Chapter 16 Bloody Saturday #2
The sounds of your parents arguing followed you down the hallway and through the stairwell, chasing you through the building until, at last, you climbed up toward the roof, and left their anger behind you for a while.
Time proved Mami right.
As summer ebbed along, Westerners began to leave the city. First the women and children, then nonmilitary men: bankers, traders, craftsmen, and the like. A trickle of flight that grew into a panicked stream as the months slipped by. That, you could not ignore. No one could.
The British began running drills, preparing the Hong Kong population for impending invasion. Soon, you learned to dread the air raid sirens.
The first time you heard one, you did not recognize the noise. It sounded like the spirit of the wind being cut open, tormented with needles, and then forced through a pipe organ. The wailing moan went right through your soul. The bombs would be worse, when they fell.
Baba continued to insist that Britain would protect Hong Kong. Mami smoked and ignored him; you listened, and tried to believe. He continued insisting that for the next few months until, on the 7th of December in 1941, Japan woke the “sleeping giant” of America by bombing Pearl Harbor.
The same morning, half a world away, they also launched an attack on Hong Kong which destroyed the city’s airbase. The Americans did not talk about that as much, though.
Most of Hong Kong’s northern territory was taken in barely a week. That, I remember starkly. It fell with breathtaking suddenness, leaving those who were on Hong Kong Island, like you and your parents, utterly stunned.
“We should leave, like the gweilos are,” Mama said, later that day, during an argument with Baba. They argued nonstop, now. Mostly about the war. “Before it is too late!”
But Baba would only say, “Go where? There’s nowhere to go!”
“We could return to my ancestral home.” It was the first time Mami made the suggestion, though it would not be the last. “It’s quiet there—”
“Daiyu, you were the one who told me never again that place, not ever. The things you said about it—”
“That was then, this is now,” Mami retorted. “The worst my island has is ghosts. That’s better than war. It must be. If we stay here, we will die!”
“And how would we eat, on this island of ghosts? How would we live? What happens if the Japanese land there?” Baba stormed out, and neither of you said much for the rest of the evening. By the time you went to bed, he was still gone.
But late that night, sounds of warfare woke you, the guns and shells distant yet audible. Your eyes flew open in the early hours of darkness from a particularly loud explosion, and it was then that you saw the light on in your living area.
Naturally, you got up and peeked through the door.
Your father had returned.
He sat at the kitchen table which had been the literal and metaphorical center of your life for as long as you could remember, smoking one cigarette after the next in flickering candlelight.
His back was toward you, shoulders stooped with what you thought was weariness, but would later realize was defeat.
“Baba?” You kept your voice pitched low, so as not to wake Mami. “What are you doing?”
“I’m thinking and remembering,” he said, without looking up. “I haven’t heard from my brother or his family since Shanghai fell. Haven’t seen him for almost twenty years. Did you know it had been so long?”
In fact, you did know that. Baba and his brother had never found the time for a reunion. You said nothing, though, because he wasn’t really speaking to you at all.
“I’m sure he is gone, now. Obliterated when the city fell. Everything is gone.” He coughed smoke. “Buddha says, All things are transient. Every single moment we are undergoing birth and death. That is the way things are.”
You fidgeted in awkward silence, unsure how to talk to him. He’d never been like this around you, so oddly vulnerable and maudlin.
“Go back to bed, my little bird.” He stubbed out the glowing end of his cigarette and lit another with hands that shook. “Don’t go into work tomorrow. It isn’t safe. And don’t let your Mami go in, either.”
With the wisdom of a goddess, I know that your Baba was afraid, and deeply ashamed.
He believed he’d failed you in a fundamental way; that he should have got you all out of Hong Kong, somehow.
He felt that he should have predicted or altered the course of world events, though they were far outside his control.
His state of mind was born from a toxic sense of self-flagellation, and that must have been terrible to bear alone.
At twenty, you were far too young to talk to him about the choice he was weighing. If you existed another hundred years, you would still be too young. Nobody is ever old enough to talk about war and death.
All the same, you would later wish that you’d tried. That you’d told him No, I won’t go to bed, not just yet. That you’d sat with him, put your head on his shoulder, and said Pain is transient too, Baba. Good things may be transient, but so are bad things, because Buddha also teaches this.
If nothing else, you would later wish that you’d sat with him through the night. Though he wasn’t a perfect human, he was the only father you had, and there would never be a shared grave for the three of you. Your family would not be lucky enough to enjoy such a fate.
But the past is written and unchanging. In my unlying memory of that evening, you merely did as he asked, curling on the bed into a tight ball. Sleep crept up on you like a mountain lion, leaping when your attention lagged.
In the early hours of December 15, 1941, you woke to Baba’s absence with a haunting sense of bewilderment and trepidation. He’d left, taking almost nothing with him except shoes and clothes. There was a note on the kitchen table.
Mami had got up before you, and already read it. She thrust the slip of paper your way.
“He’s written it to you,” she said, and you wince; Baba hadn’t left a note for her. That must have stung.
Still, you took the scrap of writing from her swollen-knuckled hands and silently read your father’s blocky script, the characters so meticulously formed.
Siu Yin, your mother is right. We cannot stay in Hong Kong any longer.
There is no time to waste—both of you must leave the city.
Go to Shek Ham Chau, as your mother has suggested.
She still owns property there. It is bleak and lonely on the outlying islands, and rife with ghosts, but it will be free of invaders.
Either way, look after your Mami until I return. I will wrap up our affairs, use the money to purchase a boat of our own, and pick you both up in a few weeks.
“I’m … so tired, daughter.”
You looked up.
Mami had simply collapsed into a kitchen chair, the sharpness of her dulled and blunt. Her shoulders twitched but her face was a landslide of tiredness, as if all the fight and fury had eroded suddenly. The one person who could always spur her to anger had gone.
She hadn’t tried to go into work, nor had you. The skin across your back tightened as you hunched in shame.
You were too old to cry, too young to know what you should do. Instead, you sat by the window, knees scrunched to chest, flinching when the air raid sirens came on again. It seemed like you should do … something. You felt like doing nothing. There were no words for how you felt in that moment.
Look after your Mami until I return, he’d said, but you had no idea how to do that, how you were supposed to manage this without him.
There is no time to waste—both of you must leave the city.
That directive. You thought about it, reading the words over and over, and realized the stark truth: despite his protestations these past months, Baba knew the city was not secure.
He expected it to be either overrun or bombed to fragments shortly, or both.
He wanted his family to flee before Hong Kong surrendered.
Go to Shek Ham Chau, as your mother has suggested.
His fears about invasion were well-founded, and you shared them.
Everyone had heard what life might be like under Japanese occupation.
Citizens whispered about every horror under the sun, citing the massacres and war atrocities, the wanton rape and random slaughter of innocents.
That had happened in other places, and if your city fell, it would be your fate, too.
It is bleak and lonely on the outlying islands, and rife with ghosts, but it will be free of invaders.
He had underlined those words: free of invaders. This man, whom you adored and respected, had given you a final task. In the end, how could you refuse him? He was your Baba, after all. That brought an end to any lingering doubts.
“Mami,” you said, “get up. We need to leave.”