From the Fatherland, with Love, page 25
An emergency call came in from Osaka police prompting another flutter of agitation around the table. An express bus that had left Fukuoka in the middle of the night was now on the mainland speeding along the Sanyo Expressway. Other buses had also since departed, so it was decided to track them all by helicopter, stop them on the expressway, and run ID checks on all the passengers. If any terrorists were on board and put up armed resistance, they should respond by shooting to kill—Kido, Shigemitsu, and Oikawa all okayed this. “What if they take hostages?” Oikawa had asked, but it was agreed to defer dealing with that until the situation arose. Listening to this exchange, Yamagiwa’s sense of unease grew. Still, if he’d been part of the proceedings himself, he realized, he probably wouldn’t have had any doubts about it.
It was one o’clock in the morning, and the most powerful people in Japan were still ensconced in the Cabinet Office. The PM’s eyes were bloodshot, and the Chief Cabinet Secretary’s voice was increasingly hoarse as he spoke on the phone with the governor of Kyushu. The other ministers and bureau chiefs loosened their ties, undid a few buttons, rolled up their shirtsleeves, chewed on their pens, or tugged at their hair as they took notes. Even the women among them had no thought to spare for their appearance as they immersed themselves in the task at hand. An impartial observer would certainly have had the impression that they were all working flat out. And indeed they were, issuing tough, complex instructions that would result in the mobilization of tens or even hundreds of thousands of people.
Yamagiwa felt a sense of hopelessness wash over him. On turning fifty, he had gone through a midlife crisis and had been on antidepressants for a couple of years. Here in the crisis-management room, watching these people frantically at work, he got the same sour taste of futility that sometimes made him feel like saying to hell with it all. At first he thought it was because he’d been left out in the cold, but he was beginning to feel it was more than that. Being outside the frenzy of the round table, he had become painfully aware of the Japanese government’s inability to see the big picture—and if he could see it, no doubt other outsiders could see it too.
The crisis room was two floors underground and windowless, but the TV screens were showing the sky lightening over the seaside city of Fukuoka. NHK and various independent broadcasters had been covering the incident through the night. The NHK footage of the neighborhood around Fukuoka Dome was probably taken from the roof of the TV station. The terrorists had banned all helicopter flights over the Dome, and made it clear they would shoot down any aircraft infringing this ban. The scene being broadcast showed an expanse of green military tents in the area between the Dome, the high-rise hotel, and the hospital, with plumes of smoke from cooking fires rising here and there.
Periodically an ultra telephoto lens closed in on the terrorists’ flag. It wasn’t the North Korean flag, naturally, since they were a rebel army, but bore a cryptic design on a white background with something written in Hangul below. Yamagiwa was thinking that they couldn’t have chosen a more preposterous place for their camp, but he was also impressed. While the government had spent the night organizing the blockade, the terrorists had constructed a full-blown base camp, with tents, strategically positioned vehicles, sentry posts, and what looked like several checkpoints. A few ministers at the round table suggested attacking it with American precision-guided missiles like those used in the Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but an SDF expert explained that it was too close to a large hospital for this to be feasible. Even if they used a bomb with a limited lethal blast range, those who survived would likely take cover in the hospital or other buildings in the area and further complicate the situation. As things stood now, according to telephone interviews broadcast on TV, the terrorists hadn’t yet entered the hospital. The Kyushu Medical Center was a huge, maze-like building complex with numerous blocks connected by corridors. It probably would have been safer for them to occupy it from the start, but they had chosen instead to set up camp on the vacant, park-like ground outside.
The Chinese and South Korean consulates were inside the area now under the terrorists’ control, and the US consulate was not far away. These, however, had been evacuated as soon as the Dome was occupied. The US consular personnel had been flown to the Yokota base near Tokyo, while the staff of the other consulates appeared to have gone to the mainland by bullet train or car. A small research institute and school for the handicapped east of the Dome had also been vacated. Nevertheless, most of the residents of the adjacent districts had been left behind. In the event of a natural disaster, the city authorities, the police, and the fire department knew how to go about evacuating residents. In this case, however, any evacuation would risk causing panic, and they didn’t have the facilities to transport and accommodate huge numbers of people.
Doihara had put his head down on the table and was fast asleep. The PM looked refreshed, having showered and shaved following an hour’s nap in another room. After a night of issuing orders, most of the ministers and bureau chiefs were now taking a brief rest in the rooms provided. For reasons of confidentiality the admin staff couldn’t be relieved; they had spread blankets over their knees and were dozing sitting upright. All this time, Yamagiwa had been completely ignored. Shigemitsu had told him to stay until the end of the meeting, but he couldn’t say whether the meeting was over or not. He’d dozed off several times in his large and comfortable leather-upholstered chair—and why not, he thought defiantly; after all, he had been relieved of his post. Now, as he drafted his letter of resignation, he kept one eye on a TV special about the Fukuoka occupation, but there hadn’t been any new developments since the release of the hostages in the Dome and the installation of the rebel army base camp, and the guest commentators seemed to have run out of ideas.
Yamagiwa basically agreed with what the experts on North Korean affairs were saying. One university professor insisted that there couldn’t be any such rebel faction within the People’s Army, and a Japan-based Korean journalist agreed that while it wasn’t impossible for an insurgent movement to emerge, it could never have become as organized as this. If the troops controlling part of Fukuoka weren’t a rebel army, therefore, shouldn’t they be disarmed—or even eliminated? Nevertheless, none of the experts had any idea how to get them to lay down their arms, or how to respond when no demands had been made. Neither did any of them have an answer when the anchor asked, “If they’re not a rebel army, then just what are they?”
The TV cameras were still showing the terrorists’ camp. Along one edge, ten portable toilets had been erected—not the tall, thin, fiberglass boxes you saw on construction sites, but simple canvas-covered structures. A hole they had been digging must have been for a septic tank, and two sewage disposal trucks with CITY OF FUKUOKA emblazoned on their sides were already lined up in the parking area. The camp had been set up in just one night, entirely by hand. The TV had shown several hundred soldiers putting up tents and digging holes in the dark, most of them young, and all working flat out. Not a single one was shirking or looking as though he didn’t know what to do.
As she watched the North Koreans at work, now and then wiping the sweat from their faces with the sleeves of their army fatigues or exchanging a joke and laughing, one female anchor on an independent TV station marveled: “They don’t look much like terrorists, I must say.” Yamagiwa couldn’t help agreeing. Whoever heard of a group of terrorists coming to a foreign country, brazenly erecting tents, and digging a septic tank, all with smiles on their faces and in full view of television cameras? Terrorists usually kept themselves out of sight. That’s how the commentators were still referring to them, however—as “the North Korean terrorists.” They probably didn’t know what else to call them.
The screen image switched from the camp to the studio, where the anchor reported that the mayor of Fukuoka, the prefectural governor, and the chief of the prefectural police had been summoned by the terrorists to a meeting. Shigemitsu had been informed of this only a few minutes earlier by the mayor of Fukuoka, but all the ministers had already been called back into the room, and the round table was once again buzzing with activity. Stowing his half-written letter of resignation away in his briefcase, Yamagiwa wondered if he’d ever be able to go home. Apparently, the North Koreans were now calling themselves the Koryo Expeditionary Force. Umezu’s pronunciation of “Koryo” was corrected by someone from the Foreign Ministry, at which Umezu, irritable from having his sleep interrupted, barked, “Who the hell cares?” There was some confusion over whether they should call them by this new name or keep referring to them as terrorists. Several of those present insisted that calling them the Koryo Expeditionary Force would amount to official recognition, while others maintained nevertheless that they couldn’t go on calling them terrorists for ever. Eventually it became clear that anchors and commentators on CNN, NBC, and the BBC, as well as TV stations in France, Germany, and China, had all started using the name Koryo Expeditionary Force, or KEF for short. For the moment, the PM said, the official Japanese line should be to refer to them as “the North Korean terrorist group calling itself the Koryo Expeditionary Force.” This was agreed to and adopted, which meant that TV stations and newspapers in Japan would be obliged to follow suit.
Hearing that the prefectural police chief had been summoned along with the mayor and the governor, Sadakata of the National Public Safety Commission, a man in his late seventies, spoke up for the first time. Apparently unable to get his head around the new designation, he kept referring to “this Koryo gang.” His proposal was to substitute his own subordinate, the Kyushu regional police bureau chief Okiyama, for the head of the prefectural police. Sending someone with close ties to central government would be a good way to get direct information, and this Koryo gang wouldn’t know the difference anyway, he said smugly.
No one was terribly impressed with the plan, but most agreed that the KEF was unlikely to know the difference. And all of them, including Kido, were exasperated with having to get information secondhand from the mayor’s office and the press. It was therefore decided to implement Sadakata’s proposal, and someone phoned the mayor and the governor to inform them. If they wanted inside information, wondered Yamagiwa, why didn’t the PM go to Fukuoka himself? He probably wasn’t the only one there thinking this, but nobody was about to say it. If Kido were to go, there was always the danger of him being taken hostage. There was no shortage of politicians ready to take his place, of course, but that wasn’t something you could say out loud.
Just after seven in the morning Kido, clean-shaven and wearing a fresh shirt and tie, appeared before the TV cameras in the Prime Minister’s office to announce the blockade of Fukuoka. “Fellow citizens, it is my painful duty today to ask for your cooperation and understanding during these trying times. As you will all have seen on television by now, Fukuoka Dome was occupied last night by a North Korean terrorist group calling itself the Koryo Expeditionary Force, and a further five hundred or so terrorists have since illegally landed in Fukuoka. This is an impermissible intrusion, showing absolute disregard for our country’s sovereignty and for international law. As the representative of Japan’s government, I have made a stern protest to North Korea—the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—and am quite determined that with the cooperation of our allies we shall bring this matter to an early conclusion. Unfortunately, we have further been informed that this North Korean terrorist group calling itself the Koryo Expeditionary Force may not have confined itself to Kyushu; it has been reported that some of its agents are now traveling in the guise of Japanese citizens to infiltrate other big cities, including Tokyo. In order to safeguard the lives and property of all our citizens, I have no choice but to temporarily suspend traffic to and from not only Fukuoka but all of Kyushu. This measure is being implemented under our Emergency Acts and, although temporary, will cause considerable hardship for the people of Fukuoka and Kyushu. However, we cannot allow the terrorists to encroach any further on our country, and so I must ask for your understanding and forbearance for a time. The government will make every effort to ensure that there is no shortage of medical supplies, food, fuel, and other necessities of daily life, so I ask you to please remain calm in spite of the trying circumstances. Anyone seeking to profit from this emergency by stockpiling or hoarding any of these necessary goods will be firmly dealt with.” Repeating his plea for people to remain calm and patient, Kido then bowed solemnly to the camera.
After the speech had been broadcast, Shigemitsu took questions from reporters in the Official Residence press room. The issue of greatest concern to the Japanese press was how long these restrictions would last. Shigemitsu insisted that they would only remain in force until the danger of the terrorists’ incursion into other areas had passed. With regard to mobilizing the SDF without the prior approval of the Diet, he insisted that in the case of an emergency it was permissible to get ex post facto approval. When a reporter from Kyodo News Service asked whether the use of this measure meant they were in effect abandoning Fukuoka and Kyushu, Shigemitsu raised his voice to say: “Absolutely not!” The Prime Minister himself was from Oita, and many other government officials were also from Kyushu, he stressed, his eyes brimming with tears.
The foreign press were less circumspect in their questions. One reporter from the Washington Post asked whether they were considering retaliation against North Korea. When Shigemitsu responded that at present they were not, the reporter pressed him to specify under what circumstances this would be considered. Shigemitsu avoided the question by asserting that it was classified information. A BBC reporter asked whether it would be an option for the SDF to attack the Koryo Expeditionary Force. “Given that some of the residents of Fukuoka are still being held hostage, I can’t answer that question,” replied Shigemitsu. All the reporters referred to the KEF by name, without any mention of the word “terrorists.”
What do you think the Koryo Expeditionary Force wants? How can you take countermeasures without knowing what the demands are? Have you requested backup from the US forces based in Japan? If not, why not? Have you started negotiating with the KEF? Who’s in charge of the negotiations? Is there any plan for the Prime Minister or Chief Cabinet Secretary to go to Fukuoka to talk to their commander? Are you in contact with the KEF? Do you intend to contact them? Shigemitsu evaded all these questions, saying only that he was unable to answer at this point in time. Asked when he would be able to answer, he replied that he didn’t know. The reporter from the Chinese Xinhua News Agency was particularly persistent. “Does Japan consider the Koryo Expeditionary Force an enemy that has to be eliminated?” Shigemitsu wiped his forehead and said, “We are gathering information to ascertain the true identity of the terrorists,” which didn’t really amount to an answer. If he declared them to be an enemy force, it would mean that they had to be driven out; yet as a sovereign nation, Japan could hardly regard a horde of armed illegals as anything but an enemy force. “Please understand that as long as the residents of Fukuoka are in effect being held hostage, I have to be discreet,” he said, bringing the press conference to an end.
In its wake, reports in the US, British, and Chinese media were critical of Japan. FOX TV featured a former CIA chief who suggested that Japan’s recent military build-up was behind this incident. “Anyone would agree that North Korea is a failed state,” he said, “but it’s a small one and therefore easy to control. However, once a major power begins to slip, it can become a real liability”—a blatant dig at Japan. The BBC rolled out an expert on international law who maintained that a blockade was, broadly speaking, an act of war, and a former Territorial Army general commented that instead of defending itself against what amounted to an invasion, the Japanese government was responding by sacrificing its own territory. A major Hong Kong network came out with the nonsensical view that if the KEF really was a North Korean rebel army faction, then it was difficult to say whether its occupation of Fukuoka constituted an act of aggression or of self-defense, citing the example of the former Imperial Japanese Army defying the will of their own headquarters and advancing into Manchuria on the noble-sounding pretext of saving Japan from Russia. Listening to all this made Yamagiwa bristle. Not that he felt any sympathy for Kido and Shigemitsu—it was good to see them with their backs against the wall. But he couldn’t bear to see Japan and its government criticized and sneered at by the media of other countries—and allies at that—in the midst of this crisis.
Within Japan, however, the blockade seemed to be accepted with relative calm. The TV was showing interviews with mayors, factory managers, store owners, and residents all over Kyushu, most of whom seemed resigned to the situation. When a doctor from the Kyushu Medical Center right next to the KEF camp was interviewed, everyone in the crisis-management room was watching. Dr. Kuroda Genji looked tired, and told the interviewer that he’d just returned home from the hospital. “The soldiers haven’t come into the hospital, and the examination and treatment of patients is proceeding normally. Sick patients can’t wait, so we’re just getting on with what has to be done. We doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff have been allowed to come and go as usual, and to return to our homes when off duty. Last night we saw a rise in the number of cases of stress-related bronchitis and asthma attacks. By the end of the night I really needed a break. The soldiers have set up checkpoints on all the roads out, but when I showed them my ID card I was let right through. They had a computer at the checkpoint, and they appear to have all our personal details on their database. All of us working at the hospital, as long as we show them some ID, can pass any time we want. That’s what I was told.”
