The Story of Danny Dunn

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘How do you suggest we do that? I imagine there are one or two industrial heavy hitters who might kick up a fuss.’

  ‘Of course, the two soap factories for a start. The key is rezoning. If you change the zoning and at the same time give the old polluting industries the right incentive to move to the industrial estates starting on the fringes of the metropolitan area, they may be interested. Our survey shows that ninety-five per cent of existing industry located along the edges of the harbour does not depend on water transport.’

  ‘So we give them a bribe to relocate – is that what you’re suggesting?’

  ‘Yes, but a real incentive, a generous one. Western Sydney is where the population is increasingly shifting and they need the employment the industries will provide. The increased land prices the harbour factory sites will fetch once the area is zoned residential or even light industrial will be a further temptation.’ Danny shrugged. ‘It’s not that difficult and it’s good government.’

  Askin shook his head. ‘I see the carrot clearly, but we’ll need a stick. There are jobs involved, the local people won’t like it.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. Balmain just voted for it.’

  ‘Danny, this is a lousy media story – people having to travel vast distances to get to jobs that were formerly on their doorstep; some may even be forced to uproot and relocate. The serious TV docos will have a bonanza, and so will radio and the print media.’

  ‘Then give the media an even bigger story, one with real legs, one that all of Sydney can embrace.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘The decline in Sydney’s environment. All of Sydney’s environment! The water and air pollution that’s affecting us all, from Vaucluse to Pymble. Our harbour has been used as a sewer for over a century and a half, and we’ve been pumping shit into the air for almost as long. Take a team of scientists and a TV crew out to Balmain and have them analyse the stuff the soap factories, foundries and marine workshops are pouring into the harbour. That’s your stick. You simply say your government has decided to make Sydney the cleanest harbour city in the southern hemisphere. We’re building the world’s most spectacular Opera House and we’re not going to allow it to be swimming in a cesspool! It’s a long-term platform that just might get you elected with a working majority next time around.’

  Askin looked hard at Danny. ‘This wouldn’t have something to do with the twenty-eight houses you own on the Balmain harbourfront, would it?’

  Danny nodded his head, laughing. ‘Yes, of course it has. When my mother bought them she was the laughing stock of Balmain; the people simply couldn’t believe anyone could be that stupid. But we went ahead nevertheless, and young couples came to take a look at the nice, neat, renovated little houses and started to buy them. Nothing had changed, except that people started to take notice; they began to see that change was possible. We’ve sold all but five houses, and they’ll be sold the moment they’re renovated and long before any rezoning might take place. My mother and wife and others who own them have already reaped the benefits. This is not about being greedy or about making money, it’s about instilling hope. We haven’t bought any more properties and, if it gives you any comfort, we won’t be doing so – well, not in Balmain, anyway.’

  Bob Askin rose. ‘I can’t see why not. I’m happy you’ve benefitted. It’s going to be interesting having you more or less on our side, Danny. It will be some weeks before we’re properly underway and can formulate and pass legislation. In the meantime there’s a trade delegation going to Japan in a week – away for ten days – would you like to be included?’

  At the mention of Japan, Danny started, but immediately collected himself. ‘Japan, eh? Hmm, can’t say I’m overly fond of the Japanese,’ he said dryly.

  ‘There are no strings attached. Both major parties are included in the group and the addition of an Independent is always sound politics. You’ll be back before parliament opens. If I’m not mistaken, Tommy O’Hearn was on the original Labor list of people to go. You’ll enjoy it, and of course you’re welcome to take your wife.’

  ‘May I think about it for twenty-four hours, please?’

  Bob Askin had reached the door. ‘Of course!’ he said, then paused with one hand on the doorframe. ‘By the way, thank you for my office,’ he grinned.

  ‘You’re welcome. Oh, and, Bob, this rezoning legislation needs to happen in the first twelve months of your government, with the regulations to back it firmly in place. I don’t wish to be left like a shag on a rock if a couple of by-elections make you complacent and you have a majority in your own right.’

  Bob Askin straightened and gave Danny a mock salute. ‘As one sergeant to another, I promise. But you must understand that legislation doesn’t happen overnight.’

  Danny nodded. ‘Why don’t you get your mate, Frank Packer, on side? That will bring in Channel Nine, the Daily Telegraph and the Women’s Weekly. Not such a bad start, eh?’

  Askin nodded. ‘I now realise they don’t call you “Nifty Dunn” for nothing. By the way, talking of offices, this one is ridiculous. I’ll allocate you a better one.’

  Danny shrugged. ‘This one will do.’

  ‘No, no, allow me the pleasure of turfing out some old Labor parrot from his nice comfy perch. Some of them haven’t said a word in the house for fifteen years beyond squawking “aye” or “nay” when nudged awake for a vote.’

  Danny and Helen travelled first class to Japan, the politicians not being averse to squandering taxpayers’ money. They were ten minutes out from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, with the seatbelt sign already on, just as the sun, a great red orb against an almost pewter sky, was setting. It was the original of the image on the Japanese flag and immediately made Danny feel uneasy. He nudged Helen. ‘Take a look at the sunset, it’s giving me the creeps.’

  Helen glanced through the plane window. ‘Darling, it’s only a sunset. I’ve seen similar ones from our top verandah.’

  ‘Yeah, but at home it’s the sun setting, here it’s the dreaded fried egg.’

  ‘Danny, we went through all this when you decided to come. It’s over twenty years ago. You know the Japanese fighting in the Pacific, Malaya and Singapore suffered terribly. The people who are likely to be our hosts were ten-year-old kids when the war ended.’

  ‘I’ll bet that bastard Mori isn’t dead,’ Danny growled.

  Helen touched him on the arm. ‘You promised me you wouldn’t dwell on him, darling. If you do, I’m taking the first plane home in the morning,’ she warned. ‘We both need a holiday – you’re exhausted after the election and . . . well, I’m just plain exhausted. This is a trade junket. A couple of dreary tours through a motorcycle factory and a shipyard to see the ships they’re building for our iron ore, three receptions and a fair bit of bowing and laughing at jokes we don’t get, and then we’re supposed to enjoy ourselves.’ Helen looked at him appealingly. ‘Don’t spoil it.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Bloody silly, I know, but for a moment that sun brought everything back.’ Danny smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be all right, you’ll see – the life of the flaming party. These are blokes I have to get to know.’

  The delegation was met at the airport and escorted in four black limos to the Imperial Hotel, where, to their surprise, they were shown to a suite. Danny turned to Helen, who was just about to inspect the bathroom, and laughed. ‘Bob doesn’t miss a trick, but this is very nice. Did I tell you he moved me from a hole in the wall to a big office with my own secretary – leather couches, oil painting of the First Fleet on the wall, the works.’

  Helen called from the bathroom. ‘We’ll have to have a bath – there’s no shower – and the bath will fit all but about two feet of you. It’s very posh. Take what you can get from Askin, darling. I can’t help feeling that the moment they have a majority you’ll be last week’s bread.’

  They spent the day looking around
and came to realise that Tokyo made Sydney look like a backward village. That evening they attended a reception near the Imperial Palace as guests of the Australian embassy. The embassy, a magnificent traditional Japanese building, closer to a small palace than to a large residence, had been seized from the Japanese as war reparations, according to Tony Blackmore, a military attaché who introduced himself to Danny. ‘Even after twenty years, Japanese businessmen tell us it’s time to give it back – when they’ve had too much to drink, of course, which is quite often.’

  Danny laughed politely.

  Tony – a captain, Danny noticed – went on with a grin, ‘They’ve got Buckley’s. We like this rather grand pad. Even the Brits and the Yanks envy us.’

  Danny warmed to him, despite his officer status. He had no pretentions and was just the sort of young bloke you’d like to think represented your country abroad.

  A little later in the evening, when Helen had repaired to the powder room with several of the other wives, Danny approached the attaché. ‘Do we, you know, keep a list of the . . . the bad guys who got back . . .

  I mean, the Japs?’

  It was an awkwardly phrased question but Tony seemed to understand immediately. ‘Mr Dunn, as a matter of diplomatic procedure we prepare a file on all the important visitors who come to Japan. I know you’re a decorated ex-POW from the Burma Railway.’ He grinned. ‘We’re briefed to avoid questions like that one.’

  Danny laughed at his forthright manner. ‘First, please call me Danny. And, second, if you know anything about state politics, you’ll know that independent members, unless they’re needed to achieve a majority, have about the same importance in parliament as the tea lady, probably less. But I’ve often wondered if it’s all been swept under the carpet and everyone conveniently forgets the war ever happened.’

  Tony Blackmore looked serious for a moment. ‘No, not quite. We keep files on all the old Class A war criminals.’ Then, changing the subject, he asked, ‘How does it feel to be in Japan?’

  As a lawyer, Danny knew how to persist with a line of questioning. He told the attaché about the sunset, adding, ‘I wouldn’t mind ten minutes with Colonel Mori, the Japanese commandant who ran our camp. The Yanks repatriated him without a trial to run the family industrial complex – business before justice, expediency before accountability.’ Danny sighed. ‘Water under the bridge, I guess. I must be getting old and bitter.’ He paused, then shook his head. ‘No, that’s a lie. I’ve dreamed for years of catching up with the bastard.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be the first to say that. We even have a precedent, though it was long before my posting to Japan – a Qantas pilot, a former RAAF pilot, captured at the fall of Singapore and, like yourself, a prisoner of war under the Japanese on the Burma Railway. By some extraordinary coincidence he was in a bar in the Shinjuku district and recognised the barman as one of the Japanese officers from his camp in Thailand. He completely lost it and pulled him over the bar and very nearly beat him to death. He got away before the police arrived and came straight to the embassy and reported the incident.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Well, I believe the ambassador, himself ex-RAAF, got him on a flight back home using a diplomatic passport and a fair degree of bluff.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know any more than that. Canberra kept it very hush-hush and it never made the papers back home. The diplomatic blokes aren’t too keen on military intelligence stirring things up; it upsets the business cocktail circuit.’

  ‘You sound like you don’t agree with a policy of amelioration.’

  ‘Know thy enemy – that’s our motto in intelligence. The only thing the Japs are sorry about is that they lost the war.’

  ‘You mean you could find Colonel Mori if you wanted to?’

  ‘Hmm . . . I must say, it doesn’t sound too difficult. If he is a big noise in industry, then that would make it even simpler. I’ll have a quiet look for you.’

  ‘You will?’ Danny asked, surprised. ‘I’m obliged to you.’

  ‘I’ll call you at your hotel if I find anything. But you have to promise me, no violence.’ Tony Blackmore looked sternly at Danny. ‘You’re not carrying a handgun in your luggage, are you?’

  ‘Good Lord, no!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Dangerous weapon, knife, garrotte?’

  ‘I’d have to kill him with a ballpoint pen,’ Danny grinned.

  ‘It’s been know to happen. I’m sorry, but I had to ask, and I apologise for doing so, sir. It’s just that possession of a handgun by a foreigner in Japan means a life sentence.’

  ‘Why are you offering to do this for me, Tony?’ Danny asked, looking directly at the young army officer. ‘You said yourself you’re briefed otherwise.’

  ‘You’re a member of parliament, so I take it you’re not a nutcase willing to create a huge diplomatic incident between our country and the local mob. But, as a matter of fact, I do have a reason, sir. My brother Jack survived the Burma Railway and got back to his family. I’ve witnessed what the demons can do to a man, the effect they had on his family. Unable to deal with them – the demons, that is – he finally committed suicide three years ago.’ Then he added quietly, ‘He always said, “I just want to tell the bastards, see them face to face, show them what they’ve done!”’

  ‘Jesus, I’m sorry,’ Danny said, taken aback.

  ‘Would it honestly help to confront this Colonel Mori?’ Tony asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Danny replied. ‘I honestly don’t know. But I do know I have no wish to kill him.’

  ‘Would it help if I came along?’

  Before Danny could reply he looked up to see Helen approaching. ‘My wife’s coming, mate. She wouldn’t be too keen to hear any of this,’ Danny said, sotto voce.

  ‘I quite understand, sir. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  The following afternoon they returned from a visit to a motorcycle factory outside Tokyo. They’d been told that Japan was set to dominate the world motorcycle market. This, it was explained, had not been the case ten years previously when British and European manufacturers owned the market.

  ‘They may have lost the war, but they seem to be winning the peace,’ Danny remarked, as they reached their hotel.

  Helen nodded. ‘Nobody could ever accuse the Japanese of laziness.’

  Danny went over to reception to get the key to their suite and the desk clerk gave him a meaningful look as he handed him a note and said in halting English, ‘We not put . . . unner door, sir, by special instruction . . . that come telephone.’

  Danny glanced at it briefly. It was a message from Tony Blackmore, asking him to call before five. He pocketed the note and walked over to Helen, who was standing at the lift, and handed her the key. ‘You go ahead, darling, I want to see if I can find an English newspaper.’

  He got through to the embassy from a guest phone in the foyer and was put through to Captain Blackmore. ‘Tony, Danny Dunn.’

  ‘Thanks for calling back, Danny. How was the bike factory?’

  ‘Pretty good, although I think my wife would have happily given it a miss. To her they’re just things on two wheels that make a lot of noise and are usually ridden by hoons.’

  ‘Your Colonel Mori . . . interesting story,’ the attaché began.

  ‘Oh, you found him?’

  ‘Yes, it wasn’t difficult. He’s retired.’

  ‘Retired? He wasn’t that old.’

  ‘That’s the interesting bit. As you know, the Americans brought him back to run a family engineering company – huge business – a significant part of rebuilding the Japanese economy. He assumed control for six years and in 1951 suddenly announced he was retiring.’

  ‘What, for health reasons?’ Danny asked.

  ‘No, not at all. His announcement caused a bit of a fuss with the Japanese Government, an
d the Americans weren’t all that chuffed either. They’d absolved him from standing trial for war crimes and now he was opting out of the rebuilding of the local economy.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, mate! Lesser war criminals got the death penalty. I still get pretty worked up thinking about it.’

  ‘That’s the whole point. He announced at the time that his purpose for retiring was to atone for his actions during the war!’

  ‘C’mon, you’re bullshitting me,’ Danny exclaimed, clearly astonished.

  ‘He’s become a monk at a Buddhist temple in Kyoto.’

  ‘Fair dinkum. And he’s still there? Still a monk?’

  ‘Yes, the Chion-in temple in Kyoto. It’s a major centre for Amida Buddhism here.’

  ‘Amida? Is that significant?’

  ‘Apparently they believe even the worst disciple can attain enlightenment by meditation and devotion to Buddha. Prostitutes, war criminals . . .’ Tony laughed. ‘Politicians . . .’

  ‘Surely not politicians,’ Danny replied. ‘May I ask, can I visit this temple?’

  ‘Sure,’ came the reply.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  JAPAN, GENERALLY SPEAKING, IS no longer a pretty place. Too many people work in ugly functional buildings and go home to equally soulless high-rise apartments. Beauty is to be found in the foreground, in small exquisite details; the broader landscape seems to have been sacrificed to progress, with very little thought given to rewarding the eye with unsullied countryside or rustic villages. Shinto, not exactly a religion, involves worship of the spirits that live in nature, and yet the Japanese have been prepared to sacrifice the countryside and nature itself for the dubious trappings of progress. The unavoidable outcome of an industrialised nation grown too big for the landmass it occupies is that Japan’s architectural soul has been gobbled up, and many of its lovely quiet places have been lost. Kyoto, Japan’s former capital, is the marvellous exception.