Pet Phrases
Everybody has certain pet phrases. Kazuo had recently begun to notice this.
First, there was the phrase that all grown-ups used: “During the war . . . ” referring to World War II, which had ended about twenty years ago. Whenever adults lectured kids about something, telling them to do their homework or clean their plates, they always said, “During the war we couldn’t study, even if we wanted to.” Or, “During the war we couldn’t be choosy about our food because there was no food.”
Kazuo had heard this phrase so many times that he had begun to ignore it.
Then there were his father’s pet phrases: “I’m beat” and, when he had been drinking, “Son, you are going to study hard and get into a good school, you hear me?”
Father could be heard saying “I’m beat” at least three times a day: after work when he arrived home, after dinner when he settled down to watch TV in the living room, and after TV time, when the low table had been cleared away and he was crawling into his bedding. He was saying it more now that the end of the calendar year was approaching and things were busy at work.
Kazuo believed that Father actually was really tired. Every morning he left for work at seven thirty and didn’t come home until after seven. But on holidays and Sundays, Kazuo wished his father wouldn’t say “I’m beat” quite so often. Saying it when he was sprawled in front of the TV was, in Kazuo’s opinion, a little bit embarrassing.
Then there were Kazuo’s mother’s pet phrases. Not a day went by when they didn’t hear “Boys, during the war . . .” The next most frequent ones were “Clean your plate,” “Be grateful for what you have,” “Straighten up,” and “Did you do your homework?” The difference between Mother and Father’s pet phrases was that Mother’s were always directed at Kazuo and Yasuo.
Why doesn’t Okaasan have a pet phrase about herself, like Otohsan does? Kazuo often wondered.
Perhaps it was because he and Yasuo always quarreled and had to be told to do their homework, and wanted to do nothing but watch TV and read comics.
Still, Kazuo didn’t think he and Yasuo were really all that bad. They set the table before meals and folded up their own bedding. Their grades, while far from highest in their classes, were not bad. So Kazuo often wished that his mother would sometimes direct her pet phrases at her own life.
Recently, Mother had developed a new pet phrase: “I am sick and tired of war.” This phrase came out of her mouth every time she saw images of the , which were beginning to appear constantly on the TV news.
One day in the middle of December, when Father was working late and Mother, Kazuo, and Yasuo had finished dinner, Mother said the phrase again.
They had been watching the seven o’clock news. The TV screen showed American warplanes heading into the jungles of North Vietnam and dropping bombs. Kazuo thought the scenes looked like images from a movie—unreal and even a little bit thrilling.
But that was not what Mother saw. “Why do people have to go and do that?” she said in a choked voice.
Startled, Kazuo and Yasuo looked at her. As she watched the TV, tears flowed from her eyes. The two boys, who had never seen their mother act like this, kept silent, stealing glances at her face from time to time.
After a while, the scene on the news changed to a bustling Tokyo street. Mother wiped her tears and shifted her gaze back to Kazuo and Yasuo.
“Do you want to hear what I have to say?” she asked quietly.
The two boys nodded, still keeping silent. What on earth was she about to tell them? Kazuo wondered. He shifted uneasily on the floor.
What she told them was a story they had never heard before. “During the war I lived apart from my family for two years, when I was in the fifth and sixth grade, due to the evacuation of schoolchildren from Tokyo. But after sixth grade, when I’d graduated from grade school, I had to come back to Tokyo. I arrived in January of 1945.
“At that time, it was clear that Japan was losing the war. After all, American airplanes were dropping bombs on the streets of Tokyo almost every day. One of the most devastating attacks was the bombing of Shitamachi, the old downtown.
“On March 9, the American military used incendiary bombs, or , for the first time. An incendiary bomb is filled with gasoline instead of gunpowder. The incendiary bombs turned all of the old downtown into a sea of fire. Many houses burned, and close to a hundred thousand people lost their lives. Mr. and Mrs. Yoshino, the owners of the tofu store, lost their son that night.
“When that happened, I was living in Shibuya in west Tokyo. I watched with my own eyes as a firestorm filled the sky to the east, and the night turned a deep red, as bright as day. A lot of people jumped into the Sumida River to try and escape the heat. But the fire had eaten up every inch of the ground, and easily crossed the water, so everybody who jumped into the river was burned to death.
“When I heard that, I grew so stiff with fear that I couldn’t move. I couldn’t help wondering if the same kind of disaster would happen to me. An odd superstition was beginning to make the rounds then: if you only ate shallots for dinner, you would be able to outrun the fires from incendiary bombs. My mother—your grandmother—began to serve meals made only of shallot and sweet potato gruel.”
“Oh . . .” Yasuo said sympathetically, as if he couldn’t imagine such a dish as his only meal. Kazuo shot him a glance.
“But the bombs weren’t just falling on Tokyo. They were falling on Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka—all around the country. And just as I had feared, the American military soon carried out an attack on western Tokyo, including Shibuya.
“The air raid started on May 24, after midnight. Your grandmother and I were the only ones home. When we heard the warning siren, we jumped out of our blankets. Outside the house, we could hear the B-29s as they flew in low. When they dropped their firebombs in the distance, it sounded just like rain falling in big drops on rooftops. The two of us grabbed bags packed with a change of clothes and our bank records, and ran out of the house.
“The sky to the south was deep red. We could tell that the firebombs were coming closer. I said to your grandmother, ‘Okaasan, come on, let’s go to the woods behind the Hachiman Shrine.’ Soon we met up with a whole crowd of people also headed toward the shrine. Your grandma and I joined the crowd, gripping hands so we wouldn’t get separated. But soon, the pitter-patter rain sounds shifted to loud whistling sounds, like flutes.
“And then, right before my eyes, columns of fire came crashing down. We all fell to the ground. The earth shook violently, then flames shot up everywhere, and in an instant the whole area was on fire.
“‘If we stay here we’ll burn to death!’ somebody yelled. Everyone scrambled to their feet and began to run, desperately trying to get away. We moved with the crowd, rushing toward the woods behind the shrine.
“‘You can’t go that way!’ someone else yelled. ‘It’s too dangerous! Go back!’
“Your grandmother and I both heard that voice, and we stopped in our tracks. But a lot of people around us couldn’t hear it and kept running for the shrine. As the two of us stood frozen, wondering what to do, we heard the whistling sound like a flute, and then a bomb dropped right there in front of us. We were so scared, our bodies trembled like leaves as we fell to the ground. When we somehow managed to lift our heads, we saw just ahead of us a woman with a baby on her back. She’d been running for safety like us. Now she lay on the ground, her whole body on fire. The flames were so bad, we couldn’t get close enough to help. The smell of gasoline filled the air, along with another horrible smell—the smell of human flesh burning. We could tell that the flames around us were getting higher and higher and closer and closer.
“‘We’ll die if we stay here!’ I told your grandmother.
“Somehow the two of us got back on our feet, still shaking. Clutching each other’s hand, we began to walk in the direction of smaller flames. The heat of the fire was so intense, it singed our eyebrows. We had no idea how long we walked. But eventually we realized we were standing in front of our own house.
“The fire was everywhere by now. ‘If we’re going to die,’ your grandmother said, ‘then we should die together in our own house.’
“The two of us went back inside. We huddled together on the bedding, trembling. By that point we could no longer hear the firebombs. Instead, we heard the roaring of the fire. I said a prayer: ‘If we’re going to die, let us die without suffering. And if we are born again, let us be born into a peaceful world with no war.’
“Finally, it began to grow light outside. Night was ending and morning had come.
“We’re still alive. With this thought in our minds, we cautiously opened the front door.
“Outside, everything was gone. All the houses and buildings between our house and Shibuya Station had burned—not a single one was left standing. The area all around was flat and charred black as far as we could see. Off in the distance was Shinjuku Station, a building two stations away that we shouldn’t have been able to see at all. Your grandmother and I took one look and began to weep. Here and there you could still see black smoke rising where fires were smoldering. The stench was so awful we could barely breathe. I was terrified I’d never see my relatives and friends again. And I remember looking at the field of ashes and thinking, ‘So this is what death is.’ ”
Mother paused to take a breath. “Almost twenty years have gone by since the war ended, but the sights from that day will always haunt me.
“It turned out that everyone who fled to the Hachiman Shrine was burned to death because the fire spread to the trees in the woods. If we hadn’t heard that voice warning us to go back, your mother and grandmother would no longer be in this world.”
Both Kazuo and Yasuo listened to their mother with serious expressions. By now, she had told them many times about how there wasn’t enough food during and after the war, and about how as a child she had studied with miniature light bulbs during blackouts, and about how lots of people had died during air raids. But this was a new story. Maybe she had decided to tell them about this because of the bombs flashing on their TV screen every night like a movie.
Kazuo had looked at a map, and America and Vietnam were far apart, on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean. So why did America have to send so many troops and drop so many bombs in Vietnam? He had no idea. He also had no idea why his favorite American TV programs, like Leave It to Beaver, never showed the war. Instead, all they showed was the family’s house with the big refrigerator, and Beaver’s older brother coming home from school and making himself a sandwich, and the whole family wearing nice clothes. There was never an air raid siren going off, or people running frantically to get away from enemy planes dropping bombs.
All of this struck Kazuo as strange, but it didn’t make him hate America. Instead, the America that appeared on the TV screen continued to look cheerful and wonderful to him.
After Kazuo’s mother told the story, he expected things to change for some reason. He thought that maybe she would stop nagging them about their homework or about eating all the food on their plates. But even though she began to use the new pet phrase “I’m sick and tired of war” more often, her old pet phrases for Kazuo and his brother did not let up even a little.
When the two of them were engrossed in TV or comics, she asked, “Did you do your homework?” When they didn’t eat their vegetables, she said, “Clean your plate.” And if they complained that they would like to taste a steak like the ones Beaver and his family had for dinner, she would snap back at them with one of her favorite pet phrases, “Be grateful for what you have.”
So Kazuo and Yasuo had to keep on doing their homework and cleaning their plates of onions and carrots and boiled fish, all the while remembering to be grateful for what they had.