Promises
Lawrence Farrar
Paul Hamilton, a widower and retired school superintendent from Madison, Wisconsin, had overnighted at Tokyo’s Okura Hotel along with a group of fellow Korean War veterans. They were all men in their sixties. Headed for home, they had flown in from Seoul the day before, after a week-long tour on the Korean peninsula, a place transformed from the one where they fought and where their friends died forty years before. For Paul and the other vets, experiencing the prosperous South Korea they helped preserve had been gratifying; recalling the human tragedy and breakage it involved had been heart-rending.
Now, on a bright May morning in 1992, most of the vets and their spouses had opted for a day of cherry blossom viewing in Kamakura, a few others for a round of golf at Tama Hills. Standing under the hotel portico as his companions loaded onto buses, Paul spoke to the tour leader. “I don’t play golf, and flower viewing’s not my thing. I think I’ll just do a little sightseeing on my own. You folks have fun.”
In fact, the possibility of a solo excursion had dominated Paul’s thinking ever since the trip brochure appeared in his mail box and he discovered there would be a three day stop in Japan. Forty years had slipped away, forty years. But, he had never forgotten her. Never.
Outfitted in chinos, a short sleeved madras shirt, and white bucks, he not only looked like a tourist, he felt like one. Damn it. He was one. There could be worse things, he supposed; he had aged pretty well--still slim, still fit. Didn’t wear glasses, never had. The serifs that now lined his face, he thought, gave him a rugged look. His limp almost imperceptible, the ripples of scars where the slugs had torn through his legs only showed when he played tennis.
His sole concern, and one he tried to dismiss, was that his close-cropped white hair had started to thin. His wife, before she passed away, cheerfully accused him of becoming vain in his old age. I’m not that old, he thought. But, vanity probably had something to do with his decision to put on one of the 24th Infantry Division ball caps handed out before they left Detroit. He wanted to look his best when he got there--just in case.
After a short cab ride, Paul stepped into a train at Tokyo Station and settled in his seat for the two-hour ride south to the small coastal city of Shimizu. He calculated he could get there by 10 o’clock and be back in Tokyo by seven.
Japan looked so different, so prosperous. Not like the first time he boarded the train for Shimizu on a December day in 1949. Not at all. In those early days after their cataclysmic defeat, the Japanese people had scraped by, but just barely. Everything had looked decrepit, patched together, and worn out--even the people. Now the place they inhabited seemed so affluent, the people so healthy, so well fed. It had all changed. He stared out the window glimpsing the verdant countryside, the modern towns, and the prospering villages flashing by. Forty years.
Paul extracted a folded sheet of paper, stashed between the pages of a Japanese phrase book he carried in his shirt pocket. The concierge had been helpful, writing Japanese translations beneath each line of Paul’s neatly printed note:
My name is Paul Hamilton. I was assigned here in 1949-1950.
Can you help me locate Hiroko Terashima? She was a school teacher. Her father was a school principal. Her little brother was named Ichiro. Her mother died in the war.
Looking up from the paper, Paul let his eyes fall shut and, in the darkness of elastic time, the cords of memory tugged, and then pulled him back. He remembered it had been snowing that winter day. The steam train had chugged wearily through the bleak, gray countryside, crystalline flakes driving against the coach windows like icy bullets. He had been so cold. Even in the white-striped cars set aside for Occupation forces, heat was difficult to come by and seats hard as the pews in his hometown church intensified the discomfort. Paul had been happy to escape the train and tote his duffel bag down the station stairs to the waiting jeep where Corporal Jack Grady, a blond bean pole from Willamette, greeted him. Grady had saluted, his teeth chattering. Paul smiled at the remembering. That had been in late 1949.
~ ~ ~
Too young for World War Two, Paul had revered his older brother, Will, who had been killed going ashore at Normandy. Paul wanted to serve like Will, felt compelled to serve, and for two years chafed in his job as a high school English teacher in River Falls. Finally, while college friends and returning veterans hurried to build lives in the fast-demobilizing postwar world, Paul accepted an Army commission and soon shipped out to Japan. General MacArthur still led the Occupation that had begun in 1945. After three months temporary duty at Occupation Headquarters, new orders landed Paul on that freezing train enroute to an assignment at a small transportation and military police post on the periphery of Shimizu.
By the fourth year of the Occupation, like many small posts scattered across the country, whatever utility the place once possessed had evaporated. Occasionally the soldiers there tracked down alleged black marketers or towed a military truck gone off the road. But, most of the time they adhered to a numbingly slow metronomic routine. Garrison life softened them; no one could claim they were combat-ready. To Paul, it seemed an absolute dead end.
Burt Ryder, a wartime colonel reverted to his permanent rank of major, ran the post. He was a smallish man with a pale face and a thin mustache that looked as if it had been sketched on. He seemed to take pride in his wavy black hair, through which he sometimes ran a comb at unlikely moments. A humorless and small-minded martinet, he displayed total insensitivity to the needs of his men and to the Japanese whom the Americans, according to Occupation authorities, sought to democratize. However, when Headquarters directed that various regulations on non-fraternization--ones he had zealously sought to enforce--should be relaxed, Ryder quickly genuflected. He always sailed with the prevailing wind.
Assembling the post’s half dozen officers and NCOs in his Quonset hut office, he said, “Apparently, we’re supposed to do something nice with the Japs. Community involvement. That sort of thing. I need some ideas. We’ve already done the orphan party.”
Red-faced and square jawed, Staff Sergeant Harold Killibrew added, “Yes, sir. And I’ll be damned if I’ll put on that Santa suit again.”
Lieutenant Frank Vincent said, “Charlie Okimoto (the post’s Nisei interpreter) heard the middle school is looking for some volunteer English teachers.”
“Now that sounds great,” Major Ryder said. “Just show up and chat with the little Nippers.”
“Yes, sir. Nothing to it,” Killibrew said.
“Okay, Paul,” Ryder said. “You were a teacher, right? You’re our man. You and Charlie hustle over there and talk to the principal. See what you can set up.”
The next day, Paul and Charlie drove to the school where Principal Sanjiro Terashima welcomed them. In his sparsely furnished office, the faint heat from a small coal stove failed to stave off the December chill. Paul decided it provided about as much warmth as a light bulb.
“I apologize for any discomfort. It has been difficult since the war,” Terashima said in passable English. Rumor had it he had been a Japanese intelligence officer. But, no one knew for sure. Terashima was a thin man, tall for a Japanese, wearing horn rimmed glasses and outfitted in a dark wool suit that appeared to date from the 1930s.
It struck Paul most Japanese seemed thin, likely a result of wartime and postwar deprivation. Things had improved, but for a long time, there had not been much to eat. People still scrimped, patched their clothes, saved string, walked, or rode bikes. Even if they could have afforded one, there were no cars to be had.
Paul’s meandering mind refocused when a young Japanese woman, wearing a skirt and heavy sweater, entered the room. She carried a tray with cups and a small pot of green tea. That moment remained etched in Paul’s mind--the first time he ever caught sight of her. She had straight hair, cut short, and she wore no makeup. Her lustrous skin seemed perfect.
Before serving the tea, she said, “Welcome. I am sorry. This tea is all we have. But please enjoy it.”
“This my daughter, Hiroko. She is teaching English to our seventh and eighth graders,” Principal Terashima said.
“How do you do. I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” Hiroko said in textbook English. Her eyes lowered, she bowed, and left the room. The softness of her voice and her gentle manner had captured Paul’s attention.
“We are happy to say we have completed our conversion to the American school system,” Principal Terashima said. “We are now officially Shimizu Junior High School. We even have a PTA--just like in America.”
“Everything American is in,” Charlie said. “I heard they’re even making people learn how to square dance.”
“Yeah. We’re the model,” Paul replied. “I guess you’re more democratic if you can square dance.”
He and Charlie chuckled, but they stopped quickly, fearful of seeming to be disparaging.
Terashima explained, with Charlie’s help, that, in keeping with Japan’s commitment to better understand American democracy, he felt it important for young people to learn English. And it would be extremely beneficial for them to hear native speakers. Did Lieutenant Hamilton think this could be arranged?
Why, of course. The soldiers would be delighted. Nothing they would rather do. Paul had hardly envisioned returning to a classroom when he took the military oath, but it looked like he would be doing just that, at least part of the time. Major Ryder seemed determined. And so, soon after, twice a week Paul and two enlisted volunteers, corporals Miller and Chance, transformed themselves into English helpers at Shimizu Junior High School.
Each adhered to his own simple routine. In Paul’s case, he would show up in a classroom, greeted by a chorus of children’s voices, “Hello Mr. Hamilton. We are happy to see you.” Then, with Hiroko Terashima dutifully conducting, the youngsters worked their way through two verses of You Are My Sunshine, or something similarly uplifting, the English words largely indecipherable. Since they lacked textbooks, Paul and his fellow helpers devised simple recitation drills. [Student stands up. How do you do. My name is Okada Taro. Student sits down. Next student.] And so it went. By the third week it was [Student - How do you do. My name is Okada Taro. I am thirteen years old. What is your name? Paul - I am Paul Hamilton. I am twenty-four years old.] It would be a long journey.
When Paul arrived one day with a bag of chocolates and gum, the children eagerly crowded around him, hands outstretched. For the first time, the gentle tone of Hiroko’s voice yielded to one with a sharp edge. “Please, Mr. Hamilton, do not give them such things. We are poor, but we are not beggars.” Paul realized kind gestures by the American GIs, no matter how well intended, could generate embarrassment or shame. The Japanese had lost the war but most of them did not want to lose their self respect.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll use them as rewards for lessons learned.”
Hiroko smiled behind her hand. “You are an understanding man, Mr. Hamilton.”
Paul was not only an understanding man; in a matter of weeks he was a smitten man. Hiroko struck him as a truly nice person, kind and deferential. At the same time, despite the obvious difficulty of living in war’s wake and (he learned later) with the loss of her mother, she seemed to be a determined person, her pride very much intact and buoyed by a core of inner strength. He respected her for all of these traits. He also had the impression that, while she remained locked in by the constraints of a traditional upbringing, in the swirl of postwar changes sweeping Japan, she aspired to become a new, modern Japanese woman, but was still not certain how to go about it. And, without question, he found her physically attractive.
The only Japanese girls Paul had encountered during his brief time in country until then had been bar hostesses, brassy and on the make. By contrast, Hiroko conducted herself with unblemished decorum. Yet, despite no obvious manifestations, as weeks passed, somehow he felt she was as drawn to him, as he was to her. Perhaps each of them found something in the other different from what they had come to expect in their own society. For Paul, the fact he was a twenty-four-year-old male far from home no doubt also exerted an influence. Whatever the reason, the twenty-one-year-old Japanese girl infatuated him. He thought of her as pretty, but really did not know what standard of beauty to apply. Certainly the blond, blue eyed one he had grown up with did not fit. A different realm.
Delighted with his “English Program,” Major Ryder dispatched glowing reports to Tokyo about the outstanding education effort he had organized and, in that connection; he decided he needed a public relations photo. Consequently, on a warm April day in 1950, all 150 or so students and teachers assembled in front of the worn, wooden exterior of the school for a group picture. Sergeant Killibrew presided, with Principal Terashima snapping additional photos with his old German Leica. Killibrew arranged the students in rows by height, with their teachers and American helpers flanking them. While Killibrew tried to enforce order among some rambunctious seventh grade boys, Paul felt Hiroko’s arm pressing against his own. Inadvertent? He thought not. Standing next to him, she looked straight ahead, but he recognized it as a not so subtle signal. Later, he gave her a copy of the photo, which she posted in the classroom.
~ ~ ~
Paul knew Hiroko walked a considerable distance to and from the school, sometimes with her father, sometimes not. So, on an azure-skied early May day, he offered to drive her home in his jeep. A gesture of goodwill, it also served as a way to be alone with her.
Her unguarded smile reassured him when he turned onto a narrow road that climbed the heights above the town to a park. At their springtime best, a profusion of iris, hollyhocks, and blossoming cherry trees displayed their delicate colors. Paul parked the jeep, and they sat there, appreciating the far-reaching vista across Suruga Bay, its unruffled surface as flat and glistening as a lacquer ware tray. Below them, beyond the town, fishing boats and harbor craft cut wakes through the water. Across the bay on the Izu Peninsula, a place peppered with hot springs, the mountains seemed to breathe vaporous mists and clouds. And in the distance, south toward the ocean, Japanese freighters, survivors of the war, and American Navy ships, winners of the war, shared the horizon.
His Japanese nonexistent and her English limited, Paul and Hiroko somehow managed to communicate--about the students, about his life in Wisconsin, about the flowers, about nothing and everything. But, eventually a silence came between them, each one seemingly waiting for the other to say something.
Finally, Hiroko spoke. Looking out across the harbor, she said, “Paul-san, I am very happy to be with you. I have a very lively feeling for you.”
He laughed. “A lively feeling? Wow.”
“Please do not laugh. I think you are a fine person.”
“I think you’re a fine person too, Hiroko. You have come to mean a great deal to me.”
“I think I have special feeling for you. Like in American movies. Do not think I am silly.”
He took her hand.
“Please not. People will see.”
“No one can see. We’re alone up here.”
She giggled, and then turned serious. “In the war, I was afraid about when the American soldiers would come. And when my mother died by the airplane, I hated all Americans. But, I am not afraid with you, Paul-san. And I cannot hate you.”
“Hiroko, I . . .”
She looked at him, her eyes suffused with affection. “Let us walk over to the trees. Then you can kiss me if you like. Like an American girl.”
They walked hand in hand to a secluded spot in a nearby stand of maples and pines. It was like passing into a shadowy, green roofed cave. Once there, they embraced. “It is so wonderful,” she said. He spread his shirt on the ground. “It is so wonderful,” she murmured. “You are my first boyfriend.”
The sweet look of happiness on her face stayed with him for a very long time.
~ ~ ~
Paul and Hiroko found it difficult to be alone together. They went up to the park two or three more times. But, they stayed away after they were nearly surprised at an inauspicious moment by a band of elderly ladies out viewing flowers. More than once Paul sneaked her into his Quonset while his roommate conveniently found things to do elsewhere. They even made love in her father’s house when Principal Terashima and Hiroko’s brother went off to a baseball game in Yokohama. It had been difficult to know whether Paul or Hiroko experienced the greater case of rattled nerves. She described their furtive rendezvous as thrilling. Their trysts became adventures, to say nothing of sexual highs.
Paul guessed her father suspected something, but did not want to probe for fear of confirming his suspicions. He worried her father might not prove to be as understanding as Paul had at first hoped.
When Paul spun out talk of marriage, Hiroko became animated, infused with excitement. At the same time, for this would-be emancipated girl, such a choice seemed an alien notion, and reluctance born of centuries of tradition asserted itself. It was impossible, she said. Paul was a foreigner; it just wasn’t done. Moreover, her father would soon be old, and she would be obliged to care for him and her brother, Ichiro, who had just turned eleven. But, like an eager artist at his easel, Paul painted a bright picture of a wonderful future in a new and changing world. And she soon came to believe him. Neither of them addressed the fact that, if they did not marry, he would eventually have to leave Japan without her.
At times Paul was conflicted. Although he had convinced Hiroko he wanted to marry her--and, indeed, he did want to marry her--every impulse warned him that serious involvement with a Japanese girl translated into a bad idea. Problems abounded.
Social ostracism and command opposition accounted for just two of the likely ones. He recalled Sergeant Killibrew, a half dozen dead soldiers in formation on the bar, declaring, “Those little honeys might look good over here, Lieutenant, but just try bringing one of ‘em back to Poughkeepsie.” The vets at the River Falls Legion hall hated the Japanese. Paul remembered the venom. Some of them had survived Bataan. Paul’s superiors would likely erect one obstacle after another, and he heard that entry into the United States for Japanese “war brides” had proven to be extraordinarily difficult. And what about mixed blood children? The Japanese shunned them. How would they be accepted--or not accepted--at home? On top of all that, he realized the reaction of Hiroko’s family, like that of his own, would likely be negative. Yet, having pondered all these things, Paul became determined. Somehow he would find a way. Somehow.
~ ~ ~
“You want to do what?” Major Ryder said from behind his desk.
Paul worried. The man had a flammable temper. “Sir, I want your endorsement on my request to get married. The consulate in Yokohama says we have to have Army permission before they’ll marry us.”
“Look, Lieutenant, nobody’s denying you a little yellow tail now and then. But, we don’t marry them. Wasn’t long ago they were killing your fellow soldiers, not in pretty ways either.”
“Sir, my girl’s not like that. She’s kind and considerate, and. . .”
Ryder took a long drag on a glowing cigar. “Jesus, Hamilton, don’t you know race mixing is against the law in most states?”
“Some marriages have gone through and are working out and . . .”
“You’re probably just horny. Why don’t you go down to that whorehouse in Kizarazu?” Ryder delivered a knowing, half-smirk.
Paul remained stone-faced.
“What about your parents? Her parents? What are they going to say?” Ryder said. “Have you thought of that?”
“Her mother died in the war. A plane strafed her when she was down at the beach gathering seaweed. Her father is an educated man. He’s on board for democracy, for changing Japan. I’m sure he’ll accept it--over time.”
“I thought you were smart, Hamilton. I guess I was wrong.” Ryder made a gesture of throwing up his hands.
“But, sir . . .”
“Come back in a month. If you still want to do this, we’ll see.” Major Ryder returned Paul’s salute, then lolled back in his chair and shook his head.
~ ~ ~
Paul became even more fiercely determined not to leave Japan without marrying her. But, he left Japan without marrying her. It came about in a way no one would have anticipated. On June 25, 1950, spearheaded by Russian made tanks, North Korean forces surged into South Korea. Unprepared for the onslaught, the American Army desperately pulled together garrison soldiers from Kyushu, loaded them on planes at Itazuke, and flew them to the Peninsula on July 2. This stitched together outfit, designated “Task Force Smith,” plunged into battle three days later at Osan. Overwhelmed by the North Koreans, the survivors were soon fleeing south. The generals scraped up every available soldier in Japan to reinforce the retreating American forces. Paul became one of those soldiers.
“Okay men,” Ryder announced to his assembled troops, “we’re closing this place down. One squad staying behind to tend the store. Collect your weapons and your gear. We’re leaving by truck for Tachikawa at 0830 tomorrow morning.”
Panic seized him. Paul’s marriage papers remained in Ryder’s in-basket, the process moving like lava. Too late. There was nothing he could do--nothing. He vowed to himself that, whenever this police action in Korea ended, he would come back for her. Somehow he would come back for her.
Paul commandeered a vehicle and raced to the school. Hello, Mr. Hamilton. Children polishing the wooden floors, an after-school chore, called out as he hurried down the corridors. Hello, Mr. Hamilton. When he burst into her classroom, Hiroko immediately recognized that something bad had happened.
“There is trouble in Korea,” Paul said. “I must go there.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Why?”
“I’m a soldier. It’s my duty.” Combat--what he thought he had signed on for; now he didn’t want to go.
Itsu? When? Her eyes welled with tears.
“Tomorrow morning.” His heart thudded. “I am sorry, dear Hiroko. I am so sorry. I promise I’ll be back. I promise.”
Her voice laced with pain, she said, “Do not be killed, Paul-san. Please do not be killed.”
That night she rejected all the strictures of her upbringing and went with him to a Japanese inn. Everyone would know, she told him. She did not care. As they lay in bed, their naked bodies spooned together; there was no sex, only a prolonged frantic embrace. Looking up through an open window at a brilliant canopy of stars, they both cried.
~ ~ ~
The medics described Paul as one of the lucky ones. The fighting at Taejon on July 20 left almost every man in his makeshift platoon dead or captured. He vaguely recalled the whoop of the mortars and the cackle of the machine guns. But, his body shattered by multiple wounds, Paul had no recollection of being dragged to safety by Corporal Grady, the bean pole from Willamette. For a long time, he had no idea of where he was or where he was going. He did not recall his arrival in Japan, the desperate surgeries in the hospital there, the near loss of his legs. He had only the vaguest awareness of the hospital ship crossing to San Francisco.
In September, 1950, with the help of a nurse’s aide, he wrote his first letter to Hiroko. He told he had been wounded and was sorry he had not been able to write sooner. He thought of her all the time. When he got better and left the army he would come back to Shimizu. He wanted to marry her more than ever. He asked that she not forget him.
Day after day Paul lay in his hospital bed eager for an answer. But, none came. He sent another letter. No answer. He sent another and then another. “Any mail for me?” he would ask the nurse. “From Japan.” It became a daily mantra.
Discharged from the Army in November, Paul returned to his parents’ home outside Madison. Rehabilitation and therapy at a nearby VA hospital continued for almost another year. Beset by an enduring sense of loss, Paul persisted, sending one unanswered letter after another to Shimizu; several times he tried to reach Hiroko by telephone, but his calls did not get through. Time slipped away, and his spirits flagged. Since none of his letters came back, he realized she had to have received them. Reluctantly he concluded, for whatever reason, she wanted nothing more to do with him. After sending more than twenty letters, his hopes exhausted, he finally gave up.
In the fall of 1951, Paul resumed his teaching career, this time in Eau Claire. A few months later, he married a girl he had known in high school. Memories of Japan and of Hiroko flickered and dimmed, but were never extinguished. From time to time, without catalyst or warning, they reasserted themselves. Paul shared them with no one. He got on with his life, but a void remained. He always wondered.
~ ~ ~
Coming out of the Shimizu station that May morning in 1992, like a time traveler returned from a long journey, Paul recognized almost nothing. True, the geography remained--the harbor, the town, the hill above the town with its tiled roofed houses--but little else appeared to be as he had thought it might. The gravel and dirt streets now had been topped with asphalt. Instead of broken down buses and trucks mingled with a hodgepodge of olive drab military vehicles, new cars crowded the streets. The tired wooden buildings had given way to concrete and brick structures--slick, shiny, kitschy. And directly across from the station the Americana of golden arches greeted him. The idea of an egg and sausage sandwich tempted him; instead, he went into a little coffee shop, grandly named Bristol Arms.
A young waitress approached him. She seemed tentative, not many foreigners found their way to the town. It had been a long time since gaggles of GIs wandered the streets, perhaps in her grandfather’s day. Paul ordered coffee. He thought of showing her his note, but decided against it. She did not strike him as overly bright.
How nice it would have been, he thought, had there been a place like this in 1950, one where he and Hiroko could have just sat and chatted. He looked about, trying to reconcile images long marinated in memory with the reality that engulfed him. Shop girls, students, a couple of elderly women--they all oozed prosperity, he searched for a description, they looked so, well, so contemporary. His memory had set a seal on the image of Japan as he had known it and on the image of the young school teacher he had loved. Breaking the seal promised to be neither a pleasant nor easy process. Like him, Hiroko would now be in her sixties. Probably a grandmother.
Paul hesitated. He feared she would be disappointed, feared he would be disappointed. Torn by convoluted thoughts and counter-thoughts, his note still deep in his pocket, Paul paid and went out to the street. He started back toward the station. It had been a cockamamie idea; she might not be willing to see him, might even have moved away years before, or, a thought he did not want to consider, she might have died. It would be best simply to head back for Tokyo.
But, seized by an inspiration wrapped in the warm colors of nostalgia, instead of entering the station, he hailed a cab. Phrase book in hand and gesturing toward the hill above the town, he said, yama no koen, the mountain park. The place lured him. For a moment, the driver seemed perplexed, and then grasped his meaning. Fifteen minutes later, Paul once again looked out over Suruga Bay. No more American ships, but the view remained as beautiful as it had been that first day they parked there in his jeep.
He could almost hear her voice. I have lively feelings for you. Paul’s chest tightened. Embarrassed, he took out a folded handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes. Just an old fart wallowing in memory, that’s what I am, he thought. He lingered for another five minutes, gazing at the vista stretching before him. His deceased wife would never have understood. His friends would never have understood. Perhaps some of his fellow vets, the ones who had been boys and young men during the Occupation, perhaps they would understand.
Paul searched for Shimizu Junior High School. Either it was gone or the driver could not understand him. Paul knew he was stalling, afraid of trying to find her. Finally, he told the driver to take him back to the station. Paul had noticed what appeared to be the police headquarters just across from the station. It was worth a try. He marched up the steps with determination, went through the glass doors, and showed his note to a surprised female receptionist.
“Terashima,” Paul said. “Terashima.” The nonplussed receptionist, clutching the note, disappeared into an office. Through the half glass partition, Paul saw her show the note to a policeman who rose and came out to speak with him. Clearly, the officer comprehended the purpose of Paul’s quest.
He pointed to the note. “Terashima dead,” he said in English. “Long time dead.”
Paul’s heart left him. It had all been for nothing. He thanked the officer and started to leave.
“No. You wait.” They probably thought he was up to something. All he needed.
Paul used the bathroom, and then took a seat on a bench across from the receptionist.
He saw the policeman on the phone. The officer reappeared. Again, he said, “You wait.”
What was going on? Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Paul used the bathroom a second time. God, he hated getting old. He studied his phrase book. How could he say, “I want to return to Tokyo?”
He lifted his eyes in time to see the policeman greet a middle aged Japanese man at the entrance. Then together they approached Paul where he still sat on the bench.
“Terashima,” the police officer said.
Who was this man? Surely it was not Principal Terashima.”
“How do you do, Mr. Hamilton? I am glad to make your acquaintance again,” the man said and, instead of bowing, extended his hand. “I am Ichiro.”
“Ichiro?”
“Ichiro. The brother of Hiroko.”
Paul swallowed hard. Of course, the little brother. “Yes, yes. I remember. Do you speak English?”
“A little. My sister taught me after the American helpers went away. I was young. But, later I worked for an auto company in Nagoya. Many foreign businessmen visited our plant. Now I am retired. And I have come back to my native place.”
Brimming with heady excitement, Paul discarded any semblance of restraint. “Your sister. Hiroko. Is she well? Is she here? In Shimizu?” Both eager and apprehensive, Paul agonized. Was she even alive?
“The policeman called my house, so I came to see if you are the same one. You look old. But, you are him.” Ichiro smiled a little, as if relishing the moment. “I did not want my sister to be deceived.”
“Then she is alive. She’s here.” Paul bubbled with anticipation.
“I think you were her good friend, Mr. Hamilton.”
“Does she know I’m here? Can I see her?”
With a group of bemused policemen looking on, Paul and Ichiro again shook hands.
“Please wait in the coffee shop by the station, Mr. Hamilton. I will send Hiroko to meet you. Nice to see you again. Have a pleasant stay.”
~ ~ ~
Carrying a knotted dark blue furoshiki, a Japanese wrapping cloth, Hiroko stood in the doorway and peered into the dim interior of the coffee shop. Paul recognized her immediately. She had on a short sleeved white blouse and brown skirt. Pulled back in a bun, her hair had gone to gray-white, and she wore gold framed glasses. But, her dignity, her inner beauty showed through just as they had the first time he saw her. Paul got to his feet as she approached his table.
She made a little bow and took a seat opposite him. “It has been a long time, Paul-san. Such a very long time.”
“I’m so happy to see you. How can I ever . . .?” Paul said. It was inconceivable, as if she had materialized from a dream he had thought lost forever.
“I am happy to see you too.” Her English came easily.
The waitress appeared and they each ordered coffee, and then sat for a moment in silence.
“Horrible things happened,” Paul said. “How can I begin? I thought you had turned away. I . . .” Trying to say everything at once, he felt like one of the tongue-tied schoolboys they once tried to teach English.
“I know,” she said. Then, after an interlude of silence, she smiled. “Did you marry a beautiful American girl, like Lana Turner?”
“My wife died four years ago. And you? Are you married also?”
She turned solemn. “No. I never married. I am afraid I am an old miss.” I finished college in Yokohama, and then taught English in the school here for thirty-five years.”
“I was wounded, I couldn’t . . . I wrote to you many times. But, I guessed you didn’t want . . . I don’t know what I thought.”
“Paul-san. My heart broke into a thousand pieces when you went away. I think my English was not so good. I once said I had lively feelings for you. Do you remember?” They both smiled.
“How could I forget?” he said. “Then, why? Why did you never write back?”
“I must show you something.” She reached down to the adjacent chair where she had placed the furoshiki. She untied it and displayed the contents--all of Paul’s letters, neatly bundled together with ribbon.
“Here are your letters. I am afraid the paper has become yellow and some pages are worn by too much touching.”
“I don’t understand. If you received my letters . . . and you still cared . . . Why?
“I did not receive them. You sent them to the school. My father received them and kept them from me. Only after he died did I find them hidden in the kura.”
“The kura?”
“A storeroom attached to our house. It was many years after you disappeared from my life.”
“Do you mean you didn’t know I . . .?”
“At first I thought you were dead. Then one of the American soldiers, one of the helpers, came back to Shimizu. He visited our school. He told another teacher you were alive. But, I did not know where you were. America was so wide.”
“All that time I was sending . . .”
“When I heard nothing, I long wondered what wrong thing I had done. But, even without the letters, I dreamed that one day I would see you again.”
“If I had only known, Hiroko. If I had only known.”
“I think you are still cute.”
Paul grinned. “Cute?” Nobody’s called me that since I was a kid.”
“I mean handsome. Yes, I think you are handsome.”
“And you are just as pretty as ever.”
She hid her smile with her hand.
“I am an old woman,” she said. From the bottom of the furoshiki she produced a manila envelope. “I have something else to show you, Paul-san. Do you remember this?” She handed him the group photo taken in front of the school.
“I remember.”
“I was very bold that day. If you look carefully, you can see I was touching your arm. I was so innocent, but I wanted you to know I . . .”
“Hiroko, would it be a bad thing if I missed my train back to Tokyo? There is so much I want to tell you.”
She looked at him with long sustained affection. “It would not be a bad thing. It would be a good thing.”
He reached across the table and placed his hand on hers.
“People will see.” She giggled.
“Who cares?”
Forty years. Paul had kept his promise. And maybe, just maybe . . .
