Guest Post By: Maria Rainier
Some years ago, I visited Japan and was sitting in the home of one of my friends when she told me a story about the time she and her mother had lived in Okinawa.
Okinawa is a cluster of islands south of Japan and was the closest American ground troops got to mainland Japan in World War II. I knew of the battles there, the over 60,000 and 100,000 American and Japanese military dead, the 100,000 Okinawan civilian dead. Ghost stories abound there more than almost anywhere else in Japan, the exceptions perhaps being Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two cities reserved for American atomic bombs.
Over a traditional bowl of rice and other fare, my friend Nana began to tell me about the time, one summer’s day, she went out with a friend to look for adventure, as middle-school-aged children are wont to do. I can’t, for the life of me, recall where she and her friend purportedly went, but the day that had started out cloudless turned later to rain, making a bridge they came upon quite slick. They crossed it, found nothing but boring fields and a dirt path beyond it, and went back to town without incident.
When Nana returned home, dripping wet and hungry for dinner, her mother took one look at her in the doorway and told her stop in her tracks.
“You crossed the bridge, didn’t you?”
Nana nodded, perplexed.
“You brought someone back with you.”
Her mother had tilted her chin at her, “because pointing would have been rude and made him angry,” she said to me across the table.
I was stunned by the sudden turn of the story. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been, as many Okinawans treat the idea of specters and spirits quite casually. I’ve never been much of a believer in the paranormal, but I couldn’t help but wonder what reason Nana had to lie to me, and in cahoots with her mother, no less.
“He was clinging to your shoulders,” Nana’s mother said quietly as she took another bite of rice. “Like someone does when you’re giving them a piggy-back ride.”
“Mama said he wasn’t a malicious essence, just someone who didn’t know where to go. He found me and came back with me because he was scared and lonely,” Nana explained.
He had been a civilian during the war, according to his tattered dress and lack of uniform. He had probably been caught in the crossfire between opposing armed forces, judging by the blood on his shirt where there had been three very small holes, maybe the size of rifle rounds. After an hour-long talk with Nana’s mother under the doorway, not a step further into their house, he had left, never to be seen again.
I’ll say again that I’m not much of a believer. Still, it is of Nana and the man on her back that I think of whenever it rains.
Bio: Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education performing research surrounding online universities and their various program offerings. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.
