Free Rules of Honour by Matt Hilton Page A

other arm and lifting her over to a bench against one wall. There he continued to press a hand tight over her mouth, while his other fingers pulled at the buttons on his trousers.
     
    Yukiko paused in her tale, unable to voice what happened, and I was glad. I did not need the details to know what Rose must have endured. The old lady was shaking, the memories so vivid in her mind that she must have felt transported back through those years and was once again that tiny girl, hiding beneath a pile of dirty laundry, watching her best friend being violated by a monster.
    I touched her on her knee.
    ‘You were a child, Yukiko. There was nothing you could do to stop him. Don’t blame yourself, OK.’
    ‘I should have done something . Even if I’d shouted and run away, it would have made him stop. He would have feared repercussions, because I know now that he was an aberration – only one of a few men who were beastly towards us. He would have been punished for his crime then . . . instead of later.’
    I now knew where Yukiko’s story was leading, but I did not want to rush her to the conclusion.
    ‘I helped Rose as best I could. I got cloths and cleaned her. She was bleeding, Joe, from down there: a small girl bleeding as if she was a woman. Afterwards Rose swore me to silence. She felt dirty, afraid, that somehow she was to blame for what that monster did to her. She thought that if the truth were told then she would be seen as spoiled and she would be disowned by her family, like a used vessel that was no good any more.’
    ‘But by keeping her secret you were also inadvertently allowing this man to get away with what he did. It must’ve been a terrible thing for you to carry, being so young yourself.’
    ‘Yes, a terrible burden, but it was worse than that, Joe. Later I learned that the soldier had raped other girls. One lady died. Not at his hand but indirectly. She was so ashamed that she took her own life. She was found hanging in a store closet. Her death wasn’t so much covered up as simply ignored. Life was hard in the internment camps, and she wasn’t the first to choose death over such a brutal and disheartening existence. But we knew, Rose and I, for we had been watching the monster watching her and knew what he’d driven her to.’
    ‘Her death was never investigated fully?’
    ‘No. People died from inadequate medical care, others from the high level of emotional stress they suffered. The lady was just another statistic, Joe, that’s all any of us were back then. We thought that the commanders suspected something was going on, but they chose to turn a blind eye. Finally – following the lady’s suicide – someone must have decided to take action because he was moved away. I heard later that he had been sent to Tule Lake. It sounds stupid, but I feared that he would hurt my father. I know now that he was a coward, and it was only helpless girls and ladies he had any interest in.’
    I was cold. I had a ball of ice at my core and the more Yukiko explained the harder it grew. I knew about this dark episode in American history, but like many had not given it much thought.
    When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, US citizens had feared another attack and war hysteria had seized the country. Pressure was placed on President Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066, and under the order 120,000 citizens of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in internment camps, on the unfounded fear that they would spy for the Japanese. More than two thirds of those interned were American citizens and half of them were children. None had ever shown disloyalty to the US. During the course of the war ten people were convicted of spying for Japan: ironically all of them were Caucasian. People are horrified that Nazi Germany ran concentration camps – and rightly so – but no one wants to accept that we were also guilty of similar if less atrocious crimes. It made little difference