Know thine enemy.

Fifty years ago, they fought on opposite sides in the Pacific war that scarred them both. One is the professor-husband whom I married in 1950, a newly graduated Ph.D. The other is his Japanese corespondent for the past eight years, at first on matters military, but now on their families, wives, cats, politics, religion, illnesses. Their match was made in Washington, D.C., in 1986, by the U. S. Army Center of Military History.

Makoto Ikeda, like my husband Hargis, is retired, a journalist in his seventies. Because Hargis is older, Makoto never addresses him by his first name; it is always "Dr. Westerfield," and I am "Mrs. Nancy." "Ikeda," he says, is a common Japanese surname; "Makoto" means "sincerity." I know what the name Hargis means. It was the last name of a proud, feuding clan in mountain Kentucky. War is bred in the family blood.

A single bloody engagement - only another minor passage at arms in the vastness of war - unites them. They came together by circuitous routes to Zamboanga, in the Southern Philippines, in March 1945. Bored with computing payrolls in army finance in Australia, Hargis volunteered into infantry, trained with a rifle, and was sent north.

Makoto was trained as an Indonesian language specialist. He had joined Japan's army only after his brother went to his death with his submarine. One ship was sunk under Makoto; he spent a day in the boats. Stranded at Zamboanga, he was pressed into service as a "civilian marine," a common rifleman like Hargis.

The Zamboanga operation, which the Japanese disastrously lost, constitutes major chapters of Hargis's 544-page history of his 41st Division, published in 1993. Much of his grant-funded research was carried on in Washington, at the National Records Center. When Makoto, as an "amateur historian," began his own A True History of the Sulu Fighting, he wrote to Washington. The name given to him as the man knowing more about Zamboanga than any other writer, was Hargis.

The two historians found themselves alike in their focus on personalized narrative history. "Truth" for Hargis lay in digging past official records to minutest day-reports and thirty years' massive correspondence with individual contributors. Makoto agreed. "In the defeated Japan, there were many obstacles to write `true' in the battlefield for the sake of consideration for the war deads, the bereaved, and the survivors. We could write easily a brave comrade's heroic death but we could not write a major's death of hunger because he was deserted by all his men."

The two shared their mourning. For Hargis: the buddy who waved him back on a coral cliffside, and took the bullet aimed for the first man. For Makoto: the buddy he had to leave behind on the retreat into Zamboanga's hills, where the men ate lizards, reptiles, anything they could lay hands on.

Soon the two historians were sharing their lives. Snapshots introduced Makoto's beloved wife, Yoko. Theirs was no arranged marriage: "I fell down in love," Makoto wrote. More pictures: daughter Yuriko, the chubby dark-eyed granddaughter, the treasured mother-in-law in an Episcopal nursing home. Hargis arranged the return of a battle flag taken as prize from a dead soldier. Pictures come back of the flag's ceremonial reception by Makoto's unit in reunion, and its ceremonial restoration to the soldier's family. Makoto introduces fellow-historian Akiyoshi Fujioka, who refused to be an officer, turning in a blank paper at his examination. In battle, he surrendered and accepted amnesty, though his commander had threatened to "kill down" any who slipped away to do so.

Makoto confesses to combining "certain Christian beliefs" with his faithful Buddhism. Writing to Hargis in March 1995, Makoto describes the fiftieth anniversary memorial service in Japan "for the war deads of the Navy in Zamboanga. One of the twenty-seven survivors from the Philippine battlefields contributed their money and built the statue of Kannon [one of the saints of the teachings of Buddha] for the war deads who was calculated roughly 500,000 in total in the Philippines."

Makoto's own history is almost completed now. He doubts its publication "because the general interest of WWII was over already." In any event, he assures Hargis, "If my book will not be published, you will become to be one of few owners of my manuscript of A True History of the Sulu Fighting .... I owe my work to my many friends, above all to you. If I cannot refer to your `Division History,' I wouldn't be unable to write my true history." Hargis and Makoto have helped each other reach toward closure of a terrible scar.

Nancy G. Westerfield is a poet who lives in Kearney, Nebraska. Her work has appeared often in Commonweal.