Making a Massacre of the Miyoke House
–Night of December 10th–
The rescue part had arranged to meet up at the home of Miyoke Yasutarō. It was, for the frontier, comparatively large and in a geographically strategic position. Miyoke and his wife, Yayo, had five sons: Rikizō, Yūjirō, Kanakura, and Umekichi; and a daughter, Hisano. Yasutarō had left on urgent business for a neighboring town, Onishika. The family had taken on several guests: Saitō Ishigorō’s wife, Take, and sons Iwao and Haruyoshi, had evacuated to the Miyokes, and Odo, the Ōtas’ lodger, had nowhere else to go. Between the family and the evacuees, there were ten people staying in the house. Ishigorō, by this time, had already departed for Tomamae to seek help. Yayo was preparing dinner and Take was offering up dumplings to the Buddha.
Miyamoto Yutarō, a Sankebetsu farmer, dropped by. “I’m about to head down to the Nakagawa house. All these women and children are sure to get the bear excited! But don’t worry, it’ll take him a long time to get through Saitō’s big old lady,” Yutarō joked, giving a high-pitched laugh as he exited.
Just after that, they heard a commotion from far off: the bear’s attack at the Ōta house. The two houses were no more than five hundred meters apart. The rescue party gathered there departed at once, leaving the women and children in the dark as to what was going on. They clung to Odo, throwing more kindling on the fire.
“Don’t let the fire go out! More firewood! All bears flee at the sight of fire!” The mistaken belief that bears were afraid of fire was widespread among the settlers.
Meanwhile, the rescue party had confirmed that the bear had fled and that the mourners at the Ōta house were unharmed. They escorted them with extreme vigilance to the safety zone downstream.
Along the way, there were whispers about the accuracy of Tani’s prediction. Some swore that the bear was still lurking about. And sure enough, not ten minutes since the uproar at the Ōta house, the evacuees heard a second commotion.
Yayo had put a pumpkin into a pot in the hearth, and as soon as she returned to the living room, there was a terrible sound and a rumbling. A giant black shape loomed in the doorway.
“HELP! SOMEBODY!” Yayo cried out. But there was no reply.
It was a bear. A brown bear bigger than she could imagine.
Suddenly the fire out and the lamp extinguished, plunging the room into complete darkness. Yayo turned about, looking for any safe avenue. Just then, Yūjirō jumped onto her lower back. Umekichi, her youngest, clung to her shoulders. Unbalanced, Yayo fell down hard. They were ripe for the taking.
The bear clamped down on Umekichi’s head, back, and legs, and dragged the three of them back to the living room. Then, it got onto Yayo’s back, holding her between its forelegs and chest. As she scream, it bit Yayo’s face several times.
The bear roared, as if signaling it intended to move on to Yūjirō. But Yūjirō, clinging tightly to his mother, was making it difficult.
Odo tried to make a run for it, but this attracted the bear’s attention. Yayo, though grievously wounded, took Yūjirō’s hand in hers and tried to escape.
The path to the door blocked by the bear, Odo tried to scurry under cover. But the bear clamped down hard on Odo’s lower back, gouging out the right side of his waist from crotch to rear and slashing him with its right paw. Odo screamed at the pain of his body being pulled apart.
This scream troubled the bear, and it dropped its paws to its side and returned to the living room, where Yayo and Yūjirō, trapped, were frozen in terror. Here the bear killed Kanakura with a single blow of its paw, and then attacked the cowering Saitō siblings, Iwao and Haruyoshi. Iwao suffered near fatal wounds, and Haruyoshi was beaten to death. Take could not bear not knowing what was happening her children, and she poked her head up from the vegetable bin in which she had been hiding. The beast, persistent, spied the hidden woman, and dragged her with its claws to the middle of the living room. She was nine months pregnant.
“Don’t bite my belly! Don’t bite my belly! If you’re hungry eat me!” Take shouted to the end of her strength, but at last her voice faded to an insect’s drone and she lost consciousness.
The bear ripped open Take’s belly, threw the wriggling fetus to the ground, and started to eat Take from the feet up.
Rikizō, had hid his body in the same corner as Take, but sensing that this was dangerous, concealed himself behind bags of rice stacked two high about four meters away. Rikizō, while hidden, tried not to listen to the sound of the gruesome slaughter. And though he knew he must not look, before he knew it his face was pointed towards the bear’s eyes and snout.
Rikizō had concealed himself nearby Take, but this seemed an untenable position and so he wriggled behind bags of rice stacked two high on the ground. He tried to tune out the gruesome sounds of slaughter. But the more he tried not to hear, the more he heard the dying screams, the begging for help of his mother and brothers, and the disconcerting sound of crunching bones. And though he knew that he must not look, he found himself drawn inexorably towards the bear.
The crunching of bones is a difficult sound to describe. Like a cat eating a mouse. At the same time, there came to his ears the sound of labored breathing, and then a moan born of latent strength.
Stiff with fear, Rikizō wordlessly resigned himself to the fact that he was next.
Take was not enough to sate the bear, and next it started on the expired Kanakura, eating his chest, shoulder, and head. Then it moved onto Iwao, still clinging to life. The bear chewed at his groin, rear, chest, and shoulders.
Faraway, Saitō Ishigorō had alerted the authorities in Tomamae and was relaxing at the town’s Obata Inn, soothing his exhaustion with his beloved liquor. He had no idea what had happened.