Grenade Read online

  “What?” Hideki said.

  Kimiko didn’t say anything, but it was clear to Hideki that she could see there was something different about him. Could Kimiko see Rei’s mabui on him, without Hideki even telling her about it?

  There was something else he needed to tell her first.

  “Kimiko, Otō is dead. So are Anmā and Isamu.”

  Kimiko put a hand to the wall of the cave to steady herself. “I knew that Anmā and Isamu were gone. I heard their ship had been sunk. But Otō … I sensed he had gone to join our ancestors, but I didn’t know for sure.” Tears spilled from her eyes. “You and I are all that’s left now.”

  “That’s why I came for you,” Hideki told her. “I was with Otō when he died. I promised him I would find you, and I did.”

  Kimiko laid a hand on his shoulder, and Hideki covered his sister’s hand with his own.

  “I never told our parents what really happened to me. How I got the white streak in my hair,” Kimiko said. “I never told anybody.”

  Hideki frowned. He couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t have the white streak.

  “It was years ago, when you were just a baby. I was too little to go in the ocean without Otō or Anmā there, but I did it anyway. Me and Fumiko, another girl from the village. A giant wave came and tumbled me, sweeping me under and flipping me over and over so I didn’t know which way was up. I’ve never felt so helpless, so out of control. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t scream. I hit my head on a rock and passed out, and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back on the sand and Fumiko was bent over me, sobbing. She told me I wasn’t breathing when she pulled me out of the water. I had drowned. I was dead, and now I was alive again.”

  Hideki was aghast. How had he never heard this story before?

  “I never told Otō and Anmā what happened, because I didn’t want to get into trouble. But when my hair grew back in the place where I’d cut myself, it grew in white. And from that day on I had a special connection with the dead. That’s why I’m a yuta.” Her voice grew soft. “I’ve been dead once, Hideki, and I don’t want to die again.”

  “Then we’ve got to get out of here,” said Hideki. “Is there another way out of the cave?”

  “Yes,” Kimiko told him. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  Kimiko was right. Hideki didn’t like it.

  An unexploded bomb the size of a cow sat in the mud right in the mouth of the cave’s back entrance. The bomb was greenish gray, with four black fins sticking up at the back and a yellow band painted around the base of its nose cone.

  Why the huge bomb hadn’t gone off when it hit was a mystery, and the slightest touch now might set it off. If it exploded, the whole cave would be blown to bits.

  It was the mother of all bombs, and there was barely room to squeeze past it. The IJA hadn’t even bothered to leave a guard by this back exit, because they thought no one would be crazy enough to go near the bomb.

  Hideki took a step back in fear.

  “That’s the only way out?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Kimiko told him. “It’s either that, or we die tomorrow with those soldiers. I overheard the generals at the command post. The plan is for the IJA to hold out as long as they can at each ridge. Just when the Americans are about to overrun them, they retreat to the next ridge and start all over again, all the way to the southern end of the island. In between retreats, they send infiltration squads to attack the Americans by night. But they’re not meant to survive either. The Japanese army was never going to win, Hideki. They’re just here to slow the Americans down. They’re trying to take as many American soldiers with them as they can. And as many Okinawans too, I guess.”

  Hideki felt numb. One plane for one battleship, one man for ten of the enemy. Wasn’t that what Lieutenant Colonel Sano had told the Blood and Iron Student Corps before sending them out with their grenades to attack the Americans? That night outside his school felt like years ago to Hideki.

  But the price of an Okinawan life was far cheaper even than one man for ten of the enemy. Far cheaper than the life of one Japanese soldier, that was for sure. And Hideki was tired of sacrificing people he cared about.

  “Then we do it,” Hideki said. “The bomb might go off, and it might not. But if we stay, the IJA will definitely kill us, and at least this way we have a chance.”

  Kimiko looked sideways at Hideki, like she was measuring him again, but she didn’t say anything.

  Hideki and Kimiko went back to the main part of the cave. They told Masako the plan, and very quietly the three of them gathered the eight Okinawan children and led them to the back entrance.

  Masako gasped when she saw the bomb. “We have to get past that?”

  “You can do it. We have to,” Hideki said. He turned to his sister. “You and Masako go out first. I’ll send the kids out to you. Get them as far away from the bomb as you can.”

  Kimiko nodded. She approached the bomb, took a deep breath, and slid sideways between the cave wall and the metal shell. The space was too narrow to avoid touching the bomb, and gently, oh so gently, she put her hands against it. Hideki held his breath, and Masako closed her eyes.

  Kimiko wiggled sideways, and the gap between the bomb and the wall got tighter. Tighter. She spread her arms around the bomb and carefully rested her weight against it as she slithered through the narrowest spot … and then she was past it and outside. Hideki let out his breath, and beside him, Masako opened her eyes and bit off a sob of relief.

  “You’re next,” Hideki told her.

  “I can’t do it,” she said.

  “You can,” Hideki told her. “We survived that cave of flames, didn’t we? These kids need you to be just as strong as you were for those injured soldiers in the hospital. I know you can do it. Just do what Kimiko did.”

  Masako took a deep breath and nodded. She avoided the bomb as long as she could, pressing herself against the cave wall, but soon the space grew too narrow. Too short. She froze, her back curled against the cave wall, holding her body just centimeters from the curving side of the bomb. Kimiko called encouragement to her from where she stood outside, but Masako couldn’t go any farther. She closed her eyes and shook her head, her trembling body hovering just inches above the bomb.

  “Masako, you can do it,” Hideki told her again.

  “No. No! I’ve seen what American bombs do to bodies! I don’t want to end up like that!” Masako cried.

  “You won’t,” Hideki said. He looked at the frightened children with him. “None of us will.”

  Masako just shook her head more forcefully. She wasn’t going to budge. But she couldn’t keep pressing herself into the curving wall at her back forever, and with a scream of panic she lost her balance. With nothing to grab on to, she fell face-first onto the bomb.

  Clang!

  Hideki gasped and closed his eyes, waiting for the mother of all bombs to explode.

  The bomb didn’t explode. Not yet. But Masako was done. Her courage was exhausted. Her legs gave out, and she started to slide to the ground, sobbing. But Kimiko was there on the other side to take her hand and pull her the rest of the way past the bomb, out into the rain.

  Hideki sighed with relief, but he still had a job to do. He straightened and addressed the children.

  “There, see? They both got past! We can do it too!” Hideki told them. “It’s like a game. Who can get through without touching any of the metal?”

  The children were wise to him though. If Masako’s fear hadn’t already infected them, they had all seen enough bombs in the last two months, enough death, to understand the danger. They knew this wasn’t a game.

  But if Hideki had learned anything from playing with his younger brother, Isamu, it was that little kids were often brave where teenagers and adults were scared. Because little kids thought they were invincible. The number of times Isamu had jumped down from a branch that was too high, or put his hands too close to the kitchen fire, or tried to pet a strange dog … Hideki g
ot choked up thinking about his little brother. Isamu, who had been brave enough to leave half his family and board a strange ship for a land he’d never been to before. Isamu, whom he would never see again.

  Hideki shook off his sorrow for his little brother, saving it for another time. If he didn’t get these children past the mother of all bombs, they would all be joining Isamu too soon.

  One by one, Hideki helped the boys and girls slide around the bomb and into Kimiko’s waiting hands outside. Hideki’s stomach was full of butterflies the whole time, but not because he worried about the bomb going off and killing him, he realized. Because he didn’t want any more children, any more innocent Okinawans, to die for a fight that wasn’t theirs.

  “Halt! Where are you going? What are you doing?” someone yelled, and Hideki spun.

  A Japanese soldier was aiming a rifle right at them.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” the Japanese soldier cried.

  Hideki’s heart caught in his throat. His first instinct was to panic. To run. But there was nowhere to run. And he’d been through too much by now to panic over a nervous IJA private aiming a shaky gun at him. Like Kimiko, Hideki didn’t want to die. But he wasn’t afraid of death anymore either.

  A steadying calm came over Hideki. It stilled him from head to toe like the cool breeze off the sea in summer, and all the tension left him.

  Hideki stepped in front of the last of the children, a little boy. Right in between the soldier on one side and the boy and the bomb on the other.

  “Go ahead,” Hideki said.

  The soldier frowned. “What?”

  “Go ahead and shoot,” Hideki told him. “But just know that if you miss, or if the bullet goes through me, you’ll hit the bomb behind me and then you’ll be dead too. We all will be.”

  The soldier’s rifle dipped as he realized Hideki was right. Hideki watched the private’s eyes dart this way and that as he considered his options.

  “What’s your name?” Hideki asked the remaining little boy.

  “Kazuo,” he squeaked.

  “Go on, Kazuo. You’ll be all right,” Hideki told him.

  The Japanese soldier took aim with his rifle again. “No one is allowed to leave! Come away from there at once or I’ll shoot!”

  The little boy looked to Hideki for direction, and Hideki nodded for him to go on past the bomb.

  “Stop!” the soldier said. He raised his rifle again, but Kazuo didn’t stop and the soldier didn’t shoot. When Kazuo was safely through, Hideki slid the pack off his shoulders and turned to leave.

  “I said stop!” the soldier cried. There was panic in his voice. A panic Hideki no longer felt.

  Hideki handed his backpack through the narrow gap to Kimiko, then slid sideways to follow it. If the soldier tried to shoot him now, he had a better chance of hitting the bomb than Hideki.

  “No one is permitted to leave!” the private yelled.

  A riptide pulled at Hideki’s stomach as the distance between the wall and the bomb got narrower and narrower. He was going to have to put his hands on the thing, wrap his arms around it the way everyone else had. Would his touching the bomb now set it off at last? Would the soldier let his orders override his common sense? Had Kimiko and Masako gotten the children far enough away where they wouldn’t be hurt?

  Distracted by his own thoughts and fears, Hideki lost his balance the way Masako had. He’d meant to let himself against the bomb slowly, gently, but now he fell onto it with a teeth-rattling thud.

  Clang! The ceramic grenade in Hideki’s pocket whacked the side of the bomb like a hammer, and he flinched and closed his eyes. Had the grenade cracked? Was it going to explode?

  Hideki froze for what seemed like an eternity, wondering if he was dead and just didn’t know it. At last he took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Gray-painted metal and lines of rivets stared back at him. Water streamed down the side of the bomb like the sweat running down Hideki’s back. The bomb was still there, and so was he.

  Hideki glanced sideways to see what the soldier was doing, but he was gone.

  “Hideki! Come on!” Kimiko called to him. He turned to look the other way, and there she was, right by the bomb. She hadn’t run off and left him.

  Hideki closed his eyes and slithered the rest of the way around the bomb, the grenade in his pocket digging into him as it scraped along. And then it wasn’t scraping anymore, and there was more room between the cave wall and Hideki, and Kimiko was taking his hand and pulling him free.

  Hideki fell into his sister’s waiting arms, and she held him while he shook. All the tension of the moment washed back over him. He and Kimiko hadn’t hugged like this in a long time. They were both too old for that kind of thing. But now neither of them cared. They were still alive, and they were together, and they held on to each other like they would never let go again.

  “What is that?” Kimiko said at last, feeling the hard lump in Hideki’s shirt pocket.

  “A grenade,” Hideki said. He pulled it out and showed it to her.

  “That’s not a grenade, you idiot,” Kimiko said. “It’s a piece of pottery.”

  “It is too a grenade,” Hideki said. “And it works. I know.” That was all he said. Kimiko seemed to understand there was more to the story, but she let it go. For now.

  “You have a grenade?” Masako called. She was watching them from beyond the next hill, where she waited with the children. “Use it on the bomb!”

  “What?” Hideki said. “Why?”

  “To close the cave off. To blow them all up!” Masako called. She knelt and put her arms around a little boy, the one who had still been in the cave when the Japanese soldier threatened to shoot them. “It’s only fair, after what they were going to do to us!”

  Hideki thought about it as he and Kimiko joined the others. At last he shook his head and put the grenade back in his pocket.

  “You told me to be brave enough to slide past that beast, but you’re not brave enough to throw your grenade at it?” Masako challenged him.

  Hideki frowned. Was he just being a coward again? Maybe. But there was more to it than that. He couldn’t explain it to Masako. He wasn’t even sure he could explain it to himself.

  Shouts came from inside the cave. The soldier had gone back for help! Hideki didn’t know if any of them would be able to squeeze past the bomb, or would set it off trying, but he didn’t want to be around to find out.

  “Come on,” he told the others. “Time to go!”

  “Where?” Kimiko asked him. “South?”

  “No,” Hideki told her. “North. Back through the front lines. We’re going home.”

  Hideki led Kimiko, Masako, and the children on a zigzag path up muddy hills and down blasted valleys. But always north. Toward the illumination shells and the gunshots and explosions.

  Toward home.

  Hideki, Kimiko, and Masako pulled the last of the children up to the top of a steep ridge. They stopped to take a breather, but something about this particular place made Hideki’s skin prickle. He motioned for the others to be quiet and stay where they were, and he crept down the other side of the ridge, holding on to tree stumps so as not to slide.

  And there it was. A Japanese army machine gun nest. It was pointed north, toward the direction the advancing Americans would come from. Hideki was standing on the hill above the nest, where the Japanese soldiers inside couldn’t see him. But they would see Hideki and others when they passed by, and the soldiers would likely shoot them as spies, or for running away.

  Hideki snuck back to report his findings to Kimiko and Masako.

  “Why can’t we just go around them?” Kimiko asked. “Head west for a while, then turn back north?”

  Hideki shook his head. “If there’s a nest here, then there are nests up and down this ridgeline, to the west and east. This is the new defensive line. If we don’t find a way past this machine gun, we’ll just have to find a way past the next one.”

  “What do we do?” Masako asked.
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  “I’ll take care of it,” Hideki said. “Give me five minutes, then take the kids over the ridge and down through the next valley. I’ll keep the machine gunners distracted.”

  “How?” Kimiko asked.

  Hideki shrugged and headed back down the ridge. “I’ll think of something.”

  “Use your grenade,” Masako hissed.

  Hideki considered it again. His last grenade. The one the IJA had given him to kill himself with. The fragile ceramic thing had survived the whole awful battle. All he had to do was chuck the thing through the hole cut in the hillside, and the machine gun nest would be destroyed. So would the soldiers who operated it. Then Kimiko and Masako and the children could slip safely by.

  Hideki thought he saw something moving out of the corner of his eye, and he glanced sideways at it. But no one was there. Hideki put a hand to the stitches under his hair and wondered if he was sensing the ghost of Rei, or if his head wound was playing tricks on him. Either way, it was a stark reminder of what happened when you threw grenades at people.

  He would just have to find a different way to distract the soldiers.

  Hideki returned to the hill above the machine gun nest and took a deep breath. He had to make this work. For Kimiko. And Masako. And the little kids.

  “Yōkai,” Hideki said, loud enough for the soldiers inside to hear him.

  “What?” someone called from the bunker. “Who said that? Who’s there?”

  “Yōkai!” Hideki said again.

  “You don’t sound like a ghost!” the soldier called back. He still couldn’t see who was talking, and Hideki could hear the rising panic in the soldier’s voice.

  “Yōkai is the new password,” Hideki said. “I’m from headquarters. You’re supposed to give me the response.”

  “Response? We don’t know the response!” the soldier called back. “Nobody tells us anything out here!”

  “All right, all right,” Hideki said. “I can tell you’re Japanese. I’m coming down.”

  Hideki scrambled down the muddy slope and climbed inside the tiny machine gun nest. There were only two soldiers there, both Japanese army privates. Their clothes were muddy and oversized, like the men had shrunk in the rain, and they each had scraggly beards that showed just how long they’d been alone. The bunker reeked of sweat and urine, and there were three inches of water on the floor. Between them stood a Type 92 Heavy Machine Gun.