Fireflies

by Ben Byrne

  There was a piercing shriek, and I awoke with a shout. The train was shuddering to a halt. The door to our carriage swung open, and there was a sudden blast of cold air. People scrambled inside the compartment. The voice of the platform guard barked out. He raced to the door, barring entry, shoving people out and packing them off to the carriages reserved for Japanese. The door slammed shut, and I rolled over in my berth with guilty relief.

  The rest of the journey was interminable, the train groaning frequently to a halt, or stopping at small branch line stations for endless intervals. We finally clambered out, blurry eyed, into the dim morning light of Himeji to be met by Lieutenant Hartley, a shy young officer from the 130th Infantry.

  As we walked along the platform, the station master slid out the destination plates from their frames on the side of the carriages. Himeji was the junction of three major lines; the train would split here. He slotted in another plate, the name of the terminus obscured by his back. Two military policemen were treading toward the Allied carriage in white helmets and heavy boots. They paused by our compartment, hopped up onto the side, and suspended themselves by the open windowpane as they inspected the interior. Apparently satisfied, they jumped down and waved. The station master blew his whistle. As the carriages shunted forward, the plate displaying the onward route came into view. Japanese ideograms and neatly written English letters listed the new destinations:

  OKA-YAMA — KURA-SHIKI — FUKU-YAMA — MI-HARA — HIRO-SHIMA.

  I stared at the artless syllables as the train pulled away. Just another town.

  Hartley drove us in a jeep through the town — all badly burned, though the castle at the summit of the hill was white as a wedding cake. I asked him of the significance of the police at the station.

  “Well, sir, Himeji’s the end of the line for Allied personnel right now,” he said, struggling with the gearshift as we wound up the hill.

  “Is that so?”

  A pained look came over his face. “Hiroshima’s kind of off limits for the time being, sir,” he said.

  The castle loomed before us. I remembered the sloping turrets of the medieval fortress from back in July, when our bombers had poured a few hundred tonnes of incendiaries over the town. Miraculously, the castle had survived. Out front, GIs from the local garrison snapped portraits with their Box Brownies. Inside, the rooms were gloomy and austere.

  Eugene was sulking. “I’m sure glad you made me come, Harold. What a splendid view!”

  From the balustrade at the top of the castle, we could see far into the distance. A burned hamlet huddled beneath us; muddy fields stretched for miles around.

  “Okay, Eugene. Give me a break.”

  There was nothing more to detain us in Himeji, so we went back to the gymnasium where we were billeted and ate a dull dinner of fried spam. Hartley came back later on and invited us into town. I refused, intent on getting my head down, but Eugene’s interest was piqued. I heard him stumble back several hours later, stinking of cheap scent and whisky.

  ~ ~ ~

  The next day was cold, and Eugene was surly. Halfway home, the train halted outside Kyoto. After much confused lumbering, it shunted into a siding, where it stayed for over an hour. Finally, the door opened, and a large man I thought I recognized climbed aboard. Thick set, with big tortoiseshell glasses and a few strands of brown hair scraped over his head, he raised his meaty hand when he saw us. At that moment, the train began to creak backward. He heaved his kitbag up onto the rack, his face brightening as he noticed our green press patches.

  “Well, now, the fine men of the Stars and Stripes. Always a pleasure.”

  His accent had a European inflection. German? I thought. Yiddish?

  He extended a thick palm. “Mark Ward. Chicago Sun-Times.”

  “Hal Lynch,” I said, shaking his hand.

  I remembered where I’d seen him. At a press conference in the council chamber of the Diet a few weeks earlier, he’d been haranguing the incumbent prime minister with a vigour the man clearly found unfamiliar and disconcerting.

  Eugene shook his hand sullenly. I suspected he was resentful of the men from the “official” papers and the agencies. The Stars and Stripes, Japan itself, was something of a pet project for him, one he disliked having to share with others. The train started to clang along the rails. Ward winced as he eased himself into the seats opposite.

  “Lord save us,” he said.

  “Not quite a first-class Pullman,” I ventured.

  “Be grateful of small mercies, young man,” he replied, jerking his thumb toward the packed Japanese carriages behind us. He twisted his head until his neck cracked; then let out a groan of satisfaction.

  “Interesting assignment?”

  “Himeji.”

  He raised his eyebrows in question.

  “Set of touristic sketches. About the historic places of Japan. Kinds of places the ordinary GI might like to visit.”

  A polite nod.

  “Castles and such. Famous beauty spots.”

  Ward squinted at the temple roofs and tall cedars of Kyoto as they skittered past.

  “Well. I guess they may as well take a peek at what’s left.”

  I noticed with embarrassment that Eugene was studiously ignoring the man. I speculated on the possible reasons for the train’s tardiness. Ward gave a sheepish grin.

  “I’m the culprit, I’m afraid,” he said. “I was interviewing a major here, local head of procurement, about certain reconstruction contracts he’s just awarded to a local nightclub owner.”

  A cigar emerged from the side pocket of his kitbag, and he flicked a silver lighter at its tip.

  “Well, we just couldn’t stop talking and so the interview ran over. The major’s secretary was kind enough to telephone the station master, who said he’d hold the train until I got there.”

  Eugene snorted. “Gee, I hope it was worth it.” He hoisted his boots onto the seat and buried his face in a two-month-old edition of Popular Science.

  “Don’t worry about Eugene, Mr. Ward,” I said. “He likes to keep abreast of his ignorance.”

  Eugene yawned deliberately, and went off to lie down in another part of the carriage. As the train rolled slowly eastward, Ward puffed at his cigar in the contented manner of a commercial traveller. He seemed to have visited half of the country already, though he said he’d spent most of the war in China.

  “I was based in Chengtu for a spell myself,” I ventured.

  He examined me, as if sizing me up. “Well, perhaps we’re kindred spirits, then, Lynch.”

  He took a flask of whisky from his kitbag and handed it over. I swallowed a glug with relish and he nodded for me to take another.

  “Well, that’s my sheet. How did you find yourself here, Lynch? You must have seen action, I suppose.”

  “Well, sure,” I shrugged. “Where should I start?”

  The train gave a loud shudder as the wheels shuttled on the rails. He glanced outside, where dusk was gathering now in the paddies.

  “We have plenty of time.”

  As I told him about my war, the sound of Eugene’s snoring drifted from the next compartment. I felt vaguely resentful — I realized that Eugene hadn’t once asked me about my service in all the time we’d been back together. Ward’s manner was avuncular and invited confidences. As the train shunted toward Tokyo, he offered me more whisky from his flask as I recalled to him days and nights hunched over the viewfinders in the belly of Flashing Jenny, mapping out the country piece by piece.

  “You drew up targets for the Super Fortresses?”

  “Eyes of the 21st Bomber Command.”

  The previous September. Arriving at the Isley Field airstrip on Saipan, fresh and bright in our gleaming new photo-converted Superfort, straight off the line. Bombs out, cameras in. At our first briefing with General Curtis LeMay, then head of st
rategic air operations, we were informed that the best map we had of Japan was from National Geographic. Our job was to remedy the situation. All through fall, we flew dozens of missions, debriefing LeMay in his Quonset every day at thirteen hundred, pointing out the spillways of the naval yards; the carriers and cruisers; the munitions factories turning out aircraft engines and locomotives; the heavy guns and rolling stock.

  At dawn, one by one, the silver dream-boats floated off from the runways. Dipping with the weight in their bomb bays, they ascended, their fuselages dazzling bright in the first rays of sun. After dark, the ground crewmen sweated it out on the airstrip, puffing cigarettes, gazing fretfully at their watches and up the sky, until the low drone of motors sounded faraway and finally the powerful landing lights lit up the runway and the first returning planes touched precisely down.

  In January, we were relocated from Saipan to Harmon Field at Guam to be closer to LeMay. Operations staff were no longer interested in industrial targets, he informed us. Instead, we were to identify the most densely packed residential areas in each Japanese city, and to grade them according to the most inflammable areas.

  “The fire raids?” Ward asked.

  My scalp prickled. I pictured my map of Tokyo up on the wall, the wards marked in varying shades of grey according to their population. By then we had fire jelly and white phosphorus that would stick to skin, paper, or wood and burn like hell until everything was gone. To the west of Tokyo, the new suburbs were blank white. To the east, the old wards, Fukagawa and Asakusa, were shaded jet black.

  “The night of the Tokyo Raid,” I said. “Lord God. You could see the flames from two hundred miles away.”

  Pillars of smoke rising to 18,000 feet. A wave of heat blasting up, the sky bright outside the windows of the plane. My hand pulling hard on the camera crank, over and over again.

  “Next week, Nagoya,” I said. “Then Osaka. Kobe. We were going to burn the whole damn country to the ground.”

  Ward’s face scrunched up like paper.

  By July we were running out of places to bomb. The face in the mirror was twitchy, my body listless and unkempt. My CO ordered me to take a week’s leave, which I spent swimming around the reef at Tuman Bay, trying to shake my throbbing headaches and chronic dysentery, convinced that a stink of soot and burning flesh had ground into my skin. Floating on my back in the water. Staring up at the planes in the sky. The day I returned to duty, I was told to prepare for a new photo mission. We were to map out a bombing approach. To identify primary targets around the naval base out in the eastern city of Hiroshima.

  Ward was standing over by the window. He hurled out the remains of his cigar, and it flew into the night in a shower of embers.

  The next day at thirteen hundred. Operations staff hunched over my prints. LeMay suddenly turned and demanded a primary target. His bulldog face, for a moment, was that of my father.

  “That white T-shaped bridge, sir,” I blurted. “See? Right in the centre of the city. Clear as day. Couldn’t miss it if you tried.”

  Ward pushed up the window. He turned to me in the darkness as I wiped the perspiration from my forehead.

  “Are you bothered by what you did up there, Lynch?”

  Floating over that charred plain one week later, eerie and desolate.

  “You were just an observer, Hal.”

  I swallowed. “That’s right. I was just an observer.”

  The train emerged from behind a hill and, for a moment, the track curved around a stretch of coast. Black waves in the distance rippled with moonlight.

  He gave a sudden, jaw-cracking yawn.

  “Okay, Lynch. Maybe we should get our heads down.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “You’re probably right.”

  He looked up at the miniature berths, wincing. “Oh, my aching back . . . ”

  When we woke, the ruins of Tokyo were appearing in the grey light of dawn. Naked children stood outside ramshackle hovels at the bottom of the embankments, and waved up at the train as we passed. At the station, we slung our kitbags over our shoulders and made our way through the departing crowd. Ward held out his hand to me.

  “It was good talking to you, Lynch. Look me up at the press club. There’s some folks you might be interested in talking to.”

  “Okay, Ward. Thanks.”

  “Well then. I’ll see you.”

  He held up his hand as he shouldered his way through the crowd, off to write up his piece about scandals and corruption. Eugene and I wandered blearily back to the Stars and Stripes office to file our own story: “The Touristic GI visits Historic Himeji Castle.”

  11

  THE RYOKAN

  (HIROSHI TAKARA)

  I woke up in the cavern of the ticket hall to see my breath coming out in clouds. All around me, men and women were giving off little traces of vapour, like a horde of sleeping dragons. I stood up and picked my way around their mats, dodging the pools of milky vomit that stank like rotten soybeans. By the concrete staircase, an old man was shivering and clutching his wretched fingers over his eyes to shield them from the light that filtered down from above.

  Smallpox. The people in the tunnels had complained of headaches and chills at first. Then they started to shiver and moan. The rashes came next, spreading amongst them like wildfire: bubbly freckles that crusted into sores and spewed white pus all over their faces, as if they’d been stung by a swarm of wasps. The skin of the sickest ones stayed smooth as glass though. Eerie blotches of purple welled across their bodies like islands on a map. They died almost straight away, their mouths gaping, as if they’d been caught by surprise.

  I ordered the children to wear rags over their mouths and to stay well away from the sick. Even so, Koji came to me one morning complaining that he felt exhausted and that his mouth stung. He held up his shirt as I examined him. I was sure I could see a faint flush on his chest.

  Outside, a frost had covered the city with a sheet of white that sparkled in the dawn sunlight. It lay crinkled on the wasteground behind the station and on the jagged mounds of scrap metal. As I wandered toward Ueno Pond, I thought about the tall American in the trench coat who’d come over to talk to us the week before, and who’d been so interested in Tomoko.

  The Americans are savages and demons! That’s what we’d always been taught. During the war, I’d gazed at the murderous coloured double-spreads in Boy’s Magazine for hours on end, imagining myself in the midst of a desperate suicide charge, firing a submachine gun at those monsters on the beaches at Guam. Chun-chun-chun!

  The man had looked stylish and rugged, as he stooped over to talk to us, his camera dangling around his neck. It was some kind of Leica, I thought, a new model I’d never seen before. When he draped it around my neck, I rubbed my thumb over the exposure control and twisted the smooth aperture dial. I felt the weight of the brushed metal in my hands. It was absolutely beautiful. I held up the camera and looked through the rangefinder at the crisp twin images of Tomoko. I didn’t want to ever give it back.

  My father had owned a camera once. A Rolleiflex, with a hinged back, which a fat customer had given to him at the bonenkai party he held to thank his regulars at the end of each year. I liked to take it out and study the embossed foreign letters. One day, my father brought home some photographic film, and for two weeks I’d waltzed around the neighbourhood, a cut-out masthead of the Yomiuri newspaper pinned to my jacket, taking “portraits” of the locals: wrinkly old Mrs. Oka from next door; two white-faced maiko girls who held their fans over their faces as they stopped in for snacks on their way to a party.

  A year before the end of the war, my father received his red call-up papers. I was sent back to Tokyo from the countryside. My mother had been stunned — after all, he’d been a borderline at his age. That Sunday, my father told me to dig out the old camera. He wanted to go up to Ueno Park to see the cherry blossoms before he left to join his unit.
There weren’t many families stretched out on the grass that year, and no classical music played from picnic gramophones. We laid out our blanket and ate a quiet meal together beneath the trees. Before we left, my father told me to take a photograph, as a souvenir. I lined the whole family up beneath the sprays of white blossom, and waved them into position.

  My mother wore her pale blue spring kimono, her hand resting lightly on my father’s broad shoulder. Satsuko stood beside them in green and gold. They gazed out serenely, calm and dignified, as all around them, the falling blossom floated hesitantly in the air. After a second, I pressed the shutter to capture the scene. When I tried to wind on the film, the lever resisted. The spool was at an end.

  ~ ~ ~

  Past the crimson walls of the Imperial University, I climbed up the hill toward the older, more elegant quarter, where the merchants and artists once had their mansions. The grand old villas were mostly still standing, though many were damaged and silent now behind their heavy wooden gates. Further along the road, around the side of the stucco wall, I saw that a tree had splintered in one of the gardens, knocking out a section of brick. I looked up at it, uncertainly. Then I swung myself up by the woolly branches and dropped down onto the other side.

  The wide garden was choked with tangled grasses and gnarled ornamental trees. The walls of the main building looked solid and the slanted roof was overlapping with neat slate tiles. But the windows were boarded up, and the fishpond was empty and silted.