The Phoenix Tree

The Indian put the bills in his pocket. ‘This is as far as I go. You wanna be careful with that money. I could of took it off of you. You know what they used to say – never trust an Injun.’

‘I’d kill you if you tried.’ Minato stood up, awkwardly but quickly. The scout’s knife was open in his hand, its blade a pale glint in the moonlight.

The Indian didn’t back off. His right hand came out from under his blanket; it held a knife, one with a longer blade than Minato’s. ‘Don’t try it, Jap. How many guys you killed with that potato-peeler?’

One: but what was that to boast about? Minato picked up his suitcase and backed away, on edge for the first hint that the Indian was about to plunge towards him. But the Indian didn’t move; instead, he grinned and put his knife back under his blanket. He looked steadily at Minato, then he turned on his heel and walked slowly back into the moon-softened darkness, like a ghost retreating into the past.

Then his voice came floating back, as clear on the desert silence as if he were only a few yards away: ‘You can’t win, Jap. You’re like us – the war’s lost!’

Minato sat down suddenly in the dust; it was his spirit, not his ankle, that buckled. For six months, ever since he’d been picked up, he’d fooled the Americans. Slowly he had let them think they had turned him round, converted him into a double-agent, a traitor to Japan. It had not been easy to fool them; the Americans had a pathological suspicion of all Japanese, even the US-born ones like Tom Okada. But subtly, he thought, he had hinted at his six years’ conversion to American thinking and institutions; but all the while he had remained as Japanese as ever. He was intelligent and objective enough to know that Japan was losing the war; but he wanted to go home to die in Japan, not live on, or at worst die, in America. And now it seemed that the long wait might end here in the Mexican desert.

He had twenty thousand miles to go, more than halfway round the world, and suddenly he wondered if it would all be worthwhile. Abruptly he began to giggle, almost drunkenly, sounding just like the Indian had when he had first stumbled on him. He was thinking of Tom Okada, the American, waiting for him in Japan and his own bleached bones lying here in the mean shade of a Joshua tree.

The joke was that Okada’s code name was Joshua.

2

On St Valentine’s Day Tom Okada hung in midair at midnight above the middle of Honshu. He had never felt so utterly alone; it was as if the whole universe were a vacuum and he, alive only on the air still in his lungs, were the only living thing in it. Already the sound of the aircraft that had dropped him had faded and above him the stars were dead white eyes that offered him no sympathy. Below him Japan was just a black hole hidden by cloud cover.

The feeling of being alone, at first not recognized, had begun as soon as Ken Minato had been allowed to escape; from then on Okada had realized there was no turning back, at least if shame was to be avoided. He had been surprised to find that he had a shame complex; that was a Japanese trait.

He had been sent to Corpus Christi Naval Air Base in Texas for, as Commander Embury sardonically described it, a crash course in parachuting. The instructors there had not been told why a Jap should be instructed in jumping; some of them had questioned Okada, but he, acting inscrutable, had told them he didn’t know. They hadn’t been inscrutable in showing their annoyance at this smiling, uppity Jap. He had made three jumps and been passed as satisfactory, though he himself felt far from satisfied with the situation.

He drifted down through the darkness, the air whispering along the cords of the parachute. He had little idea of what lay below him other than that it was mountainous country; there was the danger that he might land on the edge of a cliff, but it had been decided (by Embury and the others; he had been given no vote) that the danger would be greater if he landed in flat country where there would be villages or even troop concentrations. He began to sweat, wondering if he would be dead in the next few seconds.

‘You’re going to need luck,’ Embury had said. ‘But if you land safely, it should be a good omen for the rest of the mission. Do you believe in omens?’

‘No,’ said Okada, lying; lately he had begun to see everything as an omen, even a passing cloud.

Embury and Lieutenant Irvine had accompanied him to Saipan. Irvine had been of considerable help in assisting him to take on the character of a Saipan Japanese civilian. Okada had had to adjust his accent once again; thoroughly exposed to it now amongst the prisoners still held on the island, he had found the Saipan civilians, the ones who had spent their life there, had a much coarser accent. Since he could not imitate it perfectly it was decided that, in the persona that was gradually being painted on him, he would have spent three years in Japan with his grandparents, folk who were now conveniently dead. He learned to say certain words and phrases the way the Saipanese did, the hint of local colour in the emerging portrait of Tamezo Okada, sawmill under-manager. It had been decided that he should keep his own name, the risk being taken that there were no records in Tokyo of all the civilians on Saipan. It comforted him to hold on to his name – an omen, if you liked.

‘The thing to remember,’ said Irvine, ‘is that in a country as battered as Japan there is more confusion than suspicion. America is at war, but it isn’t in the war – so forget all about how you felt at home. You’ll be more at home in Japan—’ He smiled as Okada looked at him quizzically. ‘Well, you’ll be less conspicuous, shall we say?’

But Okada had wondered if he would ever be at home in his father’s homeland; he had certainly not been when he had been taken there as a child to stay with his grandparents. As a boy he had not come to terms with the Japanese mentality and now as a man he still felt uncomfortable with it.

Okada had been attached to a Marine battalion that had landed with the first invasion wave on the island of Saipan in the Marianas eight months ago. Like everyone else in the battalion he had been surprised at how, since World War I, the Japanese had colonized and developed the island. Besides the 30,000 soldiers on the island there were 25,000 civilians working in the sawmills, the sugar-cane fields and other light industries. Few military prisoners had been taken, but civilians had been captured in their hundreds and Okada had been kept busy as an interpreter. Then his battalion had been moved on, to the north of the island, picking their way through the countless, stinking corpses of the soldiers who had died for the Emperor in suicide attacks or by their own hand. Then, on the very northernmost tip of the island, he and the Marines had stood sickened and powerless as they had watched over 10,000 Japanese civilians take their own lives and those of their children. Babies had been smashed against rocks, women and older children had been thrown from the high cliffs, men had hurled themselves, with long-drawn-out cries that would scar the aural memory of those who witnessed the scene; into the sea far below. The civilians had died because their Emperor had, at the last minute, promised them an equal place with soldiers in the after-life to which they all aspired. Hell was not for them, only for the Americans who saw them die.

‘Jesus!’ said the Marines and looked at Okada. ‘What gets into you guys?’

Two days later Okada had been called back to the prison camps where there were still civilians, sensible though damned, waiting to be interrogated. Still haunted by what he had seen his father’s countrymen do, he had tried for an explanation from those who had declined to die; but the survivors were struck dumb by shame, not at what the suicides had done but that they themselves had not followed the Emperor’s call. He found himself in no man’s land, shunned by the Japanese he was making fumbling attempts to help, suspected by the Americans as being sympathetic to the mass suicides.

In October he went with the first wave of the invasion force on to the island of Leyte, in the Philippines. A week after the landing, when a deep beachhead had been established, he was called back from a forward unit and told to report to headquarters.

‘I got no idea what it’s all about, corporal. All the order says is that you’re being transferred. Permanently.’

He hadn’t liked the sound of that. ‘Can I protest, sir?’

‘Corporal, I understand you’ve been protesting ever since Pearl Harbor. You must be the bitchingest soldier that’s ever served in the US forces and I’d go back as far as the Revolutionary Army.’

Okada had smiled through his sweat. ‘Just proving I’m an American, sir.’

Okada had been put on a plane and two days later, via Honolulu, he was put down in California, his home state which he hadn’t seen in two long years.

‘Welcome to San Diego,’ said the Navy officer who looked as if he might have been starched inside his uniform. He was a good six inches taller than Okada, who was five feet nine, and he had a long nose that he appeared to use as a range-finder when looking down at men on a lower level of height and rank. ‘I’m Lieutenant-Commander Reilly.’

Okada saluted, a sloppy effort due more to exhaustion than disrespect. ‘I hope you can tell me why I’m here, sir. The Navy?’ He looked around the base, as spick-and-span as an admiral’s ribbons. This was the clean end of the war, the best end. ‘Is there some son of services merger going on?’

‘God forbid,’ said Reilly. ‘Follow me.’

Okada, lugging his kitbag, followed the Navy officer across to a low building set aside from the main administration offices. He was conscious of being stared at by passing Navy personnel and he could read the question in their faces: who’s the Jap bum, some prisoner they’ve brought back from the SWPA? Serves me right for looking like a bum, he thought. But then he hadn’t expected to be dumped here in this naval base where even the lawns looked as if they were shaved daily.

Reilly led him into a room that, though spartan, was still far more comfortable than anything he had seen in the past two years. FDR smiled a toothy welcome to him from a photograph on the wall, but Okada ignored it. The President was not to know that he was no longer one of Okada’s heroes.

‘Sir, is this the usual accommodation for enlisted personnel in the Navy?’

‘No, corporal, it’s not. It’s usually reserved for visiting officers – certain officers, that is. You will not leave it at any time, unless accompanied by a guard.’ Reilly nodded at the mate second class of shore police who stood outside the door, all self-importance, muscle and gaiters. Okada hated police of any sort, service or civilian. ‘You hear that, mate? If he wants to go to the head or the showers, someone goes with him every time. And he is not to communicate with anyone. Anyone, you understand?’

‘Jesus!’ said Okada.

Reilly looked at him. ‘Are you a Christian?’

‘Would it help?’ Then he saw that Reilly had little sense of humour. ‘Sorry, sir.’

Reilly gave him a look that, two years ago, Okada would have considered racist; but he no longer cared about such things. Not today, anyway; he was too exhausted. Reilly went away and Okada, letting his clothes lie where they fell, a most unnaval custom, went to bed and slept for twelve hours. If the war was over for him, he could have cared less.

Next morning, fed, shaved, showered and dressed in new tan drill, he presented himself, escorted by the SP detail, to Lieutenant-Commander Reilly. With the latter were two other officers, one American, the other British.

‘Commander Embury. Lieutenant-Commander Irvine. You may sit down, corporal. For the moment there will be no formality.’ It seemed to hurt Reilly to say it; his starch creaked as he tried to relax. ‘Commander Embury will now take over.’

Embury was USN, but a reserve officer; the starch in him had never taken, or had been watered down. He had had a successful Oldsmobile dealership in Falmouth on Cape Cod; perhaps the Navy powers-that-be had decided that an auto salesman’s shrewdness would be an asset in Intelligence. Not that he had a slick salesman’s look, as if he’d only sold solid farm machinery. He was untidy, squat and ungainly, suggesting that he was shambling even when sitting down. He smoked a pipe that looked as if it might have been taken from one of the Indians who had greeted the Pilgrims and the tobacco he used smelled as if it were dried peat from the cranberry bogs on Cape Cod. Everything about him said he was a misfit, till one looked at his eyes. Okada had never seen such a coldly intelligent gaze.

Embury wasted no time: ‘You speak Japanese fluently?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Read and write it?’

‘Yes, sir. My father insisted that my sisters and I learn it. And I lived in Japan for two years with my grandparents.’

‘We know that, corporal.’

‘I thought you might, sir.’ Okada was suddenly wary. ‘Why am I here, sir?’

‘You’ve worked with Detachment 101, of the OSS?’

‘Just the once, sir, my first action. They were short of an interpreter and I was sent to Burma. I didn’t volunteer, sir.’

Embury’s gaze suddenly softened as he smiled. ‘You didn’t like it?’