'What's all wrong? Baker asked.
'For one thing, he's in a chair, not on a zabuton. That's a floor cushion. For another, he's not wearing a kimono. Tadeo was a stickler for tradition with an eye for detail as well.
'What detail? Doc Baker was frowning.
'The traditional dress for seppuku is a white kimono.
The frown became thunderous. 'You mean to tell me it isn't seppuku because he's wearing the wrong goddamned clothes? What about the sword? That is a samurai sword, isn't it? And isn't this hara-kiri or whatever the hell you call it a samurai tradition?
Baker was reluctant to give up his pet theory even in the face of expert information to the contrary.
'It is that, George Yamamoto agreed; 'and it may still turn out to be suicide, but I doubt it.
Up until then, Doc Baker had been treating George Yamamoto with uncharacteristic deference and consideration, but anyone casting doubt on one of Baker's prize assumptions is going to get run over by a truck.
'You're saying it's not suicide then? You think it's murder?
George nodded. 'Of all people, Tadeo wouldn't have violated the ancient traditions.
Baker rolled his eyes in disgust. 'You mean he'd commit suicide by following some ancient recipe? Come now. Some of Baker's customary truculence was leaking back into his manner, but George wasn't intimidated.
'Tadeo knew more about samurai traditions than almost anyone in the country, he replied quietly. 'He spent a lifetime learning about it.
Big Al and I had lingered in the background. We didn't want to disturb their deliberations, but we didn't want to miss out on something important, either.
'What did you call it? I asked.
'Seppuku, Yamamoto repeated. 'You probably know it as hara-kiri. It's the ritual disembowelment of the samurai.
Big Al stirred uneasily. 'What's all this crap about samurai? This is Seattle, for Chrissakes, not Japan. Besides, I thought all that samurai bullshit went away a hundred years ago.
'More like a hundred and twenty, Yamamoto corrected. 'It's gone, but not forgotten.
'And that rusty old knife over there is supposedly a samurai sword?
George Yamamoto regarded Big Al with an air of impatience bordering on irritation. He nodded slowly. 'A tanto, he said. 'A hidden sword, sometimes called a woman's sword.
Al Lindstrom grunted. 'That thing's so rusty it's hard to believe it could do that kind of damage.
George knelt down on one knee and examined the weapon. 'Don't let appearances fool you. It can cut, all right. Those ancient swords were made from such high carbon content steel that they'll rust in minutes just from not having the blood wiped off, but they're still sharp as hell. From the looks of it, this one could possibly be very valuable.
'An antique, then? I asked.
George nodded.
'Do you think it belonged to him?
George glanced at me. A shadow of personal grief flickered across his carefully maintained professional facade. He stifled it as quickly as it had appeared. 'I don't know. If it did, he never mentioned it, at least, not to me.
'You said he was an expert. Why? Was he descended from a samurai warrior?
'Not that I know of, but from the time I first knew him, he was interested in samuari history and lore as well as the swords and all the accompanying sword furniture.
'What kind of furniture? Big Al asked.
'The other equipment besides the blades themselves that were part of a warrior's equipment.
'How long did you know him, George? I asked gently.
There was a slight pause before he answered. 'We had met earlier, when we were little, but we became friends in Minidoka. George Yamamoto made the statement softly, evenly, looking me square in the eye as he did so. 'During the war, he added with quiet dignity.
George turned away. Once more he stood looking down at his friend's body in a room that was suddenly oppressively quiet. The $20,000 reparation being paid to survivors of Japanese War Relocation Camps may have mystified the rest of the country, but not the people who live here in the Northwest. We had a larger concentration of Japanese-Americans before the war. As a consequence we're more aware of the irrevocable damage done to those 125,000 people who were stripped of their rights and packed off to detention camps during World War II. Around here the scars are still very close to the surface.
Most the the detainees were citizens, born in the U.S. or naturalized, but they were nevertheless suspected of complicity with the Japanese, summarily deprived of their livelihood and possessions, and shipped into the interior. Minidoka, a raw barracks camp in the wilds of the Idaho desert, was where many of Seattle's Japanese- American folk, suffering alternately from terrible heat and terrible cold, waited out the war.
I knew vaguely that as a young teenager George Yamamoto had been incarcerated in one of those camps, but this was the first time he had ever spoken of it, and although I was barely born at the time, I felt ashamed of what had happened to him and to his family. Ashamed and chastened-a variation on a theme of the white man's burden.
The silence in the room had lengthened uncomfortably. I'm not sure George even noticed. He stood, lost in thought, gazing down sadly at the mutilated body of his dead friend.
'What does Minidoka have to do with samurai history? I asked.
George walked over to the window before he answered. 'Tadeo was interested in it, that's all. Interested and curious. He spent hours every day talking to the old ones there, asking them questions, listening to their stories. He came out of the camp as an unofficial samurai expert. He was particularly interested in swords. The rest of the time he spent fiddling with radios. He single-handedly kept the few radios in the camp running on scavenged parts.
'Swords and radios? I asked. 'That's an unlikely combination.
George smiled and nodded. 'Tadeo is…was a very unusual man, equally interested in both the very old and the very new. Once the war was over, he went on and got degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Washington. We were in school there at the same time.
I could tell from the set of his shoulders that grief was hammering at him, and George Yamamoto was doing his best not to give way to it. Listening to him, I had, for the first time, a sense of what their meager existence in Minidoka must have been like. Obviously, living there together had forged a long lasting comrade-in-arms bond between Tadeo Kurobashi and George Yamamoto, the same kind of bond that comes from surviving other varieties of wartime experiences.
'Is that where he met his wife? I asked, once more trying to break up the silence before it swallowed us whole. 'In the camp?
George swung away from the window. 'Machiko? he asked, spitting out the name as though the very sound of it was offensive to him. 'No, he answered. 'Not her. She came over as a war bride in 1946 during the occupation. Tadeo married Machiko after her first husband died. He was still working his way through school when they married.
From the way he said it, I could tell that George had disapproved of his friend's choice of wife, that he had despised her in the past and still did in the present, even after all the intervening years.
Moving away from the window, George stepped over to the desk, standing in front of it and studying the items that lay on the smooth, polished surface. Without touching anything, he focused briefly on each of them, stopping eventually on the two halves of the wooden box. 'Come look at this, he said.
Big Al and I did as we were told. Both the top and bottom of the slightly curved rosewood box had been carefully crafted and polished to a high gloss. The outside surface had been worn thin by years of opening and closing, but I was certain from looking at them that the two pieces would still fit together perfectly. On the top surface, a delicate inlaid ivory squirrel gathered an equally tiny mound of mother-of-pearl acorns. The exquisite inlay work was some of the best I've ever seen.
'It's beautiful, I said.
George Yamamoto nodded. 'It is that, and I'm convinced that under all the blood we'll find the same design repeated on the handle of the tanto itself. Once the blade is cleaned up, we'll be able to see who made it.
