Ghosts of Bungo Suido (2013)

by Deutermann, P. T

  At sunset the commandant and Kai were observed heading toward the barracks. The prisoners all scattered to their racks and away from the front windows. Kai unlocked the door and stood back to let the commandant in. Kashiwabara spoke some English and now shouted for all of them to get outside.

  “You help,” he demanded. “Outside. Now. You help.”

  Gar wasn’t sure what they could do for the writhing mass of severely burned humanity on the ground, but out they came, dispersing through the huddled figures in the near darkness to do what they could. The first thing they noticed was the smell. A sweetish odor of overcooked meat permeated the enclosed prison compound, threaded with more elemental smells as people died where they lay on the grounds. The guards were making rounds with wooden buckets of water and small towels, and the prisoners’ job became one of tending to individuals, wiping away burned flesh or administering sips of water. The burns were the most severe Gar had ever seen, revealing blue white bone in many cases every time they used a towel. Many of the victims could breathe only in a rapid-paced series of tiny puffs, and once they started doing that, they died before long. As the night wore on, the prisoners were detailed to carry bodies off the assembly area into a corner of the compound. They didn’t need lights—there was a deep red glow in the sky coming from over the ridge as Hiroshima or whatever was left of it continued to burn through the night.

  By dawn the area within the compound had settled into a profound silence. Gar realized that none of the two hundred or so wounded who’d been let into the prison camp were still alive. The prisoners were exhausted from their night’s work. Most of them just lay down on the ground and tried to sleep. The guards did the same. The commandant had spent the entire night on the front porch of his headquarters building, just staring out into the darkness. Kai hadn’t been seen since they’d come to roust out the prisoners. Rumor had it that he’d gone into the city on the other side of the ridge. There was no food that morning.

  Major Willingham was afraid that there would now be a mass execution of the prisoners. They all felt a terrible sense of foreboding. When the Japs came to their senses, they’d want blood for whatever had happened over the ridge. Then Gar heard air raid sirens starting up to the east of them, away from the city. Nobody seemed to know what to do. None of the guards did anything at all, so everyone just looked up into the dawn light and waited to see what was coming next. Finally they could see two lone contrails flying from east to west, very high over Hiroshima City, and then south until they were out of sight. Photo-recce birds, no doubt, Gar thought, coming to see what had happened to the city.

  The prisoners spent the rest of the morning clearing away the rest of the bodies, carrying them in litters down to the crematorium building beyond the mine entrance. They kept wondering if there’d be rations, but the little old man never showed. As best they could tell, there were none for the guards, either. The prisoners straggled back to the barracks building in ones and twos, went in, and hit their racks after getting some water from the communal tap. Gar washed his hands and face and then dropped into his rack still stinking of the night’s work. They all did. He fell asleep immediately but was roused seconds later by a sudden shaking, and instinctively waved his hand to swat away whoever was trying to get him up.

  “Get out, out, everybody out!” someone was yelling. Gar opened his eyes to see everything not nailed down in the building dancing in place as an earthquake rattled their side of the ridge, raising whitish clouds of dust outside and shattering what few glass windows were still left in the barracks building. Gar could see the light fixtures swaying back and forth at the end of their hanging poles, and then some of them even came down, their bulbs exploding on the floor, as some of the prisoners tried to crawl out of the shaking building on their hands and knees.

  Something in Gar’s brain said, Screw it. He felt exactly the way he’d felt right after the bombing at Kure—overwhelmed, desperately hungry, despairing, surprisingly indifferent. He pulled the sheet over his head and just lay there, waiting for it all to stop, one way or the other, and he knew he wasn’t the only one doing that. Eventually the shaking did end. A sudden warm breeze blew through the barracks, lifting the sheet off his face and blowing all the dust away. One end wall had cracked open, and all he could think of was that they finally had air-conditioning. He went back to sleep.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Two days later they were told that the entire group was definitely going to be moved to the prison camp servicing the Kawasaki coal mine. Once again they packed up their belongings in the cotton bags and mustered in front of the barracks at daybreak. Lieutenant Colonel Kai came out with his entire staff of six officers, and the prisoners immediately noticed something different—they were all wearing their swords. The English-speaking adjutant then directed that all the prisoners be separated into groups of five. They straggled out of ranks with their bags and congregated in small clumps in the assembly area. There was a larger contingent of troops in the area than usual, all toting rifles with fixed bayonets. Everyone was hungry. They’d received one meal yesterday consisting of some kind of soup laced with rice and what looked like bamboo shoots. This morning, however, there’d been only a single oilcan of bitter tea for all the prisoners.

  Once the smaller groups had been separated, more soldiers showed up from the direction of the main gate. These were faces they hadn’t seen before, and each soldier was bearing a rifle with bayonet affixed. They’d obviously been briefed in advance, because there was no yelling of orders this time. They spread out into the assembly area, forming a hollow square of inward-pointing bayonets, making it clear that no one was going to leave. When they were finished getting into position, there were two soldiers standing behind each prisoner.

  Suddenly Gar became afraid. Kai’s expression was unusually fierce, and he refused to look any of them in the face while all the additional soldiers formed that hollow square. The sun had just risen in a bright yellow sunrise that threw fantastical colors over the camp and the north-facing ridge rising between the camp and Hiroshima City. None of the usual Japanese workmen were present in the camp this morning. The guards in the towers were not visible, either, but their machine-gun barrels were.

  Then Kai drew himself up to his full height and began giving a speech, his words and intonation rising in anger as he got into it. Most of the prisoners, of course, could not understand more than a word or two, but they watched warily as his officers began to spread out into a line abreast, all of them watching the prisoners intently. The soldiers forming the hollow square pushed in with their bayonets, compressing the little groups of five closer together. It looked rehearsed, and Gar remembered the doctor talking about the Japs practicing for the day of the kill-all order. Had the invasion begun? That enormous explosion across the ridge—had that been the opening gun for the final invasion?

  Kai finished speaking. Gar saw the commandant appear on the porch of his admin building. He didn’t look too happy. The adjutant nodded once to the sergeant in charge of the five-man group nearest Kai. Immediately one of the group, an Aussie, yelled in pain as two bayonets were jabbed into his lower back, forcing him to step out of the group in the direction of the lieutenant colonel. Senior One started to object but was quickly silenced by one of the bayonet-wielding soldiers standing behind him, who thumped him in the head with his rifle butt, knocking him to his knees.

  As they watched in growing horror, the Aussie, an emaciated twenty-two-year-old man who looked fifty, was forced to kneel in front of Kai, who then drew his big sword in one swift and practiced motion. He began shouting again, like a man who had to work up the courage for what he was about to do. At one point all the soldiers in the compound started yelling banzai, and then Kai lifted that gleaming sword and brought it down in a vicious arc that partially severed the Aussie’s head from his torso. A second stroke finished the job, and the headless body flopped down on the ground, bleeding profusely, but not for long.

  A second prisoner was dr
iven forward while Lieutenant Colonel Kai wiped his blade clean on the tattered clothes of the dead Aussie. This time the adjutant had his sword out. The prisoners began looking around for a way out of this, but that palisade of lowered bayonets made it clear that any kind of resistance was hopeless. Gar was ready to do something, anything. They might all die, but they’d go down fighting, and they might manage to take a few of these monsters with them. Then Gar felt a bayonet at the base of his own spine and froze.

  Suddenly several of the soldiers cried out simultaneously. Everyone looked up and then to the south, where another tungsten white glow was blooming on the horizon, many miles away but no less impressive than what they’d seen two days before: that eye-searing white light painting the underbelly of a high cloud deck, followed by a luminous, multihued expanding sphere of energy lasting only a fragment of a second, and following that the towering cloud boiling up above the distant horizon, looking even bigger and wider than the one they’d seen before as it pushed quickly into the stratosphere. It took a half minute for that deep rumble to reach the compound. There was no blast of wind in either direction this time, but the titanic cloud looked like the arm of God, gripping the island to the south of them and shaking it to its core for what seemed like forever.

  All of them, Japs and prisoners, were transfixed by the sight, and then the prisoners began looking sideways for a way out of the ring of steel knives surrounding them. Kai sheathed his sword and stepped backward into the courtyard to get a better view. He needn’t have bothered, because that cloud was definitely bigger than the one that had risen over Hiroshima City, even though it had to be 40 or even 50 miles distant. Up on the porch, the commandant’s hands rose to the sides of his face as he stared in absolute horror and started repeating the word “Nagasaki” in an anguished voice. Some of the soldiers behind them also repeated that word, but in a different tone, one that revealed deep fear.

  As if on signal, they began to back away from the prisoners. A phone started ringing inside the commandant’s office. An enlisted clerk inside answered it, listened for a few seconds, made a wailing sound, and then appeared in the door to give the commandant a message. Again that word, “Nagasaki,” and they guessed that the clerk was telling the commandant that the city was no more, because he fell to his knees and began to weep ostentatiously, while the rest of his officers and soldiers began chattering excitedly. Gar kept watching Kai and the soldiers. Either they were all going to die right then and there, or the garrison was going to fall apart.

  At that moment a small jeeplike vehicle arrived at the front gate and beeped its horn urgently. One of the guards handed his rifle to another soldier and ran to open the steel gates. The vehicle sped in and stopped in a screech of dust, and an older Japanese officer got out. A column of army trucks that had been following the jeep ground to a halt just outside the gates. The older officer, who was probably a full colonel or possibly even a brigadier, took one look around the assembly area, taking in the scene: the crumpled figure of the Commandant still on his knees up on the porch, Kai cleaning his sword again, and then the headless body lying in the dirt. When he spoke, it was in a much deeper tone of voice, filled with quiet authority, with none of the hysterical shouting of the camp’s officers. They were all at attention now, their faces frozen as they listened to what he had to say. Then, as one, the officers all bowed, broke ranks, and started barking out orders to the guards themselves, who hopped to whatever they were being told to do. Gar kept watching the towers for movement, figuring they were going to finish what the officers had started on a mass-production basis. The colonel, if that’s what he was, never so much as looked at the groups of prisoners. He did glance up one time toward the south, where the very tops of that towering cloud were just starting to feel the effects of the high-altitude winds. Now it looked even farther away than when the explosion first occurred. The colonel walked over to the commandant, helped him to his feet, and led him into the office building. The prisoners were left standing alone on the assembly ground, fearfully eyeing the machine-gun towers.

  In fifteen minutes all the Japanese soldiers, including the clerks, were trotting down toward the main gates, carrying what looked like all their field gear. They started boarding the trucks waiting outside. Even the tower guards had climbed down and joined the exodus, much to the relief of the prisoners. A team of six soldiers went into the storehouse and dragged out burlap sacks of rice, which they hustled down to one of the trucks. One of the bags broke, and they just kicked it aside. The prisoners continued to stand there in their segregated groups. Nobody wanted to draw any attention to himself from anyone at all. Once the troops had boarded the trucks, the senior officer came out of the commandant’s office building and approached the five-man groups.

  “Senior One,” he barked. Gar looked over at Willingham, who was still lying on his side, his hands cupping his bleeding head. Gar stepped forward, brought himself to attention, and saluted, taking care not to look him in the face.

  “You stay here,” the officer said. “Close gates. Stay here. You go outside, you die. Stay here.”

  Gar nodded once. He didn’t quite bow, but he kept his head down, looking at the ground. He pressed his trembling palms into his sides, not wanting to show this officer how afraid he was. The officer nodded back at Gar in that sharp, up-and-down head motion they used. Then he turned and started walking toward his waiting jeep. At that moment a single shot was heard coming from inside the commandant’s building. The colonel stopped, put his hands at his sides, bowed deeply once in the direction of the office, and then got into his jeep. The vehicle drove slowly down toward the gates and assumed its position in front of the column of trucks. Then the whole convoy simply drove away. As best the prisoners could tell, they were alone in the camp.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Gar asked two guys to go down and shut those gates before the local population figured out that they were unguarded. Whatever the hell had happened to Hiroshima City and now Nagasaki was apparently grounds for killing every POW within reach. For the next few hours they organized to secure the camp. Several men checked the buildings to make sure all the Japs had left. Two Brits helped Senior One into the barracks building. Gar and Dr. Morris went into the commandant’s office, where they found exactly what they expected to find. Gar liberated the commandant’s pistol and then set up a detail to get the Aussie and the commandant’s body down to the crematorium building. The prisoners who went up the towers reported large crowds in the street outside the walls, but they were not agitated, just standing out there, staring at that enormous cloud on the southern horizon as it bent lazily off to the west, pursued now by much blacker smoke beneath. The guards had left the permanently mounted machine guns in the towers, but no ammo. Gar made a mental note to search for some.

  They checked the three storehouses and found that the Japs had taken every scrap of food, leaving only that one broken 50-pound sack of rice behind in the dirt. They salvaged every grain of it, and a detail went into the cookhouse to get some water going. Within the hour each of them had finished an entire bowl of rice, their first real food in two days. Senior One then called a meeting with all the officers in the camp to reorganize themselves now that the Japs had pulled out. Willingham had been injured more severely than Gar thought, but he was able to speak, and Gar didn’t want to “relieve” him if that was avoidable. He was a Brit, and most of the inmates were also Brits.

  Gar volunteered to put himself in charge of the organizing effort, subject to Senior One’s approval. Willingham waved that off and asked Gar to simply take charge. Two British infantry majors took on perimeter security. They stationed men in the three towers, dressed from the waist up in what they hoped looked like Jap uniform gear. Their job was to man the machine guns and move the barrels around occasionally to make it look like the camp was still guarded. A second detail went up on the roof of the main barrack to repaint POW and add NEED FOOD on the roof in 20-foot-high letters. The “paint” was made by mixing l
ime from the crematorium with some used motor oil. In the meantime they all made copious use of the Japs’ bathing facilities, although there was no fuel to heat water. Gar sent a team into the mine to see if there were any signs of life from the trapped night-shift miners. The team came back shaking their heads.

  The recce flights began that afternoon, both over Hiroshima City and farther south. Senior One thought that the departure of the prison camp’s staff meant that things finally might be coming to an end after those two gigantic explosions. Nobody wanted to voice the other possibility, that new guards were inbound. Two of the radiomen had managed to get the broadcast radio in the commandant’s office up and running, although it wasn’t very useful given that none of the POWs were fluent in Japanese. There was still a steady stream of people coming up over the ridge from Hiroshima City that evening and throughout the next five days. Those who could walk were all helping burn victims who could not, and after a while the prisoners stopped looking through the seams. Men, women, children of all ages, and even some household dogs trudged sorrowfully past the camp, headed generally north and away from whatever horrors lay just over the ridge.

  On the fifth day after the Nagasaki explosion the rice ran out. Senior One met with his officer council again, and it was decided that they had to go out into the surrounding town to see if they could get food. As they were meeting, one of the radiomen stepped in and said that there was funereal music coming over the government radio and that the announcer sounded really excited. The tower guards reported that the town’s residents were coming out into the streets outside the camp and that they appeared to be falling into ranks on the sidewalks. As they hurried to look through the cracks they could see hundreds of civilians standing along the streets, but not a single military uniform. There were loudspeakers wired up to telephone poles at the street corners, and the same music was coming out of them. The POWs speculated quietly; they wondered if there’d been another sun-bomb, as some of the guys were calling it. Hiroshima City, Nagasaki, and now perhaps one of the bigger cities in the north? Or were the Japanese simply expecting some other overwhelming event to land on them? Then they heard the sound of planes coming.