MacArthur's War: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan

by Douglas Niles

  By the time the second wave approached, Ellis could pick out four main and dozens of smaller fires burning across Hiroshima. The main blazes burned in four of the city’s five main districts, those regions separated by the channels of the delta. The AA fire buffeted them, but—for once—Ellis didn’t notice the shots coming up from the ground. His whole attention was absorbed by that spectacle, the conflagration attempting to consume an entire city.

  “Joe, you’ve got the plane,” Wagner said into the intercom.

  “Aye aye, Skipper,” the bombardier replied. “Looks like we’ll be able to drop this load right on the dime.”

  HIROSHIMA, JAPAN, 0645 HOURS

  “Mama! Mama-san! Wake up!”

  Michiyo tried to keep her voice even, but it cracked from the urgency. Her mother’s watery eyes blinked open, and for a second the girl was certain that the wailing of the sirens, the droning of the bombers that was already beginning to shake the walls, the very foundation, of the little house must surely have roused her.

  “Wake up, Mama! We have to run—to the shelter!” Michiyo was shouting now, trying to get through the haze of confusion that since her father’s death had seemed to close in around her mother’s mind.

  “Oh, that’s too much trouble. You go, take Otomi,” her mother said. “I’m going back to sleep.” With that, she rolled to her side on the thin futon, turning her back and shutting her eyes.

  “No! You have to come, too!” screamed the young woman, raising her voice to a parent for the first time in her life.

  Mama-san rolled back and looked at her with something like shock on her face. Abruptly, after a long, ragged intake of breath, she began to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Mama. But you have to get up, to come away from here. We need to go to the shelter or to the river!’ Michiyo dared to reach out with the hand that wasn’t holding the baby, tugging on her mother’s arm. Slowly, groggily, the older woman sat up, and then—with continued assistance from her daughter—rose to stand shakily.

  “Your kimono—get it—put it on!”

  As if she was sleepwalking, Michiyo’s mother stumbled to her little wardrobe and pulled it open, eyeing her few precious garments as if she was trying to decide what to wear to a ceremonial event. Otomi started to fuss, and Michiyo held the baby to her shoulder, cooing and swaying until he quieted again.

  For long, seemingly endless minutes, she fidgeted, holding the baby, hopping from one foot to the other in her agitation as Mama-san very deliberately draped a bright green kimono over her slight form. After she was dressed, the older woman turned slowly around, looking about her in confusion. “My combs,” she said plaintively. “How will I hold my hair?”

  “There’s no time, Mama—we have to go now!” Michiyo fought back the urge to cry. She was stunned to realize how old her mother looked, how heavily the months had worn on her since her husband’s death. It was as if she had aged twenty years in only the past two seasons. Now an old woman, she looked around in confusion and despair. Michiyo was reminded in a piercing and painful moment of the old woman whose house had been destroyed to help create the firebreak. Against the fear she felt now, the work of clearing the city seemed like a pitiful and useless waste of time.

  With that realization, Michiyo ran out the door, calling for her mother to follow. Sirens were wailing in every direction, and the droning of the B-sans was a growl that she could feel in the pit of her stomach. She looked up, could not help thinking that the great silver bombers were strangely beautiful, flying in long lines from the mainland toward the city and the harbor beyond. They did not look dangerous, but the fear they inspired was audible in the great crying and shouting of humanity in the street.

  She turned and saw Mama stumbling after her, one hand clutching the fold of her kimono, another patting helplessly at the tangle of her hair. Michiyo ran back and took her hand, tugging her forward while holding the baby, stepping off the little sidewalk to join the throng in the street.

  They were mostly running to the right, toward the bomb shelter near the Fukuya Department Store. Michiyo joined the crowd, dragging her mother along. The baby again became restive, uttering a few curt squalls. Her mother stumbled but managed to keep up with the pace of the crowd. Somewhere several children were crying, and adults whispered tensely to each other, but there was no great outcry of panic.

  Still, the pushing and prodding of the mass of people became rougher. Michiyo was swept along, as the pace of the crowd increased. Desperately she clung to the baby and to her mother’s hand.

  “Where are we going?” Mama-san said sharply. Her eyes were clear and serious, now, as if she was beginning to understand the circumstances.

  Michiyo thought about the shelter in the large, stone department store and knew that it would be packed long before she got there. But the large Aioi Bridge, and the main channel of the Ota, lay just a few blocks beyond, and she made up her mind to go there.

  “We’re going to the river, Mama. That will be the safest place.” She could only hope that was the truth.

  It was then that she smelled smoke. In the narrow lane she could see nothing of the rest of the city, and the sky overhead was deceptively blue—though still speckled with the silver bombers and the black puffs of the exploding shells the antiaircraft gunners were shooting upward.

  A few more steps carried them into an intersection, and here Michiyo could see down an avenue running parallel to the river, extending toward the northwest. She gasped when she saw that the sky there was black, a veritable wall of smoke spewing upward. Here and there she could see flames licking upward from the city underneath that smoke. The cloud was drifting in her direction, and the wind against her face was hot, dry, and smelled of soot—and darker things.

  The crowd surged around, people streaming along the avenue away from the flames, toward the square bulk of the large store. In the swell and motion, Michiyo lost her grip on her mother’s hand and was carried along with the flow of humanity.

  “Mama! Where are you?” she cried and suddenly realized that lots of people were shouting, screaming, calling for loved ones.

  Otomi cried lustily, and Michiyo almost stumbled as she spun to look for her mother. With a stab of fear she realized that if she fell, she—and the baby—would be trampled. Resolutely she pulled him close, tucked her elbows into her sides, put her head down, and concentrated on keeping her footing as she moved with the crowd. They came to another side street, and the crowd seethed and slowed as people were backed up at the doors of the Fukuya Department Store. Michiyo made up her mind and darted to the side, pushing against a few people who were trying to crowd into the street, finally breaking free to run a short distance up the narrow way.

  She looked back helplessly and could see no sign of her mother in the tangle of terrified humanity. A building across the street burst into flames as if by magic, and she screamed as she saw burning debris—including large support timbers—topple onto the crowd. Now the screams were a keening wail, and people fled the newest fire, many of them running right toward Michiyo.

  Turning her back on the sight, she sprinted along, holding the baby who—as if understanding the stakes—had fallen silent and simply looked at her with his big, dark eyes. The river was a block away, and all she could think of was reaching that water, immersing herself and the baby in cool liquid.

  There was fire right beside her in a sudden burst, so close that she could feel painful heat against her cheek and hands. And then, like a ravenous and very cruel beast, the fire somehow sprang across the narrow street, so that the buildings on both sides were burning. An abandoned cart at the side of the road burst into flames, and Michiyo stared in horror at the wall of fire.

  Otomi started to wail with all the force of his lungs, and she was horrified to see blisters forming on his face as the searing heat closed around them. Sobbing now, she lowered her head and charged toward the river.

  The baby was on fire! Otomi’s worn silk blanket burned fiercely, and Michiyo crie
d out in pain as the flames seared her fingers and her face. He shrieked and then stiffened, became terribly still. Michiyo’s lungs burned even as she took a very shallow breath, stumbling through the curtain of fire.

  And then the stone railing at the bank, with the dark waters beyond, was there in front of her. She half jumped, half stumbled over the barrier and stopped screaming only when the warm waters of the Ota closed over her head.

  B-29 DRAGON LANCER, OVER EAST CHINA SEA, 0751 HOURS

  The bombardier grinned up at Ellis from his position at the Norden bombsight. “We’re giving them a hell of a pasting, Colonel. Want a look?”

  “No, I can see enough from here,” he replied. It took an effort to speak, and he realized that his hands were clutching the edge of his seat with a white-knuckled grip.

  Climbing up out of the nose, the bombardier moved aft and then stopped to kneel between the two pilots’ seats. “Feeling queasy, sir?” he asked.

  “Just a bit,” Ellis acknowledged. “Those are civilians down there, not soldiers.”

  The bombardier shook his head. “With respect, sir, that’s not the way to think about it. No.” His voice had a Midwestern nasal quality to it. “No such thing with the fucking Nips. Every one of them is a combatant. The kids are all gonna grow up to be soldiers and the women breed. Kill every last fucking one of them, that’s what I say. You know the only thing I don’t like about the bombing campaign?”

  “What’s that?” asked Ellis.

  “It ain’t enough. This ‘unconditional surrender’ bullshit, even if the Japs decide to take it, lets them live. Me, after we finish burning them out of their cities, what I’d do is I’d round all the survivors up, put them in one great big camp out in the middle of nowhere, and then you know what I’d do?”

  Ellis didn’t ask. The bombardier was sure to answer anyway, and within a second he continued.

  “Then I’d send a bomber flight right over and fry every last Jap bastard. Give ’em a taste of hell before they spend eternity enjoying the real thing. Maybe keep a couple alive in a zoo or something. In this cage is Homo Jap, a degenerate human form, extinct in the wild, and about damn time, too.”

  The radio operator, who spoke with a pronounced Southern accent, added, “They’re worse than niggers. Niggers is mostly just stupid and shiftless. I don’t have anything against niggers. Hell, I kind of like them. I got niggers I call friends. But Japs are more like copperheads. They’re not smart, but they got animal cunning. They’re sneaky little bastards. And the only thing to do with copperheads is kill them. Kill every last one of them and smash their eggs and tear up the nest while you’re at it.”

  The bombardier nodded enthusiastically. “Mark my words. If we don’t kill every last Jap man, woman, and child, we’re just leaving the problem for our grandchildren, because they’ll just breed more slant-eyed bastards and we’ll have to come back and fight all over again. Let’s do the job and finish it this time, that’s what I say.”

  “Amen, brother,” the radio operator said.

  Ellis hated the Japs as much as anybody, but the sight of flames rushing up from the burning city frustrated and upset him in ways he wasn’t sure he understood. It was a tough and brutal war with no quarter asked or given. He had more than once turned his bomber in a circle so his gunners could shoot an enemy pilot dangling helplessly from his parachute. But that was revenge for what the Japs did to their prisoners…prisoners like Johnny. Besides, the Japs started it.

  But he still felt queasy.

  Behind him, the city of Hiroshima was invisible, entirely masked by the churning cloud of smoke that rose into the otherwise peaceful morning.

  TWENTY

  Washington, DC; Southwest Pacific

  • WEDNESDAY, 13 JUNE 1945 •

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, DC, 0800 HOURS

  (OPERATION OLYMPIC, X-DAY + 86)

  Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, was poking the ceiling of the Oval Office with a broom handle when General George C. Marshall, the chief of staff of the United States Army, walked in for his regularly scheduled morning meeting.

  Almost every day, the President had some fresh horror story to tell about the appalling condition of the White House. “Look here, General Marshall,” Harry Truman said in his raspy Midwestern voice. “See? This damn broom goes right into the plaster. It’s rotten clean through.” He withdrew the broom handle and a cascade of plaster fell onto the worn rag below. “Hell. If I had a dustpan, I’d clean this up, but they won’t let me touch a thing in this Great White Jail. Got to be waited on hand and foot. Know what I mean?” He looked at Marshall, then back up at the fresh hole in the ceiling. “This place is falling apart. We’re about one good sneeze away from catastrophe.”

  Today, it was the roof plaster. Yesterday, mouse pellets. Last week, mildew. Always, the upholstery.

  Marshall smiled. The new President was different in many ways from the Oval Office’s previous occupant. FDR had been patrician, sophisticated, and complicated; he never let his left hand know what his right hand was doing. Harry Truman was solidly middle-class, of comparatively narrow experience, and blunt. There were similarities, too. Both embodied enormous willpower and drive, decisiveness, and moral courage.

  Truman tore his eyes away from the hole in the ceiling with one final disappointed shake of his head and turned his attention to the general. “Where are my manners? Good morning, General Marshall. Have you had breakfast yet? Hate to have a man start the day without a good breakfast. It’s the foundation for everything else, you know. Always eat well first thing in the morning.”

  They went through this every morning. “Thank you, Mr. President. I’ve already had breakfast,” Marshall lied. He had only grabbed a cup of coffee. Now that the President mentioned it, he did have an appetite, but if he admitted it, he’d be stuck with the President’s idea of a good breakfast every day for the rest of the Truman administration.

  “All right, all right, I’ll stop nagging. Coffee?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. President. I could do with another cup of coffee.”

  “Milk, two sugars?”

  “You’ve got it, sir.”

  “Have a seat, General. Make yourself comfortable.” Truman walked over to a percolator that was set up on a folding table on the far curve of the room. He poured the general’s coffee and brought it over to the conversation area.

  In addition to the President’s formal desk, which was normally kept spotless and paperless—another change from the Roosevelt years—there was a conversation grouping of two worn and tired sofas flanking a coffee table, capped with an armchair at each end. They sat on opposing sofas.

  Marshall put his briefcase on the coffee table, snapped it open, took out his briefing materials, then closed the briefcase and put it down by his feet. He didn’t expect to use the briefing materials. Truman would read every word of them later.

  The President looked Marshall in the eyes. “Tell me how the war’s going, General. How’s that mess on Kyushu”—he pronounced it “Koo-Shoo”—“coming along? I’ll read the book later. You know I like to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  “Well, it’s still a mess, Mr. President, but we’re moving forward. Inch by inch, maybe, but forward.”

  “Hell.” Truman shook his head. “Reminds me of the Great War. Meat grinder battles just eating up men and spitting out corpses. I missed the worst of it, being in field artillery, but I remember what it was like, being there. I hate like holy hell sending more American boys into early graves. Too bad the Great War didn’t live up to its billing as ‘the War to End All Wars.’”

  “Amen, Mr. President. But it’s hard to whip an enemy who doesn’t care about the casualties they take.”

  Truman stood up and walked around to the back of his sofa, facing Marshall. “Now, you’ve told me this before. I still think it’s the craziest damn thing I ever heard in my life. The Japs think that if they get enough of their men killed, we’ll have to giv
e them better surrender terms?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And tell me again why the hell killing Japs is a bad thing?”

  “First, sir, they’re going to take a lot of our boys with them. That’s what the kamikaze attacks do. If a soldier—more often a woman or a child—wraps up in explosives and dives under a tank, we’re down one tank. There are lots of ways to kill the enemy if you don’t care if you die in the process. Our boys are brave, but we aren’t going to go for mass suicide.”

  Truman shook his head, then started to pace. “Damned right we’re not. That is the goddamnedest idea I have ever heard. It’s positively inhuman. What the hell makes them act like that? They’re human beings, aren’t they? Or are they?”

  “They are, but they’re still different. For one thing, their main religions, Shinto and Buddhism, believe in reincarnation. Death isn’t permanent.” Marshall stood as well. “Their Emperor Meiji, Hirohito’s grandfather, said, ‘Death is lighter than a feather; duty, heavy as a mountain.’ That’s part of their military creed. And they know we don’t see it that way. In their eyes, that makes us weak and sentimental.”

  “Weak and sentimental. Okay. I’ve got it. Go on.” Truman took a swig of coffee.

  “The second reason they think their strategy might work is world public opinion. If we kill enough of them, we’ll look like the bully.”

  “Maybe.” Truman looked skeptical. “Go on.”

  “The third is that death is better, at least for the real fanatics, than the disgrace of surrender.”

  “So what are you telling me? Are you recommending that I change ‘unconditional surrender’ to something else?” Truman’s fingers went tap-tap on the sofa’s arm.

  Marshall looked at his President. “No, sir. I just wanted to lay out the Japanese side first.”

  Truman looked back at Marshall. “All right. That makes sense. So, what do you folks propose to do about it?”