by Martin Booth
Twice in the week following the storms the timber yard was subjected to air-raid alerts. When the sirens were heard from the city ten miles away, or relayed by phone from a command centre of some sort, the hancho would rush into each of the buildings and blow three short blasts on a football referee’s whistle. This was a signal to switch off all the machinery and lighting and line up at the door in Indian file. At a command from the hancho the file would jog out of the building and over towards the stockpile of untouched tree trunks. In the centre of this a bunker of sorts had been constructed. It was really just a low log cabin affair, over which the raw trunks had been piled higgledy-piggledy until they were ready for the saws and planers. Although makeshift it seemed likely to provide ample protection from anything but a direct hit.
Once in the bunker, which had only the one entrance, the guards would squat by the door while the prisoners and their Japanese co-workers would sit cross-legged in rows. They were forbidden to speak. When the all-clear sounded, or the hancho was called to the telephone by the ringing of the exterior yard bell, they struggled out in lines and paraded in the yard for ten minutes’ physical jerks, conducted by the hancho, to shift the cramp of the air-raid shelter.
The first raid was a non-event. They could hear the high-altitude drone of bombers but not bombs dropping or any form of retaliatory ground-to-air fire. The second was not a raid as such but the timber yard was buzzed five or six times by a pair of fighters. They flew in low from the coast, the hum of their engines expanding to a crashing crescendo as they passed overhead at under five hundred feet. They banked towards the hills inland and returned. No gunfire occurred either from the cannons on the aircraft or the ground.
When they were gone, the prisoners chattered about the visitation.
‘Recce. They’ll invade near here. US Marine landing zone.’
‘Wasn’t a strafing run…’
‘Maybe this area’ll be a parachute-dropping zone. It’s flat. Got some cover.’
‘Chump! Got muddy fields as well. Fancy dropping into the clag?’
‘Sussing out the lie of land for likely targets.’
‘Looking for the camp, maybe. Liberation plans?’
Their ideas swerved from the possible military justifications of such a flight mission to the optimism of release.
* * *
‘Today’s 27 July.’
‘So what, Smudger?’
‘It’s me wedding anniversary.’
No one replied. A year before, someone might have offered to send him flowers or beg a peek at his sexy letters – of which he had received none – or rib him for remembering. Now they threw each other glum looks which took on an even sadder air from the guttering peanut-oil lamps.
To change the subject and draw Smudger off his misery, someone said, ‘What do you think that mission today was for? Not bombing again.’
‘I know what it was all about,’ commented one of the Americans. ‘We saw it in the docks. Leaflet raid. A B29 flew over at about twelve thou’ and dropped leaflets. I got one. Some drifted on to the quay. The Nips were fast as hell collecting them up so that we didn’t get to see, but I found one later blown under a crate. It’s in Nip.’
He rummaged between the cracks of his bunk, under the centre of his straw mat, and extracted a many-folded sheet of white paper.
Sandingham handed the leaflet to one of the Dutch officers who could read Japanese. The man studied it for a few minutes, holding it at an angle and close to the smokey flame.
‘What’s it say, Jan?’
‘It is from the American High Command,’ he explained. ‘It is quite long but what it says, in short, is that if Japan does not surrender then the Allied forces will destroy Hiroshima.’
Mishima, thought Sandingham, and bukimi. The idea was there. All that was to follow was the act itself.
‘What did the Japs in the docks think of this?’
‘Not a lot, sir,’ said one of the others who worked in the dockyards.
The senior British officer had entered the barrack in time to hear the translator’s interpretation. Now the dock-worker was speaking.
‘I only heard a few of the guards chattering and couldn’t understand much of their jabber. But the Jap who works the crane hoist on my jetty, who’s a decent sort of bloke – he let me know they were laughing at it. Scoffing at it. They don’t think it’s on, I suppose.’
On his bunk, Sandingham resolved to tell Mishima of the leaflets and, the next day, as soon as the opportunity arose, he did so.
‘I, too, have seen one of them,’ was the reply. ‘It scares me very much. I think there will be a big air raid on Hiroshima.’
He confirmed that many people took the threat the leaflets promised lightly.
‘There is one good thing,’ Mishima said later in the day. ‘My house is a long way from the centre of the city or the industrial sites where they will drop their bombs. My wife and I shall be safe or have time to run. The nearest place to bomb to my house is the railway station, and that is nearly a mile away.’
* * *
All day long at the timber yard Sandingham had had a sense of apprehension which he could not quite put into words.
The day had started cloudy but had cleared to become a warm and fine afternoon. By evening the rainy weather was a thing of the past but it left its legacy of air filtered clean of dust and summer heat. Driving back to the camp in the lorry, he had seen the countryside around bathed in a charm and beauty hitherto unseen or unacknowledged.
His uneasiness transferred itself to his friends.
‘What’s up, Joe? Feeling ill?’
‘No. Just odd.’
‘Gut-ache?’
‘No. Not exactly. Sort of emptiness. Sort of butterflies or stage-fright mixed with a little nausea.’
He stared at his arms and legs in the pure rays of the evening sun and studied the shadows that lingered under his taut skin. His joints were boney and his muscles, though not badly shrunken, showed very obviously the fact that he was starving. He looked at his comrades as if for the first time and knew that they too, were slowly dying of malnutrition. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the rear window of the driver’s cab. His cheekbones were becoming prominent and his eyes sunken with the mascara of hunger tingeing the lids and spaces under his lower lashes. His skin was pallid and the paleness was accentuated by the bare sunlight. Yet he was still, to his own astonishment when he gave it thought in the sleepless night hours, unscarred by any of the terrible diseases that wracked some of his colleagues.
‘Empty belly, empty mind,’ advised a fellow officer.
That night there were two air-raid warnings but the prisoners were left undisturbed in their barracks. Only four times in the previous three months had they been taken to the shelter constructed beside the main guardhouse, between it and the eiso. Even then the aircraft had flown on. The guards were certain that the bombers were either not interested in their area or else knew of the lettering on the roof and therefore avoided the place. The hassle of getting all the prisoners up, out to the shelter, through the inevitable tenko that would be necessary, and back into their huts was just not worth the effort.
Sandingham could not doze off. Each time the alert came he slipped softly through the sleeping, grunting, fidgeting sleepers to the shutter crack and peered out. The starlight was prominent but he could not see or even hear aircraft.
Eventually he was able to let his mind slip into an uneasy doze from which he kept waking himself by moving and itching.
* * *
At morning tenko, just after six o’clock, the prisoners were informed that the truck taking those who were employed in the timber yard to work would be an hour late. The five lorries transporting those who went to the Mitsubishi shipyards and the docks left on time at a quarter to seven.
At half-past seven, after the commandant had been informed of the all-clear having being given, Sandingham and the others boarded their truck and settled themselves into the back. There had been a
warning given just after seven, as the truck was arriving, and this had delayed their departure. The warning had apparently been a false alarm.
The tarpaulin cover had been removed from the framework several weeks before and, instead of the well-patched canvas awning, they now had a morning-blue summer sky over their heads.
The road to the timber yard was busier than usual, Sandingham thought. Cyclists and some motor vehicles came and went in both directions. Pedestrians were somehow more numerous, too. He wondered why, then realised that it was probably due to the fact that the air-raid warning had delayed some from leaving home and now they were seeking to catch up on their daily routines. What was more, he was usually in the timber yard by now and so was not familiar with the public activities of this time of the morning.
At a crossroads, the lorry stopped to allow a bullock cart to negotiate the junction. The animal was nervy and did not want to get too near to the vehicle. To allay its fear, the driver backed up the side lane and switched off the ignition.
There was a comparative silence punctuated only by the owner of the cart trying to cajole the bullock forward.
‘Hear it?’ Toni asked.
Toni Ardizzoni was from New York. Little Italy. Corner of Greene and Spring, where his father had a delicatessen, of which Toni was inordinately proud: he hoped to inherit it, or at least manage it, after the war. Toni had been responsible for making the shop’s fresh tortellini. He had also flown B29s as a navigator.
‘What?’ Sandingham could hear nothing in the aftermath of the chuddering of the motor.
‘Another aircraft.’
They all looked up. Even one of the guards gave a quick turn of his head towards the sky.
‘Can’t see anything.’
The bullock was padding the ground, its hooves kicking the dirt about with fear and frustration.
‘I can. Left of the small cloud. It’s a plane. No – it’s two, I think.’
‘Got it.’
‘What is it, Toni?’
‘That high, it’s gotta be one o’ my babies. Movin’ slow, too.’
As he spoke, they saw the dot alter course. Another dot and possibly a third followed it on a parallel change of direction.
‘They’re veering off. Weather planes?’
‘Mebbe.’
The bullock was smacked on its rump with a bamboo cane. It took some tentative steps forward. The cart lurched behind it and the driver waved his hand to urge the animal on. It jittered and tried to skip in its shafts. A wicker basket containing two emaciated cockerels fell off the rear of the cart and rolled in the dust, the occupants squawking with annoyance. Once over the crossroads, the carter waved his thanks to the driver who returned the gesture.
Reaching to the ignition key, he was about to twist it when it happened.
There was a sharp flash on the horizon. It was a blue colour, like an electric spark of magnificent proportions. A few seconds later there was a warmth in the air like a summer breeze but not blowing, not moving at all.
No one said anything.
It was followed by a cloud bellying outwards and upwards over the distant city. There was a silence lowered upon them. Sandingham became acutely aware that there were no birds singing or insects chirruping. The bullock, he saw, was standing as still and firm as a statue. It was as if someone had stopped the projector running the film of life on to the screen of the world – just for a few frames. There was then a rumble that quickly swelled to a thunderous bang.
The film recommenced. The bullock jerked into action. The birds sung again.
The driver started up the lorry and crashed the gears. The guards were shouting to him, gesticulating wildly through the rear window of the cab and through the doors. He did not reverse and drive back towards the camp but on towards the timber yard, the horn blaring to clear the way through the cyclists and walkers.
The gates to the yard were open, swinging wide on the hinges. The driver slewed the truck through them and skidded to a halt. The guards bullied and chivvied the prisoners off the rear bed of the truck and herded them into the woodpile bunker. With them all in there, they pulled the door to and wedged it firmly shut with a heavy log. The prisoners heard the truck drive off. Still nobody spoke. They could hear nothing from outside.
‘They’ve gone. Buggered off,’ someone said incredulously.
‘Let’s get the door down.’
They shoved and heaved but the log held firm in the earth.
‘Roof. Have a go at the roof.’
The bunker was not well constructed, depending for its security upon the weight of timber on and around it. It was, furthermore, never intended to be a prison. Without too much difficulty they managed to ease aside some of the logs and Sandingham, being thinner than most, was hoisted up and started to weave his way through the mesh of trunks resting on the bunker. In ten minutes he was out.
Gathering his breath, he shouted down through the wood pile, ‘I made it. I’ll get the door.’
It was then that he looked up.
Over the city was a cloud, thousands of feet hight, as it seemed to him. It was shaped like an umbrella toadstool. It was black and deep purple and grey all at once. At its base was a thick layer of smoke, turning in and in and in upon itself like dough being kneaded.
‘Christ!’ he muttered involuntarily.
The log was no problem. He tugged it aside and all the prisoners crawled or crouched out into the sunlight.
‘Look at that!’
They gathered in the yard and gazed up at the cloud. Even now it was growing taller as they watched.
‘That was some kinda raid!’ exclaimed Toni.
He studied the face of his scratched and battered watch in a perplexed manner.
‘What’s up, Yank?’
‘I don’ get it. It’s only twenty to nine.’
‘So?’
‘You see a raid like that come together in under twenty minutes…?’
They scattered about the timber yard, searching for the workers or the guards. There was no one there, not even the hancho. There were no weapons, either. In the office, they found some clothes and shared them out.
Sandingham was excited and afraid and exhilarated. It was like being a child let loose in an adult world from which all the adults and their constraints had been miraculously, irrevocably removed. Yet he was simultaneously terribly afraid for Mishima.
The two dozen or so of them met in front of the office.
‘What the hell do we do now?’ puzzled ‘Harris’ Tweed, confused by the possibility of freedom.
‘Get back to camp or stay here. One or the other. What we can’t do is piss off as we like.’
‘Why the hell not?’ asked Mick Harwood in his Liverpudlian accent.
‘You heard His Majesty the Nip Emperor free you? You see US Marines chargin’ over th’ hill? Ain’t no cavalry in this man’s war. For Chrissake, think, you guys!’
‘Toni’s right. If we run loose, we’ll be judged escapers and shot by the Kempetai. If we get seen at large in the countryside we’ll be done for. If that is a flattening of Hiroshima by a raid, and the Japs want scapegoats to punish, we’ll be the best they could have.’
They sat in hasty council and took a quick show of hands. The majority was for getting back to the camp where there would be guards to protect them against the local population. The calculated risk of making their way through the farmland was accepted as inevitable. It was deemed better than remaining in the timber yard for a lynch-mob.
‘How far is it back?’
‘I reckon it’s five, six – mebbe seven miles.’
‘If we go on the road…’
One person ran to the gate and cast his eyes up and down the road. There were few people in sight.
‘Not many about now.’
‘Where they all gone?’
‘See here. I reckon we could cut across country. The camp is over there…’ The prisoner from the gate returned and pointed with a six-inch nail he had pi
cked up as the only weapon he could find. ‘… And if we marched as fast as hell we could do it in less than two hours. There’s no steep hills or anything.’
To assist with their journey, they put on all the Japanese clothing they could find in the office. As they dressed, Sandingham realised that the clothes were the property of the Japanese workers. It confirmed that they had been there that morning, but had left in a hurry before the prisoners’ arrival.
He lifted Mishima’s jacket off its hook. As he did so, through a window, he caught a glimpse of a bicycle haphazardly leaning on a wall.
In one pocket of Mishima’s jacket, he found some currency notes, some coins and a small rice cake wrapped in a cotton napkin. In the other was a small wallet-like folder. Inside were identity papers of some sort, two letters and a photo – it was of the three of them: Mishima, Noriko and their son, Katsuo.
Pushing his arms through the sleeves, he pulled on the jacket. It was a good fit, although it would not have been had he not lost so much weight. The sleeves were much too short. To disguise his head, he put on one of the peaked caps that were regulation issue to workers and soldiers alike.
The others had assembled in the yard.
‘Are we ready? We don’t go as a column. That’d be too obvious. Split into two and threes. But walk in sight of another group. If you get stopped, keep going. If you see one group being done over, join forces. Okay? Let’s go!’
In their worry, no one noticed Sandingham holding back.
When they had gone, he ran behind the office to where he had seen the bicycle. He mounted it and pedalled out of the gateway. In the distance, on his left, he could see the groups making their way along the road; the leading pair were striking off along the banks between the rice fields. To the right, ahead of him as he shifted his weight and turned the handlebars, was Hiroshima. Above it the cloud now looked less like a toadstool and more like a tall-bodied oak tree with a fearsome, awful canopy thousands of feet high.
* * *
The bicycle was old and heavy and his legs were not strong enough to propel it forward at any speed. At first he had wobbled: it was six years since he had last ridden a bike. This one was plainly a poor man’s model, for it lacked gearing and there was a metal-framed shelf behind the saddle for the carriage of packages and boxes.
