A Choice of Evils

by Meira Chand

  All morning they had been loading the truck with those things Shizuko deemed essential. All valuables had long before been sent to Uncle Juichi, and buried somewhere on his land. A sharp wind whipped about Kenjiro’s neck as he stood on the truck arranging boxes. A stream of neighbours had come, begging a lift out of the metropolis. The stations were bedlam, people camped for days upon the platforms for a chance to get on a train. Passengers were taken with only as much as they could carry. No extra luggage was allowed. A truck was an unheard-of luxury. They had agreed to take with them a family of three in the road behind, who also wished to go in the direction of Uncle Juichi. Already the truck was piled high, but still Shizuko kept appearing with further items.

  ‘Mother, there is nothing more we can take,’ Kenjiro protested. His own possessions were few, and consisted mainly of papers and the radio.

  ‘Where in these times will I buy an iron pan like this? I’m lucky it wasn’t taken from us already,’ his mother replied. And so it went on all morning, until the truck was dangerously top heavy. Shizuko insisted on quilts, a chest, a lacquer table and any surviving cushions.

  ‘Where will we get stuff like this again?’ she repeated. ‘Do we leave it here for the bombs or as pickings for the poor?’

  The maid Yoko was to accompany them, Kimiko would remain in the house. At the factory Kenjiro had spoken to the supervisor, who had agreed to arrange a transfer to an ammunitions plant near Uncle Juichi’s farm. The supervisor had been helpful, knowing the power once held by Yuzuru Nozaki.

  Kenjiro’s chest hurt. The fresh morning air in his lungs made him cough. He threw ropes of plaited cloth over the loaded truck, knotting them tight. The journey would take a few days. His mother had packed all the food they possessed, and what little rice remained. He took no notice of the noise of a car, involved as he was in knotting the ropes, until his name was called. He turned and saw two men from the Kempeitai. Behind them stood Kimiko.

  ‘You are going somewhere?’ they asked.

  ‘Like everyone else we are leaving Tokyo to escape the bombing. I have informed the ward office and registered our new address. My factory has arranged a transfer to an ammunitions plant near where we shall be living. My papers are in order,’ Kenjiro replied.

  ‘Your papers may be in order, but our orders are to search everything before you leave.’ They seemed to Kenjiro without personality, like clones from a master model. It was this lack of character that ignited fear. He remembered his torturers in Nanking.

  The men stepped forward and unknotted the bindings of the truck, tossing out quilts, cushions and lacquer boxes unheedingly from the vehicle. Everything was opened, everything examined. Eventually, as he knew they must, they found the radio in a wooden crate beneath a padded jacket.

  ‘Where is the aerial?’ one of the men demanded.

  ‘There is no aerial,’ he replied. The man slapped him about the face.

  ‘We know you are broadcasting messages to the enemy. You have long been suspected of being a spy. Now there is proof. Where is the aerial?’

  In the house they ripped up floors and stripped cupboards. They spent a long time in the loft and emerged upon the roof. They could find nothing, and returned to him, furious. One of the men began to shout.

  ‘Where is the aerial? Where is it?’ He stamped a foot like an angry child.

  ‘You cannot find what is not there. I am not a spy,’ Kenjiro answered calmly.

  They took him then by the arms, binding his hands together. He was pushed towards an armoured van. His father stepped forward to remonstrate.

  ‘He has done nothing. Nothing,’ he shouted. His agitation was useless, he was thrust roughly out of the way.

  Kenjiro turned as he stumbled forward to look at his parents. His mother pressed a hand to her mouth, staring desperately after him. His father was flushed with helplessness. Behind them was Kimiko, a look of satisfaction upon her broad face. His parents stood beside the truck. Bright quilts and cushions tumbled in the road about them. Iron-bound chests spewed kimono and sweaters from their open drawers. Kitchen pans had rolled like stones into a nearby ditch. The bombed wing of the house lay like a sordid backdrop behind them. Their whole life seemed piled in tatters around them. Kenjiro felt he would never forget this scene of dispossession. Never before had he seen his father stripped of power. For the first time he saw him as an old man, waning in all those qualities he had built his life upon.

  Behind his parents he could see the remains of the garden, the charred bushes and scorched stones. Only the old lantern had escaped the carnage. It stood as ever, upright, inviolable, its mossy surface singed, but intact. Suddenly, his mother ran forward crying out his name. And stopped short, realising again the uselessness, biting down upon emotion. The brightness of her eyes was all that indicated tears.

  He was pushed roughly into a van with barred windows. Through the dusty glass he peered out at the scene of devastation and knew the bleakness of that morning would live with him for ever. The van began to move. He looked a last time at the old lantern. Soon they turned a corner and everything was gone. He sat back on the floor of the lurching van and thought of that blackness he knew now so well, that must soon again encase him.

  35

  Black Rain

  August 1945

  As they finished their breakfast of stale bread and a few black beans, the air raid warning sounded. Nobody moved in the prison camp. The shed that was designated as an official shelter would collapse at a shudder. It was safer to stay where they sat with their food. The air raid warning sounded regularly at this hour as an American weather plane flew over the city.

  The August heat singed the air. At night the ground reflected the stored-up summer fire through its baked surface. Night was the worst. The rough boards that served as bunks were layered so tightly beneath the ceiling that no one could sit up. Prisoners were forced to climb in at an angle. Kenjiro’s health had deteriorated since he entered the camp. The rations barely kept them alive. His lungs hurt, the fever and coughing had returned. As yet he spat no blood and this gave him hope. He was determined to survive.

  He stared from a window. The heat and terrible conditions, the poor food and hard, monotonous work at the ammunitions factory did not bother him. He had got used to it. It seemed not worth complaining when he could see the sky each day, or smell the scent occasionally of a flower on his walk to the factory. He knew the alternatives in dark, bug-infested cells too well. It was past seven o’clock and the sun, although hot, still retained its morning freshness. At least he was alive.

  They had not kept him long in the Tokyo prison. The speed with which he was brought to trial and dispatched as forced labour to this camp on the outskirts of Hiroshima, was proof to him of how badly things were going. The government could not afford to keep more than an essential few in gaol.

  Small fry like himself must earn their keep in the factories. Once again no proof emerged of his spying.

  Outside, cicada crescendoed like an hysterical orchestra. The paddies glowed an acid green. In the distance stood the town and beyond it the sea. Sometimes, if the wind was right, he could sniff its briny odour. Now, all he could smell was the heat. Every day he looked up at a sky filled by heavy American planes. They sailed by amongst the clouds, like flocks of migrating birds. Wherever it was they went to bomb, they flew in from over the coast. The absence of attack upon the town filled Kenjiro with unease.

  In the camp there was of course no news. Sometimes, in the factory, the workers who came in from outside as regular conscription, risked whispering the state of affairs. Since the beginning of the year there had been a change in propaganda techniques. The disinformation and false optimism had ended abruptly. No longer able to keep secret the appalling defeats of the war, the army, through radio and the newspapers, began to magnify the violence at the front. The question now was not of winning, but in what manner Japan should lose the war.

  In this camp were Allied POWs: British, Australian and
Dutch. They were kept apart in a hut of their own. Anyone caught talking to them was severely beaten. They were a scrawny, sickly lot, and sat now on the floor some distance away from the Japanese prisoners, waiting for the all clear. Kenjiro alone had some contact with them. He was used as an interpreter by the supervisor of the camp. Where he could he extended conversations, giving them news he had gleaned of the war situation. There were also some Koreans and Chinese, and they received the worst treatment.

  ‘Get out on the road. Get moving.’ The orders came as usual. It was past seven-thirty. They began to file out of the camp, assembling on the road to town with the factory at its edge. It was a walk of about fifty minutes from the camp. Anyone attempting to escape was shot. As they set out, the all-clear sounded. The rasp of crickets and cicada pressed thickly about them. There was the smell of wet earth from the paddies. A bee buzzed about his face, and Kenjiro brushed it away. Soon they reached a spot at a higher level. From here they had a view of the town in the distance. It lay on an estuary, straddling the many tributaries of a river. Already a haze of heat lay over the city and the road ahead buckled and shimmered. A wave of dizziness overcame Kenjiro as he forced himself on. He kept his eyes on the northern suburbs, where he knew Tilik Dayal now lived.

  It had been a shock to realise Dayal lived in the city. Even now he wondered at the coincidence. He had been marching as now, at exactly this time, head down, staring at the road. It had been spring, the morning was cold, and he shivered as he walked. From nowhere Dayal had fallen in to walk beside him. The shock had stopped him in his tracks, and the prisoners behind piled into him. The supervisor yelled at Dayal, who stepped back to the side of the road.

  ‘At first I didn’t recognise you,’ Dayal had shouted excitedly. ‘I can’t believe it. I’m on my way to get a ration of millet. I’ve moved here with my wife’s family. Everything burned in Tokyo. I’ll be in touch. I’ll find a way to see you,’ Dayal’s words floated over the heads of the moving file of men. The supervisor roared his anger, thwacking Kenjiro with a bamboo cane.

  There was a wait of some weeks, but eventually he was summoned to the supervisor’s hut. Dayal stood before him. The supervisor’s face was ugly and he did not leave the room. As they spoke in English his presence made no difference.

  ‘How have you managed this?’ Kenjiro asked.

  ‘I have my contacts, in case you have forgotten,’ Dayal smiled. ‘We’ve only a few moments, so I’ll talk quickly.’ He pointed from the window to a group of houses on a nearby hill, not far from the camp, where he lived with his wife and her family. Tilik filled in the gaps of knowledge since they last met and gave a brief summary of Japan’s war situation as he knew it.

  ‘It has to be over soon. I’ve heard rumours already of efforts for a negotiated peace, possibly through the Russians. I’m not sure I can come again too soon. I was lucky to arrange this. Keep well. We’ll meet when this is over,’ Tilik said as he retreated from the room.

  Now Kenjiro turned his head to look back to the hill where Dayal lived. In the sky three planes flew at a great height. Kenjiro squinted up at them. Since the all-clear had gone there could be no danger, they must be reconnaissance planes. The road narrowed, along one side was a school ground. Women were drilling: training to thrust with bamboo spears at the coming American invaders. Perhaps somewhere his mother, as she had forecast, would be doing the same. The shouts of the instructor filled his ears. Outside the school a group of soldiers dug a trench from which they would fight when the Americans came. On the opposite side of the road stood a windowless wooden warehouse that was reportedly filled with bales of precious cotton and other commodities. Upon its padlocked doors was hammered the mark of the military. Its shade fell upon him, cutting suddenly through the heat. He saw then that he had walked ahead of the others and the supervisor was shouting for him to wait. As he turned to look back a white flash of light hit the sky. There was no sound. The illumination was blinding, like a mammoth flashbulb. He saw the warehouse lift from the ground. At the same time something seemed to pick him up and propelled him through the air to meet it. It cannot be a bomb, he thought, for there was no sound. Then everything went black.

  When he opened his eyes he could see nothing. A great weight was upon him. He tried to move and could not. His head was humming. His shoulder hurt. Soon Kenjiro’s eyes grew accustomed to the dark, and he saw high above a chink of light, like a crack at the end of a steeple. Whatever it was that pressed about him was firm but flexible to his touch. Gradually he found he could move, altering his position inch by inch. He guessed he was hemmed in by bales of raw cotton or something similar, that had cushioned his fall in the warehouse. Slowly, he moved towards the light, burrowing upwards like a worm from the earth. Whatever was wrong with his shoulder, it still worked. Nothing appeared to be broken. He kept thinking, I am alive. I think I am alive. He feared that when he eventually reached the light he might find he was really dead. Outside might wait not the earthbound world, but some nether land beyond the living.

  He did not know how long it took, but at last he reached the crack of light. He pushed his way out and found himself on top of a mountain of wood. The sun no longer shone, the day was dark. He did not recognise the scene before him. Perhaps he was dead. The thought kept running through his head. A thick, black dust seemed to float in the air. He climbed down with difficulty from the remains of the warehouse and looked about. The thought persisted, that he might have crossed the line of life into another world. Then he heard cries. Through the dust Kenjiro saw the other prisoners were strewn about the road.

  Those still alive wandered about in a dazed manner. In the school playground the women lay in a heap, one upon another like bloodied rag dolls. The soldiers sat bolt upright but dead beside the dugout, blood streaming from their faces, their uniforms in tatters. Kenjiro looked back again at the prisoners. The supervisor lay head down in a ditch. In the distance the barracks no longer stood, flames rose from the rubble. In the area where the factory should have been, he could see nothing but a flattened mess. The houses in the road beyond the warehouse had also collapsed. He turned towards the town and stared for some time in confusion. As far as he could see a flat bowl of ash spread out before him in the darkness. He tried to think. He remembered no blast, and bombs hit specific areas. Perhaps it was not a bomb but a massive meteorite. An earthquake? He realised then that his clothes hung in shreds and he was bleeding from his chest. A wind was beginning to blow. For the first time he noticed the silence. No crickets rasped, no cicada rattled, birds had ceased to sing. In the distance he heard a strauge, hollow, mewling. On the wind blew the moaning of people, welding together into a single frenzied note. Out of nowhere then a rain began. His arm was splattered with large black drops, like petrol oil. He licked his hand, but the rain tasted of nothing he knew.

  He saw now that the smoke about him had taken a shape, piling up high into the sky, as if it would reach the roof of space. Twisting on a black umbilical chord, a diabolical incubus hovered above the town. He stared in horror at this strange cloud. For a moment it seemed as if all the evil of the last ten or fifteen years, all the frenzied lust of killing and hate, wherever or by whoever, hovered there physically above him. He could not move, filled with terror. On the wind the moaning blew to him once more. He looked up again at that silent incubus, and knew he was not wrong. Hate had at last exploded. From this place there could be no return.

  Kenjiro turned then and ran. Tears streamed down his face. He ran in the direction of Dayal’s home. At last he reached the hill upon which Dayal had said he lived and began to ask for the foreigner. People pointed the way, their faces blank and bewildered. Children cried beneath the rubble of half-collapsed homes. Kenjiro stopped to help a woman pull a screaming baby from under wreckage. The child emerged almost unharmed and the woman sobbed her thanks. There seemed less damage in this district. The strange wind fanned flames from collapsed houses. One fire merged quickly into another. At last he reached a house
which still partially stood. All the doors and windows had been blasted out, and most of the tiles were gone. He looked up to see Tilik standing in a ruined room, his face badly cut about.

  ‘What was it?’ he asked, scrambling up beside him.

  ‘A new bomb, the one that’s been rumoured. It’ll be one bomb per city now until Japan surrenders. Michiko and the children went into town with her mother early this morning, to the doctor. I must go and find them,’ Tilik gestured desperately.

  ‘Have you seen your face? That’s a bad gash above your eyes,’ Kenjiro replied.

  ‘I must go. I must find them.’ Tilik pulled out a handkerchief and held it to the cut.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Kenjiro said.

  ‘If the Kempeitai see you in that prison uniform, however little there is left of it, you’ll be shot. Open that cupboard, put on some of my things. Hurry,’ Tilik demanded.

  ‘Why have they bombed this town?’ Kenjiro asked. He looked about in bewilderment.

  ‘It’s the base of the Second General Headquarters of the Imperial Army. The city is swarming with soldiers,’ Tilik replied, already making his way out of the ruined house.

  Kenjiro remembered then that Hiroshima was a military city, its wealth built upon a warring past. Troops in 1894 had set off from Hiroshima for the battlefronts of China, and Emperor Meiji had moved his military headquarters to the city. When, a decade later, Japan had gone to war with Russia, Hiroshima was once more the centre of military operations. For a moment he imagined the city like a fly caught at the centre of a web. That was why there had been no raids. They were waiting for the kill to ripen.