by Meira Chand
The closer they came to the town the worse the damage was. Not a house stood. From the flattened piles of rubble came cries for help. Kenjiro hung back, attempting to do what he could, but Tilik was desperate with impatience.
‘We cannot stop. I must find Michiko.’ Tilik pulled him on.
The wind seemed to have swung about and was coming now from the north. For the first time Kenjiro looked down at his arms, bare beneath the sleeves of Tilik’s shirt, and saw that the splodges of black rain seemed to have sunk, indelibly, into his skin. They resembled the dark spots of age upon his father’s hands.
‘I don’t know where I am,’ Tilik said suddenly. ‘There is nothing left. All the landmarks have gone.’
‘Let us go to the river, perhaps from there you can find your way,’ Kenjiro suggested. Walking to the factory, he passed the river each day.
Tilik nodded. ‘The doctor was near the river.’
They walked on. The moaning Kenjiro had heard on the wind came now from all directions. It wrapped about him. He was overwhelmed by his helplessness before such pain and anguish. As they neared the centre of town the roads thickened with people, flowing towards them.
‘Water. Water.’ The cry came to them again and again.
He knew these were people. They walked, had limbs and heads that moved, but little else about them seemed recognisable. It was as if the earth had spewed up some half-formed race before their time of birth. Skinless, faceless, blind and unhearing, they flooded towards Kenjiro. He drew back in horror. Tilik pushed on before him, each sight only fuelling his desperation. He began to shout.
‘Michiko. Michiko.’
They came upon a charred tram, twisted like a piece of gum. From it oozed a gluey substance in which floated blackened twigs. Kenjiro turned and vomited. The twigs he saw were burnt bones, the congealed liquid was once the passengers who that morning had boarded the tram. From everywhere people streamed at him, roasted as chickens on a spit.
‘Water. Water.’
The patterns of fans or flowers from blouses were impressed like stencils upon their skin. The shadow of straps, suspenders, braces and belts were also to be seen. Soon the sheer number of people overwhelmed him. They appeared to come from all sides. Kenjiro realised suddenly that he and Tilik, upright and unharmed, were like a magnet to these wounded. They lifted arms to them, chests skinless.
‘Water. Water.’
Those who could not see seemed to sense their passing.
‘Water. Water.’
Kenjiro helped somebody to the side of the road. He comforted a lost child, carrying it for some time upon his back but could not find its mother. He set it down beside a woman who appeared relatively unharmed and suckled a baby at her breast.
They passed a wall on top of which rested two brown gloves laid out neatly, side by side. On looking back Kenjiro realised the gloves were no more than the skin of a pair of flayed hands.
Flames whipped up about them, the heat intense upon their faces. The darkness was like an eclipse at midday. Looking up at the sky Kenjiro saw, still hovering above, that black incubus, moving, swaying, turning in upon itself. Tilik strode ahead.
They came at last to the river. In it floated a load of logs, and amongst these logs the living doused themselves with water to ease their pain. Kenjiro realised that yet again, the logs were the detriment of grilled corpses.
It was late afternoon before Tilik agreed to retrace their steps, back across the bowl of ash. ‘Perhaps Michiko has managed to get home,’ Kenjiro comforted. Halfway across the annihilated town Tilik stopped, refusing to go on.
‘Let me check the refugee centres again, and the first aid tents. Maybe I have missed her. There are also now more bodies to check.’ He bent as others also bent, to examine the dead. Many people now swarmed about, relatively unharmed like themselves from the outskirts of the town, looking for relatives, anxious to help.
‘You go back to the house and see if they have returned. I cannot leave. I cannot.’ Tilik stopped again before a pile of charred bodies, turning them over, one by one.
Kenjiro walked back the way he had come, running in spite of exhaustion, to be free of the Hell. On the river now a launch pushed its way amongst the floating human debris. A naval officer stood on the deck and shouted through a megaphone. The launch was white and the officer spry in his starched summer cotton. They seemed apparitions from another world.
‘Be patient. A naval hospital ship is coming to take care of you soon. Be patient,’ he shouted repeatedly.
Kenjiro made his way around a smoking pile of bricks and passed a fragment of wall. His shadow stretched upon the wall, and yet there was no sun. He walked forward, but the shadow did not move. Upon the wall, he suddenly realised, the shadow was all that remained of what had once been a man. It was as if that dark and sinister half of man, buried deep within himself, had shown itself at last. Upon this wall for eternity, it had imprinted its shadowy self. Kenjiro began to run.
Soon he reached the house. In the dark he stumbled across the threshold. He saw the outlines already of the two women and the children.
‘I have waited here all day,’ Michiko sobbed when he explained. ‘I never went to the doctor. My mother felt too unwell to walk. We stopped at a neighbour’s for her to recover. Then that flash came and the neighbour’s house collapsed upon us. We are still alive, it’s a miracle. By the time we managed to get out from under the ruins of the house, Tilik was not to be found. I thought he was dead.’
Kenjiro collapsed in exhaustion. He closed his eyes and the world reeled about him. What he had seen could not be part of any war. It was no less than the end of the world.
Eventually Tilik returned. He stared at his wife and children, sitting whole before him.
‘You are here,’ he said without expression. He sat down and began to cry.
36
Sword of Power 3
1945
When the atomic bomb obliterated Hiroshima on the 6th August 1945 at fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, Emperor Hirohito was walking in the palace gardens. He had spent the previous night in his air raid shelter beneath the palace, discussing the Potsdam Declaration’s demand for Japan’s surrender with his brother Prince Takamatsu. He had slept little and was in an emotional state. At the news of Hiroshima he grew white and tears sprang to his eyes.
For months Marquis Kido and Prince Konoye had been urging him to think of surrender. Kido drafted a report of his own, ‘Measures for Managing the Situation’. He urged Hirohito to speak out for the cessation of hostilities immediately, although the Government still talked of victory, and the Army Minister, General Anami and the chiefs of the navy and army, categorically opposed the idea of surrender. Defeat was an aberration unknown to Japan, surrender an unheard-of and alien concept. An honourable end to the war was what was sought for the nation. Hirohito seemed powerless to take an initiative. ‘One more victory. One more victory’, was all he seemed able to repeat to Konoye. A series of ignominious defeats, the sight of war-damaged Tokyo, and the shattering of Hirohito’s dream for the era of Showa, had thrown the Emperor into a state of paralysis. Now, when informed of the nature of the new bomb, Hirohito at last began to react.
‘Under these circumstances we must bow to the inevitable. No matter what happens we must put an end to this war as speedily as possible, so that this tragedy will not be repeated. My personal safety does not matter,’ he announced at long last to Marquis Kido, when later they met. The safety of the Emperor and his family was everyone’s concern.
But there were still fanatics prepared to fight on, who used the Potsdam Declaration’s silence over the fate of the Imperial family in surrender, as a reason to continue the state of war. Hardly had the bomb been dropped than the Russians, whom Japan had hoped might negotiate a conditional surrender for them with the Americans, turned instead upon Japan with a declaration of war. Hirohito was beside himself. He sent for Kido and demanded he call a session of the Supreme War Council and the Cabinet and make
the Emperor’s wishes known to all members of these boards. The Emperor now begged for haste. He was a scientist and could guess the potential of such a bomb.
Haste was the last thing that appeared to drive the Supreme Council. It took three days to persuade them to meet. They too, like Hirohito earlier, were paralysed by the coming defeat. The few who spoke realistically were outnumbered by those who still talked of last attacks, and a fight to the death. No consensus for surrender appeared reachable. Even news, during their discussions, of the dropping of a second atom bomb upon Nagasaki, seemed not to hurry a decision. The Americans pressed for an unconditional surrender. Any surrender as far as Japan was concerned must be conditional, but the number of conditions was still in debate. The very idea of defeat was unacceptable. A stalemate had been reached.
Although it was late at night, it was decided by the elderly Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki, who had known Hirohito since his childhood, to ask the Emperor to call an Imperial Conference over which his royal presence should preside. Hirohito agreed that, if no unanimous decision was reached at the meeting, he would exercise his Royal Prerogative, and call an end to the war.
The Emperor, according to ancient metaphor, lived forever above the clouds, like a mythical crane, surveying from on high the state of his nation, but leaving its government to appointed officials. Only on occasions of rare and dire crisis might he issue direct commands to his people. At these times he spoke in the Voice of the Crane.
At this impromptu and desperate Imperial Conference, Hirohito no longer sat upon his throne before a golden screen but in his air raid bunker, fifty feet below ground. He wore a crumpled khaki uniform. It was a hot August night and there was no air-conditioning. The panelled walls of the bunker were sweating.
The conference began at 11.50 pm. Before Hirohito sat his ministers, perspiring profusely in formal morning coats and dress uniforms as befitted an Imperial Conference. The same arguments that had devoured the previous precious hours now began again. Once more no decision was reached on suitable conditions for a surrender. At 2 am, Prime Minister Suzuki rose stiffly from his seat, desperation ingrained in his weary expression.
‘We cannot go on like this. The situation allows for no further delay. In these circumstances I shall humbly present myself at the foot of the throne and I will seek the Imperial guidance and substitute it for the decision of the conference.’ The old man left his seat and prostrated himself at the feet of the Emperor.
At last, when the Prime Minister was seated again and intensity calmed in the room, Hirohito began to speak. Agitation twisted his face, sweat had steamed up his glasses making it difficult to read the notes in hand. He gulped visibly, and began to speak in a high, strained voice. Slowly, his voice settled and took on a sure tone.
‘I have given serious thought to the situation prevailing at home and abroad, and I have come to the conclusion that continuing the war can only mean destruction for the nation and a prolongation of bloodshed and cruelty in the world . . .’ He went on for some time, stopping emotionally at intervals, once taking a sip of green tea and wiping his sweating face. At last he neared the end of his speech accepting the Potsdam Declaration of unconditional surrender.
‘I cannot help feeling sad when I consider the people who have served me so loyally as soldiers and sailors, who have been killed or wounded in battlefields overseas, the families who have lost their homes and so often their lives in the air raids here. I need not tell you how unbearable I find it to see the brave and loyal fighting men of Japan disarmed. It is equally unbearable that others who have given me devoted service may now be threatened with punishment as the instigators of war. Nevertheless, the time has come when we must bear the unbearable. When I recall the feelings of my Imperial Grandfather the Emperor Meiji at the time of the Triple Intervention in 1895, I swallow my tears and give my sanction to the proposal to accept the Allied proclamation on the basis outlined by the Foreign Minister.’
Hirohito wiped his face on his handkerchief and sat down exhausted on his chair. The Voice of the Crane had spoken.
37
The Journey Back
1946
Bradley Reed returned to his office in the Dai lchi Building in Tokyo after an interview with General MacArthur. The Supreme Command for the Allied Powers, or SCAP as it was called, was in a massive, draughty building, relatively unscarred by bombs. He sat down heavily at his desk and looked across to where Nadya typed industriously. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East was about to begin.
‘Now, as well as advising the Prosecution for the trial, I am to be attached to the Government Section to advise on the new Constitution. You don’t refuse requests from General MacArthur. I suspect nobody knows quite what they’re doing yet,’ Bradley Reed announced. ‘Every old China or Japan hand I know seems to have been summoned here, just like myself. It’s years, you know, since I was in Japan, and it’s a shock to see the state of the place.’ Bradley lit his pipe. Nadya stopped typing and looked up. She could understand Bradley’s shock.
Beyond the office footsteps echoed along the stone corridors of the Dai Ichi Building. A mass of uniformed Americans hurried in all directions, papers in hands, intent upon great purpose. MacArthur’s American military and civilian staff appeared intimidating to Nadya. The constant rhythm of feet was like the beat to a melody that never started. Or perhaps, Nadya thought, it was that she herself waited apprehensively, as if for a curtain to rise upon some future act of life. She had obeyed Bradley’s summons to join him in Tokyo with reluctance. She had been eight years in America and had no wish to leave. Most of all she had no desire to return to the Far East and the crucible of memory. Each day of the journey to Japan, as her destination drew nearer, she had felt progressively weighed down. A sense of violation filled her. She knew now that this was the real emotion left with her after Nanking. Only now could she give it a name. Perhaps there were also other emotions to discover, buried conveniently during the years in America. Her apprehension thickened.
As conditions had worsened in China in 1938, Bradley Reed returned to America to teach Chinese history and politics at Stanford University. He insisted Nadya also leave China and find a future in America. Marriage to Donald, with its resulting nationality, made this move uncomplicated. Nadya had sailed from Shanghai some weeks after Bradley. He arranged a job at Stanford for her, as librarian and assistant to his department. She settled easily and, as the years went by, felt she grafted well to the country. She enjoyed her work and the freedom at last from the trauma of war into which the whole world was progressively plunged. Bradley and his wife were forever introducing her to suitable young men. There had been several serious relationships but, to Nadya at least, none had the hope of permanence. No wave of emotion swept her away, destroying sensibility.
Every six months on average a few lines from Donald arrived, written in haste from some war zone of the world. He was alive, but she knew little more. The demand for divorce never came. She waited for his few scrawled words on a crumpled sheet of notebook. Each brought the same relief: that he was not dead, blown up by a mine or sniper fire, or shot down in a plane over Guadalcanal.
‘I don’t know why you need me here. Anyone can type these,’ Nadya scowled at Bradley, puffing benignly on his pipe. She could not keep the anger from her voice at finding herself in Tokyo.
On arriving in the city it was a shock, after the years in America, physically untouched by war, to return to demolished worlds. The jeep Bradley sent to meet Nadya had jolted over bomb-cratered roads, towards the Dai Ichi Hotel. It was as if there had been no space of time between Nanking and now. Eight years in America appeared obliterated in a single view from the window of this vehicle.
‘I didn’t imagine it was as bad as this,’ she said to the young GI who drove the jeep.
‘Yes Ma’m, we did a thorough job of things here,’ he grinned. She looked at him in distaste.
Japan. The name, during those nightmare months in Nanking, ech
oed of terror. It conjured a vision of irascible power. Now, Tokyo spread about her in a dust pile. A shanty town of sticks and rags and bits of paper. Barefoot, ragged children, women with babies strapped to their backs, men without legs propelling themselves upon makeshift trolleys, begged for money or cigarettes. In spite of her knowledge of the blitzing of Japan, she had been unprepared for this. The city was silent except at its centre where the GIs roamed. No street lights survived to illuminate the night. A stench of sewage corroded the place. All the old pictures of Nanking returned. She hugged her arms nervously about herself. A sudden force thrust her back into a world she had tried all these years to forget. One bombed town looked much like another. One human’s pain and terror, whatever their race, was the same as another’s. She could have been riding through Nanking.
Since arriving in Tokyo her sleep had been blown away. Once again she awoke with nightmares. In the middle of the day she was paralysed by flashbacks. In spite of this and whatever her grumbles to Bradley, her reluctance to come to Tokyo was diluted by the knowledge that Donald must be here. Like her, he could not escape this trial. He was famous everywhere now for his war reportage, and the film he had smuggled out of Nanking all those years ago. She could not suppress the agitation filling her at the thought of seeing Donald again.
‘I don’t know why you need me here,’ she repeated sullenly to Bradley. Her own unsettled emotional state undermined her confidence. ‘The people in this building all seem to know where they’re going and what they’re doing. Only I feel superfluous.’
‘A matter of activity hiding confusion.’ Bradley puffed on his pipe, and leaned back in the chair. The smell of tobacco filled the room. ‘The job before this Occupation is immense. Immediately, food must come in, millions and millions of tons. The country is starving and thousands will still die unless we act quickly. Then the educational system must be changed, religion overhauled. Democracy, justice as we know it, and the vote and equality for women must all be installed. And more, much more. A whole country and its way of thinking must be refashioned. And while all this is going on, those men who brought things to the sad pass you see beyond this building, must also be brought to book. The evil of men, many small men, who thought themselves beyond the judgement of God must be run to ground and brought to trial. The task ahead is monumental. But I have faith in General MacArthur.’