Chapter 4 — The Enemy

"The Enemy" is a short story by Pearl S. Buck set in wartime Japan. An American prisoner of war is washed ashore, badly wounded, at the coastal home of Japanese surgeon Dr Sadao Hoki. The story follows Sadao's agonising choice between national loyalty — which demands he surrender the enemy — and his professional duty as a doctor, which compels him to save the dying man's life.

Dr Sadao Hoki is a celebrated Japanese surgeon and scientist who was sent to America at twenty-two to study surgery and medicine, returning home at thirty. He is perfecting a discovery to render wounds entirely clean, which is why he has not been sent to the front. He also serves as the personal physician of an old and powerful General.

The wounded man is a young American sailor from a U.S. Navy warship — a prisoner of war who has escaped. He is flung ashore by a breaker onto the narrow beach below Sadao's house. He is unconscious, dressed in wet rags, and has a gunshot wound on the right side of his lower back that has been reopened by the rocks in the surf.

Sadao openly states his conflict: "If we sheltered a white man in our house we should be arrested and if we turned him over as a prisoner, he would certainly die." He also says, "If the man were whole I could turn him over to the police without difficulty. I care nothing for him. He is my enemy... But since he is wounded..." His medical training will not let him abandon a dying man, even an enemy.

Hana is initially frightened and conflicted, suggesting they put the man back in the sea. Yet when the maidservant Yumi refuses to wash the wounded man, Hana overcomes her own reluctance and washes him herself. She assists Sadao throughout the operation, administering the anaesthetic. She does not like the prisoner but tends to him when the servants will not, and she serves him food while he recovers.

The servants — the old gardener, the cook, and the nursemaid Yumi — believe that Sadao and Hana have forgotten their patriotic duty because of their years in America. The old gardener says the white man ought to have been allowed to bleed to death, and Yumi worries about the fate of the children if Sadao is condemned as a traitor. On the seventh day after the operation, all three servants leave together.

The General is Sadao's powerful patient who depends entirely on Sadao for his medical care. When Sadao confides in him about the prisoner, the General — reasoning that he cannot afford to have Sadao arrested — offers to send his own private assassins to kill the American quietly. However, preoccupied with his own pain and a subsequent emergency operation on his gall bladder, the General simply forgets his promise.

Once the soldier has recovered enough to walk, Sadao secretly drags his own boat to the shore at night, stocks it with food, bottled water, and two quilts bought at a pawnshop, and ties it to a post in the water. He instructs the young man to row to a small uninhabited island nearby and wait for a Korean fishing boat, signalling Sadao with a flashlight if he needs more food. The soldier — disguised in Japanese clothes with a black cloth wrapped around his blond head — slips out through the garden in darkness.

The story explores whether a trained professional's duty to preserve human life can and should override the demands of national loyalty during wartime. It shows that shared humanity — "I have been trained not to let a man die if I can help it" — can transcend political enmity. The final line — Sadao wondering "why I could not kill him" — reflects the deeper pull of conscience and professional ethic over patriotism.

Sadao starts a typed report to the Chief of Police but leaves it unfinished in a secret drawer. After nursing the soldier back to health, reporting him feels impossible. He decides the safest and most humane resolution — for the soldier, for Hana, and for himself — is to give the recovered man a boat and help him reach a nearby uninhabited island from which he can be picked up by a Korean fishing boat, removing the problem without directly betraying the prisoner.

Hana notices deep red scars on the young man's neck just under the ear. She wonders privately whether the stories of prisoners being tortured are true, recalling men like General Takima who was cruel in private. The text does not state the cause explicitly, but the scars suggest the soldier may have suffered mistreatment before washing ashore. Sadao also notices them but does not ask.

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