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by Bob Laine
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we were only boys
and they were too
we were Americans
they were Japanese
there were two of us
there was six of them
they saw us
we saw them
we ran
they chased
we were only boys
we were just brothers
two Air Force Brats
looking fun on a Sunday
it was 1974 In Misawa Japan
we were old enough to know
the locals could be hostile
but too young to know why
in Japanese culture class
we folded colored squares
while they taught us the words for
good morning and thank you
ohayou gozaimasu we would say to
our paper swans
domo arigato
our origami frogs would croak back
our fragile menagerie
spoke to us in bright colors
and perfect creases
they
like us
knew nothing about
mushroom clouds
and nuclear fallout
the assimilation curriculum
did not include a module on
‘reasons why the indigenous
population might hate you’
so we were confused at the scowls
we sometimes got in the the local shops
and from passerby in the street
I thought maybe they
just didn’t like kids
I had met adults like that
but why did the kids hate us too?
then I thought maybe it was my
handicapped brother they didn’t like
I had met kids and adults like that too
and I was always ready to fight anyone
who tried to mess with my brother
unless of course there was six of them
in that case I ran
we were only boys
and they were too
my brother and I ran
and the six Japanese boys did too
we cut through back yards
they followed
we dodged rock gardens and kiddy pools
they hurdled them
we squeezed ourselves under a fence
they scaled it
when we reached the far side of a large baseball park
it looked like we were running out of options
when I realized in slow motion horror
that it was no longer we
it was just me
my brother had plopped down midfield
bawling and screaming
like he was the devil’s baby
and the Japanese boys were closing in
it’s a moment of time
that is frozen in my memory
that jarring feeling that I had failed my brother
that I have abandoned him
that I was powerless to protect him
that feeling would never leave me
I would remember that feeling
the day I left for college
knowing I would never live in the same
city or house with my brother again
that feeling would come back every time
I returned home from another too short family visit
and even now
forty years later
when my brother’s annual
four month stay with me ends
and I take him to the airport
to send him back home to my sister and parents
I will sit at the gate
looking out the window
as his plane taxis away
and the memory of that Sunday will return
even five minutes after the plane has taken off
I will still be sitting there
seeing the impossible length of field between us
feeling I am as powerless now as I was then
in Misawa Japan in 1970
the six Japanese boys
never touched my brother
for reasons unknown
they accepted his ear-piercing surrender
passed him by
chased me down
and beat the living shit outta me
we were only boys
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