Sayonara (2 page)

O
n April 4, 1952, I shot down my sixth and seventh MIGs. It happened up near the Yalu River and when I returned to base at J-10 I was excited. The Air Force doctor took one look at me and said, “Gruver, you've had it.”

Boy, they were sweet words. They meant I was through flying for a while. But since I'm a West Point man I felt obligated to appear eager before the flight surgeon who had been called back from civilian life, pot belly and all. So I frowned and said, “Nothing wrong with me, Doc. A bottle of beer'll fix me up.”

“That's right,” the doc agreed.

He had taken my eagerness seriously and for a minute I felt a little sick inside. I didn't want to fly any more. Not just then. I wanted to appear rough and ready but I also wanted some solid chairborne duty.

But the doc was smart. He laughed and said, “Don't turn pale, Gruver. I was only kidding. I never take this hero stuff seriously.”

I relaxed and said, “Thanks. I could use some Korean sleep.”

“It's even better than that,” Doc said, putting away his stethoscope. “You're going back to Japan!”

From the way he said this you knew he thought Japan was paradise, but I'd been through the place and it never impressed me much.
Dirty streets, little paper houses, squat men and fat round women. I had never understood why some Air Force people got so steamed up about Japan.

I said, “If you go for Japan, I suppose it's good news. I'd just as soon rest up right here at J-10.”

Doc said, “You mean you never tangled with any of those beautiful Japanese dolls at Tachikawa?”

I said, “I'm a four-star general's son. I don't tangle with Japanese dolls, beautiful or not.”

Doc looked at me sorrowfully and said, “Chum, you're sicker than I thought.”

I hadn't meant to sound stuffy, but when you know your outfit sort of has you ticketed for fast promotion right through to colonel and maybe one-star general by the time you're thirty-five, a lot of the ordinary razzle-dazzle connected with military life doesn't impress you. On the other hand, I had always tried not to act superior to reserve officers just because they were civilians at heart.

I said, “I'll think of you, Doc, when I hit those clean Tokyo sheets and that good Tokyo beer.”

He shook his head with a tricky little leer and said, “For you, Chum, it ain't gonna be Tokyo. For you…special orders.”

Like a warning flash and without my actually thinking the word I blurted, “Kobe?”

“Yep, Chum! You made it.”

Instinctively I put my left hand on my hip and felt for my wallet. I said, “About these special orders? Were they from General Webster?”

“Yep, Chum! You're in.” He gripped his hands in a tight little ball and winked at me. “Why wouldn't one general look after another general's son?”

I had always known the doc to be a second-class sort of guy and I refused to be drawn into an argument. I played his game and said, “It's what they call the West Point spirit.”

“That's what I mean,” the doc said. “Kelly has your orders.”

“I'll go see Kelly,” I said, glad to get away from this know-it-all civilian.

But as I left the medical tent and started down the gravel path to squadron headquarters where Kelly worked, another civilian called me: “Gruver, could I speak with you?”

I turned and saw the chaplain and since he almost never spoke
to anyone except about trouble I stopped short and asked, “Kelly again?”

“Yes,” he said almost sorrowfully. “Kelly.”

I waited on the gravel path while he picked his way across the brown Korean mud. J-10 was almost all mud. When he joined me I asked, “What's he been up to now, Padre?”

“This time it's serious,” he said sorrowfully. He led me to his tent, a beat-up affair with Bibles, crucifixes and the special silver gadgets for conducting Jewish ceremonies.

“Kelly face another court-martial?” I asked.

“Worse. He's appealed to his Congressman.”

I'd always been disgusted with enlisted men who write letters to Congressmen. The Air Force had a sensible and just way to handle any problem. Congressmen weren't needed. So I asked, “Why don't you advise the colonel to throw this guy out of the service?”

“Under the new rules…”

The new rules! I was always forgetting the new rules. Starting in 1945 a lot of soft-headed do-gooders in Washington had revised the basic rules for military conduct and as a result you now saw enlisted men writing to Congressmen. I had always agreed with my father. Knock such stoops on the head and throw them in jail. Then the do-gooders could really sob.

“So under the new rules, what happens?” I asked.

“So Kelly gets his way. He goes back to Japan.”

“Ridiculous,” I said. “The Air Force is becoming a kindergarten.”

“And when he gets back to Japan, he marries the girl.”

This was too much. I sat down in one of the padre's rickety chairs and asked, “You mean that in spite of all you and the colonel have said to this kid he still gets permission to marry the girl?”

“That's right.”

“Why doesn't somebody bust him in the head?”

“That's no solution. I want you to talk with him.”

“Nothing more I can say.”

“Does the boy realize that if he marries this Japanese girl he can't possibly take her back to America?” the padre asked.

“Sure he knows. I made him sign the paper proving that he knows. He signed and told me what I could do with it.”

“You must talk with him once more, Gruver. He's a misguided boy.”

“He's a dead-end criminal, Father, and you know it.”

“Not a criminal! A tough boy who's had trouble in the Air Force. He's just hot-headed.”

“That's not where the heat is, Padre.”

He laughed and said, “You're right. That's why we mustn't let him make a fool of himself.”

I was tired from flying and said bluntly, “Look, Padre. Kelly belongs to your church. You're the guy who's got to save him.”

Chaplain Feeney became very serious and took my hands in his. It was a trick he used when he wanted to make a point and it accounted for much of his success with the squadron. He was never afraid to plead with a man. “You must believe me when I say I'm not trying to save Kelly for my church. I'm trying to save him for himself. If he marries this Japanese girl it can lead only to tragedy. In ordinary times such a marriage would be unwise, but under the new law…when he can't even take her with him to America…What's to happen, Gruver?”

He spoke so passionately that I had to give in. “All right. What do you want me to do?”

He was embarrassed at what he was about to suggest and hesitated a moment. Then he said, apologetically, “You're engaged to a fine, good-looking American girl. You showed me her picture one night.” He smiled as I automatically reached with my left hand for my wallet pocket. “When you're flying and things begin to get rough you pat that picture for good luck, don't you?”

I said I did. It was a gimmick I had picked up when I shifted from propeller planes to jets. Like most pilots, I was scared of the jets at first so whenever it looked like trouble I would pat my wallet for luck, because Eileen Webster had been good news for me ever since that special weekend I met her in San Antonio.

Chaplain Feeney said, “If the opportunity presents itself, show Kelly your girl's picture. Let him remember what a fine American girl looks like.”

I said, “I'm not selling anything.”

The padre was a smart man. “Who asked you to?” he said. “When he says he's determined to get married tell him you understand. Tell him you've seen some really wonderful Japanese girls.”

“Trouble is, Padre, I haven't. They're all so dumpy and round-faced. How can our men—good average guys—how can they marry these yellow girls? In '45 I was fighting the Japs. Now my men are marrying them.”

“I've never understood it. Such marriages are doomed and it's my job to prevent them.”

“I agree.”

“Then you'll speak to Kelly?”

“Wouldn't it be simpler for the colonel just to order him not to get married?” I asked.

Chaplain Feeney laughed. “Some things can't be handled that way. We've investigated the girl Kelly wants to marry. She's not a prostitute. She's not subversive. As a matter of fact, she got a good recommendation from our investigators. Used to work in a library. Kelly has a right to marry her.”

The word
marry
caught me strangely and I was swept back four years to a spring weekend in Texas when a gang of us left Randolph Field for a big time in San Antonio. We were walking down some stone steps to an open-air theater by the river that runs through the middle of San Antonio, when suddenly I saw this beautiful girl coming up. I did a double take and cried, “Aren't you General Webster's daughter?” And she gave me a dazzling smile and said she was and I stood right there staring at her and asking, “Why didn't you look like this when you lived across from me in Fort Bragg?” and she said she'd always looked like this but I had been too busy going away to the Point to notice. I tried to recall but couldn't even remember her clearly from those days so I said, “You must have been a long-legged kid of eleven when we were at Fort Bragg.” Then she said something which stopped me cold. She ignored the other Air Force men standing beside me and said, “I'm still a long-legged kid.” And she was right and eighteen days later we sort of made up our minds to get married. But Eileen's mother and Korea took care of that.

So I brought myself back to Korea and told Chaplain Feeney, “I'll do what I can.”

“Thanks, Gruver.” As I started to go he asked, “Mind if I speak to the colonel about you?”

“What for?”

“You're as tense as a watch spring, son. I'm going to tell the old man you ought to be grounded.”

I laughed and said, “The doc beat you to it. I'm on my way to Japan.”

“Wonderful,” he said. “Tokyo?”

“No, Kobe. My girl's father is general down there.”

“That's fortunate.”

“It has its drawbacks.”

“I mean Kelly is going to Kobe, too. You can keep an eye on him.”

I was disgusted. “You mean you're flying him back to where the girl is?”

“His Congressman insists on it.”

I started to say what I thought of Congressmen who butt into military affairs like this but the padre said, “You might save the boy.”

I thought of mean, sawed-off Joe Kelly and said as I left, “Nothing could save that bum.”

I
t was a curious day in Korea. Our air base at J-10 wasn't what you'd call warm, but there was a shot of spring in the air and the ground was beginning to thaw and even Korea felt pretty much the way any part of the world feels in spring. I took a couple of good deep lungfuls of air and walked down headquarters street, a dismal drag even with spring nibbling at its edges, and I said to myself, “Skip Kelly. Let him take care of himself.”

I headed for my bunk, where there would be some beer and a poker game, but then I realized that Kelly had the hot dope on my orders, so I went into the squadron tent where I found this mutt sitting behind a hand-painted sign big enough for a general:
AIRMAN KELLY
.

He was a runty kid in his teens. I was twenty-eight and everybody younger than that seemed immature, but Kelly really was. He'd never been to school but had a quick animal intelligence and a sort of gutter know-how. He'd come up through a tough section of Chicago and had sandy hair and an up-with-your-dukes Irish face. He was against the world and against all officers in particular. He had the weird record of having been promoted to corporal four times—and busted back each time. He was bitter and always in trouble and the last man in our outfit you would expect to get involved seriously with any girl.

He shoved my orders at me and said, “Pays to have friends.”

I had been responsible for one of Kelly's court-martials, but he had astonished me on the second by requesting me as his counsel. He respected no one, but he did like men who flew the jets. When he jammed the papers at me I was going to haul him up again, but he grinned and said, “Hear you bagged two more today.”

“Boom, boom.”

“How was it up there, Ace?”

“Never gets easier.”

“You know what's in your orders?” he asked in a snide way that a gangster might use in asking about a pay-off.

“Kobe,” I said, picking them up.

“Yeah, but I mean how you happened to get them?”

“I've never discussed things like orders with enlisted men,” I said, turning for the door.

Kelly was different. He said, “What I mean is, did you know about General Webster writin' to the colonel?”

It was infuriating. I wanted to bust this little twerp in the face but he kept me on the hook. I hesitated and said, “They're friends.”

“Sure, but these letters were about you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, General Webster started all his letters, ‘Of course I don't intend to intrude on your handlin' of the squadron but…' He always got the
but
in.”

“But what?”

“But he would sure like to have Major Lloyd Gruver come right the hell down to Kobe.”

I stuffed the papers into my pocket and said, “I didn't ask for orders like that.”

Kelly laughed in an ugly way and said, “You ain't heard nothin' yet, Ace.” He seemed to despise me for being an officer yet to tolerate me because I was a working pilot. He said, “General Webster's had you assigned to the Interservice Aviation Board, which means you sit on your parachute all day long and do nothin'.” Then he grinned and added. “But oh them nights.”

“What nights?”

Kelly poked his blunt little head in one direction then the other and asked, “Ace, can you keep a secret?”

I had always been careful never to discuss military secrets with anyone and I said, “I'd rather not hear about it.”

Kelly threw me a nasty salute and said, “This ain't Air Force secret. It's Ace Gruver secret.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why do you suppose you're gettin' orders to Kobe? And a cushy job? And a priority flight?”

I sensed that I was getting in too deep with Kelly and changed the subject. “Chaplain tells me you're heading for Kobe, too.”

“Yep.”

“I hear your Congressman arranged it.”

“Yep. Chaplain said no. Colonel said no. You said no. But the Congressman said yes.”

I let him know by my manner that I was disgusted with such procedures and asked with some irony, “And I hear you're getting married.”

“Yep.”

His insolence killed any intention I might have had to help Chaplain Feeney by arguing with this low-grade character. I signed the receipt for my orders and headed for the door. But Kelly stopped me short by saying, “I hear you're gettin' married too.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The general's daughter is arrivin' in Kobe. Tomorrow.”

Kelly stared up at me with a nasty grin and when I asked if this was true he said, “Yep. General Webster arranges it so you can marry his daughter. My Congressman arranges it for me. Generals for the officers. Congressman for the peasants.”

Kelly and I looked at each other in one of those odd moments when you seem to see life in absolutely clear cold light. You see another human being without uniform, without degrees, without past or future. There he is, with his own problems and ambitions that are miles apart from yours but which at the same time are part of yours. The Secretary of War once told me that my father's great success in the Army sprang from his ability to see each man he had to work with dangling in free space, suspended by a string leading to the hand of God. I could respect Kelly. He was trying to get my goat and he was an evil little twerp, but I could respect him.

I took out my wallet and asked, “Have I ever shown you a picture of the general's daughter?” I think Kelly must have been looking at me in that same cold clear light for he leaned forward like a human being and said no.

But I got mixed up—I'd never before bagged two MIGs in one
day—and the picture I grabbed was not my prize shot but one of Eileen and her mother. Kelly studied the picture and asked, “Is the battle-axe your mother-in-law?”

I recovered the picture and said, “This is the one I meant to show you.”

Kelly whistled and said, “Wow! She sure fills a bathing suit.”

I said, “She intended to.”

Kelly said, “She's a dish. Even for a general's daughter, she's a dish.”

I said, “It's pretty exciting to think of a girl like that waiting for you in Kobe. Thanks for the good news, Kelly.”

He said, “You ever seen Katsumi?”

“Where's Katsumi?” I asked.

“The girl I'm marryin'.”

“I'm sorry. I don't know Japanese names.”

“Think nothin' of it,” he said brashly.

He produced a small P.X. picture of his girl. I was embarrassed because this Katsumi was certainly no Madame Butterfly. She had a big round face, prominent cheeks and what looked like oil-black hair. If you'd never been in Japan you'd probably have taken her for an Indian or an Eskimo maybe. But if you've ever seen Tokyo you'd recognize Katsumi at once. She was one of the millions of girls who could never be pretty, who did all the heavy work and who dressed as if the only clothes in Japan were made from old flour sacks.

I had to say something and by the grace of God I remembered about her working in a library. I said, “She sure looks intelligent.”

Kelly said, “She's a lot brighter than me.”

I was about to leave when I recalled my promise to the padre. I asked, “Aren't you taking a big risk?”

“Risks don't scare me any more,” Kelly said defiantly.

“I mean about not being able to take her home?”

“That's what don't scare me,” he said.

“How old are you, Kelly?”

“Nineteen.”

“You're only a kid. Why don't you think this over?”

“I have. The Army and the Air Force and the State Department have ganged up to keep me from gettin' married. Only makes me more determined.”

“What do you mean, ganged up?” I don't like people who feel sorry for themselves.

“When my Kobe skipper saw I was really gettin' serious about Katsumi he gave me the bum's rush to Korea. Then the doubledomes in Washington set a deadline. ‘If you marry a Jap girl after then,' they said, ‘we won't let you bring her back Stateside.' So I drew a court-martial for demandin' that I be sent back to Japan to marry the girl before the new law. I never made it. And now each week Father Feeney hands me a pamphlet provin' how stupid I am even to be thinkin' about such a thing.”

He ripped open a drawer and slammed down some mimeographed sheets widely used in our area to bring young kids to their senses. The one on top was titled, “But Will Your Family Accept Her?” Kelly grabbed it in his hairy hand, crumpled it up and pitched it into the basket.

“They've tried everything to stop us, but do you know what I'm gonna do, Ace?”

“Something stupid, I'm sure.”

“That's right. I'm stupid enough to be in love. It happens that I love this girl. And if I have to give up my American citizenship to marry her, that's O.K. with me.” He was trembling mad and put his girl's picture back in his desk.

I was outraged to think that any American man would dare to talk like that. Give up his citizenship! I wanted to grab the young idiot and knock some sense into him, tell him that anyone who even thought of surrendering his American citizenship for a Japanese girl ought…He turned his back on me and started on some paperwork, as if to dismiss me.

I don't take that from anyone. I got sore. I reached out, grabbed him by the shirt and spun him around. “Who in hell do you think you are?” I cried.

To my amazement he cocked his fist and threatened me. “I'll let you have it, Ace.”

For one brief moment I wanted to mix with this squirt and pin his ears back, but I realized that would be murder. I could have massacred him any day in the week. So I dropped my hand and said, pretty well shaken up, “You get to be a hophead with these damn jet planes.”

Kelly was completely at ease. He laughed and said, “We could use some more men like you.”

I said, “Excuse me, Joe. But you sounded crazy when you said you'd give up your citizenship—for a girl.”

“I am crazy,” he said. “I'm in love—crazy.”

I felt a little dizzy and said, “Let's go over to my bunk and split a beer.”

“Wonderful!” he cried, slamming his desk shut. As we walked through the late afternoon sunshine with the hint of spring warmth about us he said, “You know, Ace, back there I wasn't afraid to sock you. Because I know that if I did you'd knock my block off fair and square and you wouldn't yell for a cheap court-martial.”

“Oh, brother! How wrong can you be? I just finished arguing with the chaplain that you ought to be court-martialed for having written to your Congressman.”

“I mean, you wouldn't turn me in over a personal grudge.”

I thought a minute and said, “I guess you're right.”

“That's what I mean,” he said.

We went into my bunk and promoted a fifth of Suntory. I said to Joe, “The Japs must make this out of farmers' socks.” But Joe took a murderous gulp and cried approvingly, “Wow, that's man's stuff.”

It was obvious that he wanted to talk with someone. He asked, “You really do think I'm nuts, don't you? The guys at the mess hall do too. That is…” He paused, looked at me carefully and said, “That is, some of them do. But you know a strange thing, Ace? In the bunks at night you never hear one man who married a Japanese wife complain. You hear a lot of other guys complain about their women. But not the ones who got hitched in Japan.”

This seemed so unlikely that I took a long pull at the bottle and asked, “How come?”

“Sounds old-fashioned, Ace, but it must be love. If a white man with good Air Force pay goes ahead and marries a yellow girl, it must be love.”

“That's ridiculous!” I felt the old yearning coming back to knock some sense into this kid but he was dragging on the bottle again, so I said, “I'm in love. Half the men around here I know love some girl back in the States. What's so special about loving a Japanese girl?”

He said, “You ever been in the bunks at night? Men with wives back in the States talk about Junior's braces and country-club dances and what kind of car their wife bought. But the men with Japanese wives tell you one thing only. What wonderful wives they have. They're in love. It's that simple.”

This flustered me because he might have been talking about my own family. My father was a four-star general with a tremendous reputation as a result of what he accomplished in Guadalcanal and the
Philippines, and my mother had written a couple of stories that had appeared in the
Atlantic Monthly.
They were excellent people, they were exciting people, but they had never been in love. In his bunk at night I think my father must have talked about my braces and the kind of car my mother drove. I'm sure he never talked about love.

I said, “There's a better explanation. The guys with Japanese wives are younger. They don't have kids to talk about.”

Joe thought that one over, took another swig, and said, “You could be right, Ace. But I ain't takin' no chance. Because when I see Katsumi I see a dame who could fill my heart for the rest of my life.” He looked down the tent as if pondering his next comment, then went ahead and made it. “Tell me, Ace, do you feel that way about your girl?”

He had me again because I was a professional soldier. My future was all cut out and I knew that I would never find any one girl whose presence filled my heart forever and ever. Among the young officers in my gang love wasn't like that. You looked the field over and found a good-looking solid citizen who could stomach you for the rest of your life and if she came from a military family, like Eileen, so much the better. I couldn't explain to Kelly that Eileen would be the finest wife an Air Force officer could have and yet not be the way he was describing.