The Seventh Samurai

CHAPTER 1: Tsugaru Strait

In the Detective Section of the Osaka Police Department the sandy-haired Westerner in a rugby pullover and faded khaki cotton trousers stood out like a parrot among penguins – even his shoes, which were tatty sneakers with no logo. All around him, Japanese in dark business suits, white shirts, conservative ties and polished leather footwear went about their daily tasks.

Watanabe guessed the man had come to see him. Returning from the coffee machine, Watanabe detoured three desks out of his way and thrust out his right hand toward the man who was still looking a little lost. Taro Watanabe.

Detective Watanabe?

The same.

You talk like an American.

I’m famous. Watanabe stood, paper cup of coffee in his hand, waiting for the man to introduce himself. The accent seemed American, but his manner was tentative, like a diver staring at cold ocean water, uncertain whether to make the plunge. He took a deep reassuring breath before he spoke.

I’m Ben Hardy. I’ve been thinking about coming in for several days. Then I had a free day, so I just dropped in. The shadow of a polite smile brushed his features.

Watanabe smiled. You giving yourself up?

No. Not that. Hardy’s manner was serious. He was deeply tanned, some early wrinkles likely indicating solar skin damage. His dress was as casual as Watanabe’s, Berks over bare feet, worn jeans set off by a tooled western belt, faded denim shirt. I’m a scuba diver. There was an accident a couple of weeks ago. You may have heard about it.

Up near the Tsugara Strait? Watanabe questioned, referring to the body of water that separates the large island of Honshu from the northern island of Hokkaido.

Yes, Hardy said, then hesitated. Watanabe took a sip of his coffee and waited for him to continue. There’s something strange about the accident. I need to talk to somebody.

We can talk, the detective said. But that’s way out of my territory. Would you like coffee?

No thanks.

Watanabe led the way to his cubicle. As head of the Osaka Flying Squad, a catch-all group that usually involved itself with any crime having to do with foreigners in the Kansai, the general name for the western industrial area of Japan, he could treat his guests to a small amount of privacy. He waved Hardy to a chair, then seated himself behind his coffee ringed desk. Do you mind if I put this on tape?

Not at all. Hardy waited while Watanabe rummaged in his drawer for a tape, peeled off the old label, pushed the cassette into a dusty recorder, then satisfied himself that it was working. It’s not much of a story. I’m a licensed scuba instructor, but I don’t make my living that way. I teach English conversation.

Watanabe nodded. There were hundreds of English teachers in the Kansai, thousands in the Tokyo area. They were known as native speakers, and if they worked long hours they made a surprising amount of money, far more than Watanabe’s police pay.

But I belong to a scuba club and me and these three Japanese were up at the Strait doing a little routine diving. It was good weather, calm seas and almost no boat traffic in the area.

Did I read they were students? Watanabe questioned.

You mean scuba students, not college students?

Yes.

Well, you may have read that, Hardy said, but it isn’t entirely true. I was the most experienced person and the only licensed instructor. But all three were thoroughly trained and Kenji was an excellent diver. He would have been an instructor soon.

He’s the one who was drowned?

They all drowned. Hardy was grim, verging on the emotional. But Kenji’s body washed ashore. The others are still listed as missing, but they’re dead. We were a long way from shore and visibility was excellent.

Just how did it happen?

Kenji and I were topside in the boat. The other two were diving as a pair, a good safety practice. Time passed and they didn’t surface. Their air should have been running low, so Kenji went looking for them. Hardy shrugged, a bleak look on his face as he relived the moment. That’s it. He never came back.

You stayed in the boat?

For a long time I did. I mean this was just unheard of. Two trained divers dropping from sight. Then a third, very experienced man, disappearing. There just isn’t any explanation.

Of course, Mr. Hardy, you went through this with the police.

Sure. Call me Ben. But my Japanese isn’t all that good and their interpreter isn’t all that good.

What you’re saying, Ben, is that you have some new information?

No, it’s not that, Watanabe-san. It’s just that I’m not sure that I got through to the locals up there on the Strait, and if I did get through, I'm not sure they believed me. There was a lot of smiling and nodding to one another. You’re Japanese, I know, but my friends tell me you spent a lot of time in the States. Anyway, you know how Japanese feel about foreigners.

Yes, I do. There are people in this department, even in this section, who consider me to be a foreigner, a gaijin, because of the time I spent abroad. I know exactly what you mean. Continue.

That’s about the whole story, except three men, all competent, with good equipment, all drowning, just isn’t in the cards.

But you were together, said. Possibly your air tanks were similar. Possibly an identical flaw from the same source.

Sure, I thought of that. I did recheck my equipment during that long wait. Then I went down for a look around and found nothing. I rechecked my equipment later. It was perfect. But there is one more thing. Kenji’s body. It washed up on a deserted beach on the east coast of northern Honshu. Early identification was made through an ID bracelet. The family later identified the body. I never did see it and I’m just as happy. But I understand there was no tank and his flippers were missing.

Is that so unusual? Watanabe asked. A body in the water for some time?

Probably. I don’t know. The flipper would come off, but the tank? I don’t know. I didn’t see the body and I don’t know what shape it was in. This is one thing I thought you might want to do. If there’s some sort of report, an autopsy, it might be worth looking at.

Watanabe finished his coffee and tossed the cup in the wastebasket. What you’re hinting at, Ben, is foul play. The detective eyed Hardy sharply and said, You think Kenji was killed, murdered, by a person, or persons, or, what the hell, a creature unknown.

It sounds implausible, doesn’t it. But there’s one more thing. I’ve studied winds, tides, currents, anything I could get my hands on in English, and there’s no way that Kenji could have drowned near the boat and been carried to that beach.

I can check that, Watanabe said evenly. Naturally, there’s some explanation for whatever happened. But now you’re talking two jurisdictions, aren’t you? One where the divers were lost, another where the body was found.

Those spots are far removed.

And the three victims. We can assume there were three. They’re all from the Kansai?

Yes, Hardy said. All from the Osaka area, two from Kobe, one from Sakai City.

And you are a foreigner. I think that’s all I need for some tenuous form of jurisdiction. I’ll bounce it off my boss, but he pretty well gives me carte blanche. I can get a copy of whatever report the police up there made out when you made your report and whatever there is about the body. I should be able to get more on tides and ocean currents than you did. The damage has been done and there’s no need for speed, but I should have something in a couple of weeks.

Phones were ringing, the low hum of Japanese invaded the cubicle, the aroma of curry rice drifted in, lunchtime neared and some were sending out for take away, an attractive young woman with brown eyes and glistening black hair poked her head around the corner and asked if Watanabe-san wanted green tea. He declined. Shoving a piece of paper across the desk to Hardy, he said, Give me your name, address, telephone, e-mail and write down the high points, particularly where you got the boat, where you stayed, where and when you did the police reports, times and dates.

Hardy nodded in agreement and began writing. Watanabe suspected it had been a severe shock to Hardy to lose three companions in one stroke, three persons that he, as the senior member, felt some responsibility toward. It would be enough to get the most well-balanced person slightly off track for a time. An American living alone in the Japanese culture might be even more prone to paranoia. The least Watanabe could do was assure Hardy that he was on his side, then draw a logical explanation from the evidence, have another meeting with Hardy and talk the thing through. And, make it perfectly clear that Hardy was not in the least responsible for the three deaths if the facts led to that conclusion, as Watanabe was fairly certain they would.

CHAPTER 2: Genesis

On April 1st, 1945, the American assault on Okinawa began. Small boats, bristling with men and arms, made for a sandy beach by the village of Hagushi on the western coast and toward the southern end of the large island. Beyond the village were gentle, rising slopes and pleasant fields with patches of ripe winter barley. The entire scene was one of tranquility, the yellow sunlight highlighting armies of scarlet, green and blue wildflowers, arcane paintings from the brush of a mad genius, a pleasing abstract canvas in stark contrast to the brutish strife to come. Incredibly, there was no resistance from the Japanese. Two hours after the first American troops rushed ashore, fully prepared for savage gun and rocket fire, patrols of the Seventh Infantry secured Kadena airfield. The Sixth Marines occupied Yontan airfield an hour later.

So peacefully had these two major objectives been captured that a Japanese fighter plane eased down to a landing at Yontan that afternoon. The pilot climbed from his aircraft and strolled toward the hangars. Suddenly realizing that the armed men near the hangars were not Japanese, he drew his pistol. What thoughts must have crossed his mind as three rifle shots, fired as one, pierced his body and he was thrown back on the hard ground, dead, or dying, the initial casualty of an island struggle that would run up a spendthrift butcher bill that could have as easily been avoided.

By the end of that first day as many as 60,000 men had come ashore at a cost of fewer than 30 lives. By nightfall a huge beachhead had been established, and by the end of the second day the First Marines were virtually across the Ishikawa isthmus, a narrow strip of land separating the northern two thirds of the island from the southern tip.

After four days, the Americans were well over two weeks ahead of their timetable. If the American forces were following the successful plan according to their land commander, Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., the Japanese defenders were also following a plan laid down by Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima.

Ushijima, with a large number of crack troops equipped with excellent weapons, knew his cause was lost, but vowed to take an awful toll in American lives, a vow he was to keep.

The death toll was to include General Buckner, who, while observing an attack by the Eighth Marine Regiment on June 18th, 1945 was killed by a shell-splintered rock. And it was to include General Ushijimi, who died calmly and by his own hand, in full Japanese ritual, after a night of feasting and farewells.

When the 83-day fight ended, the bloodiest land battle of the Pacific war showed Japanese losses at 110,000 killed and 10,760 taken prisoner. The U.S. Army and Marines lost 7,612 killed and missing, 31,806 wounded and more than 26,000 other casualties. The figure for those unfit for duty because of combat fatigue were particularly high during the fierce struggle.

U.S. sailors and navy pilots operating from the sea lost more than 4,000 killed and 7,000 wounded. At this point in the war the Japanese were using Kamikaze, explosive-laden suicide planes.

General Ushijima opted to make his stand in the south and dug into the rugged terrain that would be defended ridge by ridge and foot by foot below the Ishikawa isthmus. Line after line of his defenses formed rough circles around his headquarters, Shuri Castle. Natural limestone caves, intricate networks of tunnels and above-ground masonry vaults, used by the locals to house the bones of their dead, provided cover for rifles, mortars and machine guns.

Huge rooms had been dug underground. Spider holes – rifle pits with well-fitted lids – could hide the defenders until the enemy had passed. The shoot-and-hide, fight-and-run, then attack again tactics took a bitter toll. The experience of the Seventh Infantry Division, which took seven days to cover 6,000 yards to the village of Ouki, paid a price of 1,120 casualties.

A portion of General Ushijima’s defenders were Okinawan. A home guard unit called the Boeitai, and numbering 20,000, was taken into the Japanese Thirty-Second Army. These locals were used mainly for menial tasks such as digging tunnels.

***

The evening before the invasion, along with his diploma from the Shuri Middle school on Okinawa, thirteen-year-old Akira Yoshimoto received orders to report to the Japanese army.

Yoshimoto was not an Okinawan. His father served with the Japanese army in Manchuria, then in Singapore. There was never an official report of his death. The last the family heard from him was a letter from the Raffles hotel where he was billeted with other officers. Like many other Japanese servicemen, he simply never returned from the war.

Yoshimoto’s maternal grandfather was a man of some influence in the Osaka area and sent the boy and his mother to Okinawa where he thought they would be safe. He had the idea that if the war came to a disastrous end for the Japanese, as he suspected it would, the Americans would by-pass Okinawa and strike directly at the home islands.

Indeed, there were high ranking Americans who shared this view. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who carried off most of the Pacific campaign with a surprising small loss of life, accused Admiral Chester W. Nimitz of tossing away thousands of American lives by insisting on driving the Japanese from Okinawa instead of sealing them off and letting natured take its course.

The thirteen-year-old was inducted and entered a unit called Blood and Iron for the Emperor, or Tekketsu. Most of these youngsters were assigned to the Thirty-Second Army’s communication network, but as conditions deteriorated they were given a short course in guerrilla tactics and told to fight to the end, to the very last man.

After living days in terror of American naval shelling, aircraft bombardment, mortar fire, grenades and small arms fire and the particular hell of hand-transported and tank-mounted flame throwers that incinerated cave-dwelling Japanese like so many broiled chickens, Akira Yoshimoto found himself in a cave with six Japanese enlisted men and a dying officer.

A few meters down the slope from the cavern’s entrance was a heavy concentration of U.S. Marines armed with satchel charges that could effectively seal the mouth of the cave.

During the day, the seven enlisted men had taken turns creeping to the brush-littered cave mouth and taking shots at their tormentors, spacing them far enough apart as to not to draw undo attention to their position.

The cave commanded a fine view of the valley below and at one time had been a sector command post. For this reason, there were cases of canned crab, bottles of sake and other provisions in the large underground opening. When night fell, the men closed the entrance to the cave by using blankets propped by long poles. They then lit several candles and gathered in a semicircle around the bed of pine boughs they had fashioned for the dying officer, Colonel Toshiki Inouye.

The group of battle-weary and bedraggled men from a hodgepodge of units assembled in the dim cave by the flickering light of candles, the background staccato of battle only meters away, the distant thunder and thud of naval guns and land artillery and the ubiquitous smell of death was an impressive scene, particularly to a new recruit of Yoshimoto’s age. He never forgot it.

By that primitive light, the scene could have been centuries old, the sake bottles were opened and small china cups passed to every man. The fresh smell of sake, the true Japanese drink, was like a breath of spring life to the weary men, evocative of the home islands and a thousand blending memories stretching back to childhood.

The colonel propped himself up on an elbow. The move was difficult and took much of his strength, but no one dared offer to help him. After a sip of sake, he spoke. All Japanese should become fighters and die for the Emperor.

There was nodded assent. The men were ill at ease. Most had never been this close to such a high-ranking officer. They sat cross-legged, ready to bow if he flicked an eye toward them.

The Colonel, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at home in the cave, in fact serene. He knew he was dying. He looked into each man’s face, lingering on the youth, Yoshimoto. At that moment, Yoshimoto felt a certain bond between himself and the older man, a man he regarded as a samurai warrior.

You are my seven samurai, the Colonel said quietly. When dawn comes I know you will attack the enemy with the fire and ferocity expected of you. I wish I could lead the attack, but my wounds are severe. My spirit will be with you and, if you survive, if you come through this hellish fight, I expect each and every one of you to seek reprisal, a grand reprisal for all of us, our humiliation and our shame.

At this point he paused and, even by the dim light of the candles, seemed to grow paler. One of the older men refilled his sake cup and urged him to drink. A sip of sake, then another, seemed to restore some vitality. The Colonel continued. "I am grieved to report that because of my wounds I am unable to bring about my own death in the honorable prescribed fashion. I will therefore take the second choice and ask one of you to end my life.

When that is done there is no need to cremate or otherwise dispose of my body. Perhaps the Americans with their flamethrowers will do the job. Just leave me where I die and prepare yourselves for the battle to come.

The candles played odd figures on the cave walls, shadows dancing in silent exultation, the stale air, the smell of smoke and the body stenches of those long unwashed. It is a tradition of the Japanese to bathe frequently, but here was only the grunge and weariness of a defeated army, a dying army and a fading tradition.

The Colonel eyed the grim-faced group and inquired, Which of you is the youngest?

Yoshimoto was certain that he was. The others were veteran soldiers who had been through more than one campaign. Meekly, he pushed a hand to the level of his shoulder and said, I think I am, Sir.

Then it will be you, the Colonel said, a soul unblemished by the years. There is a straight razor in my kit. I assure you it is sharp. Bring it here, then cut my throat with it.

Yoshimoto was frozen with fear. He would have preferred to run outside the cave and face the Marine guns rather than cut this man’s throat. He considered bolting from the cave, but a deeper sense of duty held him back. He was after all Japanese and still an impressionable boy. Samurai stories danced in his head. Under the unflickering gaze of the Colonel, he slowly forced himself to rise from the cave floor, go to the Colonel’s kit and find the cutthroat razor.

It was of German manufacture. The blade was flawless and glittered in the dancing fire flames of the candles. The boy returned to the Colonel’s side and knelt on the cave floor, awkwardly holding what would become a bloody instrument of death.

The Colonel seemed almost in a trance, far removed from the cave, his thoughts straying to a time when a bold young lieutenant strolled with his bride-to-be beneath the cherry blossoms near the Imperial Palace. At length his spirit returned and his flame-flecked eyes seemed fully alert. All right, son. You may cut my throat.

Yoshimoto had little recollection of what happened after that. The actual job was easier than he thought it would be, such was the sharpness of the blade. He cleaned the blood from his hands as best he could. Then he gulped sake. It was his first experience with the fiery beverage.

The others saw to it that he ate crabmeat from the small can. They were proud of him for performing his duty. Some of them dozed now and then because of too much sake, but none of them really slept that night. Among the other supplies in the cave were officers' swords. Half in jest the men talked of themselves as the legendary seven samurai to which the Colonel had referred.

As dawn turned the black sky gray, with the blankets over the cave mouth down, a sullen breeze ushered in a wretched morning. One soldier, holding a sword in his two hands, muttered, There can be no death. Yoshimoto wondered what he meant. Were they not surrounded by death? Could one rise above death? Was death a welcome escape?

They had decided to use the swords in their attack against the dug-in Americans. They shared a sense of hopelessness and a night worn out by drinking had deadened their nerve ends to the point that they acted almost like robots, programmed to hold the swords and move as a body toward the waiting guns of the enemy.

Some had concealed hand grenades in their clothing. If wounded and facing capture they could blow themselves and their enemies into eternity.

Once outside the cave the men stumbled and staggered toward the Americans. When the first shot was fired, they picked up their cry of banzai. In the face of automatic weapons it was short lived.

Yoshimoto stumbled, slashed himself on the right calf, then tripped, bashing his forehead against a rock and knocking himself senseless. Hours later he woke up, his head banging from an imperial hangover. His wounds were bandaged and a heavy cloth swathed the gash on his forehead. He was a prisoner behind enemy lines.

CHAPTER 3: Exit Ben Hardy

Sunday morning, Taro Watanabe and his girlfriend, Nana Liberman, were off to a festival in Sakai Higashi. They stood on the station platform enjoying the fine fall day. At the rear of the platform were a small valley and a cemetery, whose stones were tightly clustered to preserve space and house the bones of the dead.

Near the cemetery was a small house with a cheap tin roof, rather than the heavy tile roof so common in Japan. A woman in rice farmer’s garb, a large cloth hiding her face, was pushing a wheelbarrow near the house. Beyond was a small shrub and tree nursery, and on a hill a couple of miles distant rose the huge brick complex of the Kinki teaching hospital.

Nana drew the usual stares from the others on the platform, her long straight taffy-colored hair, green eyes, a trim, athletic five-foot-seven, moderate bust, blue jeans and a mannish Oxford white shirt set her apart.

Watanabe was a shade taller than Nana and thoroughly Japanese in appearance except that his hair was on the sandy side. Looking over a large group of Japanese one finds jet-black hair of the raven variety is uncommon, except in very old women who get theirs from bottles. His hair was neatly trimmed as always, his eyesight good and his teeth white and – thanks to an orthodontist in the States – straight.

Nana seemed pensive and Watanabe feared she might still be brooding over a remark overheard from a nearby restaurant table the evening before. A Japanese had amused his male dinner guests with the remark that both women and Christmas cakes, central to the Japanese celebration of the holiday, were no good after twenty-five.

Watanabe sometimes wished that Nana had not bothered to learn Japanese. He had seen the glint in Nana’s green eyes as her temper flared. She turned and shot a searing glance toward the nearby table. The man who had made the remark locked eyes with her for a short time before his smile faded and he turned away.

In the States, Nana had been a member of NOW and a spear carrier in numerous feminist causes. It was not always easy for her to live in a society where men could do little wrong.

She had been drawn to the island nation by the high wages available to those willing to work hard as English teachers, a sense of adventure and the chance to travel throughout Asia. What rankled her was the way most Japanese women accepted their inferior situation. In any office, or at any social gathering, they would fall all over each other to make green tea and to serve it to the men. She was blind to