This felt even more bizarre to me, perhaps, because it was the summer of 1945—it should have become abundantly clear by this point that Japan was at an extreme disadvantage. But I also knew that the national newspapers had been reporting on the war in a way that made it sound like we were winning battle after battle in order to keep up morale. I could see how the average citizen wouldn’t think there was any chance of Japan losing in the end. Still, I found it a bit unnerving to see how the whole country was rallying together to cheer on our troops as though they were representing all of us on the world stage—like it was the Olympics or the World Cup or something. But if I didn’t already know how it’d all end, perhaps I would be right there with them.
Once she was finished sweeping the floor, Chiyo waved goodbye, promising to come back later. After watching her go, I tried to shake these conflicting thoughts from my head as I carried the box of fish she’d brought into the kitchen.
“The fish are here, Tsuru-san,” I said.
“Great, thanks,” said Tsuru. “Could you stash them in the icebox?”
“Will do,” I said—before transferring them to the literal box full of ice which I’d thankfully refilled earlier this morning. Once I was done, I closed it back up tight, so as to keep the ice from melting as long as possible.
A little while later, there was a commotion or something coming from right outside the mess hall, so I stepped out through the curtains to see what it was.
“Oh, hey,” said a voice. “It’s Yuri-chan.”
Sure enough, a group of soldiers from the base had gathered outside. Leading the pack was Ishimaru, who waved at me with a smile.
“Why, good afternoon to you all,” I said as I invited them inside.
As they came in, I spotted Akira among the group.
“Hey, Yuri,” he said, patting me on the head as he passed. “You been well?”
Immediately, his fellow soldiers began to cry out in protest.
“Hey, no fair, Sakuma!”
“Yuri-chan’s like a little sister to all of us, y’know!”
“Yeah, no hogging her to yourself!”
“Wow, you’re awful popular, Yuri,” Akira said to me with a smile, before turning to face the other men. “Hey, I found her first, remember. Which means I have every right to hog her if I want to.”
“Sakuma, you dirty dog…”
The other men burst out laughing as they filed into the building, each of them patting me on the head as they went. As someone who’d never had a father figure or any older male relatives, I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to this treatment. I just stood there and took it, pouting in mild frustration—until I heard Akira let out a snicker.
“…What are you laughing at?” I said.
“That look on your face, it’s really funny, that’s all,” he said. “You almost look like a neighborhood troublemaker, annoyed that you did a good deed by accident.”
Okay, he was treating me like a kid again. I puffed out my cheeks.
“Fine, then!” I grumbled. “See if I ever do anything nice for you again!”
I could hear Akira snickering behind me as I stomped off into the building.
He and his fellow squad mates would always come to eat at the mess hall on their days off, or on days when training wrapped up early. They’d usually hang around for a bit after they were finished eating, too—either lounging and chatting in the tatami room, reading the newspaper, or playing games like shogi, go, karuta, trump, or hanafuda… They spent their time doing all sorts of stuff when they weren’t on duty. Our normal customers tended not to come in on days they knew the soldiers would be here as a show of respect, so they pretty much had the place all to themselves.
Tsuru always made them such lavish meals, too—well, relative to the time period, anyway—always adding bonus side dishes on top of the things they’d actually ordered. It wasn’t long before I realized that she couldn’t possibly be turning a profit like this, so one day, I decided to ask her about it after the soldiers had already gone home.
“Hey, Tsuru-san?” I said.
“What is it, dear?” she replied.
“Are you…sure you can afford to give them so much free food all the time?”
Tsuru just smiled at me and said, “It’s fine, dear. They’re kamikaze pilots.”
This left me at a loss for words. I’d known Akira was a kamikaze pilot, of course, but they all were?
“They’re giving their young lives to defend our country, so for the few months or weeks they have left with us, we must treat them like living gods,” said Tsuru. “It’s no trouble at all to give them a little extra hospitality in that time.”
Months? Weeks? Did she have access to information that suggested their unit was going to be sent out to die sometime in the near future? I was astonished by the notion that all those men could simply be gone mere days from now.
Although now that I thought about it, I’d noticed some changes to their group in just the short time I’d been here; there were a few new faces among them too. More concerningly, though, I could think of at least a few that had suddenly disappeared without warning. Warily, I asked Tsuru about it, and she confirmed my fears: They had received their orders to sortie in the next wave of attacks, and the new faces were replacements who had been transferred here to take their place in line.
According to Tsuru, once a soldier was stationed on the front lines for a kamikaze operation, it could be anywhere between a few days to a few months before they actually made their fateful final flight.
Ever since I’d learned that, I wasn’t really sure how to behave when interacting with them anymore. After all, any time I saw them could easily be the last; they could all be dead in a matter of days. That thought was always swirling around my head.
And yet, they still acted no different from your average young men—joking around at the table, gobbling down their food with reckless abandon, making light of their situation and of each other. They still had their whole lives ahead of them, and they were prepared to give that all up. Just watching them like this filled me with deeply conflicted feelings.
“Hey, Yuri-chan!”
A voice called out to me from the floor.
It was Ishimaru—Chiyo’s not-so-secret crush. He was sitting over in the tatami room with four other guys, Akira included. The other three were named Teraoka, Kato, and Itakura. Despite their somewhat varied ages and personalities, they were all members of the same unit and therefore always came to eat as a group.
“Come siddown and chat with us old farts for a bit, will ya?”
Ever cheery and playful, Ishimaru was definitely a social butterfly. At twenty, he was the only one who was the same age as Akira, and the two of them were quite close.
“Aw, c’mon… ‘Old farts,’ really? You’re going to scare her away, talking that…”
Kato, meanwhile, was twenty-six. He was the hot-blooded, no-nonsense type.
“Yeah, Ishimaru-san! You sound like my dad when he gets drunk…”
Then there was Itakura. He was the youngest—a boy of only seventeen.
“Why, you…!” Ishimaru growled, playfully hooking his arm around Itakura’s neck to give him a noogie. “I’ll teach you to disrespect your elders!”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Itakura wailed. “That hurts!”
The other three laughed, watching from the sidelines.
Itakura was apparently the fourth son of a large and successful family of merchants, and he certainly had the vibe of a sweet-but-naive, well-to-do youngest child to match. He was clearly well-liked by his older squad mates.
“I see you two are getting along as well as usual…” said the last man with a smile.