Myth of Arrival

In a recent fictionalized retelling of the Himeyuri (so far only shown on independent Japanese TV), the producers of the movie chose the American Civil War song “Amazing Grace” as the theme music to draw the story together. It is a good choice; as a reflective message illustrating the terrible suffering of a dark chapter of my nation's history it reminds us that even those engaged in the morally corrupt side of the battle are still human; they, like us, in the end still died painfully, shamefully, needlessly … even if, and I speak only for myself, popular wisdom claims they brought it down upon themselves.

Perhaps suffering is the only thing that unites humanity; despite our constant complaint that no one ever suffers as deeply we do … in the end a painful death at the hands of others, regardless of the reason, is still a miserable way to end one's life.

For this movie, and for completely different reasons, I chose another song from my country's shameful history. “Strange Fruit” is the most horrific song I have ever heard. To hear it is look oneself square in the face about the long history of racism in this country. It is not to blink, give excuses, to look the other way but to say that “we too, have had a hand in all this.”

But to put the song into a context that is not linked to the immediate American Deep South; that is, to sing about atrocities that are not directly linked to 1930s and '40s lynchings of African Americans … even after I sang all alone last night, even after I wept last night as I sang poetry that has the power to break me every time I hear it; I still wonder if I am committing some sort of heresy simply by singing.

It has something to do with my tone deafness, my terrible voice in which I can only hear my lisp; I know I am a wretched mirror when one can hear what Federico Garcia Lorca calls “duende” in the voices of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone; but to sing “Strange Fruit” is the most honest thing I can think of doing today … even if my voice offends.

Perhaps because my voice offends.

The first time I heard Billie Holiday's “Strange Fruit” was in high school (I graduated in 1989); oddly my teacher played the record during our assigned reading of “Hiroshima” by John Hersey. Thus disgust was born on several levels; the image of a victim of nuclear holocaust reaching up for help only to have the skin of her entire arm pull away in the rescuer's grasp like a “silk glove” combined with the “bulging eyes and the twisted mouth” of lynch victims in our American South that my teacher used to illustrate man's “inhumanity to our fellow man.” Both images have never left me.

It was in college when I stumbled across the recording by Nina Simone that simply devastated me; Lady Day might have made the song famous and painful to listen to, but to listen to Simone sing is to witness evil happening before us. Her emotions are so raw, so painful to behold; I have only had the courage to play the song three times so far. I am in tears and disgrace every time I hear her voice.

This is the reason I chose the song as a theme for this movie. The story I want to tell is the story of the destruction of Ryukyus – once the independent kingdom occupying the island chain between Japan and Taiwan that we call Okinawa. “Strange Fruit” has become to me a song of the suffering of all humanity and as a result to hear it makes it universal.

Am I detracting from the importance of the song? I hope not; it was written by a Jewish Socialist in the 1930s, Abel Meeropol, who went under the pen name Lewis Allan (the first names of both of his children who died in childbirth); Billie Holiday and Nina Simone made it immortal and since then numerous artists have sung their versions – Josh White, Lena Horne, Tori Amos, Sidney Bechet, Cassandra Wilson, Carmen McRae, Karan Casey, Eartha Kitt, Diana Ross, drag queen Squeaky Blonde, Siouxsie and the Banshees, UB40, Catherine Wheel. Marcus Miller, even Sting – I would like to think I am following in a beloved tradition, if I am doing anything.

When trying to tell history it is true that often whole facets of a story get left out. Usually not on purpose but the story teller has only so much time to explain things to an audience with short attention spans so often complex events get stream-lined. I hope not to do this here; to say that the island population of Okinawa sacrificed its girls for the Japanese Imperial Army leaves out the fact that the young boys of Okinawa were also sacrificed. They formed the Blood and Iron Student Brigade; which was incorporated along with many impressed Okinawan adult soldiers into helping defend their homeland.

On a personal level I am not as knowledgeable about the fates of these young boys as I am about the Himeyuri; which is why I have the protagonist of this part of the story speak to us as a ghost. I can recall being fifteen; what a frightful age to die in, to be burned alive by the constant shelling of enemy ships. We dubbed the battle of Okinawa a “typhoon of steel” for the incredible amount of bombs, rockets, missiles we dropped on the enemy. Over 90,000 Japanese soldiers perished on Okinawa – if I was to die then who would blame me crying out forgiveness? What ghost wouldn't speak to us with a slightly bitter voice from across the void? They say that the Samurai code of ethics, bushido, is the act of “looking for the right place to die,” but who wouldn't, at any age, be flabbergasted to find out they died for nothing, burned to a charred carcass from enemy bombs over nothing more than the vanity of their superior officers' total disregard for their fellow man?

Ghost of Ushijima [fire ranging in the background]: No, don't call me back. No, don't ask me to remember. I do not want to remember …

There was fog. All day our observation posts …

[s/x: water rushing by the prow of a warship]

… reported sea fog, so much was invisible to us. The clotted sea. All day ….

… I never met the men who came to my school, who told me, who told all of us: “the Americans are going to kill you all! It is better to die for the Emperor than to be a slave for the Americans!”

Who could tell that to children? What did I know? I was a fisherman's son.

The terms you use today: lynching, extermination, genocide … how could I know? I was only fifteen.

Soldiers [shouting]: Fog closing in! Impossible to see!

Ushijima: I tell you, we were blind.

[s/x: fire stormy, uncontrolled]

Ushijima: I asked you not to call me. I do not want to remember a time of raining bombs, a violent sea wind, a typhoon of steel. I was burnt alive … my body broken, burned beyond recognition. Why? Because I was bad? Because I was a Jap? That is the term you used, isn't it? The term you still use.

[s/x: falling bricks, small explosions]

Ushijima: Mother! Look what has become of your boy, the last of the Blood and Iron Brigade … we watched the rockets come out of the fog. We watched while every position we held crumbled in flame, while every soldier rose up in fire, screamed, vanished … we watched it …

[s/x: gun turrets raising, clicking into place, the sound of history; missiles preparing ready to launch]

Ushijima: Mother! What else could I do?

Soldier: Enemy! Enemy battle ships sighted! I repeat enemy batt –

Song:

“Southern trees bear strange fruit,/ blood on the leaves and blood at the root,/ black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,/ strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees …

“Pastoral scene of the gallant south,/ the bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,/ scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,/ then the sudden smell of burning flesh …

“Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,/ for the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,/ for the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,/ here is a strange and bitter crop …”

Ushijima: Mother! I am so sorry ….

* This is me singing, yes; but I was accompanied by a friend on bass and bassoon from the group Severus & The Death Eaters, thanks mate!

"cleaning the wounded" ZJC (2008)

This is Yukio, a 10 year-old girl from the story I am trying to tell of the Himeyuri nurses of Okinawa. The goal of this movie is not to judge one side or another but to tell a story; however, being an American born many years after all this happened, it is much harder to be non-biased than I ever thought. Perhaps it is impossible.

I chose to make an animated movie based on the events surrounding these girls for the simple fact that the medium known as anime, that is, animated movies from Japan, has the potential to be astounding. It is true that in the last twenty years or so American cartoons have been created with messages so simplistic that even ape creatures with sub-par intelligence cannot fail to get the meaning (“Teasing hurts!” “God is good!” “Lying to Homeland Security is bad!”) but the beauty and craft being used today in Japan rivals anything Hollywood has produced; and because it is a drawing anime can do things live-action movies simply cannot … plus the more obvious fact that I can get this project done on a shoe-string budget, poverty having its limitations.

However, having said all that, I find it frustrating that Japanese anime, much like some modern American poetry, has shown the tendency over the years to reach for the lowest common denominator again and again. I find it rather pathetic that, when boiled down to its roots, most stories being told in anime appear content to revolve around only a couple of themes — most of which are geared at 12 year-old male fantasies of big-breasted girls with big guns causing big explosions in one form or another. Much like our current instance that poetry needs to confuse to be deemed deep (“It all has to mean something!”); I am sure there are plenty of consumers who feel that animated porn-brain-candy is as far as the art needs to go, thank you very much.

But there are real stories out there that need to be told; I write this at a time of scandal within the Japanese public school system concerning textbooks (i.e., the histories currently being taught to the next generation) that rewrite the Imperial Army's role and actions not only on Okinawa but all during the first half of the century leading up to WWII as almost benign:

“Reflecting [on] Japanese tendency towards self-favoring historical revisionism, historian Stephen Ambrose noted that the Japanese presentation of the war to its children runs something like this: 'One day, for no reason we ever understood, the Americans started dropping atomic bombs on us.'”

This is, of course, not an isolated event — as Winston Churchill noted, “History is rewritten by the victors” … or at least their children. I live in a country that prides itself on the democratic ease of our collective amnesia over things we just did (“What? We allowed our President to invade Iraq? I thought my edgy bumper sticker put an end to war! Say, let's pull out!”) but instead of allowing our institutions to gloss over, dumb down or simply rewrite activities that have occurred in our country's name, wouldn't it be better to bring these issues into the spotlight for discussion and discourse?

That leads to a problem, however; it is frightfully easy to make a bold claim like I don't want to judge other people when trying to tell a story such as this … but actually doing it is another thing. Perhaps I am incapable of being non-biased? I do not know.

To tell the stories of the Himeyuri nurses is to tell of teenage girls willing to sacrifice themselves for such issues as patriotism, their families and Okinawa homes, as well as a deep fear of what the invading army would do to them if they were caught. It is a story of the Japanese Imperial Army that exploited these fears and the local population, using them as cheap labor, indentured soldiers, human shields against an enemy it had no hopes of defeating. It is also a story of an American army that carpet-bombed the civilian Okinawa population with missiles and rockets; that had no qualms about going cave to cave across the island, burning alive anyone — solider, civilian, mother, father and child — who didn't immediately surrender. “The Battle of Okinawa has one of the highest casualties rates throughout World War II: the Japanese lost over 90,000 troops, and the Allies (mostly United States) lost over 50,000 men in combat. It is unknown the exact number but conservative estimates put the number of civilians wounded or killed in the 'hundreds of thousands.'”

Perhaps I won't be able to be as nonjudgmental as I hope; coming as I am from the safety of a life in Michigan, United States, in the year 2008. Even though all of this takes place twenty-five years before I was even born it is a story I don't want to forget; even if cartoons and poetry seem a simple way of telling it, it is better than not telling it at all.

Since this is a cartoon and I'm not good
drawing and it is a history and
it is not mine, yet; I would, if I could,
draw the last Army Medic Unit – bland
and blank – right before our bombs start falling.
I love color so right before fire claimed
them, I'd show you the young nurses picking
maggots from the bandages of the maimed.
The job of ten year-old girls; every grand
image that words protect you from seeing.
Since this is a cartoon full of unnamed
lives, full of childlike morals that demand
nothing from us; only that once hurting
others made us both humble and ashamed.

Here is the first installment of my Himeyuri story. I must stress again (and throughout this project) that this is pure fiction. While the story is based on the last months of World War II and the Japanese nurse aides of Okinawa, the characters are not based on anyone living or dead.

The narrator of the story is a teenager named Kohitsuji, which is Japanese for the word lamb, baby sheep. The original title of this story was going to be Red Lamb, an homage to the L.A. band The Monolators and the song I was listening non-stop to throughout February. While I am still in love with the song I have since abandoned attempts to work it into the plot though I am keeping the name.

Since this is a rough draft attempt at a movie, I placed the dialog where I imagine it go in the form of subtitles but I am sure with better direction things can be changed around. Either way, please enjoy.

The Last Himeyuri — Prologue

Prologue:

[Kohitsuji in half-shadow, reading aloud]

“Can we do nothing?
Even the red lamb cannot
make nothing happen.”

That is the last poem I ever wrote. But what good are words if there's no one to hear them? What good is a story if there is no one to tell it to? I cannot tell you what should have happened; only what did. There are too many “ifs” to say anything else … If we had not gone to war. If the Americans had not crossed the ocean seeking revenge. If the Imperial Army had not seen Okinawa as its last defense against an unhonorable, miserable defeat …

[Cut to Mother]

… then I would have been an onarigami like my mother and her mother; a shaman, my village's priestess …

[Cut to Kohitsuji in tears]

… but of course, that never happened.

[Cut: small Okinawa house. S/X: the world is oppressive with humid air and the suffocating racket of incests. Cut: to Mother at her writing desk.]

Mother [calling]: Kohitsuji?

Kohitsuji [off screen]: Yes, Okkaa-san?

Mother: I see you are going against my wishes. You are really going to do this?

Kohitsuji: Why are you asking me this? Of course. I am going to earn the Imperial Order of the Rising Sun! I want to make you proud of me!

Mother [close up of her writing the word “kata/ direction” in Japanese script]: You are my daughter … of course I am proud of you!

Kohitsuji: That's not what I mean, I am part of the Himeyuri! That is … an honor!

Mother: Kohitsuji, what do you think will happen when the Americans get here? Do you have any idea what they are capable of doing? Look at this word I am writing …

Kohitsuji: That's why I need to do something! I can't just sit here and let nothing happen.

Mother [echo]: “Let nothing happen?” But what about your poetry? What about being our priestess? Our onarigami? Are you giving all that up then?

Kohitsuji: My poetry? What good are poets when our family, our friends, our neighbors and gods – all of us, all of this, everything worth putting into a poem – can be raped and bombed and killed by the enemy?

[Sudden cut to Kohitsuji half in shadows, a memory]: I really should have tried to lie to my mother but I am so blunt. I am always getting lost. Like I have any direction … like either of us had any idea of what was about to happen.

Mother [softly]: I didn't raise you up to the age of fifteen only to die.

Kohitsuji [angry]: I am done writing poetry, I am going to make something happen!

[Cut to Kohitsuji in half-shadow]

“To make something happen?” [laughs] I so badly wanted to “make something happen” … to be part of something … part of the glorious Himeyuri, the Star Lily Corps., the nurses of the Imperial 3rd Army preparing to defend our beloved Okinawa.

“To give our lives saving lives,/ to die caring for the wounded.”

… My name means Lamb. There are no sheep on our island … my mother thought Lamb would sound like something new, rare, astounding … a bloody little lamb of war.

But I never lied to my mother. This really is my last poem. The only thing I leave behind so you can remember me.

“Can we do nothing?
Even the red lamb cannot
make nothing happen.”

* Most of the music, unless otherwise stated, are original bits from one of the members of from Severus & The Death Eaters. Cheers, mate!

There is a fantastic story here, but I am not telling it; the story I am going to tell is a work of fiction. My story comes third-hand, from my poor attempts at translating Japanese, from snippets I've seen in non-translated Japanese action adventure movies, from my own imagination.

It is hard for me to remember just when I stumbled upon the story of the Himeyuri; for the past two months I have thought of little else. I've put my poetry to one side, I've been bad at returning phone calls and email; I have been hurry-scurry trying to turn the still photos of the young Japanese girls who were sacrificed on the island of Okinawa during the last months of World War II into a story I could share with others. Even finding reliable information on them has been a problem. The English version of Wikipedia article simply states:

The Himeyuri … a group of female high school students formed into a nursing unit for the Imperial Japanese Army during the Battle of Okinawa. Two hundred and twenty two students and eighteen teachers … were mobilized on March 23, 1945 … During the nearly three month long battle, the Himeyuri were on the front lines performing surgery and other gruesome, back-breaking duties. Near the end of the battle of Okinawa as the Imperial Army fled inland, the nurse corps was suddenly dissolved … In the week following approximately 80% of the Himeyuri and their teachers perished.

That is a small part of the story. The Japanese version of the same Wikipedia article gives a much fuller account and goes into serious depth over the nurses' history, as well as providing an excellent bibliography (all in Japanese) for anyone wishing to read more.

The story of the Himeyuri nurses needs to be brought into the English world; very little has been written, though what there is comes mainly from first-hand military accounts by U.S. soldiers. I recommend George Kerr's Okinawa: The History of an Island People (1958), George Feifer's The Battle of Okinawa (1992) as well as Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook's magnificent collection of oral histories, Japan at War (2008).

However, the real story of the nurses come from the surviving members themselves. An extraordinary 133-minute documentary movie, simply titled Himeyuri, features the testimonies of the twenty-two surviving women, most in their eighties now. The project took 13 years to film, for the director, Shohei Shibata, felt it was important only to capture the stories when the survivors were ready to retell them.

The film (or any of the action adventure version made over the years) has yet to be translated into English, but even so the emotions of women retelling their accounts are universally gut-wrenching. A small collection of their narratives have been translated into English. Anyone interested can read the first hand accounts in the journal Manoa (13, no. 1, 2001).

Being neither skilled in translating Japanese, nor (as it turns out) creating coherent animation, the project I started back in February has taken on a more crude "frame work" approach; what I am going to present here is a rough-draft of a movie based on the experiences of the Himeyuri had I the time and talent to do the project some justice.

Still, I deeply believe there are many stories that need to be told, even if in other hands they might be told better. I think one of the role of the story teller is to remind us that these stories are universal, that they cross nations and race and gender and age, that while the Himeyuri might have occurred on Okinawa half a century ago it is a story that still resonates even today.

Thank you.