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Battles (1997)

I was always fascinated with American history. In school, it was my favorite subject. I remember learning about the Pilgrims, the Wright Brothers, Robert Fulton’s steamship, cowboys and Indians, the Great Depression, and the Untouchables of the "roaring 20s." As I became more Americanized, this link to what I considered my past gave me identity. This was a youthful persuasion that later became more sophisticated while in college to include Chinese history in America, but in my formative adolescence, my interest was in the history that was taught in the public school system.

Perhaps the most interesting history for me was the history of War. I know that this sounds incredibly politically incorrect, however, struggle, conflict and bloodshed have always held an intense interest for young males in America who grew up when I did. There was something about growing up in the fifties that brought this out. Perhaps it was because WWII was still fresh in our minds. The Korean conflict brought young soldiers home to our neighborhood as heroes and they wore their uniforms proudly. The Movietone News that was shown at theaters between the feature presentation and the cartoons always had items about Korea, and Hollywood had found a selling formula in depicting the glory of battle. There was glory in courage, personified by the Audie Murphy movies that I saw. And then there was Uncle George.

George was my mother’s older brother. Unlike my father, he was not a refugee from the War. He had been a soldier, one of Merrill’s Marauders in Burma. A hero. While my father, who resisted assimilation, was a pacifist, Uncle George was flamboyantly American and like most American men who served in WWII, he was proud of his military past. For my brothers and me, this was confusing. While wanting desperately to become westernized, we sought out role models that would support this desire. We found this in people like Audie Murphy and Uncle George; not my father, who was tied to the old ways. George wanted us to grow to be "men", strong in resolve, able to fight for our beliefs, individualists who stuck to their guns. In retrospect, I think my father wanted those same things for us but in a different way. There were oftentimes conflicts between my father and George over this. They were never really resolved. At any rate, children are easily seduced by heroes, so the path we followed was that of George. This is not a proud statement; just factual.

Because we lived in a traditional extended family situation, George was part of our household, as well as my aunt and other uncles. He had his own room and we were told to respect his privacy by staying out of there at all times. But, being the inquisitive kids that we were, one day when all the adults were gone, my older brother and I ventured into his room to explore. My brother and I rummaged about, curious to see what we could uncover. We found some "girlie" magazines that fascinated us for hours. We found unfiltered Pall Malls that damaged our lungs. We found after-shave lotion that burned our faces, and we found a killing knife that was in a leather sheathe. Now this was a true find. The sheathe had the word "Burma" emblazoned on it, testimony to his time with Captain Merrill. We removed it from the sheathe and lightly touched the blade. It was still sharp. We envisioned how George had used this weapon in hand to hand combat with the Japanese. It was like all the movies.

We jumped and bounced on his bed, wielding the knife over our heads and made war cries, stabbing at the air. We were "men" who used after-shave, and smoked Pall Malls, and read "girlie" magazines and carried weapons. Then the gun fell out from under his pillow.

We froze. A gun. This wasn’t a toy. We didn’t have to be adults to know what guns were made to do. They were made to kill. We backed away from it like it had mystical powers; powers that might make it go off and tear through someone’s flesh. It was at the same time frightening and completely spellbinding. The barrel was shiny and polished. The handle had a black grip that showed wear from use in some untold battle where countless numbers of the enemy had obviously been slain. My older brother picked it up and held it, his finger to the trigger. I said that maybe we should put it back before we got into trouble. He laughed at me and chastised my cowardice. I implored him to put it down, saying that this was too dangerous and that we should go before someone came home. And then, I saw a look of disgust from my brother. It was penetrating. It was deep. At eight years old, I knew that he and I were destined for different paths in our lives. It was more than just the look, or the words. It was something visceral.

Ten years later, there was Vietnam. I was adamantly against the war. I often wondered what Uncle George would have thought about my views. After all he had been a leader at the VFW. He had been the grand marshal of the Chinese New Year’s Parade in San Francisco and carried the American flag in front of the Chinese contingent of WWII veterans. But George had died five years before that in a car accident. I remember how my history classes had taught me how the Civil War had divided families. Vietnam was my generation’s Civil War. While my two younger brothers and I marched in the great Moratorium in San Francisco in protest of the war, my older brother had joined the Marines and had been at Da Nang and Khe Sahn during the Tet Offensive. Though I felt the war was wrong, I wanted all the GI’s to come home safely. One of my older brother’s best friends had already been killed. It was enough.

Before he left for Nam, the tension in our house was tremendous. We were 18 and 19 years old, full of ideals, but from different poles. We had become "men." Men who were strong in our resolve, able to fight for our beliefs, and as we had been taught, we "stuck to our guns." But we were barely "men", and because we had just crossed that arbitrary threshold from adolescence to manhood, we lived our lives with the blind passion that invariably guide people of that age. The night before he left for the Nam, we needed some sort of resolution. It might be unspoken. It might be symbolic, but we needed something. We knew that there was the possibility that he might not ever come home again. He found the vehicle. My older brother knew that he could provoke me if he hurt my cat. I know that this seems totally unrelated, but it worked. He picked up my cat and threw him across the room. I charged him before the cat even landed. Fists flew and bones cracked. The rage released singed the house. My father jumped in but was quickly dispatched by both of us. There was blood on the walls as we battled like gladiators to the death. My younger brother called the police.

We fought for almost twenty minutes. Our lips were broken. My hand was fractured. Our bodies were covered by cuts, abrasions and bruises. Blood splattered against the walls and spilled onto the tiles in the hallway. When the police arrived twenty minutes later, we both lay crumpled on the floor, exhausted, gasping for breath, too tired or hurt to even hurl an epithet at each other. One of my other brothers sent the police away, saying that the situation was in hand.

Finally we struggled to sit up, leaning against the wall, side by side. There had been screaming and crying all around us as our parents were hysterical. But we never heard them. It wasn’t their battle. It was ours. We were in a vacuum where only the two of us existed. We were numb to the rest of the world. Then, he looked over at me and grunted, "some pacifist". I smiled back at him when I realized what he meant. I said, "yeah", and we both coughed out a laugh.

I have often wondered how two people raised in the same family could grow up to be so different. My initial thought is that our histories were different, but that isn’t quite true. Perhaps history isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. I’m not so sure of my pacifist beliefs anymore. My history doesn’t show it. Maybe I’m a quasi-pacifist. The only thing I know is, that for both my older brother and me, there are some battles that need to be fought. And the one that I just described was one of them.