By Scott Graber
It is Saturday, and we have, at long last, rain; a lawn that is once again green; and I must admit this gives me some contentment.
In addition to this contentment, I have an old (April 17) Wall Street Journal that reviews a new film, “Amrum” — a coming-of-age movie focused on a German boy (Nanning) at the tail end of World War II.
The review — I have not seen the movie — tells us the boy’s father is a Obersturmbannfuhrer at the front; his mother, Hille, is also a full-blown Nazi.
When Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker. Nanning and his mother are living on an island in the North Sea.
When the war ends Hille goes into a severe depression — refusing to eat — and Nanning goes on a “mini-odyssey” to find food that his mother will eat. That lengthy trip — and the beatings and theft that ensue — become the substance of the movie.
“When it comes to the horrors of the 40s, so rich is the history that we will probably never come to the end of fresh approaches to it. ‘Amrum’ is a stirring example of how childhood reminiscence can stand for so much more.”
I, myself, was born two days before “Little Boy” was exploded above Hiroshima and was too young to remember the immediate aftermath of WWII. But my 6-year-old self was in occupied Japan at a guard-and-gate-protected enclosure called “Grant Heights.”
I have a black-and-white photo of a two storied, white-painted duplex underscoring the dreary, unimaginative sameness of most military housing. The photo shows a complimentary clothes line, a child’s swing and a small garden.
I remember little about the Tokyo landscape; but I do remember our Japanese house servant, Yoshiko. I can still remember her young face with startling clarity notwithstanding the passage of 75 years. I can also feel a definite sense of love for this Japanese teenager who helped my mother with the care and comfort of my brother and myself.
Yoshiko was our cook, house-cleaner and my constant companion for our entire four-year tour; and she informs my belief that the Japanese are the most inscrutable people on earth.
On the one hand there is the enduring love and loyalty of Yoshiko I can still feel in my old age. But then you have the routine, standard-issue beheadings in Nanking, Korea, Bataan, Burma and every other place where the Japanese Army bivouacked.
I can’t, for the life of me, reconcile the harmonics of Buddhism, Shintoism and Bushido (the Japanese moral mindset) or put Yoshiko into the same race with the stone-faced men who executed Chinese, Korean and Manchurian men, women and children by the millions.
After Japan, we came back to the continental United States for postings; my father becoming interested in burns at the Army’s Surgical Research Unit in San Antonio, Texas. His last duty station was the Landstuhl Army Hospital near Kaiserslautern, Germany.
While in Germany we did not have a servant; nor did I develop any close relationships with any Germans. I did, however, read Mila 18, Exodus and any nonfiction I could find about the Holocaust. I did visit Dachau.
It wasn’t until I got to Beaufort that I met a married couple, Germans, who had been children during World War II. Both of these people had fathers who had been in the Wehrmacht; both had been bombed by the 8th Army Air Force — one was in Dresden when we decided to remove that ancient city from the face of the earth.
I often spoke with this couple about Kant, Catholicism, Kandinsky, Stalingrad and George Wallace. And found no comment, opinion or theory that would connect them with the deprecations of Hitler, Goebbels or the slaughter of the Jews.
The woman’s father (I’m not going to use her name) was on the Eastern front, captured, and somehow survived. The man’s father operated an anti-aircraft gun that took out more than a few of our B-17s.
This couple had a strong sense of “right and wrong” that was reflected in everything they did or said. But I suspect they were forever haunted by the war knowing that everyone silently questioned their morality. There was also a sadness attached to their persons and, perhaps, the realization that they were forever marked by the unspeakable actions of their parents.
I have not seen “Amrum” yet; but think it might help me understand great evil and what happens to the children.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.