Grenade

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-10

Chapters 11-20

Chapters 21-30

Chapters 31-40

Chapters 40-45

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

The Honor Culture of Imperial Japan

The novel explores the complex power dynamic between the ethnically distinct Japanese and Okinawan people. While both cultures emphasize the value of bringing pride and honor to their families, the Japanese army urges the Okinawan populace, whom they consider ethnically inferior, to bring honor to Japan and to Emperor Hirohito by sacrificing themselves in defense of Japan. This imposed cultural norm makes Hideki admire the kamikaze pilots: “Hideki’s heart swelled at the sight of the planes dropping out of the sky into the withering antiaircraft fire of the giant American ships. This was true bravery, he thought. To fight in the face of overwhelming odds” (21).

The beginning of the novel seems to confirm that the Japanese soldiers on Okinawa always live up to the ideals of Imperial Japan. A soldier shames 13-year-old Hideki for his apparent cowardice when he tries to board an evacuation ship alongside his mother and younger brother; the soldier suggests that almost “Fourteen is old enough to fight!” (33). Similarly, we see that Okinawan civilians have internalized the Japanese devotion to the emperor. Hideki’s principal dies while holding a photograph of Emperor Hirohito, doing his best to protect the emperor’s mabui, or spirit; later, Hideki sees that someone has taken a photograph of the emperor off the wall in a classroom full of dead students, safeguarding the emperor’s image while leaving class photos.

However, as the novel continues, Hideki sees the hypocrisy behind the IJA’s promotion of honor culture. Japanese soldiers dismiss Okinawa’s residents as cannon fodder, happy to use them as human shields. In a particularly horrific moment, a Japanese officer straps dynamite to a mother holding a baby, sending her into a group of US soldiers as an unwilling suicide bomber. This behavior belies the high-toned speeches of men like Lieutenant Colonel Sato, who instructs Hideki and other children to glorify the violence of war.

Okinawan Spirituality

In traditional Okinawan beliefs, one’s ancestors are a vital part of identity. This belief is expressed in a variety of ways. Despite the horrors and upheaval of war, Hideki’s dying father Oto commands his starving son to leave an offering of food and clean their family tomb, since “failing to look after a haka brought sickness and death to a family” (80), no matter the extenuating circumstances.

The actions of ancestors have generational effects on a family. As Kimiko explains, Hideki is haunted by the mabui, or spirit, of his ancestor Shigemoto—a man who surrendered to Japanese invaders centuries earlier. This inherited cowardice can explain the trepidation Hideki feels at the idea of war: “Three hundred and fifty years ago, one of our ancestors died like a coward […] Until our ancestor’s spirit finds peace, [Hideki is] worthless in a fight” (33). The mabui’s curse is public knowledge, leaving Hideki open to being bullied at school; every time he fails to stand up for himself, he seemingly confirms the accuracy of the curse.

After three terrifying months of conflict, Hideki learns to act with courage under extraordinarily demanding circumstances—courage that reflects his own values, not those of IJA propaganda. He does this by assimilating a new mabui that resides alongside Shigemoto’s: that of Ray, an American soldier that Hideki kills with one of his grenades. His frequent sightings of the dead Ray out of the corner of his eye are in accordance with the Okinawan belief that the spirits people carry with them are visible, and have an enormous effect on daily life. Ray’s mabui guides Hideki, offering silent judgment on events. Others in Hideki’s life also seem to see Ray’s presence. An old Okinawan woman “looked at Hideki this way and that, as though trying to spot a spider” before concluding, “this is no yokai [ghost]. You have the American’s mabui on you” (157). Kimiko also sees Ray’s mabui on Hideki. Most surprisingly, the US Marine Big John seems to feel Ray as well—he calls Hideki “Rei” and Hideki recognizes Big John’s sensation of “somebody else there whom neither of them could see. Hideki knew that feeling all too well” (245).

As Hideki matures, he disposes of the mabui he carries with him. His newfound courage means that “Shigemoto is at peace now” (252). His display of photographs of Japanese and American soldiers in their prewar, human lives pays respect to Ray’s mabui, which can now inhabit Shuri Castle. Finally, Kimiko suggests that Hideki has lost his own mabui in the violence and nightmare of war. This is unresolved at the conclusion of the novel; Alan Gratz uses Hideki’s lost and gained mabuis to suggest that the individuals who survived The Battle of Okinawa lost parts of themselves, as well as being touched and changed irrevocably by the tragic losses of others.

The Might of the US War Machine

The invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of WWII. Gratz first emphasizes the overwhelming enormity of US naval and aerial forces: Heading toward Okinawa is “every American ship in the bay—more than a thousand of them […] Battleships, destroyers, cruisers. And overhead, wave after wave of planes” (10). Each vehicle is enormous, “bigger than any Japanese ship Hideki had ever seen in Naha Harbor” (17), and is laden with weaponry that most closely resembles the power of natural disasters. Ray feels the bombs viscerally: “one of the battleships’ big guns was so loud and so close that the BOOM rattled Ray’s stomach” (10). Similarly, Hideki compares US shelling to an earthquake, their “vibrations deep inside the island’s bedrock” (31).

This superior weaponry creates horrific scenes from afar. The US doesn’t have to fight in close quarters: As Hideki travels south, the road he is on is destroyed by a shell fired from a US battleship; later, a US jet calls in the position of Japanese soldiers and Okinawan civilians, functioning as “a spotter for the battleships offshore” (182). Eventually, the destruction becomes otherworldly, its resonances no longer comparable to forces of nature but to supernatural nightmares: “muffled booms shook [Hideki] and rocked the ground […] Mud and rock and shrapnel pelted him. His world was hellfire and destruction” (182).

The novel also zooms in on US personal troop gear. Ray’s military-issue pack contains a “flashlight, pistol, canteen, first aid kit, extra cartridges for his M-1 rifle. The Marine-issue “entrenching tool,” which as far as Ray could tell was just a shovel with a fancy name. And then there were the grenades. Two of them, Cast iron” (13). This practical set of tools and weapons—which plan for survival, prolonged outdoor warfare, and hand-to-hand and ranged fighting—characterizes the preparedness of American forces.

Gratz intentionally describes in detail Ray’s grenades to juxtapose US and Okinawan weaponry. Ray’s grenades are state of the art: “Each was painted a drab olive green, the army’s favorite color, and had a bright yellow collar around the neck. To activate the grenade, you gripped the gray handle on the side and pulled a big wire attached to a pin .The grenade activated when you let go of the handle, igniting the fuse” (13). The colors guide soldiers to use the grenades properly; their high tech ignition mechanism is meant to prevent mistakes. In contrast, Hideki’s grenades are insubstantial and dangerous; made of “glazed brown pottery:”

[They are] much lighter than real metal grenades. Inside the small rubber cap at the top, there was a match-like fuse and a little piece of rough wood. You activated the grenade by striking the fuse against the wood, but Hideki had no idea how fast the fuse burned and how long he would have before the grenade exploded. […] the soft clink of the delicate pottery grenades against each other made him worried that they would crack—or worse, explode in his jacket pocket (9).

The comparison between these weapons indicates both the random chance of war—despite the fact that Hideki’s grenade is much less powerful, he kills Ray with it—and foreshadows the eventual end of the battle. No matter how committed to dying for the defense of Okinawa and the Japanese mainland the IJA and its Okinawan conscripts might be, the US is simply not a match for them.

The Brutality of War

The novel doesn’t shy away from showing the gruesome reality of battle, which indiscriminately horrifically maims and kills American soldiers, Japanese soldiers, and Okinawan soldiers and civilians. The brutality of the conflict is expressed in a variety of ways: in the horrific sights Hideki and Ray witness, in their remorse over the acts of violence they have to commit, and in the trauma the novel implies will lie in store for at least some of the war’s survivors.

Hideki and Ray are shaken by the scenes they see during the fighting. Even seemingly successful missions are full of horror. Hideki watches with pride as a kamikaze plane hits an American ship, undoubtedly killing many on board “with a fierce explosion that boomed across the water” (22). Even as he celebrates though, Hideki can’t help but look on as “fire and black smoke poured from the deck of the ship” (22)—an image that makes him realize that “dozens more kamikaze plans were being shot down by American ships long before they even got close to the armada” (22). Later, he will see an untold number of dead Japanese soldiers, their bodies left out with no one to bury them. The most gut-wrenching sights are dead Okinawan civilians—especially children. Hideki learns that his mother and brother are dead, imagining their evacuation ship “torpedoed by an American submarine” (81). At Kimiko’s school, Hideki sees a room full of dead children: “Some of them had been thrown across the room by the blast. Others were slumped over their desks. The bomb had hit while the students were in class” (102). Ray, too, is moved by this sight; he collects a photograph of the children from before the war started.

Hideki and Ray lack the mindset of ideal soldiers; both are too invested in the humanity of the people around them. This is why when they are part of actual combat, the experience is deeply traumatic. Ray is devastated when he kills a Japanese soldier who runs at him: “As his adrenaline wore off, Ray started to shake so much he couldn’t stand. He staggered back, dropped his rifle, and collapsed inside the foxhole. He couldn’t stop the tears that streamed from his eyes” (65). Ray does not see himself as a killer or a violent man, so this event deeply disturbs his sense of self. Similarly, Hideki is unable to fully embrace the indoctrination of total war preached by the IJA. His peers do equally terribly in combat: one friend is shot in front of him, “hit again and again by bullets, his body dancing like a broken puppet before he crumpled to the ground” (59); another blows himself up, perhaps by accident or perhaps by suicide. When Hideki kills Ray, the action is so destabilizing that Hideki absorbs Ray’s mabui, or spirit, seeing it accompany him on the rest of his journey.

The men whom Hideki is meant to admire—Japanese soldiers—conduct themselves with such cruelty and hypocrisy that they completely undo Hideki’s illusions about the glory of war. In one of the novel’s most strikingly awful scenes, Hideki watches a Japanese lieutenant instruct a soldier to strap explosives onto an Okinawan mother and baby and sending them into US troops as unwilling suicide bombers. In contrast to this, Hideki rejects using his last grenade, leaving it behind and embracing a postwar life. Later, Ray is appalled by seeing same woman; despite the danger of the dynamite, he is unable to shoot her—a decision that also seems to point to his rejection of soldiering: “Ray was frozen. He couldn’t do it. The woman in the beautiful blue dress staggered closer, closer, her arms wrapped tight around her baby” (133).

Although the novel ends on a note of hope as Hideki considers the possibilities of Okinawa’s future, conjuring an image that metafictionally describes real-life Okinawa today, Gratz hints that getting over wartime experiences is not always easy. The idea of PTSD appears in the novel under several guises. First, we learn about Ray’s father, who came back from WWI a different man—violent, prone to impulsive aggression, and relying on alcohol to self-medicate. We also see glassy-eyed soldiers suffering from shellshock—the mid-20th century name for the condition we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. Finally, Kimiko cannot join in Hideki’s hopeful projection forward; for her, the war has been the end of all things—an attitude that points to psychic damage that will be hard to heal.

Gratz represents the horrors of war as universal, refusing to emphasize the suffering of one group over another. This is mirrored in Hideki’s choice to honor and mourn all of the soldiers and civilians depicted in the photographs he hangs at the remains of Shuri Castle; the warring sides symbolically unified by their devastating losses and traumas.