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ARTS AND CULTURE

After the obscenity

  • 08 July 2008

Return with effects The following undated journal pages were among Corporal Ryan's personal effects. Include with items to be sent to his mother. Attach inventory.

I was 36 years old the day I arrived at Kure, south east of a city now known for an obscenity. Belsen, Dachau, or, closer to home, Changi. But also Dresden, Nagasaki and the capital of the prefecture where I am based — Hiroshima. No longer young, I have spent my life with children. My boyhood sped in Fitzroy's narrow streets, playing cricket with paling bat and india-rubber ball or sailing in paper boat regattas when bluestone gutters brimmed and our vessels foundered or flew. I became a country school teacher while still almost a child. Drawn to far, flat horizons and black skies blistered with stars. I grew used to earnest conversations in the local pub, where some farmer would ask, 'Is the moon over Ouyen the same one they see in Melbourne?' My hungry heart has roamed. Whom have I known1? For nearly twenty years I have been a flying Dutchman, a wandering Jew, carting enlightenment to the outer reaches of the Wimmera, the Mallee. Never in one place long enough to belong or marry, always the liked outsider. I carried my books in packing cases from one town to another — the world I made for myself after supper, by the light of a kerosene lamp. I refined my schoolboy Latin, Greek, read The Iliad. And then, I studied Japanese. I loved the intricate characters — word, picture, sound. In black sweeps and scratchings, diverse elements compounded. My struggling crosshatchings scraped with spattering nib across the paper, until finally there was order. I enlisted early, only to be classified B2. I was relieved. But when Japan surrendered, I was suddenly of use — an Australian with a degree in Japanese. No one now expected to fight, we were an occupation force. I was to be a translator. Feasible, if all I had to do was read and write — I could not speak the language. More Caliban than Prospero, I had no words to make my purposes known2. But I did not hate. The war had not touched me. No one close to me had died. My brother deserted when our part had just begun. My father is an old man. Japan, not the enemy, but a land of myth and mystery. The Japanese turned out to watch when we arrived. Not like the newsreels of liberated France. No cheering crowds, just ragged soldiers and rows of women in kimonos, blank faced, babies on their backs. They made no sound. No roses in our way, no myrtle3. We were freighted to the warehouses