Grenade

“‘Don’t move! Nobody is to move!’ Hideki froze. Every atom of his being told him to RUN. To find a cave somewhere to hide.”

Hideki, a child, yearns to run and hide from the terrifying invading forces, which will undoubtedly bring death and destruction. Instead, the Okinawan boys are conscripted, armed with poor weaponry, and ordered to stand, fight, and die. Sano’s directive is the novel’s first clue that Japanese officers do not live up to their ideals of honor; instead, they use Okinawan children as child soldiers and human shields. Gratz problematizes the Imperial Japanese Army’s policy of mass suicide for the Okinawan people.

“‘One grenade is for the American monsters coming to kill your family,’ Sano told them, and Hideki looked up. Sano’s gaze swept down the row of boys until it stopped on Hideki, like he was talking to him alone. ‘Then, after you have killed as many Americans as you can,’ Sano added, ‘you are to use the other grenade to kill yourself.’”

Sano’s description of “American monsters” alludes to the IJA’s historical campaign of propaganda depicting US soldiers as violent and untrustworthy; this made Okinawan civilians reluctant to surrender, increasing civilian deaths by crossfire, starvation, and suicide. Furthermore, Sano’s instructions allude to the Japanese value of honorable self-sacrifice—giving one’s life for country and emperor, like kamikaze pilots did, was celebrated as noble. Many Japanese soldiers died by suicide rather than surrendering to American forces at the end of the Battle of Okinawa.

“The complicated trigger distressed him, and the soft clink of the delicate pottery grenades against each other made him worried that they would crack—or worse, explode in his jacket pocket.”

Hideki’s flimsy and dangerous pottery grenades symbolize the ill-preparedness of Okinawan conscripts to face the might of the incoming American forces. Later, Gratz details the sturdier weaponry given to Ray. Ray’s grenades are juxtaposed with Hideki’s to emphasize the comparative might of US weaponry.

“Through the salty sea spray, he saw every American ship in the bay—more than a thousand of them—shooting their guns at the island. Battleships, destroyers, cruisers. And overhead, wave after wave of planes flew over the island, dropping agony and death from above.”

The overwhelming mass of US ships and planes signals the might of the US war machine. Meanwhile, the phrase “dropping agony and death from above” paints a vivid picture of the suffering of Okinawan civilians in the bombardment. Many civilians died before the Battle of Okinawa even formally began, and thousands more died over the subsequent three months, marking this conflict as one of WWII’s most brutal.

“Each was painted a drab olive green, the army’s favorite color, and had a bright yellow collar around the neck. To activate the grenade, you gripped the gray handle on the side and pulled a big wire attached to a pin. The grenade activated when you let go of the handle, igniting the fuse.”

Gratz creates an intentional juxtaposition between the integrity of Ray’s grenades, which represent American weaponry, and Okinawan defenses, which are flimsy and inadequate compared to the incoming onslaught.

“The brochure said the Okinawans were generally smaller, and were ‘simple, polite, law-abiding, and peaceful.’”

Dramatic irony occurs when the reader identifies the US misconception of how they will be received by Okinawan locals, who have been taught by the IJA to try to kill as many Americans as they can before killing themselves rather than surrender to the blood-thirsty American monsters. Rising tension occurs in this chapter; the reader identifies that Ray—and the American forces more broadly—will be shocked by the intensity of the resistance on Okinawa.

American forces stereotype Okinawans as “polite”—a form of benign racism that attributes pseudo-positive traits to a racial group with condescension; the novel compares US bigotry with the ethnic prejudice Japanese people feel toward the Okinawan populace, which they view as inferior.

“Hideki’s heart swelled at the sight of the planes dropping out of the sky into the withering anti aircraft fire of the giant American ships. This was true bravery, he thought.”

The Okinawan boys have been influenced by Japanese value of honorable self-sacrifice. Hideki’s admiration of the sacrifice of the kamikaze pilots illustrates that he subscribes to these beliefs, which teach that it is noble to give one’s life for one’s country. Later, Hideki becomes disillusioned with the lessons he was taught; he comes to see wartime death as tragic and unnecessary and becomes skeptical of his loyalty to Japan as an Okinawan.

“On Okinawa, you lived under the same roof with the spirits of your ancestors. The shadow of that decision—the 350-year-old ghost of their cowardly forefather—had haunted Hideki’s family for hundreds of years. It haunted Hideki still.”

Okinawan Spirituality, an important theme in the novel, holds that ancestors play an active role in daily life, which means that they have to be acknowledged and respected accordingly. Hideki believes that the presence of the spirit of his ancestor Shigetomo, who surrendered to Japanese samurai, explains why Hideki is frightened of war. Over the course of the novel, however, Hideki comes to realize that fear in response to a terrifying situation is reasonable. Moreover, he finds true courage is living according to his own values: Rather than becoming a soldier, he pushes through his fear to survive battle, find his sister, save Okinawan children from becoming human shields, and display a memorial to fallen soldiers from all sides of the conflict.

“‘Superstitious dojin,’ the soldier muttered, and Hideki heard his father gasp. Dojin was a rude way of saying ‘primitive natives.’ The soldier was basically calling them animals.”

The soldier’s rudeness to Hideki’s family during the partial evacuation of Okinawa alludes to the ethnic prejudice of Japanese mainlanders, who perceive the residents of Okinawa as less than. The soldier’s disrespect foreshadows the way the IJA cruelly uses Okinawan civilians as human shields during the battle, justifying the practice based on this ethnic bias.

“This was his fate. He stood up, fully exposed if any of the soldiers in the trucks had bothered to look up at him, and got ready to strike the match-like fuse on his grenade. For the Emperor, Hideki told himself. For Japan. For my family.”

To live up the Japanese value of honorable killing and self-sacrifice for one’s country, Hideki chants this as he prepares to throw his grenade. We can see in the fact that he needs to repeat this litany the seeds of what will emerge later: As Hideki matures, he will grow away from these values and see them for the indoctrination they are. By the end of the novel, rather than admiring military might, he comes to see war death as irrevocably bad, and feel angry and disillusioned with the Japanese army for using him and other Okinawan civilians as a pawn in their larger military strategy.

“‘Hee-DOY koat-o wa shee me-SEN,’ he tried, walking closer. ‘We’re not going to hurt you,’ he said in English.

The women and children wailed as Ray got closer, sobbing like it was the end of the world, and Ray wondered if he was saying it wrong.

Then the whole lot of them stepped off the cliff.”

Japanese propaganda depicted US forces as terrifying monsters in an effort to convince Okinawan civilians to choose death by suicide to surrender. In the novel, this results in the horrific scene of women and children leaping to their deaths rather than believe Ray’s assurances that his squad means no harm. Gratz drew on historical records of Okinawan mass suicides during the Battle of Okinawa for his historically accurate depiction.

“‘Takeshi killed himself! He blew himself up with his own grenade!’ one of the boys yelled in horror.

Was it an accident, or had Takeshi killed himself out of fear?”

The Brutality of War is here made manifest in the shocking death of Hideki’s friend—also a child. The reader is positioned to feel sympathy for the Okinawan boys, who are put in an incredibly and unreasonably stressful situation by the IJA; the extent of their distress explains why Hideki considers whether Takeshi might have exploded his grenade intentionally.

“Surrender? Hideki crumpled up the leaflet and threw it on to the ground. It was like the Americans knew he was a coward and were teasing him about it. He wasn’t going to surrender. And he wasn’t going to let the Americans or Shigetomo’s mabui tell him what to do.”

Hideki is disgusted at the idea of surrendering; at this stage he still subscribes to the Japanese belief in honorable death for one’s country, Emperor, and family, as well as Japanese propaganda about monstrous Americans. This scene foreshadows Hideki’s later decision to surrender with Masako, Kimiko, and the children, and to avoid using his second grenade to cause more bloodshed.

“‘Sergeant, wait,’ Ray said. ‘That tomb, it was full of Okinawans. Women and children. We gotta stop using grenades on them.’ ‘But the last tomb was full of “Japs,”’ Big John reminded him. ‘They had built a machine gun nest into it!’”

Ray’s compassionate nature is foregrounded in this exchange, as he implores his squad leader to consider the lives of innocent Okinawan refugees. The conversation highlights the casual use of racist slurs among American soldiers, who refer to Japanese people with a derogatory insult. Conversely, the challenge facing American troops is illustrated in this discussion; historically, Japanese soldiers during the Battle of Okinawa often hid among Okinawan civilians, intentionally using noncombatants as human shields.

“‘Clean the tomb?’ Hideki said. ‘That doesn’t matter right now.’ ‘It always matters,’ Oto told him.”

The important role of ancestors in the daily life of Okinawans is illustrated in Oto’s requests to his starving son to clean the family tomb, even as Oto dies of an abdominal injury. Ancestors aren’t history to the Okinawan people, but are ever-present, and are thought to impact the current circumstances.

“Ray squeezed the trigger of his M-1.

Hideki threw his grenade.

Pakow!

BOOM!

The blast threw Ray and Hideki back into the mud and knocked them both out cold.”

Gratz uses onomatopoeia—“Pakow” and “BOOM”—to create a vivid sense of the immense noise of dual weapon discharge in the reader’s mind, immersing readers in the stress of a wartime confrontation between enemy soldiers. The collapse of both protagonists creates tension as the reader wonders whether either survived. Gratz also emphasizes the randomness of death during war; both of these characters could conceivably live or die in this exchange of fire.

“‘I’m sorry, Rei,’ Hideki said. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing. I was afraid, and my fear turned me into a monster.’”

Gratz does not paint Hideki as a villain for killing the likable Ray, instead, he fosters reader sympathy for the confusion and grief of Hideki, who is a child soldier forced into an impossible and terrifying situation. Gratz intentionally does not wholly condone or condemn any one side in this battle, but instead draws the reader’s attention to the devastation of war for all involved.

“First the food in Rei’s pack hadn’t been poisoned, and now the Americans had treated his wounds. He’d seen them be monsters, but he’d seen them be kind too.”

Hideki was taught that Japanese soldiers are wholly good, whereas Americans are evil monsters. His varied experiences throughout the battle show him that the reality is more nuanced. He has seen Japanese soldiers behave dishonorably, and witnessed that American soldiers are at times kind and at other times brutal. Hideki’s growth is evident in this reflection; he becomes increasingly disillusioned with the version of events presented by Japanese propaganda.

“He saw brilliant white coral sand roads lined with waving green palm trees. Thatched wooden barns, square houses with red terra-cotta roofs. Women in blue bashofu kimonos with babies strapped to their backs, going to the market. Old men in brown bashofu and round straw hats, leading water buffalo to the sugarcane fields. Everywhere he looked, the bright memories of before overlaid the gray, miserable after, like his fingers were making a window into the past, a past that was so recent, so real to him, that he could almost reach out and touch it.”

Hideki, picturing his home a few months earlier, paints a picture of an idyllic, agricultural society on a tropical island; this is the Okinawa before the battle. By conjuring this image in the reader’s mind, Gratz emphasizes the extent of the devastating destruction wrought by the bombing and shelling.

“American bombs had knocked down trees and taken the tops off hills, stomping the landscape flat like an angry god. Entire villages were shattered, the wooden houses and barns reduced to toothpicks. There was no color to anything anymore—the people, the ground, the sky, they were all a dull, filthy gray-brown.”

Hideki’s memories of an idyllic pastoral community are juxtaposed with the destruction and devastation that resulted from the Battle of Okinawa. Homes have been reduced to nothing, natural features have been obliterated, and the vivid tropical colors have changed to a ubiquitous gray-brown.

“‘You say the American devils were nice to you, but we were told they would kill our babies.’

‘No,’ Hideki said. ‘They’re only monsters when they’re afraid. Just like the Japanese. All the Japanese and Americans care about is killing each other. You should surrender to the Americans.’

‘Surrender?’ Father Miyagi said. ‘But they’ll kill us!’

‘Not if you go to them now,’ Hideki replied. ‘If you wait until they’re fighting, until they’ve all become monsters, they’ll eat you up. Do you understand? If you surrender to them without threatening them, they’ll help you.’”

The role of Japanese propaganda in discouraging Okinawan civilians from surrendering is clear. Furthermore, Hideki’s growing maturity and compassion is also evident. He no longer condemns surrender as weakness, as he has experienced—the reality of combat has shown him that all people have the potential to be both monsters and saviors.

“On the very top, he placed his grenade. The one the IJA had given him to kill himself with. Hideki had finally understood: This is what he had to do with his last grenade. If he took it with him now, it would kill him. To live, Hideki had to leave his only weapon behind.”

Hideki’s rejection of war mentality and his desire to seek a future rather than destroy himself is evident in his decision to discard his final grenade and the IJA uniform. He knows that violence creates more violence; he hopes that the US troops in the camp have enough humanity left not to kill unarmed children. By living his own values, Hideki has completely abandoned the belief in honorable self-sacrifice and no longer thinks that death serves a higher purpose for Okinawa or Japan. Rather, he has come to understand that wartime death is an unnecessary tragedy.

“There aren’t any soldiers here. There are brothers and fathers and sons, surrounded by the people they love and the people who love them back. I’m honoring the men they were before they came to Okinawa. Before they became monsters.”

Hideki hangs these photographs, as well as the others that he and Ray have collected, in the ruins of the Shuri Castle—a symbolic gesture honoring the sacrifices of both Japanese and American soldiers. The act memorializes these men as the people they were before the war, rather than celebrating the violence they committed as soldiers. Gratz suggests that the devastation of war is unifying, in that human suffering and pain is universal. Hideki no longer distinguishes between the different ethnicities and racial categories of the people in the photos he hangs, respecting the humanity of the subjects equally and protecting all of their mabui.