Today is one of the days (Pearl Harbor Day & his birthday are the others) when I fire up some incense for my great-uncle Satoru. After his older brother (my grandfather) was rounded up & “relocated” under the provisions of Executive Order 9066, Uncle Sat ducked the feds & joined the 442nd RCT. He was 17. I’ve seen pics of him at that age. He looked like he was 14 or 15, I know he didn’t fool anybody. He returned from France minus his left leg. I was tight with him as a kid, and he never talked about the war. After he died, we mobilized a caravan of pickups to move Aunty Shizu into a condo. I grabbed a cardboard box from the master bedroom and it broke open. Out spilled Uncle Sat’s war memorabilia, including his Purple Heart & Silver Star. Aunty Shizu walked in on me & said “You’ve found the lucky charms!” She explained that Uncle Sat felt displaying them would have been “vulgar.” He saw them as tokens of his stupendous luck, and reminders of his brothers who never came home. Aunty Shizu called them lucky charms; a private endearment between the two of them. Except for Aunty Shizu & their daughter, I am the first member of the family to have ever seen them after the war. お大事に to those who’ve volunteered to be the pointy end of the spear. You’re better than me, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
