The Fugu Plan

by Marvin Tokayer

  "This war has been going on for too long. Americans are killed, Jews are killed and Japanese are killed. Japan is not in Washington; the Americans are not in Tokyo. There seems to be no need to continue this senseless war. We know of the great Jewish influence in America and that President Roosevelt is Jewish, as are his top advisers. We believe that you can influence Roosevelt to bring this war to a speedy and proper conclusion. We are asking that you broadcast to your brothers in America, informing them of the truth - that Jews are not mistreated under Japanese rule, that Jews are treated well; and perhaps an arrangement can be made to bring this war to an end."

  The colonel sat down. The Jews were totally at a loss as to how to answer. Was it a trap to see if they were loyal to the Japanese? What kind of answer were the Japanese looking for? Stalling for time, they kept the vodka flowing. But after only a few minutes, Hidaka again rose unsteadily to his feet. His face was bright red from his drinking. He was also tired of waiting. Slamming his hand down on the table he shouted, "Enough is enough! It is now time for an answer!"

  Slowly, Belokamen also rose and began speaking as if he had been thinking about the proposal for ten days rather than ten minutes.

  "We Jews know our American brothers better than you do, Hidaka-san. If we broadcast to them, they will be very surprised. They are sure to ask: Why now? Why not two years ago or two months ago? They may think that the reason for the broadcast is that Japan is now weak. If they do conclude in this manner, they will not react as you hope but will come after you with greater strength and fury. Perhaps, this would not be to your best advantage."

  Hidaka listened carefully, then conferred with his assistants. "Your answer is wise," he finally said. "I will report it to Tokyo. But, if we request you to make the broadcast, you will do it?"

  "Absolutely," Belokamen said, "immediately and just as you say."

  On this positive note, the meeting broke up. The Japanese were escorted back to the station in time to catch the next train to Peking. The Jews of Tientsin never heard anything further from Hidaka.

  As the war situation grew more hopeless though, the Japanese tried other approaches to come to terms with the United States on some basis other than unconditional surrender. In Manchukuo, Colonel Yasue tried to work through his connections. Ayukawa, the originator of the Manchurian settlement scheme, tried to promote peace negotiations through one of his former Jewish employees. There were also dozens of peace feelers which had nothing whatsoever to do with Jews at all. But nothing worked. Manila fell in January 1945, Iwo Jima in February; by March, the Chinese were within a hundred and fifty miles of Shanghai, and the devastating fire-bombs were falling on Tokyo. Early in April, President Roosevelt died of a stroke. But even on the editorial pages of Japan's major newspapers, it was conceded that this would have little effect on the American war drive: the demand for unconditional surrender would stand firm. In May, Germany collapsed. Japan tottered, both domestically and militarily; but, supported by an unyielding concept of national honor, she fought on. On July 16, the United States test-fired the first atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico. On the other side of the International Date Line in Shanghai, it was July 17.

  Trudging through the wet July heat, Avram felt as if he were pushing himself through a wall. It was a Tuesday, a half day for the Kadoorie School science teacher, and he was on his way home if the tiny, airless cell he'd been forced to accept when the ghetto was created could be dignified with the name "home." Crossing the dusty street that formed one of the outer boundaries of the ghetto, Avram approached the main checkpoint. Every time he had to pass through this gate - every school day since Kadoorie was outside the designated area - he was filled with loathing for the pass procedure. It really didn't matter that this year it had become a little simpler. At last, SACRA had screwed up its collective courage to request that Ghoya be replaced . . . and at least the new man, Harada, was sane. However, everyone still needed a pass and still had to have it checked as if he were a dangerous felon who could not be let loose to run freely in the city. Avram groaned to himself as he came up to the checkpoint where a particularly alert young member of the Pao Chia, under the supervision of a Japanese, appeared to enjoy playing soldier. Since Avram was a teacher at the Kadoorie School, his pass was in order. But approaching the point from the inside were two yeshiva students. Because they were ninety-nine percent of the time totally engrossed in the world of talmudic scholarship, these young men seemed always to have trouble passing the gate. Their papers were never in order, something was always wrong. . . . The diligent young guard, anticipating that most heinous of sins, an irregularity, was examining their papers with meticulous care. Having no alternative, Avram stood and studied the students awaiting the guard's pleasure.

  Avram had had virtually no contact with the yeshiva. Many months before, when he'd first heard its members were foregoing one meal a day for money to print the books they needed, he'd made a small anonymous contribution in memory of his "Hebrew days" in Vilna. Many in the ghetto had experienced a religious revival - nearly half the Jewish shops were now closed on the Sabbath - but so far observant Judaism had continued to pass Avram by. Had he not been a teacher, he would have worked on Saturday. And on those rare occasions when he could afford meat, he bought it where it was cheap - not from the kosher stalls set up in the marketplace but from the local Chinese purveyor of pork and, probably, dog.

  Yet as he stood waiting for the guard, he realized he'd seen one of the boys before, at least a lifetime ago, carrying an arm load of bread down one of the streets of Kobe. What a change there had been in him! Such a nervous, eye-darting boychickel then, so young, with just the beginning of a thin beard. And here he stood like a man, with an early morning dark shadow all over his face, so much calmer and more solid, though just as thin as everyone else. For himself, Avram had gotten used to the ravages of age - his hair was completely gray now, the skin of his face was beginning to droop like an old man's, his eyes were starting to recede beneath his brows. Still, it was a surprise to see that that boy had become this man.

  The yeshiva student felt himself being watched and glanced over to Avram. Recognizing him as someone he'd seen, so long ago, probably at Kobe Jewcom, he nodded a polite greeting. But the yeshiva lived according to its own schedule of observance, was supported in large part from its own sources, was enveloped in its own scholarly activities. . . . Though they both were "Hongkew ghetto Jews," the science teacher and the yeshiva student had little else in common.

  "Your name?"

  The youth glanced back at the guard.

  "Yankel Gilbewitz."

  "Gilbewitz, Yankel," the guard punctiliously corrected him. "You don't look anything at all like this photo."

  "One gets sick, one gets well: one even gets older," Yankel replied mildly. "I am the same person still."

  Reluctant to concede the point, the Pao Chia studied him for a moment before sharply returning the papers.

  "You may pass," he ordered.

  "Into the promised land," the second boy muttered in Hebrew.

  But the soldierly Jew understood no Hebrew and took no notice. Seeing Avram's pass, he waved him through without hesitation. Avram glanced into the small guard box where a very bored soldier was seeking protection from the sun. The clock on the wall beside him showed twelve-ten.

  Moments later, as he was nearing Tongshan Road, Avram heard a rumbling roar; more curious than apprehensive, he looked up toward the apparent source of the sound. The sun glinted silver off the wings of a diamond formation of American bombers approaching steadily from over the North. Avram had seen bombers like these several times before during the past few months - still they thrilled him. They were, after all, bringing the Japs to their knees Americans from America, that wonderland that none of them had ever stopped dreaming of. Following the curve of the river, steadily, majestically, totally unopposed by the feeble Japanese defense system, each plane in turn released a consignment of destruction on a ship, a dock, a warehouse.
Avram stood and watched, hypnotized by the relentlessness of the machines. Other pedestrians also halted. Vehicle traffic slowed and stopped. The ghetto was a safe place to be. The residents knew, from experience and from a downed American pilot they had helped escape - that the bombers had strict orders to avoid civilian areas.

  Scarcely audible against the roar of the engines, a cry rose from the clusters of spectators - the planes had turned inland opposite Pootung and were now coming directly over their section of Hongkew. In an instant, excitement turned to terror: the small black biscuits that were now tumbling out of one of the planes would land right in the ghetto.

  Avram threw himself to the ground just as he heard the first explosion; then the whole world became one terrible roar. For less than an instant he shut his eyes against the shock. When he looked again, a building directly opposite him was in flames. Groggily shaking his head, he tried to pull himself to his feet.

  "Are you all right?" The question came from another man nearby, also picking himself up from the street.

  "Yes. No. I think ... All right. Over there. . . ."

  The wall of a building a few doors away had collapsed into rubble, and fire was spurting up through what was left of the roof. They began running toward it when a husky shopkeeper in a dirty apron hurried out into the street as if to shoo them away.

  "Forget it - it's empty! Down there. . . ." Trying to take off his apron at the same time, the man pointed to a far greater catastrophe.

  Less than two blocks down Tongshan Road, where it was crossed by Kung Ping Road, there had been a SACRA refugee center. Now it was a center of hell. The main building had been hit directly and totally destroyed; two adjoining buildings were in flames.

  Still shaking from the shock of the explosions, Avram staggered after other men who were racing toward the intersection. By the time he reached it, a bucket-brigade had already formed - not that it could do much to contain the fire. An ever-mounting number of casualties lay on blankets in the center's vegetable garden. Some moaned in pain and shock; some lay silent and too still. From the one remaining building, totally destitute refugees - the only ones who had qualified to live at the center - streamed out, tearing up their one last sheet, their shirts, their towels for bandages. Half a dozen elderly women tottered out from the side door of the building, teapots and cups in hand. Calmly they set up a work area out of the way of the activity and began serving tea, first to the wounded, then to the volunteer firemen for whom the intensity of the heat, a normally scorching July midday augmented by the fire, was almost unbearable.

  "Aren't you the science teacher?" Avram was pulled out of the bucket line by a SACRA committeeman who had been organizing the evacuation of injured from the burning buildings.

  "A hospital of sorts is being set up at the Ward Road Jail," the man said. "Go there. You'll do more good there than here. Can you manage to take this one with you? She doesn't have much of a chance, anyway; but if she stays here. .. ."

  The SACRA man gestured to a teenage girl lying amid the lettuce plants. Her hair had been completely burned away, leaving her scalp, like her face, a deep unnatural red. The flesh was swollen beyond any hope of recognition. Except for her shoes, whatever she had been wearing had been blasted away. Dry and charred, the structure of her rib cage poked through the broken flesh. Avram looked at the man, hopeless.

  "We can try," he said, taking off his shirt. The SACRA man helped him lift the girl off the ground and draped the shirt over her to keep away the already swarming flies. The girl moaned but did not regain consciousness.

  The jail was five blocks away. Trying to keep the girl's head elevated so as not to put any additional strain on her lungs, Avram trudged through the crowded streets, detouring back and forth around burning buildings. Chinese and Jews together were trying to beat out flames with blankets or their bare hands. A few low-level Japanese officials had come to survey the damage and stayed to do what they could to help. But if there was any fire-fighting equipment in the ghetto, it was no more evident than the emergency first-aid stations that existed, on paper, in Kubota's office. Miraculously, the girl was still breathing when they reached their destination.

  The largest building in the area and by far the most solid, the Ward Road Jail surrounded a large open courtyard. At this moment its doors were open and the courtyard looked exactly what it was a battlefield medical station. Maimed and burned victims were being brought here from all over the area on contrived stretchers or in the arms of their families. The bombs had shown no national favorites: Jews, Chinese, even a few poor Japanese civilians lay together. Purposefully, the refugee and Russian Jewish doctors moved from injury to injury, concentrating first on the most serious, returning later for the superficial. They made no distinction by race. Each victim was treated in turn, as thoroughly as conditions allowed. But conditions were atrocious. There were only those few instruments that the doctors had brought with them; painkillers and drugs were totally lacking.

  Avram laid the unconscious girl down as gently as he could, folding one end of the blanket into a makeshift pillow. Immediately a volunteer - a woman who in calmer times, might have allowed herself to faint at the sight of blood came running with a damp cloth and a bowl of water. Avram joined the doctors, asking how he could help.

  "You can change the damned Chinese doctors into human beings! You can march into that clinic where half a dozen of them are sitting around on their hands and pull them out here to act like doctors! You the science teacher?" The question followed the outburst with no change in tone. "Hold this arm while I try to get this piece of metal. . . . Those bastards have got everything in there instruments, anaesthetics, sterile needles, the works. But they won't do a thing till someone comes in with the money to pay for it. What the hell kind of doctoring is that?"

  As the refugee doctor continued to probe for the base of the metal, the patient, an elderly Chinese, groaned and turned his face away from the wound. There were many more Chinese victims in the compound than refugees.

  "Will you hold the arm still, for God's sake. . . . Ahhh!" Allowing himself a fraction of a moment's satisfaction, the doctor triumphantly held up a vicious ragged piece of metal, then dropped it into the dirt and moved on to the next. The women came up behind him, bandaging the bloody wound; and so it went for the remainder of the afternoon. One by one, the most traumatic cases were moved to the refugee hospital. But the girl from the SACRA compound was not among them. Balanced so tenuously on the edge of life, she lay as Avram had placed her, breathing in shallow little gasps, too injured to move - and there was no suitable place to move her to anyway. No Shanghai hospital had facilities for burns that severe.

  By early evening, everyone who could be helped had been. The Chinese, grateful for the care given by the foreigners, brought fruit and cakes. This was a rare moment of amity between the Chinese and the Jews and, perhaps rarer still, between the Russian Jews and the refugees. Avram was exhausted. The Chinese food revived his failing spirit, but he was tired down to his bones. Sitting on a stool, Avram held his head in his hands, peering out toward the courtyard entrance, like a child, through his fingers.

  Suddenly a familiar figure came slowly through the gate. A chill of apprehension washed over Avram, settling into all the fatigued places. "Moishe!" Avram got up and went toward the haggard boy.

  "I can't find her." Moishe was at the end of his strength. "I've spent hours at the heime clinics. I went to the refugee hospital. I've asked everyone."

  Moishe, who had given up expecting much from anyone or anything, looked at Avram as if begging for life itself: "Have you seen her?"

  Avram put his arms around the boy's shoulders. "I haven't seen her. But there is a girl, Moishe, very badly burnt. . . . Come."

  Avram led him to the still unconscious form lying in the shadow of the jail. Moishe looked at the face, still swollen into anonymity, then down at the shirt, rising and falling with every shallow breath, then finally down to the bare legs and shoes. He shuddered and
, just as four and a half years ago in Vilna, he collapsed sobbing onto the ground.

  The sun set and darkness filled in the shadows of the courtyard. By the harsh light of acetylene lamps and soft moonlight a few volunteers remained to watch over the last of the injured victims. Moishe sat on the ground by his sister, not touching her, only occasionally looking at her legs and her shoes.

  They had been through so much hell together, since that night at the Polish border - come so far, struggled so hard to stay alive and together. The year following Getzel Syrkin's death had been the hardest. Moishe, by default, had become the man of the family. But not the bread-winner. Never able to find work, he quit trying, spending most of his time at his school, learning as much as possible in preparation for the end of the war. Cheya - who aged twenty years in twelve months - had spent more and more time in a desperate search for part-time jobs to augment the tiny ration that was all the relief agencies could afford then to dole out. This search for work had become a compulsion, and even after relief money for food became available from abroad again, in the spring of 1944, Cheya had kept right on going out day after day, asking if anyone, anyone, had work for her to do. So it had fallen to Sophie to cope with the daily running of this household and to take care of Dovid who was still small, not strong and immature even for his eleven years.

  She had become so practical, his little Sophie, so sensible; her jumpy little-girl gaiety had been burned away by the harshness of Shanghai refugee life, but what remained was a solid core of capability and resilience. Though only two years older than Dovid, she seemed more mature by decades. "And all for what?" Moishe asked himself, looking at the broken body lying in front of him. "All for nothing, just to die, to be killed in a mistake." His heart cried out as if it would break; but he didn't make a sound.