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Copyright 2017, Dean Adams Curtis
Chapter 1
Valenzuela
BLACK MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1941
The word "sukimoko" refers to a good deal, a fair deal.
A good deal is what Maria, the store's owner, wants people to get when they shop at Sukimoko, a sari-sari, a small goods retailer
in the town of Valenzuela, located just above the city of Manila on the big northern Philippine island of Luzon.
Maria has found that by offering her customers sukimokos she gets more customer traffic in her shop,
which results in more sales.
Though she doesn't make as much money as she could on each individual sale, the larger sales volume provides her with greater profit.
It also helps her sales that Sukimoko is situated on a street featuring a "palengke," a wet market where a great variety of seafood, chicken, and pork is sold,
along with vegitables and rice.
She sees the young American woman at a rice seller's shop that is across the street from Sukimoko. The American points to rice in a wood rice bin, one of eight square bins that are built side-by-side together at the front of the rice seller's shop, each containing a different grade and type of rice.
The woman, who comes by Sukimoko daily, is one of Maria's favorite customers. She reminds Maria of the actress Katherine Hepburn. The rice seller is Maria's sister, Irene. The young American woman points to the type of rice she wants. Inside the shop, Irene leans over a narrow counter
and lowers her wooden scooping box, a salop, which is an open-topped cube of a standard size that all rice sellers used. She plunges it deeply into the bin of rice.
Irene brings the box back up, filled with rice. She sweeps the back of her hand over the open top of the box to knock the excess rice and levels it off. Then, she dumps
the rice into a small burlap bag. In one quick movement, she pulls a short length of twine from a roll, wraps it around the neck of the bag,
and jerks the length of twine along a sharp edge of metal beneath the roll, cutting it.
Maria's five-year-old son, Emiliano, runs into Sukimoko, screaming gleefully. He is chased by his big brother, eleven-year-old Francisco.
The boys move like a whirlwind, quickly circling the store's racks and shelves until Emiliano bumps a metal rack of paper products. It falls over ringing loudly.
Attempting a quick escape, both boys rush out the back way, heading into the tight alley behind the shop. There, they hear their mother shout,
"Emiliano, Francisco, tigilan ninyo!" words that mean stop (tigilan) both of you (ninyo).
Hearing the sharp tone of their mother's voice, both boys come to an immediate halt, and turn, waiting with attention for her next words.
"Emiliano, pick up that paper rack and put the products back in their proper places," Maria says in Tagalog.
"Francisco, take singko (cinco, five) from the box, buy rice from your Tita Irene (Aunt Irene) for our lunch. Ngayon (Now)!"a
"Oh po, Nanay (Yes, Mother)," says Francisco. Words repeated by Emiliano, as the boys move to obey Maria's directions.
"Well done," the American woman says, as Francisco darts past her, heading across the street toward his tita's rice shop. "I like a woman who takes command when needed."
"Like Eleanor Roosevelt, Ma'am," Maria replies with a smile, recalling the conversation she had the day before with the woman, about the American president and his willful wife.
"Like Eleanor Roosevelt," the woman agrees. "And you promised you would start calling me Persephone."
"Yes, Ma'am," Maria opens her ledger book to the page where the woman's name is clearly printed, Mrs. Bloom, Persephone.
Mrs. Bloom has previously told Maria that she is from the U.S. state of Ohio. She is the bride of an Ohio elevator entrepreneur, whose elevaror component warehouse is located just down the street, diagonal from Sukimoko.
"I'm bringing elevators to Asia," Maria once heard Mrs. Bloom's dashing elevator entrepreneur husband, who reminds her of Cary Grant, say to a potential client, as they walked past Sukimoko toward the cockfighting ring. Mrs. Bloom browses the products displayed for sale on the wood racks Maria has painted bright primary colors. She ruffles the hair of young Emiliano's head as she passes him restocking the rack he has stood back up. When she glances over at Sukimoko's proprietress, its owner (may-ari), female (babae), female owner (babaeng) Maria, is watching her. "Sentimo (penny) for your thoughts," Mrs. Bloom says with a smile, knowing that Maria understands her, as they have previously spoken many times in English, and as Maria is her most prolific tutor of the Tagalog language, an interesting mix of Spanish and ancient Austronesian, in the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup, Philippine Batanic dialect cluster. Persephone Bloom has a linguistics degree from Yale.
A loud roar begins building from somewhere outside, becoming ever deeper, more troubling.
Maria, Emiliano, and Mrs. Bloom find themselves drawn together into the street. Across from them, Tita Irene Figueroa, the rice lady, limps onto the street with a hand on her nephew Francisco's shoulder for support. Francisco holds a burlap sack tied with twine. Irene's two daughters, eighteen-year-old Juanita and sixteen-year-old Conception, come out from the shop behind them.
Everyone's gaze is soon drawn upward. The roar is coming from the sky.
A plane passes thunderously close to the ground, traveling fast, vibrating everything and everyone staring up at it from the market street.
The roar continues. Three planes fly over in a triangle formation.
Then, four triangles of three planes pass overhead. Red circles are on their wings and their sides, and on the fins sticking up at their tails.
"Japanese," Mrs. Bloom says, with a sudden shiver of fear.
"Ja-pan-ese," repeats Emiliano, Maria's three-year-old son.
Emiliano looks up to his big brother Francisco, who is looking at the Bloom elevator parts warehouse.
"Let's go up on the warehouse roof!" shouts Francisco.
"What does Mrs. Bloom say?" Maria replies.
Mrs. Bloom points her arm at the warehouse. The two boys run toward it. The boy's cousins, Conception and Juanita, immediately run after the boys.
The four children are followed at a run by Mrs. Bloom, who are all watched by Maria and her sister Irene, whose days of running up stairs are behind them.
The roar continues. Maria steps to Irene's side. She slides an arm around Irene's waist. Irene rests a hand on Maria's shoulder.
As the five runners on the staircase reach the rooftop, a squadron of six Japanese bombers passes over them, almost wingtip to wingtip, as if they're all part of one giant zig-zagging wing.
Tall Persephone Bloom instinctively crouches down, though the planes are a hundred feet above. Three kids duck. Francisco stays tall, almost rising onto his tip-toes. When all straighten, they see stretching across a panorama before them, squadron after squadron of Japanese warplanes.
"Count them!" shouts Tita Irene's 16-year-old daughter Conception, who excels in math.
With that, the four young cousins and Mrs. Bloom each attempt to count, and by this attempt to calm their hearts, which have inevitably been set to racing by the run up the stairs, by being witnesses to such a vast metal flock, and by the roaring vibrations of many dozen airplane engines.
"They're flying southwest!" shouts Francisco, who is good at geography.
"Seventy-two!" shouts Conception.
"Agreed! Seventy-two!" shouts Mrs. Bloom. With that, the count is settled.
They five, stand silently on the roof of Mr. Bloom's elevator component warehouse, watching the flying armada move to the southwest, far across the city of Manila. Moments later, they see hundreds of little metallic specks reflecting glints of the sun.
When the glitter reaches the horizon, a patch of it blooms with explosions.
"They're bombing the American base at Fort McKinley," says Tita Irene's other daughter, fourteen year old Jesusa, who in practice is called Jessie, and who loves gazing at maps imagining herself exploring areas they reveal.
"They're trying to destroy the American airplanes," replies Francisco.
Chapter 2 Manila
At the exact same time as the children run with Mrs. Bloom onto the warehouse roof in northwest Manila, on the veranda of the clubhouse overlooking a golf course in downtown Manila, a golf course that surrounds the walls of the old Spanish fort along the river, Mr. Anthony Bloom of Ohio, the entrepreneur bringing elevators to Asia, stands looking up at the sky filled with planes.
Anthony Bloom is transfixed by his view. From behind Bloom comes a womanan's voice he knows well.
"These islands have been dominated in the past by Islamic caliphs, Spanish kings and queens, and most recently by the United States of America," says Christina Ortegas, a Filipina beauty, and a wealthy heiress of Spanish royal descent mixed with that of refugees from the Chinese imperial court. She stands behind him holding a cosmopolitan. "Now come the Japanese. We Filipinos will again have to bear occupation by a foreign power."
"Fatalist," Bloom replies. "We'll fight them off."
"American optimist," Christina responds, stepping closer to Anthony, her left fingertips gently running down the center of his back. "Except when it comes to what could happen between us."
Anthony Bloom doesn't respond. In the next moment, distant whispers from the bomb explosions reach them on the veranda of the clubhouse.
"They must have hit the fuel depot at Fort McKinley," says the Ohio elevator entrepreneur.
"Fuel depot, humph," fumes Christina, spinning on her heels, heading for her locker in the ladies to change out of her golf attire. "I will be dining at the Hotel Manila, should you care to catch up."
Someday soon, Christina tells herself as she strides away, I will win the heart of Mr. Anthony Bloom.
Then, her mind shuts thoughts of him off like a switch. Her brainpower focuses on her evening ahead. She imagines that she is already dining at the Hotel Manila, where her eyes alight on a handsome gentleman at a table diagonal to her, a suitable dance partner for the evening.
Anthony Bloom steps to a clubhouse phone. He picks up the reciever, awaits an operator, then says, "Valenzuela 6-9000. Yes, I'll hold."
The Ohio elevator entrepreneur is watched. Behind the clubhouse bar, a Japanese man who has been passing as an experienced Filipino bartender from the provinces, conceals a smile. The project, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, with Tokyo at its apex, today takes a key step toward full fruition.
The Filipino-looking bartender, Japanese Naval Intelligence Captain Yoshi Imai, lowers his eyes, turning his focus to polishing the rim of a glass with a white cloth.
Chapter 3
Fort McKinley
On the southern edge Manila, at the vast verdant American Army base named after U.S. president McKinley, crates of aircraft parts, that over the past weeks had been arriving by boat in Manila Bay,
were side by side on hanger aprons and taxiways with partially assembled airplanes.
Beside the runway at Fort McKinley, Sargent Rocky Riddle, of the U.S. Army Air Corps 27th Bombardment Group, is face down, his arms holding his helmet to his head, his body bouncing off trembling earth.
Manila. Bomb shrapnel, and parts of exploded U.S. aircrafts, sizzle past over him.
He focuses thoughts on his wife Ruth, and of their wedding day in Athens, Georgia.
Chapter 4
Manila Bay
Juan Santos walks on a metal walkway within a quiet engine room. To his right, an elephantine metal ship engine is cool, sculptural, at rest far below the deck of a ship, well below its water line. This is how he usually encounters ship engines, quieted by some injury. He is not called to service them when hot and operating, but idle from malfunction. Today he is on a ship anchored in Manila Bay. His work repairing the engine is halted for want of a replacement piston rod. Lunch break. He steps to where he stashed his metal lunch box. He takes it from a satchel and opens it. On the inside of the box's lid is a picture. It is of Juan beside Maria flanked by their two boys, Emiliano and Francisco. Before he can reach in to withdraw his lunch from the box, Maria's husband hears a rumble. Strange, he thinks, the ship is still, not moving through water. What could cause the unusual sound? He worries the ship may be about to rupture, to burst a seam, popping faulty rivets. He is not usually a worrier of things out of his control. Is she splitting apart? The volume of the rumble increases. Confused about what could be happening, Juan decides to investigate. He closes his lunch box and slips it back into the satchel. He carries it with him back along the metal walkway. A coworker pops out from astride a stand of sapling-like pipes, grease blackened, startling him. Juan knows he must look similar to the man, due to his working all morning loosening large nuts and removing a piston head. The man follows Juan. They climb up a ladder, then hurry down a hall to climb another. The rumble intensifies. Their feet hurry them up a staircase toward the deck. They look at one another. After another hall is hurried down and a further stairs surmounted, a door onto the ship deck awaits their unlatching. Humid Manila air greets them. Incredulous, they stare at the sight in the sky, understanding what is happening due to the red rising sun symbols clearly visible under the wings of the planes flying low overhead. His coworker utters unnecessarily the obvious, "Hapones." Chapter 5
Malabon
Genuflecting, and assuring that her boys also make the sign of the cross on their chests, Maria Santos walks with Francisco and Emiliano into a Catholic Church located
in Malabon, a bayside city next to Valenzuela. Maria has brought a basket of goods from Sukimoko to donate, a regular mission she has assigned herself. Within the sanctuary, two nuns are standing talking
with a priest mid-aisle between pews, colored by multispectral light cast upon them through stained glass.
Emil knows that his priest cannot hear well, so he shouts out, "Father Marco, Hapones." The half deaf priest looks at Maria and her sons and wonders why the boy has ordered him to kneel. In the sky above, the pilot of a Japanese Mitsubishi, whose plane has been hit by American machinegun bullets that punctured its gas tank, releases his 500 kilogram bomb, hoping to save fuel.
In the church below, the priest propels his body up the church aisle, followed by the two nuns, toward Maria, Francisco, and Emil.
He catches his breath before them, as the back of his church, cross and Christ, disappear in an explosion.
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