The Navidad Incident (8 page)

Matías Guili believes this Chujiro Miyakura was his father. He's never told anyone, nor is there any official record of his father being Japanese. Still, the idea is not as farfetched as it might sound. Not that he ever met the man or even heard anything about him from his mother. She herself was from Melchor Island, far away from Gaspar and Baltasár. When her parents died one after the other, the orphan made her way to the capital and found employment at a Japanese-run barbershop. Which is where, her son Matías supposes, she met Miyakura. Supposes, because when Matías was only three, she succumbed to a Japanese tuberculosis epidemic.

His mother's younger sister took the child back to Melchor and entrusted him to the care of distant relatives, where he received little attention and, after finishing three years of public school, was thrown out on his own. An unruly boy, he headed back alone to Baltasár. There, an aunt found him living hand-to-mouth and gave him a box—keepsakes from his mother, she told him. Cheap Japanese perfume, a few pencil stubs, a dirty handkerchief printed with a Japanese landscape he would later recognize as the Ama-no-Hashidate shoals, a hairclip made of hibiscus wood and shell … and, tossed in among all this, a single dog-eared calling card:

Chujiro Miyakura
Chief Manager
South Seas Fisheries Company Ltd.
Navidad Katsuobushi Division

That's the size of it. His mother bore him and died unmarried. There were no rumors about this man and his mother; his aunt knew nothing about how her sister came to be with child. Still, Matías found a father in that box. Mere conjecture, embellished on a name card? As far as he was concerned, the card
was
his father. The figure behind it was up to him to invent. No card can make a woman pregnant, but it can beget a father.

Whatever connection existed between this father and his mother he could only imagine. To that ruling-country male who left behind a wife and children to come to the South Seas, was she merely a local mistress, a “shadow wife” in the parlance of the era? Was there mutual affection? Was it a one-night stand, or worse, a roadside rape in broad daylight? Feelings notwithstanding, it might as well have been rape. At a time when the islands themselves were being ravished, how could there be consenting sexual relations between Japanese men and island women? Or so teaches the ideology of anti-colonialism. Matías tried hard to convince himself of the rape scenario; he felt no sympathy for the man. Only—since a boy needs a father—he had to manufacture one. No need to color in a personality; the more abstract the figure, the better. No need, even, to wonder whether a man who raped a woman would then give her his calling card.

Whatever his reasoning, much later, during the several years he spent in Japan as a student, Matías took off one spring vacation and made a special trip to Kochi to find out about this Chujiro Miyakura. With nothing more than the card and snatches of hearsay to go on, he finally managed to locate the address, but unfortunately Miyakura himself was long gone. After just two years in Navidad he'd returned to Japan at the very end of the war, only to be conscripted despite his disability, and shipped off to his death. All Matías eventually heard from a nephew of his, who received him with cool suspicion, was that Miyakura had been a
katsuobushi
maker and a bonito fisherman before that. On the long ride back to Tokyo, changing trains countless times, Matías asked himself what in fact he'd learned. That the man really existed. That he indeed did come to Navidad. That he probably was good at his trade, but returned to Japan two years later because he missed his wife and children. That his family had since split up, whereabouts unknown … but was this what he wanted to know?

The truth was, there was only one question he wanted to ask: “Did you rape my mother?” It probably didn't even matter what the man's answer would have been.
No, it wasn't like that at all
, or
I don't remember the woman
, or
I never had a single woman the whole time I was on the islands
, or
Yes, I did take advantage of her, but that doesn't mean I didn't love her
—anything to clear up what Miyakura's name card was doing among his mother's things. He'd just wanted to sit in that tiny house in that tiny fishing village in Shikoku, and put it straight to the wizened shrimp of an old man before him—“Did you rape my mother?”

Maybe he was so insistent because he badly wanted just to distinguish himself from all the other island boys. He was willing to be the bastard product of rape. He wanted living proof that half his blood came from superior Japanese stock. The chances were his father was just a Navidadian with no name card to leave behind. The boy's facial features and skin color could cut either way. Whatever the case, his mother died without telling a soul who the father was. That in itself was not uncommon, but the record was never set straight after her death. Even after the boy grew up and became president, no father ever surfaced. Which gave him the unique freedom to choose one for himself.

It also helps explain what made the boy so bent on success in a place where, given the traditional island lifestyle, he'd never go hungry. Even orphans enjoyed some fat of the land. The local standard of living may not have included rice or soy sauce or soap or cans of Geisha-brand mackerel, but any good Catholic would come into Sunday Mass clothes. He'd still be given a patch of earth and allowed to make his own canoe. Still guaranteed a back row seat at ceremonies. That should have satisfied anyone, but no, Matías made up his mind to renounce the land of plenty.

The good thing about the South Seas is maybe just a little too good: if you don't really have to work for your food, why stake your life on rebelling against foreign domination? Not that colonial administrators ever got around to oppressing the islanders into starvation. But if the drive for change is altogether foreign, where did Matías get his social-climbing ambition? That achiever mentality could only have come from a Japanese: a vision channeled into the mind of a Navidad orphan by an imaginary rapist father. And so it was, urged on by Chujiro Miyakura, the boy began his long ascent to the office of president.

What, then, of his mother? Where did she figure in the inner life of the boy Matías? We know she was from Melchor Island, the third distant light in the Navidad trinity. Relations between these islands are a story in itself. Ordinarily, two large island twins might be expected to overpower a third smaller one, but here the isolated, less populated, not especially prosperous Melchor has always held spiritual sway over Baltasár and Gaspar. The other two even sent tribute. Not because of any organized religion or political clout, but the clairvoyance of the Melchor Council of Elders. At the end of the nineteenth century, when the Ponape islanders revolted against the Spanish, and Navidad debated whether to take up arms as well, the Melchor Elders advised against using force. Spanish rule, they said, wouldn't last much longer, and their pronouncement proved correct: Spain lost the Spanish-American War and abandoned its colonies in the Pacific (although other foreigners moved in to take their place). Everyone was mystified. How had the Elders known what historical changes were afoot?

Like a homebound sister who develops visionary powers while her able-bodied brothers go out to farm and fish, Melchor left everyday concerns to Gaspar and Baltasár but would reliably divine the right path in times of serious crisis. Thus, anyone coming from Melchor to the capital was treated with a certain respect and often called upon to solve difficult situations, for it was widely believed that everyone born on Melchor had this sixth sense.

Matías made the most of his Melchor origins, although with his tenuous family ties, he never really thought of Melchor as a homeland. Had the twelve-year-old orphan stayed on Melchor, he wouldn't have gone far, wouldn't have been given the chance. So around the time that Imperial Japanese Navy cruisers first dropped anchor off Navidad, Matías left his home of nine years, his mother's keepsakes under one arm, and crossed the waters to a different life.

On Baltasár, his first job was as an errand boy for a Chinese laundry that served the Japanese. Three years later, with a little luck, he found employment as a busboy in the naval officers' mess hall. There he made use of his most salient skill—conversational Japanese. Three years of pointless grammar drills at public school had taught him next to nothing; still, he was different. Buoyed by a faith in his Japanese blood, he made extra efforts to learn passable daily speech. Simply speaking the language of the colonial overlords raised him that much above his peers. Here for the first time the orphan discovered his own worth, and the earnest way he cleared the tables made him the mess hall pet.

One officer in particular had his eye on Matías. Second Lieutenant Kazuma Ryuzoji was paymaster for the troops stationed on the islands. What was it about this scrawny brown kid that piqued his interest? He'd call the boy over and listen to his Japanese for mistakes, even tutor him in
kanji
characters and arithmetic if he had a moment. The other officers razzed him, “Hey, Kazuma, didn't know you were the type!” but to Ryuzoji it was simply a charitable gesture. Teaching gave him some small pleasure—at least that's what he told himself.

Or perhaps the real story was that Ryuzoji caught a glimmer of himself in this youngster, living by his wits, tempering his ambition by force of intellect. Matías wasn't just aware of being different, he was dead set on turning that half-breed distinction to his advantage. What else did he have? Here, Japan's incursion into the South Pacific was instructive: Matías realized early on that cultural enrichment came from rubbing shoulders with everyone, but politics worked the other way around, by excluding outside elements to consolidate power, by putting oneself forward at the expense of others. Ryuzoji saw how the boy picked up on these things almost instinctively.

Ryuzoji himself was born into a poor family in Kyushu, and the navy was the quickest way up—if only as a temporary step. He took up accounting at the Naval Academy with the idea of learning a skill he could fall back on in civilian life, whenever that might be. Accepting an unglamorous posting as a paymaster, his hands-on application was all that kept the books balanced at a time when Japan was seriously out of kilter. The mercenary mentality agreed with him. Bravery and loyalty and determination aside, wars were waged by moving men and materiel with businesslike efficiency.

By early 1943, however, supplies were running desperately short, and many of the vessels that weighed anchor from Navidad never came back. The islands would not fall under direct attack for some time, nor did the Navy men here sense the impending peril. Ryuzoji alone could see it coming. That April, a few days after the shocking news that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had been killed in ambush at Bougainville, Ryuzoji formed a bold opinion he dared not share with his fellow officers. Instead he took Matías into his confidence, though he'd only known him for three months. That noon, when Matías brought him the daily special of taro curry and salt-grilled reef fish, Ryuzoji invited him to his quarters after dinner.

“Tell me, boy, do you have any idea why Japan is the greatest country on earth?”

“Because Japan's got great people,” replied Matías.

“Wrong. There are great people in Japan, and there are slouches too. Brains and idiots, nice guys and crooks, in just about the same proportions as any country, anywhere. Well, maybe we're a little more hardworking, but even that comes out about the same, give or take. People everywhere work, only some never really get down to business.”

Matías just listened. This abstract stuff was tricky.

“The Empire of Greater Japan owes its success to His August Presence, the Emperor.”

Whatever you say
, thought Matías, half wishing he could go back and change his answer.

“Humans are weak. One person alone can't do much. If just for themselves, people won't till the fields until after dark. There are hungry children at home, old folk, that's why they work. Even school children, they study because they want to take home good marks to their mother.” (
Not me
, thought Matías.) “The desire to work is the wellspring of community spirit. There's no greater pleasure than to live up to others' expectations. Just as there's no greater joy than to sacrifice one's life for someone you believe in. That's how it is.”

Matías listened silently. This was getting too difficult for him.

“And the one who's watching over all of us Japanese subjects like you and me, that's the Emperor. Because we always feel His eyes on us, we work for Him, we do battle with the enemy, we struggle through every setback. And why do we struggle for the Emperor?”

“Because the Emperor's so great,” said Matías, the groomed student providing the expected answer.

“Wrong,” said Ryuzoji, the patient teacher. “From here on is my opinion, so don't say anything. Just listen, and don't tell anyone. If talk gets out, I'll be in deep trouble.”