The Souvenir (26 page)

On Halloween night, in the last months of his life, my dad invited my mother to take a drive with him to watch the sunset at the Marina Del Rey, twenty minutes from their condo. They took the elevator to the underground garage and climbed into their shiny black Chrysler New Yorker.

The New Yorker was the first “luxury” car my father had ever bought. Real leather seats and all the extras. He'd bought it a year earlier, as a surprise gift for my mother after her cancer went into remission.

They drove west down Jefferson Boulevard toward the beach when a thin plume of smoke spiraled out from under the hood. My father swerved to the side of the road and stopped the car. They both scrambled out. Wisps of smoke became billowing black clouds, then bright orange flames. Heart pounding, my father instinctively reached for the vial of nitroglycerin in his pocket.

It was nearly dark and the night was chilly. Traffic whooshed by. The people in their cars wore Ronald Reagan masks and devil's horns, vampire's capes, and blond Marilyn wigs. My father popped another nitroglycerin.

I didn't learn about the incident until the next day. “Your father came home, poured himself a glass of brandy and went straight to bed,” my mother reported.

The car was a total loss. A manufacturing error caused the fire. They could only get Blue Book for it, a fraction of the original cost. Impossible to sue Chrysler—a mega-corporation is immune to that sort of litigation.

The next day my father woke early, called a taxi company, slipped out of the house without waking my mother, drove to a Honda dealership in Santa Monica and bought not one but
two
brand-new cars. He who had never bought anything Japanese bought two new Hondas. Straight cash.

His war was over.

M
Y FATHER
'
S WAR
lasted nearly sixty years. He woke with it. He slept with it. We all felt it. His wounds were not visible. He would not talk about his experience. He didn't know how and neither did his family.

I write this on the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war. Every day, young men and women return home from Iraq and Afghanistan with life-altering injuries—psychological, physical, and moral. Their war won't be over anytime soon. Nor will the war be over soon for the young children of the soldiers who will not be returning, or for their lovers, spouses, parents, siblings.

Soldiers who would have died of their injuries in earlier conflicts are now surviving, thanks to advances in American combat medical technology. Thirty minutes after a rocket attack in Mosul, a soldier can be airlifted to safety and transported by jet to the U.S. Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad—the fulcrum for U.S. trauma care in Iraq—and from there on to a hospital in Germany. But what then? As of March 1 of this year, 520 personnel have lost a limb in Iraq. 101 have lost more than one limb. (
LA Times
March 26, 2007)

Our veterans hospitals are strained and ill-equipped to serve these former soldiers' disabilities over the long term. A recent
New York Times
story told of a blinded vet released to outpatient care
within a week of his injury. “Despite being extremely disoriented, he said he was given a map and told to find his own way to his new residence on the hospital's sprawling grounds.”

And when these vets come home—after they learn to walk on artificial legs, after they learn to read Braille—who will listen to their stories? Will they—like my father—bottle them up and erupt into rage at whistling teakettles? “The many wounds of war are endless,” as one veteran wrote so succinctly.

Traveling around the country to read and discuss
The Souvenir
these past few years, I've been touched most deeply when vets in the audience have been moved to speak about their experiences in combat—in Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq. Sometimes they come up to me afterwards to say quietly, “I know why your father couldn't talk about the war.”

A fifty-something Vietnam vet in San Jose told me that reading
The Souvenir
had given him the idea to talk to his own dad, a Pacific War vet, about his combat experience. He hadn't done it yet, he said, but he would. I can only imagine their conversation and, in my best version, their dialogue—though halting at first—extends over weeks, months, years. I imagine the older vet listening to his son and perhaps, vice versa.

In his remarkable book,
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
, psychiatrist Jonathan Shay writes of his work with traumatized veterans. Toward the end, he issues a plea and a challenge: “Combat veterans and American citizenry should meet together face to face in daylight, and listen, and watch, and weep, just as citizen-soldiers of ancient Athens did in the theater at the foot of the Acropolis.”

As part of our national healing, our returning soldiers—the men and women who bear the burden of decisions made by politicians—need us to listen and weep with them. They need us to insist that our government provide the services that enable those
who have risked their lives to re-enter the world they left behind and to live once again at peace with themselves and others. It is our moral duty, as Shay makes clear, to those we ask to serve on our behalf.

If
The Souvenir
can inspire readers to participate in—even initiate—those conversations, I'd consider it a fitting way to honor my father who carried his war unspoken inside him for sixty years.

—Louise Steinman
       Los Angeles, 2007

1. Steinman's quest began with her discovery of the box of letters and the flag. She also mentions other “souvenirs” in the book: an antique ring and a small silver wine cup. What objects from your daily life contain important memories? Why?

2. Steinman had little knowledge about the Pacific War when she began reading her father's letters and her quest to find out more led her to conduct extensive research. How has
The Souvenir
deepened/changed your understanding of that conflict?

3. What is the difference between reading a history book about WW II in the Pacific and reading a personal story about the war? How does this allow you—the reader—to “enter” into history. Are there veterans in your own family? Have you ever asked them questions about their experiences?

4. Citizens sometimes look at their countries' past conflicts through the lens of their own accepted views of history. In her book, Steinman explores some of the discrepancies between the Japanese and the U.S. official views regarding Hiroshima. Does her examination of the rhetoric from both sides add to your understanding of this pivotal event? What does her friend Shoji Kurokami—a native of Hiroshima—mean when he says, “Some people may think bomb was good—and maybe that's OK. But to me, bomb is bomb”?

5. The Smithsonian Museum's proposed exhibit to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II was fraught with
controversy. Steinman repeats the words of a Smithsonian official, “The veterans wanted the exhibit to stop when the doors to the bomb bay opened. And that's where the Japanese wanted it to begin.” (
this page
) Why is it important for former combatant nations to look at history together?

6. One of the veterans Steinman interviewed objected to her attempting to return the flag. He said, “Your father would be rolling over in his grave.” Do you agree?

7. Steinman owns up to her naiveté about the Pacific War when she first found her father's letters. To what extent might that naiveté have been a hindrance to her quest to return the flag? How might it have been a help?

8. Steinman says that she could understand why the WW II veterans she interviewed were still bitter towards the Japanese. Do you think that reconciliation between groups in conflict must wait for later generations? Why?

9. Steinman says she inherited an antipathy to Filipino cuisine because of her father's experience in the war. How are prejudices transmitted to future generations? What prejudices and stereotypes of other cultures might you have inherited through your family's history?

10. The paradox of the actual souvenir flag is that it means different things to different people. What does it mean to Steinman, her father, and the Pacific vets she interviewed? What does it mean to Yoshio Shimizu and Shimizu's family?

11. Some authors write whole novels about places they have never visited, only imagined. Do you think it was necessary for Steinman to journey to Balete Pass in northern Luzon of the Philippines in order to understand her father's experience in the war? How does her visit to the actual place inform the book?

12. Why do you think Norman and Anne Steinman preserved Norman's war letters, even though he wouldn't discuss the war?

13. Steinman writes that she was shocked by some of the language in her father's letters. How was that language in keeping with the war propaganda about the Japanese enemy that was then current in the United States? How was the enemy demonized by both sides in the Pacific War?

14. The villagers in Suibara welcomed Steinman with both warmth and formality. Why does the entire village turn out to meet her? Do you think such a communal reception would be likely in the United States were the roles reversed?

15. The Passover scene and the vision of Yoshio at the end of the book are examples of fiction or what Steinman calls “speculation.” How and what do these sections add to your understanding of Steinman's quest?

16. Steinman juxtaposes her own journey to understand her father with her father's journey to the Pacific and back during WWII. How do these two journeys comment on one another? How might the book have been different if Steinman had not included her father's letters?

17. “So many unknowables in a life,… How a name on a piece of cloth could propel you halfway around the world.” How does her encounter with the Shimizu family affect Steinman? How does it affect the Shimizus?

18. Steinman tries to look at the war from the Japanese point of view. She finds the “official” Japanese view in institutions like Yasukuni Shrine and the Hiroshima Peace Museum. What does she learn from talking to the villagers in Suibara. How do their views depart from the official view?

19. While visiting the American cemetery in Manila, Steinman writes that her father wanted to bury his memories. “His desires were irreconcilable: He wanted to never forget and he needed to never remember.” What is gained or lost by forgetting difficult experiences? What is gained or lost by remembering them?