Go For Broke

Connor Akiyama

23 April 2015

World Literature Honors

Ms. Bennett

Go For Broke

“MORTARS!” cried out the officer next to me, his binoculars trembling in his hands as he pointed them towards the ridge ahead. He clamped down on the top of his steel helmet and cried out, “GET TO YOUR FOXHOLES!” We scrambled like eggs and knocked over our boiling kettles in our rush for safety.

I peeked over the edge of my dirt trench and quickly ducked back down as the dirt kicked up around my eyes. I held my rifle close to my body, like it was my child. Clumps of dirt flew around me, full of machine gun bullets fired ferociously, indiscriminately. My rifle slid across the dirt as I placed myself along the bottom of the foxhole and aimed my iron sights forward.

Three years ago, when the Zeros first flew over Pearl Harbor, my world was shattered as if the bombs had hit my home in Stockton. I was always an American at heart, but my official records pointed to my father, a Japanese citizen.

Suddenly there was silence across both our lines. We glanced nervously at each other as the trees stopped swaying and the radioman furiously barked relays to the artillery battalion. German shouting rang out from across the meadow as a distant rumble slowly became audible to our ears.

“Tiger tanks,” someone gasped as a wave of white hot terror swept the entire line. “Sir we have to pull back.” Our knuckles whitened as we clutched tighter to our weapons, desperation in our eyes.

When those bombs fell, my father panicked, but not me, because I was a loyal American. When the government took our radios so we couldn’t contact “home”, I didn’t turn mine in because I was an American. Then I was forcibly disarmed and evacuated by train to the Turlock Fairgrounds into a cramped and hastily erected internment camp. It was at that moment, two whole years ago, that I realized, my own country had turned against me in our darkest hour.

“5 TIGERS. MARK NINER TWO SEVEN THREE FIVE” screamed the radio man as five tiger tanks menacingly burst out from the undergrowth and barrelled at us like the parade-goers in New York. Shouts, shots, and explosives rang out suddenly as everyone gathered their wits and began to shoot.

In Turlock, the recruitment officer asked for my name without any regale. I stiffly replied, “Grant Matsumoto, sir. 24 years old, UC Berkeley class of 1941, worked as a farmhand in central California afterwards.” I stared at his slanted hat so as to avoid direct eye contact, the khaki fabric softly illuminated by the rays of the rising sun. He sized me up quickly and handed me an American loyalty questionnaire.

As I was nearing the end of the survey, the final question glared out at me like a foreboding pair of yellow eyes in the dark of night. “Will you … forswear any form of allegiance to the Japanese Emperor or any other foreign government, power, or organization?” I was an American forced to abandon my home, herded out to the middle of nowhere like a cow, and forced to live in repurposed horse stables that still had the stench of alfalfa and manure. Now I was being questioned about my loyalty to a country whose loyalties themselves I was no longer sure about. But when I turned in my packet, the blue ink was bled into the paper, “yes”.

    We had to charge or we would be obliterated by the hail of mortar and tank fire raining down on our positions like mini teardrops from Hell. “Okay men,” yelled the company commander at the top of his lungs. “I know this is asking a lot from you, but we need to man up right now, and rush the Krauts or we will be overrun.”

    “Are you out of your mind!?” screamed a young Japanese soldier in the rear.

    “That’s sir to you, soldier,” he briskly replied. We smiled faintly at his riposte as our stomachs churned like the treads of the tanks ahead.

    We quickly leaped out of our foxholes and charged straight at the tanks, firing our guns from our hips, spraying them in every single direction. Then the machine gun fire started.

    “Son, why are you doing this?” my father worriedly asked me after I returned from the army tent. “You’ll get killed out there for a country that no longer honors you.”

    I pondered this for a moment and kicked the hay around my feet. Finally I mustered the courage to speak and responded, “Because if I don’t fight, we won’t be honored after the war. We are Americans and if I must sacrifice my life to show my dedication to this country, then that is what I must do. I will not back down in the face of these illegal war time acts nor will I capitulate to the forces that oppress me. After all, I’m an American.” My father’s eyes flashed briefly with a glimmer of hope as he proudly looked at me.

    “I’ll tell you how the New York Giants do this season,” he said, with a levity in his tone and a small grin on his face as he patted my shoulder.

    But now, in this field, my gut burned like the Great Chicago Fire set itself off in my stomach. I fell to my knees, hazily looking forward at my still running comrades. The burning would not stop and I clenched my stomach with my hand. The blood flowed out from the machine gun round in my stomach. I keeled backwards with the sounds of explosions going off around me and the screaming from both sides. I felt the cold hands of a friend press down on my stomach with a first aid kit and scream for the company medic.

    He desperately muttered to me, “Grant! Grant! Stay in it buddy, you’re 442nd, you can’t go on us now. We still have a war to win. Go for broke remember?”

    As I fluttered between consciousness, I smiled slightly. “To risk it all,” I murmured. Go for broke.