Grenade

Ray Majors, whose name is misheard as the more Japanese-sounding “Rei” by Hideki, is an 18-year-old US Marine. Ray grew up on a farm in Nebraska, the son of an emotionally volatile and sometimes violent father suffering from PTSD. Ray’s traumatic experiences of warfare on Okinawa allow him to empathize with what his father lived through in the trenches of WWI.

Ray is compassionate, thoughtful, and sensitive; he feels conflicted about the realities of war. After he kills a Japanese soldier, Ray can’t help humanizing the man by looking through his belongings; when he finds photos of the man’s wife and young family, Ray weeps and keeps the photographs as a kind of remorseful memorial. Ray also urges Sergeant Meredith and then Big John, his respective squad leaders, to treat Okinawan civilians with respect and mercy: “[T]hat tomb, it was full of Okinawans. Women and children. We gotta stop using grenades on them” (75). This is complicated by the Japanese soldiers’ tendency to disguise themselves as Okinawan civilians. The novel uses Ray’s compassion to link him to Hideki, who also cannot help seeing enemy fighters as people. Their eye for poignant and tragic details, such as the photo of the school children in their ruined classroom or the beautiful blue kimono of the Okinawan woman with dynamite strapped to her, make Ray and Hideki echoes of one another.

When Hideki and Ray run into each other in the Okinawan forest, each fumbles for their respective weapon, though Hideki reaches and detonates his grenade first. When Ray dies, his presence in the novel doesn’t end; instead, Hideki comes to believe that he has Ray’s mabui on him—guiding him, offering silent commentary on Ray’s actions, and reminding Hideki of his newfound understanding. Hideki hopes to eventually help Ray’s mabui to find peace. The novel suggests that by collecting photos like Ray and then hanging them in Shuri Castle, Hideki has done just that.

Kimiko is Hideki’s older sister. She is marked as a yuta—a woman with the ability to identify and communicate with spirits—by the distinctive white stripe in her hair. She is an outspoken and assertive person; she is unafraid in telling the Japanese soldier on the Okinawan dock that he is wrong to try to recruit Hideki, because Hideki is a coward. She condemns her brother as an idiot with a roll of her eyes and a smack to his head when he decides to remain on the island.

Kimiko is recruited as a military nurse in a Japanese army hospital—this post allows her to escape the horrific fate of her classmates, who die in a bomb attack on their school.

When Kimiki and Hideki are reunited, they successfully plot to save a group of Okinawan children whom the Japanese army is planning on using as human shields; together, they lead the children to safety in a US military camp. Kimiko and Hideki end the novel near their family home in the north of the island with dual visions of what the battle has meant for Okinawa; while Kimiko believes that the destruction is an ending, Hideki assures her that Okinawa could still have a future.

Corporal John Barboza, known as Big John throughout the novel, is Ray’s foxhole buddy and a seasoned soldier who teaches Ray how to keep safe in the midst of battle. Despite his bear-like appearance, Big John has a kind and sympathetic side—a side that military service seems to be slowly eroding. When Ray is filled with horror at killing the Japanese soldier, Big John comforts him: “He knelt beside Ray and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I know what it feels like to kill a man for the first time,’ Big John told him. ‘We all do’” (65). However, much to Ray’s discomfort, Big John also makes disturbing half-jokes about killing all the Okinawan civilians they come across just in case some of them are IJA soldiers in disguise.

When Sergeant Meredith is injured in the explosion of a faulty grenade, Big John becomes squad leader. He leads Ray’s squad to attempt to take Kakazu Ridge, a mission for which the squad is undermanned and underpowered. When the US survivors hurriedly retreat, Ray is killed as he runs into Hideki in the forest.

Big John reappears in the novel as the leader of the US camp where Hideki, Masako, and Kimiko bring Okinawan children would have become human shields. Ray’s influence is clear in Big John’s newfound compassion: He insists that the children be treated with kindness and not be harmed. Big John also seems to recognize Ray’s mabui on Hideki. He addresses the boy as “Rei” and Hideki recognizes that Big John is aware of “somebody else there whom neither of them could see” (245).