A Choice of Evils

by Meira Chand

  ‘I can’t see you for light,’ she shaded her eyes in mock horror.

  He came forward and gripped her arm, kissing her on the cheek. The familiar scent of him rushed through her. She saw now there were lines upon his face she did not remember, grey streaked his straw-coloured hair. He looked older and had acquired an expression of austerity.

  ‘Where were you? We expected you earlier. Bradley even cabled The Times,’ she scolded.

  ‘I arrived last night. Between here and Nuremberg there is no room for breath. But you look good.’ He stared down into her face with a sad smile.

  ‘If I do it’s because I escaped a war,’ she answered.

  ‘No need to sound guilty. If you’d been where I’ve been you’d know half the world has dreamed of escape. You were one of the lucky ones. God was on your side.’ He took her arm and guided her forward. ‘Let’s get some lunch. I’m starving.’

  She sensed something new within him. Much of the old bravado seemed gone. ‘I can see it’s not been a good war for you? Where were you?’ she asked, slipping into the old flippant tone of voice, waiting for Donald to sling the usual handful of irreverent words.

  ‘I was everywhere. Normandy, Paris, Warsaw, Guadalcanal, Manila, Okinawa, Berlin to name a few. And the liberation of Belsen and Auschwitz.’ His voice fell suddenly low. ‘And what war is good? But men will fight. They’ll fight again as soon as this mess is cleared up.’ The censorious tone surprised her.

  ‘I didn’t mean to sound flippant, but you usually demand it from people.’ She sat back in her chair and sipped a beer, observing him curiously across the table.

  ‘Perhaps by now I’ve seen too much to keep up that line of defence,’ he replied. He looked down at the steak that had been placed before him.

  ‘A line of defence? Yes, perhaps that was what it was. But you were fun when you were nice, which of course got less and less. Now you don’t look like you know what fun is,’ Nadya replied.

  ‘A case of temporary amnesia maybe. I’ll be all right. Auschwitz and Belsen, those camps shook me up like nothing since Nanking. And I was only an observer to the leftovers.’ He took a long drink of his beer. ‘I’m not looking forward to reliving Nanking. I couldn’t handle it then. I don’t know if I can now. Who else is here?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ Nadya replied and then told him about the visit to Teng, and about Martha.

  ‘She did so much, helped so many. Nothing makes sense in this life,’ Donald’s voice was low and intense.

  ‘Neither can Martha make sense of fate, I suspect,’ Nadya answered. The disconcerting change in Donald gnawed at her, eroding old perceptions.

  ‘We all punish ourselves for our inadequacies,’ he replied, but did not elaborate. ‘I can always say I did one good thing in this war. I gave you the means to get to America, out of the whole damn horrible thing.’ Donald grinned suddenly.’ God knows what you might have got caught up in otherwise. You always did insist upon putting yourself where the most trouble was,’ he added, almost to himself.

  There was an ease between them, different in quality from anything Nadya remembered. It was eight years since she had seen him. ‘You know there is no binding, no obligation, if you wish to be free. If you have met someone else.’ She looked away as she spoke, not meeting his eye. Suddenly it was important to know if there was someone else.

  ‘You would have heard if that was so,’ he smiled. ‘And of course the same goes for you. We agreed on all this long before. For myself I seem to have been too busy throwing myself into the front line trenches to think of more weighty things.’

  ‘I just thought the contract may need updating. I wanted only to be honest with you.’ She was surprised at her relief on hearing his reply. As always, it was difficult to understand the strange heap of emotions that lay between them.

  ‘You are always honest,’ he smiled, remembering the night on the Lotus Lake.

  They returned to the press section. He persuaded her to leave Bradley in the VIP enclosure and sit beside him, where, as he said, the action was. ‘This is all so different from the Nuremberg trials. I don’t like the atmosphere here. They say Keenan is a drunk. It’s all arranged as pure theatre. Look at the opulence of this courtroom for a start. At Nuremberg the decor is simple, they’ve relied on the majesty of the concept of justice to set the tone of the trial. This trial is to be played to the world as theatre, no doubt about it.’ He was already scribbling down notes. ‘All these klieg lights for a start make it appear like a Hollywood premiere.’

  ‘Will you write that?’ Nadya asked.

  ‘If that is what it turns out to be. I’m also honest in my way.’ Donald took her hand and turned it over absently to examine her palm.

  ‘Your life line is long,’ he remarked, as if he had forgotten why he took her hand in the first place. He laid it back upon her lap.

  Soon the proceedings began again with the reading of the indictment. This was undertaken in relays, for the counts were many. Once more Tojo sat forward as in the morning, to catch each word. At times he leaned back with a dispirited expression, before alerting himself again. As in the morning Shumei Okawa, seated directly behind General Tojo, rolled his eyes about like an imbecile, paying no heed to anything. He continuously buttoned and unbuttoned his shirt, scratching at his chest. Finally the shirt slipped from his shoulder as Okawa smiled inanely. Sir William Webb stopped the hearing and ordered a young military policeman to see Okawa kept his shirt on. Whenever Okawa reached for his buttons the MP placed a restraining hand upon him. Okawa continued to smile amiably. The reading of the charges advanced and Okawa created no more disturbance.

  The count of indictments had reached number twenty-two. The names were read out of those in the dock, charging that ‘on or about the 7th December 1941 they initiated a war of aggression and a war in violation of international law, treaties and agreements against the British Commonwealth . . .’

  Okawa rolled up the sheet of paper stating the charges against him, leaned forward suddenly and struck Tojo’s bald head resoundingly. Tojo turned in shock, anger flushing his face. Okawa stood up and struck him a second time. MPs rushed forward and hauled Okawa from the dock. The court stirred noisily. Okawa’s voice was heard, yelling in English, as he left the room.

  ‘Tojo is a fool. I will kill him.’

  Donald jumped up and rushed from the press section. Nadya attempted to follow him and then sat down, unable to push through the crowd. Outside in the corridor Okawa was still yelling.

  ‘Tojo is a fool. I’m for democracy. America is not a democracy. She is Demo-crazy. I am a doctor of law and medicine. I haven’t eaten in seventy days. This is because I have found a way to get nourishment from the air. I am the next Emperor of Japan. I must kill Tojo. I must kill him to save my country.’

  Flash bulbs were popping. Okawa sat down upon a couch in the corridor. ‘Give me a cigarette,’ he demanded. ‘Do not worry about me. I will show the world how to live on air. Shall I show you what I did to Tojo?’ He stood up again and began to hit a Japanese journalist about the head. The flash bulbs popped until he was dragged away, back to Sugamo Prison.

  Kenjiro Nozaki sat back in shock in his seat in the public gallery. He’s mad. Quite mad. The whispers buzzed about him at Shumei Okawa’s performance. And that, he knew, was what it was, no more than a performance. It was typical of Okawa to pull something off like this. Probably, he would get away with it. Okawa always got away with things: thuggery and murder and chicanery. There was not a political plot of the last two decades that had not been scripted by Okawa. A little acted madness was nothing to him. If, for a while, the world thought him a fool, Okawa would have the last laugh.

  The Americans were naïve, Kenjiro thought angrily. Whatever the conditions of the day, a sub-culture of Okawa’s adherents were buried in the woodwork of Japan. They would emerge in disguise to prove him mad, and allow him to evade a trial. Even as these thoughts flashed through his mind, he remembered that night long before wh
en right-wing extremists had broken into his home, killing old Chieko, forcing him to flee Japan, placing him upon a path he might otherwise not have taken. No one else had the guile of Okawa. Even about Tojo, whatever his arrogance, there was a sense of directness and decency respected by those who served him. He had none of Okawa’s slipperiness.

  Kenjiro was depressed, and the heaviness would not lift. The trial appeared to have started on a deplorably comic note. Would the drama and tragedy of the era ever come across? He had heard titters of laughter amongst the American spectators at Okawa’s behaviour, and listened to comments by foreign newsmen on the theatricality of the first day. He controlled the rage of shame he felt before the arrogance of these foreigners with their superior expressions. And yet he could not deny that the nation had brought this fate upon itself. It had deceived itself by a slavish lack of criticism for those in authority. Could a people be held responsible for the society they lived in? And if they were not held accountable, how could a liberal society survive? Was that what had happened here?

  Kenjiro stared at the box of elderly defendants. He dreaded reliving Nanking. It seemed strange, after a lifetime of persecution, to suddenly find his principles were fashionable. In spite of this, he could not dispel discomfort at the thought of standing in the witness-box to prosecute those of whom he knew nothing. Some of the men in the dock should not be there at all. Others, whose bestiality was beyond belief, had escaped detection or arrest.

  There was also, he had discovered, to be a special immunity from prosecution for the Princes of the Blood. It was possible to see a case, rightly or wrongly, of immunity for the Emperor. But why should Prince Asaka, a Commander in the field, not stand before the court to answer with others for the rape of Nanking? Innocent or guilty, Kenjiro did not understand why so many well-known faces were deliberately to be excluded from the trial. Where, for instance, was General Nakajima? Why would he not be testifying? Was he being kept for later exhibition? How much would be manipulated to suit the American prosecution? Did they not realise they were perpetuating indefinitely by these tactics the circle of irresponsibility already present in Japanese society? After Hiroshima it was so easy for the nation to forget that Japan was also an aggressor. Kenjiro feared the responsibility for that aggression would be passed around for ever more, from the military to the police to the politicians to the bureaucrats and back again. In this cycle all need for self-examination could be avoided forever.

  One part of Kenjiro had been greatly relieved that the Emperor was not to stand trial. On another less emotional level, he was unsure. By escaping trial and retaining his status, the Emperor evaded all blame for the war. It was of course difficult to determine the degree of that blame but, identification with the monarch was so strong that by allowing him to appear innocent he would become the symbol of an innocent nation. It would be forgotten in decades to come that the nation must examine the issue of its own guilt. The experience of Hiroshima would allow Japan to see itself only as a victim.

  There was also the issue, that had worried Kenjiro so long ago, of medical research upon live Chinese and Allied prisoners in the pursuit of biological warfare. What Fukutake had hinted at in Nanking had been true. It was rumoured a mega-weapon of lethal proportions had indeed been developed. Apparently, no word of this criminal research, involving in its development the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of defenceless people, was to be raised in the trial. It was said a deal had been struck behind the scenes between Japan and America. In exchange for the results of Japan’s long years of gruesome research, the Americans would grant immunity to those involved with it. A whole diabolical chapter of history was to be erased for the benefit of America. What other deals had been struck that nobody knew about? The whole trial had an odour. Kenjiro gave an exasperated sigh.

  He had already seen Nadya down in the press section, sitting with the British journalist, Addison. Both appeared to him unchanged. Addison might look older, but Nadya seemed unscathed by war, with a freshness that took his breath away. It seemed strange now to think that once their bodies had met in a madness beyond control, risking death. The more he looked at her, the less he could believe such intimacy had passed between them. And yet, he still remembered that demented grasping at life in the midst of death.

  He stood up slowly. He had now to use a cane to walk. Strange pains and symptoms afflicted him. Much of the time he felt weak, and very ill. He had lost much of his hair. Too little was known about the Hiroshima bomb to give him a prognosis. In this flamboyant trial nobody had yet mentioned that bomb, except in terms of triumphant finality. Yet was that not also as great a crime against humanity as any argued here? He felt an artificiality in the courtroom. There was the trumping up of certain facets of life and an ignoring of others of equal importance. But such things were inevitable, he supposed, in a process as complex as this.

  He made his way down in the next recess and at last found his way to Nadya. As he expected, she took a moment to recognise him.

  ‘I know, it has been a long time and much has happened.’ Kenjiro saw her staring at the keloid that had developed across his cheek. ‘It is a minor one and I am told it will go.’ He saw she did not understand. It was Addison who asked the question.

  ‘Are those sort of things not the results of the atomic bomb?’

  Kenjiro nodded. ‘I was lucky. I was some distance from the bomb. A warehouse shielded me from the worst effects, and then collapsed upon me.’ He explained about the prison camp in Hiroshima. Donald searched for words to adequately describe his horror, but finding nothing meaningful, remained silent.

  ‘At the Nanking Embassy they would tell me only that you had returned to Japan.’ Nadya continued to observe Kenjiro in distress. What had passed between them, however brief, still remained linking them, like a frail bridge.

  ‘I have seen Professor Teng. I was sent to China to find him for the prosecution,’ Nadya explained.

  ‘Teng?’ Kenjiro turned to her in amazement.

  ‘He is coming here in the next few days,’ she told him. She was conscious of Donald assessing the unspoken exchange between them, aware of things he did not know.

  ‘Are you a witness for the prosecution or the defence?’ Donald asked suddenly.

  ‘Both, I think,’ Kenjiro replied. ‘Until now I have been a black sheep in Japan for my views. In a trial like this I feel there is little to lose in doing what I can for both sides. I saw enough in Nanking. As you know, we at the Embassy could do little to stop it. I am willing to bear witness to that.’

  ‘And the defence?’ Nadya asked. She had not seen Kenjiro’s name on either prosecution or defence witness lists, but each day new witnesses were being found. It would go on like this for the length of the trial, according to Bradley.

  ‘Tilik Dayal has been arrested on charges of war crimes and collaboration with the military regime. He too was there in Hiroshima. He was but a minor cog in a vicious wheel, and towards the end against his will. There was much human decency in him. He managed to find it before it was too late.’ Kenjiro looked directly at Nadya. ‘But for Dayal, Teng would not have escaped. Teng too might stand witness for the defence when he knows Dayal has been arrested.’

  ‘Professor Teng has become a monk,’ Nadya told him.

  ‘That was always his true vocation.’ Kenjiro appeared unsurprised.

  The great lights in the ceiling blazed down upon them, setting Nadya’s red hair on fire. Kenjiro could not take his eyes from the fiery halo, swinging about her head. It was what had first drawn him to her. Now, looking back, one part of his life appeared to fit neatly into another, like a set of Chinese boxes. Each separate entity contained its small pile of memories, yet added to the weight of the whole. He felt only gratitude that once this woman had come to him, sharing life. He felt grateful now for all experience, good or bad. Each distilled its necessary residue. He no longer mourned Jacqueline, but felt this same thankfulness fill him. Now, his thoughts were only for his daughter, Naomi. Wh
at time he had left, and he felt there was little although the doctors refused to agree, he wished to live for her. His parents were old and frail. He intended to send Naomi back regularly to France. There she would discover another side of herself and a younger set of grandparents, who would care for her if he should worsen and die.

  He saw that between Nadya and Addison, as he had always suspected, lay feelings neither would admit. Time brought everything full circle, he thought. And time brought the only perspectives. Little escaped its working or judgement, however strange its ways. He thought again of Teng, and could not believe they would soon meet.

  39

  Sugamo

  1946

  News found its way about the prison quickly, especially on bath nights. Rumours twisted through the steam. Twice a week at Sugamo, gossip was as important as cleanliness. Many prisoners of the various classes were held together at Sugamo Prison. On these nights, news of the Yokohama courthouse, where Class B and C defendants trials were taking place, was exchanged for an earful of the lchigaya Class A courthouse gossip. The news tonight was all of one thing: Shumei Okawa had gone mad. Now, instead of sitting in the dock he was in hospital being examined by American psychiatrists.

  ‘He is a genius,’ said a man called Toda, a Class B criminal who had something to do with atrocities on the Baatan death march. He spoke to Tilik from beneath a shower of hot water, before approaching the rows of steaming wooden tubs.

  ‘I have met Okawa. He is not a man to go mad,’ Tilik replied as Toda got in the bath beside him. ‘If he was not an intellectual, he would have made a great actor.’ He remembered the force of the man, the energy and the oratory that swayed people to his ideas. Okawa was also, he realised now, sharpened by animal cunning. He thought again of Okawa’s lectures, and the pounding rhetorical stance through those books Rash Bihari had lent him at their first meeting. Beside him Toda began to chuckle.