Frank’s disappearance and the collapse of the plan to go to America

Frank’s disappearance turns Sachiko’s announced departure for America from an apparently settled future into a test of trust, money, and maternal responsibility. In Etsuko’s recollection, Sachiko first treats Frank’s absence as a minor delay; what she later recounts about his conduct in Tokyo makes that optimism difficult to sustain. Even after declaring that she will not follow him, she subsequently says she is moving to Kobe and still expects to go to America, leaving the plan’s collapse uncertain rather than final.

Announcement and Disappearance

Sachiko tells Etsuko that everything has at last been settled: she and Mariko will leave Nagasaki for America within days. The news comes while Etsuko is already concerned about Mariko and asks whether the girl might be with friends. Sachiko laughs, lays a hand on Etsuko’s arm, and reassures her that there is no reason to be alarmed. The contrast is immediate: Etsuko is thinking about Mariko’s whereabouts, while Sachiko is eager to announce a future that she presents as decided.

Later, Sachiko explains that Frank has gone. He left his hotel the previous morning, and there was no message for her. Etsuko is still holding a piece of fray when she hears the news; she puts it down and sits opposite Sachiko. The small domestic pause gives the report a striking calmness, but Sachiko’s packed preparations make the practical setback plain: she had expected to leave with Frank, and now has to account for his sudden absence.

Sachiko says she had half expected this. She plans to go into town that night alone and look for him, reasoning that Nagasaki is tame compared with Tokyo and that, if Frank is still in town, she knows his habits. She insists that he has not gone far and argues that a man intending to leave her would have left a note. Her strongest reassurance is that Frank once travelled all the way from Tokyo to find her at her uncle’s house. She treats that journey as proof that he means his promises and still wants to take her to America for a steady, respectable life. The evidence she offers is therefore not a message or a present commitment from Frank, but an earlier journey and her confidence in what it signifies.

The Search and the Fracture at Home

Sachiko’s certainty is challenged by the strain between her and Mariko. When Mariko asks why her mother always goes away with Frank, Sachiko raises a warning hand and demands an apology. Mariko instead insults Frank, calling him a pig. The exchange makes the cost of the proposed departure visible within the family: Frank is not merely the absent partner in an uncertain plan but someone whose presence and excursions have become a source of anger for Mariko.

Etsuko offers to stay with Mariko while Sachiko searches, and later asks whether Sachiko found her friend. Sachiko confirms that she did, continuing to make tea without looking up. The account does not say where she found Frank or describe what passed between them. That omission matters: the immediate mystery of his whereabouts is resolved, but the scene supplies no assurance that he has become dependable or that the departure can proceed as planned.

The Earlier Pattern and Sachiko’s Decision

Sachiko explains her expectations by recalling an earlier episode in Tokyo. Frank disappeared there too, spent their money, and drank it all in three days. Some of the lost money was hers. She had worked as a maid in a hotel, scrubbing floors on her knees, and believes they were only a few weeks away from having enough for a ship to America when Frank drank away what they had saved. Her account turns the present absence into a recurrence: what she had described as a slight delay resembles a previous derailment of the same escape plan.

That memory also changes the meaning of Sachiko’s initial confidence. She has not mistaken Frank’s past conduct for reliable support; she knows he has disappeared before and that his drinking has cost her labor and savings. Yet she had been prepared to leave with him again. Now, after seeing him in a bar with a saloon girl, she asks how she can place Mariko’s future in the hands of such a man. She says that children mean responsibility and that her daughter comes first. The decision she announces is to discuss the matter with her uncle for Mariko’s sake and, if he is unhelpful, find another course. She says she has no intention of accompanying a foreign drunkard to America. For this moment, maternal responsibility outweighs the promise of emigration.

An Unsettled Destination

The break does not remain a simple, definitive renunciation. Later, Sachiko tells Etsuko that she is leaving Nagasaki for Kobe, and then says that America will follow and that Frank has arranged everything. She asks whether Etsuko is pleased for her. This renewed assurance sits uneasily beside her account of Frank’s disappearance, the earlier loss of their savings, and her declaration that she would not accompany him. The episode establishes a rupture in her trust, but the later announcement shows that the imagined destination continues to exert its pull. The evidence does not explain what changed or whether Frank’s arrangements can be relied upon.

The recollected episode also resonates with Etsuko’s later memory of arriving in England. Looking back at the fields and house as they had first appeared, she remembers thinking that everything looked like England as she had imagined it, and feeling pleased. That recollection does not resolve Sachiko’s plans; instead, it places her America beside Etsuko’s own remembered image of a destination. In both cases, departure carries the promise of a life elsewhere, while the account preserves the fragile circumstances and unresolved costs behind that promise.