Koji was already suffocating. Dressed in gloves and several layers of clothing to protect against the sharp cane leaves, they all wore straw hats against the sun, and bandanas tied over their mouths to keep out the dust. Koji soon sweated through both shirts and the jacket that clung heavily to his back like wet rags. By the end of the day, Koji could barely lift his left arm, and the palm of his hand burned and bled watery pus from his broken blisters. Only then did he realize how much his parents had endured every day since they arrived at Puli, especially his mother, who returned home from the fields filthy and exhausted every afternoon, stripped off her layers of clothing, and began to cook dinner for them. After dinner, she washed clothes, or sewed, or tended their garden before finally finding a moment to rest, while his father went down to the river to drink with the other Japanese men. In the early hours of the morning it began all over again.

Day after day, Koji gripped his father’s machete in his callus-hardened palm. It didn’t take long for him to find his rhythm among the older men. It soon became evident he was born for cane cutting, a strong, broad-shouldered boy with an easy swing that came naturally to him. Within months, Koji was noticed by the luna as a talented cutter, stacking hundreds of pounds of cane each day. Not long after, his water breaks grew longer while other lunas paused to nod his way. At the end of his first year, Koji stood hot and uncomfortable in the wood-paneled foyer of the plantation manager’s big house, clutching an envelope containing his first cash bonus for cutting the most cane by the end of the harvest.

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