Page 34 of Daikon

SEVENTEEN

THE FIRST LIGHT OF MORNING was painting the sky ocher when the freight train screeched to a stop and the boxcar was decoupled and left on a siding.

Two fresh soldiers, barely eighteen, were assigned to guard it.

They started to protest when they saw the hole kicked through the side of the car, now revealed in daylight, but Petty Officer Yagi’s glare intimidated them into silence.

Yagi sent them off to refill the thermos and find something to eat, then helped Keizo Kan down out of the boxcar to relieve himself behind a nearby shed.

After finishing the hot tea and the few food scraps the soldiers returned with, Yagi challenged them to a contest of throwing stones at various targets to pass the time.

Kan considered the navy man as he watched, envying the easy way he seemed to adapt.

The events of the past several days had not seemed to ruffle Yagi at all.

The stone-throwing continued, rocks thocking off boxcars and poles, until a bowlegged rail yard worker came stumping over and angrily told them to stop.

An hour’s wait with the sun coming up, then the onward journey continued, due north now on the Sagami branch line following the Sagami River, the boxcar attached to a rusty relic of a truck, engine wood-fired, wheels converted to run on rails.

Kan and Yagi sat in the open door, their legs dangling out, gazing at the Kanto Plain, the vast expanse of fertile flatness extending from Tokyo on the coast of central Honshu to the mountains inland.

The view was of fields of ripening rice and millet and barley, farm settlements, vegetable plots.

An elderly woman looked up from her garden and stood motionless, watching them pass.

Kan’s eyes returned to the distant mountains. A popular song from before the war came into his mind. Life had been so much easier then, a summer hike in the hills.

He started softly singing, hardly more than a whisper:

Let’s cross the hill,

The sky is clear and sunny.

With joyful hearts,

Blood resounding in our chests.

Let’s praise our youth,

As we head off,

Crossing the hill of distant hopes.

Yagi sighed with pleasure. “Ah, ‘Crossing the Hill.’ I haven’t heard that in a long time.” He joined in with his rough, booming voice.

Let’s cross the hill,

The November sky is brightening,

With joyful hearts,

A fountain in our chests…

The town of Atsugi crept past at twenty-five kilometers an hour, a dismal place, houses dilapidated, shop signs broken and askew.

The bigger town of Hachioji was next, “Seven Lives for My Country” painted multiple times on a wall facing the tracks, the fading characters unskilled, evidently the work of schoolchildren.

Tachikawa appeared off to the right, an industrial center, much damaged.

Then they were crossing the Tama River.

Then they were there.

Tama Airfield. Home of the Imperial Army Air Service’s maintenance training center and aircraft testing department.

It should have been a prime target for enemy bombers, but the 1,200-meter-long runway, hangars, and ancillary buildings all were undamaged.

The Americans had overlooked it out here on the edge of the Kanto Plain.

The airfield, operational only since 1940, did not appear on prewar maps.

Yagi and the two soldiers jumped down onto the siding.

Kan followed more slowly, favoring his right hand.

He looked around at the airfield’s shabby, dark buildings, mostly unpainted wood, and up at the sky, clouds now moving in.

Had it really been only five days since he had passed through here en route to Hikari?

A bicycle approached. The rider was Captain Onda, Colonel Sagara’s aide.

“Kan-sensei!” he called out, excited and cheery. “You’ve arrived!”

Onda dismounted and turned to PO Yagi.

“Petty Officer Ryohei Yagi?”

Yagi responded with a casual nod.

Onda passed the bicycle to one of the soldiers and looked into the boxcar at the Daikon, a lump wrapped in canvas. His eyes went to the hole kicked in the side of the car, then back to Yagi and Kan.

“It was like that when we got on,” said Yagi, shooting a warning glance at the two soldiers.

They both nodded confirmation.

“Yes, well, welcome to Tama Airfield,” said Onda. “You’ll be working here.”

He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Hiroshima… this is really the same sort of weapon?”

Kan nodded. “It seems so.”

“All that power from just one bomb.” Onda shook his head in wonder. “They’re saying that eighty percent of the city was destroyed.”

The number stirred images burned into Kan’s brain—his glimpses of horror flying over Hiroshima; deeper memories of the firebombing of Tokyo in March, one hundred thousand killed in one night.

“I don’t know how anyone could have survived it,” he whispered. “Casualties must have been terrible.”

“Seventy thousand dead is the estimate,” said Onda. “So not as bad as Tokyo. But people are still dying. Oh, and the reports of parachutes just before the flash—some sort of instruments were dropped as well. What do you make of that?”

Kan thought for a moment. “To measure the effects, I suppose.”

Onda nodded as he pondered this possibility. Then he started peering intently at Kan, then at Yagi. “And you’re all right? The Colonel mentioned that there was an incident at Hikari and you might have been injured.”

“I’m fine,” said Kan, covering his right hand.

“Perfectly healthy,” said Yagi.

“Excellent.” Onda turned to the engineer leaning out the cab of the truck-locomotive. “Take it onto that siding!” he shouted, pointing toward a divergence from the tracks up ahead.

The driver put the truck into gear and chugged off, trailing exhaust, hauling the boxcar toward the hangars facing the runway.

It was the biggest airplane Kan and Yagi had ever seen up this close.

Neither man had known it even existed. It was called the “Mountain Range” bomber, the Nakajima G8N Renzan, based in large part on the American B-17.

The fuselage alone, twenty-three meters long, was as large as a blue whale.

Its wingspan, 32.5 meters, four massive engines, 8,000 cumulative horsepower, made it much bigger.

The behemoth looming over them filled up the hangar.

It conveyed such a feeling of mass that it was hard to imagine it could get off the ground.

“The Renzan,” said Captain Onda as they walked around it.

“Long-range land-based bomber for the Imperial Navy. Only five completed before production was shut down in June. They sent the Army this one and it’s been just sitting here, a prime aircraft going to waste.

So Colonel Sagara has requisitioned it for the mission.

Isn’t it magnificent? Fully armored, self-sealing tanks, range 7,500 kilometers, maximum bomb load 4,000 kilos. ”

He turned to Kan with a grin. “Did you hear that, Sensei? Maximum load 4,000 kilos. I think that should be more than sufficient, wouldn’t you say?”

Kan tore his eyes away from the plane. Each of the blades on its four propellers was as tall as a man.

“Yes,” he said. “I believe so.”

Yagi was equally enthralled as he counted the guns: two cannons mounted in a turret atop the fuselage behind the cockpit, another pair in an underbelly turret toward the rear, two machine guns in the nose, two more in the tail, and openings on either side of the rear fuselage for waist guns. The Renzan was an airborne fortress.

He pointed to the twenty-millimeter turret guns. “Are those Type Ninety-Nines?”

“Exactly,” said Onda. “You know it?”

Yagi nodded. “I had some time on one of the Ninety-Nines on our ship.”

“Yagi-heisō shot down a Hellcat,” said Kan.

“Did you!” Onda looked at the navy man with renewed interest. “Well done! We won’t be using a full crew of course, so some of the guns are going.

The navigator can man the nose gun, the flight engineer the top turret gun there, maybe one more.

The main thing is that there is plenty of room for that .

” Onda jerked his head toward the boxcar parked on the siding nearby.

“For the Daikon,” Yagi prompted.

Onda chuckled. “Excellent. A code name. Yes, plenty of room for the Daikon. That will be the responsibility of you two, to prepare the Daikon and install it in the aircraft. An interservice project, Yagi-heisō. Full cooperation, with you representing the Navy.”

Kan observed a flicker of pride break through Yagi’s usual taciturn look, then saw his eyes suspiciously narrow.

And he knew why. If Yagi, a mere petty officer second class, one step above seaman, was the extent of Navy involvement, wasn’t that a slight to the service?

He scrutinized Onda’s face for any hint of sarcasm but saw none.

They skirted the Renzan’s chest-high rear wheels and continued around to the starboard side.

There were two men on a scaffold, applying paint to the underside of the wing.

Black paint. It gave Kan a sudden feeling of dread, the awful realization that men would take off in this aircraft with the intention of never returning.

“The pilot,” he said, lowering his voice. “Has someone been chosen?”

Onda smiled and modestly lowered his head. “Colonel Sagara has granted me the honor of volunteering. I flew with the 81st Reconnaissance Squadron before joining his staff.”

“Oh,” Kan exclaimed, taken aback. He controlled himself and gave the proper reply. “Then I should offer you my congratulations.”

Onda nodded his thanks.

“Congratulations,” said Yagi, his voice flat.

A moment of awkward silence. Finally Kan asked, “And the rest of the crew?”

“Nothing decided yet apart from me,” said Onda.

“But I think we can expect to offer five more places. The Renzan would normally take a crew of ten, but for this mission a crew of six should be enough. Colonel Sagara intends to invite a volunteer from the Navy, Yagi-heisō. To make it even more of an interservice operation. I told him that would be a splendid idea.”

Yagi grunted.

Onda slapped his head. “Oh, I almost forgot.” He placed his arm around Kan’s shoulder for a private word. “About your wife, you’ll be pleased to hear that the Colonel has taken steps to improve her situation.”

Kan’s eyes grew wide, his heart skipping a beat. “She’s been released? Is she free?”

Onda smiled and nodded. “You see? We’re not unreasonable in the Imperial Army.”

Kan stepped back and made a low bow. “Thank you, Onda-tai-i,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“Oh, there’s no need to thank me. It was the Colonel’s doing. It was all Sagara-chūsa. Now, you must be hungry. What do you say to some lunch?”

A meal was brought to them in the office built against the inside wall of the hangar.

They ate in silence, Yagi and Onda wolfishly slurping.

Halfway through the meal, Kan realized that he too was actually enjoying his food and that his lower abdomen was no longer causing discomfort.

Surely this was confirmation that the cramps he had experienced were due not to radiation exposure, but to nervous tension—tension that had now fallen away with the good news that Noriko had been freed.

He couldn’t help smiling and giving Captain Onda another grateful nod. He would do what was expected, installing the Daikon on the plane. Then he would return to Noriko and put Onda and Sagara and their desperate mission out of his mind.

The meal finished, they settled back with cigarettes and tea, Kan taking surreptitious glances at Onda. There was no apprehension in the man’s face, only enthusiasm and a satisfied smile. The prospect of sacrificing his life on a suicide mission did not seem to disturb him at all.

Kan’s gaze shifted to a map on the wall, which he had noticed Yagi contemplating. It showed the farthest extent of the Japanese empire in 1942, from the Aleutians in the north to New Guinea in the south, from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific to Burma in the west.

“Have you chosen the target?” he asked.

Onda hesitated, then shook his head. “All I can tell you is that it will be a long mission and will be flown over enemy-held territory to a great extent. So getting there without being spotted—I think we can manage if we fly at night. That’s why we’re painting the plane black, to make it more difficult to see at night.

We fly at high altitude, under the cover of darkness, and there will be no risk of being seen before the final approach. ”

He leaned forward to grind his cigarette into the ashtray, a decorative affair with a dial thermometer attached.

“But now the timing,” he said, his brow furrowing.

“That could be a problem. We need to be able to see when we arrive at the target, so that means getting there precisely at daybreak. If we’re early, we’ll arrive in the dark and won’t be able to see.

If we’re late, it will be full daylight and we’ll be exposed.

” Onda waved his hand at the Renzan filling the hangar outside the office.

“We know what it can do, how long the journey should take in normal conditions. But at high altitude, things can be unpredictable. The air currents up there can be strong, so I really don’t know what to expect.

A headwind or a tailwind—that could add or subtract an hour or more to the journey.

And that kind of uncertainty…” He frowned and shook his head.

The mention of air currents brought to Kan’s mind another research project, funded by the Imperial Army far more lavishly than Project Ni-Go.

He had heard it spoken of on several occasions, usually with a touch of envy, when Ni-Go’s tight budget was being discussed.

Perhaps it would be helpful to Onda. He was deeply thankful for Noriko’s release and wanted to appear helpful.

“Are you aware of Project Fu-Go?” he asked.

“Fu-Go?” Onda shook his head. “Was that some sort of weapon?”

“Balloons,” said Kan. “They did a great deal of research into high-altitude air currents.”