1.12 Sasebo Repo Depo

*Slim Novel 1 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage

12: Picture Brides

Kimi is alone in an arrival building. She has nothing to do but sit on a threadbare overstuffed sofa reading old magazine. She dines on pickles and rice at mess hall and wanders about the camp.

Morning and honking horn! Rubbing sleep from eyes and looking out window, she sees an army truck and, at its back, young women climbing down, each helping the next. ‘Picture brides’ – poor farmers’ daughters who figure life in Manchu with a stranger no worse, perhaps better, than slaving in rice fields and bearing a farmer’s babies. They crowd into the building assuming Kimi is one of them.

The next morning with the picture brides at dockside: each woman in ankle-length, long-sleeve brown dress, pink apron and white headband like house-wife, standing alongside her possessions and in columns. Moored nearby is a black rusting old troopship its decks crowded with tanks, field guns and crates of rifles and ammo. Along the rails are soldiers in gray-green uniform.

  On a wood stand draped with the familiar red-ball-on-white flag, a 4-piece army band tunes up then starts Patriotic March as Major Ito steps up and speaks of babies. Japan needs babies especially boy babies who will grow into colonists and teach the Imperial Way
.  “Baby making is a sacred duty of young women! It is the Emperor’s wish!”

   A red-face farm girl next to Kimi whispers in her country accent, “I be first if Big Boy wanna try me fer size!”

  Kimi gasps inwardly at the unschooled, shocking disrespect. The Emperor had been named with Chinese characters meant to convey the idea “abundant virtue”, which would be anticipated during his reign. But it also could mean “expansive male virtue”, which lusty young farm girls at once understood to mean the Emperor’s superb sexual part. But even with no knowledge of the ideographs, the mere sound of the Emperor’s name could easily be interpreted as “big wide fellow”, hence “Big Boy”, which had only one meaning for randy young ladies.

  To the music of Patriotic March and the cheers of the flag-wavers, the brides and Kimi march up the boat's boarding ramp under the eyes of the soldiers on the ship's rail and past the erect Major Ito.

                   To read next, click 1. (13-15) The Sex Slaves