Page 35 of Daikon
EIGHTEEN
COLONEL SAGARA LAY ON THE cot in his War Ministry office, an intravenous bottle feeding fluid into his arm.
It had been thirty-six hours since his return from Hikari, and he was feeling much better, although his left side was still weak.
The spell he had suffered had likely been a stroke, the doctor had told him, possibly brought on by severe dehydration.
But if he took care, he should expect to fully recover.
The colonel had no intention of taking care.
The situation was too critical for that.
It had started with the news received during the night that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan.
The latest reports from the Kwantung Army, which Sagara was going through as he waited for the bottle to empty, were all bad.
Soviet forces were crossing into Manchukuo all along the frontier.
Soviet mechanized units were driving hard across the steppes. Japanese forces were being pushed back.
Sagara cast the pages aside and picked up the newspaper. There, on the front page, was the first authorized report of Hiroshima’s destruction, released for publication in newspapers that morning to dispel the rumors that were swirling around.
“New-type bombs were used by a small number of B-29s that raided Hiroshima on Monday morning,” read the announcement.
“They were reportedly dropped by parachute and exploded before reaching the ground, causing considerable damage to the city. The explosive power of the new bomb is now under investigation, but it is considered that it should not be made light of. Authorities assume that more of these bombs will be used against Japan and are therefore speedily preparing countermeasures. In the meantime the public is advised to wear light-colored clothing, preferably white, as this seems to mitigate the effects of this weapon. Adding a roof to entrenched positions and liberally covering it with dirt is also recommended, as the effect of the bomb does not appear to penetrate soil.”
The communiqué, based in part on eyewitness accounts, contained several inaccuracies that Sagara was content to let stand, starting with the statement that multiple bombs had been dropped.
It was better to encourage the public to think this.
The truth that a single bomb had wrought so much destruction might cause undue agitation.
As for the safety recommendations, he had no reason to doubt them.
Multiple reports from Hiroshima confirmed that the bomb had not penetrated more than two or three centimeters into the ground.
The roots of plants at this shallow depth appeared untouched.
And white clothing, strangely, did indeed seem to offer some sort of protection.
Photographic evidence of this had been received at the War Ministry the previous day, including an image of an eleven-year-old boy who had been injured at a distance of four kilometers.
His exposed face, arms, and shoulders were all badly burned.
But his torso, covered by a white singlet, was unmarked.
The boy was also blind, his retinas seared beyond any hope of recovery. He had been gazing up at the parachutes when the bomb detonated, facing the flash that Sagara had observed at Yuu Airfield forty kilometers away. Even at that distance the light had seemed to fill the whole sky.
Light. Hikari .
The colonel thoughtfully nodded.
A weapon of light.
He had recovered a weapon of light from a town named Light. A coincidence? No. It was a sign.
The door opened. It was his clerk.
“Your car is ready, Colonel. Shall I get the doctor?”
Sagara stiffly got up and yanked the needle from his arm. “Don’t bother.”
He kept his eyes down as he crossed the lobby, moving as quickly as he could, walking with a slight limp.
He did not want to invite any encounters.
He had already had an unpleasant moment with Colonel Takeshita, in a renewed state of agitation over his actions at Hikari.
Mustering all his patience, Sagara had begun again to tell his version of events and his justifications, only for Takeshita to rudely cut him off.
“I don’t want to hear it!” Takeshita removed a paper from his pocket. “Do you know what this is? An official summons to the War Minister’s office! General Anami, my brother-in-law, has sent me an official summons!”
Sagara exited the War Ministry and climbed into the back seat of his waiting staff car. “Nichigeki,” he ordered.
The driver turned around, doubtful. “The Nichigeki music hall, Colonel?”
“Yes, the Nichigeki! Go!”
Sagara settled into his seat and began to thumb through the information on Project Fu-Go that he had extracted from the War Ministry files.
The project was dead, canceled back in April.
But perhaps some value might be squeezed from it yet, if its data on high-altitude air currents, requested by Captain Onda, contributed to the success of the mission.
He looked out the car window.
They were passing the moat of the Imperial Palace, stone walls just beyond.
The Nichigeki Theater was in Yurakucho, near the southeast corner of the Imperial Palace.
Colonel Sagara had been told he could meet two former staff members here when he’d called the Technical Research Institute to ask for further information on Fu-Go.
The massive Art Deco structure, once the largest and finest theater in Asia, had been battered in the air raids but was still standing.
It rose to a height of seven stories above the rubble-strewn street and descended an additional three floors underground, making it one of the few buildings in the city with enough interior space to accommodate the unique war work that had been done here.
The main entrance door was unlocked by a guard, releasing a pungent odor from inside.
He returned a minute later with an Imperial Army major named Kishi and a civilian meteorologist Kishi introduced as Mr. Yonetsu.
They had both worked here until four months before and had just been ordered back to gather up any sensitive materials.
They had been informed that the colonel might be stopping by and were glad to answer his questions.
As Kishi and Yonetsu led the way through the lobby, Sagara realized that the smell he had initially noted permeated the whole building—something boiled and earthy, with undertones of turpentine and mildew.
He glanced at the posters still adorning the walls as they passed, the largest being for the 1942 smash hit film The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya.
The thought occurred to Sagara that this was a good omen.
Then they were entering the cathedral-like auditorium and he was looking around.
Light angled down from the broken windows high up on the walls, no longer covered with thick velvet curtains.
The shafts of illumination, motes of dust drifting about, revealed a hall from which all the seats had been stripped, exposing the bare concrete floor.
In the center of this space, watched over by the seats in the balcony, lay the scattered remnants of a workshop and the deflated corpses of a half-dozen immense white balloons.
Fusen bakudan. Balloon bombs. These were the remains of Project Fu-Go.
“Ten meters in diameter when inflated,” said Major Kishi. Yonetsu stood a respectful step back.
Colonel Sagara bent down and hefted the edge of the nearest balloon. Like everything else, it was covered with a layer of dust.
“Washi paper,” said Kishi. “Four layers glued together with potato paste. Initial fabrication was done mostly in schools. We used high school girls. When the balloons were finished, they were sent here and to the Ryogoku Sumo Hall for inflation testing. After we checked them out, they were shipped to launching stations along the coast.”
Sagara nodded as he took it all in. “What sort of payload?”
“One hundred forty kilos,” said Kishi. “Including the ballast. The actual explosive material—most carried an incendiary package, twenty kilos, and a fifteen-kilo anti-personnel bomb.”
Sagara gestured toward some tanks lining the far wall. “Is that the gas you used?”
“Hydrogen, yes. It’s what finished us off, when the B-29s knocked out our hydrogen plants. No more gas. The program had to be suspended in April.”
April. A bad month, Sagara mused. “How many were launched altogether?”
“More than nine thousand,” said Kishi, swelling with pride.
“And how many actually reached a target?”
Kishi deflated a little. “We estimated about ten percent. But we’re not really sure.”
Sagara frowned as he looked about at the detritus of the project.
According to the information he had read in the car, each balloon had cost ten thousand yen to manufacture.
More than nine thousand balloons launched, each costing ten thousand yen, with 10 percent reaching a target, a figure he was sure was inflated. It added up to a very costly failure.
“All right,” he said. “Tell me about these air currents you studied. What would an aircraft encounter, heading south from Japan at high altitude over the Philippine Sea?”
They moved to a glue-stained worktable at the foot of the stage, a convenient shaft of light falling upon it.
Mr. Yonetsu, the civilian meteorologist, took over, producing a large map and spreading it out.
It showed the entire Pacific Ocean, the east coast of China and Japan on the left, Hawaii in the center, North America on the right.
He then unrolled a semi-transparent sheet of onionskin paper and spread it out over the map, superimposing a series of wavy lines on top.
“We developed this chart of high-altitude air currents from the work Professor Oishi began in the 1920s,” he said.
“He published his findings in Esperanto, so hardly anyone took notice outside Japan. Even now, the Americans are only starting to learn about this. From their B-29 pilots, flying so high.”