United States of Japan Read Free

legs were missing, only bandaged stumps in their place. Kimiko’s face was wan and there was a shocked stillness in her eyes as though they’d been frozen. Ruth looked at Bernard to see if he was breathing, but she couldn’t tell.
    “Poor Kimiko,” Ruth heard someone say. “Their family was so wealthy and now they’ve taken everything from her.”
    “The rich had it the hardest.”
    Many agreed with deploring nods.
    “Sister…” Corporal Fukasaku began.
    But, before he could continue, Kimiko demanded in rage, “Why didn’t the Emperor save him? Why couldn’t he have rescued us just a day earlier?”
    “I am very sorry for your loss. Please keep in mind that it wasn’t the Emperor who killed your friend, but the Americans. I assure you, the Emperor has taken revenge a hundredfold for what has happened to all of you here.”
    “I don’t care about revenge. He’s dead. HE’S DEAD!” she yelled. “If the Emperor was so almighty, why couldn’t he have sent you a day earlier?”
    “Calm yourself. I know you’re upset, but speaking against the Emperor is forbidden.”
    “Fuck the Emperor. Fuck you. Fuck all Americans.”
    “I will only ask you once, and that’s because I know you’re not in a proper mental state. Do not speak against the Emperor or–”
    “Or what? He’ll take his revenge? I shit on him and the whol–”
    Corporal Fukasaku raised his Nambu Type 18 semi-automatic pistol, pointed at her head, and fired. Her head exploded, brain and blood spraying the ground. She fell over, arms interlaced with her dead boyfriend.
    “No one is allowed to speak against the Emperor,” the corporal stated. He holstered his pistol, stepped around Kimiko’s dead body, and went to reassure the other survivors that everything was going to be OK.
    Everyone was too stunned to speak. Ezekiel was shaking. Ruth put her arm around him and asked, “Do you still want to be a soldier?” It was as much for herself as it was for him.
    She looked back at Kimiko’s body and did her best to hold back tears.
    “You have to be strong,” she said to Ezekiel, as she placed his hands on her belly. “For little Beniko, be strong.”
                                  SOUTH OF SAN JOSE
    July 2, 1948
    12:13pm
----
    Ruth and Ezekiel were in one of the hundreds of buses driving south towards Los Angeles on the I-99. She looked at Ezekiel and recalled how their courtship had started over arguments about politics and religion. Those arguments turned into long diatribes about the nature of God and existence. Soon, they were fighting in each other’s arms. Not long after that, they became lovers. She wondered if the feeling of imminent doom had fused them more tightly together.
    Outside, Ruth saw a mountain of smoke that resembled a sea with its own waves within it. Streams of black were being written in a calligraphy of destruction, kanji painting lines of woe into the air that, like most suffering, indifferently blended into the rest. The warbling and the heat distortion made the horizon appear to be melting into the ground.
    “The Germans have overrun the entire east coast,” a man up front with a radio shouted, relaying news updates as he heard them. “Rommel is in Manhattan. The Fuhrer is supposed to arrive within the week. They’ve imprisoned Mayor La Guardia because he refuses to surrender, but someone else has accepted surrender terms in his place.”
    “What about San Jose?”
    “No word.”
    The mayor of Los Angeles, Fletcher Bowron, spoke on the radio, assuring Americans, “This is a temporary transitional period. Don’t resist the Japanese soldiers and you won’t be harmed.”
    “I hope my uncle’s OK,” Ezekiel said to her. “He owns one of the biggest clothing factories in Los Angeles and he’ll let us work there until we can get something on our own.”
    “I’ve only been to LA once and we took streetcars everywhere. Do you know what you’re going to change your name