The time Dad captured Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi

when news makes a splash

News was a vague thing for me when I was a child. The television was always full of color and music, grown ups in flowered shirts and striped pants and lots of hair. Crises in such places as Vietnam or the Middle East were distant specters, nothing to interrupt the fun of digging in the dirt or jumping into puddles with my red boots on. It’s true that from time to time there was something intriguing about men being far away up in the sky wearing strange white costumes. But even that could not compete with the solid joys of seeing water splash around my feet. That was a world I could see, a world I understood.

But when I was about five, the Navy sent Dad to the island of Guam for a full year, clear on the other side of the world. I barely remember it. I remember Mom crying every time the song, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” came on the radio. I remember a few sparse phone calls, all huddled around the pale yellow phone in the kitchen, its long cord wrapping around our legs. And I remember - mostly because we listened to them for years - exchanged cassette tapes between Dad and us. My favorite part is when I started blowing into the mic and Mom said, “Christopher, stop being silly.”

I also remember hearing that a Japanese soldier had been captured on the island of Guam while Dad was there. This was a true story, the famous Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi, who had gone into hiding when the United States retook the island in 1944. He eventually learned that the war had ended but still refused to surrender, living off the land for close to three decades, convinced that if he were captured, he would be tortured and executed. Sergeant Yokoi was finally discovered by two local shrimpers in January, 1972 and flown home to Japan, where upon landing he announced, “It is with much embarrassment that I return home.” Apparently, Sergeant Yokoi preferred death to the shame of surrender.

But back home, at preschool, I gleefully announced to my classmates that Dad had captured Sergeant Yokoi. I don’t know if that was just me making things up, a child’s predilection to make one’s father a larger-than-life figure. Or maybe five-year-old me could only process so much data so it all got mashed together in my head. Dad was on Guam. A Japanese soldier was captured on Guam. Ergo, Dad was the one who captured the Japanese soldier on Guam. It stands to reason.

The only other major news story I remember as a young child was much less cheerful. After we moved to Bethesda, I became friends with Trevor down the street. I would go to his house after kindergarten to watch Sesame Street and Zoom while we played with blocks. In high school, Trevor became a skinhead punk. He would ride his skateboard to the bus stop, flipping it under his arm as he boarded and telling us about the different kids he’d beat up. But watching Ernie and Bert together in kindergarten, it was hard to see that coming.

But as it turns out, on many afternoons, PBS preempted our cheerful programming to broadcast somber men with wide ties and thick rimmed glasses sitting behind staid desks. They spoke into microphones with muted voices, talking about some sort of break in at a DC office building, and what did the President know and when did he know it. Nowhere near as interesting as Oscar the Grouch.

I never knew what Trevor’s father did. He was home all day, puttering around while his wife went off to work. He wore slacks and short-sleeve button downs, sporting bushy white sideburns to offset his balding head. As long as I knew Trevor’s dad, I never knew what he did for work. Maybe nothing. But he liked to watch TV and these somber men behind their desks, seeking the missing twenty-two minutes of some sort of recording. He was spell bound.

But all of that DC intrigue was way too complicated for a pair of kindergartners. We just wanted Big Bird. And parents who loved us and were there for us like my Dad was for us, even if it was only by cassette tape for a year. Eventually, Dad did make it home for Christmas - and every Christmas after that.

Decades later, the news would become much less vague in my life. Our first year of marriage, the Army sent me to a distant land to fight a war I hoped would never start. I huddled around the radio in my tent each night, straining to catch updates from the BBC, hoping against hope for news of peace. I did not make it home for Christmas that year.

Sometimes the news remains obscure and far away, too complicated for us to understand or trouble us. Other times, distant wars become ours. Powerful men behind desks speak in muted tones, but their decisions rip into our lives, upending our routines and tearing us from loved ones. Angry boys on skateboards scream at us to go home and we wonder, where did all this hate come from? Maybe we too should go to ground, refusing to have contact with the other, lest we be destroyed in the humiliation of surrender.

Or maybe this world was made for something better than all of this. Maybe a day is coming when we need not fear one another, nor ever worry that we will be away for Christmas. A day when the news never needs to stay distant or vague, because all tidings will bring joy and every morning will bring peace.

A world where color and music will be the very air we breathe. A world where everlasting love will reign, every bit as joyful and real as the splash children make when they jump in puddles.