—Come again, she whispered.
Once the loneliness had settled in her heart, she took a deep breath and climbed out of bed. She washed her face, changed her clothes, and glanced over at the clock. It was only six twenty. Breakfast started at seven. She wasn’t hungry, but considering the day’s schedule, she knew she should at least have something light.
She couldn’t recall how many decades had passed since her last trip alone. Kōsuke, her late husband, had loved to travel, so for the ten or so years after his retirement, they had gone on trips together twice a year. Thanks to him, she was used to traveling, but it was completely different now, on her own. The stress of trying not to forget the keys when leaving the house made her realize how much she’d depended on him.
At the restaurant on the first floor, she had a simple breakfast of rice porridge, pickled plums, and miso soup. When she’d finished eating, she returned to her room and packed her bag. Then she sat in the chair in front of the veranda and looked out the glass door. Puffy white clouds appeared in the deep blue sky. Looked like it was going to be a hot day. Through the aluminum railings, she could see fishing boats and ferries moving in and out of the harbor. Her room was on the eighth floor of a hotel near Naha Airport. She wondered if the white ferry loaded with freight was heading to the Kerama Islands.
If Kōsuke were here, she could’ve asked him. Her eyes moved to the bed, and she was again reminded that the comforting voice she’d heard upon waking from the dream was also just a dream. Her nightmares about the woman had started only three months ago, more than a year after Kōsuke’s death. He couldn’t possibly have ever consoled her about them. The realization deeply saddened her. She had another two hours until checkout, but she picked up her bag and left the room.
It was a short walk to the bus stop from the hotel. Within five minutes, a bus bound for northern Okinawa arrived. Hisako stared in disbelief as four chattering high school girls cut in front of her and climbed the steps. Then she boarded the bus behind them. The facial features of the passengers and the general atmosphere made her keenly aware that she was now in Okinawa. But making the distinction pricked her conscience.
After sitting in one of the second-row seats reserved for the elderly, she placed her bag on her lap and looked out the window. It was her first trip to Okinawa in three years. The last one was with Kōsuke to visit her parents’ grave. The memory depressed her, so she tried to focus on all the new buildings and other surprising changes in scenery. However, she didn’t succeed.
She was filled with regret that on their last trip to Okinawa together, she hadn’t taken her husband to the island. But that had been utterly impossible. This would be Hisako’s first trip there since returning as a child with her family to Naha sixty years ago, shortly after the war ended. After moving to Tokyo as an adult, she had rarely even visited her hometown on the main Okinawan island. If she hadn’t started having these bad dreams, she probably wouldn’t have considered visiting at all. That was how alienated from the island she’d become.
Sixty years ago, her father had sent her and her brother to the island before the Battle of Okinawa started. At first, he’d considered sending them to Kyushu, but after hearing that the Americans had torpedoed a ship loaded with evacuating civilians, he quickly changed his mind. Instead, he sent them with Hisako’s mother and grandmother to stay with relatives on the remote island in the north. During the war, the four of them ended up spending many days huddled together in dark air-raid shelters, which caused her to resent having been sent away. But a few years after the war, once Hisako fully understood all that had happened, she appreciated what her father had done. Many of her classmates had gotten caught up in the war with their families, and many had lost their lives.
When the bus entered Urasoe, Hisako saw a US military base beside the road. She lowered her eyes and stopped looking out the window. She didn’t want to see any American soldiers in their camouflage-colored military uniforms. After she started having the dreams about the screaming woman, other fragmentary memories started bubbling up out of her subconscious, too. She saw several American soldiers swimming toward her from across the ocean. And who was the girl that took her hand as she frantically rushed to shore, tripping over the waves and choking on the salty seawater? She recalled that it was still light out, and that the sand clinging to her wet feet was still hot. When the soldiers closed in, they became huge black shadows blocking the light. Laughing, they grabbed the girl hugging Hisako and carried her away. Hisako also vividly recalled the thorny green leaves of the screwpine trees. When she saw the soldiers heading under them, she could hardly breathe and had to struggle not to scream. She couldn’t think about what happened next.
Hisako raised her head and glanced out the window. Behind a wire fence topped with three rows of barbed wire, green grass stretched off into the distance beneath the blue sky. She didn’t want to think the lawn was beautiful. Considering such a possibility risked being drawn into the agenda of those who had built the base. Ammunition wasn’t the only thing hidden beneath that well-kept grass; also buried there were the multi-layered history
