Free Above the East China Sea: A Novel by Sarah Bird Page A

us that. My father, your grandfather Shojin Kokuba, had already proved to us that our enemies were soulless monsters when he took us to the foreigners’ cemetery near the port of Tomari. Since we have to wait now, shall I tell you about it?
    Yes.
    All right, then. The visit was dangerous. To express any interest in the imperialistic enemies of the emperor was a treasonous crime, punishable by public flogging if the commander was merciful and beheading if he was not. But our father took the risk, because he believed it essential to impress upon his daughters that, in the unlikely event that the Americans did manage to overcome the invincible Imperial navy and invade our island, we, the young women of Okinawa, had to understand that Americans were not human, and that we would be used in beastly, unspeakable ways.
    The round lenses of Father’s spectacles flashed like the beacons of the great lighthouse at Zanpa Saki as he nervously checked in all directions before we entered the neglected plot. Who knew what spies might be lurking about? But the only soul who passed was a bowlegged old man with whiskers long and white as Confucius’s, and a stack of dried pandanus leaves taller than himself lashed to his back. When Father was certain it was safe, he shooed us in like our mother driving her silky-eared goats before her.
    At our approach, chartreuse-spotted monkey lizards skittered away from the weeds and vines choking the strangers’ graves. I reached for my big sister Hatsuko’s hand. Even in the still afternoon heat, her fingers were chilled by the presence of the unquiet spirits that occupied this shunned place. Weathered headstones lay flat on the ground, where any passing dog could lift its leg on them. Odd stick-letter words were etched horizontally into the foreigners’ grave markers.
    I caught Hatsuko’s eye and jerked my head from side to side like a crazy girl, pretending to read the strange letters that made a person’s eyes twitch back and forth in such an unnatural way. Hatsuko rewarded me with a tight smile that she immediately covered, and I made the crazy-girl face again.
    Our father cracked his walking stick against my backside. “Tamiko,” he hissed. “Do you think this is funny?”
    “No, Father.” Fortunately it was his stick made of bamboo, not the sturdy one of banyan wood, and the smack only stung for a moment. Overall, I preferred the bamboo cane to the times when Father disciplined me by making me kneel on rice with my hands tied behind my back for so long that when my punishment was over, Hatsuko had to help me stand, then dig out the grains embedded in my knees with the tips of her fingernails.
    Father had been a schoolteacher before the day when he both married our mother and was adopted by her father, your great-grandfather, Masahide Kokuba. My mother’s father was a well-off farmer cursed with six daughters and no sons to inherit the family’s land or mortuary tablets or carry out the funeral rites that would ensure that Grandfather Kokuba would be with his kin group in the next world. That day in the barbarians’ cemetery, Father was once again the stern schoolteacher as he tapped the stick letters engraved on the tombstones, and said, “These are the names of four of the sailors who came with Commodore Perry on his expedition to force open the closed door of the mighty Japanese Empire and lay it bare to America’s imperialistic greed. When our king would not meet with him, Perry marched on Shuri Castle with two hundred of his men and they bullied their way through Shurei Gate like the barbarians they are.
    “Though there had been no weapons on our island since the Japanese claimed Okinawa in 1609, and Commodore Perry and his men wore gleaming swords at the high waists of their white trousers and were guarded by soldiers carrying rifles with bayoneted tips that reached to the top of their impossibly tall hats, our brave king refused to meet with him. Instead, with smiles and