Original subtitles

Nineteen days out of Yokohama,

we were practically drifting toward Saipan at six knots an hour.

The convoy consisted of five old Bonita vessels.

Our engines were in poor shape.

We carried badly needed supplies toward the island outposts.

We were fishermen, proud to be drafted into service,

and had two soldiers posted on each boat.

No need for more, we thought.

We were not prepared for defeat. Who is?

The lead boat, the Hyosuke Maru, was captained by an old salt

who knew nothing about this watery arena.

His maps showed some 2,000 islands,

like sprinkled crumbs on a vast surface.

We were now passing the Mariana Archipelago.

Once it had belonged to Spain,

then to Germany, and finally to Japan,

and we intended to keep it.

This tropical world was a geological joke

of coral and volcano.

Some islands lasted, some disappeared.

Some were inhabited, others were not.

Who'd want to live there anyway?

This giant body of water and all that was in it was ours.

Our belief in victory was unshakable.

We had stopped looking at the steppingstones that paraded by.

They were of no interest.

We wanted to return home.

We now sighted Anatahan,

a jungle rock that stood high out of the sleeping waters.

So it was duly recorded in the log,

6:00 in the morning, June 12, 1944,

the fourth year of a war to which we had dedicated our lives like children,

playing a game without vision or foresight.

Four bells and our chief cook and bottle washer

appeared promptly with asameshi, breakfast for the skipper.

His American sailor's hat was a reminder of a defeated enemy ship.

At first we thought it was one of our own planes.

The barren map of the world makes no note of where misfortune strikes.

We went down fast. Few survived.

The Mariana Trench over which we swam ashore

was over 35,000 feet deep.

The fiery center of the earth had blown this rock of Anatahan a long way from the ocean floor.

How we got ashore, no one remembered.

We were dumped like garbage on a hot coast, left to rot.

The change from a human being with dignity to a helpless worm

takes but a second.

A merciful narcosis kept us from suffering too much.

One of the men had not only saved his hide,

but accomplished the heroic feat of bringing a machine gun ashore.

A warrant officer with a long service record,

he was the only one who knew what to do.

To defend this island for a couple of months was not a difficult task, he thought.

He knew the enemy,

and he knew the Imperial Navy would not permit us to stay abandoned very long.

Yes, we have picked the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean,

deep and solemn.

And we were to be here for seven long years.

And little did we know that the enemy was not in planes overhead,

nor was it the lack of food, the lack of water and medicine,

nor the venomous plants that hemmed us in.

How could we know that we had brought the enemy with us in our own bodies,

an enemy that would attack without notice?

One of our men had spotted a deserted village.

This was good news after many weeks of hardship.

And so we entered the twisting, haunted labyrinth

of an unfamiliar jungle,

a beautiful but vicious world from which many of us never returned.

Oi!

Oi!

Oi!

Oi!

What sort of a Japanese was this?

His name was Kusakabe.

Said he lived alone on the island.

The others had left when the war started.

He'd been plantation foreman,

exported copra.

But the jungle had taken over.

An unfriendly man.

Unfriendly to us, and unfriendly to himself.

Imagine living on an island like this by choice,

thousands of miles from nowhere.

That's how we met Keiko.

At first,

she was only another fellow human being

stranded on this pinpoint on the map.

Then she was to become a female to us.

And finally, a woman.

The only woman on earth.

Our eyes have stayed empty and remote.

We lost track of time. The rains had started. They seemed never to end.

We built boats-- toy boats to carry us home on the wings of our longing.

This lonely island was our whole world.

We went to sleep at night and dreamt of home.

Each morning we were back on Anatahan.

Like a rare bird of the wet jungle,

we caught an occasional glimpse of Keiko.

Some of us, sooner than the others,

longed for something more than bread alone,

and we watched her, and we watched each other.

The rain stopped. Nothing lasts forever.

Though the waves of the ocean lasted long.

First thing we did when the hot rays of the sun came again

was to build a Shinto shrine to speed our prayers.

Most of us believed in Shintoism.

There were two Christians, four Buddhists.

Others believed only in Japan.

We extracted salt from the sea, hunted lizard and bat,

found wild potatoes,

lived on food that pigs would have rejected.

But best of all, we found a way of making fire.

We had sunk to the level of prehistoric man.

But our progress was not slow.

We achieved in weeks what the caveman had taken centuries to accomplish.

And so we faced our new life,

halfway between Japan and New Guinea on a deserted sea lane,

1,500 miles from the Philippines,

some 16 degrees above the equator,

resigned to wait.

The first typhoon struck us with an unjust fury.

What had we done to reap all this?

Why did man and nature conspire to make us helpless?

The rocks that were so formidable when we crawled ashore

were pebbles now in a giant sea.

It raged for three days.

The elements are cruel.

To the winds and to the sea,

man and his problems is as nothing.

The typhoon pounded at us. The ocean wanted to wipe us out.

This island rock that was anchored firmly to the bottom of the deep sea

seemed to tear loose and join the storm.

One year on Anatahan.

This was our home now--

three miles long, one mile wide, most of it impenetrable.

We stood guard in turns to wait for our navy to come-- it never came.

For the enemy to come-- he never came.

Nothing came but the waves.

The tides lifted and the tides fell.

We now took another step away

from prehistoric man.

We had found empty beer bottles,

and now we found a way of filling them-- with coconut wine.

If we drank quickly, before it turned to vinegar,

it made us forget where we were and who we were.

We were scolded, of course.

But since when has alcoholism been cured by scolding?

"Who are you combing your hair for?"

"For you, naturally." Was she combing it for him?

Takahashi was the first one to break the social ice.

He brought a peace offering--

more shells for the wife, as if she needed them.

At that time we still thought they were man and wife,

and we had not yet become savages.

The difference between a child and a grown-up

is in the way the brain is in control of the emotions.

Kusakabe objected to anyone paying attention to Keiko-- that was easy to diagnose.

More difficult to understand was why he was so antagonistic to us,

and to himself.

Our leader, the boss of the island--

that is, boss for a while--

was not opposed to a display of his authority.

Some men are drunk on wine. Some are drunk on power.

Hai.

So far, all these things that happened to us on Anatahan

were very small.

Our life now consisted of nothing but trifles.

How were we to know what was important

and what trifle was not?

She was a pretty woman.

She was a Japanese woman, trained to obedience.

When she was young she followed her father,

never dreamt of walking at his side.

When she married she walked behind the husband.

Obedience to a husband is considered to be the prime virtue of Japanese womanhood.

The full moon of the autumn equinox

is the time for the ohigan festival,

when we pay respect to our ancestors.

Our thoughts then go from them to our family.

The word "higan" means "the other shore."

It is taken from the Buddhist legend

that there is a river marking the division of this earthly world

to a future one.

This river is full of illusion,

passion, pain and sorrow.

Only when you cross the river,

having fought the currents of temptation to gain the far shore,

do you reach enlightenment.

This was the time when we thought of our families far away.

This was the time when we thought of our families, all of us.

And so did Kusakabe.

He had brought with him, when he came, wife and child.

At the outbreak of the war, four years now,

they had left him to go to Saipan for safety.

Keiko too had had a husband who had left on the same boat.

She too had not heard from him again.

All this we found out later.

Careless as we might wish to be

in our relations to other human beings,

there is a time of accounting.

Left alone in an empty world,

it was natural for these two to have formed a bond of sorts.

For a time they have forgotten everything but each other.

Keiko?

Keiko?

Keiko?

Keiko?

"Are you thinking of your home?"

"Yes, but not when I see you."

She was prepared to hear just that.

A long journey begins with one step.

Hers was to be quite a long journey.

This was Anatahan.

We still kept track of the months,

though we had forgotten the day of the week.

A little while later no one would care what year it was.

Japan had forgotten us.

The horizon remained empty and remote.

But the circle around Keiko enlarged.

She was young.

Her body failed to remember the blows it had received.

It also slipped her mind.

She became better-looking day by day.

She became queen bee, and we, the drones, began to swarm.

"What's your husband doing?"

"All I know, he's not out looking for another woman."

"How would you like to be my bride tonight?"

"I don't need two husbands."

Coconut wine had become our steady diet.

With the coming of wine, discipline vanished.

Some of us began to feel strongly

about being told to stand guard day and night against an enemy that never came.

Who was this man anyway,

who never allowed us to forget what it meant to be a Japanese soldier?

All this talk of "stand up and salute" became more and more pointless.

It took him years to achieve his position.

It took seconds to lose it.

Typhoons and human beings strike without much warning.

There are few signals,

and only the skilled-- the very skilled can read them.

The loss of face to a soldier in command

is not a pleasant experience.

To lose the respect of our fellow men

is not pleasant for anyone anywhere.

A good part of our life is spent in trying to gain the esteem of others.

To gain self-esteem, however, we usually waste little time.

We had thrown off the yoke of discipline.

We were free, free of all restraint,

which only meant that we were slaves to our bodies.

A folk song from Okinawa, the "Tsundara Bushi,"

had spread like a weed among the soldiers during the war.

"You and me, like an egg. I'm egg white, you're egg yellow.

I embrace you."

The day started with a dispute over the words of a song.

How the day would end,

no one knew at the time.

"You are looking for trouble."

"And we found it."

""Keiko, Keiko, come out, come out.' Those are the right words."

Semba was 19, with the beard of a man and the brain of a grasshopper.

He was next in line for Keiko's favors.

We gave little thought to our actions.

There is no medicine against stupidity, and it was epidemic among us.

Then came the unexpected.

"To all Japanese forces.

Three months ago, the 15th day of August,

Japan accepted unconditional surrender.

The Japanese emperor himself is asking you to lay down your arms.

The war is over.

An American ship will take you home.

Hostilities have ceased.

All Japanese men and officers, surrender.

Surrender at once."

The unbelievable had happened.

This could not be true.

We had just begun the war.

We were prepared to fight for a thousand years.

We'd overrun Asia, almost the entire Pacific.

How could we have lost so suddenly?

This was a enemy trick.

It could fool no one.

We came to ask him to lead us again.

There are those who lead and those who wish to be led.

There is not necessarily any other bond between them.

"The sacred soil of Japan cannot be conquered.

So long as we have one drop of blood in our veins, we will not give up.

Rather die than surrender."

Hai! Hai!

But far away, in Japan,

our country had faced the reality of defeat.

The emperor had called the troops home

and millions streamed back,

away from the nightmare of trying to conquer a world.

Father and son, wife and husband...

mothers, daughters, friends,

all those who had feared they might never meet again.

The men who had fought in vain came back home.

Though there were many that did not come back.

But we knew nothing about what took place in a new Japan.

We were still on Anatahan, deserted by the world,

defending this volcanic rock.

Defending it against what enemy?

The only real enemy most of us ever have is lonesomeness.

The jungle had disgorged a rare prize.

An enemy plane had been found wrecked,

the bodies vanished.

This was a doubtful reminder of civilization.

We fluttered around this sudden gift from the skies like vultures.

What could we find to make our life better?

Some of the things were to make our life worse.

Nishio found a.45-caliber weapon and a few bullets.

Amanuma too hit the jackpot.

Keiko found a parachute,

which meant elegance for us instead of clothes made of tree bark,

or no clothes at all.

Semba, our friend the lady-killer, found a ring.

The easy way to a woman's heart.

This lifeless mass of iron was the only sign of life from the outside world so far.

Narayama was seaman first class.

Before joining the navy he had been a first-class musician.

He had an idea how to make use of rusty wire.

He was to convert a war machine into a musical instrument.

This was the first shot heard on the island.

It was not to be the last one.

Two old pistols, two new masters.

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko was gone.

She had been absent all night. This was a serious defection.

Keiko missing? Kusakabe was more out of his mind than usual.

Keiko! Keiko!

Keiko!

Away from all our troubles,

our now useless leader kept the machine gun ready to shoot.

This gun was never to shoot.

Our search party went into action.

Something must have happened to Keiko.

Was she dead?

We were too stunned to count the men that were missing.

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko was not dead. Far from it.

She was very much alive.

This was the beginning of a new pattern on Anatahan.

Keiko had gone into circulation.

To spy on the humiliating details of another human being's life would be unforgivable,

were we not concerned in finding a clue to our own behavior.

Nothing that happens to a human being is alien to us.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Keiko!

Nishio and his friend are not uncommon among those we know.

They had guns now to take the place of thinking.

Oi!

Keiko?

Of course they had seen no one.

Why should they reveal her whereabouts?

They had plans of their own.

We had now been on this island for a long time.

For all we knew, we would be there forever.

It is easy to look back and label all this commotion about Keiko ridiculous.

What we did there we might not have done somewhere else.

Opinions differ on that point.

It is said that human beings react according to a set pattern,

whether they are in a primitive or a civilized society.

Maybe so.

To look back on something is not the same as living with it.

The relationship between a man and a woman is based on emotions,

which often may not be understood by others

who, in one way or another, fumble just as much.

It is easy to see what wrong others do.

We carry no mirror to reflect our own actions.

She was clearly the winner this time. A bond had been made.

When a woman threatens to leave,

this has considerable influence on the behavior of a man,

even when she's not the only woman on earth.

Our leader took the occasion to lecture on our behavior.

Our mission was to defend Anatahan,

not to drink and chase after females.

Someday the enemy would appear.

But the enemy was on Anatahan. Man's genius to destroy himself was in clear evidence.

The day began with a harmless little ditty,

a prelude to violence.

Keiko wanted to be taught how to play the samisen.

"What about your husband?"

But she knew how to handle him now.

One more blow out of him and she would leave him again.

We were all in bondage to Keiko,

some more and some less.

She was the center of our universe.

We had no one to call our own, no one to care for us.

It is not good for man to be alone.

Kuroda was the oldest sailor among us,

and he confirmed our suspicions

about the marital status of Keiko and Kusakabe,

as if legalistic technicalities made any difference anymore in Anatahan society.

It was he who noticed the photograph and told us about it later.

There was no law on our island, no police.

There were only two pistols.

Not so long ago,

these two had been members of the Imperial Navy, disciplined and polite.

But the navy was all but forgotten,

and forgotten was what they had once been.

But they were still human beings,

and that classification is sufficient to cover quite the variety of behavior.

Certainly Kusakabe had promised not to beat Keiko.

But in turn, he reminded her that she had promised not to fool around with others.

The two gunmen suggested that they settle their differences

where they could be under scientific observation.

They had an idea.

Keiko was able enough to cook for four as easily as for two.

Kusakabe could provide food if he wanted to be friendly.

She did not object too much. It would have done little good if she had.

Now these were no longer trifles.

The knife and the bullet had become law.

So the queen bee kept house for three drones.

At all these events that began now, we were not present.

We were not inside their hut.

There is no way to check the story of violence that now unfolded swiftly.

Even had we been there, all our versions would differ.

One man who did try to check what occurred

on the Hill of Fools, as we subsequently called this corner of the jungle,

was our old friend Semba.

A little while later his body was found in the swing

where only a week before he had enjoyed the company of Keiko.

We can only guess how he got into that hammock.

We can only surmise how a second body came to be found on that hill.

Two bullets, buried deep in Nishio's back,

helped us to guess correctly.

In some parts of Asia,

there is a god of immediate retribution

whose function it is to spare us long delays in deserved punishment.

Had he decided to become the deity of Anatahan?

Anyway, death was fishing in this jungle,

and on his hook, as bait, he dangled Keiko.

So we buried our two victims of our ill-fated mission

with due Shinto ceremony.

A little part of us went down with them into the moist ground.

We felt sorry for the dead.

Even an insect an inch long has half an inch of soul.

Time had stopped for these two,

but our miserable existence continued.

We had now been on Anatahan for five years.

Five years can be short. For us, they were endless.

Days can be as fatal as bullets.

All that kept us alive was the thought of our country, our fatherland.

Somewhere to the north was another island,

an island that we loved and longed for and could never forget

so long as we had breath in our bodies.

We celebrated the new year like good Japanese soldiers.

We paid our respect in the direction of the Imperial palace

and sang our national anthem.

We wished each other a happy new year--

Omedetou gozaimasu--

and, as if nothing had happened, thanked each other for the friendship of the past year

and hoped, courteously,

that this year would be as pleasant as the last.

At all this too,

no one else was present.

We can only reconstruct the events from which we were barred.

The king and queen had left our festival.

That we knew.

But we never saw the king again.

He had been marked for death, indelibly, long ago.

The only thing we did not know

was who would be the executioner.

Now Kusakabe was royalty.

Anatahan had a new overlord,

a new king for a short time--

for a short time only.

She followed him obediently.

But this was a travesty of obedience.

Obedience at the point of a gun

is no obedience at all.

We put Yanaginuma to rest with the others.

He died young.

He had no chance to learn how to live properly.

Someday we will bring his ashes back home

and lie to his people that he had died like a good soldier, honorably.

The queen had returned to the beehive,

but there was little rejoicing.

They should've attended the funeral.

We do not beat the dead.

When human beings wish to quarrel,

they soon find a cause.

The litany is of no consequence.

This time, it was no food in the hut.

"Why doesn't he go out and get some?"

There was no love in the hut also.

Next in line

was the ex-cook of the Hyosuke Maru--

Yoshiri.

He aspired to Keiko.

The goal of his ambitions was not very lofty.

We are driven by forces about which we know nothing.

The king is dead. What price for the new king?

How long will the tyrannical house of Yoshiri last?

He was to wield his power over Anatahan

for less than 24 hours.

Keiko was his, and all the coconut wine he could guzzle.

Untold riches.

But the queen was not to be his.

She had not been partial to the murder of her previous consort.

The bond between them had been strong,

whatever the nature of the elastic might have been

that binds together male and female.

He wanted her as queen and handmaiden.

No insolence.

He was not going to have a cup thrown at his feet.

Would he have laughed quite so much

had he known that he would not see the light of another day?

All of us remember that night.

The moon was low.

The trees silent. The air was full of mist.

The sea was deep, the rocks black.

Nature was indifferent to the cruel destiny of man.

The history of this unfortunate is the history of an American sailor's hat.

The two pistols were thrown into the ocean. They were gone.

There was to be no more bloodshed.

We chose Keiko peacefully.

That is, peacefully for us.

But Keiko was not going to be chosen, peacefully or otherwise.

She was through.

We started a hunt for the prize

that this time had been won in fair competition.

The foe had found us, the long-looked-for enemy.

We were to be bombed, we thought.

For this we had been trained.

This was a simple matter.

"To the Japanese army on Anatahan."

The bombs that had dropped told us that war had been over for five years.

A vessel would call and take us home.

This was, of course, another crude enemy trick.

What did they think we were? Children?

This was hardly the time for love letters from the enemy.

"Let's find our Keiko."

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko! Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

Keiko!

This method of persuasion

had worked exceedingly well in old Baghdad

and in ancient Rome,

and it could not fail to work in our culture.

We did not see this. We never saw her again.

She disappeared as if she had never existed.

Long ago I heard her say that if she had wings, she would fly home.

Keiko had gone. There was no more trouble.

There was also no more life.

Then, a year later, a ship came

and a white flag was found in our jungle burial ground.

Eh?

Letters. Letters from Japan.

Hai.

Hai.

Hai!

Hai.

Hai!

Hai.

Hai.

Doi-san. Eh?

Kuroda!

This one... was from Keiko.

Oh!

Keiko?

She had notified our families,

told them that we were alive.

Kuroda had no family so she thoughtfully thanked him

and said she hoped her departure

had brought no trouble to him.

This was embarrassing,

but definitely not an enemy trick.

There was another letter,

from the governor of a prefecture.

The war had ended six years ago.

"Your families are waiting."

"This flag we send

surrendered a Japanese regiment.

Use it.

We want you home."

"You can return if you wish.

I will never go back to a defeated Japan."

The rest of us... surrendered, gladly.

We had lost the battle of Anatahan.

Our days of hardship had ended.

We soared like eagles over our sacred mountain.

It took ten hours to retrace a journey of 19 days

and seven long years.

We were back in Japan,

heroes to all but to ourselves.

Brother and Sister were there.

Our friends were waiting.

Father and Mother.

Our neighbors came.

We saw our wives.

Our children, now seven years older.

We would have to earn their affection all over again.

We were home at last.

And if I know anything at all about Keiko,

she too must have been there.