Irony: Death Becomes the Living

“’A life-buoy of a coffin!’ cried Starbuck, starting.”
Moby-Dick, Pg. 503; Chapter 126: The Life-Buoy


         We got a note in the mail today.  It had the markings of the military: very official-looking.  Mama opened it without showing us, but when she read it she cried; so we all knew what it said.  The only question left was who had died.
         It had been months since we’d heard from them, the two that survived, and years since they’d left for the effort.  Seiichi had turned 17 last month, and we had sent a letter; but we received nothing in return.  Papa hadn’t written since the American attack on Tarawa, or at least we hadn’t received what he might have sent. 
         Yuusuke and I turn 19 in a week.  But he won’t see it.  He volunteered as a kamikaze pilot.  He might be dead by now; he might die tomorrow.  I’m not sure.
         Mama brought home the rations with the note today.  We only get food about once a week.  Her middle gets thinner every day.  I see her take food off her own plate when she thinks we aren’t looking and add it to ours.  But we’re all getting thinner.  Little Shinji cries all the time, day and night.  Yuuko can’t keep anything down anymore.  We’ve taken her to doctors, but they tell us that it’s malnutrition.  “All she needs is food,” they tell us.  They don’t think we know this?  They think there’s something we can do?
         The army takes what we have, and gives us back only a fraction.  I just hope that they’re feeding Yuusuke better than they’re feeding us. 
         Hitoichi’s wife died yesterday.  She was pregnant and their youngest was still nursing.  He took the child out back when it was dark and struck its head with a brick so that it would not have to starve without its mother.  He still has two young children that he struggles to feed. 
         The government tells us it’s okay, to kill our family, kill the ones we love.  There are fewer people to divide the food.  Fewer civilians to take resources away from our armed forces.  A man gave his wife a dagger and told her to kill herself.  It’s horrible to watch the knife go in through the chin, but what’s worse is seeing the starvation.  If one woman dies, maybe one of the stick-children in the streets may live through this war. 
         I feed Yuuko fruit when we can get it, but she can hardly handle it.  She’s been getting worse every day.  This morning, I found her lying on the floor trying to chew up little stones that she found on the ground.  She thought they were candy.  She won’t live through the night.  How much longer will little Shinji live?  And Mama? 
         Sitting next to my sister’s death bed, I think about the woman with her dagger.  When Yuuko dies, Mama won’t tell the army; her food will just be more for Shinji and me. 
         When Papa left, he gave me a little box full of his memories.  He took his katana to the war with him, of course, but there was a set of three gorgeously crafted shuriken from the final Shogunate.  I pick one up and run my fingertip lightly along the edge to the point. 
         Yuusuke will never turn 19.  He will write me a letter before he leaves, and he will tie on his thousand-stitch belt and climb in his plane.  He will know just where to hit the American air-craft carrier so that it does the most damage.  Hundreds of Americans will die with him. 
         I won’t see 19, either.  And Yuuko won’t live past midnight.  But Shinji will.  I’ll write him a letter, so that he will know what we went through.  He will read it when he’s older, but he won’t be able to remember me, or Yuuko, or his brothers or father.  He won’t even remember the war.  But I will tell, so he will know what happened to his family. 
         I pen the letter, and sign it with my father’s stamp in red ink.  I feel like I’m already signing it in my blood.  I glance at Yuuko and wonder if I should wake her, put a pen in her hand and have her mark the page.  But I don’t disturb her.  I pick up the shuriken and, kissing my little sister on the forehead one last time, raise the blade to my chin.  In one stoke, I jerk it upward. 


Yumi’s letter to her little brother was destroyed in the bombing of Nagasaki not long after.  No records remain of her mother and little Shinji, but Seiichi and Papa returned home from the war to help clean up the devastation of Japan.  Papa died of old age, and Seiichi died of cancer in his 30’s.