Murder In Triangle Park
[Adventures in Faith: Japan; 1991] One cold winter night I was with other homeless men around a fire, singing songs. Suddenly, one of them murdered the man right next to me.
Tom and I had been living among the homeless men in Kamagasaki in Japan for a few months.
Now it was winter. It was cold.
We slept in a little park, about six blocks outside the Kamagasaki area. We had a nickname for our park. We called it Dogshit Park. You might be able to guess why.
We slept in Dogshit Park for two reasons. First, if we slept in Triangle Park, there was a good chance we would be murdered in our sleep.
Second, even if we weren’t murdered in Triangle Park, we would never be able to sleep. The homeless men would keep waking us up to give us Can Coffee and talk.
So we slept in Dogshit Park. But during the day, we were usually in Triangle Park.
One chilly evening, a group of us homeless men were gathered around a cardboard fire at Triangle Park. There were ten men. I was one of them.
My missionary colleague Tom was at the laundromat, so I was alone. I was alone in Kamagasaki.
Normally, Tom and I always tried to be together, everywhere we went in Kamagasaki. In such a violent area, we hoped there would be safety in numbers.
But tonight we felt it was OK for us to be apart. Tom was alone at the laundromat, and I was alone in Triangle Park.
The men in the park were singing. They were taking turns singing Enka, which were popular ballad songs.
One man would start a song, and soon anyone who knew the words would join in. To my ear, it sounded like the music you hear in an old Japanese movie.
I didn’t know the words, but I tried to join in and sing along. It was fun!
One homeless man had a harmonica. He joined in on the song, improvising the notes he would play. He was pretty good, and he made the singing even more effective. I called him “Harmonica.”
The cardboard fire was roaring, and some of the homeless men were a little tipsy. They’d been drinking One Cup, which was a potent alcohol beverage sold in vending machines on the street.
So the singing was either great or awful, depending on your point-of-view.
Our Evangelical friends complained to us about our homeless men in Kamagasaki, calling them lazy drunks.
That stereotype isn’t always true. But whether it’s accurate or not, it’s unfair.
To be fair, these men were homeless. Not by choice.
They were trying to fall asleep by laying on the ground, outdoors, and it was 35 degrees.
They were in one of the most violent places in the world.
They had no spouse and no lover. They had no home and no warmth.
For them, there were no movies, no video games, no change of clothes, no savings, no therapist, and no future.
Life somehow didn’t work out for them. All their hopes and dreams were completely demolished.
They were the most shunned people in their nation.
Their lives were unimaginably stressful.
So having an “adult beverage” was about the only way they could relieve their great stress.
So ten homeless men were singing Enka songs around the cardboard fire.
But actually, two men weren’t singing.
One man who wasn’t singing was old. He had succeeded in falling asleep, despite the biting cold. He lay on the ground, nearly in fetal position. He wasn’t bothering anyone.
The other man who wasn’t singing was young. He was athletically fit. He was wearing white athletic gear: a white T-shirt, a white running jacket, and white running pants.
They were gleamingly white, like the white you see in TV ads for laundry detergent.
Having clothes that clean was quite unusual in Triangle Park.
When you’re homeless, you aren’t able to wash your clothes very often. And sleeping on the dusty ground doesn’t help, even if you lay on a scrap of cardboard.
The young man with the sparklingly clean white clothes wasn’t singing Enka. Unlike the other men, he didn’t look happy or drunk. Instead, he had a grim look on his face.
Suddenly, he stood up. Like Darth Vader pulling out his light-saber, this young man reached under his white jacket and pulled out a wrench.
It was a big pipe wrench. It was about 18 inches long, and massive.
As he pulled it out, I could see the wrench. I could see that he pulled it out by the handle.
Smoothly, like a warrior in a Samurai movie, he flipped it around in midair. Now, instead of holding it by the handle, he was holding it by the end with the jaws.
Still smooth as could be, as one hand raised the wrench above his head, his other hand joined in on the action. It was almost elegantly done.
Yet it was terrifying. By the time his hands were above his head, time seemed to stop. I could see the handle end of the pipe wrench was sharpened.
This sharpening was done skillfully. The taper was spread across about six linear inches of the wrench handle. The surface of the taper was smooth and uniformly shiny. It revealed no errant grinder marks.
This tool had been skillfully prepared, sort of like how a Japanese Katana, or sword, is prepared for combat by months of fabrication by an avowed master.
I was paralyzed. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. I was seeing everything in a sort of slow motion. My brain was motion-capturing everything.
I was beyond fight-or-flight. I was frozen.
It felt dangerous. Really dangerous.
While his hands were positioning the wrench, the young man leapt. He stepped right next to the sleeping old man.
The wrench came down. The sharpened end plunged into the old man’s skull. It made a nauseating sound.
The wrench came up and stabbed back down into the old man’s skull a second time.
The wrench went up a third time. As it went up, the young man flipped it around in mid-air. Now he held it by the handle end, opposite the heavy end with the jaws.
It had become a baseball bat of sorts.
Down came the pipe wrench. This time, instead of the sharpened end penetrating the skull of the old man, the heavy end thwacked his head like Babe Ruth hitting a home run.
The blunt-force trauma made an awful crunching sound as the homeless old man’s skull fractured yet again.
The young man slowly rose from his lunge position. He backed away a few steps. He looked at us homeless men sitting by the fire.
We were witnesses to a murder. A murder he had committed.
He made threatening motions with the pipe wrench. He backed away, scanning around with his eyes, always keeping us in his field of view.
It was clear that we had to let him go, or suffer the same fate as the sleeping old homeless man.
These events couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds. Yet to me it seemed like an eternity. I beheld it all in slow motion.
There was something like motion-capture going on within me, because even now, many decades later, I can see and feel all these things as if they took place today.
In my peripheral vision, I could see our harmonica-playing friend stand up.
Mr. Harmonica spoke in calm, low tones to the young man with the wrench. He slowly walked toward the young man, speaking calmly.
The young man made threatening gestures to Mr. Harmonica.
Harmonica was undeterred.
In moments, he had positioned himself between the wrench-wielding murderer and us.
Behind his back, Harmonica motioned for us to get away quickly.
Harmonica had deliberately stepped into harms’ way. He was risking his life to save ours.
Several of us scurried to the old man who was stabbed. I was closest to the old man, and I got there first. I picked him up in my arms.
Like most homeless people, he was skinny and weak, and hence not heavy to carry.
But also like most homeless people, I myself was skinny and weak. That skinny old man was quite heavy to me.
I began to carry him toward the ambulance station. As I walked, he made a brief moaning sound. How could he still be alive? Maybe it was some reflex deep within his dying body. Or maybe I was moaning.
I felt like John Rambo, rescuing a Prisoner of War from some prison deep in the jungle.
The other homeless men circled around me. They protected me, as I rescued one of their own.
Without thought for themselves, they had made themselves human shields.
I have not the slightest doubt that any of them would gladly have sacrificed their own life to make sure I could get the old man to the ambulance.
Mr. Harmonica and those homeless men are the greatest heroes I have ever met.
What is it that causes an ordinary person to spontaneously become a hero?
Why will some people risk their life to protect someone they don’t even know? Why will they step into harm’s way, in the face of a very clear and present danger?
Why will some people, without hesitation, lay down their lives for their friend?
As I carried the old man to the ambulance, some of the blood oozing out of his head dripped onto one of my shoes.
From that day on, every time I looked down, I saw the blood of the old man on that shoe.
That blood-stained shoe was the most valuable souvenir I’ve ever owned.
The ambulance station was a half block away. On arriving there, we pounded on the door.
It took quite a while for the EMTs to answer. They were probably weary of answering the door, only to find drunks pounding on the door at all hours of the night.
But eventually they did come to the door.
They saw the old man in my arms. They wheeled out a stretcher and collected his body. Soon, the big garage door opened, and the ambulance sped away.
I never found out what happened. My guess was that the old man was already dead.
I looked at the other homeless men. Almost as if on some unspoken cue, we all started to walk away.
Without planning it, we all walked away in different directions. Within a minute, we were a crowd that had dispersed.
I was numb. My limbs were shaking. My six-foot tall body had become 135 pounds of adrenaline and terror and nervousness. My tinnitus was screaming.
I went for a long walk into the night.
Alone. In Kamagasaki.
When the stabbings had taken place, I was sitting next to the old man. I wasn’t more than three feet away.
Later, I returned to the Triangle Park area. By now, Tom had also returned. He was looking for me.
We spotted each other on a side street. I briefed him on what had happened.
We walked into Triangle Park to recover my bag.
When we got near the cardboard fire, we could see that everybody’s bags had been rifled. All their contents were strewn everywhere. Including mine.
It was like in the movies, when corrupt police “toss” somebody’s apartment.
Except in our case, it was probably just some hungry homeless person trying to find food or money in our bags.
We collected my possessions and stuffed them back into my bag. Fortunately, nothing was missing.
Thanks to strong minimalism and being homeless, I guess I didn’t own anything worth stealing.
In the months to come, for Tom and me, that became a source of delight. We had proof that we didn’t own anything worth stealing.
We left Triangle Park and walked to a side street. There, we talked some more.
I was really anxious. Even my friend Tom couldn’t talk me down.
As we talked, a man approached us. He had the characteristic look of a member of the Japanese Mafia.
Some people refer to the Japanese Mafia with the word Yakuza. However, we were told the word was considered offensive. So we didn’t use it.
The man’s hair was curled in a perm. He wore a long-sleeved shirt, possibly to conceal his tattoos. He was smoking a cigarette. A finger was missing.
He had a sort of Buddha-like calm about him.
He told us the murderer was a Shinogi, a gang member. And he told us we’d better leave Kamagasaki.
In a polite Japanese way, we sincerely thanked him.
But what did his words mean? Our minds raced. Was he threatening us? Did he know of some plan against us?
After a few urgent moments, we realized he was protecting us. I was an eyewitness to a murder, a murder done by a violent gang member.
That gang would be on the lookout for me. To stay in Kamagasaki would almost certainly mean I’d be killed.
In all of our experiences of the Japanese Mafia, they always looked out for us. They never harmed us.
Never.
Not even once.
In fact, the Japanese Mafia protected us. Again and again.
We considered their protection a miracle.
Sirach 34:11-12, NAB translation:
I have seen much in my travels, learned more than ever I could say. Often I was in danger of death, but by these attainments I was saved.
RESOURCES
At Wikipedia:
ADVENTURES IN FAITH
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