Isolation and Trauma Theme Analysis

It wasn’t until sometime after I finished my studies and began interning at Tokyo Imperial University Hospital that it dawned on me how incapable I was—how incapable we all were. Medicine was not the noble, enlightened profession I’d envisaged. Patients still died; there was no secret cure. Greater men might be able to achieve more, but not me.

“You think I don’t know that? I’m more than happy to do my fair share. But they’ve got the boys in our tent doing everything—all the shit jobs that they don’t want to do. Just because we’re not like them. Because we don’t kiss their arse, worship their god, bow to their emperor. Tell me something: is your guy helping you out with the work?”

Seeing them play baseball together reminded me of the divers in Broome, who were always so at ease in each other’s company [….] They were my countrymen, but the way they conducted themselves was almost alien to me. To be a diver was to never be alone.

We moved into our new home early in the new year and started on repairs straight away. There were doors to be measured and mats to be ordered. We bought new shutters and installed latches that stopped them from banging in the wind. We replaced our fence with new bamboo stalks, binding them together with rope. We scrubbed the soot from the kitchen, the mould from the bathtub, and the grime from the floors. Kayoko took to the work with a vigour I’d previously only seen in her when she played the koto. She insisted we do everything ourselves. “It’s our first house—it should be just the two of us. We’ll feel more proud this way.” She could be sentimental about such things.

I was struck by the ingenuity of the [mallee] tree in its ability to regenerate and create a new shape better suited for its environment.

Gazing at the mallee trees as we walked to the river, I once more admired their inconspicuous quality [….] Taking a wider perspective, I realized that every element of the landscape […] seemed at pains not to outdo the others, and it struck me as a very noble quality indeed.

Now, from my own position at the edge of the river, I thought of […] waking up in the darkness of the ocean. I considered the slender divide between our perceptions of life and death. And how one life could be valued over another.

But for all [Sister Bernice’s] outward calmness, I sensed something had changed. She still conversed with me and occasionally brought me black tea—although she herself never used the cup I gave her, which pained me—but there was a coolness to her now. She had closed a part of herself to me.

I thought about the situation with Kayoko. I had sent her two letters from Broome, telling her of the new life I had begun in Australia, but I never got a reply. After that, I gave up, convinced she never wanted to hear from me again. But perhaps I had stopped writing too quickly. Perhaps I had not written what she wanted to hear. I tried to think of what Harada would have done. Surely he would have fought for her, even at the risk of shaming himself. Honour, duty, pride—Harada would have sacrificed all those things for the woman he loved.

I stared at Mrs. Sasaki’s face. Her drawn-on eyebrows. The cheeks that had grown heavy with age. The ugliness of this woman who’d come into my house and presumed to know me. She had no idea of the things I had to do each day, the secrets I had to keep. Neither did Kayoko. She didn’t understand the sacrifices I had made to serve our nation—to help ordinary people such as her.

It was a dreadful kind of waiting. Time entered a new dimension—not exactly slow, but a state in which I sensed everything more keenly. I detected the sharp scent of metal in the air, I felt each drop of sweat beneath my shirt, and I observed how the shifting light at dawn and dusk seemed to hide more than it revealed.

The ceremony was originally intended for only a small group of Stan’s friends—mainly the Australian-born Japanese and me—but that afternoon more than thirty people lined the path that snaked through the garden. For someone so quiet, Stan had many friends.

We reached the junction at the middle of camp and I looked back. The blur of my friends pressed against the fence. The sweep of ochre dirt. The rows of galvanized-iron huts. The guard tower rising up beyond the fence. It was bleak, but it was home. A place where I belonged.

In the coffee shop, a dark figure came towards me. My heart fluttered when I realized it was Kayoko. She wore navy monpe trousers knotted above her waist and a matching coat. In the unfamiliar clothes, I hardly recognised my wife. Grey threaded her hair. Her cheeks had lost their fullness and her mouth was tight. We sat together, the hum of conversation surrounding us as we shared fragments of our pasts. She smiled when I told her about releasing the lanterns in Broome and the baseball competition at camp. She described the friends she had made at the factory where she worked, assembling munitions parts.

I’d clung to the ideal of discretion, when it was courage—and forgiveness—I’d needed all along. My silence had been weak.