The Second Sun, page 19
“Brilliant,” I said. “Who do we talk to?”
Janet queried the secretary, who said she knew just the guy and he was right down the hall. I started laughing when I saw who it was: one Colonel Billy Peterson, US Army. He grinned sheepishly when we came into his office.
“I thought maybe Leavenworth,” I said after we shook hands.
He said, no, not exactly. Are you familiar with the term kabuki? I told him I was a recent student of the political version.
“That’s what the gym scene was all about,” he said, as we got some coffee and sat down at a small conference table. “And the subsequent warnings at HQ. Don’t snoop, or you might disappear like Colonel Peterson. No one said it, but the message was pretty clear.”
“Your better half was pretty convincing,” I said.
He nodded. “She knew,” he said. “But the kids and neighbors didn’t. I came over here to the EOB to work originally for Van Rensselaer, then the National Security Council at large. Japan country expert, with a specialty in their industrial production capabilities.”
“Can you speak Japanese?” Janet asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve taken some lessons at the language school over in Roslyn, but I’m just no damn good at foreign languages and accents. I can read it fairly well if it’s in Roman, but every time I tried to speak, the language tutor would start to cry.”
Janet laughed.
“How can I help you guys?” Peterson asked, glancing at his watch. We spent the next twenty minutes describing our recent taskings since being pulled into Van Rensselaer’s orbit. We could speak about the project now that the Bombs had become sensational news around the world. Then the specific question about how we’d accomplish our new mission and what support to ask for from MacArthur’s staff.
He thought about that for a long moment. “You’ll probably enter Japan at Haneda air base, just outside Tokyo. MacArthur and his staff are billeted in an undamaged insurance company’s downtown headquarters building near the palace and the diplomatic quarter. The imperial palace district was off limits for the B-29s, which is not to say some stray bombs didn’t find their way there. The rest of the city is a wreck, especially after the firestorm in October of last year. Your problem will be that all the normal in-country travel modalities are also wrecked. Trains. Interdistrict bus lines. Highways. Interisland shipping. Bridges.
“One of MacArthur’s first requests was for a thousand Army trucks. Repair and rail-laying trains from Union Pacific. We now have a continuing stream of passenger-cargo ships coming from West Coast ports to Tokyo and points south. They unload food, medical supplies and personnel, bulldozers, tents—stuff like that. Then they go to Guam or the Philippines to pick up troops for repatriation, precedence being given to ex-POWs. It’s a massive effort.”
“Well, it’s not for an invasion, though,” Janet said. “That has to be a good thing.”
“Pretty good imitation of one,” Peterson said. “The Japanese are astounded at how fast we brought in what we—and they—needed. We don’t tell them it was all pre-staged on the West Coast for Operation Olympic—the invasion. Now there’s a central logistical office at MacArthur’s headquarters, trying to coordinate the world’s biggest food fair. They’re the guys who will provide you a means of traveling within Japan, and within the two forbidden zones.”
“Forbidden?” Janet asked. “Radiation?”
“Fundamentally, yes,” Billy replied. “Lot of confusion on that subject right now. One bunch of scientists say that since the Bombs went off high up, there should be very little residual radiation on the ground. Another camp says no one will be able to go into those two cities for a thousand years. MacArthur’s people are playing it safe right now until experts on the ground can settle it.”
“That’s a huge difference,” Janet said.
“Yeah, well, Los Alamos is saying that the confusion is being caused by the Trinity test. That bomb was relatively close to the ground, as compared to a B-29 dropping from tactical altitude, and, yes, that site is terribly hot. And there’s radioactive materials that went walkabout after the blast. Indian reservations downwind are turning up a lot of sick people. But there’s also some pretty horrifying numbers coming out from the Japanese. Somewhere near seventy-five thousand were killed outright when the Bomb went off in Hiroshima from blast and radiation. Some of our medical scientists are predicting three to four times that number once the radiation sickness comes into proper focus. Big politics in that issue, as you might imagine.”
“We’ve been tasked to go to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” I said.
“Lucky you,” Billy said. “Our medical world is still trying to figure out how to do that safely, if that’s even possible. Fortunately, the big medical effort is taking place beyond the city limits and not down near ground zero.”
“Why is that?” Janet asked.
“Because that’s where the people who ‘survived’ the initial blast went. There are only a few people left alive in those two cities. The survivors who could, fled. What’s left is thousands of dead or grievously ill people. It’s a hideous mess, when there’s no wind. And when there is wind, whole precincts downwind get dosed.”
We sat there, trying to absorb everything he’d been saying. He gave us a moment.
“Look,” he said. “I’ll gen up a list of what you’ll need to get from Tokyo down to Hiroshima, and from there to Nagasaki. I’ll include a place to stay in Tokyo. There are US Navy ships in Hiroshima harbor, probably down closer to Kure. I suspect there are some near Nagasaki, too. That’s where you’ll stay, aboard US Navy ships. Then you’ll need transportation into or at least as near the cities as you can safely get. Lots of unknowns in both target areas, none of them good. Now: who speaks Japanese?”
Janet explained her qualifications. He brightened at that. “Great,” he said. “Try to downplay all that when you’re around American authorities. They’ll shanghai you in a heartbeat. Just communicating with the Japanese is a huge problem.”
“From what we’ve been told,” I said, “neither MacArthur nor Van Rensselaer are going to be happy when we show up.”
“Have no fear,” he said with a grin. “I’ll prep the message in Leahy-speak. No one fucks with him. No one.”
This was all good, I thought. Except, the Japanese army and navy had perpetrated war crimes and barbarous behavior throughout Asia. China. Korea. Java. Singapore. Malaysia. Indonesia. Thailand. Guadalcanal. Borneo. The Philippines. The list was sadly long. A humanitarian effort in all those conquered places made sense. But, in my opinion, we ought to leave the Japanese islands to experience a few years of societal die-off for what they had done. Instead, it looked like we were now going all out to raise them from the ruins of their own making. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I’d faced their torpedoes and guns at sea.
“How should I act?” I asked, remembering Janet’s plan. The daimyo. The fearsome, American giant. Aloof. Impatient. Imperious. Silent. Capable of—what?
“What do you think?” Billy asked Janet. “You know their culture, their language. I don’t. I’m a number cruncher. I think the Japanese will look to the captain here, not you, which means they’ll never see you coming.”
She laughed at that and then asked me to stand up.
I did. Billy was fit and strong. I was also fit and strong, but much bigger than he was. He got the point immediately.
“If we dress him up right,” she said, “I think he’ll intimidate any Japanese he meets. That’s when I, the oh-so-subservient woman assistant, the lowly interpreter, will begin probing.”
“Why would they be the least bit interested in becoming our ally?” Billy asked.
“Because the captain here,” she replied, “will make some deliberately ambiguous pronouncements about the atomic bomb, Russia, and the rise of communism right next door. If there’s anything the Japanese respect, it’s raw power. We’ll be talking to small fry, but trust me, word of these encounters will get back to whoever’s left in the Japanese bureaucratic aristocracy, assuming they survive the war crimes tribunals. Plus, they’re gonna be invaded after all, by legions of American expert delegations, showboating politicians, and sneaky diplomats.”
Billy nodded. “I get it,” he said. “Give me a day to draft up your requirements.” He paused for a second, then grinned. “I’d love to see Van Rensselaer’s face when he receives the message.”
“Not popular here in the EOB?” I asked.
Billy became serious. “He had an impossible job, considering the scale of the Manhattan Project. I think he pulled off his part of it. I personally resented his imperious manner, and I’m not alone in that. Besides, guys who have a ‘van’ or a ‘von’ in front of their names tend to raise American hackles, you know?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
NEW WAYS
For all the war years the word “Tokyo” had represented the place where the horrors of the Pacific war originated. I’d never formed a picture in my mind of the actual city until late in the war, when I saw the newsreel pictures taken through Norden bombsights as the B-29s plastered the fuzzy streets and blocks two miles below with bright bomb flashes and clouds of smoke. The smoke and fires were all gone as we descended over Tokyo Bay in our DC-3 transport, but there were swaths of utter destruction clearly visible. Nothing left but the veinlike canal networks surrounding blackened squares, the same canals into which terrified Japanese had plunged during the firestorms, only to be boiled alive five minutes later. As we flew over the city center, we could see much less due to the smoggy haze hovering over the city. Even Mount Fuji, normally a prominent feature visible from Tokyo, was invisible.
Haneda airport had no passenger terminal. We were told to stay in our seats as the plane taxied noisily down to one end of the field where there were American vehicles and planes parked around a complex of large US Army tents. I hadn’t seen those since Guadalcanal. An American flag hung limply in the still air on a temporary flagpole. A few hundred yards away several US Army trucks were being loaded. They were lined up in a road convoy formation, with a couple of armored personnel carriers at each end of the convoy. We were both extremely tired, having endured the by now familiar (to me, anyway) endless slog across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean.
The plan was for us to go downtown to MacArthur’s headquarters, where we expected to be assigned rooms in one of the expropriated hotels in the embassy district. We’d stay there for two days and nights, and only then go see Van Rensselaer and possibly the General at the headquarters building. Apparently, headquarters had learned there was no point in even talking to arriving visitors from the States until they’d had two days to recuperate from the ordeal of a trans-Pacific crossing.
There was a Navy lieutenant waiting for us when we debarked from the DC-3. He introduced himself and I immediately forgot his name. He had a staff car waiting nearby, and we were soon on our way toward the city center. The roads were in tolerably good shape but only because there were mounds of burned debris on either side, looking like black snow after a big storm. Some of the suburban areas we went through were thoroughly demolished, with no people or even animals in sight. And no trees, either. The silence as we drove along with the windows open was disturbing. There were no people out on the streets and almost zero vehicle traffic. It was as if the entire area was still stunned from what had happened, and the population—the surviving population, I reminded myself—was probably still in hiding. I turned to Janet to say something but she was asleep. Smart girl. I asked the lieutenant, who was driving, how the Japanese were acting around Americans.
“When we first got here there were people out along the roads and streets,” he said. “Women mostly, some children, the occasional older male. As our convoy drove into the city center, toward the imperial palace, they all turned their backs as the convoy drew abreast. We thought they were being hostile, but later found out that they were so ashamed that Japan had surrendered they turned their backs so we wouldn’t have to see their shameful faces. That’s how different things are here.”
“Are they lurking around, trying to kill Americans?”
“Not at all, and our new chief of staff, who’s something of an Asian specialist, told us why. The Japanese army headquarters staff was totally against surrender. They wanted a fight to the death for all Japanese. It was the emperor who saw the light, presumably after the A-bombs. He was the one who sent the surrender message, not the military government, and he also got on the national radio, for the first time ever, and told the people of Japan to basically knock it off—it was his imperial will that the war was over.”
“Yeah, and?”
“To the Japanese, that meant that they were no longer allowed to do anything to harm the occupying Americans when they came ashore. That order was coming directly from a god. And, that’s pretty much what’s happened. They’ve been cooperative. They do what we tell them to do. It hasn’t hurt that each day of the occupation brings in more food, medicine, and other stuff. We’re sure there’s some die-hard bushido types out there, but, perversely, their friends and neighbors are telling these guys, well, if that’s how you feel, you have a perfectly honorable and traditional way to solve your dilemma.”
“You mean suicide.”
“Yes, sir. You know the US Marines have this motto: death before dishonor. That shit originated right here in Japan.”
Amazing, I thought. But it had to be true. It was good to know that once we left the capital and went to the two cities that there wouldn’t be hostile crowds wanting to kill us both.
“One more question,” I said. “We’re going to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That deal still hold in those cities?”
He hesitated. “Sir, I can’t guarantee that. Supposedly, more people got killed here by the firestorms in the Tokyo region than did down there. But we’re hearing strange shit. Our battalion commander went down there. He came back saying the survivors had this awful look about them. Living dead, he called them. They’ve seen something so bad that they’re not entirely there anymore. I’ll tell you this—there are more US security troops around Hiroshima and Nagasaki than there are here in the capital region. One major who was down there with the CO said he couldn’t tell who was more scared—our security troops or the Japanese who’d lived through it.”
“And the cities? What did they say about the cities?”
“Gone, Captain,” he said, grimly. “Just fucking gone, excuse my French.”
We were met downtown by a Navy commander, who immediately took us over to a nearby hotel. He gave us a written guide for new American arrivals in occupied Japan. We were each assigned a room on the second floor and were given printed English instructions regarding the hotel’s baths, bar, restaurant, and curfew regulations. There was a scary paragraph about what to do in case of an earthquake, which were not uncommon. I had taken precautions when packing to include a bottle of good Scotch deep in my sea bag, which seemed to have survived the trip. I made sure by fixing a drink as soon as I got to my room. Janet’s room was right next door. I looked for a connecting door; no such luck.
The room was small, maybe ten feet by fifteen. There was a single window, but no glass. Instead, there was a parchment roll that could be pulled down for privacy. The bed was practically down on the floor, with a standing lamp on either side of the bed. The room was neither heated nor air-conditioned. The rooms had bathrooms containing a toilet fixture, but not showers or bathtubs as Western hotels did. There were towels but no soap. If you wanted to wash away a trans-Pacific odyssey, you went down into the basement to the baths. You walked to the stairway wearing a thin, mid-thigh-length robe and sandal-style slippers. Everywhere you went in the hotel there were people in sight, mostly elderly women—outside your room, in the hallways, the stairwells—whose mission was to give you directions, attend to service requests, or even escort you to different areas in the hotel.
The baths were interesting. Once there you first took a hot shower and then were escorted by tiny Japanese matrons to the actual hot bath and shown how to get in. There was no soap provided in the shower, and no clothing, slippers, or towels were ever allowed in the hot bath area. The water was more than hot, and the headquarters instructions pamphlet said to stay no more than three minutes until you had become accustomed to using Japanese baths. It took me almost three minutes to fully submerge and when I got back out a few minutes later, the steamy atmosphere of the room felt a little chilly. More escorts as I went back up to my room, where the door was being held open for me when I arrived.
After lots of bowing, I got to be alone in my room. I looked for a room phone, but there wasn’t one. If you wanted to communicate with, say, the front desk or another room, you stuck your head out the door and sent one of the ubiquitous women off with your requirements. I’d wanted to call Janet, but gave it up. I was pretty sure she was long asleep. Relaxed after the hot bath, I gingerly got into the bed, and was gone in sixty seconds.
I slept into the late morning. As soon as I started making noises in the room, there was some tentative tapping on the door and then two maids scuttled in to open the window shades and bring a tray of tea and the smallest biscuits I’d ever seen. I was standing there in my skivvies but, after lots of bowing, they still made no eye contact. Apparently, they were supposed to be invisible, and you, the guest, were supposed to behave as if they were. Okay, I thought. I was hungry by then and wondering if the dining room was open. I got dressed in wash khakis and headed downstairs, accompanied by much twittering along the hallway. I approached the desk and was given a sealed envelope. I took a seat in the lobby. The note was from headquarters, which explained that I needed to tell the front desk to call them whenever I woke up. They would then send a car that would take me to the American Embassy, where there’d be food.
Idiot, I thought. Of course there wouldn’t be food or drink in the hotel. The whole damned city was on the verge of starvation, with many thousands of people being kept alive by generous deliveries of staples from the dreaded Occupying Power. As if to emphasize that fact, a convoy of US Army canvas-backed trucks came rumbling down the street out in front, led by an armored personnel carrier and then a jeep with an Army driver, an American officer in the back seat, and a Japanese civilian up front.
