Page 21 of Daikon
ELEVEN
THE DOCTOR WAS SHROUDED IN a gown, gloves, and face mask as he examined Seaman Wada.
Keizo Kan, Petty Officer Ryohei Yagi, and Seaman Nakamura, looking on from the foot of Wada’s cot, were not similarly protected.
They were confined along with Wada in the empty barracks.
Hikari base commander Koreeda had ordered them all quarantined.
“Please relax,” the doctor instructed Wada, feeling his pulse. The young seaman, his face drawn and gray, did his best. The doctor squinted at the second hand on his watch, sweating under his gown as he counted fast.
“One hundred and ten,” he said. “Very high.”
He wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Wada’s left arm, the good arm clutching a towel, and began pumping the bulb. He pumped a long time before releasing the air and watching the mercury fall.
“Please try to relax,” he said, pumping the cuff tight again for a second reading.
Wada tried. The doctor removed the cuff and set the apparatus aside.
“One hundred and eighty-eight over one hundred and five. Very high.”
Kan found the man’s admonitory tone annoying. It reminded him of the doctor who had passed off his own breakdown as a form of hysteria, a product of his imagination.
The doctor began feeling under Wada’s neck and along his jawline, probing the lymph nodes.
“Any tenderness here?”
Wada forlornly shook his head.
The doctor produced the chopstick he used as a tongue depressor and peered into Wada’s mouth. He pulled up Wada’s shirt and poked his gloved fingers into the seaman’s liver and kidney.
“Any pain?”
“No.”
The doctor moved to Wada’s solar plexus and belly.
“What about here?”
Wada winced. “A little.”
He suddenly lurched upright in his cot, holding the towel to his mouth, and heaved. Nothing came up. A few more dry heaves, his whole body straining.
He lay back, gasping from the effort.
The nausea had come over Wada an hour after the incident the previous afternoon, as he was sitting in the shade outside the workshop, now locked up with the disassembled bomb sealed inside.
Yagi had ordered him to remain there, away from the main part of the camp, while he went to report to Lieutenant Miyata, who in turn reported to Lieutenant Commander Koreeda.
Keizo Kan had insisted on going with him to telephone his own report to the War Ministry in Tokyo.
It was his fault that Wada had been exposed, and he felt guilty leaving him, even for a short time.
If he had warned him of the danger or taken adequate precautions, it never would have happened.
He expected, however, that trouble was coming.
If he didn’t communicate his findings to Colonel Sagara now, he might not get another chance.
When he returned to the workshop, Wada was doubled over, vomiting into the grass.
Kan recorded this latest development in his notebook, adding to the observations he had set down in an unsteady hand after the initial shock of the incident passed.
As far as he knew, nothing like this had ever before been reported.
The results of extreme radiation exposure were of course well known, the horrific bone loss and malignant tumors suffered by those who ingested radium back when it was believed to be healthy.
He had seen a photograph of the amputated right hand of radium discoverer and radioactivity research pioneer Marie Curie, two fingers missing and the others covered with lesions after a lifetime of handling the substance.
It had probably also killed her, her death attributed to a rare disease of the blood.
But these were the outcomes of long radiation exposure, lasting for years.
What had happened in the workshop had lasted for only a second, but the effects were immediate, starting with the tingling and numbness Wada reported feeling in his hand. And now this nausea.
Wada’s stomach was soon emptied, but the heaving continued as he was moved into quarantine at Koreeda’s orders.
Kan assured the commander that the bomb was not a biological weapon and that Wada’s illness was not contagious.
His inability to explain what it was, however, left Koreeda fearing the worst. He ordered Yagi, Nakamura, and Kan to join Wada in isolation before placing a call to Vice Admiral Masao Kanazawa at Kure Naval District headquarters.
Wada’s violent dry heaving continued through the evening and on into the night.
The spasms finally subsided just after dawn, leaving him wrung out and exhausted.
Whatever had been ailing him seemed to be releasing its grip on his guts.
His hand, however, the one that had held the uranium ring, was worse.
Now it was red and inflamed under the wet compress and ointment that had been applied. The doctor was treating it like a burn.
Kan recorded it all.
Examination over, Wada returned to gazing sadly at the open window. Barked commands and shouted responses could be heard from the kaiten pilots performing their morning calisthenics outside. “I should be on duty,” he said.
The doctor ignored him. He turned to Yagi, Nakamura, and Kan. “And you? Any symptoms?”
“Nothing,” Yagi said curtly, rolling a pair of dice in his hand. “I’m fine.”
“Nothing. I’m fine,” echoed Seaman Nakamura.
Keizo Kan, his arms tightly crossed, was slow to respond.
He did not feel fine. His head was aching.
Was it merely stress or something else? He had been at least four meters away when it happened, Yagi and Nakamura perhaps double that distance.
What was the effect of a neutron and gamma ray burst at four meters, a burst so massive it had generated light and instantly heated the uranium rings?
He had no idea. And then he had stupidly touched the hot ring.
The doctor noted his hesitation. “Any nausea? Any discomfort?”
Kan shook his head.
The doctor left. Kan watched him strip off his gown, mask, and gloves as soon as he was outside and confer with Commander Koreeda, who was just returning. Koreeda then borrowed the doctor’s mask and, holding it over his nose and mouth, entered the barracks and called Kan to the door.
“I’ve spoken with Vice Admiral Kanazawa,” he said, “and he is communicating with the Navy Chief of Staff in Tokyo. In the meantime I’ve been instructed to question you and gather more information.”
He looked into Kan’s eyes. He said, “I wonder if you’ve been entirely forthcoming with us.”
Kan was unable to hold the commander’s gaze. He looked down.
“Kan-sensei, the Army and the Navy must cooperate. That’s the directive. If the War Ministry has instructed you otherwise, someone there is disobeying an Imperial order.”
Kan hesitated, remembering Colonel Sagara’s admonition for secrecy. “I’m sorry, Commander. I’m in a… it’s a difficult situation.”
“Caught between the Army and the Navy. Yes, I can see that.”
Koreeda regarded him for another moment, then jerked his chin at Wada inside. “What happened to the seaman?”
Kan glanced over his shoulder. Nakamura was out of earshot, sitting with Wada. Yagi, pocketing his dice, had approached when Koreeda entered and was standing nearby.
“I don’t know for certain,” Kan replied, keeping his voice low. “But his condition isn’t contagious. I can assure you of that.”
“Yes, so you told Lieutenant Miyata. But isn’t it curious that you know his condition isn’t contagious yet would have us believe you don’t know what his condition is?”
Kan’s eyes dropped again to his scuffed shoes.
“Come now,” pressed Koreeda. “If I don’t get a truthful answer, I’ll have no choice but to keep you confined here. What happened to the seaman?”
Kan’s eyes remained down. The Navy, he knew, had funded its own atomic bomb research, Project F-Go, to explore the centrifuge method of uranium enrichment.
He had exchanged data with F-Go’s head scientist, Kyoto Imperial University professor Dr. Bunsaku Arakatsu.
With a report of the incident now on its way to the Navy Chief of Staff, it was just a matter of time before Arakatsu was consulted and everything was revealed.
It therefore seemed pointless to dissemble with Koreeda.
It would serve only to keep him confined here in the barracks, unable to carry out Colonel Sagara’s orders.
“Very well,” said Koreeda, turning to leave. “Consider yourself detained. Indefinitely.”
“Radiation poisoning,” Kan blurted out. “I believe Seaman Wada has been exposed to a large amount of radiation.”
Koreeda turned back. “Radiation poisoning,” he repeated, unsure of the term.
“There are several kinds of radiation,” said Kan.
“X-rays are one. If you have had an X-ray photograph taken of your body, you have received a small amount of X-ray radiation. It doesn’t do any harm.
Gamma radiation is another. I believe Seaman Wada received a large amount of gamma, large enough to make him sick. ”
“And it’s not contagious?”
“No. Definitely not contagious.”
Koreeda hesitated a moment, then lowered his mask.
“So is that the nature of this bomb? To generate radiation? A kind of poisoning weapon?”
Keizo Kan had not considered this. A radiation poisoning weapon? No, that seemed unlikely.
“Poisoning would be only a by-product,” he said. “I believe the real purpose would be to create an explosion. A large explosion. It’s called genshi bakudan .”
“Atomic bomb,” repeated Koreeda slowly. He considered the term for a moment. Then: “How large an explosion?”
Kan didn’t know the answer. According to the accepted calculation at the Riken, one kilogram of enriched uranium had the energy potential of 1,700 tons of conventional explosives. But that was purely theoretical.
“It’s difficult to say,” he replied.
“Bigger than the Blockbuster?” Koreeda was referring to the well-known monster bomb the British had used to pulverize the Germans.