As they bid Daddy farewell and started to leave the premises, an important-looking man in a crisp military uniform slid over and whispered in Mother’s ear, “Your husband’s unit will depart from Shinagawa Station in one week on the eight o’clock overnight train.”
Mother was taken aback. “Is that true?”
“But you won’t be able to access their train’s platform. You’ll be seeing them off from a different platform some distance away,” the officer said before gliding off as though nothing had happened.
Mother instructed Totto and her siblings to stay put and went back through the gate to inform Daddy that they would go to Shinagawa Station on the night of his departure. They agreed that he would wave a folding paper fan with the Japanese flag which he’d received from the military so that they could spot him from a distance among the soldiers.
To this day, Totto does not know why the officer approached Mother to let her in on the secret. Was it because Totto and her family had looked so heartbroken? Or because Mother was so beautiful? Regardless of the reason, what mattered was that he had told them.
✦ ✦ ✦
Daddy’s Send-Off
The night of Daddy’s departure, Mother asked the neighbors to look after little Mari-chan and Noriaki-chan and took Totto with her to Shinagawa Station. There was a blackout in effect and the station was completely dark.
About twenty other families had gathered there to bid their loved ones farewell. From the Yamanote Line platform where they had been instructed to stand, they could see soldiers in the distance streaming onto the overnight train. But it was too dark and they were too far away to be able to tell the men apart.
Totto knew Daddy was somewhere in the crowd and that he would signal to them with his paper fan. “Father!” she shouted at the top of her voice, waving toward the blur of soldiers. The other families also called out and waved in much the same fashion.
And then, all at once, the soldiers aboard the train opened their fans—each one exactly alike—and started to wave them. Mother and Daddy had been gravely mistaken in thinking the fan would help distinguish him.
Totto knew this might be the last time she ever saw her father and was desperate to catch a glimpse of him. She wanted him to have an image of herself and Mother on the platform to keep in his mind. Frantically they searched and waved to a soldier they thought could be him. The man waved back, but then they saw a different soldier who they thought could be Daddy and waved to him as well. That person also waved back. The people around them on the platform were just as frantic. “Is that Father? It must be, right?” and so on. In the end, Totto and Mother noticed one soldier waving his fan to a unique rhythm and decided that he must be Daddy. Whenever they waved at him, his fan appeared to swing more wildly than the others.
All too soon, the train started to inch forward. Totto and Mother kept waving with all their might as they raced after it to the very end of the platform, bumping into other people along the way.
Then, the train vanished into the night.
✦ ✦ ✦
“That had to be Daddy,” Totto and Mother said as they walked through the underpass of Shinagawa Station. It was even darker in the tunnel than on the platform. Soon they heard the crunching of boots over gravel and realized a different troop of soldiers was approaching.
Totto tried to clear the path for the marching men, but fell into a gutter on the side of the road. She stood there, soaked to her knees in the darkness, as the soldiers trooped past, inches away.
“Mother!” Totto screamed. At that moment, from the resounding column of marching soldiers a voice yelled out, “Tetsuko!”
Totto looked up and saw—Daddy! Standing right in front of her! His unit was on its way to the platform, where another train waited. Totto wondered if she was dreaming. Without thinking, she reached for Daddy’s hand and knew it at once to be the big, strong hand with the long fingers that she loved so dearly.
“Mother! It’s Father!” she shouted.
Mother rushed toward them, astonished and overjoyed. But they could only exchange a word or two before Daddy had to hurry back to rejoin the ranks. He resumed marching, and Totto and Mother returned to the Yamanote Line platform once more to see him off.
The platform was still too dark to make out any faces, but Mother reassured Totto, “Don’t worry, dear. I told Daddy to wave his fan like a conductor so we know that it’s him.”
Just as Mother said, when the soldiers started to wave their fans in unison, one man swung his arms up and down in the manner of an orchestra conductor. Totto and Mother waved back for all they were worth. This time, they knew for certain it was Daddy they were bidding a proper farewell.
If Totto hadn’t fallen into the gutter and screamed for her mother—or, rather, if the timing of Totto’s fall and Daddy’s unit marching past had been off by mere seconds—Totto and her mother would have gone home believing that the stranger they’d seen off had been Daddy. And Daddy, for his part, would have departed for war waving toward the platform after Totto and Mother had left, believing they were there.
Adults often admonished Totto for her tendency to pick the most dangerous paths, walking down streets with holes in the ground or roads with ongoing construction. But on that night, Totto wanted to pat herself on the back. Reuniting with Daddy at Shinagawa Station felt like nothing less than divine intervention.
✦ ✦ ✦
Totto wondered if Daddy had called her Tetsuko, her given name, instead of his usual “Totsky” that night because he was embarrassed about what the other soldiers might think. They only ever received one postcard from him following his departure. It had the words Military Mail stamped on it in red and contained just a few short, nondescript lines: I hope everybody is doing well. Father is hard at work serving the country. Please take care of yourselves.
The letters were censored and he likely could not write anything more.
After this postcard, all correspondence with Daddy ceased.