by David Peace
However, the IMTFE is still in session and so there is still time to act upon the information I gathered and passed on to you (and to the IPS) and to bring Ishii and his subordinates to justice. My only regret is that my health problems (and the doctors) prevent me from personally ensuring that this is done. Hence this rather rude and abrupt letter, which I hope you will forgive but understand and, more importantly, act upon.
Finally, I would like to state for the record that as soon as my health permits I am most eager to resume my work in what I hope is the ongoing investigation into the Jap BW program, in whatever capacity you deem fit.
Sincerely, Lt. Col. Murray Thompson.
*
Marked PERSONAL
St Luke’s International Hospital, Tokyo, Japan
July 9, 1947
Dear Peggy,
As you can see from the above address, & as you probably already know through other channels, I am still confined on doctor’s orders (& quite possibly on MacArthur’s orders, too) to this hospital. They say my illness has taken a turn for the worse, but I do not believe them. I now believe they may even be experimenting on me, for they seem incapable of curing my illness, only prolonging it.
So the days turn into weeks, the weeks into months, the months into years, & I cannot tell you how much I miss you, Peggy, & how much I miss the children (who doubtless do not even remember me). I also cannot tell you how much I want to leave this bed, this hospital, this city, & this country! But I know that even if I can leave this bed & this hospital, I will not be able to leave this city & this country until I have corrected all the mistakes I know I have made, until I have righted all those wrongs.
For as I lie here, hour after hour, day after day, with nothing but time on my hands, I cannot help but go over & over, again & again, all the events that have left me here, that have STRANDED me here so very far from you & all I hold dear. Particularly, I cannot help but go over & over all the choices & mistakes I have made. Peggy, I go back, again & again, over & over so many things.
Do you remember the balloons, Peggy? I see now that was where it all started for me, with those balloons, for that was when they first came for me, those men who never knock, who never introduce themselves, those men who came that day in November 1944, who told me of Jap germ warfare attacks on the Chinese in Manchuria. They’ve killed a lot of people, they said, they’ve poisoned wells, poisoned reservoirs. So we knew. Even then, back in 1944, we knew, I knew. Then they told me of the strange balloon that had been found in Butte, Montana, thirty feet in diameter, ninety-one feet round, & made of rice paper, told me of ten other strange balloons that had been found, & told me to come to Washington.
Do you remember how excited I was, Peggy? How I stood in that circle around those balloons, that circle of military & scientific experts, how I told them these strange balloons had obviously come from Japan, that prevailing winds could easily carry balloons from Japan to the US mainland? How I warned them that if any of these balloons contained Japanese B-encephalitis, then we were in real trouble because mosquitoes are the best vectors of Japanese B-encephalitis & we have plenty of mosquitoes here in the States? How I warned them that our population had no defenses against B-encephalitis, that we had no experience of the disease so we were totally vulnerable, that four out of every five people who contracted B-encephalitis would die? Of course, I didn’t stop there, did I? I told them it was equally possible that the Japs could have contaminated the balloons with anthrax, that anthrax is a tough bug, sturdy & cheap to produce, that we knew the Japs had already used it in China. I warned them back then that the Japs could splatter the west & southwest of Canada & the United States, that they could contaminate the pastures & the forests, kill all the cows & sheep, all the horses & pigs, plus a considerable number of human beings. I also told them there would be widespread panic & hysteria, so they placed rigid censorship on all radio & press reports of the finding of any balloons.
But the balloons kept coming, didn’t they, Peggy? By the end of March 1945, over two hundred balloons had been found from Hawaii to Alaska & down to Michigan & I pored over each one of them, inch by inch, but I found no hint of bacteria, no trace of disease. Nothing except incendiary devices, only two of which actually detonated – do you remember those, Peggy? The one in Helena, Montana, that exploded & killed a woman, the other in Oregon which killed six men out fishing, do you remember?
But I refused to believe that the Japs had not infected the balloons. I could not believe there were no bacteria, no disease, that these were the only balloons. So I spent hour after hour in the glass belly of a B19, tracking up & down the west coast of the United States, hour after hour looking for thirty feet of rice paper hanging in a tree or lying punctured in a field, & still I found nothing.
But I refused to give up, even then. I gathered up every field report I could find. I asked for meetings at the headquarters of the 7th Service Command in Omaha, Nebraska & the headquarters of the US Western Defense Command in San Francisco. I spoke for hours, I spoke for days, telling them what we knew, what I knew, even then, in March 1945. I told them about biological warfare & about strange balloons. I told them about the Jap germ attacks on the Chinese & about the Jap use of anthrax, the Jap use of plague –
PLAGUE, even then, PLAGUE.
I told them about the man who headed the Jap BW project, though I could not yet name him. I told them about the Jap BW headquarters (which I then believed to be in Nanking). I told them about the prisoner-of-war statements which mentioned a bacillus bomb (the Mark VII, Type 13, Experimental Bacillus Bomb). I warned them of possible targets, possible means of dispersal, possible biological agents & diseases. I told them about Jap attempts to get a strain of yellow fever virus from the Rockefeller Institute in New York & about a similar attempt in Rio de Janeiro. I told them it was quite possible that the Japs now had the virus through Germany. I warned them of the threat to our cattle & livestock from rinderpest, that rinderpest kills & spreads rapidly, that we were 100 percent vulnerable to rinderpest. I warned them that one single balloon could be crossing the Pacific that very minute, carrying enough cholera to start an epidemic, that we were 100 percent vulnerable to cholera.
I told them & I warned them because I KNEW, Peggy, I KNEW, even then, I KNEW.
But then, of course, the call came from MacArthur & that was the last time I saw you, the last time I saw the children, that last time before I ended up here in THIS PLAGUED CITY.
I know now for sure, Peggy, that they’d already been told about me before I even set foot in this place, that was why they were waiting for me, why they had my photograph!
That photograph of me in Camp Detrick is another thing I keep coming back to, over & over, again & again. How had the Japs got hold of that photograph? I know that our own guys, our own G-2, must have given it to the Japs, that G-2 must have already made contact with Naitō & the top men in the Jap BW program & that was why he was waiting for me, why he had my photograph in his paws, why he knew I wasn’t up to the job because THEY HAD TOLD HIM, because THEY HAD ALREADY MADE THEIR DEAL.
Of course, I knew even then that I could not & should not trust them but I see now that I personally was far too ready to believe all that I was told. So I believed that the Kwantung Army operated on the mainland with a high degree of independence from the military leadership back in Tokyo & I believed that, within the KA, Ishii was a law unto himself, that the Army Medical Department exercised no control over Ishii & his operations.
I realize that I became obsessed with Ishii, believing Ishii, & Ishii alone, to be the one who should bear sole burden for their BW program. I realize now that this was what I wanted to believe.
Now I believe more than ever that the deal (deals? Who knows how many deals were made?) was a mistake. But I swear to you, Peggy, that I did not know that human guinea pigs had been used when I suggested the arrangement to MacArthur, Willoughby & Compton. And now we know about the bacillus & anthrax bombs & their use on American prisoner
s of war & Chinese civilians, now we have the evidence, there is still time to prosecute Ishii & all the other guilty Japs at the Tokyo Trial. But no one here or in Washington takes my claims about the human experiments seriously or, should I say, no one wants to take them seriously because it does not suit them & what they (wrongly) believe to be ‘our best interests’.
But in years to come future generations will ask, who knew? Who knew and who made the deal? And the answer is, they all knew. They all knew, myself included. We all knew and so we are all guilty, guilty of the things we did, and guilty of the things we did NOT do.
I cannot bear the thought that George or Emily might one day read of all this & know that their own father knew, know that their own father was guilty (which I am), & that he did nothing.
All that I now plan to do, I do for our children.
Perhaps I should not tell you this, Peggy, but there are days here when I wake, my eyes still closed, & I can hear the voices of the children & I believe, for just one moment, I am home again, home with you & the children, & that I am finally & forever home, out of this bed & this hospital, away from this city & this country, from this hell. But then, of course, I open my eyes & I know I am not home, that I am still here, here in this bed in this hospital in this city in this country, in this hell, that those voices were not the voices of our children but the voices of vermin, of mice & of rats, in the walls & under the floor, muttering & whispering, & then I fear I will never leave this bed & this hospital, never leave this city & this country, that I will never leave this hell, that I will never hear the voices of our children again, will never see their lips move again, never even see their faces again. But I swear to you, Peggy, I WILL NOT LET THIS HAPPEN, I will not let their experiments succeed, I will not let them get away with this.
So, as soon as I am able, I plan to discharge myself & check back into the Dai-Ichi Hotel. I plan to finish the task at hand, to correct all my mistakes, as quickly as I can, so I can then finally, finally put all this behind me & return to you all a new & better man, a better husband to you & a better father to the children.
With all my love, always, Murray.
*
Stamped TOP SECRET
From the Diseased, Infected & Plagued City,
In the Place & Hour of No God,
January 26, 1948
To whom it may concern, but not for the eyes or the knowledge of my wife or my children, or any who have felt or shown affection toward me. A second letter is for their eyes, and only their eyes.
I write this letter here and now, in this laboratory, at the end, not as explanation or vindication of my actions or inactions, but to document, and to warn. For I know now for certain that they have been experimenting on me and that they have been successful, that they are the ones who are behind the mutterings and the whisperings, in the walls and under the floors, that it is their voices that every day mutter and whisper, ‘Get up, Tommy! You still have work to do. Get up!’
They are the ones behind that voice on the telephone this evening – that thick and heavy-accented voice – that voice which said, ‘On your head are these dead.’
These men who never knock, who never introduce themselves, these men who sit and who stare, who watch me and who follow me, on the corners and in the doorways, in their protective masks and rubber shoes. ALWAYS FRIENDLY, VERY FRIENDLY. But I know I will never see their faces, never know their names, for they all wear masks – monkey masks, squirrel masks, but mainly the masks of mice, the masks of rats – white clay masks. THEY ARE THE RATS BOARDING THE SINKING SHIP, testing me, experimenting on me, in this city that has become their laboratory, with its double-plated windows and its paper-covered walls, THIS PLAGUED CITY that is their laboratory of the Apocalypse.
In this laboratory, IN THIS PLAGUED CITY, here at the end, I see the Angel of History and the Angel of Pestilence, and I feel the breath of their wings upon me now, and I close my eyes.
In the history of the world, there have been as many plagues as there have been wars. They rise and they triumph, then they decline and they disappear. But they always return, plagues and wars. They always return, these plagues and wars, to take men equally by surprise. Until now, now men have married plague and war in an unholy, godless matrimony.
And I see visions, visions of plagues, my eyes open / my eyes closed, the same visions. The dead rat on the stair, gray and yellow, the cat convulsing in the kitchen, a bloody red flower blossoming in its mouth. That is how it will start. The rats in the daylight, from out of the walls, from under the floors, they will first come in files, and then die in piles, six thousand dead in one day, burnt in bonfires through the night, and then the rats will be gone and the fevers will start, the swellings and the vomiting, the yellow and the gray, before the asphyxiation and then the death, the red and black death, the red and black death of the people, death of this city, this gray and yellow city of gray and yellow eyes, then red and black eyes, of yellow blossoms and red flowers here and there, on the corners and in the doorways, this gray and yellow, red and black city wherein men will take to their beds and leave them on stretchers, in coffins, in hearses, until there are no more stretchers, no more coffins and no more hearses.
ON YOUR HEAD ARE THESE DEAD!
Just the swellings and vomiting, the asphyxiation and death, the death of this city, death of this country, this (w)hole world.
ON YOUR HEAD!
For it is coming! It is coming! It is coming!
And I know I am to blame, too.
For I know it is my fault.
ON MY HEAD!
My mistake IN THE PLAGUED CITY, this city of public records and private erasures, of half-truths and whole-lies –
LIES! LIES! LIES!
Again and again, I come back to that incident, over and over, that incident on the Ginza with the old mouse on his bicycle.
For I can still feel his spit upon my face.
Still taste his spit in my mouth.
His spit in my blood.
In my blood.
My blood, infected and signed, Dr M. Thompson, Tokyo, 1948.
– Stamped, MISSION TERMINATED, 2/27/48 –
Beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, you are crawling, crawling again, crawling beneath the swinging shoes of a dead American, round and around, in the occult circle, in the light of its candles, round and around you crawl, beneath the swinging shoes of all the dead, the swinging shoes of all the dead upon your head, the dirty soles of their swinging shoes upon your head,
round and around, on your head,
round and around,
you crawl –
And now the ropes snap, and the shoes fall, and the bodies fall, on your head, another candle, on your head, extinguished,
on your head. Out –
Out. Out –
But in this occult circle, in the light of its now-eight candles, still you crawl on, in circles, on you crawl still,
in circles, circles of conspiracies, circles of agendas, conspiracies and agendas that form narratives and give meanings, narratives and meanings, fictions and lies –
For on your hands, you are still clothed in your despair, on your knees, still digging your own grave, still-born in your own tomb, this airless, artless tomb of ink and words, still enticed and entranced, still deceived and defeated,
in-snared and in–
prisoned –
In the flicker-light of these eight candles, where there are no keys and there are no doors, where there are only locks and only walls, but still you turn the yellow-pages of your notebooks, your ink and their words, still searching for clues and searching for maps, in their clippings and in your copies, in the ghosts of their stories,
your stories of their ghosts:
NEIGHBOURHOOD INVESTIGATIVE HQ
A local organization named Mejiro Chian Kyōkai Nagasaki Shibu
has founded a ‘Civil Investigative Headquarters’ because ‘the locals will be upset unless the [Teigin] case is solved quickl
y,’ said the Chief of the HQ, Mr Shimizu.
The HQ is located in the office of the Nagasaki Shrine, and their investigation is mostly focused on the killer’s tracks. They summon those who had been in the vicinity of the crime scene, and who had hurried to rescue the victims, as well as local children who may have also witnessed the crime. Shimizu and his team plan to gather up all these testimonies and give their reports to Mejiro Police Station.
Each member of the team runs a separate district of the neighbourhood and witnesses are summoned to the Nagasaki Shrine HQ, even in the night, to be questioned by these amateur cops. For now, Chief Shimizu ignores his own business and devotes himself entirely to the investigation, twenty-four hours a day. ‘I take 5 or 6 Hiropon injections per day but, what-the-heck, I’ll do beyond my best till we get him,’ said Mr Shimizu, and he will not disband the HQ until the killer is caught.
However, one local housewife complained, ‘I really wish the killer would be caught very soon, or he [Mr Shimizu] will be back to ask us for another donation to his association!’
In the flakes and in the flurries, in the night and in the snow, the medium stands before you now, in a cape and in a hat, and she says, ‘I am Shimizu Kogorō. I am the Occult-Tantei…’
Before you now, in his cape and his hat,
with his curses and his spells, stain–
tear-ed and stain-blood-ed, nailed
to the back of a door, IN THE oCcULT CITY
The Fifth Candle –
The Curses & the Spells of the Man in the Shrine
The city is a curse, this city is a spell;
webs of curses, weaves of spells.