Between the Spaces of Time: A Poetic Exploration of the Effects of War and the Journey of Healing

by Ann Marie L Bonasera

Overview

Through her personal journal entries and poetry, the author AnnMarie L. Bonasera speaks through the narrator, Ann, who informs the reader about Japan's culture and the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Bonasera provides insight into the experiences of the Japanese and American people who were in a war that brought mental and physical devastation that not only affected their lives but the lives of their offspring. In addition, Bonasera communicates the feeling of internal pain and conflict, and the dilemma of finding oneself lost in a place that is somewhere else.

In Between the Spaces of Time, Bonasera tries to make sense of the senselessness of war and its atrocities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781462059317
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/07/2012
Pages:	108
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.26(d)

Read an Excerpt

Between the Spaces of Time

A Poetic Exploration of the Effects of War and the Journey of Healing

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By Ann Marie L. Bonasera

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Ann Marie L. Bonasera
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-5931-7

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Chapter One

I. My Mind is Full of Memories

Images Like a movie That plays out its reruns Over and over And we relive those Episodes Within our fantasies Bringing to the past A new interpretation In the present Reinforcing a future With blown-out-of-proportion Memories. It takes a hurricane To blow it away And send it back to its Miniscule place in its life span; To diminish it And clear the way To embrace this life We now have.

4/17

I met Jessie for lunch today. We ate in the Lotus Restaurant on East 86th Street. It's been about two years now since she came back to New York City, and here we were again as if no time had passed. It was a great treat for me to see my dear friend again. My mother used to call her "Christmas Tree Face" because when she smiled and laughed her whole face would light up and her eyes twinkled in a way that made it seem like the lights blinking on a Christmas tree. We hadn't seen each other since she volunteered in the Navy right after high school graduation. I can remember that day as if it were yesterday. It was such a sad day for me. She met me in front of my building and she told me that her mother had signed the permission papers so she could enlist in the Navy and that she would be leaving the next month. So she left and traveled around the United States and I went off to college and my life in New York City's boroughs evolved. She wrote to me and sent post cards from all the places she visited, so in those days I traveled vicariously. Today we were celebrating my birthday. She remembered. We always celebrated our birthdays in high school. Halfway through lunch she handed me a package. It was wrapped so pretty I almost hesitated to open it. I always felt that a gift was so much more meaningful if someone took the time to wrap it up. To me it meant that the person was thinking of you in a good way when they were wrapping it. The wrapping paper is like the "canvas" of their loving thoughts about you. A card read "To my best friend, Ann-when I saw this picture I immediately thought of you. I think she looks like you." The first gift was a picture of a girl sitting at a table with psychology books and a candle. She looked like a beatnik. She had long hair and a long, pensive face, with thoughtful eyes, framed by big black rimmed glasses. Wearing black tights and red boots, pencil in hand, she seemed ready to take notes. I guess it was the long hair and the big eyes, or maybe it was the pencil and the books. I always had a pencil in my hand. Jessie said I was a born psychologist, maybe because back in high school I used to be the one that everyone told their problems to, and I was the one who had all the answers. How ironic, since I have more questions now than answers. I guess I worked my way backwards. The other gift was this journal.

She said I needed a place to collect my thoughts because they were like shooting fireworks that splattered across a dark sky. I needed a place to contain them.

This is a very royal looking journal and the pages have beautiful silver edges. What a change in me, that I would like the silver edges. Silver had a sad meaning for me. So here I am, back with silver. When I was 5 years old my Uncle Frank asked me and this other girl, Susan, to be his flower girls. We had very fancy pink gowns and our mothers decided that gold shoes would look nice. Susan went to the shoe store with her mother and got the gold shoes, but when I went to the store they didn't have any gold shoes left, so they gave me silver. My mother agreed that silver would look good, but all I could think about was that Susan got gold shoes and I didn't. For some reason I felt that what Susan got was better. I realized now that even at the young age of 5 Susan gave me an inferiority complex. She was so talented and could sing and dance on stage without fear. Everyone thought she was so adorable and enjoyed her performances. She was even the lead singer in our school choir. I, on the other hand, was very shy. I knew that I was very talented too, but it was all locked up inside of me then, and I could only imagine in my dreams that I was a "star" like she was. So when she got the gold shoes and I got the silver, I took it to heart. I took it to mean that I was getting the left over's or just not the best. I never gave it a thought that maybe silver did look better. Silver was bad. Then years later my father asked me what I would like for Christmas and I asked for a gold cross. I wanted to wear something gold, shining on my chest. When I opened my gift on Christmas morning, there it was—a silver cross. How could I not love it? My father gave it to me. He said that gold was too expensive. It was very pretty, and this journal is pretty too. Sometimes we just don't get what we want. Sometimes it's just not ours to have. We are meant for other things.

4/24

My father was a Sicilian G.I. during W.W. II and my mother was a Geisha living in Kyoto. My father never talked about his experiences in the war. Anything I learned was from the stories my mother told me and from two old letters that my grandmother kept. Apparently he was engaged to a woman named Lucy before he went overseas and Lucy shared those letters with his mother. One was written by a nurse in a hospital in Ethiopia when he suffered from malaria and was delirious with high fever. She wrote to his fiancé and told her that Eddie was not able to write. He had been through a bad ordeal in combat. He killed a man and then started to run towards the enemy but a buddy soldier grabbed him and was able to get him back to safety. He suffered a nervous breakdown and his hands were too shaky to write. On top of that he had contracted malaria.

The other letter was about being in Italy. There he was, the son of natural born Italian parents, fighting the Italians. Gesualdo Bonasera ... That was his birth name. Eddie was his American name. I still have that old article about when he was interviewed and asked how he felt about fighting the people from his homeland. He said he was a Yankee, through and through, and that he was born in America and he was an American.

My mother told me a story about my father being in a fox hole for a very long time. There were four soldiers, huddled together in a hole. They were on the lookout for the enemy. They took turns getting food. This one time it was my father's turn but his friend said that he would go instead. His friend went, but never came back. He was shot. It could have been my father. My mother said he always felt guilty about that. He had a lot of anger and would switch from a gentle and calm guy to a frightening fury of anger like one would flip a switch. We all walked on egg shells. He had a short fuse. He never talked about the war, but he watched a lot of war movies. And although he never talked about the war, we lived in a 'war zone'. He was extra vigilant and suspicious and always on guard. He never liked when we closed a door in the house and it became a little uncomfortable when I wanted some privacy. He wanted the doors and windows opened, unencumbered by closed shades and venetian blinds. He was claustrophobic. Those war experiences must have stayed locked inside of him like an eternal hell. That's probably why he drank so much and wallowed in self pity at times and at other times he directed his abusive wrath towards his loved ones. I read somewhere that you hurt the ones you love because you can act out with people with whom you feel safe.

4/25

My mother met my father when he was reassigned to Japan and entered with the American Occupation. She was a geisha. From the age of 5 she entered the Iwasaki geisha house in the Kyoto's Gion Kobu district. I guess my mother was a little lucky that she was a geisha. Her sister, Akane, had a different life. After the bombing of Hiroshima, the city was devastated. When the Americans came I read that they raped Japanese women and that they even invaded hospitals and raped women who had just had babies. It makes me wonder about how they saw the Japanese women. Did they think they were animals? Were they getting revenge on Japanese men? Were they continuing to conquer like a last shove after the bomb? I can't imagine such violence. It confuses me. I cannot see my father in that light. Despite his "issues" with alcohol and his inner demons, in many other ways he seemed like an insightful and protective man, but who knows? Who knows what dark secrets lay beneath the surface of one's past? Maybe that is why people wind up so jaded, burdened by the dysfunctions that they witness and the guilt of their own thoughts or actions.

The Americans bombed Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, and then they built it up again. I never knew quite how to understand that. Did they build the city up again from guilt? Did they do it out of some kind of ownership and to feel that they destroyed it and now they would rebuild it on their own terms? And who are these men who came to rebuild a government and bring democracy when they raped the women? Maybe the Americans wanted to punish Japan for their atrocities, But weren't these the same atrocities? None of this makes much sense to me. Was it all right for "Americans" to have taken the land away from the Native Americans? Was it all right for England and Holland to occupy India, Singapore, Hong Kong and the East Indies? The way I see it, the Japanese takeover of Manchuria was not very much different from American military intervention in the Caribbean. So where is the justice? Is justice the act of performing the same cruelty on those who perform brutality on others? Was it about an eye for an eye? What about the rape of Nanking? It is written that anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 Chinese women were raped by the Japanese. So the Japanese raped the Chinese women, and the Americans raped the Japanese women. But everywhere women were being raped. What about Dafur? Women in Dafur couldn't venture out without the probability of getting raped. Men could be castrated so they decided that the lesser of the two evils is for the women to get raped, so they sent the women out to get supplies. Where there is war, there is rape of women. So what did they do in Japan in 1945 to prevent women from being continuously raped by American soldiers? They recruited women who were prostitutes, dancers, entertainers, and those who lost their family in Hiroshima, including high school students, to work in the comfort stations to serve the needs of these soldiers. They even coerced office workers and women working for the Japanese government, to 'serve their country' by taking care of the 'needs' of these soldiers. So they used women to keep men occupied so they would not rape other woman, and the Japanese government praised these women as being in the front lines of service to their country and protecting their fellow women. They called them pan pan girls. This is what my Aunt Akane became. My mother's parents died in Hiroshima, and she was saved because she was in Kyoto at the time, in a more secure building in the outer part of the city. Guilt and her soul's annihilation in the face of isolation determined my aunt's destiny.

It's interesting to see the relativity of matters. She became a prostitute, but the Japanese government sugar coated it and raised it to the level of "helping your country" and protecting their correlating sisters. In a way, these women became associated with the liberation of repressed sexuality. They became symbols of defiance of Japanese oppression and reflections of American mockery as the Americans "owned" the gratefully gifted girls. Well, it certainly paid very well!

I wonder what I would have done if I lived in those times? What would I have been? Would I have been a "butterfly" or an "only one"? I rather like the idea of the bata furai, fluttering from customer to customer, the drama of the promiscuous heroine who loved to love! Or would I be loyal to one American soldier? An accomplished courtesan to one, handsome, powerful man, I would walk arm in arm, riding in his jeep. I would prostitute myself to the Conqueror! Those were devastating times. I wonder if the devastation was more physical or psychological.

4/27

Japan prided itself on its national heritage. People asked who was responsible for Japanese aggression and atrocities committed by the imperial forces, but the Japanese asked who is responsible for defeat? When you win, then all your efforts mean something, right? But when you lose, how do you justify the death of all those soldiers who gave their lives for the national cause? Winning would have softened the blow and soothed the pain of separation by death. It would have brought some closure and made things seem like there was some meaning in all this madness. What do you tell the dead when you lose? My mother never talks about her brother who was in the military and died in battle. She never talks about her dead parents, or the Iwasaki family who raised her in the Gion Kobu district of Kyoto. She speaks very little and any information that I have I had to work hard for, researching my own heritage. Sometimes I feel like I am on the circumference of experiences I will never understand, like an epidermis that covers a body of many internal mysteries.

Personally, I think it is all madness. To me the anger and hatred among people of war, seems like a vast projection of little children in their fights and power struggles over a toy, but this time the little boys are older but they are still little boys ... like on gangs or something. My gang against your gang ... Just because these boys want to fight we all have to suffer. We all have to become enemies. Lilly and Emily are Chinese and they are my friends. How could we kill each other? How could the Japanese go and kill all those Chinese people and rape the women? And how could the Americans bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki and rape the Japanese women? And how are we all friends now?

II. The Day in Hell

The Night Is the journey Into the deep, dark Crevices of the Undercurrents Of my psyche The tunnel to The past An Underground Passage to A collective consciousness That reigns Supreme in Hades The Night Takes me to the Underworld Of ghosts And memories And echoes of Worlds That turned to scars and Swords That cut hearts and souls The Overload Keeps me stagnant With a Hangover That lingers And leaves me in a Still Life of Nights

6/14

It was years before my Aunt Akane could talk about what happened in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. She was saved because she was at her sister's house. One afternoon, while having tea, she began to confide in me, which was surprising, given the air of secrecy in my house. She told me this story and it haunts me as I feel like some part of me was there. After all, it was my family, my blood. Maybe it was because we were having tea together and it all started like that in Hiroshima. She said that she was sitting at the table with her brother in law having tea when she saw a great flash outside the window, At first she thought it was lightning, but then it became dark. Her niece, Satomie, was playing outside with her friend, Akemi. They were inseparable. They went to school together every day and always played together when they came home. Aunt Akane told me that the house started to shake and she and Uncle Tanaka ran outside. It got so dark, yet more like dark red, and there was so much smoke. She remembered smoke and shadows that looked like people in slow motion, and that she couldn't move. Everything seemed like it was in slow motion, yet she heard Uncle Tanaka's voice calling to his wife, "Yaeko-san! Yaeko-san!" Everything sounded so distant. Aunt Yaeko was pulling Satomie from under the ground as she was buried under rubble of broken street and dirt. But no one could find Akemi. Suddenly Akemi was gone. No one ever knew what happened to her. It was like the earth ate her up. Aunt Yaeko was shaking as she held Satomie in her arms. They were all moving along the road through a red fog. People were falling down and some were on the ground laying there. As she told me the story she buried her head in her hands and said "It was just awful. Just awful ... I was so afraid." I could feel my aunt reliving her fear. I could feel my mother's guilt. I could feel my father's anger. I was living in the midst of a post traumatic stress syndrome that simulated what Hell was probably like.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Between the Spaces of Time by Ann Marie L. Bonasera Copyright © 2012 by Ann Marie L. Bonasera. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments....................ix
The Angel of Death....................xi
I. My Mind is Full of Memories....................1
II. The Day in Hell....................14
III. Life in a Dream World....................18
IV. Lost in a Place called Somewhere Else....................26
V. Hello is the Beginning of Goodbye....................31
VI. Chidori-ga-fuchi....................35
VII. High Technology....................53
VIII. Centered....................59
IX. Silent Suffering....................68
X. Enemy, Friend....................75
XI. Who am I?....................77
XII. The Dark Night of the Soul....................80
XIII. The Passing....................82
Between the Spaces of Time....................88