Totto was about to leave for school one chilly morning when her mother handed her an envelope containing fifteen soybeans that she’d roasted in a frying pan.
“Now, listen to me. This needs to last you the whole day.” She placed the envelope in Totto’s palm. “Don’t gobble it up at once. There won’t be any food for you when you come home, so really think about when and how many you eat throughout the day.”
Totto let that sink in. Starting today, this would be all she had for lunch. And no matter how hungry she was, she couldn’t afford to finish it in one sitting.
“Drink lots of water with these. It will help to fill your stomach,” Mother repeatedly reminded Totto.
“Fifteen soybeans…I suppose I’ll have three for breakfast,” Totto decided, and popped one in her mouth on the way to school.
Crunch, crunch.
She chewed slowly with her molars, but the soybean was gone in no time. On to the second.
Crunch, crunch.
Again, gone in a flash. Just one more.
“And that’s three,” she sighed. Once she got to school, she drank plenty of water as Mother had instructed. “Those three beans will soak up the water and get nice and big,” she thought to herself as she imagined the soybeans expanding in her stomach. Totto tucked the envelope into her trouser pocket. She had only twelve soybeans left.
Right around lunchtime, they were in the middle of class when a siren sounded to warn of an air raid. Totto and her classmates took refuge in the bomb shelter in a corner of the schoolyard. With the bunker door closed, the shelter became pitch dark. The children held their breaths and stayed quiet in the beginning, but they soon grew restless and started to pass the time by whispering to one another.
“I had ice cream once,” somebody said.
“Oh, me too!” Totto piped up.
As they waited impatiently in that dark shelter for the siren that signaled the end of the alert, Totto couldn’t stop thinking about her soybeans. Unable to bear it any longer, she reached inside the envelope and placed two beans into her mouth, taking great care not to drop them.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
That only whet her hunger even more. She longed to scarf down the rest of the bunch, but knew that if she did, she would have nothing left for the rest of the day. “Not now, not now…” she silently repeated, willing herself to show restraint. Then a thought occurred to her. “I still have ten soybeans, but what good will they be if a bomb falls on this shelter and we all die? Maybe I ought to eat them while I can.”
She had another thought. “What if we don’t get hit here, but a bomb burns down my house? What if when I go home, I find out that the house is gone, and that Daddy and Mother are dead? What shall I do then? Perhaps I had better eat the ten soybeans now, after all.”
Such worries spun around and around in her head, filling her with sorrow.
“I do hope our house hasn’t burned down…”
She ate two more soybeans.
The all-clear siren sounded a while later, and Totto and her schoolmates were finally able to crawl out of the shelter.
“We’re finished for the day,” the teacher said. “You may all go home.”
But the closer Totto got to her house, the more frightened she became that it would no longer be standing. Thankfully, she found her home looking just as it had when she left that morning.
“Phew. The house hasn’t burned down, and Mother and Daddy are alive. And I still have eight soybeans.” A wave of relief passed over her.
On nights when Totto was so famished that she couldn’t sleep, she drew pictures of her “dream menu” items. Mother had invented the game. To play, you sketched the foods you wished to eat and then went through all the motions, giving thanks for the meal, munching mouthfuls of air, asking for seconds. I’ll have another! Over and over, they drew pictures of sweet egg omelets, grilled meat, and other fancies, and pretend-chewed them all.
Eventually, the distributed rations were reduced to something called kelp noodles. To make them, thick kelp that had washed ashore was ground into powder, combined with the starchy vegetable konjac, and rolled into thin noodles that resembled udon. Totto didn’t like them because they reminded her of frog eggs, but there was nothing else to eat. And since the family had already run out of condiments with which to season anything, they simply had to boil the frog eggs and slurp them down as best they could.
✦ ✦ ✦
One winter Sunday, Totto headed out for the Sunday School at Senzoku Church which she had been attending since she was a little girl. It was drizzling lightly and the air was very cold. As she walked, she murmured her usual “We’re cold, sleepy, and hungry” chant that somehow always helped her feel as though she were on a special excursion.
An icy wind was howling, causing a few tears to trickle down her cheeks. She must have been making a strange face, too.
“Hey, you!” a policeman barked at her. “Why are you crying?”
Totto wiped away her tears and replied, “Because it’s cold.”
“Think about the soldiers at war!” the policeman shouted. “They don’t cry just because it’s cold, and neither should you! Stop that at once!”
His anger stunned Totto. Apparently, wartime meant no crying, either.
“I don’t want to be yelled at again,” she thought. “And if you can’t cry when you’re at war, then I won’t cry anymore, even if I’m cold, sleepy, and hungry. The soldiers have it much, much worse than me.”
That was the best Totto could do.
✦ ✦ ✦
Guilt Tastes of Dried Squid
Totto began to notice long lines popping up all around town. As soon as people heard that a shop had stocked new items, they immediately got in formation. It didn’t matter what was being sold; people stood in line because they felt they had to. They could not afford to miss out.
“I finally made it to the front of the line, only to learn that we were waiting to pay respects at a funeral!” Mother had said once, recounting a story that could have come straight out of a comic rakugo performance. Totto hooted with laughter. That was back when shops still had some products to sell, and Totto’s family felt secure enough to turn mishaps like Mother’s into funny stories.
It was around this time that it happened, near Jiyugaoka Station. Totto was on her way to board the train back from Tomoe Gakuen when in front of the station she saw a soldier, surrounded by his family and community, saying his farewells before departing for duty.
“Oh, that man is going to war.”
No one close to Totto had yet been claimed by the draft, so it was hard for her to imagine how the people gathered that day felt, but they all appeared to be holding in their emotions.
“Wave this flag, will you?”
Someone handed Totto a small Japanese flag along with a thin strip of roasted dried squid. She looked up to see a man she didn’t know smiling down at her.
“Why did he give me a piece of dried squid?” she wondered. “Is that what you get when you wave one of these flags?”
Totto was ravenous, of course, so she took the flag and crispy treat. Mother had taught her never to accept things from strangers, but she was too hungry to resist. Glancing around, Totto saw that all the adults and children were waving their flags and cheering “Banzai!” for the soldier.
Totto concluded that she must have been right, and that the squid was a reward one received for waving these flags. She joined in, yelling “Banzai!” and swishing her flag back and forth as vigorously as she could. Eventually the farewell ceremony ended, the soldier disappeared into the station, and the people with flags went their separate ways. Totto waited until everybody had left, then quickly stuffed the dried squid in her mouth.
From that point onward, she looked forward to the days when people gathered at Jiyugaoka Station to see soldiers off. Tomoe Gakuen was within a stone’s throw of the train stop, so any time the calls of “Banzai!” reached Totto in her classroom, she slipped out and sprinted toward it, even if class was in session. Tomoe’s rules were not strict in this regard, and she was never reprimanded for leaving the classroom.
Totto fervently waved the little Japanese flags for the soldiers headed to war and lost herself in happiness as she chewed away at the strips of squid that earned her.
But then at some point, no matter how fervidly she waved her flag, the squid strips did not materialize. The rippling effects of the food shortage had reached even these send-off ceremonies. Once Totto learned that she would no longer receive any squid, she became deeply disappointed and stopped attending the affairs.
But she never forgot the taste of those roasted rewards.