My fingernails dug into my palms. I didn’t care what war meant. I just wanted it to return my mother to me, give me back my father and my uncles, and make our family whole again.

The Great Hunger

Ngh? An, 1942–1948

Guava, tell me how you like this short poem.

Quiet pond

a frog leaps into

the sound of water

You think it’s beautiful? I do, too. The poem is a haiku written by a famous Japanese poet named Matsuo Bashō, who lived in the sixteenth century. I found Mr. Bashō’s poems a few years ago, when I’d become a teacher and decided to learn about the Japanese. I wanted to understand why Japanese soldiers had done what they did in our country. The books I read told me that many Japanese are Buddhists like us. They worship their ancestors and love their families. Like us, they like to cook and eat, and dance, and sing.

Before I read those books, I’d watched the Japanese man—Black Eye—in the winter of 1942. I’d tried to believe that he had some goodness inside of him and that he would let my father go.

Do you really want to know what happened to your great-grandpa? All right. Hold my hand as I go on.

Black Eye advanced. He reached into the cart, and flung a sack of potatoes onto the road. The soldiers kicked open the sack, chopped the potatoes into pieces. I watched my father closely as he put the wooden board back onto the cart. Oh, I watched him—the tanned hands that had held me against his chin, the eyes that had lit up whenever they saw my smile, the lips that had told me countless legends and fairy tales of my village.

Several men from the two groups of soldiers were talking to each other in a language I couldn’t understand. It sounded soft and lyrical. Surely, the people who held such a language on their tongues couldn’t be brutal toward others.

The women were pushed forward. They scrambled frantically into the cart like mice being chased into a hole, hurried by the glinting bayonets. My father stood by, helping them up, sorrow heavy on his face.

“Tell me who the potatoes are really for?” Black Eye roared, shoving his hand against my father’s chest, pushing him away from the cart. “For the Vi?t Minh guerrillas who just killed my comrades?”

“No, Sir. They’re for my customers in Hà N?i.”

“Ah, for the French, the invaders of your country?” Black Eye laughed. He turned as if about to walk away. But in a swift movement, he spun around, his sword cutting a deadly arc across the air. “Traitor!”

I stood frozen as fountains of blood spouted out of my father’s neck. His head thumped down the road, rolling, his eyes wide with terror. As C?ng pressed his palm tight against my mouth, my father’s arms writhed in the air. His body crumpled.

The world around me spun as I tried to run toward my father. C?ng held me back, whispering that the Japanese would kill us.

I looked on helplessly as a Japanese soldier jumped onto the front of the cart, turning it around. He lifted his feet, kicking the rumps of the buffaloes. The cart’s wheels rolled over the headless body of my beloved father.

OH, GUAVA, I’M sorry for the tears you’re shedding for your great-grandpa. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. . . .

I didn’t want to tell you about his death, but you and I have seen enough death and violence to know that there’s only one way we can talk about wars: honestly. Only through honesty can we learn about the truth.

In seeking the truth about the Japanese, I read as much as I could about them. I found out that, during World War II, Japanese troops beat, hurt, and murdered thousands and thousands of people across Asia.

The more I read, the more I became afraid of wars. Wars have the power to turn graceful and cultured people into monsters.

My father was unlucky to meet one of those monsters. He died so that C?ng and I could live on. He died protecting us.

We brought my father home. My mother leaned against me as we knelt by his coffin, our heads white with funeral bands. The ?àn nh? two-string instrument wailed in C?ng’s hands. He played for the entire three days and nights of mourning, the days and nights that saw our home packed with people who came to pay respect to my father. Only then did I learn how many people he’d helped.

I didn’t want to say good-bye but the time came. The ?àn nh? music led the funeral procession to the rice fields where my father was laid to rest. C?ng played until a dune of soil covered the coffin, the last incense burned out, and the sun died on the horizon.

C?ng didn’t utter a single word during the entire funeral, but when he returned home, he stood in the front yard, the ?àn nh? raised high above his head. His scream tore into the night as he shattered the instrument onto the brick floor. His wife, Trinh, and Mrs. Tú gathered the broken pieces, trying to put them back together, but he would never play again.

I blamed myself for my father’s death. If I hadn’t been driving the cart, we would have gone faster, and my father wouldn’t have met Black Eye. Your grandpa Hùng didn’t let me succumb to my sorrow. “It was not your fault, you were just helping Papa,” he said. “Besides, he wouldn’t want you to be sad. He would want you to celebrate his life.”

My mother was like a tree uprooted. She would just sit there on the ph?n, her gaze distant and empty. Minh, Ng?c, and ??t didn’t leave her alone, though. They surrounded her, becoming the soil of her life, demanding that she grow new roots. “Grandma, play with us,” they said, pulling her arms, leading her out of the house and into their childhood games.