Q: You were seen at Occupation Headquarters on the afternoon of April 29, 1947. What were you doing there?
Slipping out of the press, he chased the trolley swaying like an old milk cow down the pitted track. Clasping the railing, he swung onto the metal ledge. Inside, the trolley was packed, the old and the young, the fortunate and the less, compressed into one somnolent mass. Once upon a time, when the country still picnicked in flowering parks, he’d been part of the crush, maneuvering to protect his mother, who had to protect their lunch. Now he clung to the railing, breathing in the bitter dust wafting from the wasteland.
All month, he’d feared finding Konomi’s body—or worse, never finding a trace—but to think she’d been working for the Americans. Furukawa had spun some story about an infiltration plan organized by Ōtsuka, his now dead right-hand man, to gather information about the Occupation’s movements against the Party. Konomi volunteered, securing a job at Occupation Headquarters. This was a month ago, Furukawa had said, which fit the timeline of her disappearance. Three weeks in, Furukawa “caught wind” that Konomi and Ōtsuka had “turned.” He was vague, but his eyes, which he kept fixed on the body, were bitter. Then he’d told the boy where to find her.
The tracks smoothed; buildings began assembling into blocks of shops and offices, and at last he glimpsed the Imperial Palace moat. He jumped off, the momentum tumbling him into a school of jinrikisha pulled by leathery men half the size of their white customers. He crossed the intersection, and there it was: the concrete behemoth that now housed Occupation Headquarters, its stark columns made almost majestic by the wide boulevard and the wider mirror of the Palace moat spread beyond it. Surveying the sweep of steps rising to a row of doors, recessed and heavily guarded, he looked for the JAPANESE ONLY sign Furukawa had mentioned. A flock of glances alighted on him, and he moved on, gaze lowered, as soldiers passed, trading language lessons with spirited women who looked resolutely away from him.
On his third pass, he saw Konomi.
WITNESS #3: KONOMI
TOKYO METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT, APRIL 29, 1947, 20:00
I don’t know what those guys Kiyama and Sato told you, but you should know, they aren’t real Communists. They talk the talk, but all they care about is their “revolution of the flesh.” A fine idea—stripping off false ideologies to get back to our human values—but inviting people to literally strip? Pretty convenient. Not that they’re bad guys—they’ve help me and the boy—but I’m through with them, trust me.
That boy’s different. Half his body burned, covered with boils, and he still cares. I’ve known him a year now, and he’s never said a word about his family. Do you know why? Because he survived. The least you can do for a boy like that is give him food, medicine, a job. Instead, all you do is round them up, like our Liberators round us up, any woman, to randomly test us for VD. We had proper lives once, you know. Tell me, how many requisitioned family homes did you renovate this month to accommodate “American living standards”? If they think throwing chocolate and chewing gum from their jeeps is sweetening anyone’s life, they’re wrong.
Threaten me all you want, but that boy’s not a murderer. He looked after my father, changing his clothes, wiping his spit and blood—how many people would do that, risking their own health at a time like this? Maybe he hung around a couple of Communists. So what? He’s a decent human being, unlike you lackeys, never lifting a finger for any of us, your own people, while you pant and jump for the next new powers that be. How can you live with yourselves?
So here’s your chance. Let the boy go. If he was at Occupation Headquarters or the American Embassy, it’s because he was looking for me. I disappeared on him. I’m not proud of it, but when my father died, I got to thinking about my future. Now I clean toilets for the Americans—who else has a job to give these days? But that boy didn’t need to know. Nobody needs to know. How should I know how he tracked me? I don’t see what the murder has to do with this. Did you just say assassination plot? That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.
Q. On April 29, 1947, you were also seen at the American Embassy. What were you doing there?
Konomi was skinnier, all bones beneath a blue dress cinched at the waist in a style he’d never seen on her, her feet, like a film star’s, pecking the pavement in Western-style heels instead of clomping along in her trademark geta. He hadn’t believed Furukawa, but this was definitely Konomi emerging from Occupation Headquarters, and the sight clipped his heart. Since they’d met at her stall the previous spring, they’d spent almost every hour together, selling her omusubi and busting anyone who gave her trouble. After the police crackdown and the black market’s dissolution, he moved into her shanty to help her look after her father while she trawled her new market to sell the only thing left to her. Not that Konomi advertised herself; in fact, she chose her customers, shy white soldiers not much older than himself. It burned him, the crawling hours, the pitching fear, the mess of gratitude snarling into anger every time she returned safely. But he also knew it burned her, this self-flagellation, justified every time she exchanged her grubby notes for the supply of penicillin she needed for her father’s tuberculosis.
One evening seven months earlier, they were on their way to collect their share of kitchen scraps from a restaurant owner Konomi knew. Near the service alley, they saw the usual mobile food stall crowded with sundry people, two GIs squeezed in among them, slurping from bowls like the others. As they shimmied by, he saw a wallet neglected on the counter below the GI’s busy elbow, the leather supple like the one his father used to carry. He slipped his hand over it—and that was it. He woke days later sore to the bones in what appeared at first to be a tent, Konomi’s voice mingling with Kiyama’s and Sato’s. Instead of shaming him, the students invited him to stay with them at the shelter, and knowing how much this would lighten Konomi’s load—she had to bribe her shanty manager, who counted not just her father but the boy among her sick—he did. The arrangement suited them all: he helped the students with Party errands and cared for Konomi’s father when she needed him to. He found himself relaxing, his days clarified with purpose—until Konomi disappeared.
WITNESS #4: PROF. ISHIKAWA
TOKYO METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT, APRIL 29, 1947, 21:30
Really, there’s no need for this. I wasn’t “sniffing around” your station; I have an interest in the youth, who I first laid eyes on last July at the Ueno market. A dirty slip of a thing, covered in rags and boils, he looked as though he’d risen out of the ruins like a prophet of our new era, teeth bared for survival but with a sneer that promised to make a mockery of even his own defeat, if it came to it. One has to admire the energy, the unbridled animal determination emanating from his pores, petrifying even the blackguards of the blackest market. I didn’t suspect then that he and a young woman who tended a stall there were close. Half-starved, I was greedy for a taste of life, and he, the pustular youth, charged into my path as the agent of my punishment.