The Bone Dig

In January and the first half of February of 1996, I avoided one of Northern Michigan's snowiest winters by teaching for a Michigan State University Master's program held at Kadena Air Force Base, an American military base, on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Okinawa today is a bustling island, crowded with houses and shops from shore to shore. Historically, it was the sight of the bloodiest battle of the second World War, with high civilian causalities&emdash;the only battle fought on Japanese soil.

Mainly, I taught military personnel. Strange place for an aging sixties anti-war activist! My pacifist wife Sharon, who had grown up in the military and whose first marriage was to a marine officer, told me I needed a "dose of military" to appreciate what her life had been like before we'd met. Those six weeks were plenty!

During my stay, two of my students in a course on death and dying invited me to attend a Shinto "bone dig." At first I thought we'd be going on an archeological expedition to a well-developed site. Only after I agreed did I learn the dig was to recover the remains of soldiers and civilians killed during World War II. Already committed to the tune of fifty dollars, I quelled the unease that surfaced as I learned what adventures lay ahead.

The fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II and the Battle of Okinawa had been celebrated the year before. I'd toured some of the battlefields, where Japanese tourists still receive starkly different versions of the same events. Until quite recently, related our tour guide, the Japanese had not discussed the war. The official "spin" in schools was that the Americans had started the war and, in this bloodiest and costliest battle of the entire war, had killed many civilians. We noted that as Americans and Japanese passed at the Peace Prayer Park, on the southern tip of Okinawa, glances were not returned, paths remained studiously separate.

This annual bone dig, now twenty years old, continues for remains and to identify those who died in the battle. Only then, according to the Shinto religion, can their spirits be released from the site of their death. Buddhist and Christian groups also participate since many who died were from these religions. Occasionally, exact identifications are made. Despite these years of searches, many areas remain unexplored.

I was apprehensive. Shinto is a principle religion of Japan. Were Americans really welcome? Weren't we the last people the Okinawans would want around?

According to Ron Fuller, who currently organizes the American participation, Americans have been welcomed for the past eleven years. "During the first years," Ron recalled, "some Japanese were very distant. When they saw how dedicated and respectful we became to the process, we developed friendships."

Ron shared stories, one about the Japanese Army major, a veteran of the war, who would come each year in full combat attire, including backpack and sword, to participate until he died five years ago at the age of eighty-five. He had been one of the few Japanese survivors of the Okinawa campaign, shipped home on leave in the days before the battle began. "I should have been with them" he would maintain each year at the banquet, his honor somehow blemished by his survival. Many of the Japanese who come are now in their seventies and eighties, still searching for identifiable remains that will allow them to release the souls of their husbands and brothers.

With no experience in jungles and subtropical areas, I was puzzled how bodies could remain undiscovered fifty-one years later in what seemed like a dense urban and industrialized island. I knew that hundreds of thousands had died, that thirty percent of the Okinawans had perished in those bloody three months. I hadn't seen any jungle, just beautiful beaches and parks. Why were the bodies not found? Why did the need for a search continue?

The answer became apparent as our team of Americans and Japanese left Peace Prayer Park. Finished for the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, it was built as a memorial to all war dead, including Americans and Korean slave laborers. The exception remains the enslaved Asiatic "women of comfort" that the Japanese government still officially refuses to accept as their responsibility and whose names are yet to be placed on the wall. Etched with the names of those who died in the style of the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC, this wall created an amphitheater overlooking the ocean, a stone-covered stage in whose center burns an eternal flame.

From the top of the cliff (called Suicide Cliff) with its breathtaking view of the shimmering Pacific, thousands of women and children had been herded and forced to jump to their "honorable deaths" rather than fall victim to the horrors in store for them by the terrifying Americans. Many more hid in caves below the cliff. Some were rescued. Others killed themselves or were killed. These cliff jungle areas, like the rest of Okinawa, had been blown into a moonscape by the offshore bombing in May and June of 1945. Quickly, vegetation returned, the caves were sealed, and the cliffs became inaccessible, governed by the hostile and deadly creatures of the jungle.

Near the park, we descended under Suicide Cliff, slowly hacking our way with machetes through vines and dense clinging underbrush which left no trace of last year's trails. This annual dig is scheduled for early February each year, a time when "jungle critter" activity is relatively dormant, with highly lethal snakes gratefully in hibernation. Only giant, hand-sized poisonous centipedes were in evidence, and easily avoided in the caves.

Gloves and helmets were mandatory as we climbed over and under jagged coral, mounted rugged climbs which led past partially hidden caves, and skirted and heard but never reached the ocean. The terrain, in brief spurts, was as challenging as any mountain climb I'd ever been on. It took a concentrated burst of energy from this fifty-six-year-old reasonably fit body to climb out of one rugged area. Puffing and wheezing, I was eager to complain. Then I glanced back, sighed and extended a hand to the tiny eighty-year-old Japanese woman who companioned me on the rest of my muted journey.

Thirty or more of those present on the dig were Americans. There were a couple of hundred Japanese, mainly from the Shinto religious groups on the mainland who sponsored the annual event. Split into different teams spread out in many sites, young Japanese men, armed with machetes and walkie-talkies, directed the search. With their limited English and our non-existent Japanese, we were often just told to "dig" and pointed to a spot or to a cave.

Our team found bones, artifacts of pottery, clothing and medical supplies. It was easy to see why this place had not been searched before; the jungle was so thick that five steps in one direction could leave one completely lost. The admonition to keep at least one person in sight at all times was taken seriously.

One teenager, Mark, had been dragged along on the dig by his teacher parents Tammy and Ralph. His complaining was suddenly replaced by curiosity and excitement. He'd found a tiny cave opening which could only be entered by crawling flat on his stomach for several feet. We apprehensively followed his lead, soon relieved to be standing in cathedral space with light from an opening to the sky. It was a cave that had obviously not been explored since the war. Huge rocks had cascaded to the floor, crushing bowls and burying remnants not taken away or devoured by animals.

Near one wall I found a bowl whose rim was partially broken sitting in the center of a flat rock that had once served as a ceremonial table. Scraping with a hand rake and sorting with my gloved fingers, I held a small flashlight in my teeth to illuminate the darkened space. I began scraping downhill toward the side of the cave. I found pieces of broken pottery, a cache of partially rotted shoes and belts, an intact section of silken underwear. Tammy found some old one yen coins. Suddenly she gasped. Two feet from me, almost under my heel as I was backing toward the wall, was a pineapple-shaped hand grenade. We called for Yukio, our supervisor, who warned us not to touch. "Dangerous," he pronounced, then taped the grenade to a flat rock. He left it in our midst, a relic that sobered, a reminder of the death and fear this space once held, its potency still alive for those not respectful of war's enduring power to destroy.

Earlier, at a site outside this hidden cave, a young Japanese woman found bones identified as a mother and infant. A white cloth was spread, with each fragment placed on the cloth. We stared at the remains of mother and child, silently wondering what their last moments were like, how they might have died.

Each bone was considered a sacred find. Perhaps the only remnant of a relative that would ever be found, the release of the spirit from this place of traumatic death depended on the proper religious ceremony and burial.

In my site, I found a small bone identified as a finger bone. Later, Ralph found another finger bone near a glass hypodermic needle. We conjectured that this cave was either a hospital or a garbage dump. Perhaps the fingers were amputated. Perhaps they were all that remained after a grenade suicide.

The first time we really paused to take note of each other was to share lunch snacks. My eighty-year-old hiking companion passed out candy, smiling and bowing. Others shared their formal several-course traditional Japanese lunches. We unabashedly passed back peanut butter crackers which were gracefully accepted. There was joking; laughter was shared even when neither group understood.

After lunch, we were no longer directed by the pros&emdash;we searched on our own, in blended teams of Japanese and Americans. There were intact pots, some huge and undisturbed. I dug for a while at the mother-infant site, uncovered a whitish hard piece, retired to allow the experts to extract it from roots and stone.

Four bone sites were found by our group. By three o'clock, we gathered at the white cloths and prepared to depart. A Shinto incantation was offered. Hands were folded in prayer, then clapped four times to release the spirit. A chant was recited. Bones were tied in sheets.

We began our tortuous ascent, thankful it was less than a mile to the park. Still the return took almost an hour. It was a disadvantage to be tall Americans, the macheted path having been chopped by the shorter Japanese. Backpacks caught on thick vines, feet tripped over invisible ones.

Back at Peace Prayer Park, we were welcomed with tea and candies. While the larger group was assembling, I wandered back to the wall. The Pacific Ocean backdrop extended to the horizon beyond the edge of Kyan Point, the Suicide Cliff. In the forever-silent audience of etched names were sections for the dead from each Japanese Prefecture, for Koreans, Okinawans and Americans.

The American section, divided by branch of service, was stage right, nearest the cliff, ocean and the flame. I found my uncle's name, a surprise discovery three weeks before. At age six, I had thought he'd been killed in Iwo Jima, not Okinawa, which is also a "Jima," meaning island. I traced "Gilbert, Thos H" lightly with my finger, took pictures, remembered how his remains had not been discovered even after the war, with only his dog tags evidence of the likely spot he'd died and decomposed. I contemplated how it might have been if he'd been around as I grew up. Sighing, I turned and left, returning to the gathering group.

A tent with food and offerings for the deceased housed the ceremony conducted by five Shinto priests flown in from the mainland. The oldest Japanese were standing in a row just outside the tent. They would later present a living "branch of peace" to the altar, as would representatives of the Americans. The Shinto priests entered, in ceremonial black and white gowns and tall spired hats, and sat in two rows facing each other. It was bitterly cold and windy as we listened and watched, not comprehending the meaning of chant and ritual gesture, joining only with folded hands and the four claps which we knew were to release the spirits.

At the banquet, tables were culturally blended. Traditional Okinawan dancers entertained us during a thirteen-course Japanese meal. Two teenage Japanese girls, granddaughters of my trail friend, watched me using chopsticks in my unorthodox between-fingers-grip I developed in childhood. "An American professor's grip," I announced sheepishly. They bowed respectfully and giggled behind their napkins.

As beer and sake loosened us from formal beginnings, we explored commonalties, shared stories of the day and of the mission, found mutual interests, exchanged addresses. The on-stage performance ended with an invitation to join in the dance. The audience responded, flooding the stage with a delightful cacophony of movement.

We Americans were treated as celebrities. "Please come back next year" was the plea of Toshibasan, an MBA from Tokyo, as we were leaving. My older Japanese jungle companion came to me at the banquet, saying, "You are in my heart" while holding her hand over it. I was deeply moved.

I'm sure there are many ways of bringing together two cultures separated by language, customs, religion, and a history of alienation and combat. It's hard for me to imagine any being more effective and healing.

History, it is said, cannot be written while those who participated in the events of that time are still alive. Such a philosophy assumes objectivity is some day attainable for events so emotionally laden and traumatic as war and holocaust. Others say that history is a living, subjective process, lived and told by survivors, altered by new facts and healing connections. So we continue to discover minute pieces of what happened in those horrible months in the spring of 1945. We rebuild history by sharing in its process of healing. How different this seems from the ongoing battles of revenge in Bosnia, Croatia, the North of Ireland, and elsewhere.

The Shinto religious groups debated whether to continue the expensive trips from the mainland after the fiftieth anniversary, but as long as one body is found, they decided, it is worth it.

My Uncle Tom died on Okinawa. I did not find the exact place he died, but it matters to me that I found his name on the wall, that I searched alongside others who lost loved ones in that battle. It matters to me that I made a connection to a people and a place no longer so remote, that I shared the warmth of the eternal torch of memory. It matters to me that my new friends and I were witnesses and participants in a transformation forged in a bloody war between our relatives.

Whose souls, whose grief gets released by such discoveries? Does it matter, as these moments of healing between cultures, between generations, between enemies continue? There are those who will continue to search, and in their search find validating companionship from unlikely sources. Isn't that what the spirit of healing is about?

Return to the Index of Synapse 44, Summer 1998