When My Name Was Keoko (18 page)

I was ready with an answer to that; it was what I'd been thinking about all day. Still, I spoke slowly, looking down at my hands. "At first I thought perhaps you could say that he had some illness—some kind of medical condition that would be bad for a pilot. But I don't think that would work. He has already been training for so long—they would know by now that there is nothing wrong with him." I paused.

Abuji nodded again, so I went on. "But what if—what if you were to tell them something like the truth? Tell them that Uncle is a resistance worker—they know that already, right? And that Tae-yul admired Uncle greatly. And therefore you think Tae-yul should not be trusted on a mission of such importance. He should be stopped from flying."

I'd turned this plan over in my mind a hundred times. It would not be betraying Uncle. I was not asking Abuji to tell a bald-faced lie. And it might save Tae-yul's life.

Abuji was quiet for what seemed like a long time. As I waited for him to speak, I suddenly felt exhausted. The sleepless night and restless day of thinking so hard and now telling my thoughts had left my body limp. At that moment I didn't think I could even lift my hand.

At last Abuji spoke in his usual calm, even voice. "Well, then. I could tell the authorities I believe Tae-yul is not to be trusted. What do you think they would do?"

Something in his face made my stomach feel a little queasy. "They wouldn't want someone like that flying one of their planes, so they—they would stop him. Wouldn't they, Abuji?"

Abuji nodded. "And then what?"

I stared at him with my mouth open. It wasn't very polite of me, but I was too surprised to control my expression. How could I not have thought of this myself?

Abuji answered his own question. "They would arrest him. If he were lucky, he would be imprisoned. Otherwise..."

He didn't need to finish the sentence. I closed my eyes as a terrible fear rose in me.

Otherwise, the Japanese would execute him as a traitor.

If Tae-yul were not stopped, he would crash his plane and die. If he
were
stopped, he might die before a firing squad.

Abuji raised his hands and rubbed his eyes as if he, too, were very tired. He spoke with his hands still covering his face. "Sun-hee, I am deeply grateful to you for speaking to me about this. I must think about it for a while. I will tell you when I make a decision."

He lowered his hands. "Now, if you are feeling well enough, perhaps you could help your mother with dinner."

I rose from my seat and went to the door. Before I stepped out I looked back at him. He was sitting with his hands in his lap, head bowed, shoulders slumped.

I closed the door behind me and stood there for a moment, trembling.

I had never before seen Abuji look afraid.

The next day after school, I waited outside the house for Abuji to come home. I wanted to talk to him before he came inside, because I didn't know whether he'd told Omoni anything and I had a million questions to ask. Had he gone to the authorities? What had he said to them? What did they say in response? Would Tae-yul be coming home soon?

But when he came home, all the questions died in my throat. He looked at me and nodded, his face tired and gentle. Then he shook his head and took me by the hand, so we went inside together.

Without a word he'd told me what I needed to know. He had given them the information. But he had no idea what they'd do next.

We could only wait.

The last night before I leave for Japan. I'm wide awake on my bunk. Somewhere in the middle of the darkness it finally sinks in.

I've volunteered for the Special Attack Unit—the kamikaze.

That's the new assignment. Mine and two other soldiers'. They've chosen three of us, dismissed the fourth with no explanation.

All through the briefing, the CO droning on and on about duty and honor and courage, and I hardly heard him. There was only one thought in my head.

I'm going to fly an airplane!

That was the only thing I'd thought about. Until now.

Now the whole truth looms over me. I'm going to fly an airplane—and
crash it.
Into an American ship. It grabs me by the shoulders and sits me straight up in bed, that's how strong it is. Impossible! How can anyone do something like that?

I joined the army to save Uncle. Not for any other reason. Not to kill Americans. And
certainly
not to help the Japanese.

But that's what the Imperial forces do—the Special Attack Unit most of all. It's not just the damage they do to American ships. It's the power they have to boost the whole army. They make everyone, even lowly guards like Spade-face,
believe in the Japanese cause. He said it himself: As long as there are those willing to become kamikaze, there's no way Japan can lose.

How did I get here? How can I be part of that?

A sudden sound in my head—a grinding noise. It takes me a second to realize it's me, grinding my teeth. My hands are clenched in fists, too—I want to hit something.

I've given my word. If I back out now, they'll think they were right, that Koreans
are
cowards. I'd lose face completely and never get it back.

And besides—it sounds stupid, selfish, but I
want
to fly an airplane.

There has to be a way. To fly, but not to help them.

My jaw relaxes a little. I lie back on my bunk, staring at the ceiling. I spend the rest of the night digging through my mind for everything I've ever heard about the kamikaze.

Gray light at the window. And I have a plan.

Now everything is happening in such a rush. There's no time to think. Packing, saying goodbye to the fellows in my unit. We got to be friends really fast here. The guy in the next bunk, Han-joo—Kentaro is his Japanese name—salutes me. Everyone laughs, but it still makes me feel funny. We're the same rank. But he knows—we all know—as soon as you become a pilot, you're automatically made an officer.

Leaving Korea, going to Japan. My first time on the open sea.

A lot of the other guys on the boat get sick. I don't, even though my stomach feels awful the whole time. Flying in a plane probably won't feel like being on a boat. But maybe a plane rides up and down on the air, like the boat on the
waves. I practice breathing deep, trying to control the sloshing in my stomach. Just in case it feels the same.

My new camp is not far from Tokyo, at a base called Kagohara. The barracks are a lot nicer. There's a platform for sleeping on, with mattresses, not straw mats. And only six men to a room. New uniforms, too.

But the same morning routine. Lessons on the Emperor's words, reciting the Rescript. Pages and pages to memorize. What does any of it have to do with flying?

We get other lessons on the workings of airplanes. We don't have to prepare them for flight, or fix them if they break down—mechanics do that. But a pilot has to know his plane as well as he knows his own body. Better, even. If anything goes wrong in the air, there are things a pilot can do to compensate. But only if he knows exactly what's wrong.

I love these classes, learning about the engines. It's funny when I think about it, my education in machines. From bicycle right to airplane, nothing in between. Well, maybe one thing—Uncle's printing press.

When we go out to the hangars to see the engines for ourselves, I notice that the pilots ignore the mechanics. They're considered a lower class, not just by military rank. I feel bad for them. I wouldn't mind being a mechanic myself, getting to work with engines all the time. And I'm impressed by how well they know the planes.

More lessons: flight manuals, military operations, military history. We try to learn everything. It's impossible, but we try anyway. Every free moment back at the barracks we go around carrying books and manuals.

Even in the latrine. If you have to wait to use it, you can hear the guy inside reciting a lesson. Uncle would have made
a good joke about that. And I'd have laughed, except that I'm doing it, too.

In the afternoons we have "practical training." Flying at last!

But not in planes—in gliders. We watch the other squads. The glider is attached to a car with a long cable. The car tows the glider until it gets up enough speed, then the pilot releases the cable. When our instructors demonstrate, the glider banks in a gentle curve and then rises in a big spiral. It's beautiful to watch.

But when it's the new recruits piloting, ha!—a whole different story. The glider crawls along the ground, wobbling back and forth, sometimes lifting a meter or two into the air. Sun-hee has a swing in a tree back home. She gets higher on that than they do in the gliders.

Our instructors say that when the whole squad can fly gliders properly, we'll move on to planes. If we're good at it, we could be flying planes next month.

My first time in the glider. The instructor sits behind me. First he flies it, telling me the whole time what he's doing. The control is a stick that raises or lowers the nose. It directs the wings, too. I listen hard, so I can't really look to see how high we are. I know from watching the others that he'll take it up to about five meters. Then he'll bring it back down again, for me to try.

My turn. The car gains speed. The instructor yells, "Now!" and I push the button to release the cable.

The glider slithers along on its belly like a snake. Push the stick, pull it precisely, at just the right moment—and we're off the ground!

The glider stays in the air for a few seconds. It feels like a few
years.
Magic, that's the only word for it. Then it bumps
down again, tipping a little on the landing so the instructor has to help me straighten it.

I wish he hadn't had to help, but still I'm proud of myself—some of the other guys can't even get the glider up at all. It rolls along and careens in crazy'S patterns when they panic and start pushing the stick every which way.

I can't wait to fly a real plane. There are only two planes for the whole camp, more than two hundred men. So even when we do start to fly, we'll have to take turns.

Still, it's a thrill to see them for the first time.

They're kept in the forest at the edge of camp, hidden under pine boughs in case of an enemy air raid. The planes used to be kept in hangars, but the huge buildings are easy to spot from the air. So all the training planes were moved to the woods.

It's one of the duties of new recruits to jog out to the woods and uncover the planes. The feel and smell of pine again.

Ai,
they're beautiful! So slim. The cockpit is the widest part—just wide enough to hold a man or two men, one sitting behind the other. Then the plane tapers down to the tail. The propeller blades are enormous—three of them, each as tall as me. What power! And the wings are broad and flat, like two strong arms.

We uncover the planes after lunch and cover them up again at the end of the day. That's the closest we get to them for weeks.

I can see why it's organized like that. Being so close to the planes every day, but not able to fly them, makes us want to do even better at our training. So we'll be able to fly soon.

Our squad makes progress. Thirty of us—three Koreans, the rest Japanese. Our instructors are very pleased—they say
we're all fast learners, considering we don't get many chances to fly the gliders.

We're flying more often than they know. The controls for the rudder are foot pedals. After lights out we sit on our beds, imaginary stick in front of us, imaginary pedals on the floor, our hands and feet moving, every one of us flying a glider in our minds.

The day finally arrives—our first day in the planes! Reveille at 0430. The morning lesson on the Emperor's sayings is agony. Then after lunch we have to endure another speech. When the CO starts talking, I feel like I'll die from impatience.

But this speech is different from the others. For the first time ever the CO is saying something different about the war.

Losing—Japan is losing. He doesn't use that word, but for nearly an hour he talks about recent battles. The numbers of casualties—men, planes, equipment ... The never-ending waves of U.S. planes, the strength of the American naval fleet ... How the Japanese have been forced to fall back, and back, and back ... How they've lost nearly all the territory they conquered earlier in the war.

And how the battle in the air is Japan's last hope.

"Our sacred homeland now lies under direct threat of American bombardment," he says. "The responsibility for any chance of an honorable end to this war rests on our pilots—on you, should you complete your training successfully You must all apply yourselves with utmost diligence and not waste a single moment of your instruction. In the name of the Emperor!" He dismisses us with a fervent salute.

The squad is quiet after hearing all that. But then our instructors yell for us to march. Double time to the airstrip, where the planes are waiting for us, uncovered by the new recruits.

We aren't new anymore. We're ready to fly.

I talk to myself all the way out to the airstrip.
You've wanted so badly to fly. This is bound to be a letdown. It'll be different somehow—not nearly as good as you've imagined. Expect that and you won't be disappointed.

Me in the front seat now, with the instructor behind. We have radio headsets! They're wonderful—it's like his voice is inside my head. Except I keep forgetting to press the button down when I want to talk. It's embarrassing—I answer him, then he repeats the question. And then I realize that I haven't pressed the button.

Headset. Harness. I feel the rudder pedals with my feet—bigger and heavier than the ones in the glider.

The plane starts to roll. I hear the instructor's voice the whole time. I try to listen hard. Throttle forward, accelerate—I really
am
listening. But only with part of my brain.

The rest of it is looking out the cockpit windshield. At the ground, sliding faster and faster beneath us. And then I can feel it, I can tell the exact moment that the wheels leave the ground. We're in the air!