Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley Page A

THINK ABOUT THOSE EARLY DAYS OF MY ARRIVAL, those weeks when war was folding around the world, the vision that I have of myself is as my son is now. The thoughts that found me then were fatuous at best, yet passionate and strong were my emotions. When an old man views the young in himself, there is much he can find to disdain, much that will make him laugh, more that will make him cringe.
    My son is all Japanese, his language, his habits, his ways. Yet I must not be too hard on him for acting whimsically, for the poor quality of his music, or the ease with which he is distracted. When he was little I’d look at him and see the traces of another man’s face in his small one, but I loved him just the same. His mother would hold him out to me and I would take him and feel all the lighter for it.
    When my son made his first recording I gave him little help, but he was able to release it because of me nevertheless. The record jacket was gold with a picture of Milo standing at the seaside with the wind all rough in his hair. He was holding in his hands another record, and, of course, it was one of mine, my first, and if you looked carefully you could see, in turn, a small likeness of myself at the same sea. Until the time of my son’s record,
modern music in Japan had been poor. With it, however, a downward spiral was started, the bottom of which is still not visible. And now my son’s music is no longer the worst that can be found here. I, in my way, have tried to make him feel better by making my television show his music’s equal, but the efforts seem lost on him. He and I have both become popular for the damage that we do, though I, of course, am trying, and my son, I’m afraid, is not.
    When Milo was little, when he was six, he fell a story from the school window and I can remember waiting for his recovery. The war had been over a while but I still was not ready, not nearly ready, to renew the awful agony of feeling. I can remember my wife saying that from six-year-olds the world should withhold its anger, yet that Milo would roll from the window made me mad at Milo and as soon as he was well enough I slapped him. And that simple slap, so unforgivable, has stayed between us all these years. Its echo, sometimes, sends dull sensations through my fingers when I see my son.
    By the time Milo recovered from his fall I had already begun my rise from the ranks of out-of-work entertainers. I was on my own after the war but by then the nation’s interest in English had been born. And jazz seemed central to the underpinnings of the new society, as if by adopting it the Japanese could prove to the occupiers that they too were truly human. I was held up as an example of a good Japanese because I could sing so nicely in English, I could sing so accent-free. And yet, by the Americans I was held in contempt. A short while after my songs began to circulate, a little while after a large segment of my society began making furious forays into the world of late-night dancing, I, along with others of my kind, was called to a perfunctory hearing. We stood before American officers while a staff artist drew a depiction of our poor postures, our unrepentant attitudes.
    â€œTeddy Maki of Los Angeles,” the court clerk called, so I stepped forward.
    A colonel spoke softly, asking me, “Did you, Mr. Maki, fight for the Japanese during the recent war?”

    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œYou did not?”
    â€œI didn’t fight, sir.”
    â€œDid you wear the Japanese army uniform? Did you eat with the Japanese soldiers? Did you speak Japanese with them and share their jokes?”
    â€œI had no choice.”
    â€œThen the answer is yes.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAre you aware that taking up arms against the forces of the United States is grounds for imprisonment? Grounds for loss of citizenship?”
    â€œI have recently been told so.”
    â€œYou are a popular singer, are you not, Mr. Maki? Do