if they made the Sonoda Island their sole destination point as they had in the past. This time around, she suggested Europe instead.

“But we’re just getting used to our island,” Greg said. “We’re not through pioneering our second home yet.”

“Maybe you’d like to go at it as a pioneer, darling, but we’re reaching the retirement age and I want to see the rest of the world…England, Germany, Russia and don’t forget

Japan, China and Korea and the whole Southeast Asia.”

“Well, I guess I’m with you there, honey. Sure, Sonoda Island can wait but—“

“We can visit it alternately, switching from going there and traveling to different parts of the world. We’re getting older. But not too old to fit in everything we want to. Why, we might live to be a 100 what with the water to sustain us. If it can cure cancer, it can cure anything, certainly. It’s our anti-ageing elixir and to think we have exclusive rights to it— our own fountain of youth.”

“It has been a stupendous discovery,” Greg said. “I feel kind of guilty hoarding it all to ourselves and keeping it a secret.”

“Do you want to tell the world about it?” Caroline asked.

“Well, I do and I don’t. I do because that would be the noble thing to do, to benefit mankind. On the other hand, to commercialize it and make it available to the world would be

261 to exhaust the supply and it would be an off and on proposition, seasonal at best. So I don’t know.”

“I say benefit ourselves first, honey, and let the world fend for itself.”

“That doesn’t sound like you, Caroline,” Greg said, somewhat taken aback.

“Oh, I know it sounds selfish,” she said, “but I’ve come to the conclusion, about life and everything about it, that you’ve got to look out for number one. I guess I say that because I’m getting older—we’re getting older—and the kids are grown up and have families of their own. At least Brian does. Craig just got married and will make us grandparents again in short order, I hope. But they live in different parts of the country, away from home, and their yearly visits aren’t enough. I get lonely with you at the office all day and working on your manuscript at night. Sometimes I feel it’s just the dog and me. Maybe selfishness and old age go together.”

“At sixty-five, I’m just getting started, honey, and you are a young sixty-three. And just as beautiful as when I first met you.”

“Oh my. You do know how to flatter a woman, me with my nearly white hair.”

“It becomes you.”

“And your gray makes you look distinguished, too.”

“Well, which part of the world would you like to travel to? Your choice, honey.”

“Let’s see now. Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe somewhere in Europe.”

“How about Asia…Japan?”

“I know you’d like to visit Japan again. How long has it been? You came back in

1959 after spending four years in postwar Japan and went back in 1968 on a short business

262 trip mandated by the office and that’s it. My, it seems like only yesterday that we saw you off at the airport.”

“For $10,000 we could have a fine vacation there. Just the two of us. Like on our second honeymoon.”

“I can think of a better place for a second honeymoon. England, the land of my ancestors—my father’s side. And Scandinavia, as far as that goes. That would cover all my relatives on my mother’s side.”

Since cost was irrelevant, Greg saw no objection to going to England and

Scandinavia. It was just a matter of deciding when.

“The month of September is generally a slow month at the office,” Greg said, “and we can schedule a trip to England and Scandinavia sometime toward the end of that month when we have a better idea of how things look. So it’ll be in the latter part of September.”

Caroline agreed. September was three months off, but it would give her more than enough time to prepare for the trip, even do research into her background to see if there were any relatives alive in England and Scandinavia. She remembered nothing of her grandparents, their having died before she was born, but there must have been someone in the old country that knew her father before he emigrated to the United States. He was a latecomer who had gone to the Northwest to work as a lumberjack and a farmer, before moving to California. Caroline recalled hearing him mention an older brother: there must be cousins still alive. As far as her mother was concerned, her maiden name was Larsen and she had relatives in Denmark whom she corresponded with frequently. It probably would require little effort to delve into her background and explore her family tree. The idea excited

Caroline, an only child whose childhood was one lonely affair.

263 As though to make up for her childhood, Caroline immediately began to look into her family history on the Internet. First, she concentrated on her father’s brother whose name was Samuel Lister. It was easy enough to track him down; he was deceased. She knew she had the right Samuel Lister, because her father’s name was listed as one of his siblings.

There were three children in all. The third sibling was a sister, also deceased. A number of cousins were listed; they were mostly all alive, some her and Greg’s age. The Mormon website was a great resource and help. Poking around even further online, she discovered the address of one of her cousins, an Allen Lister, age sixty-six, and decided to contact him immediately. She wrote him a letter, instead of calling, since she felt a phone call out of the blue would be too abrupt to begin with but said in the letter that she would call if she didn’t hear from him in two weeks.

Two weeks passed, so she didn’t hesitate to call. The phone was picked up on the fourth ring and a gruff man’s voice answered.

“Hello, Allen here.”

“Hi, I’m Caroline Sonoda, Tom Lister’s daughter.”

“Tom, my uncle who went to America after WWI?”

“That’s right. The very same.”

“Is he still alive?”

“No, he died ten years ago. I’m calling like I said I would because I didn’t hear from you.”

“The missus is sick and I couldn’t get around to it.”

“I see, nothing serious I hope.”

264 “It could have developed into something serious like pneumonia but just degenerated into a bad croup.”

“I’m glad to hear that…I mean, I’m glad it was contained.”

“Yes. When are you flying over?”

“In another couple of months, toward the end of September…if that’s all right with you.”

“I’m still working, but I can make time to see you. You coming alone?”

“No. There’ll be me and my husband, Greg.”

“What kind of name is Sonoda? African?”

“No, it’s Japanese. He’s a Japanese American, an attorney.”

“I see.”

She paused, then said: “What kind of work do you do?”

“I work in textiles. Woolens.”

“It must be an exciting trade.”

“It can be. I own a small factory.”

“Must keep you busy.”

“It does.”

“Well, I may be calling you again before we fly out. But goodbye for now. We’ll see you soon.”

“Nice talking to you.”

She replaced the phone and wondered about his tone of voice. Was it just her suspicion or was there hesitancy in his responding to the fact that Greg was Japanese

American? Caroline wasn’t sure. Maybe she was overreacting, because he was a new

265 acquaintance and she had been sensitized in the past. Whichever was the case, she knew it wasn’t important. She was married to the best man in the world. Whatever the world had in the way of criticism of him would be unfair and unjust, she thought. Of course, she was prejudiced…ever since they first met. Even after all the years they had been married, she still had a crush on him. She decided to read up on Halifax in Yorkshire county where Allen

Lister lived and get a taste of the city as far as research could provide it, without actually sojourning there.

Greg continued work on his manuscript off and on without going at it on a consistent basis, devoting more time to Caroline and her needs. Ever since she told him about her state of mind, of feeling neglected because he was absent most of the day and worked on his writing at night, he vowed to pay more attention to her and spent more time going out to dinners and a movie or two on weekends. His continued attention brought her out of the doldrums and also worked to help him in his writing, because it allowed his mind to freewheel. When he did sit down in front of the computer, he was able to hit the road running.

On a Sunday when he had finished helping Caroline out gardening—tilling the plot, yanking out weeds, planting and transplanting—he broke open the laptop, sitting in his office, and began typing the manuscript. He was beginning to explore the issue of God’s role in morality. Was God even needed? It could be said that God was the repository of all goodness and that all good flowed from God. But what about moral objectivism, the idea that good lay outside of godly concomitants? Was the concept of heaven and hell necessary

266 to keep man on the straight and narrow? What if one did not accept either heaven or hell?

What if one did not accept the notion of eternal life?

The what-if’s and what-about’s compounded themselves. What about spirit energy?

Does it disappear at the moment of death or does it join a vast reservoir of species consciousness? (The Hindus and Buddhists believe we can be reincarnated in any living form, such as worms and plants, depending on karma, but that would be crossing the species barrier.) It has to go somewhere because the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred or transmuted. Is that somewhere heaven and eternal life? If consciousness survives the death of the brain, what form does it take, if any?

Or does it remain the same…the same consciousness as when alive as a human being?

These and many more questions impinged themselves on Greg’s mind. He didn’t know where to begin. Begin at the point of the greatest return. Which would be—the perfected humanist, in the secular sense. The perfected humanist would be a person who took responsibility for his own evolution as a human being. He would want to be a moral man in the sense of marshaling all his assets toward the end of realizing his full potential as a human being. You cannot cheat on yourself and expect to be a perfected humanist. And if you are honest with yourself, you will be honest with others—within reason. Any kind of crookedness one finds within oneself only poses a challenge to straighten it out in order to achieve perfection. But perfection may not be achievable; one may always fall short, except in the mastery of music and gymnastics. However, the mastery of music and gymnastics cannot compare with self-mastery which goes into realms that are ever so much more complex and elusive in the sense that they are inherently spiritual, mental and emotional in nature.

267 Taking responsibility of one’s evolution as a human being. What does that imply? It implies first of all coming up with a definition of what it means to be human. The ostensible definition would be that we are sentient biological beings. But beyond that what are we? We are spiritual beings, pure and simple, and we are emotional, mental and physical beings as well, in that order of importance. Too many people emphasize only the physical and mental aspects at the expense of the spiritual and emotional. A wise man will seek to balance all four and give them equal attention.

To take responsibility for one’s evolution also implies recognizing the different parts that make up the self—the Lesser Self and the Greater Self—and mentally (consciously and intellectually) guiding the development of the total personality to its completion. It is the holistic person that is aimed for, and it is in essence a quest to enable the Greater Self to live in harmony with the Lesser Self. The Greater Self responds to the numinous and its promptings; the Lesser Self follows the material needs dictated by the appetites and the ego, the mini-ego, not the greater ego.

There is great adventure—the most immediate and exciting adventure—in embarking upon a quest to know oneself and to guide oneself to self-completion. There are unforeseen traps, pitfalls and stumbling blocks along the way, but there are also progressively higher and higher plateaus one can attain as in an upward spiral of self-development that is a continual climb up the ladder of perfection—always just out of reach. Therein lies the adventure—it is always just out of reach—thus making the exploration of the self and its value a never-ending adventure, much like breaking new ground to blaze a trail through the wilderness, this time the wilderness of the mind and heart as guided by one’s spirit or soul.

268 The soul is old and wise. Submit to it a question and it will always come up with the right answer, appropriate for the needs of the moment and incisively applicable to the problem at hand. It will never fail to wrap its arms around you in a warm, understanding embrace.

In the latter part of September, Greg and Caroline flew from LA to London on their first leg of a trip that would end in Copenhagen, Denmark when they were going to visit

Marie Larsen, the sister of Caroline’s mother. But first they were going to see Allen Lister in

Halifax where he ran a textile factory, woolen textiles being the mainstay of the Lister family in Yorkshire for centuries. Once arriving in London, they had a two hour layover before transferring to a plane that landed at Leeds Bradford International Airport, a short distance away from Halifax. They rented a car to drive there.

Allen Lister lived in a mansion with a long driveway leading to the entrance. They drove through the landscaped garden and parked their car in front. Dragging their luggage behind them, they knocked on the door and waited for a few moments when it was opened by the butler in uniform. They identified themselves and were shown into a study, there to peer at the pictures on the wall, especially a life-size one above the fireplace. There were footsteps behind them, and they turned to face a large man who stood a couple inches taller than Greg and towered above Caroline.

“Hello, I’m Allen Lister, and you must be Caroline and Greg Sonoda,” he said in a deep-throated voice.

“We’re so glad to finally meet you,” said Caroline.

269 “Yes, it’s a pleasure,” Greg said as he took the large hand of the man and shook it, experiencing a crushing grip. Greg wondered if his grip was always that strong.

“So, how was your flight?” Lister asked, rather gruffly.

Caroline said the layover in London was a bit tedious but that the flight into Leeds

Bradford was pleasant enough and they had made a new acquaintance aboard the flight with a person who lived in north Bradford. Caroline decided that the Lister’s gruffness was part of his character.

“You’ll find the people of Yorkshire friendly and hospitable,” Lister said and motioned them to sit. “Can I interest you in a spot of tea?”

They said they could use a cup of tea, although Greg preferred coffee, but he was willing to go along with the English custom. Lister called the butler.

“Yes,” said Caroline, “Mr. Borden on the plane was very friendly and talked about what a fine place Halifax was to raise a family.”

“In Halifax we have quite a mixed population of Middle Easterners, Asians, East

Indians, Muslims and other foreign cultures represented here. We have learned to get along well with each other. We’re a mixed bag here: Celts, Britons, Angles, Vikings—yes,

Vikings—Normans. And we regard Yorkshire as ‘God’s Own Country’ and have our own dialect, flag and symbol, a white rose on a purple background. But we’re not insular. Not at all. We’ve achieved world fame in a number of fields of endeavor. In literature, for example. We’ve produced the Bronte sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne, a champion boxer and other luminaries. We’re known for our textiles and confectionaries, mainly chocolates, and our landscape, our scenic pride, is second to none. Yes, you might say we lean toward

Yorkshire as a whole.”

270 Lister thanked the butler for bringing the tea and said he would do the pouring.

“We must see part of your jewel while here,” said Caroline.

“You couldn’t do better than to visit Halifax Minster to get the history of the area and

Shibden Hall and Park. Also, Wainhouse Tower and Halifax Playhouse to take in a concert.

How long will you be here?”

“About a week, then we fly to Copenhagen to visit Caroline’s elderly aunt,” replied

Greg.

“I see. Enough time to take in the major sights. By the by, what would you like for supper—or dinner, as you might call it? My cook, Mr. Chen, can cook anything you wish…a steak, kabobs, Japanese cuisine. Anything.”

Caroline looked at her husband, then shrugged and said: “Anything…your local cuisine would be just fine.”

“All right, then, we’ll have Yorkshire Pudding, which is essentially a roast beef dish, with all the fixings to give you a taste of our local favorite.”

“Sounds good,” Greg said, always eager to expand his culinary experiences.

Caroline looked at the pictures hanging on the wall and indicated one by the west window. “Is that your factory?” she asked.

“Yes, it is.”

“I thought you said you owned a small factory.”

“That is small compared to the one in Bradford, which, however, is shut down.”

“It must keep you very busy,” Greg said.

271 “I’m still a working man. I don’t think I’ll ever retire. I’ll just keep on working, I’m afraid, till I drop. My sons are eager to take over but I’m not ready to step aside, if ever that day comes. So what kind of work do you do?” He directed the question to Greg.

“I’m an attorney with a big law firm, Crossett, Bigelow & Tyler, in LA. In

California.”

“He’s a partner,” said Caroline, proudly.

“I see. I do know where LA is, everybody does,” Lister said, gruffly. He seemed to shake his hoary head. “Were you part of America’s concentration camp experience?”

“Yes, I was, as a boy of nine.”

“He survived it, though,” Caroline said.

“I can see that, but I imagine it was no fun being betrayed by one’s own government.”

“No, it wasn’t. It created all kinds of problems.” Greg wanted to brush off the question of betrayal by saying merely that they had a good time in the camps with free food and lodgings, but thought better of it and kept the sarcasm to himself. He decided he couldn’t be fond of Caroline’s cousin.

“Cousin George died at the hands of the bloody Japs,” Lister began. “He was in that prison camp they made a movie of, The Bridge on the River Kwai. I understand he was beaten to death by the Japs and then stabbed with a bayonet to make sure he was dead.

Bloody Japs!”

Greg cleared his throat loudly. Was he going to let it slide? Or was he going to confront the familiar issue, one of mistaken identity? He paused for a moment, then began to speak.

“Er…I hope—“ He was cut short.

272 “Oh, I know. I let my bitterness spill out even today. But I can’t get over the fact that George who was my favorite cousin, more like an older brother to me, could die in such a manner. It was a waste of a promising life, to be beaten to death and dispatched in such a horrific fashion. Multiple times. I got it straight from an eyewitness and Saito, the commander of the camp, got away with it scot free, not that he was the perpetrator, but it was under his command. I don’t know if the noncom who committed the act was even reprimanded—or congratulated, as far as that goes.”

To change the subject, Caroline intervened: “Where is Mrs. Lister? Is she still unwell?”

“She had a relapse and is still in a delicate way—not that way, I assure you,” Lister said. “But she’ll be joining us for supper.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting her,” Caroline said.

“She’ll be happy to talk to you, I’m sure,” Lister said. “Ever since her original bout with what we thought was pneumonia, she hasn’t been well and lay couped up in her room, reading and emailing her friends. She must write fifty emails a day, she has such a wide acquaintanceship.”

He got to his feet and stepped over to his desk to pick up what appeared to be a thick photo album. He placed it on the coffee table and opened it.

“Here’s a picture of your father, Caroline, when he was a soldier with the Twentieth

Light Division. I understand he earned a medal for bravery, the Distinguished Service Order.

He attained the rank of Lieutenant and spent time in the trenches at Marne.”

“My father never talked about the war, so I never knew he won a medal. I don’t recall ever seeing it among his belongings.”

273 “That is strange,” Lister said. “You’d expect it to be displayed prominently.”

“But it wasn’t,” Caroline said. “He was such a modest man, my father. And a good one. I can’t imagine him fighting in a war, even. He was the kind of man who wouldn’t even hurt a fly.”

“Well, that’s hard to imagine,” Lister said.

“After all, he had Viking blood in him,” Greg said, rather flippantly “and that should have made some difference.” He earned a look of annoyance from Caroline.

“Maybe the war took it out of him,” Lister said. “I know it did me. In Korea. That was my war to cut my teeth on. The winters were brutal there…I nearly lost my toes to frostbite. But somehow I survived. Wasn’t the Korean War your war also, Greg?”

“It was,” Greg said, “but by the time I got out of Officer’s Training School, the shooting part was over and I landed a pretty cushy job in Tokyo in intelligence. Compared to yours though—he added—it was an easy life with all the amenities of being an officer.”

“Enough of war talk,” Lister said and shook his large frame. “Gets my blood pressure up just thinking about all the shit I had to put up with. Let me show you my garden.

You probably know we English are rather partial to our gardens.”

All three rose to their feet and Caroline and Greg followed the huge man through the house and walked out a side door to enter a garden seemingly just put together at random, but

Greg knew it was anything but. Every detail was carefully planned. They walked out on a cobbled walkway and passed a trellis and a stone bench sitting among the acacia trees, shrub roses and tree peonies. The variegated flowers competed with each other to claim one’s regard and attention with their riotous colors before they faded away for the season, some only for a short year, others until their life source was exhausted.

274 “The design was taken,” Lister began and waved his hand to include the entire large garden, “after the Coton Manor Garden in Colon, Northamptonshire. It’s located on ten acres and mine at three acres cannot hope to compete, but I have all the elements right here, the stream, the hills and a partial meadow. Margaret and I often stroll the paths in the evenings after day is done.”

“This is such a peaceful place,” Caroline said.

“Yes, it is. Marge and I are quite fond of it.”

“The layout is unobtrusive,” Greg observed.

“Yes, we like to think we are replicating nature in a subtle way.”

Subtle? Greg thought to himself. There was nothing subtle about his handshake; it was crushingly painful—which may have been totally in keeping with the size of the man.

His was a prepossessing presence, and Greg could tell he was used to getting his way—with life and people in general. Maybe his welcoming handshake was to signal the person that he was in command: of the household, the factory, the people. The powerful handshake was indicative of a sense of power, suggesting the honed recklessness of a Viking. It could also mean that he was putting Greg in his place, that he was king of his castle. Or it could have meant his disdain of Greg as a Japanese. Greg refused to entertain that possibility.

They reentered the mansion, and Lister told the cook what to fix that evening. He turned toward his guests and said: “I’ll take you to your room upstairs, so you can rest and refresh yourselves. Supper is at seven. Come casual.”

Once settled in their commodious room, Greg thought to take a shower to ease the stress of travel and shucked off his clothes to change later into fresh casuals for dinner. He placed them neatly on the bed, turned on the water, testing it with an outstretched hand, and

275 stepped under the cascading stream. The water played about his body soothingly as he lathered down, and he soon found himself humming a tune from the Sixties. When he was finished, he toweled himself dry, got into a fresh pair of underwear and donned a casual shirt and slacks.

“That was refreshing,” he said.

“You were being rather snide, weren’t you, darling,” Caroline said evenly, “when you mentioned Viking to Allen.”

“Whaa—“

“Suggesting he was uncouth and given to violence…is that what you intended?”

“Well, no, certainly not.”

“What did you intend, then? One of your observations again?”

“Honey, what’s gotten into you? You don’t sound like yourself. You’re looking strange, too.”

“Nothing that a good bawl wouldn’t fix,” Caroline said finally. “I don’t know…maybe that last trip to the island was too much. I remembered what I felt when I first read Lt. Peterson’s account of his isolation and it’s bothering me all over again.”

“You mean his loneliness, his having to live with it day in and day out for thirty-two years.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what a person could have done to console him.”

“Well, a woman’s presence could have helped a lot, I suppose.”

“Maybe that’s what is in the back of my mind.”

“Don’t fret about it, honey. It’s enough that you have a family that loves you and would do anything to keep you happy.”

276 “Maybe the island is cursed, and you and the boys have built up an immunity to it, and I haven’t, being a romantic. You have samurai blood in you and so do the boys and I’m just an ordinary white woman, trying to stand on her own two feet as a person.”

“But you have Viking blood in you, on your father’s side. You’re of warrior heritage, also.”

“Is that what you meant when you pointed out the Viking connection?”

“Yes, I think it was. In fact, I know it was.”

“But it sounded snide, and that’s not like you, Greg.”

“Oh, I might have gotten my hackles up at the man’s brusque manner. Not much, but a little.

“That might be the local character of the people here, honey. They are direct and don’t smile a lot, but I think they are sincere. Their heart is in the right place, I think. Just think of Mr. Borden on the plane…he was direct in speech. But come to think of it, he did smile a lot…probably because we were foreigners and strangers and he was trying to make a good impression.”

“Could be,” Greg said, wondering innocently about his wife’s putting the screws on him. Was she trying to protect her cousin—as if he needed protection? Or was she having a relapse because of the last visit to the island? He tried to recall anything untoward that happened during the last trip. Nothing stood out. He dismissed the idea but wished he were closer to home in Redondo Beach, closer to Onimaru, just in case.

Descending the stairs to go to dinner, Greg and Caroline talked about the pictures they had seen in the album about her father, her aunt and another uncle and Greg noted that none were still alive and according to Allen Lister his cousins were spread out all over

277 England, even in Australia, one cousin, according to Lister, having gotten into trouble and finding it necessary to move there. He didn’t elaborate on the trouble in so many words, just that the cousin had been seeing the daughter of an MP and gotten her in the family way, which was enough to send him fleeing off to the distant country.

Margaret Lister was already seated at the large table. She was a large, matronly woman in her early sixties with sparkling eyes and a petite mouth. She greeted the Sonodas graciously. They seated themselves, the butler helping Caroline with her chair.

“I hope both of you found time to rest,” Lister said, “after your lengthy trip.”

“We did, at least Greg did,” Caroline said, “but I was so excited by being in England that I just spent time admiring your garden from the window and reading about Yorkshire.

I’m looking forward to seeing more of the area. God’s Own Country, it’s rivers, valleys and mountains. This is so different from where we live in southern California, but it is somewhat similar to the northern parts of the state.”

“I can take you on a motor trip through the countryside tomorrow, if you’d like,”

Lister said.

“I’d like that,” Caroline said, “so does Greg, isn’t that right, honey?”

Greg waved his hand feebly, as if distracted by an insect. “Why, of course, darling,” he said finally.

Margaret glanced at Greg and spoke: “We have a Japanese gardener…you may have seen him working outside—Greg indicated that he hadn’t—well, he must have been absent in his cottage. But his name is Sunao Takeda and he claims to have samurai blood in him and that makes him practically a relative, I’d say. Wouldn’t you, Allen? He only nods his head,

278 he’s so busy eating. I know another Japanese in town who says the same thing. Are all

Japanese alike in that sense?”

“I don’t know about the other Japanese,” Greg said, feeling a little constrained because he was being consulted as some kind of expert on the Japanese. “But Takeda was the name of a famous samurai clan in feudal Japan and ruled the northern territories. They were known to be shrewd but fierce warriors.”

“So it could be true,” Margaret said.

“Could be, but Takeda is also a common name, so Sunao could be of humbler origins.”

“I see. It could be that Mr. Takeda is making it up,” Margaret said.

Greg didn’t like the position he was put in. To endorse Takeda as a bona fide samurai was an impossibility without proof of lineage (even that might not be adequate) and to say that yes, he might be making it up would make him out to be a liar or at best a man given to false self-advertisement and Greg didn’t want to jeopardize his position or standing with the

Listers.

“I don’t know if he is or not,” Greg said, equivocating, “but he may be telling the truth. I assume he is a fine gardener.”

“He is,” said Mrs. Lister. “We’ve had him for fifteen years now. He came to us as a transplant…an immigrant of sorts, you might say. He came first as a tourist, as a young man, then he came a second time, this time applied for permanent residency and came to work for us without experience.”

“He’s a fine man,” Lister said.

279 “I know he is, Allen,” Mrs. Lister said. “I just wanted to get Mr. Sonoda’s opinion.

“But he hasn’t met him,” Lister said.

“And maybe he’d like to,” she said and turned to face Greg. “Would you like to meet someone from your country?”

“For God’s sake, Marge,” Lister said. “Greg’s an American.”

Greg nodded in acknowledgement. It wasn’t the first time when his origins were brought into question.

“What I meant, silly, is his old country, the land of his ancestors.”

“Yes,” Greg said quickly to spare her any embarrassment, “I would like to meet him.”

“And speak to him in his own language, which you do speak, don’t you?” she said.

“Yes, I do, although I’m an exception. Not all of my people do.”

“How’s that?” she asked. “I would think that all you Japanese spoke it at home as children.”

“That’s not always the case,” Greg said, already wearying of the thread of conversation. “In my case, I studied the language at college in tandem with my degree in

Anthropology and used it as an interpreter-translator in Tokyo for four years. So I can make myself understood.”

“Fine, then it’s settled,” she said, covering her cough. “I’ll introduce you to Sunao after dinner.”

“I understand you were unwell recently,” Caroline said, “and gave Allen quite a scare, judging from our conversation over the phone.”

“I was…I was terribly ill. I was in bed for three whole months, in bed and coughing something terrible the whole time. It hurt to even breathe. But Allen was such a dear. He

280 tended to my every need, wouldn’t let our butler, James, carry the burden. No, he even bathed me.” She looked from Greg to Caroline with a taunt.

“Margaret!” said Lister, turning red, whether from embarrassment or anger, Greg did not know.

“Well, it was true,” she said. “Anyway, he was such a dear.”

“I can see where he was,” Caroline said, admiring her cousin for his patience.

“At any rate,” Lister said, “she’s much better now.” He looked at Caroline and Greg.

“How do like our local cuisine?”

“The Yorkshire pudding is great,” Greg said.

Caroline agreed.

“We’ll have Pomfret cakes for dessert,” Lister said. “Would you care for some more of our ginger beer?”

“Yes, I would,” Greg said.

Caroline shook her head: “No thanks.”

The conversation took a desultory turn and they discussed the fair weather they’ve been having, especially for that time of the year.

“The temperatures rarely exceeded 80 degrees and never went below freezing,” Lister said.

Yorkshire was indeed God’s country. There were mountains to the west, many rivers and moors and the valleys were picturesque and verdant. The region was like an immaculate garden sculpted by a divine hand.

After dinner Lister and Caroline retired to the study to look at more pictures and Mrs.

Lister took Greg by the arm to lead him through the back door to meet Sunao Takeda, who

281 turned out to be a slight man in his fifties, standing no taller than Greg’s chest. His skin was browned by the sun, having worked mostly outdoors, and his neat cottage was a single room containing a partitioned-off bedroom and a living area with a small kitchen situated in one corner. When he saw Greg, he bowed and instinctively said: “Konnichi wa,” after being introduced.

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Mrs. Lister said jauntily.

Greg watched her depart, then turned to the man, somewhat at a loss as to what to say, although he was comfortable enough in the language to address anything that might come up. Takeda was the one who spoke up first.

“Are you here for long?” he said in Japanese.

“Only for the rest of the week,” Greg said. “The missus came to visit Mr. Lister who is her cousin to learn more about her father, and we’re flying off to Copenhagen to visit one of her other relatives.”

“Sort of like digging into one’s family background, then?”

Greg studied the man’s features. He had the looks of a peasant. His broad forehead and high cheekbones framed a square face with deep-set eyes and a broad nose. Of course, thought Greg, looks were always deceiving and he could very well have samurai blood in him.

“I understand you come from an illustrious family,” Greg said, thinking of Shingen

Takeda, the renown daimyo in feudal Japan.

Takeda laughed sharply and looked at Greg with mischief crinkling the corners of his eyes.

“That was just to polish my image,” he said and laughed again.

282 “I don’t understand.”

“Well, I thought I could make a bigger impression if I told Mrs. Lister that I was samurai,” he began. “I didn’t want to appear to be just a nobody. I needed a job.”

“You came all the way from Japan to find a job here?”

“That’s a long story,” Takeda said. “Would you like some tea, coffee, beer.”

“Some coffee would be fine.”

Takeda stepped over into the kitchen and filled two cups from a pot. He handed Greg his. It was steaming hot and Greg blew into it.

“I made my second trip to England fifteen years ago,” he began. “The first time was with a group of auto mechanics who toured the United Kingdom, Germany and France to improve their skills. I was impressed by the British and the landscape of Northern England.

It is so much like Japan here.”

“But why did you want to transplant yourself in a foreign country? Postwar Japan surely has everything you need.”

“I was brought up in an orphanage. A British missionary lady by the name of Sarah

Thompson taught English at the school there, and I was her favorite pupil. She tried to teach me the difference between L and R pronunciations, but even after those many years of practicing, I never got the hang of it completely. She was so patient and kind. It was her kindness that saw me through my growing up years. Life in the orphanage was so lonely. I never knew my parents…I was place in a basket and put at the doorway of the orphanage or so I was told.”

“Life as an orphan, that must have been hard,” Greg said.

283 “It would have been harder if it were not for Sarah Thompson,” the slight man said.

“She would bring my gift in secret but the other kids found out and picked on me, they were so jealous. I told the missionary lady but she still gave me small gifts, mainly sweets after that, so I could hide them easily and eat them out of sight.”

“Bullying is a problem in Japan, all right,” Greg said.

“Yes it is,” Takeda agreed. “But after I left the institution, I sought work in repairing automobiles, mainly the European kind.”

“Because of the Englishwoman’s influence?”

“Partly. I was good at taking things apart and putting them back together again, and I worked as a mechanic before I went to England and Europe the first time in 1972. I spent the next ten years repairing cars and grew tired of the work and always dreamt of living in

England. So I emigrated here and was granted permanent residency after I found work with the Listers as a gardener. I was a greenhorn but I learned quickly and so here I am working with the plants and trees.”

“Do you miss Japan?” Greg asked.

“Sometimes, a little bit. But Yorkshire reminds me of Japan.”

“You have friends here, of course.”

“A few, but I am alone mostly. I like it that way.”

Sunao Takeda struck Greg as a self-reliant man who had a mind of his own and a will to follow his desires wherever they may lead. He sipped his coffee, then downed the last swallow and got to his feet. The two men parted at the front entrance and Greg made his way along the lit flagstone pathway, back to the mansion. He found Lister and Caroline still poring over the photos, and he joined them. Mrs. Lister had apparently retired to her room.

284 “Quite an interesting chap, that Sunao,” Lister said.

“Yes, he is,” Greg said. “We had quite a chat.”

“Came to me highly recommended.”

“Seems to be a very capable man.”

“I think he is. He entered the country as a skilled mechanic. But he didn’t know a thing about gardening. He picked up everything he needed to know in no time at all. I’m beginning to think that all Japanese are natural born gardeners.”

Greg only nodded. He recalled the time when his people were known as gardeners in

LA—and elsewhere. That was the only kind of work available to them after the war, after they returned from the camps. Even those with college degrees could not get proper jobs; they wound up as grocery clerks and errand boys.

The next day, Greg and Caroline spent a couple of hours touring the countryside first.

Then they went sightseeing and took in Halifax Minster. The large church had an impressive series of stained glass windows which depicted the story behind Christ’s crucifixion and St.

John the Baptist. They stayed for the organ recital given by an organist well-known in the region. He played on an instrument described in the brochure as the “Rolls Royce of organs.” On the ceiling were painted illustrious panels and in one section of the church was an established corner for Duke of Wellington’s Regiment.

They went on to visit Wainhouse Tower, conceived as a chimney for dye works.

Towering above the landscape at 275 feet, the highest folly in the world, it provided a panoramic view of the surrounding area. They lingered at the top after the long climb to catch their breath and take in the sights. The folly served no purpose at all, except to pose as

285 a decorative reminder of the rivalry between two gentlemen with Mr. Wainhouse winning out, and it was visible reaching skyward for miles around.

On the following day, they went to Shibden Hall and Park, located only a mile out of

Halifax. Shibden Hall, built in 1420, was situated on ninety acres of land that included a boating lake, tunnels, orchards, a small railway train and many different kinds of flowers. It housed a blacksmith’s shop, tannery and leather works, Victorian industrial tools, a brewery, an inn and a collection of horse-drawn carriages. It was the residence of Anne Lister, a noted lesbian diarist, who was born in 1791 and died in 1840. Shibden Hall and Park was designated a public park in 1926.

That evening they went to the Halifax Playhouse to watch A Midsummer Night’s

Dream. The Halifax Thespians put on its 70th anniversary production of Shakespeare’s play which Greg hadn’t seen since his college days—ages ago, it seemed. The two-story building housed a 260-seat theater which was home to the Halifax Thespians who had been in existence since 1927. They put on a professional, flawless performance of the play which

Greg could only judge according to what he had seen before. There were some words that were strange to him and he didn’t know if they were substituting their dialect for the original or whether he didn’t understand because of the accent.

After taking a day off for relaxation, they flew to London for a brief sightseeing tour, then it was off to Denmark. They landed at Copenhagen Airport just before noon and rented a car to drive to Marie Larsen’s house. Greg had to readjust his coordination back to driving on the right side of the road but it came back to him naturally and easily. It was just a matter of switching back to his Stateside habits. Driving over the cobbled roads, he noted that the streets were filled with bicyclists wending their way to work and play.

286 The address he had on hand showed an antique shop in the Norrebro district of working class people. Bicycles stood neatly in their stands. Greg and Caroline got out of the car and dodged the passersby to get to the front entrance of the shop. Inside, there sat an old woman in her nineties by the window. She rose to her feet when they entered with a smile on her face. She was slender and stood a little taller than Caroline.

“You must be Caroline and Greg Sonoda,” she said brightly.

“How are you, Marie?” Caroline said. “It’s so good to meet you.”

They hugged. Greg was about to offer his hand but wound up hugging her when she spread out her inviting arms. She was dressed in a simple blue blouse and a deep purple skirt.

“And how is my only niece?” Marie said.

“Only?”

“Yes, I have many nephews but only one niece…you.”

“I didn’t know that,” Caroline said. “Makes me feel special.”

“You are,” Marie said. “Come. Let’s sit inside.”

She led the way into the interior of the house where the living quarters were and sat in what appeared to be the living room with its sofa and easy chairs. There were a desk and a floor lamp in between the chairs.

“Did you have trouble finding my place?” she asked.

“I took one wrong turn shortly after leaving the airport,” Greg said, “but circled around to get on the right road. Otherwise, your directions were straightforward.”

“That’s good. The city is laid out rather well and logically.”

“I agree,” Greg said. “It should make getting around a lot easier.”

287 “Can I interest you in some tea?” Marie asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Caroline said.

Marie got to her feet slowly from the depths of an easy chair and went into the kitchen where she could be heard getting out the cups and saucers and putting the pot on the stove. Soon, she returned with a tray of tea things.

“Your mother, Inga, was such a beautiful child—her name meant ‘beautiful’—and she was my father’s favorite among all of us and that includes all the boys, five in all. We were a family of seven children, five boys and two girls. We are spread all over Scandinavia and Europe…I’m the only one who lives in Copenhagen. What remains of us is spread all over. Gunner, Arne and Hagen were killed during the war. They fought with the Danish resistance and were engaged in sabotage. They hated the Germans. Although the Nazi thought of us as their Aryan brothers, we didn’t think of them that way. We wanted them out.”

“What happened to the two other brothers?” Caroline asked.

“They were too young to go to war. Ditmer, the youngest, lives in Sweden and

Frederick lives in France. We seldom see each other.”

“But you do keep in touch?”

“Occasionally,” Marie said tersely and picked up her cup to sip from it.

“Occasionally.”

Caroline sensed a reluctance on her part and didn’t press the issue.

“When did Frits pass away?” she asked.

“Seven years ago. He would have been 100 years old yesterday.”

288 “A 100!” exclaimed Caroline. “You surely would have thrown him one grand party had he lived to see the day.”

“My husband would have been indifferent. He was sort of a quiet person, modest to a fault and never spoke ill of anyone. Except the politicians. They were his pet peeve. He loved to tear into politicians, because they were always fair game. But otherwise his policy was never to speak ill of anyone. If you can’t say something good about a person, don’t say anything at all, was his policy. That’s probably why he might have lived to be a 100. Maybe all that badmouthing of the politicians brought him down early (she chuckled). I’m ninety- five and I’m ornery enough to live to be a 100 myself.”

“And beyond,” Greg broke in.

“Maybe. Who knows,” Marie said and smiled. She got to her feet laboriously and walked over to a cabinet where she extracted what appeared to be a photo album. She sat on the sofa in between Greg and Caroline and opened the album.

“This is your grandfather, Sven, and your grandmother, Sophie. That’s me there on the left when I was three. And there’s your mother as a baby.”

She leafed through the album, slowly turning the pages and stopping to point out Inga and herself, the house they grew up in or Inga on a swing or at the park. Greg felt as though he were a stranger—which he was—peering into the window of a room occupied by unknown personages from the past (except for Inga) who had absolutely no connection with him, which was true enough except they were relatives of the woman he loved and that made them family as well. Too bad Brian and Craig were not on hand to witness poring over the old photographs, he thought, because it would have given them an expanded view of their antecedents and who they were, not that they weren’t already well on their way to

289 discovering that for themselves in what they were doing: Brian was a professor of American

Intellectual History and Craig, a plumbing contractor writing ferociously on the side.

Marie invited them out to lunch at Noma, one of the more notable restaurants in town, and in arriving there, they passed Assistens Kirkegard cemetery in the Narrebro district where Soren Kierkegaard, the philosopher, Niels Bohr, the physicist, and Han Christian

Andersen, the storyteller, were buried. Marie pointed out the cemetery as the resting place of one her children; the other was living abroad.

The unique décor of the restaurant greeted them as they took a table near the entrance and ordered koldt bord, a repast similar to the Swedish smorgasbord of cold cuts, cheeses, choice vegetables which was a national tradition. Greg also ordered a Carlsberg, a Danish beer that he read about in the guide book. He was always interested in the local beers and comparing them to his favorite: Kirin beer.

“How long do you intend to stay in Copenhagen?” Marie asked.

“We’re leaving tomorrow evening,” Greg said.

“And you’re going to do some more sightseeing?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Caroline said.

“There are so many things to see here,” Marie said. “Tivoli Gardens is one of them.

I’d like to take you there after lunch. It’s quite a place. Even Walt Disney was taken with it when he visited here. And then there’s Amalienborg and Christianborg Palaces, Rosenborg

Castle Gardens, Frederick’s Church. So many places but you can’t possibly take them all in in the amount of time you have here. Maybe a few.”

“We’re thinking of visiting the Little Mermaid Statue of Hans Christian Andersen fame,” Greg said.

290 “Ah, yes. Our Little Mermaid,” Marie said. “I overlooked our most famous icon, probably because it is so commonplace in our minds. It has suffered horribly the vandalism of political venting and outright meanness over the years. Chopping off the head, cutting the arms, splashing with paint. But we still restore it.”

Their meal arrived; it was served in a huge platter. They ate quietly as if focused on assuaging their immediate hunger, for Greg and Caroline had had a skimpy breakfast that morning before departing London. The cold cuts and cheeses went well with the beer.

Caroline had wine; Marie just plain water. Slightly taller than Caroline, Marie had clear blue eyes that looked out on the world with crinkly humor as evidenced by the laugh lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Her pleasant manner was probably at the root of her longevity, Greg thought, and he wished he could cultivate the same demeanor as he grew older. He didn’t know, of course, how long he was going to live but wished it would be a long, productive life. As long as he could stay busy, occupying his hands making things like his occasional woodcarvings and his mind writing, he could live to be a 100, he thought. But it was sometimes difficult to maintain a positive, optimistic attitude. His makeup precluded having a gung-ho attitude; sometimes he wanted to slough off and be a slovenly bum. But that approach was cut off by an overly stout self-regard that both sustained him and diminished him. Why should it diminish him? Because he was always fighting the opposite pull, that of self-abnegation which told him to maintain the low profile of an underdog. But he thought: “If you have it, flaunt it.”

They left Noma and drove to the center of town to visit Tivoli Gardens which was crowded with people that Saturday. The gardens opened in 1843 and evolved into a complete entertainment and recreation center with rides of all kinds, restaurants, and a

291 concert venue as well as the well laid out and immaculate gardens themselves, surrounding a picturesque lake.

Marie tired easily and they had to stop and rest often. But she was game; she even invited them to join her riding the Ferris wheel. They sat in a line in the compartment and when the ride reached its apex, they could see the entire expanse of the park and its layout from above the treetops. The park was well-planned and on its lake, there were rowboats making a circular route. In spite of being fatigued, Marie suggested that they rent a boat and row around…it was such a fine day with the warm sun to embrace them. They alighted from the Ferris wheel and walked to the rental office by the lake and got in a boat, Greg manning the oars.

After the boat ride, they went to a restaurant on the premises and ordered Danish pastry and coffee. They talked some more about their wartime experiences, how Marie managed the rationing, her brothers’ sabotage missions, Greg’s growing up in the camps.

Midway through their repast, Marie professed to be exhausted, so they got up and guided her back to the car. They hastened to return and drove through the streets, clogged with bicyclists, back to her antique shop. There they saw her inside. Chatting a few minutes longer, mindful of her frail condition, they bid her farewell, embracing her fondly, for it could be the last time they would meet. They would miss her. They then departed for their hotel.

The next morning Greg and Caroline hurried through their breakfast and drove to the waterfront to take pictures of The Little Mermaid perched on a boulder. The damage done by the many vandals mutilating the statue had been expertly repaired so that the restored

292 figure showed none of the effects. A similar figure had been set up throughout the world, in

California, Iowa, Utah, Canada, South Korea, Spain and other places.

Time constraints afforded them only one other spot to see and they chose Frederik’s

Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark right next door to Amalienborg

Palace. The church, known as the Marble Church, was finished in limestone and opened to the public in 1894. It is one of the prime examples of rococo architecture and inside its huge interior is the famous stained glass angel window along with its organ loft. Encircling the grounds of the church are statues of important theologians and ecclesiastic figures including one of Soren Kierkegaard, the notable Danish philosopher.

Their flight back was in the evening of that day, so they lingered at the church, took pictures of its ornate exterior and strode the distance of a block to take pictures of Frederick

V garbed as a Roman emperor astride a horse and of Amalienborg Palace itself. They had missed the changing of the guard known as Royal Life Guards who were similar to the Foot

Guards regiment of the British Army and were attired in the same red tunic, blue trousers and bearskin caps. But the king was not in residence at the moment, they knew, so there would not have been a band playing that day. Since they had witnessed the changing of the guard in

London in front of Buckingham Palace, they felt nothing had been lost.

After they returned the car at Copenhagen Airport, they went through the security gate and waited for their flight. Exhausted from their sightseeing, Greg wanted to doze and nodded off. He was dimly aware of the announcer’s voice coming over the PA system but did not bother to decipher the garble except to take note that she was talking about an incoming flight that had nothing to do with them. He just filtered out the noise. His mind was working on its own—freewheeling. He was summing up what he had learned from the

293 relatives, from Allen Lister and Marie Larsen. What seemed to be the common thread? That they were Caroline’s cousin and aunt? What did that have to do with him? He was an in- law, a small cut above a stranger. But they were his people, too. And he empathized with them, especially about how the war impacted on them. The war: it was one of the common denominators. The war had certainly impacted on him as a child, forming the essence of his makeup as a human being—and as a social being, or rather a being in society. The concentration camps were a pivotal chapter, the most important chapter, in his life. Their effects could not be measured in political, sociological or economic terms; they had to be gauged in psychological and spiritual terms to be fully appreciated, if at all. As a mechanism of self-preservation and self-defense, deeming the concentration camp experience a lark

(“We made a lot of friends and had three square meals a day”) is to yield to the all too familiar impulse to sugar coat an extreme, potentially devastating experience. A terminal psychological blow to the psyche that affects the entire personality would naturally rally the opposite forces of amelioration. What is extremely bad has got to be cushioned by a rosy attitude, a Pollyanna approach to acceptance and resignation. It’s only human. But in reckoning such an experience in cold, clinical terms, Greg was forced to assume a battle stance—against psychological emasculation and spiritual desuetude. At an early age, he caught the concentration camp experience straight in the guts and it was his urge to excel to get out of his underdog hole that saw him rise in life, in spite of doubts and self-abnegation.

It was time to board their flight and Greg and Caroline followed the other passengers, found their seats (they sat across the aisle from each other) and buckled themselves in. They waited while the remainder of the passengers boarded and Greg vaguely wondered what was

294 for dinner, not having eaten lunch. He looked at Caroline, caught her eye and said: “That was a good trip.” She agreed.

295 Chapter Seventeen

In the summer of the next year, work at the office was slow and Greg’s mind turned toward vacationing at Sonoda Island again. There was still a lot of work to be done: piping in water from the creek, installing a plumbing system, building an add-on room. He called his contact at Kolonai in Pohnpei to ship the material to the island before his arrival and was assured that all would be ready.

The Cotsen Institute people wanted to establish a dig in the cave and had been a frequent visitor to the site over the years. Greg made sure they felt welcomed any time they wished to come and offered the cabin for them to stay in during his absence, but they brought their own sleeping bags and tents to use, although they used the cooking facilities and the generator for lighting. Greg had brought in a larger and more powerful generator to augment the original one. With the backup system of batteries to rely on, the arrangement worked quite well.

Sunao Takeda was already on hand. Greg had persuaded him to relocate to Sonoda

Island to act as a caretaker during his absence and Sunao agreed to come, saying that he had been in one place long enough and wanted something new to move on to. He had no problem living alone, since he was basically a loner with few if any attachments; he could see himself as the caretaker in Greg’s employ for as long as he wanted him. Greg on his part welcomed Sunao as his Man Friday to look after things and do repair work as needed. Greg knew that he was good working with his hands and using a variety of tools, an ability that would come in handy when they installed the piping, plumbing and built the add-on room, as

296 well as a cabin for Sunao. He essentially hired him for his strong back and was glad Sunao had agreed so readily to join him.

Brian and Craig made it a foursome as far as a work crew was concerned. Greg didn’t think Caroline should do any of the heavy work as she had before. She would keep house and do the cooking and help with small incidentals, while the menfolk would perform the heavy work. Their two boys who arranged to take their vacations together signed on for three weeks when they would return to the States, leaving Greg and Caroline to spend the rest of the month of August on the island.

They flew together from LAX to Kolonai in Pohnpei, got on the usual yacht and in less than two days reached Sonoda Island. There they were met by Sunao. It was his first meeting with the boys and he spoke to them in English, thanking them and Greg and

Caroline for having him as the caretaker.

“I will work hard for you,” he said. “Anything you want me to do, just tell me and I will do it. No problem.”

Greg nodded and pointed to the pile of lumber, pipes and material which they would need to complete the projects.

“Is everything here?” he asked.

“I think so. I checked it against the list you sent me and the bill of lading and everything checks out, plus some extras, like more lumber than you ordered.”

“Good. We’ll start work in the morning.”

The work started with laying the foundation for Sunao’s cabin. Sunao proved himself to be a hard worker and was adept at using all the power tools on hand. Greg, his two sons, and Sunao worked side by side and they made good progress. With only half of his mind on

297 the job, Greg noted with some satisfaction that Brian and Craig were good at using their hands and put their back into their work as though they were experienced carpenters. The previous work in building Sonoda Mansion prepared them for the current tasks which were to include laying of pipes and plumbing—Craig’s line of work.

Greg thought of the future, how it was uncertain and problematic and how the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the fight against Osama Bin Laden could escalate into war. Fortunately, both Brian and Craig were established in their careers and lives, the way was clear for them and, as far Greg was concerned, he looked forward to nothing more controversial than a well-earned retirement.

And yet he was vaguely dissatisfied with the progression of events in his life. Could it be that the manuscript that hung fire would never be completed? Or worse yet that it would never see the light of day and gain an audience? Would it end up being a case of all that work with nothing to show for it? Even if it did, what would be the loss? It was still a good mental exercise that occupied his time and interest. But he wanted to somehow spark awake an interest in people to respond to an issue that he saw as paramount to the further development of humanity…that of delving into the question of one’s relationship to God. As far as the big questions of life were concerned, what could be more crucial than determining one’s position vis-à-vis God? Or in the final analysis, did that matter at all?

For two weeks they toiled and were finished on a Saturday. They took the weekend off and celebrated with a feast made up of pork, seafood and coconuts, their erstwhile fare on

Sonoda Island, excellently prepared in a variety of ways, all due to Caroline’s exquisite touch in the kitchen. They also had whisky and beer on hand. Sunao luxuriated in his new surroundings located close to Sonoda Mansion and settled in the cabin with its self-sufficient

298 facilities. Now that they had running water, they hooked up a water heater and had all the amenities of home. Thanks to the powerful generators they had installed they had all the electricity they needed. It was going to be a comfortable existence on Sonoda Island. With

Sunao as his Man Friday, Greg had no worries about things breaking down.

After the boys left, the trio settled down to enjoy their sojourn, brief for Greg and

Caroline and permanent for Sunao who thrived in his new environment. He loved to play his guitar. He could be heard strumming a song, a country ballad, and singing in a high pitched voice; at other times, he took the guitar to the top of Caroline Peak and because of the crystal clear air his voice carried down to Sonoda Mansion where Greg and Caroline were the beneficiaries of his excellent singing. His voice would ride the slight breeze and waft out to the surrounding sea as though it were a call, an invitation to come to his paradise to enjoy its singular position in the universe, a home now of isolation and repletion and a part of a great war that was waged between a continental power and an island nation. The flag marking the island and announcing to one and all that it was possessed by humans fluttered and snapped in the breeze. It had been uninhabited for eons but now had a population of exactly three— three humans who freely partook of its healing waters. When Greg had told Sunao of the healing properties of the water in an email, he lost no time at all to reply that he would come to be the caretaker and heal himself of his heart condition. He already felt an improvement.

One day there was a knock on the door. It was late in the afternoon. Greg was curious, not alarmed. If it was Sunao, he usually announced his presence by calling out at the door: “Gomen kudasai.” Greg opened the door and was startled to see two Japanese dressed in suits. What were they doing on his island? He figured that they arranged for the

299 same transportation on Kolonai to bring them to the island, but why? He asked them: “What do you want and how did you find out about my island?”

“From you brother,” said the taller one who had a longish face, deep-set eyes and thin lips. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Tamotsu Sugiyama and this is my associate, Bin

Kato.”

They shook hands. The shorter man, Bin Kato, looked stern with a frown creasing his forehead. His small eyes peered at Greg with hostility. Greg took due notice. He sensed that the men were up to no good, that the peace of the island was about to be disrupted.

“So you have found out about my island,” Greg said. “It’s no secret, of course, because of the book I wrote.”

He ushered them in and they sat at the table.

“How did you manage to get on the yacht?” he asked. “I gave them explicit orders not to accommodate anybody wanting to find the island.”

“I told the captain that we are friends of your brother,” said Sugiyama. “And money always talks.”

“What do you want?” asked Greg and watched Caroline slip out the door to fetch

Sunao.

“We want to know about the water here,” Sugiyama said.

“What about the water?” Greg asked.

“Does it have curative properties?”

“It does, if you want it to…all water has that quality.”

“But can it cure cancer?” Kato broke in.

300 “You see, we know your brother, Dan,” said Sugiyama, “and know he had cancer.

But he was cured after he went on a trip outside Japan and we deduced he came to this island a number of + years ago. From reading your book and how you cured your leg wound. We know it had something to do with the water here, his getting well and his getting rid of the cancer. We would like to bottle it and sell it. There would be a worldwide market.”

“You don’t look like businessmen,” Greg said, looking at Bin Kato who still wore a tense, belligerent expression.

“No, frankly, we are not your usual businessmen,” replied Sugiyama. “We represent a yakuza organization in Tokyo. Mr. Kato here is one of the lieutenants.”

“Is this a shakedown?” challenged Greg.

“Not unless you want it to be,” Sugiyama replied. “We want a legitimate business deal.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then we are prepared to use force,” Kato said, scowling.

“But, gentlemen, it’s such a small creek and will not sustain a large bottling operation. Even if we were to proceed, the source would soon be exhausted and your touted market would fold. Then where would you be? You wouldn’t have enough water to supply demand and if it is indeed the water properties, then you will have released a genie and the world would start invading my small island and destroy my settlement here. I cannot allow it.”

“I’d like to taste the water,” Sugiyama said.

301 Greg was in a quandary. If Sugiyama and Kato found the water as delicious as he knew it to be, they would immediately want to make a deal, more likely force Greg into making a deal on their terms. Greg couldn’t have that. He stalled for time.

“First, let me show you the creek,” he said. “You’ll see it is quite small.”

Kato looked suspicious. But the two men rose to their feet and followed Greg out the door. They took note of their surroundings: Caroline Peak and the large flag, the pigs wandering around the edges of the woods, the paths that crisscrossed the clearing. They entered the forest and walked the short distance to the creek.

“See what I mean?” Greg said, pointing to the eddying pool where he had soaked his injured leg such a long time ago. “You see it is quite small and will not support a large bottling operation.”

The two men merely grunted.

“But if we bottled just a trial batch,” began Sugiyama, “and substituted water from a different source—“

“Then we can still make a go of it,” Kato said. “Who’s to know the difference?”

“That’s right,” Sugiyama said. “Water is water.”

“I don’t think the water was responsible for my brother’s cure,” said Greg. “In fact, I know it wasn’t, because he used to go to a secret site on the island, an ancient cave, to meditate each day and spent hours in meditation. It was the curative powers of the cave that did it.”

“Meditation?” said Sugiyama.

“Yes, and we can go there right now. It was around this time of the day that he used to go.”

302 They proceeded along the path to reach the cave located higher up the side of the mountain and entered. It was dim inside, but their eyes soon adjusted. Greg spotted a flashlight left behind by the excavation crew and used it to illumine the walls. The two men were impressed by the paintings of various cavorting animals.

“So this is where your brother came to meditate each day?” Sugiyama said.

“It is. He spent a summer here in this cave meditating deeply and as you know the mind can and does influence the body and he cured himself of cancer by his own sheer will power.”

“That is typically like a Japanese,” Kato said, his expression softening, “to apply his spirit to solving a problem. And he succeeded. It’s a case of the Japanese spirit over an illness. It happens in Japan all the time. Why, I just read about an old man—”

“Then it wasn’t the water?” Sugiyama broke in.

“No, it wasn’t,” Greg said. “It was his own dedication to curing himself through meditation that did it.”

“But you said in your book that it had curative powers,” Sugiyama pressed.

“That was only because I had soaked the affected leg in clean, free-flowing water day after day until the wound was cleansed and had healed.”

He rolled up his pants leg and showed the men the scar.

“That is the result of the simple clean water treatment. Any source of water would have sufficed. All it took was repeated soakings.”

They left the cave and followed the path back through the forest and to the cabin where they sat at the table again with the two men discussing what they should do. Was their business on Sonoda Island concluded? They couldn’t keep the yacht waiting. What choice

303 did they have except to write off their would-be business venture as a total loss? But

Sugiyama’s eyes were lit with suspicion.

“I’m thirsty,” said Sugiyama. “May I have a glass of water?”

A spasm of alarm rose in Greg’s stomach. He got slowly to his feet, hoping that the fine tasting water would go unnoticed as the man was intent primarily on slaking his immediate thirst, and filled a glass from the faucet. He handed the glass to Sugiyama while

Kato motioned him that he also wanted one.

The two men partook. And gagged. Both looked as though they wanted to spit.

“How can you drink this?” Sugiyama shouted.

Both men stepped over to the sink and dumped the remainder.

“It’s so medicinal, so bitter,” Sugiyama said. “Nobody would want to drink this!”

Greg sighed. It was more a sigh of relief than what he wanted it to sound like: resignation. He shrugged nonchalantly.

“It’s a matter of getting used to it,” he said.

Just then Caroline and Sunao strode into the house. Sunao had a rifle. He held it at the ready and peered harshly at the two strangers who took note of Sunao’s short but powerfully built body. Kato looked startled—and concerned—but Sugiyama merely nodded at Sunao, recognizing him to be a fellow countryman. He smiled at Greg, gave him his hand, and bid him goodbye.

“So our promising business venture did not materialize,” he said, “but we know how lucky your brother was. He should have become a Buddhist monk. He would have become famous.”

“But not rich,” Greg said.

304 “Maybe not,” Sugiyama said and both men left the house.

Greg plunked himself down on a chair and clenched and opened his hands nervously.

He had experienced both a moment of trepidation and elation, almost simultaneously, as the two strangers drank the water. Again, he wondered what could be at work. Was it the

Onimaru effect that influenced the taste of the water or could it be that the water tasted bad in the mouths of the men who harbored evil intentions? Another conundrum.

“The men were after the water,” Caroline said, divining their intentions.

“They found out that Dan had come here and was cured, but they didn’t know how,”

Greg said. “I told them it was meditation and took them to the cave, and they were convinced it had to do something with it, after seeing the various paintings on the walls and ceiling. You have to admit they lend a certain atmosphere to the place.”

“That one was a yakuza,” said Sunao. “I could tell.”

“Kato, the shorter one. Yes, you might say he was typical yakuza. Even I could tell, in spite of living in Japan for a short while. But Sugiyama was also yakuza, although he looked more like a businessman. Certainly, a cultivated image.”

“And a forced one,” Sunao said. “I could tell both were yakuza. I’m glad I brought the rifle along.”

“I’m glad you didn’t have to use it,” Caroline said.

“But I was concerned about their tasting the water,” Greg said. “If they had found out how truly delicious it is, it would have doomed my efforts to steer them clear.”

“And they found it horrible-tasting,” Caroline said and chuckled.

“It must be Onimaru at work,” Greg said.

“Who is Onimaru?” Sunao asked.

305 “Not who, but what,” Greg said, “although it might as well be a who at the same time.” Greg went on to explain the potency of the curse-busting samurai sword in curing

Caroline’s ailment during one of the earthquakes to hit Southern California. Events had moved so swiftly since then that the incident seemed like ancient history, now alluded to in the light of yet another enigma.

“You are truly fortunate to have such a magical blade working for you,” Sunao said.

“It must have been in your family a long time, since I know miracles do not happen overnight.”

“You mean, one can’t just go out and buy a samurai sword, even one as notable as

Onimaru, and have it work its miracles.”

“No. I’m thinking that such a blessed blade has got to be the guardian of a family for a long time, hundreds of years, to attain such power.”

“It was wielded by the famous swordsman, Tsukahara Bokuden, a medieval cousin, in the olden days. That’s the one and only Tsukahara Bokuden who originated the Hitotsu- tachi Ryu of swordsmanship.”

“The one-stroke style of fighting?”

“Yes. He parries all incoming thrusts and unleashes one mighty stroke that cuts down the enemy. It’s a good stance to have. As an attitude and philosophy of life.”

“He’s good at summation,” Caroline said, breaking in for a moment. “He’s won many court cases with such prowess.”

“And I like to think it is partly due to my ancestor,” Greg said.

“Ah, yes,” Sunao said. “It is a fine thing to have ancestors to look up to. I unfortunately do not know any, being an abandoned orphan with no name. Takeda was

306 given to me by the orphanage, because, I think, it is of a famous samurai clan up north and the orphanage people wanted to give me some sort of start. Life was tough in the orphanage and if it weren’t for Miss Thompson I would have just dried up and blown away, like some poem she taught me says. She was a good teacher and taught me a lot.”

“I’m glad she gave you a good start,” Greg said. “Do you stay in touch with her?”

“I used to, but she died.”

“I see. How about the other pupils she taught?”

“Only one girl. The rest I ignored because they gave me such a hard time. They were jealous of me, because I was Miss Thompson’s favorite. She was always buying gifts for everyone, but it was to me she always gave the finest.”

“What does this girl do?” asked Greg.

“Momoko is a hostess and dance hall girl. In Tokyo. She started out in mizushobai and still is in nightlife. But I don’t hold it against her. She has had to make a living and get out in the world. I just don’t understand how an honest, simple girl like Momoko can survive in a jungle like Tokyo.”

“She must have gained her smarts at the orphanage,” Caroline said.

“That could be. She was always intelligent, always in the top of her class.”

“You must have excelled also,” Greg said.

“I could have done better, but I was always goofing off. I really lived off of Miss

Thompson’s kindness and attention and being the lazy type, I was always lackluster in my reading. Partly, it was on purpose—he chuckled—I wanted her attention all the time. She would read with me guiding me along the passages I would deliberately stumble over for her to correct me. I think she saw through me.”

307 “Maybe that’s why you were her favorite,” Caroline said.

“Could be.”

“Did she teach you about God?” asked Greg,

“Yes, she did. About God and Jesus Christ.”

“I’m writing a book about my search for God,” Greg began, “and I’m talking to everybody I can think of, everybody I encounter, as a matter of fact, and I’m asking what they think. You’d think that God and religion are taboo subjects to talk about today when all the people have on their minds these days is something to do with work, play and diets, but when I broach the subject, I’m surprised at some to the responses I get. Like one woman at the bus stop telling me that she doesn’t need to think about God, because God is always there for her whenever she needs him. All she has to do is pause a moment, any given moment when she’s under stress or worry, and give the problem a token bit of thought and then forget about it. She says it works.”

“I say such a person is lucky,” Caroline says. “I have to hunker down and pray before I feel any better. Prayer takes effort, at least in my book.”

“I have to agree with your wife. Such a person is lucky. She appears to be a natural.

But with me, I don’t know, except that when I try to pray I always have to wonder who I’m praying to. Is it to God who may or may not exist, my imagination of God, to my Self or to some higher up in the world? I don’t know. I want to pray and have assurance that I am heard, but that assurance is never there. I could be praying to the wind. Or I could be praying just to hear the soothing sound of my own voice. Listening to one’s own voice spelling out one’s woes is something of a solace in itself, I found out. So sometimes I pray to hear the sound of my own voice.”

308 “Yes, I understand your dilemma,” Greg said, “and I can appreciate your attempts at trying to understand the nature of prayer. Even if God does exist as the Creator of all things in the universe, how does He show that He cares for us, assuming he is even interested in us?

We are such insignificant creatures, struggling with an eternal poor self-image, that it requires a quantum leap in our imaginations to even consider the possibility that God could be interested in us personally.”

“Maybe that’s where Jesus Christ comes in,” Caroline said.

“That could be,” said Greg.

“But is Jesus a real person?” Sunao said. “It could be that he was a made-up person who lived 2,000 years ago.”

“There is ample historical evidence that Jesus was an actual person, a teacher and healer,” Greg said.

“And he performed all those miracles, like walking on water, curing the blind, turning water into wine?” Sunao said.

“I don’t know about all the miracles given in the Bible,” Greg said. “But I can only assume that many of them did happen, especially the healing of illnesses, while all the rest may be viewed as metaphorical, added on later.”

“Why do you assume some of them happened?” asked Sunao.

“It’s just an assumption,” Greg said, “but I’m saying that Jesus was a specially endowed person with great spiritual powers which he was able to bring to bear in healing a person of blindness, lameness and leprosy, even.”

“What about walking on water?” Sunao asked.

309 “I’d say that could be one of the embellishments,” said Greg, “since even God cannot go against his own laws of physics.

“And that goes for the resurrection as well?”

“I would assume so.”

“So you are not really a Christian?”

“I consider myself a Christian humanist. We have a long tradition of questioning the veracity of the resurrection.”

“But if God is God, He can do anything.”

“That is so.”

“So the resurrection was possible.”

“Possible but not probable.”

“What Greg is saying,” Caroline broke in, “is that God may or may not be all powerful but that He cannot go against the laws that He himself has established, and that means after three days of death, you’re dead. Period. I myself believe God is all powerful, so the resurrection is no problem for me. I accept it.”

“The whole point of Jesus is his dying on the cross,” Greg said. “He spent time on earth ministering to the poor and needy and then to fulfill the prophecy went to the cross as our older brother—my older brother—to die there to save me from myself. I can think of no more of a grand gesture of compassion for humanity than that, especially since most of us are given to extreme forms of self-flagellation which are self-perpetuating. I know I am.”

“I am, too,” Sunao said, “ever since I found out I was an abandoned foundling. It was quite easy for me to feel insecure about myself, even to…hate myself.”

310 “I have to confess that my 101 was my self-abnegation as a racial underdog in a white society brought on by the concentration camps. I really had to fight the idea that I was a second-class citizen.”

“And he has endured,” said Caroline.

That evening they invited Sunao to dine with them and he returned to his cabin to clean up. Toward the dinner hour he reappeared, wearing a fresh shirt and trousers, and sat at the table. Asked whether he would like a beer, he said, yes, and poured the beer in the glass placed before him.

"Kirin,” he said and took a swallow. “A good Japanese beer.”

“My favorite,” Greg said.

“You have all the comforts of home here.”

“You might say that, although it’s really just the bare essentials. For a civilized person. I guess we could have roughed it, you know, cook over a wood fire out in the open and all that sort of thing, but why, when I could do otherwise? So we have pampered ourselves and went American in our pioneering attempts. I wanted the outside world to know that this island belongs to me, Greg Sonoda, and my family. Therefore, the flag atop

Caroline Peak.”

“You can see the flag from afar as you approach Sonoda Island.”

“Did it surprise you?”

“Somewhat. All the other islands in Micronesia appear as ordinary islands. Green globs on the horizon. But your island stands out with the flag visible long before one reaches it.”

311 “I wanted to make sure anyone coming here would know it was inhabited, because when we were shipwrecked here, it wasn’t but had previous occupants, as I later discovered.”

“The cave people.”

“Yes. The Cotsen Institute is making a study of them. It’s been quite a controversial discovery.”

“You are certainly a well known American attorney, an author and discoverer.”

“All due to luck and a disaster.”

“The shipwreck?”

“Yes, I didn’t know if we would be rescued or not.”

“I’m reading your book right now and in it you say you cannot decide if it was

Providence that caused the shipwreck or just plain bad luck…or good luck as you summed up the experience.”

“I still can’t decide…well, I can and I can’t.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, to begin with it begs the question. Did God cause the storm and the shipwreck or did God step in later to cause the rescue? It was after repeated attempts on my part to bring about a rescue by lighting signal fires atop of Caroline Peak. Then there was a big storm, one of the biggest we had, that happened to knock an airliner off course just enough to see the smoke from the fire that happened to keep burning in spite of the rain. I had built a huge one in anticipation to withstand the rainfall. Was it God’s hand at play or my own astuteness? I don’t know. But as the saying goes: God helps those who help themselves.”

“But God help those who do help themselves! Miss Thompson taught me that one.”

312 “Yes, indeed. God does work in mysterious ways. But I’m so full of questions that sometimes I undercut myself.”

“How so?”

“Well, I can question the simplest of things like bad motives in a client and see through dishonesty. But at other times I have to do a lot of double checking before I can draw any conclusions about true motivations. Getting down to the nitty-gritty is an art form,

I’ve decided.

Caroline served them their dinner and sat beside Greg. The fare for the evening was pork cutlet which was thick and meaty and the succulent seafood. The vegetable consisted of asparagus grown in the garden Sunao had started. Caroline was an expert in choosing the right seasoning. Greg ate hungrily; his appetite seemed to be spurred by the events of that day with the two yakuza threatening the peace of the island. It had brought out the fight in him.

Later that evening, they played gin rummy. Sunao was already an adept player. It was one of their favorite games that they repaired to after toiling the long hours building and installing during the past several weeks. They usually played with the joker which made the game more exciting, the joker filling in for any book or sequence. The rich aroma of their after-dinner coffee filled the room.

“The missus and I play the game often,” Greg said. “In fact, it is our favorite game.”

“You must win frequently,” Sunao observed.

“Well, I do and I don’t. But in the long haul, I think I win 75% of the time, which annoys her no end because of my victory outbursts at the end of each game. I just can’t contain myself…I even want to do a victory dance.”

313 “And when I win 25% of the time my “So There” statement shakes the timbers of the house,” Caroline said. “So I do get my revenge.”

“And when I win tonight, if I do, I will quietly smile to myself,” said Sunao.

“You go for understatement,” Greg said.

“Usually in everything.”

“Like in the clothes you wear,” Greg said.

“And in the food I prepare.”

“You’d think you’d be more extravagant.”

“Not so. I grew up in the postwar years when food was scarce. We only had sweet potatoes that the staff would buy from the farmers, and we cooked the sweet potatoes in a variety of ways to make them palatable, like boiling them, steaming them, making dumplings out of them with the flour produced by grinding sweet potato chips dried in the sun. We would place a slice of sweet potato in the molded dough made of the flour called kankoro and steam the whole batch. To this day I am not tired of sweet potatoes. They are nutritious and that’s what kept us alive.”

“I remember postwar Japan well. I was there in 1956, but Japan was already recovering from the war by then. Before that, my family in America used to send food packages to relatives in Japan, especially to my brother, Dan, since the people had so little to eat and were starving. I think that was the only way they survived, since all the staples were in short supply and rationed, especially rice, sugar and flour.”

“The devastation of the war determined my own attitude toward life and everything else. What we have in the way of material things now only makes me want to be frugal.”

“What do you mean?” asked Greg.

314 “I think Sunao means that the accumulation of material things only serves to remind him of the need to pare down and cut back,” Caroline said.

“That is so. There’s too much stuff. Every time you go out on the town, you see new fashions, new merchandise and new gadgets that make you want more stuff. And people will buy. More stuff. And they don’t need any more stuff.”

“But it keeps the economy going,” Greg said.

“I guess so. But if it was up to me, I would change the buying habits of everyone based on need. That way we would keep the landfills empty. And keep Mother Earth from becoming one huge dump.”

“Which she is in danger of becoming,” Greg said.

“Yes. Look at the plastic waste in the ocean. Almost the size of Hokkaido.”

“So your attitude of understatement is founded in excess. Excess of stuff and excess of waste?” Greg said.

“And scarcity of food during and after the war. For example, in preparing my meals I will strive for simplicity. A small piece of meat and a vegetable. For dinner. For breakfast,

I will make a small amount of rice and a bowl of misoshiru. And for lunch, maybe a single sweet potato from my garden—that was in Halifax—or several taro potatoes. Stolen from the pigs. I don’t think they would miss them.”

“The pig population is sure holding up,” Caroline said. “I don’t think we’ve made the slightest dent in it since we landed here.”

“We take so few at a time,” said Greg. “And they are so numerous that they can rebound at will.”

315 “Yes, Sonoda Island is indeed a paradise,” Sunao said. “I wonder what did the original inhabitants in. Was it some kind of sickness? How did they get here? You say there is evidence they are Stone Age people, but they were some of the most creative people in the world for their time because of their artwork.”

“We’ll probably never know,” said Greg. “They could be the ancestors of the

Sandeleurs who migrated from Nan Madol in Kolonia and brought along a time-bomb curse from the settlement due to the wrath of one its gods I read about. We just don’t know.”

“For the moment,” said Caroline. “Cotsen people may have a few tricks up their sleeves to unravel the mystery of Nan Madol and the Sandeleurs. Some were giants nine feet tall, according to one account written by an explorer who opened their tombs.”

“I seem to recall reading that somewhere,” Greg said, “while researching Marooned.”

“I’m at the portion,” Sunao said, “where you describe Lt. Peterson’s ordeal. There are many things there that I can empathize with, being a loner. I think his story is essentially everyman’s story.”

“How so?” asked Greg.

“Well, I think it’s everyman’s story, because he was cast on his own resources and followed through, in spite of his tragic circumstances and ending. Every man to become a man has always to be cast on his own resources and answer some basic questions and follow through. That’s the way I see it.”

“Hear, hear,” Greg said. “I fully agree.”

The card game continued on. They were playing for the score of 500. Caroline was leading with 350, Sunao with 280 and Greg with 150. Greg could just hear Caroline’s resonant “So There” ring in his ears. He was working for a Grand Slam to catch up.

316 Chapter Eighteen

It was in late August that they radioed Kolonia for the return trip. They had completed their building projects on schedule and Sunao had his own abode to live in— which is what he wanted. Always wanted. He had never had a place he could call his own, his own home, his own dwelling that belonged to him, and he felt that Sonoda Island was indeed a fine place to settle even though he was alone.

Now that he had a home that belonged to him, he thought of Momoko and wondered if she wouldn’t want to leave the nightlife of Tokyo and join him. It was a farfetched idea, he knew, but as far as he could determine she was still single. Getting on in years, to be sure.

But they were two solitary creatures who were drawn to each other and remained in contact all their lives since the days of the orphanage. Why he never proposed marriage to her he didn’t know, didn’t understand. Perhaps it was because he was always insecure and never sure of himself as a man. The orphanage provided him with a good education but little else in the way of interpersonal relationships which were marked by petty jealousies. It was partly his fault, of course, because he was always demanding and insisting on his own prerogatives. Couldn’t help it. As an abandoned child, he always figured that he had to make his own way through the world and be self-reliant if not self-sufficient.

Now that he had a house, his thoughts turned toward companionship. Momoko was small in stature, lithesome and beauteous. Her beauty earned her many boyfriends, even in the orphanages. But for some odd reason (Sunao wasn’t that good-looking) she gravitated toward him and showered him with her attention. She was on his mind when he saw the

Sonodas off.

317 Deciding to broach the subject of bringing a bride to the island paradise in an email,

Sunao helped carry their luggage to the west cove to embark on the large yacht which would take them back to civilization.

“Well, Sunao,” Greg said, “you can contact me at any time with regard to anything.

You have my email address.”

“Yes, I do, and I will.”

“Thanks for keeping an eye on the place. I hope it’s not too lonely.”

“No, I’m used to it, but—“

“Yes?”

“It’s easier if I wrote an email.”

“Looking forward to it.”

“Goodbye Sunao,” Caroline said. “Thanks for everything.”

“You’re welcome.”

Greg and Caroline boarded the launch that would take them to the yacht and bid

Sunao goodbye.

“Till next time,” Greg said.

“Yes. Have a safe trip.”

The sea was calm and the ship took the required two days to reach Kolonia. Greg and

Caroline got on the jetliner, transferred once and flew back home to LA where they were met by Craig who had moved back to be closer to his parents. Craig was still a struggling writer, his debut novel still hung fire while he worked on short stories, sending them out to literary journals and magazines to build a reputation as an up-and-coming literary figure. It was hard

318 work. So far he had sold only one story to an obscure journal. But it was a beginning. It kept him going.

Craig deposited his parents at their Redondo Beach home and left to return to

Pasadena. In the driveway was parked a panel truck with the words, “Craig’s Plumbing”, blazoned on both sides. He entered the house to be greeted by his three-year-old son,

Johnny, whom he scooped up and carried into the living room where his wife, Karen, was watching TV.

“They got in OK, I assume,” she said.

“Yes, without mishap. Right on schedule.”

“Sounds as if all of you got a lot done on the island,” Karen said.

“We did. I put in all the plumbing as you might expect, but Sunao was a great help.

He turned out to a jack-of-all-trades. Turns out he’s a fine carpenter as well.”

“Your dad did well to hire him.”

“Dad is almost prescient that way. He can almost see into the future, I believe. He can’t forecast the weather, naturally, but he can spot trends like nobody’s business.”

“How about the time when he almost went belly-up with that LaserBM deal?”

“That was an exception.”

“Of course, you’d say that.”

“But in the long run, he was right. As soon as the company got the patent business straightened out, it was smooth sailing, and he made a lot of money on the stock. The laser technology is out in the forefront of everything manufactured today.”

“I confess I don’t know anything about business,” Karen said.

“You just leave business details to the Sonoda menfolk,” Craig said.

319 “Suits me. I’m just a housewife.”

“And the prettiest around.” Craig kissed her and she grabbed him, pulled him toward her and kissed him back. Taking a cue from his father, Johnny crawled on Karen’s lap and planted a wet kiss on her cheek.

At the Redondo Beach house, Greg and Caroline were settling in for the evening when Greg decided to check his email. He discovered Sunao’s. It was tucked in between the political ads and Greg almost missed it. But he opened it immediately, wondering what it might contain.

“Dear Mr. Sonoda,” it read, “I’m sorry to bother you with a personal matter. The reason that I did not mention it to you while you were here is because I wasn’t quite sure myself of my own feelings. And I was a little embarrassed. Here I am a fifty-five year old man who has lived all alone all his life and I am just now thinking of a woman. But that woman is Momoko Sumida whom I mentioned to you. She has been on my mind lately. It’s not that I cannot live alone—I am used to it. But it would be callous of me to keep this paradise all to myself, and I have been thinking of sharing it with Momoko and get her out of the Tokyo jungle. I want to have her come and live with me—as my wife. We can get married in Kolonia. And we already have a house to live in, thanks to everyone’s effort, and

I want to add to the population of Sonoda Island: instead of one, make it two. (Hah, hah).

We will be just two permanent sojourners in paradise. Please reply at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely,

Sunao Takeda.”

320 Greg showed the email to Caroline. They both discussed the ramifications of adding another person to the settlement—and the legal aspects. Always mindful of lawsuits, Greg weighed the possibility of twisted health issues and accidental death. It was with a handshake that Greg had allowed Sunao to take up residence when they met on the island.

Sunao was fully responsible for himself—personally. But Greg promised to fulfill his end by providing the money to take care of his needs. He would be footing the entire bill regarding

Sunao’s livelihood and care. Can the same be done with Momoko, who was Sunao’s sole responsibility? Being Sunao’s responsibility, was he liable for Momoko’s upkeep or was it up to Sunao? If it were just a matter of money, there would be no problem; Greg had enough to last three lifetimes. What if he increased Sunao’s salary ten fold so that he could buy his and his prospective wife’s insurance, both health and life, and have some extra to put away?

Or was health insurance even necessary since both were Japanese citizens and automatically enjoyed insurance as provided by the government?

Greg and Caroline discussed the issue at length and came around to the conclusion that Sunao’s desire to share the Sonoda paradise with a long-time friend was perfectly fine and that they would provide the additional wherewithal to finance the marriage. Anything for harmony in paradise, which seemed to elude the original inhabitants. Who knew but what a harmonious marriage might not remove any curse or suspicion of a curse that the island might exhibit. A residual curse that lay beyond the potency of Onimaru—which was unimaginable.

Greg emailed Sunao back, detailing his thinking on the issue and giving him his blessing, ever cognizant that he was the boss and employer. Sunao replied back immediately, thanking him for his swift reply.

321 “Dear Mr. Sonoda, Thank you so much for answering my email. Today you have made me a very happy man. I will immediately contact Momoko Sumida in Tokyo and try to get her consent. I am sure she will agree. She has said in the past how awful mizushobai is in Tokyo and how much she would love to wash her hands of it but was trapped and how she was attracted to it like moth to light. She knows no other business. But as her friend all these years I am sure she will come. Thank you so very much.

Yours sincerely,

Sunao Takeda.”

With that bit of business out of the way, Greg and Caroline made ready to retire for the night. First, they turned on the news and made note of the wildfires creeping up the canyon on the path to destroying a number of homes. The fires were endemic and yet people insisted on building in their paths. If nothing else, it kept the insurance companies in business—and kept the premiums high. Other parts of the news included a nasty car crash on

Sepulveda Blvd, a confrontation between riot police and protesters, depletion of fisheries off the coast of California. Both sighed in resignation; the world as it was and will always be, thought Greg. Nothing would ever change. It will be the same ol’ routine ad infinitum: violence, accidents, natural calamities. Nothing will break the cycle, though there will always be the ebb and flow, the rising tide of upheavals and the low waters of simmering dissension, offering the elusory promise of harmony. But humankind was adaptable, Greg thought: We always accommodate our immediate needs be they political, economic, cultural or philosophical to the dictates of the time. We will always find a way out of the fix we have gotten ourselves into, like climate change. It may not be apparent at the moment in 1998, but mankind was bound to find a solution to the problems he has created through science and

322 technological breakthroughs. Greg was confident of it, although his confidence was tempered by his insights into reality.

On the last Saturday of the month, the poker foursome gathered at Greg’s house to spend the night playing cards. First to arrive was Gary who brought the platter of sushi; then came Hank and Bill, bearing a case of Corona, although Greg had stocked the fridge with the usual assortment of beers.

“How goes it, Greg?” asked Gary.

“Can’t really complain. Got a case of sciatic pain in my left leg.”

“But you’ll survive.”

“I will.” Greg limped to the fridge to put away the sushi platter for the while until they settled in to start playing.

Hank and Bill placed the case on the kitchen counter within easy reach and shrugged out of their jackets which protected them from the sudden October chill. They sat at the kitchen table where Gary was already seated. Greg came in from the living room after talking to Caroline about Brian’s promotion to full professor. It seemed to be some sort of record as far as the school was concerned to have a scholar advance so fast in the hierarchy.

When the men were all seated, Gary said: “I couldn’t help overhearing about your son, Brian.”

“He just got promoted.”

“In record time, it seems,” Bill said.

“Seems it was just yesterday he was an Assistant Professor,” Hank said.

“It’s been six years.”

“The school must love him,” Gary said.

323 “He’s made a name for himself, that’s for sure,” Greg said.

“Transhumanism must be all the rage in academia,” Gary said.

“Perhaps in larger schools,” Greg said.

“Broadmor-Little College is a small school then?” Bill said.

“Small but well-known,” Hank said.

“That’s true. It’s a well-known liberal arts school,” Greg said.

“It’s a Catholic school, isn’t it?” Hank asked.

“No, it’s affiliated with the Methodists.” Greg said.

“Don’t tell me Brian’s got religion?” Gary asked. “No offense meant, Greg.”

“No offense taken. I think he’s still an atheist or at least an agnostic…more likely an agnostic. But he’s loosened hold on his transhumanism views and questions the validity of tinkering and tampering—through nanotechnology—with the original self, the self one is born with.”

“What about medical advances made possible by nanotechnology?” Gary asked.

“I don’t think he’s against applying the technology to the human body,” Greg said,

“but when it comes to the brain and its possible interface with computers and consciousness itself, I think he has reservations.”

“Good for him!” Bill said.

“But if the brain-computer interface makes us smarter,” Hank said, “it will help us solve all our problems and make the world a better place for everybody, I’d think.”

“That can be done through crowd-sourcing,” Greg said. “Putting more minds together in a systematic program to solve any issue as it pertains to any problem confronting

324 mankind like poverty, overpopulation, climate change and whatnot may just be the way to go.”

“It may go a long way toward evolving our consciousness to be super-smart and help us understand even the mind of God,” Hank said.

“I can see your engineer’s mind at work here, Hank,” Gary said.

“That could be or it could be just my personal impression.”

Bill shuffled the cards and dealt out a hand of regular Texas Hold’em . The betting began. Greg was dealt a pair of jacks, a somewhat promising hand but not a strong one. At the flop, a five of clubs, seven of hearts and a jack of spades were turned up. So as not to chase the others out, Greg bet a modicum; the others followed suit. On the turn, a ten of spades was turned, making a straight or a flush or a royal flush possible, depending on the river. Greg bet the limit befuddling the others. Then came the river, and a jack of clubs turned up. The game became interesting. Greg’s four jacks could beat a flush any day of the week. Short of a straight flush, the four jacks could not be beat. But a straight flush or flush were not possible. The most his friends could muster would be two pair or at the most a full house: five, seven or tens over jacks. But even if they suspected he had a full house—jacks over one of the three numerals—they would have to fold, unless someone suspected he had a higher full house in his hand through a miscalculation. So Greg bet the limit: a whole five dollars Bill called and they showed their hands. Bill had been so enamored of his tens over jacks that he called on a sure loser. Greg smiled broadly as he raked in the sizable pot.

Poker was every bit a cutthroat game as was the LaserBM deal.

“How was your latest trip to Sonoda Island?” Gary asked. “As I understand it you went to build on it some more, right?”

325 “That’s right. The whole family and Sunao Takeda who is my Man Friday there.”

“How’d you find him?” Hank asked.

Greg told his friends of his visit to Yorkshire and finding him there as the gardener of the Lister family. He had impressed Greg with his trustworthiness and when Greg thought of the future of his private island, he decided he needed a caretaker and contacted Sunao to get his agreement to serve in the capacity of caretaker and all around handyman. Greg mentioned his background in the orphanage as run by an Irish order called simply the Sisters of Mercy. He was good at working with his hands, having worked as an auto mechanic in

Japan, specializing in mainly foreign imports from England and Germany. He seemed to eschew tobacco and alcohol, no doubt because of the influence of the orphanage and Miss

Thompson.

“He wants to get married—he’s fifty-five but eager and willing—to his childhood sweetheart named Momoko who works in the nightclubs of Tokyo and wants to get her out of the nightlife business there. She’s done nothing else during her adult life, it seems.”

“I may have bumped into her during my younger days there,” Bill said.

“Before your total immersion in things Christian?” Greg asked.

“Riiight. In my younger days, I was so confused about Jesus and God and what they had to do with my life that I was waffling all the time. Do I believe or don’t I believe? What for do I believe? Put it out of my mind or go full bore?”

“In the end you went full bore for God and never looked back,” Gary said.

“That’s right. I surrendered but had a hard time submitting.”

“What was the turning point, if I may ask?” Greg said.

326 “My wife. She took ill, it was real serious. She was going to die, I was convinced after the doctor pronounced a death sentence by saying that the cancer was too advanced.”

“This must have happened in the distant past,” said Hank, “since you never mentioned it before, not since we’ve been getting together.”

“Yes, it was thirty-five years ago, a lifetime ago, and she’s still with us.”

“You must consider her survival as some sort of miracle,” Greg said.

“Yes, it was a miracle. I don’t know if it was because of my prayers…I like to think it was…or medical intervention that she responded to favorably or the family pulling together or a combination of everything, but whatever the case was I am thankful, not to good fortune which is nebulous and uncertain but to God Himself.”

“And that’s when you learned to submit?” Greg asked.

“Yes, it was. It was the turning point in my relationship to God.”

“You’re fortunate,” Greg said, “not that your wife got cancer, the pivotal point in your faith. But you’re fortunate because you found the opportunity to submit and you took it—which is something I haven’t come to yet.”

“You will,” Gary said.

“Don’t make it sound so ominous, Gary,” Greg said.

“Not trying to, buddy. I’m just saying knowing you, once you set your mind on something, by god, that’s the way it’s going to be come hell or high water. But I don’t really know if that’s a good trait or not. Could backfire.”

“How so?” asked Greg.

“Well, you don’t let obstacles deter you and you’ve always found a way to work around them. Oh, I know, it’s your habit, habit of thinking. But you may one day confront a

327 situation that stymies you. And you’ll just barrel ahead, smartly, of course. You’ll probably come out on top, like you always do. But be forewarned my friend. Don’t want to alarm you. But life has a way of throwing you nasty curves. I’ll always be on you side, though.”

“Thanks for your endorsement, Gary,” Greg said coolly. “I don’t look forward to any untoward happenstance but I’m fully aware of life’s nasty curves. I’ve been lucky so far but

I don’t know if it’s because of my dancing or not.”

“Fancy footwork?” asked Gary.

“Something like that.”

“It’s not only fancy footwork that makes Greg stay on the top of his game,” Hank said, “but his gumption, smarts and get-up-and-go. I’d like to toast it.”

“Hear, hear,” they said and tilted their bottles.

“And it doesn’t hurt to be guarded by Onimaru,” Bill said and tilted the bottle a second time. They all followed suit.

“There he sits, the one, the only Onimaru,” Greg said waving his hand toward the living room. “The guardian of the Sonoda Clan.”

“I wish I had such a guardian,” Hank said. “I’d be willing to take more chances.”

“Are you risk-adverse?” asked Gary.

“Why, yes, I am.”

“But you went into engineering,” Gary said.

“That’s because it was a sure thing,” Hank said, “dependent on my qualifications to become one, and apparently I am qualified. And I’m a good one.”

“Being risk-adverse,” Bill said, “is a Japanese American trait.”

“How’s that?” Gary asked.

328 “I spent my entire career in government,” Bill said, “because once in they can’t kick you out. Except in rare circumstances. It’s a cushy job. Sure it’s unchallenging…everyday it’s the same routine. But you get used to it.”

“You sound as if you sold your soul to the devil,” Gary said.

“If opting for a regular paycheck is selling your soul to the devil,” Bill said, “then millions and millions of people belong to the devil. We can’t all be entrepreneurs like you,

Gary.”

“I went into business, because it was necessary to support my family and folks,” Gary said.

“I think what Bill is alluding to,” Greg said, “is the Japanese American tendency to take the safe way out of everything, in academia, careers, and businesses. Very rarely will you find a Japanese American firebrand. It’s just not in our character, although you will find a rising group of artists among our ranks, in acting and in music. Then there are the activists.”

“We refuse to dream big,” Bill said.

“Is that true, Bill,” asked Greg.

“Yes, I think it is. I mean empire-big, continent-big, universe-big.”

“We’ve had our astronauts, like Ellison Onizuka,” Hank said.

“But he didn’t last long, Died in the Challenger accident in 1986,” Gary said.

“How well you know our history,” Greg said.

“Only because I’ve kept up with the space program, one of my pet projects is to keep current.”

329 “It’s shame Onizuka had to die,” Greg said. “He was the only Japanese American astronaut there was.”

“Oh, I’m sure there’ll be others,” Gary said. “Can’t hold you people back.”

“But racism can,” Greg said. “Take the Vincent Chin case in 1982 when two whites bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat, claiming he was a Jap who was responsible for destroying America’s auto industry. He was a Chinese American, an oriental who was mistaken for a Japanese, and, of course, the two whites could not make any distinction. They only received a two-year probation and a $3,700 fine with no jail time. The Chin case really had repercussion in our community.”

“Yeah, it still makes my blood boil,” Bill said.

“Same here,” Hank said.

“Sorry,” Gary said, “I apologize for my race.”

“You’re different, Gary,” Greg said. “A cut above the rest, and I know there are plenty of whites like you. You have to speak up more often, oh, I know you do, you take every opportunity to vent your opinion on civil rights, but you often preach to the choir.”

“You’re right, as usual, Greg,” Gary said. “That’s what attracted me to you in our officer training days, your consarned level-headedness.”

“It’s called obstinacy,” Greg said. “I like sticking to a point.”

“Like a point on the far horizon?” Bill asked.

“What do you mean?” Greg asked.

“I mean fixing a point on the horizon of the future,” Bill said, enigmatically, “keeping it in mind and advancing resolutely toward it.”

“Like looking for God?” Hank said.

330 “Could be,” Bill said, “or anything else as personal.”

“I get it, Bill,” Greg said. “I’m a humanist first and foremost and the point I’m fixated about is the one the deals with humanity at work and play and worship. I’m a country lawyer, basically, in fancy clothing and my interest in humanity is universe-big, I’d say.”

“Must be your interest in Anthropology talking there,” Gary said.

“That could be,” said Greg and paused. “By the way, Caroline and I were talking last night about inviting you guys to Sonoda Island some day, maybe next summer. What do you say?”

“’Bout time,” Gary said. “Can’t wait to try some more of that water. The last batch you gave me really helped with my back pain.”

“I’ll join you,” said Hank. “Just us or does your invite include our wives?”

“I’m afraid just us foursome.”

“I’m game, count me in,” Bill said.

“With Caroline that would make five of us,” Greg said, “with room to spare on the yacht we usually hire. We’ll fly to Kolonia and catch it from there. The passage on the yacht is my treat but the airfare is on you. Otherwise, everything else is on me, the island sojourn, food, drinks, everything. It’s going to be a fun vacation, one to write home about.”

“What is there to do on your island paradise?” Bill asked.

“Are you kidding?” Greg said.

“Just sightseeing?” Bill asked.

“There’s snorkeling, fishing, harvesting seafood off the shore, meditating in the cave, if that’s your thing and you don’t mind ghosts (just kidding) and viewing the P-47

331 Thunderbolt wreckage, partaking of the healing waters, all kinds of things, including hunting a pig or two.”

“I was just kidding when I asked,” said Bill. “I know the island and can even picture it from reading your book. Can’t wait to see it.”

“Same here,” said Hank. “I’m going to have a keep a weather eye cocked for curses,

I don’t want to have to go through what your wife did and wind up a basket case, but with you around and being the proud owner of Onimaru and a friend, I have no worries.”

The conversation revolved around their projected stay on the island and how they would spend their time there, most likely fishing, since they were all fond of fishing. Gary would often go deep-sea fishing off the Baja peninsula and Hank and Bill would join Greg on

Big Bear Lake where they would fish for lunker trout. Big Bear Lake did not disappoint.

They often came home with a fine catch. All three fly fished.

Hunting a pig and barbequing it whole over the open pit appealed to all of them, so that was scheduled in their agenda. Other than that offhand idea, they would wing the contents of their stay and enjoy the heck (as Gary put it) out of their sojourn. Gary’s back had been bothering him ever since he lifted a heavy trunk the wrong way and the pain was quite debilitating. He looked forward to drinking more of the water, after rationing himself of the remaining gallon or two that Greg gave him recently for exactly that purpose: pain relief. It seemed to work.

The night wore on and the sushi platter had been consumed and the beer—most of it—drunk. The men never got tipsy: Bill hardly drank (only to be sociable) and Hank kept up with Greg and Gary who were the heavy drinkers. But the four never exhibited signs of drunkenness probably because, Greg thought, they had food on their stomachs.

332 At around three in the morning, the poker session broke up. Greg was the big loser that night in spite of the fine initial showing and Gary the big winner. The men shrugged into their jackets and departed after deciding to hold the next party at Hank’s house in the first part of December. Greg patted Gary on the back, congratulated him on being the big winner and told him he hoped his back would be feeling better. Gary said the water had helped.

In the first part of July the next year, Greg and the others made their reservation to fly to Micronesia in August. When the day of their flight out of LAX arrived, they were all packed and ready to go. They drove to the airport in two cars, parked and entered the facilities, dragging their luggage behind them and checked them in.

They disembarked at Kolonia well into the next day and immediately got on the large yacht Greg usually hired. He said a cool “Hello” to the captain for his complicity in transporting the two yakuza to his island, but never mentioned the breach of his handshake contract in not allowing visitors to his island without his explicit permission. He thought the better of it, in the interest of a harmonious relationship with the only source of getting to and from the island, except in the single instance of him saying to the captain: “I see that two strangers were transported to Sonoda Island.” The captain said: “I thought it would be all right with you, since they said they were friends of your brother.” Greg didn’t bother to mention the bribe.

In the middle of the second day, they arrived at the west cove and motor launched to

333 the dock they had built on the last outing. Sunao and Momoko were on hand to meet them and he shook everybody’s hand gleefully, happy to have his boss finally meet his bride of less than a year. They covered the short distance from the beach to the clearing in a matter of minutes and repaired to Sonoda Mansion. The flag on Caroline Peak was fluttering in the breeze.

“Home Sweet Home!” Greg said

“Home Sweet Second Home,” Caroline corrected.

“I guess you can call it that,” Greg said. “Home away from home, not where the cattle roam but where the pigs cavort.”

“You have all the amenities of civilization here,” Gary said, as he entered the add-on room after asking where they were sleeping. Hank and Bill followed suit.

When they all reentered the main room which was the dining room, living room and kitchen combined, they all sat at the kitchen table and snacked on the pork jerky provided by

Sunao and beer which Greg drew from the fridge.

“End of a long, dusty journey,” Caroline said, “and it’s time for you cowboys to enjoy a few refreshments.”

“I have whisky,” Sunao said. “Momoko, go fetch it please.”

“Hai.” Momoko departed and soon returned with a half-empty bottle of Johnny

Walker Black.

“My favorite,” Sunao said. “I bought a case in Kolonia when we got married and have been nipping at it a small bit at a time.

Having eschewed a beer, Bill said: “I’ll try some, barten. A scotch on the rocks.”

“Rocks?” asked Sunao.

334 “Koori wari des’,” Momoko said.s

Sunao reached into the freezer compartment and withdrew the tray of ice cubes which he deftly removed and placed in a glass before adding the liquor.

“I can see how we’re all going to have a fine time during the next two weeks,” Gary said, “what with all the booze we can drink.”

“And Greg’s taste in beer has followed him across the Pacific,” said Hank.

“That’s right,” Greg said. “I have Kirin, Asahi, Sapporo, a few Gordon Biersch that I snuck into my luggage, and some Heineken. All the amenities of home.”

“All the amenities plus a whole lot more,” said Gary.

“Yeah, talk about scenery,” Hank said. “I’ll bet the view from the mountain is really something.”

“We have enough daylight left to go see the P-47 Thunderbolt that Lt. Peterson brought down,” Greg said.

They all got to their feet, except Caroline, Sunao and Momoko.

“I’m staying behind and visiting with Momoko,” Caroline said. “I want to hear all about their marriage.”

“All right, honey,” Greg said. “See you later.”

The poker foursome left the cabin and walked along a faint path to the interior of the island where within a ten minute jaunt they came upon the wreckage. The shack still stood nearby. They all knew the story behind the wreckage but to see it first hand was impressive.

This was the lean, mean killing machine that had knocked down twenty-six Zeros during the war in the Pacific. And the pilot had expertly landed the wounded bird in the clearing, coming close to hitting a clump of trees. He couldn’t have chosen a better spot in the

335 meadow than where he stopped, for with his injured leg he didn’t have far to go to get his water. The creek flowed nearby at the edge of the clearing.

They examined the plane with its faded markings and marveled at the age of the prop- driven aircraft that dominated the skies of that era. The flying machine was a modern engineering miracle. In this case, the chunky P-47 Thunderbolt rather than the sleek the P-51

Mustang was an example of superior firepower that could compete with the Zero on any day of a fine week.

The men took pictures of the fighter and shack with their new digital cameras and turned them on the clearing itself as background. With some daylight left, they retraced their tracks and returned to the compound to fetch a flashlight which Greg carried with him in case it was needed on their return hike from the mountain. The clear day promised one of the spectacular sunsets they could count on during the month, and Greg wanted to treat his friends to the view from atop Caroline Peak. He told Caroline where he was going, but she merely nodded wordlessly, so engrossed was she in Momoko’s life story, as interpreted by

Sunao.

The four men made their way through the darkening forest, crossed the creek and found the well-worn trail up the mountain. In no time, they were standing in a small clearing made while setting the rescue fires such a long time ago, it seemed, and were greeted by a magnificent view of the island, east, west, north and south. The orb of the sun hung just above the horizon, casting its dying rays into the sky and exhibiting its variegated hues of red, from crimson, ruby to carmine with a lining of purple streaks underneath the strata of cirrus clouds. The men snapped pictures of the scene and flag fluttering overhead.

336 They made their way down the mountain, retraced their tracks through the by-now dark forest and returned to Sonoda Mansion. There they stumbled upon a threesome who were engaged in venting gales of laughter.

“What goes?” asked Greg.

Wiping her eyes, Caroline said: “It seems that Momoko pulled a fast one on one of her guests at the nightclub where she worked and told the man who was three-sheets to the wind and refused to pay his bar bill that he had to take off his expensive shoes if she was going to dance with him, because the floor was made of tatami—which it wasn’t—and the hard soles would ruin the straw. And she didn’t want him to step on her feet. The man agreed and took off his fancy shoes. And she more or less supported his bulk as they careened around the dance floor. Then she excused herself, saying she had to go to the bathroom, and took and hid the shoes in the lady’s room. When she returned to her table, he was already seated but almost slipping out of his chair. He asked where his shoes were and she told him the boy-san had taken them to be polished. Well, he waited and waited for his shoes to be returned nice and polished. It was closing time, so Momoko left him shouting for the boy-san to hurry up and bring his shoes. The last she saw of him was him berating the boy-san who didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about.”

They all laughed heartily.

“Well, did they ever get paid?” Greg asked

Sunao translated.

“Momoko said she doesn’t know, but that it made her day to think that he had to walk in the rain in his stocking feet.”

They all laughed again.

337 That evening they had a dinner made up of seafood harvested by Sunao and Momoko in anticipation of their arrival. There were abalone, sea snails, octopus, and prawns expertly seasoned. Greg ate heartily, always enjoying the way Caroline prepared the food. He washed down the mouthfuls with Kirin beer and watched with pleasure how the others were enjoying their meal, an accolade to the expertise of the cook.

They played gin rummy later and Sunao won the game by racking up a score of 500 the earliest. They played on until second and third place scores were totaled with Greg and

Hank coming in second and third respectively. The game ended around 11 pm and since it had been a long day for all involved they parted ways, Sunao and Momoko returning to their cabin and the others making ready for bed.

The following day they visited the cave to witness the stunning artwork left behind by the original inhabitants. The Cotsen Institute people left evidences of a dig on the floor of the cave, and the group stepped carefully around their work so as not to disturb anything.

According to the latest, the archeologists had discovered shards of pottery that could be traced to the Sandeleurs on Pohnpei. Another piece of the puzzle falls into place, thought

Greg. But what did the ancestors of the Sandeleurs in was probably a mystery that never would be solved. Was it some kind of epidemic, possibly because of germs borne by the pigs, or a curse? It could have been a combination of both, as things usually are. We are hard-wired to think in either-or terms without taking into consideration the multifarious factors always involved in any given phenomenon, Greg thought.

The artwork did not fail to impress Gary, Bill and Hank, nor did it go begging as far as the rest of the group was concerned. Greg was always moved by the thought that many thousands of years ago a group of people could produce pictures of animals in such detail

338 from memory. One would expect simplistic, general outlines of deer, mammoths, monkeys rather than intricate running and stationary poses.

After visiting the cave, the group sat outside the entrance and ate their lunch which

Caroline and Momoko had packed using the leftovers of the previous night’s meal. Again,

Greg enjoyed the succulent pieces of seafood, and they slaked their thirst with bottles of beer.

They carried the cooler down the path to the shoreline a short distance away, took off their shoes and waded into the water to harvest some more of the seafood nature so amply provided. Soon they had gathered enough for the next day’s meal. That evening they were having pork cutlets a la Caroline-style, also one of Greg’s favorite foods, especially on the island. He usually reserved his appetite for pork pending his visit to the island. Back home his tastes responded to other fare like chicken, beef and fish.

They returned the way they had come, back around the mountain, through the dense forest, crossing the creek, and out into the open clearing where their cabins stood. Caroline and Momoko then busied themselves cleaning and cutting the seafood and storing it in the fridge.

Then they retired to the covered patio by the large fire pit and began drinking: it coincided with the happy hour back home (when Greg would meet with clients and would-be clients). Sunao brought over another bottle of unopened Johnny Walker Black and proceeded to mix a scotch on the rocks for Bill, but the latter said, “Not right now,” and reached into the cooler for an Asahi.

“All that hiking and work gathering tomorrow’s meal made me thirsty,” he said, “and

I don’t know of a better way to slake my thirst than with an Asahi, no offense meant to the water here.”

339 “You’ll be wanting some in a few moments,” Greg said. “It makes everything taste better. You’ll see.”

The group sat around without saying anything for a minute or two, then Greg said:

“Tomorrow we can go fishing and snorkeling, if you all want to. I think the weather will hold up, it’s cloudy now, but the typhoon season is not upon us yet, so I think tomorrow will be a fine day for it.

“I’m game,” Hank said. “I’d love to try my hand at fishing off your island. See what

I can catch. In LA all I do is go offshore fishing and go to Big Bear Lake for lunker trout.

We’ll see what I can turn up here.”

“Still-fishing isn’t really my style,” Gary said, “but I’m willing to give it a try.”

“So will I,” said Bill.

A further lull in the conversation, then Greg said: “Ready to try some water?”

“Sure,” they all said.

Greg filled the glasses and passed them around. They all drank; Sunao downed a whole glass in one gulp. Greg knew he was drinking it for his heart.

They all resumed their drinking of alcohol.

“I’ll be damned,” Gary said. “You’re right, it makes the taste of my Gordon Biersch stand out. What a fortune could made here!”

“No dice,” Greg said. “I’m not letting a bottling operation ruin my paradise here.”

“I can understand that,” Gary said. “But I salivate when I see the potential.”

“I bet you do, Gary,” Bill said, “being a businessman. All you see is dollar signs.”

340 “That’s not entirely true4,” Gary protested. “True, making a profit is what my life is all about, but there are other considerations like making money for the sake of benefiting mankind, giving to charity…the philanthropic part of running my business.”

“That’s how Gary does God’s work on earth,” Greg said. “Why, I’ll bet he gives more than your annual pension every year.”

“Ten times more,” said Gary.

“There you have it.” Greg said.

The next day the foursome excluding Sunao who said he had work to do (tending to the large garden) went out to try their luck fishing. They had brought their fishing gear along, so there was shortage of poles, and they followed the trail once more to the area where they harvested the seafood. Off to one side was a deeper portion of the lagoon where they began fishing.

They spent the better part of the day fishing and caught a number of nice ones using chunks of prawn as bait. Greg was not an ichthyologist, so he did not know the name of the fish, but they looked like the cod he used to fish for at the Redondo Beach pier, only bigger.

No matter the strange appearance; he thought they would go well with the variety of seafood they already had.

They wrapped up their outing mid-afternoon and found their way back to Sonoda

Mansion where Sunao made himself available to clean and filet the fish. Then they sat around on the patio and drank. This time Gary and Greg tried the water out some more, the former for his back and the latter for his leg. It helped ease the pain.

They talked about nothing in particular, just chit-chattng about things that friends of long standing talked about. Observations were made about the feral pigs that roamed the

341 edges of the clearing, within easy rifle range, and the conversation veered toward shooting one of them for the proposed barbeque. It would be a new experience for the group to barbeque a whole pig and although Greg had a recipe and the know-how gleaned from the

Internet, he wasn’t sure of the finished product. Would it turn out to perfection or be undercooked or burnt to a crisp which would be a challenge to his sensibilities, since he always strived for perfection in everything that he did? His desire for perfection extended to his writing as well which was proving to be an albatross around his neck, for in his mind, how could he achieve perfection dealing with the topic of his choice: his relationship to God?

And by extension everyone’s relationship to God, for as far as he was concerned, he was the mouthpiece for the rest of humanity, a presumption that was mostly true but not quite. He basically saw humanity as groping with the question of their relationship with God, although he realized that a greater proportion of believers merely accepted God within their lives without question. He had to question; it was the basic nature of his mind to question— everything in the universe. Why he was that way, he had no idea—an a priori dispensation?

It could have begun in the concentration camps, the questioning of why and the totally disorienting and unacceptable reason of the answer: racism. For a young boy growing up in such an environment, the reason for the camps was mind-boggling in its implications and it hit him viscerally where he had no protection. He had wanted to believe what the government had come out with as the reason: protective custody. But the demeaning treatment—the machine guns were pointed inwards—and the official attitude as represented by the loyalty questionnaire belied that fact. He had no recourse except to try to get out from under the underdog complex ingrained in him by the camp experience and emerge a strong individual in a society that did not tolerate strong individualism among its Japanese

342 American ranks, not even amongst his own kind. He was aware of the pitfalls of his choice, but he experienced none when it came to guiding his own development as a human being.

He had to take his chances. So far, so good. But how long he would remain free of racism and its concomitants remained to be seen.

Several days later they decided to hunt and shoot a pig for the barbeque. The moment

Gary, the designated hunter, showed up with a rifle, the pigs at the edges fled and disappeared. Sunao and Greg’s shooting them seemed to have spooked them and the sight of anything resembling a rifle sent them fleeing. Greg, Sunao, Bill and Hank all entered the forest to act as seko or drum-beaters to chase the pigs out into the open. They were armed with pots and pans and kitchen utensils in place of real drums as was used in Japan.

From deep within the forest they could be heard beating on the pots and pans and shouting. They saw the pigs running helter-skelter. As they emerged from the forest, the pigs ran across the clearing and headed for the far corner toward the creek when there was a crack of a rifle shot and a seventy-five pound porker fell. It lay squealing and Gary shot it in the head to put it out of its misery.

They prepared the animal for the barbeque. First they burned all the hair off and eviscerated it, saving the liver, and seasoned it with herbs and spices, first and foremost, salt and pepper and prepared a sauce with which to baste it. Then they speared it on a spit with a make-shift rotisserie motor and placed it over the charcoal fire that Caroline and Momoko had made in the fire pit. For a seventy-five pound porker, Greg figured about seventeen- eighteen hours over the fire would suffice with frequent basting. He would get up during the night to make sure it was done to perfection.

343 In the morning when they got up and checked the pig, it was done to perfection, thanks to Greg’s attention through the night, basting it and adding charcoal to the fire. They allowed the animal to cool and would have it for an early dinner that afternoon. The aroma of the roasted pig with its drippings was mouth-watering and they could hardly wait to sample it.

They sliced the liver and carved chunks off the carcass and sat down to eat at the outdoor table. They all complimented the chef—Greg—on a perfectly barbequed porker, a compliment he took to heart since it was his first time roasting a whole pig over an open pit.

He did well getting up several times during the night to tend to it and was glad of the general fact that all appreciated his efforts. There was nothing greater in his book than the praise of friends and family over something he did well for them. Nothing.

“How goes it with the book?” asked Gary.

“Slow and sporadic,” said Greg.

“What seems to be the problem?” Gary said.

“Well, it’s not coming smoothly.”

“Do you have doubts about your relationship to God?” Bill asked.

“I do and I don’t. I do because I’m not sure of having my prayers answered. I can never be sure of what God’s will is in my life. I seem to be doing everything right so far, but there’s this nagging suspicion that I’m not on the right track. And I don’t have doubts in the sense that I am consciously seeking God and in that sense God is real to me, at least, He’s real in the way of wanting to know a goal, in this case, God’s will in my life. Make sense?”

“Sort of,” Bill said. “I just cast everything to the winds and have faith without questioning.”

344 “I envy you, Bill. You seemed to have transcended any doubts.”

`”Or it seems that way. I just don’t have the mental capacity to question beyond a certain point.”

“Why not just accept God the way Bill does and get rid of all the confusing doubt?”

Hank said.

“That’s easy enough for you to say, ‘ol buddy,” Gary said. “You’re an atheist.”

“An agnostic, for your information,” Hank said testily. “After listening to the conversations about God, I just don’t know anymore. I used to disbelieve but Greg brought out my doubts about my belief. I just don’t know about God.”

“Well, I don’t believe in a god or any god, as far as that’s concerned,” said Gary. “I waffle between being an atheist and an agnostic a lot, but in the end I wind up siding with those who say there is no God, because there’s so much evidence in the world that militates against the existence of any God. Take the dichotomy, for instance, of pain and suffering, between good and evil, between spirituality and materialism and a host of other instances where you have the yin and yang pushing and pulling.”

“I can see your point of view,” said Greg. “But as far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out regarding the existence of God.”

“So you’re saying you’ll never know,” Bill said.

“I didn’t say that either,” Greg said. “It’s just that I’m knocking on God’s door all the time and I’m open to accepting any answer, any invitation. Maybe I’m all wrong in my approach or not on the right track to begin with. But I’m trying to put my best foot forward—which I hope is enough.”

345 “But isn’t it wonderful,” Gary said, “that we can sit around here on this paradise of an island, enjoying barbequed pig, a drink, with good, splendid company gabbing about anything the comes to mind, God, the weather, politics, the current scene in the world and not have to take responsibility for anything we say? I really feel like a free American.”

“Free American, indeed,” said Greg. “But I’ll toast the idea of freedom. May we always have it and never cheat on it.”

“Hear, hear,” they all said, including Sunao.

They all ate their fill and groaned under the burden of having gorged themselves.

Sunao waddled around to show how full he was and brought laughter to the group with

Momoko giggling behind a raised hand covering her mouth. Greg was glad she had agreed to join Sunao from Tokyo. She was a fine companion.

Greg was pleasantly tipsy…he always drank within reason. And now he finished his beer and would touch no more. Caroline stayed seated a moment longer before getting up to clear the dishes with Momoko’s help and the other three just sat slouched in their chairs without a care in the world which prompted Gary to make an observation that the whole world could go to war right then and he wouldn’t give a hang because they were all ensconced in paradise, a very selfish view, he said, but one that he jealously guarded.

It was a splendid day when they departed. There was a warm breeze off the ocean, making the flag furl and unfurl atop the mountain, and heralded a less than choppy sea upon their return. Sunao and Momoko saw them off.

The flight out of Pohnpei went smoothly. They stopped in Honolulu and flew back to

LA with their precious cargo of the healing water and drove out the terminal parking lot to

346 return to their wives and family—Hank still had a son living with him. They set the date of the next poker session and left.

347 Chapter Nineteen

Later that year, Greg was driving to get on the freeway, when an unlicensed and uninsured driver ran a red light and plowed into Greg’s car, throwing him against the door and knocking him out. The driver attempted to flee, but the witnesses captured him and held him for the police while an ambulance came and took Greg to the nearest hospital. Not only had he suffered a severe concussion, but he also had a broken leg. He lay in a coma.

Caroline and Craig were at his bedside almost immediately. They dropped everything to be with him. It took Brian a day to fly in from the east. His friends asked if there was anything they could do when Caroline notified them and she said nothing could be done at the moment except to rely on the doctors and nurses to do the right thing and to ask them for their good thoughts and prayers.

Greg lay in a coma for a week. When he awoke, his first words were: “What happened?” They told him. All he could say was: “What else!” He still seemed to be together as Greg Sonoda; he was not disoriented or confused, just angry. All the paranoia that lay dormant since his boyhood days in the concentration camps seemed to come to the fore of his mind. He thought subconsciously that they finally got him—in a car accident. It was a bitter anger that welled up from the pit of his belly; it was unintelligibly visceral. They were out to get him because he excelled in everything he put his hand to and they couldn’t stand it.

Two more weeks in the hospital and he was released. He felt a form of miasma settle over his head and figured it to be part of the concussion and tried to deal with it through meditation, having decided to cope with the aftermath of the accident in every way possible.

348 He didn’t anticipate any problems from the concussion, although he was leery of the possibility because of the numerous case examples of ensuing complications. He hoped he would luck out and be one of the lucky ones to survive.

Eight weeks and the leg cast came off and the physical therapy sessions began. The joint was stiff and had to be worked so that the leg would be as flexible as it had been originally. Still, Greg had to walk with a cane. His balance was somewhat off and the cane steadied him. He thought nothing of it and attributed it to the lingering shock of the accident but nevertheless was looking forward to the MRI test for any brain abnormalities. Should there be any he was confident of dealing with them. He had faith in medical science that seemed to have an answer to every ailment under the sun and would always find a solution, given the time and opportunity, to any medical problem. What they didn’t know now they would understand tomorrow.

The first chance they had after Greg’s leg cast came off the foursome met at Greg’s house for their usual game. Arriving together they filtered in to take their seats in the commodious kitchen, placing the platter of goodies on the counter and a case of beer in the fridge.

“Well, how goes it?” Gary asked.

“As well as could be expected,” Greg said.

“No bad effects from being knocked out and in a coma?” Bill asked.

“So far, so good, although I get a little woozy sometimes when I stand up,” Greg said.

“Sounds normal,” Hank said. “It may take a while to heal.”

“Could be.”

349 They dealt out the cards and the game began. But Greg’s mind was elsewhere. He was being distracted by the tensing of his scalp; it was as if the cloud of miasma had a will of its own. It wanted to bunch itself up and sit on his head as a presence. It forced him to split his consciousness in two, addressing the others in conversation and being aware of the presence sitting atop his head. It called for an elevated form of mental gymnastics. It slowed

Greg in his uptake.

The evening wore on. As they played, Greg felt a lassitude take over his thinking and a tightening of his scalp. By the end of the evening, he felt tired, more so than usual, and he developed a headache, not a good sign, he thought. He was able to play to the end by force of will and to see his friends out the door. They suspected nothing, since Greg exercised a degree of self-control, and bid him goodbye till the next poker session. But as soon as they left, he had to leave Caroline to clean up after him the next morning and headed straight for bed upstairs. There he hurriedly undressed after taking two Tylenols and slipped in between the covers.

His sleep was disturbed by weird dreams, disjointed, non sequitur, accusatory, a series of dreams that seemed to presage a shattered mind. He was in the camps again as a boy of nine, dealing with loneliness, anger and fear of the future. What was the world of adults who ran things doing? At the time of the evacuation, he childishly thought they would be back home in two weeks time, after the adults talked things over and settled their argument about putting him into a concentration camp. He was an American; he never harmed anyone. It didn’t make any sense. There was something wrong with the adults like the time the block manager grabbed ahold of his arm and yanked it hard so that it hurt and hollered at him saying, “You keep your crazy mother away from me!” It was true that she

350 frequently went to the block manager to complain about everything under the sun, because he was after all the immediate person in charge. She never had been a complainer, not until they were put into the camps, when something in her snapped. But why him? Why didn’t he talk to his father? Another puzzle for him to try to figure out. The adult world was strange and insane.

The dreams made him feel guilty. About his own identity. He was a Jap, labeled as such by the adult world, by the government, by the President of the United States, a vile, repugnant, vicious and nasty unwanted Jap, the enemy of the country. He didn’t want to identify with the bucktoothed, bespectacled visage of Hirohito but propaganda forced the young boy to consider the possibility of his being an extension of such a personality. He had no defenses against the media onslaught. He took it right in the guts.

And he came out of the whole camp experience with a raging case of being an underdog in the unholy racial and personal sense, supplanting a healthy self-image of a promising boy with one of a degraded human being who was worthless, useless and nobody wanted except as a whipping boy. The camps had laid the groundwork.

He awoke in the middle of the night bathed in a cold sweat and got up to towel himself down and to change his pajamas. It was a couple of hours more till the time he usually got up, so he donned his robe and went downstairs to his study to begin a journal of his experiences starting with the tightening of the scalp, the willful miasma and headache and the dreams he had had that night.

Sitting at his desk and writing, a voice cried out and said: “GOT YOU!” A vicious physical impact hit him on the neck and shoulders.

351 Greg was stunned. His mind, ever so nimble before the accident, went blank. He didn’t know what to think. Dread buttressed by curiosity invaded his consciousness. The voice and the physical attack were certainly related to the accident, but the declaration of having been trapped was origin unknown, unless it had something to do with the paranoia stemming from the camps. He wrote down what he had heard as an objective third party without asking the voice the obvious question of why and what. That would come later. He could not see himself talking to himself—yet.

The next day was a Sunday. They usually went to church, but that day Greg didn’t feel up to it, so he told Caroline to go by herself. She wanted to know why and after some hesitation he told her about the attack and the voice.

“My God!” she exclaimed. “The island—“

“I don’t think so, not with Onimaru around.”

“Then what could—“

“The accident and blow to the head.”

“I know that must be the cause, but a physical attack and voices.”

“Just one voice, full of malevolence.”

“But why you?”

“I have no idea, except that I had a dream last night about how confusing and unsettling the camps were in my boyhood and that combined with questioning my identity and confronting the reality of being an underdog which has bugged me all my life, well, everything just came to a head.”

“You’re not thinking of going to a shrink, are you?”

352 “No, that’s out of the question, not after our experience before. I’d probably just be sentencing myself to life imprisonment.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know yet, except I’m curious.”

“Curious! You should be concerned!”

“I am, darling. It’s just that I’m curious at the same time.”

“Mr. Sonoda, you are incorrigible!”

He tried to put a light touch to the conversation. “Yes, dear, I know I am. It’s part of my charm.”

She responded in kind. “I don’t know why, but I love you for it.”

“That’s good to know.”

“We should tell Brian and Craig, shouldn’t we?”

“Not yet. I want to get a better handle on this thing.”

Just then there was another attack accompanied by a malevolent intonation: “Give yourself a handicap because you’re a Jap!”

The impact was so great that it rocked Greg’s upper torso. He gasped for air. Greg perceived the entity did not like his sense of curiosity—or humor. It was his style and he was sticking to it without allowing the entity to usurp any of his personal qualities, for Greg suspected that the whole business was going to be focused on the battle of wills—the will to prevail in the universe, his universe. Greg was going to have to treat the entity as one awful parasite. The attack startled Caroline.

She stayed home from church, just to be on hand to comfort Greg and let him know she was behind him in whatever he needed to do to address the issue. Still in his bathrobe,

353 Greg puttered around in his slippers, had a bite to eat and went back to his study to write out his plan of attack in spite of lacking confidence. First, he was going to do research on every known psychic phenomenon dealing with physical attacks and voices with the idea of not only controlling them but eliminating them entirely, for he expected more to come. He was going to try to take the initiative, go on the offense. Second, he would try to create a mental environment that was conducive to overcoming by sheer will power what might be psychosomatic attacks through self-analysis and meditation. He might consult with a psychologist and use him for extra pointers in understanding his condition, all the while reserving the prerogatives for himself, for he was the ultimate expert. He wouldn’t let anybody else call the shots. Third, he was going to beef up his strength, physically and mentally, through proper eating, taking supplements and doing exercises. A three-prong approach or plan of attack.

After writing down his plan, he felt better and went upstairs to shower and get dressed. There was a reprieve in the air—for the moment. Greg never expected a complete secession of the circumstances; his ordeal he intuited had just begun and although he would give anything for it to be otherwise, he set his attitude to endure and fight for the long haul, which he hoped would be a matter of mere months.

He decided to take a leave of absence, citing problems dealing with balance and concentration, both ostensible reasons stemming from the accident. Either that or retire which he could do at any time now; he did not need the salary any longer, because they were set for life financially and the royalties from the book kept coming. It was a good feeling to know everything was fine on the home front. Now he could devote all his energies to fighting the current battle, that of preserving his sanity. How far the malevolent force was

354 going to go to take over, he had no way of knowing, but he knew he had to go on the offensive. It could be that this episode was just a test—which he doubted—or it could be an all-out attempt to take over his personality and entire being, which was probably more to the point. The coming fight was going the test his mettle as a man, individual and human being.

Why did he suspect this would be the case? Because of the fact that he was Greg Sonoda, on the surface an outstanding man, an accomplished one, but underneath a perennial underdog who was always compensating in a variety of ways for being one.

In the weeks that followed, he was harassed by more attacks and more voices, this time two or three at a time: “You’re nothing but a dirty, no good Jap. Act like one. Got your number. Your time is up!”

The psychologist he consulted was of no help, so he gave up going to see him after two visits. Going to see a psychiatrist was out of the question. He did research on the

Internet and came upon a site that described a form of energy parasite that the blogger termed

Ankle Biters. Greg took note of the information; he liked the attitude of the author in that he used a pejorative to indicate his contempt for the parasite. In Greg’s book, the evil entities were just bullies, all be it lethal nuisances, to have to contend with in his daily existence.

As the months wore on, Gr+eg’s condition worsened. The noise in his head was incessant and there were more voices clamoring for his attention. They would ask him questions, attack him to answer, discuss him, deride him for the size of his penis, anything and everything to embarrass him. They were trying their utmost to emasculate him, denigrate him as a man, a state which Greg had successfully managed so far in spite of the self-imposed stigma of being an ethnic underdog. The voices accused him of being a pompous ass, a professional crook, a charlatan and a hypocrite, all with an insistence of a

355 political campaign meant to slander a person and render him heartless and dispirited. They castigated him for his poor self-image as an underdog, insisting that he was a big, important man in the world. Such insistence only fed into his innate pomposity; he knew he was a successful human being. And such knowledge only served to feed a bloated self-centered ego. True or not?

In time Greg began to answer the voices, using their utterances as a point of departure to further develop his own thinking both along the lines suggested by the voices and to take the thought offensive so that he would have the final word in the unwanted conversation.

Sometimes he spoke aloud, the sound of his own voice reassuring his mind that he was in control; at other times, he put a silencer on his voice and spoke with mental disdain.

He finally told the boys of his dilemma. At the office, all they knew was that Greg was suffering from the aftermath of the concussion and he was having a difficult time concentrating which was but a logical extension of the understanding of what follows from a blow to the head, but in reality his concentration was just fine. It was just that he had to fight the distraction that swirled around his head, constantly now. But to the boys he confided all, everything that was happening. Brian weighed in with the suggestion of looking into the underdog aspect of his presumptions about himself, since that had been the central point of his neurosis. A tussle of some sort could be taking place within Greg and he had to work it out. To Greg’s way of thinking, however, the tussle was with the energy parasite, that pernicious Mr. Big, so-dubbed by Greg during one his bouts with the predominant parasite who started it all. Craig often visited his father, taking time off from work, and came to the house mainly to be on hand to lend support and comfort. He didn’t say much; he merely said he wished there was a way to strike Mr. Big dead.

356 To his brother and cousin, he wrote of his difficulties and Dan wrote back saying that he should go back to the island and drink the healing water there. If it could cure his throat cancer which hadn’t returned, it probably could cure whatever was affecting his brain.

Takanori concurred. Trying the miraculous water as a form of treatment had already occurred to Greg and he held on to the thought to add to his arsenal.

The few months as allotted by Greg to cure his condition extended to almost a year much to Greg’s dismay and consternation. He was almost distraught—almost, but not quite.

The voices and attacks had taken their toll. His friends knew of his difficulties; Gary was the first one to stop by to lend his support.

“So life finally threw you that nasty curve,” he said.

“Looks like it,” agreed Greg, “and I don’t like the looks of it.”

“I’ve been telling Greg that we have to go to our island,” Caroline said, “and let the water work its magic.”

“Why haven’t you gone?” asked Gary.

“I don’t know,” said Greg. “Fear, maybe.”

“Fear of what?” asked Gary.

“The fact that it might not work, then where would I be, if the water couldn’t touch my condition?”

“And you’re afraid that as a last ditch stand the water might fail you?”

“Then where would I be?”

“We pray together often for an answer,” Caroline said.

“I can add my best thoughts to your prayers. I’m sure Bill and Hank think the same way.”

357 “I heard from them and they said as much, especially Bill. Hank said he’d even put in a good word with Buddha by burning incense, although his belief is just peripheral. His father was a Buddhist. So I have my good friends and our church praying for me and that should add to the healing force supposedly surrounding me.”

“Let’s hope so,” Gary said.

The manuscript was nowhere near completion. Greg was hung up on a certain portion: the resurrection of Christ. What was the essence of his doubts? It was the fact that

God of all entities could not violate or go against his own immutable laws: a dead human being was dead, especially after three days when putrefaction would have set in. Jesus was dead for three days, and there’s no way that he could have been brought back to life, according to the tenets of biology, chemistry and physics, according to man’s understanding so far.

But God was God. He could work miracles if He wanted to, as attested to by the healings of Jesus, bringing sight to the blind, mobility to the lame, cleanness to the leper.

Granted that the Bible could be full of fervent metaphors as inscribed by the devote scribes, but given Jesus’ special status as a human being on whom all the propitious lines of the universe—lineage, personal characteristics, spiritual consciousness, cosmic forces— converged, Jesus could very well have been the conduit through which God worked. Jesus was the only one who qualified as the Son of God; all the other personages who were said to have been born on the same day, performed miracles and died in a similar manner— crucified—could not compare. In other words, in Jesus God finally got it right. This is not

358 to say, thought Greg, that God is not infallible; it’s just that God’s mind and the human element did not match. It all came together in Jesus.

Greg thought he was on a verge of a breakthrough. His relationship to God definitely took a turn as soon as he conjured up the idea of God’s having to work with faulty and fallible human beings. Jesus fulfilled God’s dictum to a tee. He was indeed the Son of God, chosen to be such by God Himself. As the son, Jesus was loved by God, mind, body and soul. And Jesus did God’s work during his short life, without question, without resentment, but with love and submission. He died on the cross to save mankind from its sin; God died on the cross to save mankind. Did that make sense? Yes, decided Greg, it did.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John, 3:16, Revised Standard Version)

God was eternal, Jesus was God (on earth), therefore he who believed in Jesus was eternal. God gave of Himself. It worked for Greg. God’s love lifted the miasma. There was an opening of the consciousness.

And Greg had to accept the fact and reality that Jesus was a divine human being, given his nature, humanity and accomplishments. How about the resurrection? That erstwhile stumbling block that had been dogging Greg since the beginning? Why not the resurrection? Yes, why not? Out of love, God concentrated and focused his holy energy on the mind, body and spirit of Jesus, revitalizing every single cell of his body—trillions of cells in a single blast of divine power. Jesus’ life and resurrection worked exactly as God planned.

Jesus was the chosen. For all that was holy, the sin of the world entered his soul—his true crucifixion. Therefore, his final utterance: “God, why hast thou forsaken me?” A huge feeling welled up within Greg.

359 He wept.

An understanding of Jesus and his agony on the cross crushed him, and he wanted to cry out and call to Jesus how wretched he was being so full of himself.

He knew why that was so: because of his fight with the self-image of an underdog.

And that fight took him into realms having to do with the supremacy of the Self. The Self was important, to be sure, but was only a corollary in the greater scheme of things. Even the

Greater Self which responded to the numinous was but a small part of the grander cosmic force and plan. Greg found that a reconciliation of his doubts of the resurrection gave birth to a new chapter in his life—hopefully without the voices and attacks. A quiet sense of triumph pervaded his soul.

He prayed a simple prayer of thanks.

A week’s reprieve from the constant intrusion and Greg thought the insights he had gained from his prayer would sustain him, but in a few more days the voices and attacks came back with a vengeance.

“You’re nothing but a Jap! A low-down, dirty, nasty, no account Jap! Stop pretending you’re so great and grand!”

By now Greg was sensitized by the tirade. It was exactly what he had called himself coming out of the camps and the sentiments followed him throughout his school years with an intensity that spurred him on to prove himself otherwise. But the battering had taken its toll, so when they returned in full force, he was dejected and depressed. He was on the verge of despairing. But he still did not see a psychiatrist; he would have nothing to do with them,

360 having heard horror stories and directly witnessing the effects of the brain zonkers. He would have to go it alone; so far he held himself intact by sheer will power. Working on the manuscript helped.

In time Greg gave up his fears and planned on a trip to Sonoda Island, saying the time had come to truly test the waters and see if the water wouldn’t help. Maybe a little, doing its part in the healing process, for everything was a result of the combination of things. He emailed Sunao, told him briefly of his difficulties—just enough to justify his off-season visit—and told him to make the cabin ready for his arrival. He purchased a haori-hakama

(formal Japanese dress) at Samurai Sword International, packed it and boxed Onimaru to take along. What he had in mind would take only a day on the island but he was willing to spend an entire month there.

They arrived at the island on the 25th of September, supposedly the day when Lt.

Peterson died thirty-two years after being stranded on the uninhabited island. Greg wondered at the coincidence: Was it a harbinger of things to come? The What if’s compounded themselves. Sunao and Momoko were on hand to greet them; Sunao took the luggage from

Greg who was exhausted from the trip. Momoko wheeled Caroline’s, and they made their way to Sonoda Mansion which Sunao had painted a subdued green. His own dwelling was painted a bright red.

“Welcome home, Master Greg,” Sunao said.

“Just Greg would do fine,” Greg said.

“But that is too informal,” Sunao said.

“We like to keep things American,” said Greg.

“All right then. Greg.”

361 “That’s the ticket.”

So saying, Greg immediately went to the sink and drank several glasses of water. He had run out at home, and in the beginning it appeared that the water had enabled him to keep a certain equilibrium, but he didn’t know if that meant the intrusions were held at bay or were just gathering steam as time went on. But after a few moments, he began to feel better—a lightening of his mood and dispelling of depression. He began to feel hopeful.

Greg instructed Sunao as to what his plans were for the next day. He was going to get up early and slaughter the demons with Onimaru, the Demon Blade. It was time to confront them in battle. All his instincts pointed to the veracity of his gut feelings, that the demons had to be met in a final showdown. The fight had been forced on him and it was up to him to finish it. It was his responsibility, not society’s nor the government’s nor a psychological counselor’s. It was his life and he was taking ultimate responsibility for it.

The next day when he awoke at dawn, he noted the clouds in the sky and thought it to be a good day to slay demons. After imbibing his limit of water which further buttressed his resolve and after donning the haori-hakama, he strode out into the clearing where Sunao was already waiting. He wanted Sunao on hand in case anything happened to him during the exorcism. He prayed with Caroline just before leaving the cabin.

With the stiff fabric of his garb rustling, he stepped into the middle of the clearing in his stocking feet, withdrew Onimaru that shone dully in the muted sky and held a stance.

The stance was instinctively that of the samurai. He had samurai blood in him and it was a natural attitude borne of many centuries of battle. It was as if he were a reincarnation of the medieval cousin, the master swordsman Tsukahara Bokuden.

362 He fixed his gaze in the distance, aware of his surroundings, the edges of the forest, the pig watching him idly, the slight wind that was blowing through his hair. He visualized the features of the one he called Mr. Big, a great hulk of a demon with a cruel, snarling and ugly visage, visualizing him as a villainous graphic caricature only more personalized by making one arm shorter than the other with one hand having eight fingers and a huge, hairy wart on the tip of his nose. Mr. Big represented everything evil and unholy.

He maintained a fierce stance, his eyes fixed on a target conceptualized as a dot within a circle. He would slice through the outer shell to cut into the center. He sprang into action.

“YAH!” he shouted as a form of kiai. “O-te!”

Off came the crippled arm and the eight fingers opening and closing on nothing but empty air accompanied by a pained scream of surprise.

“What are you doing?” Mr. Big hollered. “Are you trying to kill me? I’m your friend!”

“Nonsense! O-do!”

Greg tilted Onimaru sideways and cut Mr. Big in half at the waist. Mr. Big shrieked.

“O-tsuki!”

Greg sent the blade into the demon’s throat and heard a satisfying roar of terror as he twisted the blade and saw the blood gush out.

“O-men!” Greg yelled and brought the blade over the lethal spot on the forehead and split Mr. Big’s head wide open. The demon crumbled in a heap, dead, letting out a final scream. Mr. Big was vanquished, cut into pieces, destined to fade away as a bad memory.

363 After the final stroke, Greg loosened his concentration and felt faint and suddenly exhausted. It was as if the long months of his ordeal had been building up to a climax of bloodletting, all be it symbolic, which Greg had been denying himself all his life and now that the ugly, vicious visage of his tormenter had been disposed of with a finality that forced him to reckon on a future without that crutch, he felt limp and spent both mentally and physically.

He staggered and Sunao jumped up to support him. Caroline and Momoko were watching from a distance. With Mr. Big dead, all the lesser demons fled and were nowhere to be seen. It was as if they never were—apparitions that faded into the night, the night of unwanted nightmares that welled up from the unconscious.

Later that afternoon, the clouds gathered and brought torrential rain and cyclonic winds. After all it was the typhoon season, but Greg couldn’t help but think that the storm was connected to Mr. Big’s demise and it was his parting gesture of contempt to try to impress upon him his own significance in the greater scheme of things…something Greg refused to consider at the moment, so elated was he at his relief. It was a relief that was palpable: the relaxation of the scalp, the easing of the attitude, the long-forgotten joy in his heart. It was like being reborn; it was like experiencing a piece of heaven in the here and now.

But the storm became something to reckon with. The winds blew harshly; gale force winds of 100mph, so said the radio. It started to blow the shingles off Sunao’s roof. Sonoda

Mansion withstood the wind; he had built it with the typhoons in mind. And the rain inundated the land so that a small lake began to form in the open space in front of the cabin and filled the fire pit. The winds blew fiercely, the cabin rocked on its foundations but held.

364 It was well built and the typhoon, by far the strongest yet, was a test example. Greg had planned well and they sat in their house to wait out the storm. Around midnight the storm abated and they decided that their inspection of any damage could wait till morning.

Greg felt wonderful. No more voices, no more physical attacks. The demons had literally vanished. They had been exiled to the nether reaches of the universe where they had their unholy abode, never to descend on earth to bother him again. Or so he thought. What if they did return after the euphoria wore off to take up where they left off, this time with renewed vengeance ten times more vicious than before because of his temerity of slaying their leader Mr. Big? Greg did not want to consider the possibility, so happy was he at the moment in his relief from the situation. But being the prudent type, he tucked it away for future reference, deciding right then and there to keep his mental dukes up and maintain a fighting attitude in the full knowledge that anything could happen in the future.

Meanwhile, however, he could only thank God for the outcome, for he believed that all things flow outward from His beneficence toward those who try, those who attempt a grand enterprise and those who truly help themselves. God always works from within.

Confusion and doubt may often cloud the insights into God’s presence in one’s life, but in the quiet and still moments of life, when one’s mind is empty of all the dissension and turmoil of the day, there comes a very small inkling that may be accompanied by a voice which says, the world as created by oneself is proper, fitting and in proportion to one’s ideal in life, regardless of the pull of opposites.

They stayed on the island for the rest of the month and toward the end of October, they decided to return to the United States. There were no more symptoms of a mental

365 aberration any longer. Perhaps the cure would hold, thought Greg. Perhaps not. Only time would tell. They flew out of Pohnpei and were back home in no time at all.

Taking a day to settle down at home, Greg called Brian and Craig about the good news of his having successfully exorcised the demons with the famous Masamune blade—

Onimaru—the cherished family heirloom. He also called his friends who congratulated him;

Gary said he had no doubts about him coming through the experience intact and stronger than ever. Caroline was ever so much more considerate and caring—if that were possible, thought Greg—since she saw in her husband a quality that had escaped her before: his samurai heritage. To her he had been an ethnic man, a Japanese American, smart, capable, loving, an all around well-rounded human being, but now she had to see him in all the glory of his intrinsic heritage and take that into account in her love for him. It was a trait that had escaped Greg also, for he was always focused on being an American—in his early days,

200% American—so much so that he forgot his racial heritage as a Japanese until the moment he started to wield Onimaru to slay his enemies. It all came to the fore, as a headlong rush of ideas, sentiments, beliefs, ethnicity to produce a sense of completion of the

Self as it was informed and enriched by a knowledge of God.

The question remained, however: Was it God or was it him, Greg Sonoda, a human being at large, who performed the miracle? Maybe it was God working through him to make the miracle possible or maybe it was him working with God. Or both. He would never know, never be sure. But the one thing that was in affirmation of God’s presence in his life was his own sense of gratitude, gratitude for his life, his love of life and his abilities to fight for it, for God was the Creator of all things in the universe—the stars, galaxies, life, human beings, animals, all the multifarious phenomena in heaven and on earth and all the immutable

366 laws of nature—so arranged to produce an eternal balance between harmony and chaos, creativity and destruction amidst the overriding love of God for mankind. Greg’s sense of gratitude for God knew no bounds.

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