Chance of Zion

My aunt Setsuko wears an American soldier's dog tag under her blouse. She has worn it every day for fourteen years. This is how she got it. In 2006, my aunt signed up to host an American exchange student. She was 50. She didn't speak English. She did it because her son Daiki, who was eight, was being bullied at school, and she thought a big brother from far away might help him be brave. The student was Jake. Sixteen. From a small town in Tennessee. Six-foot-two. He ducked under every doorway in her house and hit his head on all of them anyway. He said "Yes, ma'am" to everything, even when he didn't understand the question. Once, my aunt asked him in Japanese if he wanted to try natto. He said, "Yes, ma'am." He talked about it for the rest of the year. He carried the groceries for every old woman on her street. He bowed too deep and too long, so the neighbors bowed back, and nobody knew how to end it. Then he found out about Daiki. He didn't say anything. The next morning, he walked Daiki to school. And the next morning. And every morning for a month. He didn't threaten anybody. He didn't have to. He just walked next to an eight-year-old boy, all six-foot-two of him, saying "Good morning!" to everyone. Including the bullies. The bullies stopped. My aunt asked him why he did it. Jake thought about it, then said something she made him write down so she would never forget it: "Big people are supposed to stand in front of small people, ma'am." She still has that piece of paper. When he left Japan, he hugged her at the airport for so long that a security guard asked them to move. He called her "Japan Mom." Every Mother's Day for six years, a card came from Tennessee. Terrible Japanese. Careful handwriting. At eighteen, he joined the Army. She asked him why. He said, "Somebody has to stand in front, ma'am." In 2012, her phone rang at 3 a.m. It was a woman in Tennessee. Linda. Jake's mother. Linda didn't speak Japanese. My aunt didn't speak English. But my aunt heard her crying, and she understood everything. Jake was killed in Afghanistan. He was 22. My aunt had never been on an airplane. She flew to Tennessee alone, with Jake's address written on a piece of paper. On the road from the airport to the church, people were lined up for miles. Farmers. Children. Old men in veterans' caps, saluting. A flag in every hand. My aunt rode in the car with Linda. She didn't know what to do. So every time she passed a flag, she bowed. Linda saw it. She didn't say anything. She just held my aunt's hand for the rest of the way. After the funeral, in Linda's kitchen, Linda opened a small box. Jake's dog tags. Two of them. She took one off the chain. She pressed it into my aunt's hand and closed her fingers around it. Then she said the only Japanese word she knew. Jake had taught her. "Okaasan." Mother. "He had two mothers," Linda said. "So he had two tags." My aunt is 70 now. She has worn it every single day since. She and Linda still can't speak each other's language. For fourteen years, every Mother's Day, they have sent each other one card. Linda's always ends with the same words. Jake's words. "Japan Mom, thank you." And Daiki? The little boy who was too scared to walk to school? He's 28 now. He's a firefighter in Tokyo. Last year, he ran into a burning apartment building and carried out a seven-year-old girl. A reporter asked him why he chose this job. He said, "An American taught me when I was eight. Big people stand in front of small people." America, you have boys like Jake in every small town. You don't make a big deal about them. They just stand in front. Some of them don't come home. We want you to know that a mother in Japan still wears one of their names over her heart, every single day. We remember who stood in front of us.