The Return of a Shadow

By Kunio Yamagishi

Eizo Osada had his shadow, always there inside his head, ready, unbidden, to announce itself. And it did; criticising, asking awkward questions, prompting. It had been there since he left Japan for Canada over forty years ago. He had left his wife and three young sons, one of them only two years old, to earn money to maintain the family back home.

Then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. A worried Canadian government interned Japanese people. Eizo spent the next few years in camps. After his release his shadow questioned why he did not go back to his family, but there was always a reason why he could not. Then there was the last letter from his wife twenty-three years ago asking him to stay in Canada as there was no employment in war-torn Japan. So he stayed, living a lonely life, saving so he could send money back.

Now, approaching retirement, the time had come to return to the wife and family he had never known for so long.

Little did he know what awaited him and how he in turn would become a shadow.