Cherry blossoms wafts over flame trees

A second in a series of reflections in anticipation of Japan’s Royal family’s visit to Saipan.

It is no longer an idle observation that, indeed, the victors of war get to write history. And if Winston Churchill is to be heeded, all meaningful historical narratives are ultimately biographical.

China has accused Japan of not being demonstrably remorseful enough about its behavior in the last World War. It faults Japanese history writers, not for what they write, but for what they do not write. Nippon of the mighty ¥en, and of the ready response to ‘checkbook diplomacy’ in the last 20 years, is being asked to fork over its accumulated balance of payment advantage to rectify the misguided policies of a belligerent and arrogant past.

In the upcoming visit of the Japanese imperial couple to Saipan, Guamanian activists are already thinking out loud about initiating public demonstrations to remind the Emperor and Empress about the excesses of Japanese occupation during the war, particularly the reality of jugun ianfu, “sex slaves,” or “comfort women,” which many deem to be an unsettled issue since its emergence as an official regional concern in the early 90s.

The policy of the Japanese government appears to be to refuse to recognize their responsibility for these crimes, and to stonewall all requests for justice. As one of a select few that presides over the financial destiny of an increasingly interdependent global economy, the Japanese economy may be able to afford ignoring such gnats on its corporate face, but whether it can retain the integrity of its soul, which some perceived had already been sold for an extra megabyte of memory chip, is another question.

But first, a word from whence I write. In the mid-60s, I attended an Asian Youth Assembly hosted in the Philippines, after which we brought with us some of the delegates from foreign countries to visit our homes. In my late teens, I left my provincial home in northern Luzon to work in metropolitan Manila. So I brought my guests up north, including a Japanese university student.

It had been 20 years since General Yamashita and his imperial forces retreated through the Cordilleras and the Cagayan Valley but the memory of the atrocities committed remained fresh in the corporate memory. In school, the image of the Japanese soldier was that of a bow-legged, shifty, slit-eyed rapist who not only would drag one’s sister by the hair and forcibly bed her atop the sacks of rice in the granary, but also without much equivocation slit her on the throat should she complain afterwards.

While much of this, I thought, must have receded from the communal memory, I would be rudely awakened in the middle of the night, when a barrage of stones rained on our tin roof. It was made clear to us in the morning that not a few of the neighbors took exception to my bringing a “Jap” into the community.

I had myself just been weaned over my Jap bigotry with Pope John XXXIII’s Pacem in Terris, and had been profoundly affected by the assassination of the young U.S. President Jack Kennedy, that my idealism for a world of brothers and sisters unbound from ancient prejudices was taking form. Bringing a Japanese student to my home was perhaps an act of redemption of my soul.

It was then that my father took me aside and explained a few things. The Uncle, who was my martyred hero for dying during the war, turned out not to have been killed by the Kem Pei Tai, but by the underground. He was literally quartered by being tied to water buffaloes who were driven in the direction of the four winds, just because he served as an interpreter to the Japanese occupying forces. A schoolteacher, he was made an example to what happens when a native collaborated with the enemy.

That was a shock. Then my father proceeded to say that the only reason he survived the war was because a young Japanese lieutenant who visited his church and who turned out to be a Christian convert from Nagasaki alerted him that he was on the list of suspected subversives about to be rounded up for incarceration. Apparently, my father used the church typewriter to produce propaganda materials of the underground in the area. My parents hastily skipped town, and I was conceived while they were on the run.

“I hate to admit this,” my Dad said, “but your mother comes from a devout Catholic aristocratic family, and I come from a lowly provincial Protestant home. Under normal circumstances, we would never have met, let alone, married. But the war drove us to be close to each other, and the pressure of Japanese soldiers keeping an eye on your mother made her decide to marry me.” My father used to say to the children: “It took a World War to get this family formed,” and to me he added, “and it was due to a Japanese soldier that you were born.”

This telling is not an attempt to diminish the pain of those who suffered during the war. Nor does it attempt to exonerate those responsible for prosecuting a war that even those who planned it, considered unwinnable in the long run. It is rather an invitation to join the royal family in a posture of meditation, as they seem to want to do so in declaring that their visit be a solemn occasion to make peace with the dead in this 60th year of remembering the lives lost, Japanese, locals and others, in this island.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur, memorably referred to as the only American Caesar for his imperial bearing and demeanor, quoted Emperor Hirohito, the visiting Emperor Akihito’s father, on their first meeting. The emperor said: “I come to you, General MacArthur, to offer myself to the judgment of the powers you represent as the one to bear sole responsibility for every political and military decision made and action taken by my people in the conduct of war.” The General then proceeded to add: “A tremendous impression swept me. This courageous assumption of a responsibility implicit with death, a responsibility clearly belied by facts of which I was fully aware, moved me to the very marrow of my bones. He was an Emperor by inherent birth, but in that instant I knew I faced the First Gentleman of Japan in his own right.”

This same gentleman who would later allow his son to marry a commoner, now Empress Michiko, passed on a mantle of responsibility and imperial style that a faithful son had willingly appropriated well.

The cherry blossoms may still linger around the Kurile and Sakhalin, if they have them there, way past the Sakura zensen of Okinawa to Hokkaido. The royal family comes to Saipan in the midst of the flame tree blossoms. The arbor roots have fed literally on the leavings of their kin, and ours. May the resplendent bloom then find a connection in our hearts. I believe we shall have in our midst, a lady and a gentleman!