Day of the Bomb

by Steve Stroble

  Once ashore, he met his driver and they drove from the harbor toward what was left of Nagasaki. At first, the ensign studied the occupation force of marines and army sent to ensure order while politicians and diplomats sorted out the details that accompany surrenders and treaties. But when he came within viewing distance of the epicenter of where the atomic bomb had exploded he started to wonder what the scientists back home had released.

  “Sort of spooky, huh?” His army driver asked. “I got the same look on my face you have the first time I saw all the damage. But you get used to it.”

  The jeep could only penetrate the fringes of the destruction because too much rubble – chunks of concrete, splintered wood, and fused pieces of matter – still blocked many of the roads. So Ensign Rhinehardt asked the driver to park the jeep. He explored the remains of the city on foot while the driver stayed with the jeep and smoked cigarettes. By the time the ensign returned, a cluster of children had surrounded the jeep and driver. They begged shamelessly.

  “Hey, GI, you got chocolate?”

  “No, kid.”

  “Candy?”

  “No.”

  “Gum?”

  “Beat it.”

  “Cigarette?”

  The flustered corporal flipped his half-finished stick of tobacco at the children’s feet. They pounced on it and each other. The oldest, a girl, emerged from the pile-on smoking it. She blew a smoke ring at her benefactor.

  “You nice GI. You come meet sister. You like.” She shook her hips, which made those around her point and giggle.

  The driver hopped into the jeep and started it. “What are you going to do with people like that? They’re hopeless. I write home and tell my folks and girl but they don’t understand. Where to now, sir?”

  His passenger stared at him blankly.

  “How about the hospital where they treat the survivors?”

  “Okay.”

  At the hospital the driver went through half a pack of Lucky Strikes before his charge finally emerged from the building. “I was getting ready to send out a search party for…” He stopped joking as the ensign vomited on the jeep’s front right tire and fender. The driver helped him into the passenger’s seat. “Sorry sir, I…”

  “That’s okay. You have anything to drink?”

  “Yes, sir.” He tossed equipment around until he found a canteen behind the driver’s seat. “It might give you the runs because you’re not used to the water around here yet. But it’s all there is.” He handed the metal container to him.

  After rinsing out his mouth, he drank slowly from the canteen as the jeep lurched into gear. “Any place else left to see?”

  The driver backed up his jeep. “Yeah. Smitty’s lab.”

  “Lab? Is he a scientist?”

  “No, sir. He’s just a jarhead photographer, but a really good one. I drove him around when he took photos of the city shortly after the bomb was dropped. He runs a photo lab.”

  Smitty was out on an assignment but his clerk proved helpful. “You’re in luck, ensign. Smitty’s the best photographer in all of the Marine Corps. You’ll see.” He handed him an eight-inch thick stack of photos. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a job with some big city newspaper or one of those weekly magazines when he gets out.”

  The jeep driver smoked his remaining cigarettes while he waited. When his passenger rejoined him there was no new vomit or apology for soiling his vehicle, only appreciation.

  “Thank you, corporal.” He held onto the windshield with his right hand to brace himself against the jolts as the jeep’s tires hit potholes and debris.

  “For what, sir?”

  “For helping me understand what really happened here last month.”

  “Just trying to do my job, sir.”

  His passenger turned toward him. The ensign’s smile was gone, along with a piece of his easy-going disposition. “Have you seen those pictures?” He jerked his thumb behind his shoulder toward the photo lab.

  “Sir, I was there when he took them. I really don’t want to look again.” He threw the remnant of his last cigarette onto the street. “You got a cigarette I can bum off of you, sir? I’m all out.”

  “Sure.” He handed him an unopened pack that he had planned to trade on the black market. “Keep them.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Tell me something. Those photos of the bodies that looked like burnt up marshmallows, were there many bodies like that?”

  “Only close in where the bomb hit, sir. They were the lucky ones. You got to see the unlucky ones back there at the hospital. So far, they’ve taken hours, days, or weeks to die. God only knows how long it’ll take the ones you saw in there to die. Who knows? Maybe months. Maybe even years. I try not to think about it.”

  Chapter 6

  “Ah, comrade Yankhov, come in. Sit down.”

  “Thank you, comrade.”

  Major Tsavich lit a cigarette and sat behind his desk, which he used more as a pulpit than to do the piles of paperwork that were stacked high atop it. “Want one?” He reached across the desk so that three of the cigarettes protruded from their package.

  “No thank you, comrade.”

  Major Tsavich studied his subject. Although she was a civilian, in his eyes that meant any such were even more under his control. Soldiers he simply ordered executed; civilians, well, they could be made to talk through “physical means of persuasion” that lasted for days if it was administered to his satisfaction and specifications. “It’s a shame, comrade.”

  “What?”

  “That you are just a scientist instead of a soldier.”

  “I can’t help it. I was rejected from serving for the Motherland during the war.”

  “No matter. You serve Russia best as a scientist. That is why you are being transferred to work on the same kind of weapon that the Americans used to destroy Japan.”

  “What?”

  “I need not remind you that your work is top secret. You can talk about it to no one other than your fellow scientists whom you will be meeting three weeks from now.”

  “But where…”

  “That too, is secret. You will be told after you spend some time in Moscow getting acquainted with them. You will travel to your assignment together. In the meantime, I suggest you return home for a visit. It may be some time before you can visit there again.” He motioned that the meeting was ended as he picked up his phone.

  Return home? To what? First Comrade Stalin starves millions from my homeland to death. That killed off momma. Then he purges the officers’ ranks of the army. That killed off cousin Alexi and Uncle Boris. Next he had his secret police shoot civilians, millions of them. I bet he only ordered that stopped because the army was running out of bullets and Hitler was making Uncle Joe sweat bullets of his own. So what does Comrade Stalin do? Sign a pact with the Fuhrer, just like that fool Englishman Chamberlain did. Let’s see, who else died as a result of the war that Stalin promised us would never happen because of his wonderful diplomacy with the Nazis? Brothers Joseph and Yuri. Wasn’t it enough to have Momma and Poppa name Joseph after you, Comrade Stalin? How nice of you to allow me to return home for a visit before I spend years helping to build our version of the atomic bomb, most of which will come from whatever we can steal from the Allies. I’ll give you this much, Uncle Joe; you have the best spy network in the world. Hitler and his Gestapo and SS were a bunch of pikers by comparison.

  The major’s secretary disturbed Yankhov’s thoughts. “Comrade Yankhov, here is your ticket. Your train leaves at 8:30 tonight. Have a nice trip.” She lowered her voice as she handed over the ticket. “I’ve enjoyed working with you.”

  Arkhip Yankhov nodded. “Your assistance has been most appreciated, comrade.” Arkhip wanted to hug the secretary but feared doing so. Oh, nothing would happen to Arkhip. She was too valuable a scientist. But secretaries are worth a ruble a dozen. Someone no doubt would see the display of affection and report it to the major.

  He would put
two and two together and conclude that at least two under his authority had greater loyalty to each other than they did toward Father Stalin and Mother Russia. Then his thought processes would begin to turn just as they did in the millions of party members who ran the USSR, each of them a miniature Stalin: Traitors who had hugged one another! But how great was their treachery? If Stalin had ordered the assassination of Trotsky while he was in exile in Mexico, then no enemy of the state can be allowed to remain free. Ferreting out traitors took the skill of the NKVD. Let them purge the less than loyal workers of our marvelous Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Now that the war is over surely there are enough bullets to spare for use on our own people once again. Such a shame! Why would anyone question our great all-knowing leader as Marx’s vision of a world ruled by communism comes to fruition? Just look at how much our influence has spread now that WW II has ended. Oh, it was touch and go there toward the end. That crazy General George Patton wanted to battle us after he took care of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, SS, and all those dumb countries allied with him and his doomed from the beginning Third Reich. But as usual, our fourth column saved the day for us, the useful idiots scattered throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia who act as apologists for communism. Now there are our real comrades, toiling day by day in the newspapers, magazines, and on radio, at the universities and colleges, and every level of government, marching ever forward to deliver their countries over to us as well. Take your time dear useful idiots, it’s no hurry. We have our hands full. How do we love the Allies? Let us count the ways. They gave us half of Germany, and all of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia…the list goes on. How fortunate that we cut the deal for them while FDR was still alive. That gruff-looking Truman might not have been so generous. Wasn’t he so very willing to use the atomic bomb on civilians? That’s enough to scare us to ramp up our research for our own arsenal of atomic weapons. It was Kant and Nietzsche and all those wonderful German theologians telling the unwashed masses that “God is dead” over and over until they finally believed it. Now if Hitler had just been content to make the Fatherland Germany’s God, he could have won, or at least still be fighting on instead of just a pile of burned bones after his followers burned him outside the bunker. But what does the Dumkopf do instead? He revives the paganism of Germany from long ago. Maybe he liked what Jung says about people being inherently religious – that you can take the people out of the religion but not the religion out of the people? Maybe Herr Hitler thought that if his pagan ancestors could defeat the Romans he could do the same by having his hordes of Huns swear allegiance to him instead of the Fatherland? Religion? The opiate of the masses as Brother Marx put it. Why is it that almost thirty years after our glorious revolution to overthrow the Czar that some still cling to their God and their Bible? Oh, well. Czar Nicholas’ wife had Rasputin the mad monk so is it any wonder that some still cling to Jesus Christ instead of our centralized socialist state that dictates every part of daily life and death? Who knows? Perhaps a stay in Siberia will bring such fools to their senses.

  Arkhip caught her train promptly at 8:30 that evening. She knew better than to tarry. The major probably had ordered at least one man to watch and see whether she did. Perhaps another would follow her home to make sure she did not disembark the train before her prescribed destination. Then a third would monitor her visit just to ensure where her loyalties truly lay. Can’t be too safe these days. The word is that Uncle Joe, Comrade Stalin, has taken to sleeping in a different room at the Kremlin each night. Is that what happens when you rule as emperor for too long over a kingdom of your own making? Do you just become one of Shakespeare’s sorry characters, perhaps Hamlet, Macbeth, or Julius Caesar? Truth is stranger than fiction. Look at Mussolini, hung upside down like an Italian sausage along with his mistress by his own people after they shot them full of holes. What ungrateful, unloyal citizens they proved to be. At least Il Duce made the trains runs on time or so they claim.

 

  More of a time of closure than vacation, Arkhip’s days spent at home passed too quickly for her, “just a slight parole from my life sentence in Uncle Joe’s vast prison system” she said to her father when she was certain no one could eavesdrop. Poor Father. Ever since Mother’s death he had begun a long, slow slide toward his own departure from this life for the next. Yes, he still clung to the God of his youth, though secretly of course. But now that his brothers and sons had been swallowed up along with the other tens of millions whom WW II had taken forever from Russia he seemed not to care what happened to him.

  Arkhip extracted a last oath from him the night before she left for Moscow. “Promise me that you won’t say or do something just so you can be a martyr.” She cried when he nodded and gently said he loved her but loved Jesus Christ even more.

  Chapter 7

  Life had at last reverted into a routine for Jason at his new home on Monkey Island. The first two weeks had been spent settling in by building shelter and a small reservoir for rain water and cannibalizing the PT boat for usable materials. With no belongings other than his life jacket, waterlogged wallet, dog tags, and uniform to take care of, his life had become simpler but more complex as well.

  He placed the jacket on a wire suspended between two trees to protect it from the rats, which loved to gnaw on any object that could be carried away in bits to feather their nests. Whenever Jason looked at the vest that had kept him afloat for two days, he thought of the Professor because he was the one who had convinced him to wear it at all times: “You see, Jason, when a ship goes down there might not be enough time to put your life jacket on and still make it off of the boat in time. Let’s say some torpedo hits us at night. You’re asleep in your rack. By the time you wake up, put on your vest, and head for deck, the ship has begun to list. You’re fighting a hundred other guys to go through hatches and upstairs so some of you won’t make it and go down with the ship. But if you wear it while you’re sleeping, you’re one of the very first ones up on deck. You jump overboard and have enough time to swim away from the ship before it blows up or sucks you under the water as it goes down. Captain Uley told me all about the time his carrier sank.” Jason kept it nearby in case the kind of typhoon that could make an entire island disappear came his way. He figured Monkey Island was as risk of that because it was the smallest island he had ever seen in his years of traveling the South Pacific.

  He was now grateful for earlier contacts with native Polynesians on other islands where he had gone ashore from his troop transport after they had been taken from the Japanese. One had shown him the many uses of breadfruit, including using it as caulking on boats. Remembering the Professor’s admonition of “you’re dead meat without fresh water,” Jason had dug a shallow pit next to his lodging constructed of plywood from the PT boat and covered with palm branches sent to the ground during storms. His shelter was a lean-to propped up next to the trunk of largest tree on the island. He lined the pit with stones and filled the spaces between them with breadfruit caulking.

  Whenever it rained, the pit collected enough water to usually last until the next rainfall. During dry spells, Jason drank water from coconuts. They and breadfruit quickly became the staples for his meals. After his diet proved too monotonous, Jason used another technique gleaned from a Polynesian. He dug pits along the nearby beach, lined them with rocks, caulked the spaces with his homemade goop, and waited for high tides. They delivered an assortment of fish. Because Rule Number 1 was to have no fire that might draw the attention of a passing ship or plane or native in an outrigger canoe, Jason cleaned the fish and cooked them on coral that absorbed and reflected solar heat. His days passed without incident. But the nights were altogether different.

  Until now, Jason’s life had consisted of the next landing. Forget all the previous ones. Only the next one mattered in the grand design of things because it might be your last if you were not careful. Now isolated with no invasion of Japan on his schedule to burden him, Jason found his repressed memories ca
me to life nightly in his dreams.

  The dreams were usually a variation on a theme: Up before dawn. Check your gear. Receive your ammo and K-rations. Clutch your M-1 and pile into the Higgins Boats or whatever landing craft the Navy had at hand. Listen to the final shells fly overhead as the battleships and cruisers rained down hell from heaven above on the Jap fortifications and pray that every last one of those explosive projectiles were direct hits because if they were not, there was always hell to pay once you hit the beach. Damn Japs. Sometimes they had guns or mortars that could put shells on you before you even made it to shore.

  Worst-case scenario for that was the landing craft sinking and most of us drowning because our packs, boots, and uniforms were never meant for swimming to shore. Best-case scenario? The shell hits the landing craft and its shrapnel tears into one, two, who knows how many guys. Some die instantly. Others bleed out slowly even though the medics scramble to save them. The lucky ones get that magical “million-dollar wound” that is just serious enough to buy you a one-way ticket home. Oh, maybe it means going home minus a hand, foot, arm, leg, or part or your insides but at least you get to spend some time there instead of ending up buried on one of the worthless islands that the Japs are so desperate to die for and that we are willing to do the same.

  So the scenes of yesterdays’ battles played out nightly for Jason during his first three months on Monkey Island. Then they were magically replaced with memories of home – dreams of Mom, Pop, two sisters and three bothers. Wait a minute, what are you doing still alive, John. You’re no longer with us remember? He had bought it as a waist gunner on a B-17 flying to deliver greetings to Herr Hitler and the boys in Berlin. The “Boxcar Express,” that was what John had called it. “Those Messerschmidts come at us from every angle but we give ‘em the gun. Truth is, the ack-ack from those monster German guns thousands of feet below us scare me worse than the enemy fighters.”