Free Sayonara by James A. Michener

take this girl back to Denver will she fit in?’ ”
    “What happened to the girl?”
    “You saw her. She works here. My secretary.”
    “I meant—what happened to the Japanese girl?” I wanted to hear his explanation.
    Before he could reply the secretary brought the fourth couple into the office and the consul droned, “You understand what you’ve signed?”
    The young man, a sailor, stood on one foot then the other and replied with studied patience, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”
    The girl was just as ugly as Katsumi and I started to leave, but the consul called me back and said to the sailor, “How would you like to have Ace Gruver be your witness?”
    “You Ace Gruver?” the boy asked.
    “That’s right.”
    “I’d be proud,” the boy said. He turned to his girl and spoke to her in rapid Japanese, using his hands to indicate airplanes in combat. The girl looked at me, giggled furiously and clapped her hand over her gold-crowned teeth.
    It was this same well-meaning consul who got me into my big trouble, for when he turned in his weekly report on G.I. marriages to General Webster he must have mentioned his surprise at seeing me as Joe’s witness. At any rate the general called me into his office and stormed, “I’m astounded that you should lend yourself to such a thing—especially since you know Mrs. Webster’s and my objection to fraternization.”
    “This wasn’t fraternization, sir. It was marriage,” I said.
    “To a Japanese,” he stormed, spitting the words out.
    “The kid’s from my outfit in Korea, sir.”
    “All the more reason you should have tried to save him from such folly.”
    “I did try, sir.”
    “Carstairs tells me you even kissed the girl!”
    “I did. He asked me to.”
    “Who, Carstairs?”
    “No, Kelly.”
    The general was outraged. He banged out of his chair and stood looking at a map. Finally he exploded. “I’m damned if I can understand how a man like you, brought up in the best traditions of the service, can outrage military propriety in this way. Such marriages are sordid, disgraceful things. We have to tolerate them because Washington says so, but we don’t have to polish our buttons and go down to kiss the bride!”
    “I…”
    “Nauseating. The whole thing’s nauseating, but it’s especially sickening to have a member of your own staff—you might say your own immediate family…”
    The bawling out I got from the general was nothing compared to the one I took from his wife. She was sweet as butter during dinner but after the general and Eileen had left on prearranged signals she said bluntly, “Do I understand, Lloyd, that you actually encouraged a Japanese marriage this morning?”
    “One of the men from my outfit.”
    “But you surely didn’t attend—not officially?”
    “He asked me to help him out.”
    “And you went to the consulate, before other Japanese who might know you…”
    “Look, Mrs. Webster, it was a guy from our outfit.”
    “It wasn’t just a guy, Lloyd. It was humiliation to the service and a direct slap in General Webster’s face.”
    “I didn’t approve of it, Mrs. Webster. I argued against it for days.”
    “But your very presence signified approval. In this dining room right now half the officers are laughing at me.”
    So that was it. She wasn’t really concerned about the welfare of the service or the standing of her husband. She was angry that something which she had started—non-fraternization—should have backfired and brought ridicule upon her. She was especially angry that the instrument of this ridicule should have been, in General Webster’s words, a member of her own family.
    I asked, “How could I have refused to attend the wedding…”
    “Don’t call it a wedding! It was a mean little surreptitious ceremony on the most sordid level. It was permitted only because some lily-livered idiots in Washington have no courage to face facts.”
    “I agree with you, Mrs. Webster.”
    She didn’t want