Mr Two Bomb

by William Coles

  “Admit what?” I grinned.

  “Admit that you were right. This man may be a Yankee – but he also is a victim of the bomb. He needs our help.”

  “Very well put,” I said – and only a fool would have said anymore.

  So for two minutes we worked on in contented silence, as the girl quietly digested the fact that she no longer loathed the Yankees.

  A shadow fell across my arm. I turned round to see an assistant police inspector standing over me, his clothes in tatters. Somewhere along the way, he had acquired an army pistol, which was slung at his leg in a khaki holster. Behind him stood another uniformed officer, while milling round the gates was a cluster of about 30 civilians.

  “Who’s in charge here?”

  I passed the forceps to the girl and stood up. “Dr Kinoshita is in charge. But he’s been up all night and is asleep.”

  “Wake him up.”

  “Perhaps I can help,” I said. “What is it you want?”

  “We have been authorised to open a first-aid hospital.” The man seemed to stand a little taller as he spoke, as if aware of the weight of responsibility on his shoulders.

  “You have come to the right place then,” I laughed.

  “I do not think your humour appropriate.”

  “Perhaps so. What would you like to do?”

  The policeman looked all about him at the clusters of victims sprawled around the grounds. “Why aren’t they inside? Why have you left them out here?”

  I spoke to the man as I might speak to a slow child. “Where there is space, we have put the victims into the gymnasium and the storerooms. The hospital was gutted by fire and is not yet fit for human habitation. But if you and your men might care to clear it out... that would be most helpful.”

  “My men must first be fed,” he said. “Where is your food?”

  I bridled at that. “You have a very abrasive manner.”

  “This is a national emergency,” the police officer said, and as he spoke the second officer sidled up beside him. He was much younger, barely out of his teens, and his fingers trailed over a wispy moustache. “How can you expect my men to work without food?”

  “Do we now we ignore all the common courtesies?”

  “I have the personal authority of the emergency committee of Nagasaki,” he said primly.

  What was the point? Why was I wasting my energy on this man, who was no better and no worse than all the other excrescences that had crawled out of the war? I no longer even knew if it was the man’s request I was objecting to, or his uniform and his curt manner. And anyway, who was I to say that these 30 hungry civilians couldn’t be fed?

  “Very well,” I said, as I retrieved the forceps from the girl. “Our kitchens are in a semi-basement beneath the hospital. There should be a cauldron of rice there. With luck, there should be some left for you.”

  The man gave a curt nod, before adding, “That is as it should be – and in future, do not waste my time. I’m here with the full authority of the emergency committee.”

  “So you mentioned,” I grunted, stooping down to once again apply myself to the maggots.

  I spent the rest of the morning with the sick. To some, this was a most unrewarding task. But I was different. It gave me joy just to salve a patient’s wounds or to bathe a festering body, for there was not a moment that I did not appreciate the blessing that had been conferred on me.

  The party of civilians had sated themselves on our rice and had begun to clear the lower two storeys of the hospital. The floors were structurally sound, as they were made of solid concrete that was half a metre thick, but, inside, it was as if the hospital had been shaken like a giant rattle. Everything, from furniture to solid steel machines, had been smashed beyond repair, and the blaze had been so hot that much of the glass had melted. The walls and ceilings were charred black and still stank of smoke. Although the windows had been blown out, the hospital did provide some small shelter, so was a marginal improvement on living rough outside.

  I did not really notice what the men were doing. From the periphery of my eye, I would catch them carrying bits of burnt furniture which were tossed on a pile outside the hospital gates. For the larger bits of machinery, it would sometimes take three or four people to manhandle them out of the hospital. When the two floors were relatively clear, they swept up the worst of the glass. Hundreds and hundreds of medicine bottles must have been shattered in the fire, and all the floors were carpeted with sharp, sticky shards.

  I suppose it was a useful enough job. It had to be done, and they had done it; though the assistant police inspector might have been a little more gracious.

  It was a few minutes before noon, and I remember the moment well because it was the first time that I had begun to comprehend the full ramifications of radiation sickness. We all knew we had been punished by a quite different type of bomb. But it took me nearly a week to appreciate the symptoms of this disease.

  I was treating a woman who, on the surface, appeared to have suffered only the most superficial wounds. Her leg had been a little burned and when I had first treated her a few days earlier, I had thought she was going to be walking out of the hospital that afternoon. But her condition had deteriorated markedly over the past three days. She was always tired, her gums had started to bleed and her frazzled hair was falling out. She had not yet developed the purplish spots on the skin which would mean that her condition had become terminal. But she seemed to be dying before my eyes. I remember this feeling of helpless impotence. I had no idea what ailed her, nor how to make her better.

  From one of the outhouses, I heard the sound of raised voices – and recognised at least one of them. I jogged over, wincing as I caught my injured arm on the hem of my trousers. How filthy those trousers were. I had been given a crumpled shirt to wear, but my trousers were still the same ones I had been wearing when I had been blown up by Little Boy.

  The noise, the row, was emanating from the small shed that housed the hospital’s only water-well. I could already imagine what had happened.

  In the shed, stood about the well, Dr Kinoshita was in a stand-off with the two assistant police inspectors. By the wall were four of the civilians’ troupe, who’d just drawn off a bucket of water. The first police officer, the one who had already berated me, was pointing his finger at the doctor.

  I tried to capture that calm poise that I had experienced a few days’ earlier from the quartermaster. “What’s happening?” I asked.

  There must have been something about my look as I stood there in the doorway, for although Dr Kinoshita was greatly my senior, he now deferred to me. “These men... ” he said, before trailing off. He had been working so hard that he was on the verge of total exhaustion. “These men have finished their work at the hospital and are now helping themselves to the last of our water. And I... ” The poor man shook his head mournfully as he stared at the ground. “I have suggested that they have their fill of the spring-water outside the hospital.”

  “Well you heard the man,” I said to the two officers.

  I will try to describe the exact feeling that tingled through my bones at that moment. It was this awesome sense of confidence, such as I have never experienced, as I finally knew I was fighting for a just cause. “Get out of here and take your men with you.”

  “I will not be spoken to like that,” snapped the police officer.

  “Let me say it another way then,” I replied. “Would you be so kind as to gather your men and leave the hospital?” But the feeling was just intoxicating. Finally I was taking them on – and it had been a long time coming. After four years, no, a lifetime, of being a supine crawler, I was telling these stuffed shirts where to go. They were an abomination, as vile and disgusting as those fat white maggots, that had somehow been allowed to thrive and prosper during the four years of the war.

  “We will do no such thing,” said the officer, and for the first time I saw his fingers stray to the army service pistol at his hip. “I am here by the au
thority of the emergency committee and my men must have water before they leave.”

  I nodded and I was even smiling at the man, I was so confident. “Perhaps Dr Kinoshita has not explained. This is the only well that we have. There is very little water left and when this runs out, then there will be nothing left for our patients.”

  I sauntered past the officer and stood by the side of the well.

  “This is a time of national emergency,” the man replied. I could see the beads of sweat trickling down his cheek. “The army and the militia must come before the injured. We all have to make sacrifices.”

  I laughed, genuinely laughed at that. “Why are you talking about the army? Have you not read any of these leaflets that the Yankees have dropped? The war is over! Our army is finished.”

  “That talk is treasonous!” The officer snatched at my arm to drag me away from the well.

  I had been enjoying myself up until then, but when he caught my injured arm, a flash of pain lanced through my body. He had tapped into a vast vat of rage that had been simmering since the start of the war.

  “Get off me!” I backhanded him hard across the cheek with my other hand. “Get away from me and get out of here, you shits, you scum!”

  The officer, trembling, tugged at the gun at his hip. “You have struck a police officer!” he said, fingers working at the leather. “You have struck a police officer who was carrying out his authorised duty! You will leave this room. You are under arrest.”

  “Get out!” I replied. “I’m sick of the sight of you.”

  The officer, working at the buckle with both hands, had finally drawn his gun and levelled it right between my eyes. The shaking muzzle was only a metre from my face.

  “I am not moving,” I said. I was making my stand. I was going no further. It might have been over such a trifling matter as the hospital’s water, but, just as the quartermaster had urged, I was doing what I knew to be right.

  “I am going to count to three,” he said, voice squeaking with nerves. “Then I will shoot.”

  “Go to the devil – and take your committee authorisation with you.”

  Dr Kinoshita had been watching aghast. “Let them have the water!” he said. “Give him the water! It does not matter!”

  “Of course it does not matter!” I replied. “But for how much longer are we going to be pushed round by these uniformed dogs. They know nothing! All they have done is brought this country to its knees!”

  The police officer, shaking all over, had brought up his other hand to steady the pistol. I doubt that he had ever pulled a trigger in anger. “I am counting,” he said. “One!”

  And what was I thinking? Was I terrified at having that maniac point a gun at me? Did I only have a few more seconds to live before he fired a bullet through my brains?

  I was certainly not frightened of dying. I had seen so much death, so much carnage, over the previous ten days, that I was past caring. At least it would be quick – which was more than could be said for most of the deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  Dr Kinoshita was pleading with me now. “I beg you,” he said. “Let them have the water.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Kinoshita, for everything. You have given me so much.”

  The police officer looked as if he was about to be sick. “Two!” he shrieked.

  As I stood there waiting to meet my end, I was in a rather casual pose, one hand in my pocket, my injured arm hanging limp by my side. I was almost side on to the police officer, and gazing out of the doorway. I could just make out a funeral pyre burning briskly by the gates.

  And a thought enters my head – perhaps the last thought of my life: in a few minutes, it will be my lifeless corpse being tossed onto the pyre.

  “I mean it!” says the officer. “I really mean it!”

  Did he mean it? Surely if he had really meant it, he would have already pulled the trigger? But to that question I will never know the answer – because at that very moment the girl flashes through the door.

  “The Emperor!” she screams. “It is the Emperor!”

  Yes, it was the Emperor, in person – come all the way from Tokyo to save my life.

  The girl was carrying a radio, turned up loud. It took a moment to understand what we were listening to. The voice was high and rather weak; none of us had ever heard it before. It was high noon on 15th August and the first time in history that the Emperor had ever been heard by the nation.

  The police officer’s face sagged, his mouth drooping open, as the full import of the Emperor’s words sank in. It was not at all clear what he was talking about. The actual words were so opaque as to be almost meaningless. But gradually we came to understand what he was saying. We were going to have to bear the unbearable. We had surrendered.

  I listened to the Emperor’s words with a growing sense of elation. “Despite the best that has been done by everyone – the gallant fighting of military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the State, and the devoted service of our one hundred million people – the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage,” the Emperor said with sublime understatement, before continuing, “Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.”

  The police inspector’s gun-arm dropped to his side, as if his very muscles had been sapped of their strength. The rest of them in that little outhouse were all in shock, not knowing what to do any more. It was like a decapitation. For the past four years, our nation’s sole focus had been on the war – and now that we had surrendered, no-one had any idea what to do next. Two of the civilians were so benumbed they had sunk to their knees.

  There was a slight hiccup, almost a stutter, before the Emperor went on: “We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.”

  The speech was at an end, and all that could be heard over the radio was the empty hiss of the airwaves.

  “Is that it?” asked the girl. “Is the war over?”

  I was about to take a step towards her, when in one fell movement the police officer brought the gun up to the side of his head and pointed the muzzle at his temple.

  Tears were streaming down his face. “I give my life for the Motherland!” he said, eyes clenched tight shut, steeling himself to pull the trigger.

  “Have you learned nothing?” I screamed, leaping forward to smack the gun out of his hands. The explosion was deafening as the bullet caromed into the side of the well.

  The gun tumbled to the ground. I stooped to pick it up. The officer was lying on the floor, weeping into his hands as he was reduced to the schoolboy that he had always been.

  I walked to the door. “The war is finished,” I said to the cowering men. “We have had enough. Japan has had enough.” And with that, I scooped the girl up into my arms and kissed her on both cheeks. I was so happy that I was crying, crying not because of the ignominy of surrender, but for the sheer delirious pleasure of being alive.

  I put her down and we danced out into the sunshine and onto the grass, brimful with the most intoxicating euphoria.

  “No more war,” the girl said, smiling up at me as she clung onto my good arm. “Perhaps you will have time to make me a kite?”

  I enfolded her into my arms. “It would be a great pleasure.” The enormity of what had occurred was beginning to sink in as I let out a primal howl of delight. “It’s over!”

  It was indeed; our war was over – and my education with it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  There were still two cities, of course, for whom the war had only just begun: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For many of the bomb victims, they had years of the most indescribable agony ahead of them.


  Much of this was kept secret from the Japanese. The country as a whole knew that two atomic bombs had been dropped, but thanks to a news blackout on any talk of radiation sickness, few people had any idea what it entailed.

  The Yankees, in particular, were keen to downplay the long-term effects of their new bombs, trying to pretend that Fat Man and Little Boy were really nothing more than a couple of giant-sized incendiary bombs. They spent years smothering news stories and fudging papers in their bid to prove that the A-bomb was just another wholesome, Honest-to-God Yankee killing machine.

  There was one man, General Leslie Groves, whose comments about radiation sickness were so outrageous, I did not know whether to laugh or cry. It was Groves who had been the main driving force behind the Manhattan Project and without his constant belly-aching, the Yankees would probably have taken another year to develop the bomb. Groves not only created the bomb, but also helped pick the target cities – and, before the Emperor’s surrender, had been all for bombing Japan into oblivion.

  Groves made many ludicrous comments after the war, but there were none quite so far-fetched as when he stated of the typical A-bomb victim: ‘He can have enough [radiation] so that he will be killed instantly. He can have a smaller amount which will cause him to die rather soon, as I understand it from the doctors, without undue suffering. In fact, they say it is a very pleasant way to die.’

  The truth, for any of us on the ground, was that the radiation sickness turned out to be one of the most terrible tortures ever inflicted on mankind. It would be months before we learned how to treat those raw, maggot infested wounds; it was a sickness of which none of us had the slightest comprehension, and we only learned by trial and error how to cure it.

  I know this well – because after Japan’s surrender, that hospital was my second home. In rather a loose fashion, I became a nurse. I did not have to take any exams, or jump any hurdles as such, but the good Dr Kinoshita kept me on as a general fixer at his hospital.