NCERT Book Class 12 English (Vistas) Chapter 4 The Enemy

4
The Enemy
Pearl S. Buck
Before you Read
It is the time of the World War. An American prisoner of war is
washed ashore in a dying state and is found at the doorstep of a
Japanese doctor. Should he save him as a doctor or hand him over to
the Army as a patriot?

Dr Sadao Hoki’s house was built on a spot of
the Japanese coast where as a little boy he had
often played. The low, square stone house was
set upon rocks well above a narrow beach that
was outlined with bent pines. As a boy Sadao
Who was had climbed the pines, supporting himself on his
Dr Sadao? bare feet, as he had seen men do in the South
Where was his Seas when they climbed for coconuts. His father
house? had taken him often to the islands of those seas,
and never had he failed to say to the little brave
boy at his side, ‘‘Those islands yonder, they are the stepping stones
to the future for Japan.’’
‘‘Where shall we step from them?’’ Sadao had asked seriously.
‘‘Who knows?’’ his father had answered. ‘‘Who can limit our
future? It depends on what we make it.’’
Sadao had taken this into his mind as he did everything his
father said, his father who never joked or played with him but who
spent infinite pains upon him who was his only son. Sadao knew
that his education was his father’s chief concern. For this reason