The Americans showed up about half an hour later. Arriving in several jeeps and small trucks, the group of about twenty soldiers disembarked and readied their rifles.
—Throw down your weapons! the interpreter screamed at the thirty men gathered near the banyan tree.
The men hesitated, but then did as they were told. The interpreter was a man of Japanese descent in his mid-twenties. He ranted on about something, but Fumi couldn’t understand what he was saying. They’ve come to get Seiji, she thought. She could tell that the men were growing more and more upset as they listened.
The soldier in charge said something to the interpreter, who then screamed at the village men. The men exchanged glances and started talking, but the interpreter yelled at them to be quiet. The squad leader gave an order, and the soldiers started moving. At the interpreter’s command, the village men followed.
The Americans started searching the houses in the village. When Fumi saw five soldiers coming toward her house, she ran to her mother and clung to her. There was a violent knocking at the front door, and Fumi’s grandfather hurried to open it. The soldiers entered their house without even taking off their boots and spoke loudly as they searched every room. After they’d finished searching the pigsty outside and every nook and cranny of the small yard, they moved on to the next house. Terrified by the intrusion, Fumi’s grandfather knelt in the middle of the front room with his head hanging down. Fumi trembled in fear and buried her face in her grandmother’s bosom.
Nobody left the house until Fumi’s father returned after dark. Fumi listened in on his conversation with her grandfather and found out what the Americans were doing. The soldiers had been divided into two groups: a group of about ten was searching the houses, one by one, while the other group was searching the surrounding woods. In the meantime, the leader and the interpreter were at the banyan tree questioning Seiji’s parents, the ward chief, and the head of civil defense. They were determined to find out whether Seiji had acted on his own or as part of a group.
The village men had been forced to help the soldiers search the woods. Of course, they just pretended to cooperate, while secretly hoping that Seiji would escape. However, there were a limited number of places to hide, so if the Americans called in more men, they’d be sure to catch Seiji within two or three days. Everyone felt that his only way to escape was to swim across to the main island. But small US warships were constantly patrolling the area, so it wouldn’t be easy to get across undetected. Besides, as Fumi’s grandfather pointed out, they’d probably stationed troops along the shorelines.
Fumi’s father mentioned that Seiji’s parents were completely terrified. Seiji’s mother had been crying and saying that the Americans would kill her son if they caught him. Seiji’s father had seemed to doubt whether their son could’ve done what he’d been accused of. The other men were surprised, too. Seiji was only seventeen, and even though he’d been toughened up from his work at sea, he still had a boyish face. Compared to his violent father, Seiji was meek and mild. No one could believe that the weak boy who’d been bullied to tears as a child had stabbed an American soldier with a harpoon. But according to his parents, Seiji had been away from home since early afternoon, and his prized harpoon was missing.
As for the American soldiers, the one stabbed in the shoulder appeared to be fine, but the one stabbed in the stomach was in critical condition. One of the four had remembered Seiji from the internment camp, and the Japanese-American interpreter knew that Seiji had been in the Defense Corps and worked with the Japanese army.
—He’s still just a child, isn’t he? said Fumi’s father.
Fumi couldn’t tell if he spoke in admiration or in annoyance.
—Well, I didn’t see the adults do anything, said Fumi’s grandfather.
The comment caused Fumi’s father to fall silent.
That night, the Americans set up a large tent near the banyan tree. A searchlight powered by a generator was trained onto the houses. The soldiers patrolled the village in pairs, while a soldier with a rifle stood at the tent on night duty. With the droning sound of the generator echoing through the village, and the intermittent footsteps and voices of soldiers, Fumi couldn’t sleep.
A full-scale search started early the next morning. Just like the day before, the men of the village were forced to cooperate. The women and children felt uneasy about the presence of the Americans, but they couldn’t stay locked up inside all day. If they didn’t tend to the crops, draw water, and cut grass for the goats, they’d have no way to live.
During her many trips to the spring to fill her family’s water jar, Fumi wondered whether the American stabbed in the stomach would survive. She pictured the red blood spreading through the clear greenish-blue water and the wounded soldier holding his stomach. She assumed that Seiji would be executed if the soldier died. She also pictured Seiji coming ashore and dashing across the rocks with his harpoon. Where was he hiding? And did Sayoko hear about what he’d done?
Since the attack at the beach, Sayoko and Tamiko had stayed confined in their home and hadn’t shown their faces. Their parents worked in the fields, but no one dared ask about Sayoko. Fumi quickened her steps whenever she passed Tamiko’s house. When she pictured Sayoko and Tamiko in the back room, her throat tightened, her breathing became labored, and her eyes filled with tears. During the search the day before, the Americans must’ve entered Sayoko and Tamiko’s house, too. How did the two girls react when the soldiers threw open the door, entered the house in their boots, and started yelling?
When her mother called, Fumi realized
