Page 18 of Daikon
NINE
KEIZO KAN SPENT A RESTLESS night in his bare room in the barracks at Hikari Special Attack Unit, listening to the rain as it subsided, to the water dripping off the eaves, to the cricket that began to chirp outside his window.
He kept thinking about Noriko as he lay in the darkness, wondering where she was and imagining the terrible things she must be enduring.
When the visions became too upsetting, he focused on the black object in the workshop, to reason it into something other than what he feared it to be.
A sensor, perhaps? A testing apparatus? Neither seemed plausible.
A ruse of some kind, then? Equally unlikely.
So why would the Americans place a mass of uranium at the end of a gun barrel inside a bomb casing—unless what they had made was a uranium gun bomb?
Kan could see it all in ghostly outline as he at last drifted off to sleep.
He slipped back inside to check on the separator. Another ten minutes passed and still nothing happened. He was getting impatient now waiting in the darkness, waiting for the second siren signaling the all clear.
It didn’t come. What he heard instead was a hum.
The hum grew louder. The searchlights came on. He jumped down into the trench with the others.
The hum grew to a roar. The ack-ack-ack of anti-aircraft fire began, tracer bullets streaking skyward.
Then the B-29s were passing over, flying low, their bombs already dropped.
There was no whump-whump-whump of high explosives.
It was incendiaries tonight, like the previous raid on February 25.
He ventured out of the trench and stood beneath branches swaying in the stiffening breeze.
It was blowing toward the southeast, where the sky beyond Ueno Park was starting to glow.
He followed the others up onto the flat roof of Building 43, one of the Riken’s taller structures.
From there he could see fires consuming the city.
The Americans were bombing the flatlands between the Sumida and Arakawa Rivers, the district of densely packed factories and working-class homes known as Shitamachi, “lower city.”
More B-29s were flying overhead now, leaving new fires in their wake.
The destruction was spreading across the Sumida River into Nihonbashi and Kanda.
A plane was seen to catch fire in the distance and spiral downward.
The spectacle prompted clapping and cheering all around on the rooftop, even though it was impossible to tell whether it was an American bomber or a Japanese fighter that was crashing, whether it was friend or foe plummeting to death.
Something massive exploded amid the conflagration, a fuel tank or munitions works erupting perhaps.
The blast had the strange effect of momentarily illuminating blue sky in the middle of the night, a flash of blue sky glimpsed between the clouds, as vivid as day.
It’s really quite pretty, isn’t it? said a voice in the darkness.
It’ll burn hot in a wind like this, said another. It’s going to move right across there, unless they can stop it.
You can’t stop a fire like that. It’ll burn all the way to the river.
Then Asakusa’s done for, the second voice said.
The dread that was quivering inside him burst into his chest. His home was in Asakusa, his family in the path of the flames.
A series of images flashed through his mind: Noriko and Aiko squatting in the air raid shelter he had dug in the garden, a pit replacing the flowers; the water barrel he had placed against the back wall; the primitive firefighting implements that had been issued to civilians so that they could protect their houses.
He saw Noriko and her maid Rie emerging from the shelter to fight the fires according to government instructions, battling the inferno with pails of water and a mop and soaked straw matting.
He saw six-year-old Aiko in her padded air raid hood, scant protection against the ferocious heat and flames.
He turned and ran down the stairs and out of the building. No one on the roof seemed to notice him leave. They were captivated by the beauty of the spreading orange glow. He passed a colleague, Dr. Chosokabe, placidly smoking, alone on the steps.
Sit down here, said Chosokabe. Please try to stay calm.
He didn’t stop. He ran out the main gate of the Riken, heading east with the wind that was rising.
Soon he was wheezing, his chest congested and tight from the unaccustomed exertion.
He continued to push himself on, fires burning less than a kilometer off to the right now, licking at the trees on the north side of Ueno Park.
He reached the Tohoku Main Line and passed underneath it.
When he emerged from the underpass, he was confronted by a wall of flames to the east and the south, cutting off any direct approach to his home.
Firefighters were battling to save a hospital on the leading edge of the blaze.
Civilians, most of them women, were struggling to save their own homes, their tinderbox houses of wood beams and wood siding, tatami mats, paper-covered doors.
Some were running about with brimming pails of water to fling at the flames, like raindrops at a volcano.
Others were climbing up ladders to get onto their roofs, batting at the spreading fire with wet mops and throwing handfuls of sand with no effect whatsoever.
He headed north, trying to skirt around the inferno.
He hadn’t gone far when he heard renewed anti-aircraft fire and the drone of engines approaching.
Then another wave of B-29s was passing low overhead, underbellies crimson, bomb bays open.
He heard the incendiary bombs falling and breaking apart, then the hail of forearm-sized steel cylinders striking rooftops and the street and exploding on impact, sending pillars of flame shooting up into the air.
A spatter of it struck him, a sticky gasoline substance aflame.
His coat was on fire. He ripped it off and cast it away.
When he looked up again, the way forward was blocked.
He turned to retreat, shielding his face and burning eyes from the heat.
Houses were ablaze now along the street he had just passed, fronted by flaming columns that were telephone poles, wires falling and sparking.
He hurried along, retracing his steps, panic rising.
By the time he reached the next street, Noriko and Aiko were no longer in his mind, only escape.
He joined a throng of people desperately fleeing, wrapped in bedding and laden with armloads of possessions.
He was on a wider street now, flames leaping up from taller buildings on either side and arching over to meet at the top, forming a tunnel that was sucking in air to fuel the flames.
Stinging debris carried by the wind striking his face.
A woman with a cotton-padded air raid hood in flames on her head whimpering as she struggled to undo the tangled knot under her chin.
A family scuttling along, holding hands.
Hold on tight! Don’t get separated! A man in a civil defense uniform waving his arms and shouting: Through the school!
Through the school! Screams all around: It’s hot!
It’s hot! A child’s voice crying out in terror: Mother!
Keizo Kan woke with a start. He looked about the barracks room. It was morning.
Another knock on the door. It opened. It was Petty Officer Yagi with the required equipment.
They did not see Kyushu when they returned to the workshop at the edge of the Hikari Special Attack Unit compound.
The view across the Inland Sea disappeared into gray mist. A handful of fishing boats were visible a short distance offshore, plying the waters around the small island.
It was as far as the fishermen dared to venture, with enemy submarines lurking beneath the surface and enemy aircraft patrolling the skies.
The workshop door was locked, as PO Yagi had left it. He removed the padlock for Kan to enter, then went off to summon assistance. Removing the steel casing from the device would be heavy work. They would need extra muscle.
The first thing Kan did was to take a series of photographs of the object with the Leica camera he had brought, taking advantage of the morning light streaming in.
Then he began conducting his own specific gravity testing of the metal rings using the basic equipment he had requested from Yagi.
He was on the second ring when the petty officer returned with Seamen Nakamura and Wada.
“You are entirely correct, Yagi-heisō,” said Kan. “Uranium. No doubt about it.”
He methodically continued, testing two more rings as the three navy men patiently waited.
When he was done, he stacked the rings in the corner, as far away as possible from the bomb-shaped object itself.
He did not know what was inside the thing, the obstruction in the gun barrel he had probed the previous evening. But if it was more uranium…
“We’ll leave these here,” he said. “It would be best not to touch them.”
He turned to the bomb, examining the rows of bolts that held the casing together. The central portion of the casing was comprised of two panels, 180-degree arcs sandwiched onto either side, seams at the bottom and at the lifting shackle at the top.
He pointed to the left-side panel. “Shall we begin here?”
Twenty-four bolts had to be removed to free it.
Some yielded to the wrench when Yagi applied mighty strain.
The rest had to be cut away with a hacksaw.
Yagi, Nakamura, and Wada took turns with the blade until they were all glistening with sweat, then went to work with hammer, chisel, and crowbar prying at the warped metal.
Kan, conscious that he was no match for their fitness, spared himself the embarrassment of helping by jotting down notes and adding detail to the drawing he had started.