Davao Pilgrimage

Translator’s Introduction

“Davao Pilgrimage” is a short story by Okinawan author Sakiyama Asao that won the 1997 annual short story award from the Ryūkyū Shimpō, a major newspaper in Okinawa.1 Sakiyama was born in 1944 in the town of Motobu, located on the northern part of Okinawa’s main island, and currently resides in Naha, the capital city of the prefecture. The Ryūkyū Shimpō literary award is an important one for local writers in the islands. Davinder Bhowmik, a scholar of Okinawan literature, points out that a common pathway for successful writers is “to win one or both of the local newspaper prizes, then the Kyushu regional prize, and for the very best, a national prize as the Akutagawa.”2 Sakiyama Asao, who writes in standard Japanese, has won other literary awards such as the New Okinawan Literary Prize and the Kyushu Arts Festival Literary Prize.3 However, unlike other Okinawan authors such as Ōshiro Tatsuhiro, Medoruma Shun, and Sakiyama Tami, Sakiyama Asao has not won or been nominated for a national award. As a result, he has largely stayed under the radar to audiences in Japan and abroad. Nevertheless, despite this relative obscurity, Sakiyama’s “Davao Pilgrimage” is an important work that should be read as an exploration of how the histories of dispersal, war and militarism, and gender-based violence in the Pacific and Asia connect Okinawa to other islands.

In this way, I am pleased to introduce Sakiyama Asaos’s work to English readers. In recent years, an increasing number of translated works of Okinawan literature have appeared in English, bringing the overlooked perspectives of the islands to a greater readership while also demonstrating that Okinawan literature “stands on an equal basis with Japanese and other world literatures.”4 “Davao Pilgrimage” adds to this growing body of translated works, contributing its own ideas about Okinawa’s colonial relationship with Japan and the continuing problem of US military bases on the islands. What sets Sakiyama’s “Davao Pilgrimage” apart, however, is that the story takes place in Davao—located in the southern Philippine region of Mindanao—which speaks to Okinawa’s long history of emigration and the specific circumstances of Okinawan settlers who were mobilized by the Japanese military during the Pacific War.5

“Davao Pilgrimage” is a 1990s’ narrative about two Okinawan men who travel to the Philippines as part of a memorial service tour to pay respects to family members who died there during the war.6 Sakiyama’s narrative remembers the diasporic history of Okinawan settlers who migrated to the Philippines in the first decades of the twentieth century and their wartime experiences.7 This history serves as the backdrop of the narrative, which becomes articulated in the uneven encounters between the Okinawans and the Filipina and Filipino characters they meet on this trip.

Indeed, as the narrative progresses, readers learn that a core conflict of the story concerns one of the main characters, Haruo, who goes to the red-light district in Davao where he is convinced that Edna, a Filipina who works in a bar, is his sister who died in the Philippines during the war. The evocation of sex work in Sakiyama’s narrative is significant given that the 1990s was a period when Filipina workers replaced Okinawan women in the sex industry in Okinawa, which catered to the American military bases.8 It is therefore possible to read the representation of the sex industry in the story as a gesture to the longer history of militarized sex work and the continuities of Japanese and American colonialisms that sustain it.9 This can be seen in the uneven processes of Filipina migration to Japan and the participation of Japanese men in sex tourism in Southeast Asia, both of which are referenced in the story. For instance, Edna, before working in the red-light district in Davao, worked for five years as a dancer in Japan, where she learned Japanese. Toward the end of the story, the Okinawan characters meet Helen, another Filipina, who moved to Manila from Davao to support her family, where she worked as an aite, or “companion,” to the American military and for Japanese tourists. These asymmetries that are depicted in the story underscore the tensions that come from the Okinawan characters’ relationality to the Philippines as tourists, which stands in contrast to their own experiences as Indigenous people subjected to Japanese and US colonialisms in Okinawa.

It is therefore important to note that while the Okinawan characters are complicit in these gendered, transnational processes, their encounters with Filipinas are informed by memories of Japan’s assimilation policies that forced Okinawans to become good Japanese subjects—in addition to the everyday realities of living around US military bases. It is implied earlier in the narrative that Haruo’s mother, Tomi, supported herself and Haruo by working in the sex industry around Koza, a military base town in Okinawa.10 For this special issue on Pacific Island Studies and Trans-Pacific Studies, Sakiyama’s “Davao Pilgrimage” offers a rare chance to consider the two discontinuous sites of Okinawa and the Philippines together as part of our larger concern in examining the interlinkages between the Pacific Islands, Asia, and the United States.

“Davao Pilgrimage” by Sakiyama Asao

It was decided that I would visit the Philippines at the beginning of September to take part in a memorial service tour. My mother’s second-oldest brother died in the Philippines during the war. My grandparents used to take part in this memorial service when they were still alive. After they died, my mother’s oldest brother replaced them, and when he died, the “children”—we are all past fifty now—took turns in his place, and somehow the task had fallen to me this year.

On the day of my departure, I left the house to be at the airport an hour before the scheduled meeting time. I arrived at the airport to find the international lobby already crowded with people from the memorial service group, all of whom were gathered around a haphazard pile of suitcases and cardboard boxes. Kinjō Haruo, a senpai11 from my village, was among them. At that moment, I recalled an unpleasant memory from elementary school. I was a third-grader at the time. I had gotten on the bus to go home after enjoying a movie in a neighboring town with my entire school, but as I looked for a seat, I discovered that most were already filled. I managed to find a single vacant seat, and luckily no one was trying to sit there, so I gladly took it. I was also happy that the female teacher I had a crush on was in the seat diagonally behind mine. Right as I sat down, however, I almost cried out from a sudden pain in my thigh. Haruo, who was two years my senior and sitting next to me, had pinched me. Because Haruo’s mother and my mother were close friends, I had good feelings toward Haruo and was surprised by his pinch. As the bus started to move, he pinched me again. It seemed that he didn’t like that our legs were touching each other.

The road wasn’t paved with coral gravel so we had to contend with some big potholes on the way back home. Every time a tire hit one, the bus jerked every which way. No matter how hard I tried to sit straight and still, my leg kept touching his. He pinched harder, and harder, every time the bus hit a pothole. I withstood the pain. I didn’t want the female teacher to notice. I lost count of the many times I was pinched. After I got off the bus, the pain in my leg hindered me from being able to walk for a while. In fact, I couldn’t walk at all. When I tried, my legs moved awkwardly. When Haruo saw me, I wouldn’t have put it past him to imagine that I was imitating his walk out of revenge. Haruo was extremely bow-legged.

Now, we were meeting again after more than thirty years. I planned to avoid giving any sign that I knew him in case he didn’t recognize me. But it seemed he did since he looked at me and awkwardly bowed as a smile surfaced on his face. I lightly lowered my head in return. The pointed look of Haruo’s devilish eyes hadn’t changed one bit. To my surprise, Haruo weaved through the crowd and came over to greet me.

“Is that you, Machida-san?” he asked. When I nodded, Haruo responded in a way that seemed almost friendly, “First time we’ve seen each other since elementary school. You got so fat that I almost didn’t recognize you. Did you also have someone in the Philippines?”

I told him about my uncle on my mother’s side. After that, we caught each other up on present circumstances. Haruo was single and worked as a restaurant cook in Okinawa City.

“Haruo-san, how is your mother?” a woman in her seventies interjected from the side.

“My mom passed away in May this year.”

“She did?” she said in shock. “I went on the memorial service trip to the Philippines with your mother when it started in ’68, and ever since then, we would, without fail, go together every year.”

It was my first time hearing this. Not only was Tomi-san dead, but she had also participated in this memorial service tour for a long time.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” I gently lowered my head.

Haruo glanced at me and quickly turned his face to the woman again. I had no more than a memory of Haruo’s mother from the ’50s. She hated the Japanese flag. In those days, people were enthusiastic about hoisting the flag, and on national holidays every house but hers would have one raised. Not only that, but she made it a point to tear down the Japanese flag that was flying at the school gate. The moment the children found out that she was heading to the school, they would drop whatever they were doing to chase after her.

Even now, I clearly recall her angry expression and strained breath as she ran up the hill to the school.

When Haruo went to middle school, he and his mother moved to the town of Koza. Not long after, rumors started going around that she was working at a bar.

It took more than two hours for the entire group to go through security. After that, there was a ceremony in honor of our group in the airport lounge, and we boarded a charter plane an hour later than scheduled.

We arrived at Davao Airport at five o’clock in the afternoon.

As soon as we left the airport building, we were engulfed in sweltering heat. Five charter buses were lined up. As I was boarding the bus behind the seniors, the seats were already filled. Just as I was stepping off to move to a different coach, a voice called out to me: “Machida-san.” I turned to see Haruo, sitting in the back seat, beckoning me over. Taking a closer look, I saw that the window seat next to him was open. When I went over to him, he moved to the window seat side and let me sit down. Immediately, I was sent back over thirty years. I wondered what would happen if our legs touched. I moved my legs as close to the aisle seat side as I could. Still, my legs lightly touched his several times in the hour it took to get to the hotel, but he showed no reaction to it at all. We were two people. Two people, side by side. I had an odd feeling about it. There had been times when Haruo and I, just the two of us, lined up next to each other. This was, of course, during elementary school. The strict enforcement of standard Japanese was underway in the schools, and for the morning assembly every Monday the vice principal would survey our progress from his perch atop the school entrance. There, he would say, “Those of you who did not speak in dialect at home this past week, you may sit down.” For about two months, almost all students were standing. The school, out of irritation, took to punishing those who kept standing. They would assign those students various tasks such as picking up rocks from the playground, pulling weeds, and moving sand from the beach. So, in the weeks that followed, the number of students who sat down increased, while those who stood decreased.

It was obvious that not everyone sitting down was being truthful. Not that the school had any way of proving it. The sitters would look up at the standers with faint smiles on their faces. And then, by a certain week, there were just the two of us standing. Haruo and I. As for me, I was standing out of defiance. The vice principal was my father. When my grandmother was still living, my father and I would talk to her in dialect.12 Haruo’s circumstances were more sincere. His mother hated Japan, she hated the flag, and she hated standard Japanese. Not a single person in our small village was unaware that she raised her voice in resentment against the school’s way of doing things. What I remember is the sharpness of her stare, like she was finding fault in everything she saw. Since then, over thirty years of blank space had passed.

“I didn’t know about your mother, I’m sorry,” I said.

“She fell and fractured her leg four years ago.… After that, she suddenly got weaker. I also tried to stop her from going on the memorial service trips saying it was too difficult, but she insisted that she go. So, up until last year, I accompanied her and started participating in the services myself. Even this year, she was trying to go, but her flu got worse and turned into pneumonia.”

“Is that right.… So, then, who did you lose in the Philippines during the war?”

“My younger sister, not even a year old…. though she didn’t die in the actual fighting.”

“So unfortunate at such a young age.”

“My mom, she never stopped mourning.”

We talked on and off like this throughout the ride. We arrived at the hotel at seven o’clock in the evening. We got our room assignments in the lobby, and after each of us rested for thirty minutes, we were scheduled to eat dinner at the lobby restaurant. I entered my room and was sitting in the chair by the window when there was a knock. I opened the door to see Kishimoto, the tour guide, standing there. He came into the room, saying, “I’m sorry to interrupt your rest, Machida-san, but are you close with Kinjō Haruo?”

“No, he was just my senpai way back when.… It’s been over thirty years since I’ve seen him. Why do you ask?”

“Actually, we have a problem. Kinjō-san only stays with the group for the memorial service. Other than that, he hires a local interpreter and goes off gallivanting by himself. It’s not safe out there. He’s done the same every time since he started joining our group three years ago. At the very least, I’ve asked him to take someone along with him, but he never listens, and it seems he goes to dangerous places. Actually, I was asked to arrange an interpreter for him tonight as well.”

As troubling as it was to be made aware of this, it couldn’t be helped. This was my first time in a foreign country, too.

After dinner, as I was resting on the lobby sofa, I saw Haruo leaving the entranceway with a middle-aged Filipino man. The bend in Haruo’s legs was as terrible as ever. If anything, it had only worsened since we were children. I heard a long time ago that Haruo’s mother tried to correct his legs and brought him to various hospitals, but it seemed to have had little effect.

“That right there’s the problem,” Kishimoto, the tour guide, grumbled as he sat down next to me. “I heard he goes barhopping in the red-light district—looking for girls, no doubt.”

“Seeing as he’s got a local interpreter with him, I’m sure he won’t set foot too far afield.”

“I hope so,” said Kishimoto as he slowly got up. He was shaking his head as he walked toward the reception desk.

The next morning, we left the hotel at 8:30 and headed to Mintal Cemetery, where there’s an Okinawan monument. I looked for Haruo on the bus, but to no avail. I hadn’t seen him at breakfast, either. The coach cut through the center of the town and drove on a muddy road during a squall through a rural landscape edged by tall trees and dotted with small homes. One hour later, we arrived at Mintal Cemetery. The Okinawan monument stood in silence, surrounded by more tall trees. An altar had been installed in front of the monument. Had members of the prefectural association built this? Members of the Bereaved Families Association offered awamori,13 fruit, candy, and other things they’d brought from Okinawa, and when they finished the chrysanthemums for the offering, everyone stood in line. Figures of the local children slipped in and out view from a hiding place near our gathering. Haruo was in the back row. There were bandages on his forehead and chin.

The memorial service began with opening remarks made by a representative from the Bereaved Families Association, followed by statements of condolences from the prefecture, local congress, and representatives of the families. Flowers were then offered by each participant. The memorial service ended an hour later and was followed by a commemorative photo. Just as we started heading toward the row of buses, the children came out and scrambled for the offerings. Even some adults were among them. It was a nostalgic scene. The spirits of the deceased dwelled in those children. When they ate the offerings, it became a memorial service, ultimately, for the spirits. Maybe it was the thick air of the cemetery that suddenly made me feel this way. Our next destination was the Tamugan Mountains.

The engine let out a roar as our bus climbed up the slope of a mountain road in a mountain range that stretched several layers deep. I recalled the mountains of K, my hometown village, but the span and depth of these mountains were different. The group got off the bus at a spot where one could see all the hills in an unbroken view. The mountains wound around us in all directions.

“Magnificent view, isn’t it?”

I casually said this to a nearby elderly man, who responded in a low but strong tone, “During the war, it was a jungle. I’m guessing you don’t know this, but the Japanese fled from the American forces, and many died as they roamed these mountains. Many people from Okinawa, too, perished right where we stand. After the war, the Japanese stripped this mountain bare by cutting lumber and importing it in great quantities.” I felt ashamed for not knowing. The elderly man gently smiled and said, “Let’s pray.” The group offered more flowers and candy, then pressed their hands together in supplication. After a while, they tried to escape the heat and headed toward the bus with the functioning air conditioner. Here, too, the figures of mountain village children flitted in and out of view.

As we walked toward the bus, Haruo approached me and spoke with enthusiasm.

“Will you come with me tonight? I want to show you something that will surprise you.”

“A girl?”

Haruo made a face at my surprise attack, but nodded.

“Just let me show you. Please, for my sake, if nothing else. One village boy to another.”

I relented.

That evening, at eight o’clock, we met up with his interpreter, and the three of us called and took a taxi from the hotel. When the interpreter, who was sitting in the passenger seat, relayed our destination to the driver, the cab dashed off with violent speed. It took thirty minutes for us to arrive in a colorful spot in the red-light district. As we exited the taxi, Haruo took the lead. We entered a darkly lit alley off the main street. “Isn’t this dangerous?” I said, to which the interpreter responded, “It’s okay, nothing to be worried about.” We walked for five minutes before Haruo opened the door of a shabby-looking bar.

Haruo stood at the entrance and looked around. The bar had a few booths, which were demarcated by decorative plants, and seats at the counter. The booths were crowded with patrons talking up a storm in every Japanese dialect imaginable. Haruo turned to the interpreter. “Can you ask whether Edna is here?” The interpreter asked a girl who came to his side in the local language. “She’s not here right now, but she’s coming soon,” the interpreter told Haruo. “Shall we wait, then?” were Haruo’s words. We were then guided by a woman to an interior booth. At once, ten women gathered. The girls didn’t appear to be reaching for their glasses. “Machida-san,” said the interpreter. “Is there a girl that you like?” I looked at the girls again. Their ages ranged from teens to forties. The interpreter pointed discreetly at the counter. Couples were going in and out of the backdoor passage beside it. It resembled the cabarets frequented by American soldiers before Reversion.14 Shortly after that, a woman in her forties came in. “That’s Edna,” a woman next to Haruo said. The interpreter muttered something in return, and the woman got up. After a short time, she brought Edna over. A handful of women left their seats as Edna took their place. Haruo sat Edna in the seat opposite to him. Everything about her demeanor told me she didn’t want to be there; she didn’t even smile.

“Remind you of anyone?” Haruo said to me.

From the features of her face and the color of her skin, she could be Japanese, I thought, but no one came to mind.

“Don’t you think she’s the spitting image of my mother when she was younger?” I couldn’t tell either way. I was disappointed. Maybe he had discovered a woman who looked like his mother, but to think he had gone to all the trouble to drag me along to see this.… Haruo seemed displeased with my attitude.

“Ask her again about yesterday,” he said to the interpreter. The interpreter relayed Haruo’s message to the woman in the local language. Edna shook her head.

“What did you ask?” I said to the interpreter.

“To meet during the day. I asked her to bring us to her mother’s place. She said no way.”

Edna turned to Haruo, speaking to him in Japanese.

“My place isn’t safe. I’d be putting you in danger again.”

“Her Japanese is good,” I said, impressed. To this, the interpreter beside me said, “She worked in Japan as a dancer for five years.”

“Haruo-san, why are you so attached to her?”

“Edna’s my little sister. So, of course, I want to speak with her mother at all costs.”

“I am not your little sister!” screamed Edna, covering her face with both hands.

I gazed at Haruo’s face in shock. “Didn’t she pass away during the war? In any case, I think she’d be of a different age.”

“Right…but I’m certain that Edna is my little sister. She came back to life. You can’t trust a woman about her age.”

I had a hard time gauging Haruo’s intentions. Was it okay for him to draw such a ludicrous connection based on resemblance alone? Maybe he was delusional and had totally missed the mark. The women at the bar, who probably saw this couldn’t be profitable, started to leave, one after another. The three who remained in the booth were of relatively advanced age. There was an awkwardness in the air. It seemed that if they were just drinking, it wouldn’t bear out on their income. Although he knew that Edna could speak Japanese, Haruo continued to oblige her through the interpreter. At last fed up, Edna said, “There are many cute girls here. Hurry up, have your fun, and get out.”

“Fine, you’ll do,” said Haruo, now sullen.

“I’m an old woman. A younger girl would be better.”

Edna got up, walked to the counter, and said something to a man with a thick middle. The man came out from behind the bar and approached us. He said something in the local language.

“He’s telling us we should leave.”

The bartender’s harsh tone softened into something much gentler through the interpreter’s mouth. In the car on the way back, the interpreter told a dispirited Haruo, “Haruo, it’ll cost some money, but shall I ask someone in the bar about where to find Edna’s mother? We can go straight there tomorrow.” Haruo’s face instantly brightened. Then to me he said, “You should come with us. Tomorrow is a free day.” He asked in a way that I couldn’t say no and I was overcome by a terrible feeling. But I was also curious so I nodded.

The following morning, the hotel lobby was bustling with Okinawans who were living locally in the Philippines. Visitors in the pilgrimage group received their cardboard boxes of souvenirs they brought from Okinawa. Some of them took the cardboard boxes for their visits to relatives’ homes. The boxes contained clothes, electrical appliances, medicines, snacks, and so forth.

The interpreter came into the lobby. “I know where Edna’s mother lives.” Taking me and Haruo, we headed toward the home of Edna’s mother. The car passed through the main street before we entered a crowded area that transitioned into a slum. Even as I was dreading the prospect of being let off at such a place, the car continued through it. As I looked at the interpreter, who was sitting in the passenger seat, he turned and pointed toward a nipa hut that appeared on a slope of a slightly elevated hill. The car stopped at the foot of the hill. We got out of the car and went up the narrow, sloping road. The door and windows of the house were left open. The interpreter called out. After a short while, an old woman emerged. She looked at us and, with a surprised face, made to go back inside. The interpreter said something, and the old woman stopped. The interpreter bribed the old woman by slipping her a few paper bills. She threw them away, then shouted at us.

“She’s saying that she hates the Japanese and that we should leave. If you don’t go, she says she will hit you with her stick.” The interpreter looked troubled. Haruo and the old woman exchanged a look. The old woman retreated inside and brought out a long and narrow rod that looked like a wooden pestle. Without warning, Haruo kneeled. The old woman shouted to the interpreter. “She will hit you,” he said.

“Please hit me, please hit me, that is what I want.” Haruo laughed cheerfully.

The old woman brought the stick down on Haruo’s shoulder. There was a dull sound, and Haruo grimaced with pain. But, soon after that, he went back to being cheerful. It appeared the old woman thought that she was being made fun of, and gave in to her rage, hitting him several more times. Even as tears came to Haruo’s eyes, it looked as though he was grateful. It all had the appearance of an exorcism you might see in the movies. Despite thinking the bones in Haruo’s shoulder might break if she carried on like this, I found myself transfixed by the bizarre scene before me. Children and adults gathered around the house, and people were peeking out from windows and cracks in their homes.

Indignation left the body of the old woman. She stared at Haruo’s expression—a strange mixture of joy and pain—as she took a breath, supporting herself with the rod. She went back inside, shouting a few words.

“Please, go inside,” the interpreter said over his shoulder. Haruo stumbled into the house.

A woven mat covered the floor. We sat directly on it.

The old woman breathed heavily, eyeing Haruo like some disgusting thing.

“You have a daughter named Edna,” Haruo said. The interpreter conveyed this to the old woman, who nodded.

“Is Edna your daughter by birth?”

The old woman nodded.

“Isn’t Edna Japanese?”

The old woman denied this with a surprised look on her face.

“If you speak honestly, I’ll repay you.” Haruo took a roll of bills from his pocket.

The old woman, staring at the bills, said, “Why would you do that?”

“I think Edna is my younger sister. My family lived on this island before the war. My father was conscripted here for the Japanese military when they were on the verge of losing the war. After he died, my mother and I were imprisoned by American forces and had to return to Okinawa. Before becoming a prisoner of war, while we were running from place to place in the mountains, my sister, who was less than a year old at the time, went missing. Edna looks exactly like my mother when she was young.”

“I know that Okinawans worked in great numbers on this island before the war. But Edna is my daughter that I gave birth to in 1955,” the old woman said.

Why was Haruo so foolishly convinced that Edna was his younger sister? I thought it was certain that Haruo’s younger sister died. Hadn’t Tomi-san participated in this memorial service for more than thirty years? Haruo stared at the old woman in silence.

“Don’t you understand?” The old woman let out a solitary laugh. “The father of my daughter is Filipino. My daughter says that she is often mistaken as being East Asian on account of her light skin.”

“Really?”

“It’s not a lie,” the old woman said unwaveringly. Haruo held out the roll of bills and slowly got to his feet.

“I’m not going to accept the money. The Japanese long ago used force, and now they do whatever they want with money.” The interpreter conveyed these words in a whisper, as if they were hard for him to say.

“That was rude. I gave you the money as a token of my apology.”

The old woman slowly turned away.

“Your younger sister died, didn’t she?” I asked this to Haruo in the car ride back.

“She died,” Haruo answered.

“Then why do you insist that Edna is your younger sister?”

“Because she looks just like her.”

“Many people in the world look alike.”

“The old lady was lying. That’s why she didn’t accept the money.”

I thought this was strange. Perhaps Haruo was caught in some wild delusion?

“How about we go back to the hotel, and tonight let’s try going to Edna’s shop once more?” Haruo was intent on making her confess this time.

“Apart from that, is your shoulder okay?”

“My body doesn’t matter.”

That evening, as we were eating a late dinner at the hotel, the waitress said a man named Elbert had come to see Haruo and was waiting in the lobby at that very moment. Haruo ate his dinner quickly and left the restaurant, taking along the interpreter.

Someone related to the prefectural association, I imagined, if not someone sent by Edna. If the latter, then I feared this might not turn out well for Haruo. When I headed toward the reception desk to get in contact with our tour guide, it appeared that Haruo and the local man were deep in conversation in the café inside the lobby. He didn’t look to be in any danger. I decided to just go back to my room.

As I was standing in front of the elevator, the interpreter came to me and said that Haruo was asking for me. As expected, he intended to go to the June Bar.

“This guy, Elbert, has some information for us,” Haruo said as he sat me on the sofa. Elbert, who was the same age as the interpreter, had a tough, sunburnt face that held an unwavering smile. “Actually, the girl who might be my younger sister is in the hospital in the next town. She is of Japanese descent, and both her age and the fact that she was picked up in the mountains during the war matched my search. I was told that she was raised as a member of Elbert’s family. I said that I wanted to meet her. What do you think?”

“What about Edna?”

“Of course, Edna is a sure thing, but this is too good an opportunity to pass up.”

“Don’t you want to ask about the details of how he was able to get a hold of your story?”

Haruo shook his head.

“How do you know about Haruo’s situation?” I asked through the interpreter.

“Everyone here knows that Haruo-san is looking for his younger sister.”

“Edna didn’t ask you to come here?”

“Edna? Don’t know her. I’m here as a favor. It’s fine if you don’t have any interest to see her. But if you are hoping to see her, I’ll bring you to her now.”

I questioned Elbert’s tone, which had at least the appearance of sincerity. It was only common sense to doubt such a convenient story. Better to avoid it altogether, I thought, especially in a foreign country. We were scheduled to go to Manila early tomorrow morning. If something were to happen tonight, it might compromise our whole group.

“How about we meet her after we come back from Manila? Daytime would be better.” Haruo seemed to be in high spirits, but beneath it was a hint of hesitation. Haruo took my advice—perhaps Elbert’s story had sent up a red flag in his mind as well. Elbert looked dissatisfied, but said, “I’ll come back the day after tomorrow.”

We sat down again. Elbert’s story was too good to be true. I wondered if he hadn’t devised a plan after overhearing the women gossiping in Edna’s bar. It was extremely risky to accept a ride at the invitation of a man whose identity we didn’t know. Tomorrow, while we were out in Manila for the day, the interpreter would gather information about Elbert. After deciding this, we went back to our rooms.

The next morning, from Davao Airport, we headed to Manila at 7:50. We arrived at the Manila airport at 9:25, and after that headed toward an Okinawan monument (a memorial for those who died in Manila in Luzon) in the town of Taysan in Batangas Province. After that, we visited a shrine memorializing Japanese, Americans, and Filipinos who died in Caliraya Town of Laguna Province. That evening, we left for a get-together at a Chinese restaurant with the officers of the Okinawan Prefectural Society of Manila. The next morning, we saw Muntinlupa and the exterior of the Malacañan Palace, and we came back to Davao on an afternoon plane.

Elbert was waiting in the hotel lobby.

I went to my newly assigned room to escape the situation. In Haruo’s search to find his sister, which seemed like a game, it was even more depressing that I was being taken along even further. Wasn’t the very existence of Haruo’s sister a product of his delusions? But I had no intention of throwing a wet blanket over Haruo’s persistence, either. I took a shower, and while I was lying in bed, I gazed at the television. The phone rang. It was from the tour guide, who asked me to go to the front desk. I changed my clothes, and as I rode the elevator down to the first floor, the tour guide, Haruo, and Elbert were in front of the reception.

The tour guide said to me in a tone meant for Haruo: “I just called for the interpreter. Kinjō-san said he is going off on his own again. This is a problem. Under the terms of the memorial service tour group, you are expected to be with at least one other member of the group at all times, and since he isn’t doing that, he must refrain from leaving.” I knew where this was going. “Machida-san, would you be so kind as to accompany Kinjō-san?”

“Alright, but only if he is okay with that.”

“Good,” Haruo said. Although I didn’t really have a choice, it would have been impossible to refuse since I knew all the details. Twenty minutes went by before the interpreter appeared.

As Haruo and I made Elbert wait, we pulled the interpreter into a corner in the lobby and asked for the results of the investigation. “Elbert is unmistakably a farmer and has an older sister. I found nothing suspicious.” The interpreter nodded several times, thus showing his confidence in these findings.

With two hours to spare before dinner, we left the hotel.

The taxi sped through a wide road gleaming in the setting sun.

Elbert sat on the passenger side, while the interpreter sat between me and Haruo in the backseat.

After driving for a while, we approached a mountain covered in thick, tall trees on one side of the road. On the other side, there were small homes made of flat metal sheets that dotted the forest as far as the eye could see. The mountain glowed crimson in the setting sun. For reasons unrelated to this scenery, I somehow recalled the fierce rocking of the boat I once rode over the rough sea from Ishigaki Port to Iriomote. As the taxi tumbled across the road, wheel-deep in rain, I wasn’t looking forward to coming back this way. Elbert suddenly raised his voice. The interpreter raised his own to match it. “Helen has cancer. She doesn’t have long to live.”

“For how long?” Haruo yelled.

“A year.”

The car rocked back and forth, and before long the inside of the car grew quiet.

“Helen was picked up in the jungle by my father. After the war, my parents gave birth to six children. Poor people have many children. From the time Helen was young, she worked a lot. When my parents got sick, she went to Manila and worked as an aite, a companion to the American military. After that, she became an aite to the Japanese tourists. Both of our parents died. But Helen worked. We, myself and my siblings, survived because of her.” Haruo and I could only listen to this in silence. We made it to the town at seven o’clock in the evening. The taxi stopped in front of a four-story building with a cross on top.

We followed him, making our way toward the hospital where Helen was.

“We’re here.” The man turned to us before a hospital room to which the entrance door was open.

Haruo went inside first. It was a large room with about ten people. As we entered, a woman sitting upright on a bed next to the window reading a magazine looked over at us. “Harumi!” Haruo yelled without warning, rushing over to embrace the surprised woman. The woman screamed and then appeared to ask Elbert to save her from this strange man. Elbert separated Haruo from the woman.

“I have no doubt that she is Harumi, my younger sister. She is exactly like my mother,” Haruo cried excitedly.

“Harumi, I’m your older brother. Haruo.”

Listening to the interpreter in the local language, she furiously shook her head in denial. Haruo looked at me with surprise. “Don’t we look alike, Harumi and I? It’s because we’re siblings.”

I looked at the woman again. It wasn’t that her large-pupiled eyes and the features of her face didn’t bear some resemblance to Haruo’s. It was just that she had no features that, at a glance, pegged them as siblings. If I answered that they resembled each other, it would only bolster Haruo’s confidence. A single utterance from me, I feared, would force me to carry a connection to Haruo’s life. I sat down. Unlike Edna’s situation, I couldn’t say for sure that they didn’t look alike. Perhaps my preconception of Helen had been planted by this guy’s story? I regretted being so complacent in coming along.

“I can’t say either way,” I answered.

“So you can’t say that we don’t look alike, right?”

“Haruo-san, it’s unwise to make such a decision based on intuition alone. Shouldn’t you get some hard evidence, like blood type or a DNA test?”

“That’s not necessary. Harumi is the spitting image of my mother.”

“Isn’t that exactly what you said about Edna?”

“It’s because we’re related and share the same blood. I can feel it.”

“Helen doesn’t seem to think so.”

“It’s fine, don’t say anything else.”

Haruo glared at me. In that instant, I was sent back to the incident on the bus all those years ago.

“All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t make snap judgments.”

At this, Haruo’s face turned bright red, and he pinched my thigh. As he did so, he said, “You’re so arrogant. You were like this when we were children. Your father was the vice principal, and even though you didn’t use dialect at home, you felt sorry for me, and you kept standing at the morning assembly. When my mother was viewed as a laughingstock, you were always the first one there. I hated you. You probably hated me, too. I spotted you looking at me when we bumped into each other at the airport in Naha.”

Haruo didn’t take his hand away. I was surprised by this unexpected development and forgot about the pain. Here I was, a man past his prime, caught unexpectedly in a grudge from elementary school. He was wrong about his mother and the morning assembly—not that I had any presumption of telling him so. This feeling subsided as I thought about the effort it would take to clear up his misunderstanding. Because, even for me, old grudges came back after not seeing him in over thirty years.

The interpreter, Helen, and Elbert stared in wonder at first but then looked away, talking among themselves.

“That’s enough, you can step away now.”

I separated myself a little bit from everyone. Haruo sidled up to Helen, took her hand, and declared that she was his younger sister. The man eagerly nodded his head to the interpreter’s words and conveyed something to Helen in the local language. Helen could not hide the look of shock on her face. Haruo, while holding her hand, talked about the situation regarding the Japanese before their defeat in the war and how they ran away from the American army, roaming in the jungle of the Tamugan Mountains. “Everyone was on the brink of death, and Mom didn’t notice what she was doing when she separated you from her bosom. Mom came to the Tamugan Mountains with the memorial service group thirty times after the war to apologize to you. Please, forgive her. I will be the one to make amends.”

Helen was crying but said nothing the entire time. Haruo promised to support Elbert and pay for Helen’s medical bills. The next morning, Haruo, who was late for breakfast, sat next to me.

“I’m sorry about last night. I was upset.”

“I went too far as well.”

Looking at it the morning after, I felt compelled to reflect on certain points of the trip.

Assuming Elbert’s story was sound, the likelihood that Helen was indeed his younger sister, Harumi, was high. Could it be that I was being more skeptical than I should have been?

“I’m going to meet with my younger sister again,” he said.

“If you see her more clearly in broad daylight, your feelings might change.”

I swallowed those words before they came out of my mouth. Instead, I said, “Will you be on the afternoon plane?”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll be back at 1 p.m.”

Haruo ate quickly and left.

Several days after coming back from Davao, I went to my mother’s place in K village, a place I hadn’t been to for a long time, to talk about the memorial service trip.

“Tomi-san passed away?”

“That’s right. Didn’t I tell you?”

I told my mother that I was together with Haruo on the pilgrimage tour.

“I felt so bad for Haruo. I heard that when they were running from place to place in the mountains of Mindanao, Haruo’s mom kept carrying him with a thin obi, which was bad for his circulation and caused the deformity in his legs. I heard that she regretted her carelessness and went to hospitals here and there to try to correct them.”

“I heard that Haruo’s sister died in Mindanao. That’s why she would, without fail, participate in the memorial service since the time they started doing it. I knew nothing of all this.”

“Haruo told you a lot. His mother hid the fact that his younger sister died; there were many people in the village that didn’t know. Her husband was conscripted in Mindanao and died, and people thought that’s why she went on the memorial service tour.”

“But Haruo was determined to find his younger sister, and because of that, I was dragged from place to place, much to my chagrin.”

“Haruo heard that from Tomi-san, did he? After Tomi-san found out that my older brother died in the Philippines, she took a liking to me and told me about Davao. This happened years ago, but in the year marking the thirty-third anniversary of those who died in the war, Tomi-san told me the details about her daughter. As she was fleeing in the mountains of Davao, she was carrying Haruo on her back while holding her five-month-old daughter. She was behind everyone, and at the rate that she was going, they were all going to be left behind…. So, in desperation, she put her daughter on the roadside. She lamented for many years over that after the war. But she did have the thought that her daughter was picked up by a local person and was still living. If her daughter was alive, she wanted to breathe the same air as her and to step on the same ground. It was with that resolve in mind that she went to Davao every year. I remember her telling me, with a bitter smile on her face, ‘I’m getting on in years myself and I’ll see my daughter again soon enough.’”

“Haruo knew about his mother’s choice, right?”

“He was probably told about it, and if so, he never exhausted his devotion to his mother."

I recalled when Haruo was being hit with the stick by Edna’s mother. Was it not his intention to receive the punishment for his mother sacrificing his younger sister?

“I heard that, on the forty-ninth day after her passing, as is custom, Haruo was sorting through his mother’s drawers, where he found clothes in baby sizes all the way up to those for a young girl.”

I wonder if Haruo understood his mother’s feelings enough to do such a thing—sending the clothes, and everything else, to Helen?

Caught up in those feelings, I dared to talk about her.

“Oh.… Haruo must’ve been so desperate. I had seen on TV the search for orphaned family members in China, and how the lack of proof in most cases makes identification nearly impossible. Haruo wanted to atone for his mother at all costs.”

As we were talking, dusk fell.

“You’ll have dinner before you go, right?” my mother asked, standing up in the kitchen.

“Ah,” I answered, “I think I’ll go for a little stroll first.”

I walked toward the beach, about 500 meters from the house. My head cooled in the breeze from the sea. The fukugi trees of my childhood lined both sides of the road. I crossed the prefectural road, cut through a vacant plot strewn with scrap wood, then came out onto the beach. Haruo and I used to carry sand from this very beach back to the school. In those days, I would see the bows of five or six boats out at sea, submerged in the offing. When I played at the beach, many American trucks would kick up white dust from the road laid with coral gravel as they rolled by, shrouding us like mist. The war had ended, but still, not even ten years had passed.

As we were eating dinner, my mother brought up the subject again. “It’s just that Tomi-san.… Ten days before she died, I went to visit her at the hospital. Haruo was devotedly taking care of her. A truly pious son.… probably because it was just the two of them, mother and child. Haruo left her room to buy a drink, and that’s when Tomi-san said an unexpected thing: ‘I strangled my daughter.’ Without even thinking, I looked at Tomi-san’s face. In her foggy state of mind, she had blurted out the unthinkable. But there was strength in her eyes. ‘I’ve never told that to anyone.’ Tomi-san’s face looked relieved as she said it.”

I thought about the mountains of Tamugan: peaceful now, but in those days a jungle. Small animals hid there. I thought back with pity.

“But why did his mother confess this to you?”

“I don’t know.… maybe Tomi-san didn’t think she could go to meet her daughter without letting go of that secret.”

I was sure Haruo would continue to support Helen. Whether Helen was Haruo’s real sister was not the issue, as proven by his seemingly reckless actions in Davao. The pilgrimage that spans the generation between mother and child would continue from here.

Ryan Buyco is an assistant professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. His research focuses on transpacific Asian literatures and cultures, Asian settler colonial studies, and US militarism in the Pacific. His work has appeared in the International Journal of Okinawan Studies and the edited book Still Hear the Wound: Toward an Asia, Politics, and Art to Come.

Notes

1. The original text of “Davao Pilgrimage” can be found in Sakiyama Asao, “Dabao Junrei,” in Okinawa Tanpen Shōsetsushū (Naha, Japan: Ryūkyū Shimpō, 2003), 115–33. For a reading of “Davao Pilgrimage” in English, see Ryan Buyco, “Afterlives of the Okinawan Community in Davao, Mindanao,” International Journal of Okinawan Studies 8 (2017). Other readings of “Davao Pilgrimage” can be found in Japanese. See Shinjō Ikuo, Okinawa Bungaku to iu Kuwadate: Kattōsuru Gengo, Shintai, Koku (Tōkyō: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2003), 154–57; Nakahodo Masanaori, Mōhitotsu no Okinawa Bungaku (Naha: Borderline Ink, 2017), 175–204.

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2. Davinder Bhowmik, Writing Okinawa: Narrative Acts of Identity and Resistance (London: Routledge, 2008), 128.

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3. Sakiyama, “Dabao Junrei,” 116.

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4. Katsunori Yamazato, “Editor’s Note,” Manoa 23, no. 1 (2011): vii. Some of these collections of translated Okinawan literary works include Davinder Bhowmik and Steve Rabson, eds., Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature from Okinawa (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016); Michael Molasky and Steve Rabson, eds., Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature from Okinawa (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000); and Frank Stewart and Katsunori Yamazato, eds., Living Spirit: Literature and Resurgence in Okinawa (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011). For scholarly books on Okinawan literary studies, see Davinder Bhowmik, Writing Okinawa; Kyle Ikeda, Okinawan War Memory: Transgenerational Trauma and the War Fiction of Medoruma Shun (London: Routledge, 2013).

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5. Throughout the twentieth century, Okinawan emigrants settled throughout the Pacific Islands, Asia, and the Americas. See Maehara Shinichi, “Sekai no Uchinaanchu: Okinawans around the World,” in Uchinaanchu Diaspora, ed. Joyce N. Chinen (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), 3–14. For more information about the specific history of Okinawan settlers in Davao and their wartime experiences, see Edith Kaneshiro, “‘My Body Trembles with Fear’: Okinawans Remember World War II in Davao,” Amerasia Journal 45, no. 3 (2019): 352–72.

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6. These family members include men who were conscripted into the Japanese military but also women and children. See Kaneshiro, “‘My Body Trembles with Fear.’”

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7. While there was an Okinawan community in Davao prior to World War II, American repatriation policies in the postwar period returned all Japanese nationals to Japan, including those from Okinawa. See Buyco, “Afterlives of the Okinawan Community,” 28.

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8. Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 78.

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9. It is important to acknowledge that feminist activists and intellectuals in Asia and the Pacific Islands continue to respond to militarism across the Pacific today. See Ayano Ginoza, “Archipelagic Feminisms: Critical Interventions into the Gendered Coloniality of Okinawa,” Critical Ethnic Studies Journal 7, no. 1 (Spring 2021); International Women’s Network against Militarism, “A Feminist Vision of Genuine Security and Creating a Culture of Life,” Critical Ethnic Studies Journal 7, no. 1 (Spring 2021).

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10. The narrator, Machida, remembers that when Haruo moved to the town of Koza, there were rumors that Haruo’s mother, Tomi, started working in a bar.

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11. Senpai literally translates as “one’s senior.”

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12. I use the word “dialect” since it is the direct translation of “hōgen.” However, it is important to clarify that the Ryukyuan languages—in particular, languages that are Indigenous to the Ryukyuan archipelago—are considered to be languages and not dialects of Japanese. For instance, the language of Okinawan is one of several Ryukyuan languages and is “based on the speech encountered in and around Naha and Shuri, that is, the area around the modern capital of present-day Okinawa Prefecture and the old capital of the Kingdom of the Ryukyus.” Mitsugu Sakihara, Okinawan-English Workbook: A Short Lexicon of the Okinawan Language with English Definitions and Japanese Cognates (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), ix.

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13. Awamori is an Okinawan liquor.

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14. Reversion refers to the end of US military rule in Okinawa when Okinawa was returned to Japan on May 15, 1972.

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