Occupied City

by David Peace

  The sole reason, therefore, that I allow and I assist in the attempts and the appeals to clear my name and save me, is for the sake of my ex-wife and my children; that their reputations may be restored, and that they may once again live not in fear or in shame.

  And that then is the only reason I have told this story, that I have said these words. But these words I have said are not for me. These words are only for those who once loved me, my ex-wife and my children. For I do not seek your pity. And I do not seek the truth. For I do not deserve your pity. I do not deserve the truth.

  Beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, between the three candles, the old man now bows his head,

  and another candle gutters,

  gutters and then

  dies–

  ‘No!’ you are screaming. ‘No, no! Come back! Come back! There’s more to say. There must be more. That can’t be all. That can’t be it. Please, please! Come back! Come back!’

  But the flame of the candle is out, its light is gone, and the old man is fading; fading, fading, fading –

  ’No!’ you shout again – ’

  There’s so much more I want to know, much more I need to know. No! No! What about the trials, the appeals? The conspiracies, the experiments, the war? Help me! Please help me to help you!’

  But in the dim-light of the last two candles, the old man is shaking his head; fading, fading –

  ‘Wait! Wait! I know you did not murder those people. I know you were never there. I know you were never at the bank. But help me, please! Please help me to help you. For I want to tell your story. I want to prove your innocence, to clear your name …’

  For now you see, now the old man is fading, going and now gone, now you see and now you know, know what it is,

  what it is you want; just the truth –

  Not the fiction. Not the lies –

  Only the truth –

  Tear by drop-drop, foot by step-step, hoping there is still time; still two candles, in this upper chamber, beneath the Black Gate; still two last candles, tear by drop-drop, foot by step–

  step, your head now turning, this way,

  that way, turning again, and again –

  Tear by drop-drop, foot by step-step, for you are not alone, beneath the Black Gate, in this upper chamber,

  between these two candles, drop–

  drop, step-step, drop–

  drop, step–

  step–

  ‘We are all in our cages, our cells and our prisons,’ says a voice in the shadows. ‘Some by the hands of others –

  ‘And some of our own making –

  ‘Of our own design …’

  This way, that way, left and then right, you turn and you turn again, looking with the candlelight, searching through the shadows,

  step-step, right and then left, step-step, that way and this,

  step-step, looking, step-step, searching, step–

  step, for the author of these words –

  ‘Are you my judge? The man who will accuse me? Accuse and convict me? Sentence and imprison me? Imprison or execute me? Is that you, my dear writer, is that you?’

  Beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, in the candlelight, now plague-light; white-light, hospital-white, laboratory-white then grey, an overcast-skin-grey then open-vein-blue, blue and now green, a culture-grown-green then yellow, yellow, thick-caught-spittle-yellow, streaked sticking-string-red, then black;

  black-black, drop-drop, black-black,

  step-step, in the plague-light,

  drop-drop, step-step,

  in the plague–

  light–

  ‘Would you sit at my table of rotting food?’ whispers the voice in the shadows. ‘Would you dine with me, drink with me, and then enter a large black cross beside my name? Is that your plan?’

  This way and that, you turn and turn and turn, drop-drop, step-step, you huff and breath-puff –

  ‘Is that what you want, my dear writer? Is that what you seek, here beneath this Black Gate, here among your melting candles?’

  You puff and breath-pant, you pant and now-gasp,

  for he is coming, step by step-step, whispering and muttering. In your ears, you hear him gaining, step by step-step,

  drooling and growling, step by step-step,

  A Night Parade of but One Demon …

  Half-of-monster, half-of-man, you can smell him, you can sense him, but still you cannot see him,

  still you can only hear him, whispering and muttering, drooling and growling –

  ‘Every society needs people like you, dear writer, people who will weep at their mother’s funeral. But a truly great man will always, already place himself above the events he has caused –

  ‘A man like me. And so behold –

  ‘In this city. In this mirror –

  ‘Here I am …

  The Eleventh Candle –

  The Last Words of the Teikoku Murderer, or a Personal History of Japanese Iniquity, Local Suffering & Universal Indifference (1948)

  In the fractured, splintered mirror, the child before the man / Before the doctor. Before the killer. Before the dead / The sunlight and the stream, the flowers and the insects / Wings off flies. Legs off frogs. Heads off cats / The skin and the skull, the appearance and the absence / In the fractured, splintered mirror, murder is born

  In the Death Factory, at Pingfan, near Harbin, in Manchuria. This place had once been home to villages and farms, to families and fields. The villages had been requisitioned and their inhabitants expelled. Then the Nihon Tokushu Kōgyō Company arrived. The Tokyo-based company hired local Chinese labourers to work day and night for three years to construct the one hundred and fifty buildings which would form the vast complex, the Death Factory.

  I can never forget the first time I saw the place. Across a dry moat, beyond the high earth walls and the barbed-wire fences, the square-tiled facades of the central buildings towered, larger than any I had ever seen in Tokyo, reflecting the sunlight and the sky in a brilliant white radiance.

  Over the moat, behind the walls and the wires, through the gates and the guards, a whole city, a future city, was waiting for me. There was a runway and a railway, a huge administrative building and an equally large farm, a power house with cooling towers, dormitories for the civilians and barracks for the soldiers, barns and stables, a hospital and a prison and, of course, the laboratories and the furnaces. This was the home of Unit 731, my new home.

  The Unit was divided into eight separate divisions; First Division was concerned with bacteriological research; Second Division with warfare research and field experiments; Third Division with water purification; Fourth Division with the mass production and storage of bacteria; the four remaining divisions handled education, supplies, administration and clinical diagnosis.

  The Emperor was our owner, Major Ishii was our boss.

  On the Black Ship, the Killer sees it stretched out now before him: the Occupied City; its sewers and its streets, its homes and its shops, its schools and its hospitals, its asylums and its prisons. This city is a monstrous place; a Deathtopia of fleas and flies, of rats and men.

  On the Black Ship, here in this Deathtopia, no one knows who he is, no one will ever know who he is. Here he will dwell, among the fleas and the flies, among the rats and the men –

  The Killer in the Occupied City.

  In the twenty-fifth year of the reign of the Emperor Meiji / In a village, in Chiba Prefecture / The fourth son of a rich landowner / In a lavish villa, in a bamboo forest / A tall child, a bright child / In a shaded grotto, before the family graves

  In the Death Factory, Major Ishii welcomed the new recruits, his new workers, standing beside an antique vase of white chrysanthemums: ‘Our vocation as doctors is to challenge all varieties of disease-causing micro-organisms, to block all roads of intrusion into the human body, to annihilate all foreign matter resident in our bodies and to devise the most expedient treatment possible. However, the research in which
you will now be involved is the complete opposite of these principles and will, naturally, initially, cause you some anguish as doctors. Nevertheless, I beseech you to pursue this research based on what I know will become your two overriding desires; firstly, as scientists to give free rein to your instinct and urge to probe for the truth in natural science, to discover and research the unknown world; secondly, as soldiers to use your discoveries and your research to build a powerful military weapon to use against the enemies of our divine Emperor and our beloved homeland –

  ‘This is our mission, this is your work.’

  On the Black Ship, among the rubble, in the sunlight, the Killer watches a group of children playing beside a crater. The crater is filled with black water, broken bicycles and the debris of a defeated city. The water smokes, the water bubbles. The children toss pieces of wood into the water and then watch them sink.

  The Killer remembers a story a colleague once told him in the Death Factory. A unit was sent to the city of Jilin to conduct tests on plague bacteria there. The method involved placing the pathogens into buns and then wrapping the buns in paper. The unit then went into an area of the city where children were playing. The men in the unit began eating buns similar to those in which they had planted the germs. When the local children saw the men eating the buns, they all came running over, asking for the buns. The men then gave the children the infected buns. Three days later, a second unit was sent to the area to record the levels of infection among the children and their families. The area had to be isolated within sheet-metal walls, then everything within the enclosure burnt to the ground.

  The Killer looks up from the black water. A man is standing over him, a man he recognizes. A man who has been following him.

  The living tend to the graves of the dead / The dead watch over the lives of the living / The lives of the living, divided and dissected / Those whom receive tribute, those that give tribute / Those of substance and those of none, those who matter and those who don’t / The child divides, the child dissects

  In the Death Factory, my work now began. There were two types of workers; those who were recruited, recruited for their brains, and those who were conscripted, conscripted for their brawn. I was recruited, recruited for my brain; its knowledge of disease, its knowledge of death. Loyal to the Emperor, subservient to the State, deferential yet intelligent, I was the ideal worker; fervent in my devotion to the Emperor, to Japan and to victory; unfailing and unquestioning in my belief in all three. My work was in the field of hygiene.

  On the Black Ship, in a coffee-shop, a man is whispering to the Killer, ‘I hear many of them have got good jobs now, in the prestigious universities or in the Ministry of Health and Welfare. I heard some of them got payments of one or two million yen. It’s unbelievable. Look at us! Look what we’ve got! Barely the clothes on our backs.

  ‘I think of all I did for them, for Ishii and for the Emperor, and look at me now. I can’t get a job and I can’t sleep, can’t sleep for the memories and for the ghosts.

  ‘I remember one day, towards the end, a truckload of about forty Russians was brought in. But we already had too many logs, more logs than we could use, and so we had no need for this lot. So we told the Russians that there was an epidemic in the region and that they should all get out of the truck so we could inoculate them. And so, one by one, they jumped down from the truck. They stood in line with their sleeves rolled up. Then I went down the line, one by one.

  ‘First I rubbed their arms with alcohol, then I injected them with potassium cyanide. Of course, there was no need to rub their arms with alcohol first. I did it purely to put them at their ease. Then, one by one, they all fell to the ground in silence.

  ‘But I can’t forget the way they looked at me as I rubbed their arms and then injected them. They looked at me with trust in their eyes, with relief and even gratitude.’

  The Killer picks up the bill from the table. The Killer gets up from the table. The Killer pays the bill and leaves.

  Flowers and insects, animals and people / The child collects and the child catalogues / Flowers then insects, animals then people / The child examines and the child experiments / Those with blood and those without, those with this blood and those with that / The child studies and the child learns

  In the Death Factory, hygiene was of the utmost importance. Fear of accidents and outbreaks, infections and contaminations, was all-pervasive. Despite the precautions and procedures taken, there were frequent unintended civilian casualties among the staff and technicians of the Unit. Priority was therefore given to hygiene and to research into better methods of hygiene control.

  Initially, my work involved only the examination, treatment and prevention of communicable diseases among army personnel and their families. The examination and treatment section in which I worked was separate from the main complex. Our building was known as the South Wing and we also worked closely with the Army Hospital in Harbin.

  At first my work was neither particularly demanding nor dangerous and my biggest fear was of becoming infected myself, particularly with the plague. Often we did not know what was wrong with a patient until it was too late. I remember that once a civilian technician from the Unit was brought in with suspected syphilis. However, the man had the plague and soon succumbed and died. When such a patient was brought in, everyone was careful to avoid getting any cuts. Often we did not shave.

  My main work was the examination of blood, urine and faeces samples, testing for and measuring changes in haemoglobin. Often this involved visits to the prison building. Whenever I entered the prison, I had to walk through a tray of disinfectant. The samples I received here had been taken from prisoners, who were also known as logs. I believe they were known as logs because the local population had been told that the Death Factory was involved in the manufacture and production of lumber. The samples were needed in order to determine a subject’s condition prior to any experiment or trial. Further samples were then taken from logs after they had become infected with various viruses. This was how the data from bacteriological tests was compared. Having received the samples in prepared slides, I would then travel back by truck to the South Wing. Often I would have to make this journey two or three times a day. Often I would also be ordered to bring back and forth research papers and human organs. These were my duties, this was my work.

  There was no real research into preventative vaccines in our work at the examination and treatment centre. The nearest we came to any such vaccine was the development of an invigorative solution. The base of this solution was garlic and we would give it to patients in order to speed up their recovery. Often I would inject it myself in order to overcome the depression and the fatigue caused by the isolated location and the long hours. I understood why many of the Chinese and the Manchurians were addicted to heroin. It was a temptation to which many surrendered.

  On the Black Ship, the Killer writes a letter, To Your Excellency Ishii Shirō, Former Lt. Gen. Army Medical Corps –

  Dear Sir,

  You must be very surprised to receive this badly scribbled and most rude letter so unexpectedly. But I was one of your subordinates at Pingfan in China and I write this letter, not only on behalf of myself, but on behalf of the many men who dutifully served under you during the war in China.

  After the turmoil at the end of the war, we came back to Japan. But the defeated Japan has not been very cordial in welcoming us back. Our homes have been burnt, many of our wives and our children are dead, and the little money we have been given towards our rehabilitation, towards food and shelter, has been consumed by inflation. Because of our hardships, many of us have now been driven to contemplate committing wicked acts in order to simply feed and clothe ourselves.

  However, before embarking on such a dark path, I beseeched my former colleagues to wait until I had at least sought the counsel and guidance of you, our thoughtful former commanding officer. Surely, I told my former colleagues, if Lt. Gen. Ishii knew of our plight, he would rescue us
, his former loyal subordinates who so faithfully carried out his every order, no matter how gruesome the work, no matter at what cost to our souls.

  Of course, because of our current hardships, we all thought of dying as we have retained the means to do so. But then we realized that if you had found the courage to live on, then we certainly should also be able to overcome our present difficulties and accomplish anything with your inspiration and generous assistance.

  So please, we beg you, our former commanding officer, that you loan us, the forgotten and unfortunate ones, as funds towards our rehabilitation, the sum of ¥50,000 and which we swear will be returned to you within two months. So please be gracious and kind enough to send the money to the above address.

  Of course, we should like to visit you personally but, since we have been so reduced to poverty, we are too embarrassed and so are unable to do so. But please, please help us.

  From your former subordinates.

  Now the Killer stops writing. The Killer seals the letter in an envelope. The Killer posts the envelope to Mr Ishii Shirō, 77 Wakamastu-chō, Ushigome-ku, Tokyo.

  Now the Killer waits.

  There are those born with strength and those born with weakness / Those who are healthy and those who are sick / There is order in all matter, there is order in all things / There are structures and there are hierarchies / Those of substance and those of none, those who matter and those that don’t / And there is one who matters more than most, the one who matters most of all

  In the Death Factory, in the summer of 1940, I was suddenly sent to Xinjing. An outbreak of plague had been reported in one part of the city. As soon as we arrived, we enclosed the entire affected area inside a sheet-metal wall one metre in height and then burnt everything within the enclosure to the ground. We then conducted examinations of all the Japanese and the Chinese who had been living in the area. Finally, we were ordered to dig up the bodies of people who were suspected of having died from the epidemic, to dissect the corpses, to remove and then preserve the organs. My task was to take small specimens from the lungs, livers and kidneys of the corpses. I then applied each to a Petri dish. Organs that tested positive for the plague were taken directly back to the Unit. The Petri dishes of plague germs which I had gathered were first sent to the Xinjing National Hygiene Laboratory to be cultivated and then on to Pingfan.