CHAPTER TWENTY

Secrets

By the way, all I see out of my tent is another tent and miles of them beyond. If I raise my eyes a little I can take in the mountains but no ocean.—March 20, 1945

I guess your mom told you about my little incident in the parking lot,” my father said the next Wednesday. I nodded.

I didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry? But sorry for what? Sorry his friend died or sorry he’d remembered? So I didn’t say anything.

“I can’t believe that after all these years it all came back to me like that,” he said. “Like it was happening all over again. Can you believe that?”

I shook my head.

“Mal and I were friends,” he said. “We both knew how to copy the Japanese code and we did it side by side at Iwo Jima. Then a few weeks later, we were ordered to write another set of letters. We were sent right back out and did the same thing but this time at Okinawa. But when they went to transfer us to the sub there, the communications room was flooded. So they transferred us to the deck of a ship. The sky was black with kamikazes.

“We were actually kind of goofing off when it happened. We were on the deck of this huge ship. When we were at Iwo Jima we made up a game. Seems strange now, to be fooling around literally in the middle of a war. But that’s what we did. There were places all around the perimeter of the deck where we could work. All we needed was a place to clip our rolling chair so we could stay in one place when the ship moved, which was constantly. And there were these metal rings at regular intervals where we could do that. But we didn’t work next to each other. We were all the way across the deck from each other.

“Well, just for fun every now and then, we’d wait until the ship rolled so one side was higher than the other, then unclip and roll across the deck to the other side. Within seconds the ship would roll to the other side and the other of us would unclip and roll across to the other side. So we switched places that way. It broke up the monotony and it was kind of fun.

“One day, for some reason, when Mal and I changed places, I got out of my chair. I can’t remember exactly why, but sometimes we did that. I was sitting on a wooden crate. Well, right after we’d switched places, a kamikaze hit close and a piece of shrapnel hit right between my legs; it was imbedded into the crate. I instinctively reached down to pull it out and it was hot. It burned my finger.”

He opened his hand and looked down at his finger.

“Right there,” he said. “It’s the darndest thing. See that?”

I looked at his finger to see a half-inch long scar of sorts. Actually it looked more like a tattoo. It was blue and in the shape of an elongated c. I remembered it well. When I was a little girl, I would run my tiny fingers across the scars on his hand. But the blue scar was my favorite. It wasn’t raised like the others. It was smooth like the rest of his skin.

“You know, a few years ago I tried to get it out,” he said. “I took my pocket knife and tried to dig it out.”

I cringed.

“And it hurt…a lot,” he said with a little laugh. “So I decided to leave it be. So anyway, it was some time after that—maybe hours, maybe days, I just can’t remember—that Mal and I were on the deck again. But this time we were in those rolling chairs. We had just changed places when this Kamikaze hit the water close by. For some reason, I looked over at Mal and saw that he’d been hit. I unstrapped and ran over to him. I cradled him like a baby. And Mal looked up at me and said, ‘Oh, Murray.’

“Then it’s kind of a blur. I remember I was holding on to him so tight that someone, a sergeant or something, ordered someone to get me off of him. They had to pry my fingers away from his shirt one finger at a time. Then I remember standing up and brushing my shirt with my hands trying to get the blood off. It’s the craziest thing, right? I was trying to brush blood off with my hands. Then I remember that same sergeant telling someone to take my shirt off of me and they did. The next thing I remember was waking up in Aiea Naval Hospital and seeing a pretty blonde nurse. Anyway, so that’s the story.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I said, finally finding my words.

“Oh, lots of guys had it way worse than I did,” he said. “You know, if Mal and I hadn’t switched places, I would have been the one gone and he would be the one with kids and grandkids.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said. I didn’t know if it was the right thing to say or not.

I went home and took a reference book off the shelf.

“Okinawa,” I whispered.

Turning the pages, I learned that the initial invasion began on April 1, 1945. I opened my father’s letters and started reading.

Just as before, I looked for clues about what had happened at Okinawa. But this time I wasn’t so hopeful. I had come to understand that there would not be neat answers that fit into a box. I read each letter staring with those dated a week before the initial invasion. Since he wasn’t there for the initial invasion, I stopped on March 30. That was the time, roughly, that my father was there. But after hours of reading and rereading, the only possible clue I uncovered is the fact that there was a break in the letters. He went just shy of a full week without a single letter. On each end were letters dated March 23 and March 30 that sat as brackets around a blank space.

March 23, 1945

Dear Folks,

Nothing new has been added in the past twenty four hours. One thing—I bought a bottle of pop. That was exactly my doings for the day. Saw the show “Winged Victory” last night. It was really swell. You should see it if you want to see about what we went through to get over here. It’s about the A.A.F. but the training was about the same (except for the gold bar when they finished).

We get all the popular programs all right, on the radio but they aren’t direct—they are always transcription thru the two local stations. All but one are in excellent English too. They have American (stateside) announcers and it’s just exactly the same as listening to KHQ or something, in Spokane.

Write. Love, Murray

March 30, 1945

Dear Folks,

Before I forget—sent a package a couple of days ago first class mail (not air-mail). Inside is one of my amphibious insignias—in case you didn’t know. It goes on the left arm sleeve at the top. That’s what I’m attached to so I’m entitled to wear it. In the Navy there are just a few branches that wear those special insignia. The Amphibs, Seabees, and P.T. crews, the rest of the service don’t wear any specialty designation. Also that overseas bar is all mine too—American theatre and Asiatic Pacific theatre. Everyone here is overseas so you never see any one wearing an overseas ribbon. Thought you might hang ’em on my star in the window or something with that rating badge I sent before just for the novelty of it.

Still have a lot of new guys around. They come and go but I stay on. Will see the doc Monday and got an appointment for eye exam. If no change I’ll be set any day after that to catch a draft. If a change is required that will probably mean another month or more. As far as I’m concerned they sure need changing all right.

Go on liberty Sunday and sure hope I arrive in time to go to church and think I’ll take in the dinner afterwards this time too.

Write. Love, Murray

As I read, I wondered if these letters were among those written ahead of time and mailed while he was at Okinawa. How strange it seemed that his mother received such a glowing report of her son’s wartime experiences while he was going through such a trauma.

But even if the letters themselves didn’t reveal anything, did she notice that he didn’t write for almost a week? And what about that break? Was that during the time he spent in the hospital? Had he been treated for his wounds—physical and mental?

One thing was certain, physical wounds heal, but the place of pain will always have a scar. Maybe it was the same for emotional wounds. Maybe a place where the pain was at one time unbearable could never be the same, no matter how good it looked or how well-healed it appeared.