Myth of Arrival

History, they say, has terrible ways of repeating itself. In this part of the film we meet a 10 year-old girl, Chiaki; a neighbor of Kohitsuji's, someone she tries to take care of even as the Himeyuri begin their fateful march across the island to the battle front.

I chose the name Chiaki on purpose; it is the the pseudonym of a young girl the Okinawa media dubbed “Chiaki Hibi;” a junior high school student raped this year in February by a U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sergent. For a full account of the incident as well as the reports of some activists actually trying to get something done, please read the Feminist Peace Network's resolution.

Regardless of my Government's lawyers who appear to be trying to place the blame squarely on the the 14 year-old (labeling her as some sort of Okinawan Lolita) I have a hard time separating the story of this young child from the children who made up the Himeyuri in 1946. In both cases those who claimed to have a vested interest in their protection (and the population of Okinawa itself, truth be told) allowed terrible things to happen on their watch. Whatever your feelings about our U.S. Military bases scattered over Okinawa this rape is not an isolated occurrence with our soldiers. I do not wish to demonetize my Military, most of which do not go about raping children. However, for over the last six decades rape cases have been reported by the locals — both in the Okinawa media, their government and survivor's first hand accounts — only to have my own military administrators look the other way, make embarrassing excuses they should be ashamed of or simply claim some vague form of diplomatic immunity. As long as these men are escaping the law how can anyone claim justice has been served?

I say my military because it is easy for us to distance ourselves from such events and people. Things that happen half a world away by members of an organization many people on the Left already have doubts about has been and will remain far too easy to dismiss. Perhaps because it is so easy to say “That Isn't My Problem;” which might explain why we've let those who need to be held accountable off the hook for so long? To be a citizen is, after all, to be responsible. If I don't start with myself, why should I expect anyone else to?

Still, I sincerely sympathize with the Okinawan people who wish to have such people off their islands; who wouldn't?

Notes:

Naha is the capital city of Okinawa.

“Namu amida butsu” – Pure Land Buddhist prayer, roughly translated as “I trust in the Buddha of Immeasurable Light and Eternal Life.”

[Graduation Day: Walking over rocky grounds the Colonel and head doctors for the Himeyuri address the collected girls]

Colonel: Himeyuri Student Corps! Work hard so as not to bring shame to the First Girls' School! This is the greatest glory you will ever have! For those who can return to your homes to say goodbye to your families. We march tomorrow afternoon. We shall all die in the service of the Emperor! Banzai!

[cut to: later that day. Kohitsuji has returned to see her mother. She answers a knock at their door to find their Neighbor and her daughter]

Kohitsuji: Oh, it is a pleasure to see you again.

Neighbor: Ah, Kohitsuji-san, I am glad to see you are well [they bow] We have come to ask for your help.

Kohitsuji: Mine? Certainly. What can I do?

Neighbor: I do not want to leave my daughter, Chiaki, alone when I return to Naha to help my father get ready for the invasion. Chiaki is only 10 years-old but I thought she'd be much safer if she went with you, with the Himeyuri.

Kohitsuji [bending down]: Chiaki-san, is this what you want? You know we'll be working all day taking care of wounded men.

Chiaki [softly]: I … want to go home.

Kohitsuji [worried]: But Chiaki-san, the enemy is dropping bombs everywhere. Maybe your village isn't safe right now?

Mother [entering]: Do we have guests? Oh my, it is a pleasure to see both of you. Kohitsuji-san, please show some manners and put the tea on.

Kohitsuji [bowing]: Of course, Okkaa-san. [exits]

Mother: Please forgive my daughter, she leaves tomorrow to the front. I understand there are a lot of wounded men there that need caring for.

Neighbor: Please, will you help us? I must return to the capital city but I want Chiaki to be safe. Would you talk to Kohitsuji? I was hoping she would take her along.

Mother: You mean to the front lines where the enemy is bombing us night and day from what I am told? How could that be safer than your village?

Neighbor: But the Himeyuri won't be at the front, will they? I thought they were assigned to the rear where the hospitals are? Where else is safer than surrounded by our Army? Even the Americans won't bomb hospitals, would they?

Mother: Do not worry, both of you. The Emperor will not let anything happen to us. We might be on an island but we are all Japanese citizens. All of us. I am sure he would have evacuated us if anyone thought this war would drag on too long.

Neighbor: But please, talk to Kohitsuji? For Chiaki's sake …

[cut to: next day the Himeyuri march across the island to the 3rd Army Surgical Unit]

Girls [singing]: “We shall meet again/ This time as friends/ We shall see all we love/ Waiting for us at home …”

Katsuko [laughing]: Colonel-san was so embarrassing yesterday!

Tira: He was drunk!

Niigaki: And what was that terrible song he kept trying to sing? “Give your life for the sake of the Emperor/ Wherever you may go!/ Give your life!”

Tira: I think he should leave the singing to us.

[laughter]

[cut to: Chiaki marching in the crowd, looking miserable and lonely]

Higa: You know, I have never really seen a wounded man before. They kept having us bandage each other. What if I see blood and pass out?

Niigaki [teasing]: Higa-san is a big baby!

Kohitsuji: I wouldn't worry too much. I think once the excitement starts we will all just do what we have to.

[cut to: next day at their new barracks with many girls on washing detail]

Ashitomi [calling out]: Kohitsuji-san, is this what you meant yesterday as “exciting”?

Kohitsuji: Oh, I don't mind, just as long as …

[cut to: a muffled noise, girls looking around in hesitation]

Chiaki: What is that?

[cut to: explosions in the jungle, screams of planes overhead]

Man #1: Bombs! Bombs! Run to the caves!

[chaos as the nurses try to flee, shot of Niigaki looking about in panic, calling to girls still in the dormitory]

Niigaki: Chiaki! Run!

[cut to: long tracer fire as American fighters race to the 3rd Surgery Unit. cut to: Niigaki and Chiaki falling forward as bullets rip past them]

Chiaki [calling out]: Kohitsuji! Kohitsuji!

[cut to: inside of cave, girls screaming, stumbling about in the dark]

Kohitsuji: Chiaki! Run!

[cut to: American fighters dropping bomb after bomb.

cut to: Niigaki, Chiaki and a third girl pick themselves up and try to run for shelter]

Kohitsuji: Chiaki!

[Kohitsuji falls back, blinded as the three girls vanish in a burst of flame and agony]

Kohitsuji: Chiaki! No! Chiaki!

[cut to later that night: Kohitsuji praying and crying]

Kohitsuji: Namu … Amida … Butsu … Namu … Amida … Butsu … I am so sorry, Chiaki … I am so sorry Niigaki … I failed you, I couldn't protect you … you came here to do good and you are gone … Namu … Amida … Butsu … I am so sorry … I failed you.

My favorite band in all their splendor … if only I had a pretzel tree!

Uminai-gami's Weaving

The title for this part of the story comes from the Okinawan Creator goddess Uminai-gami; who, along with her brother Umikii-gami, created all humans and the islands. I have yet to find if Uminai-gami was, in fact, a weaver of souls but it seemed plausible in the realm of story telling. I hope I have not offended anyone by taking such liberties.

Later in the film Ashitomi refers to herself and the other girls as being from “Ryukyu,” which is the name of ancient Okinawa back when it was an independent kingdom. Archaeological evidence points to a the island having been inhabited dating back to the Paleolithic era. Just because Japan conquered the island in 1609 does not necessarily mean it has also won over the hearts and souls of its people.

While helping to composing the music to go along with Uminai-gami's Weaving I decided to incorporate a constant static hiss in the background. I did this at first because I have no method of making the sort of ear-shattering explosions an endless rain of bombs might sound like. But the more I listened the more I liked it; static is the sound of pure chaos and that seemed fitting to what was happening. Whether it remains in the final cut has yet to be determined but I find it an interesting experiment.

[f/x: Sound of knitting. Uminai-gami weaving out fate; a sound heavy with rain and bombs falling in the mountains. Cut to: American pilots talking but the only sound is static. Cut to: line of explosions.]

Kohitsuji [fearfully]: Those bombs sound like they're getting closer.

Ashitomi [trying to change mood as noise fades away]: Kohitsuji-san, why are you looking so worried? Those bombs aren't for us, silly.

Katsuko: Ashitomi-san is right. If those bombs were for us they would have sent someone who wasn't so blind. I don't think Americans can see in the dark very well.

Kohitsuji: I know … it's just that this isn't what I was expecting.

Ashitomi: What? The bombs? Don't worry about the bombs. Himeyuri can do anything!

[In the distance the roll of falling thunder; a strange noise that never completely fades away, just grows distant for a time like waves.]

Kohitsuji: No, I know all that. It's just that so far what have we done? I do not know why they are having us work like soldiers … actually, all I did today was carry rocks out of the cave for their stupid surgery unit … but isn't that what men are suppose to be doing?

Katsuko [laughing]: Oh, lazy Kohitsuji-san! I'm still trying to get rock dust out of my underwear. I don't care what I have to do, I just wish those stupid Americans would quit shooting at us. The colonel said it was because all Americans hate Japanese so much.

Ashitomi: Okinawans.

Katsuko: What?

Ashitomi: I'm not Japanese, we're all Ryukyu! [ancient kingdom of Okinawa] I'm from Yomitan.

Tira: I'm from Ginoza.

Higa: I'm from Zamami.

Kohitsuji [laughing]: You are right! I guess no one here is Japanese.

Katsuko: Do you think the Americans will stop bombing us if they knew we aren't Japanese? After all, who wants to kill a star lily?

Tira: You know, I never understood why they call us that. We're not flowers.

Higa [laughing, striking a pose and talking in a posh manner like their Colonel]: Huh! Huh! We must protect the virtue of our pure Lilies! Huh! Huh!

[laughter from everybody]

Katsuko: I hate dirty old men. You thin you had it tough? Me and Ashitomi were put on bandage detail yesterday, cutting strips all day. That nasty doctor kept “bumping” into us. Let me dig in the dirt, at least no one tries to touch you then.

Katsuko: I heard someone say the Third Army Surgery will be safer if it is underground in caves.

Niigaki [airily]: In caves, outside of caves, it doesn't really matter to me.

Miyagi [suddenly, angrily]: Idiots!

[several girls jump up]

Miyagi: What were you expecting? That we're still in school? We can go home?

[Sudden rolling rumble of explosions not far off, lights flicker, girls fall silent staring at the ceiling]

[Cut to: endless bombs falling from bellies of aircraft, static of approaching death. F/x: sound of Uminai-gami's knitting mixed with rain and muffled explosions. Cut to: line of explosions]

Katsuko: Miyagi-san, I thought we were going to do what Himeyuri Student Corps nurses were trained to do … we'll all be working in a little tent with a red cross on it and wrap the men with big white bandages and give them shots like we've been trained to do.

Miyagi [softly]: I can't believe how naive you are. Look about you.

Niigaki: Miyagi-san, what do you think is going to happen?

[long silence]

[All heads to turn to Miyagi]

Niigaki: What do you think is going to happen, Miyagi-san? Miyagi-san?

Miyagi: I don't know but will simply telling dying men “don't give up please” really going to work?

The Himeyuri, ひめゆり — Blood, Iron & Fog [remix]

I think I made a mistake; picking to sing and record the song “Strange Fruit” and attempting to use it as a metaphor for the atrocities that occurred during WWII might be doing a grave injustice to the song and for all those for racial violence is still a part this America life. Not that I am the first person to hear the song's power and wish to use it to illustrate horror; in the 1970s the song was used (and the lyrics rewritten) as a theme for Gay Rights. Even as recently as 1998 a lesbian a'cappella group, Amasong, won the prestigious GLAMA award for their interpretation of Holiday and Meeropol's lyrics. As a member of Michigan's Triangle Foundation I fervently believe we need Gay Rights now but to sing this song with the “Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze” removed, in fact to go so far as to turn it into some torch song and sing “Here's a fruit for the world to see/ For no one to pick, running wild and free …” (113) strikes me as horrifically presumptuous.

Of course all listeners of the song come to with different experiences. I explained my own first encounter like this:

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.

Perhaps so, but does that give me license to sing it? To use it in a different context? To appropriate it for my own agenda? No.

The reason I bring this up is that the more time I spent thinking about what I did the more I came to the conclusion I was being just as presumptuous as well. I was wrong, this song isn't about the battle of Okinawa and it certainly isn't about being unlucky in love (gay, straight or anything in-between). In the same blog post where I spend some time justifying my actions I wrote: “To hear [Strange Fruit] 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.'”

Yes, I still agree to that statement (even though now I wish I was paying closer attention to what I was actually saying) because the four key words here are “racism in this country.” To try to put into a different surroundings or to try to apply it to a different group of people who have entirely different histories and experiences than you do is a discredit to those who came before us.

Also, the more I listened to other people's versions the more I returned to the source material. Really, who can sing this with more authenticity, grace and power than Lady Day? It is true we live in a culture in which the mainstream thinks nothing of “borrowing” from other people for our Art; but perhaps more people need to sit up and take note when suddenly a song that once could silence an entire night club, cause audience members to break down in tears over the memories the song evokes, is now performed by people like Sting and Tori Amos (who justified the reason she sang it by saying since her grandfather was Cheyenne that somehow “ties her to the earth” and makes it “authentic” when she sings it … this coming from a millionaire living in yuppie Taos, NM) as well as people like me in which all of my first hand knowledge and experience of the pre-Civil Rights South comes from videos, novels, poetry and songs. All three of us lack anything close to credibility so that the song turns from bearing witness to evil to one more thing mainstream America thinks it can do what it pleases with.

Ernest Hemingway once said the greatest gift a writer could have is a built-in bullshit detector. I believe that is just as important (if not more so) for musicians. Especially in an age where it is getting easier and easier to rip whole pages out of other people's histories and try to call them your own.

It's not that at some time in the future a white man couldn't conceivably sing this song with some air of authenticity, it is just that at this point that particular person has yet to be born. The director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, Dan Morgenstern, is among those who think that “Strange Fruit” belongs only to Billie Holiday. “Frankly, I don't think anybody but Billie should do it,” he said. “I don't think anybody can improve on it. … [the song] remains a metaphor for the American black experience” (120-21). This is why I am not going to use the Strange Fruit for my movie.

I hope I have not offended anyone. Thank you.

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.

All we knew was you'd kill us. All of us, mothers, children. We were told our home would vanish from the map.

… 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 –

Ushijima: Mother! What else could I do? Mother, you are dead …

Father is dead … everybody I loved is dead … and I could do nothing.

I am sorry, I am so sorry …. I could do nothing.

Your only son … your only son failed you. Forgive me.

… I am a dog because I could do nothing.

A note on the song I used instead:

Recently I discovered a lovely children's song sung with amazing grace and skill, Hagoromo no Komoriuta (Okinawan Lullaby) by Aiko Shimada and Elizabeth Falconer from the CD Oyasumi. The lyrics are: "Na ku na yo ya / Naku na yo / an maga tu bin su / Yani kwiyun do / kumidara awadara / ya ni kwiyun do / Hei yo / hei yo / naku na yo." Since I lack both grace and skill with my ragtag voice I decided that I wouldn't even try to match Aiko's but instead to re-imagine the song more as a dirge, which fits the tone of the movie. How I sound to a native Okinawa speaker I shudder to think (I will never make fun of ABBA again, not only did they sing in a language they didn't speak but they made it sound good!) though someday I'd love to listen to other versions of this song.

Works Cited:

Margolick, David. Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. Harper Perennial (2001)

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!