Midnight Flight from the Frontier
–Night of December 10th–
Cowering in the shadow of the brown bear’s successive attacks, the frontier folk endeavored to get out of the frontier as soon as possible. First the women and children were sent to safety downstream, either to the home of Tsuji Hashikura three kilometers away, or to the Sankebetsu schoolhouse, six kilometers away. The evacuation, under cover of darkness, called to mind the famous chapter in the Tales of the Heike when the Heike were forced to flee the capital.
With torches of pine and skins of gampi flowers, the flight from the frontier had begun. Dotted about Rokusensawa, the frontier folk went from door to door, the number of evacuees increasing as they went. The line reached up to a hundred meters long. Sparks dripped from the torches and continued burning on the ground, like will o’ the wisps.
The young men, quaking in terror, tried to be neither the first nor the last in the line. They were a belt over the snowy roads, heading downstream in complete silence. Some of the women and children were weeping in terror or stumbling over the snow. At last they cleared the three kilometers to the Tsuji house.
Some of the refugees had left in such a hurry that they wore only sandals, but they were too scared to be cold. Their whole lives they had been taught that bears feared fire, and so at each house they left a pile of firewood ablaze. The fires scorched the night sky, giving an eerie glow over the frontier night.
By this time the four severly wounded survivors from the Miyoke house were among those fleeing. Nothing was left of Saitō Iwao’s left hip but bone, and his skin was a gory thing, hanging in tatters. “Water! Water!” or “Mommy, catch me a bear!” he would sometimes babble, arousing great rage or tears from those around him. Tsuji’s wife, Rika, gave the boy water, and he gulped it down with such energy that he no longer looked to be on death’s door. He kept crying out for water, but before long his voice grew thin. Twenty minutes later and he was gone.
The seriously wounded Yayo, Umekichi, and Odo were given first aid at the Tsuji house. The next day, December 11th, they went the further three kilometers to the home of Morii Saburō, and three days after the disaster, on the 12th, they were finally escorted to Sawatani Fusakichi, a doctor in Kotanbetsu. They were not alone; some were so scared that they fled all the way to Kotanbetsu, Tomamae, or even Haboro.
Soon the situation was re-evaluated and Tsuji’s house was determinted to no longer be safe, and so on the morning of the 12th those same families fled a further three kilometers downstream to the safety zone. This left only seven hand-picked, hardy members of the rescue party and ten fresh-faced young men to hold the entire frontier.