25. Eddie Decides
The 2nd day, Eddie and Ivan get orders to transfer to Hardy Barracks in central Tokyo - some buildings that house Tokyo-based troops, conduct Army business and serve as temporary sleeping for soldiers who are transferring in. At Hardy, a transfer soldier might stay a week while his final destination orders are sorted out.
Eddie is happy to learn he and Ivan have the same destination - Camp Chitose on the north island of Hokkaido. Ivan, who knows everything, tells him the camp is run by the super secret Army Security Agency and is a radio spy station that listens in on the Rooskies. As part of his re-enlistment package, Ivan got a year at Army Language School in Monterrey California, where he became expert in Japanese, and he is slated to be an Army security analyst at Camp Chitose.
Eddie had been kept in the dark about his assignment in Japan. Now he understands why. Super secret! He guesses it is connected with his computing machine knowledge.
Their orders have them staying 3 days at Hardy and then by Japanese railways north to Chitose.
Eddie forms a plan. The gang-bang with the mama san struck a deep chord in him. He could see she was old - Could be my mother and maybe a little; but she is different. Never had any woman like her. I want this stuff. She'll do anything for American bucks. I'll make an offer. He had indicated he wanted to see her again and she had scribbled a number and handed it over.
Next day, after they get to Hardy, Ivan, with Eddie standing by, drops a 5 Jap yen into a public telephone and dials. He speaks for a minute and hangs up. "OK, you fugger. You sure, you wanna get mixed up with that old moose? You can get beautiful moose chicks for the same money."
Eddie insists.
"You bake your cake, you eat it. She says, we can come on out to her shack in Shinagawa, tomorrow. We'll go there after lunch."
26. Sunday Pass
They get passes and leave the Barracks dressed in nicely pressed Eisenhower Jackets with shiny visor Army hats and shined brown boots. Eddie is like a farm boy 1st day in big city - wide eyes, open mouth. As they ride surface transit, he views Tokyo outside its center: masses of small 1- or 2-story wood homes with sliding door entrances. And the wood is old, browned, horizontal boards.
Shinagawa is a large, old open-air railway station - 6 platforms Eddie counts at a glance. Ivan says it is southwest Tokyo - its name Sale-able Goods River suggests its original foreign trade business.
Ivan makes another call from a phone booth and writes down directions.
"We gotta buy a present. It's di rigueur, if you get my French. Since they're all starving and we don't want to show our being too rich, we'll buy a basket of fruits." They stop at the station gift shop and Ivan buys a basket with several apples, tangerines, pears and small bananas he says come from Taiwan.
They walk the wide avenue from the station and shortly head into a smaller street and come to a 1-story wood house that looks to Eddie like hundreds he had seen from the train window.
"This is it. Not the front. She lives in back."
They go around the right side, into a 1-body width alley and turn rear corner left into a small yard - eight feet square, to Eddie's view, and in rear, a sliding door of what was once clear glass panels separated by wood slats but now the glass replaced by old cardboard and newspaper.
Ivan signals attention in Japanese, "Moshi-Moshi!"
A moment, and the door slides open and Eddie is surprised to see the lady of his plans now in brown-wrap kimono - not new but clean, with wide black sash about her waist. Ivan calls the sash an Obi because of its fancy bow behind. She bows "Konnichi wa. Irrashaimase." indicating they should enter. Eddie thinks She don't look as old as she looked at Camp Zama. Lowering heads to clear the doorway, Eddie notes an old but clean 9-foot or so square room, with low table and hibachi like a big-plant ceramic container but filled with sand and topped with smoldering charcoal beneath a net used for heating food or tea. Around the table, sitting on shins, are an old woman in black kimono, 3 boys and youngest child a girl. The children's ages, Eddie guesses, are low teens to 6. The boys are dressed in black semi military, the girl in dark blue sailor-suit with skirt and the clothing, although clean, is worse for wear.
27. The Backroom
They take off shoes in the inside entrance, and Ivan - Eddie too after a nudge - bows and echoes Ivan's Japanese Happy to be here. He hands the gift basket to the lady who bows and says "Arigato gozaimasu." She goes to what looks to Eddie like a household altar with a Buddha sculpted bust and takes the biggest apple of the basket, shakes a hand bell, puts the apple on the altar in front of the Buddha, claps her hands once and bows head in brief prayer. Then she brings the basket to the table and Eddie notes the children and even the old lady quickly grab a fruit. The children bite into the apples vigorously; the old lady takes a banana and mouths it lovingly. They are hungry, thinks Eddie. The lady does not take a fruit. She pours cups of green tea for the 2 guests. She is sitting primly on her folded-in-front lower legs, Eddie notes, and he thinks Boy, that looks like it ought to be uncomfortable but she does it like she was born to the manner. He and Ivan sit on the sides of their buttocks, with legs stretched out. The floor, Eddie notes, is tatami - straw color fibers that form a resilient, firm, nice-smelling surface.
Doing as Eddie had asked, Ivan asks the lady about herself. Here is what she tells them.
28. Ryo
Her name is Ryo and she was born, as Ivan explains, in the last year of Emperor Meiji's rule, in 1912. He adds "Meiji had 45 years and then came his son the Taisho Emperor and then ole Hirohito, the fuckin' war criminal." Ivan knows the lady does not understand that part.
Eddie is thinking: Hm, 40. With the labor gang at Camp Zama in the monpe knickers I thought she was 50. But now I see the hairs are gray prematurely around the edges. But, boy, did she feel good inside.
She is a war widow. Her Jap husband had a deferment from the army because he was already 40 when the War with USA began. But in 1944, when scraping bottom of barrel, those kind of guys got pulled into combat. He died in 1945 on Okinawa.
Her story is typical of most Jap housewives her age. With Japan's defeat her world crashed. No welfare payments, no husband, no support network. And the people were starving and children and old dying like flies, of typhoid and other infections. So women like her survived and kept children and old parents alive doing day labor and selling sex to the GIs. Actually she'd been a middle class housewife with high school education - quite good for a women before the War. Then she'd had tuberculosis that almost put her under. This was just when streptomycin was coming in and luckily, a Christian hospital got some and treated her into remission so here she is.
Well, that's the gist of Ryo. Ivan then gives Eddie's offer. Fifty U.S. dollars a month for housekeeper service. In it is the unspoken acceptance she will give everything. At this point, Ivan takes out an envelope Eddie had given him and hands it to Ryo, saying it is a token of Eddie's serious intention.
She receives it on both open palms and bows head & shoulders onto the table from her sitting-on-shins position. Then she opens it and inside is a $50 green U.S. bill.
Eddie is thinking, Ivan said they'll do anything for money. I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope.
She does not explain anything to the old lady, her mother. She looks at Eddie at first with no expression. "Kashikomarimashita. Shiyo ga nai dakara, ii deshyo!"
"What's she saying, What's it mean?" Eddie asks.
Ivan interprets, "It is understood. No way but to do it. So it shall be."
Eddie claps his hand on Ivan's shoulder but then sees that Ryo is wiping away tears. He thinks I know I'm being a bastard, just like a Nazi soldier in an occupied country throwing my weight around. But I want her. It's my chance of a lifetime.
He tells Ivan to explain to Ryo it will take a month before he can arrange for her to start. He gives her his army mailing and the deal is sealed.
To keep reading, now, click 14.(29-34) The Spy Station
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