“I hope it’ll have become a peaceful country,” I mumbled without thinking, surprising myself. I found it hard to believe that such words had come from my own mouth. To think that I, a fighter pilot who risked my life in battle, fully prepared to die in the war, would say such a thing.
CPO Miyabe gave me a deep nod.
I took off from Rabaul very early the next morning. CPO Miyabe saw me off, waving his hat.
After taking off, I wheeled around once over the airfield. I could see CPO Miyabe yelling out to me, and his lips were forming the words: “Do. Not. Die.” That was my final image of him.
I gave him a salute and left Rabaul.
I heard that Miyabe-san died a kamikaze.
I found out the year after the war ended. I cried. They were tears of regret. I thought in earnest that a nation who expended such a wonderful man in a kamikaze mission deserved to fall into ruin.
My sister had been weeping through the latter half of Izaki’s story. He stared hard at her, his own eyes brimming with tears.
Then he said quietly, “To tell you the truth, I have terminal cancer.”
I nodded.
“Half a year ago the doctors said I had three months left to live. Yet somehow I’m still here.” Izaki looked right at us. “Now I know why I lived to see today. I was allowed to live to tell you all that. Miyabe-san said what he did before we parted ways at Rabaul so that I might someday.”
Just then, Izaki’s own grandson started crying. He wept aloud, completely unconcerned that he was in the presence of strangers. His mother and the nurse kept dabbing their eyes with their handkerchiefs, too.
Izaki gazed out the window at the sky. “Flight leader, your grandchildren have come to see me. They’re both absolutely wonderful. Just like you, the lad is a fine young man. Can you see them, flight leader?”
Keiko pressed both hands to her eyes.
Izaki closed his and lay down on the bed. “Sorry, I’m a little tired.”
“Are you all right?” asked the nurse, immediately on her feet.
“I’m fine. But I’ll rest for a while.”
The nurse gave us a meaningful look.
“Thank you very much, sir,” I said, rising. But Izaki didn’t seem to have heard me. He had wrung out every last drop of strength talking to us.
I wiped my tears away and placed a hand on my sister’s shoulder. She nodded silently and stood up.
“He seems a bit tired. I’m going to have him get some rest,” the nurse said.
Izaki was already asleep, his face very peaceful. I bowed deeply to Izaki’s sleeping figure and left the hospital room.
When we reached the lobby, Suzuko and her son caught up with us.
“That was the first time I’ve ever heard my father talk about those times.”
“I’ve never heard Grandpa tell such things,” her son said, tears still streaming down his cheeks. “Gosh, Grandpa is so mean, never telling his own grandkid his stories. I’d love to have heard all that on a porch.”
Tearfully, he turned to his mother.
“Mom. I’m sorry I’ve been so…”
The end of his sentence was unintelligible. Seeing her son in such a state, Suzuko wept as well.
“This has become a very precious day for us. Thank you both so much,” she said, wiping at her face and bowing deeply. “It seems it’s thanks to Miyabe-san that my father was able to survive the war and make it home. I was extremely moved by his story. Thank you so very much.”
I was totally lost for words. All I could do was bow in return.
I felt ashamed, but I didn’t know just why. I was just embarrassed. What Izaki said at the end—Just like you, the lad is a fine young man—had pierced my heart.
My sister was silent the entire time until we left the hospital. I didn’t say anything either. We went out onto the street.
After walking for a while, Keiko sighed and said, “Our grandfather was really a magnificent person.”
“Definitely,” I replied. “I think so, too.”
“I wonder if he ever got to meet Mom. Or if he got to see Grandma again.”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine he was on the front the entire time…”
“Might we find out if we tried?”
I had no idea.
“I’m gonna seriously try,” Keiko said.
“Hey, so you weren’t serious until now?”
Keiko ignored me.
We parted ways at the entrance to the subway since the trains we needed to take went in opposite directions.
Before we parted, Keiko said, “I think Grandma was very happy to have been so loved by Grandfather Miyabe.” I saw her eyes filling with tears once again. But before I could come up with a reply, she said, “See ya,” and rushed down the stairs.
I thought over what Keiko had said. Had Grandma really been happy? Was she loved by our grandfather and therefore happy?
I couldn’t say.
Chapter 6
The Nude Photo
“How’s the research coming along?”
The day after we visited Izaki, my mother suddenly came home at dinnertime. I still hadn’t told her what we’d learned about our grandfather. Keiko had asked me not to until we had a better grasp of the full picture. I agreed that we should especially avoid telling her about any criticism of him just yet.
However, I did tell her that I had met with three people in the past two weeks.
“That many! And did any of them remember my father?” she asked, her voice betraying her nervousness.
“Yeah, I learned all sorts of things. We’re planning on telling you all the details once we’ve sorted them out. But Grandfather Miyabe seems to have, um, really loved you and Grandma.”
Her eyes lit up with joy.
“Apparently, he told people that he couldn’t die, for his wife’s sake.”
Mom pressed her lips together and looked up at the ceiling.
I continued, “And well, they said that he was a fearsomely skilled pilot who valued his life almost to the point of being cowardly.”
“What a contradictory personality.”
“What I don’t understand is why someone who held his own life so dear joined the Navy in the first place. He even volunteered to become an aviator. Back then, flying was extremely dangerous, and many parents told their sons, ‘Anything other than an airman.’”
“I don’t think it’s weird at all,” Mom said, putting her chopsticks aside and looking straight at me. “It was probably just the rashness of youth. When you’re a teenager, you’ve got an adventurous spirit and do all sorts of dangerous things without batting an eye. If anything, it makes me happy to think that a youth like him started to value his life for our sake after getting married. He must have loved my mother and me.”
Her voice caught at the end, and I saw a shine in her eyes. I tried to avoid looking at her, focusing instead on stuffing rice into my mouth.
“So the research is still ongoing?”
“Yep, there are several other people who remember him.”
“Why, that’s amazing.”
It sure was. When we’d first started out on this project, I’d figured we’d be lucky to find even one person who remembered Kyuzo Miyabe. Yet we’d already met three. It almost felt like there was some mysterious force at work pulling strings behind the scenes to make things come together.
“Please keep at it,” Mom said.
After dinner, I went into my room and thought once again about Grandfather Miyabe. He’d been a total stranger to me just two weeks earlier, but I felt like he was now standing behind me like a shadow, as though I could turn around and catch sight of him.
Three days later, I met up with Keiko. We were heading to Wakayama to visit the home of a former Imperial Navy aviation maintenance chief petty officer. It was a weekday, and Keiko canceled a job just so she could make the trip.