Mount Surabachi still loomed high over Iwo Jima. Far below, at the northern tip of the island, two men assisted a woman down through a draw in the precipice to the sands below. Two others lowered a small rubber boat down to them. Carrying the boat, the two men followed the woman along the beach to where an arm of the cliff curved into the sea. They helped her step into the boat, then one of them rowed it around the bend.
“Wait back there,” said Kimiko, as she stepped ashore. She drew her coat more tightly around herself, and faced the winds blowing from the sea, feeling the cold of the winter bite through her clothes, matching the chill in her heart. In one hand was a small, exquisite urn.
Then she turned and slowly walked up to the cave. The stone wall had fallen, was covered by the sweeping sands, and the cave looked so much smaller than Masters had described it.
She sank to her knees and she wept, rocking in the time-old ritual of mourning, raising her head between sobs so that she could breathe.
Finally she set down the urn, and dug her hands into the sand, slowly and tenderly opening the grave for the middle-aged man with the cropped hair and light blue eyes. When it was deep enough, she placed the urn in the hole and, equally slowly and tenderly, smoothed the sand over it. Then she turned to stare out over the cold, gray waters, sensing in its relentless, undulating rhythm a kinship with the emptiness within her.
The shadows were lengthening when one of the men rowed around the point. “Mrs. Masters,” he called. “We must be getting back. It will be dark soon.”
Wearily she rose, turned to look once more at the cave and the smooth patch of sand, then she entered the boat.
Had she dug a few inches more to one side, she would have touched the outstretched fingers of Ito, reaching out across the many years.
The wheel had turned full circle.
END