Page 44 of Daikon
TWENTY-THREE
THE RENZAN’S FOUR ENGINES COUGHED to life, belching black smoke, then rising to a collective roar.
The chocks were removed and the throttles advanced.
The bomber started taxiing through the night toward the south end of the runway where it would begin its takeoff, bouncing over ruts and potholes in the poorly maintained ground.
In the cockpit, bathed in red light to preserve the crews’ night vision, Captain Onda’s knuckles were white on the yoke as he steered.
The shortage of fuel had not allowed him a practice flight, and the size of the bomber was still unnerving, the view from his right-side pilot’s seat comparable to looking out a second-story window.
But he only had to get the behemoth into the air. He would not have to land it.
Ten meters back, Keizo Kan sat in the radio operator’s compartment, at the desk on the left, Petty Officer Yagi to his right.
They were wearing rabbit-fur-lined flight suits that the crew had donned before climbing into the plane.
The bulky outfit was hot here on the ground on a sultry August evening, and the plug emerging from the hip added to the discomfort.
But it would all be needed shortly, together with the fur-lined leather helmet and oxygen mask that Kan had not yet put on.
When the unpressurized Renzan reached high altitude, the air would be thin and the temperature would fall to well below freezing.
Kan looked around the small compartment.
The lamp over the desk, red filter in place, gave everything a flat, washed-out appearance.
In the forward bulkhead he was facing was the door opening onto the bomb bay and the catwalk leading forward to the flight deck.
At the base of the bulkhead, emerging from a hole near the floor, was the wire.
It was connected to the Daikon’s manual trigger, the guillotine switch mounted on the desk at which Kan was sitting, a bracket across it locking it down in the “off” position.
When the time came, all Kan had to do was remove the precautionary twist of wire he had added, lift the locking bracket, and throw the switch. That was it.
We are also fighting enemies within, enemies occupying the highest levels of our own leadership who have lost their courage and seek to surrender.
Kan continued to ponder Colonel Sagara’s startling remark.
He must have been referring to a division on the Supreme War Council.
This mission he had been coerced into joining—Kan had assumed it was an act of futility on the inevitable path to Japan’s destruction.
But what if that path wasn’t inevitable?
What if there was another possible outcome?
What if the Supreme War Council was split, with some of its members arguing for surrender?
Kan did not consider them enemies if that was the case.
If they sought to end the war, shouldn’t he want to help them?
His eyes returned to the guillotine switch.
He imagined reaching out and retracting the locking bracket.
He imagined throwing the switch and closing the circuit.
He imagined the pulse of electricity passing through the wire, the charge detonating in the gun barrel below him and driving the uranium projectile into the target.
The bomber reached the end of the runway and turned into the gentle breeze wafting down from the hills.
Looking forward from the cockpit, Captain Onda saw only shadows as he advanced the throttles, pushing the Renzan’s four engines to full power.
Then soft points of light began to appear, blinking on to form parallel lines leading forward into the darkness.
They were shaded lanterns held by airfield personnel lining the runway, a pair of men every hundred meters to guide the aircraft on takeoff.
They had taken up position as the crew boarded the plane.
A throbbing sound on the left. Engine Two was not running smoothly. Onda checked his gauges. The rpms were low, barely 2,200. He waited as the flight engineer, Lieutenant Otani, increased the fuel-air mixture. The throbbing subsided.
Onda released the brakes. The big plane started moving, engines straining. Slowly, heavily, it gathered momentum, pounded every time its wheels hit a rut, Onda using the entire length of the runway to get his speed up to 180 kilometers per hour.
The last pair of lanterns marking the end of the runway was approaching. Onda pulled back on the yoke. The nose lifted off the ground, a final jolt, and they staggered into the air. Ahead lay the western hills rising from the Kanto Plain. Onda kept the Renzan in a steady climb to 800 meters.
“Landing gear up.”
A whine below as the wheels retracted. A banking turn to the left, the Renzan coming about as it continued to climb. Entering scattered clouds now, altitude 2,000 meters.
The last wisps of clouds disappeared, leaving only a canopy of black dotted with stars.
Altitude 5,000 meters, rate of ascent slowing.
Onda, watching the creeping altimeter needle, realized that they would not be able to reach 10,000 meters as planned.
The engines were underperforming. This was concerning.
Maximum altitude was not critical to the mission, but ground speed was.
They needed to maintain 320 kilometers per hour to reach Tinian at dawn.
A turn to the left, the aircraft easing onto the course it would follow for the first half of the flight, bearing 150 degrees, south-southeast. Altitude 7,000 meters. Onda was feeling the cold now. Unseen down below in the darkness, the Japanese coastline was slipping away.
In the radio operator’s compartment, Kan retracted the red filter from the lamp on the desk, bathing the space in a more natural warm glow. His left ear was hurting. He worked his jaw, trying to relieve the pressure.
A crackle in his earphones. Captain Onda: “Kan-sensei. Yagi-heisō. Make sure your suits are plugged in. And you should have your oxygen masks on.”
Kan clipped his mask into place. It smelled vaguely of vomit.
He plugged the cable emerging from his flight suit into the socket by his seat and turned up the rheostat to get the electricity flowing.
Within minutes his suit began to feel warm.
Outside the aircraft the temperature was ten degrees below zero.
A jolt passed through the plane. It made Kan jump, like something had touched an exposed nerve.
A pause, then the Renzan began to vibrate and buck.
These were the air currents Onda had told them in the briefing to expect, the headwinds that could add an hour or more to their flight.
The turbulence lasted a few minutes, then subsided as they leveled out at 8,000 meters.
It all depended now on the navigator, Lieutenant Kamibeppu, to plot their course in the darkness and get them to the target.
Kan visualized him doing it now, crouched in the glass nose of the plane, using a sextant to take fixes on the stars, then working with compass, flight calculator, and chart.
They would continue on their present heading for 1,300 kilometers to latitude 24 degrees, then come onto bearing 170 degrees, south by east, for another 1,000 kilometers, to latitude 14.
5. Then they would turn due west to Tinian, the rising sun to their back.
One o’clock in the morning. They had been in the air for two hours.
Kan slipped his watch back into the pocket of his flight suit, contemplating Colonel Sagara’s words and the terrible choice that he was now seeing before him.
We are also fighting enemies within, enemies occupying the highest levels of our own leadership who have lost their courage and seek to surrender.
If steps were being taken to surrender, the success of this mission would only prolong the war, which he hated.
Kan had no doubt about that. He himself would help to prolong the war and in turn the suffering of the Japanese people, everyone that he knew.
But if he detonated the bomb now, before they reached the target…
He was a dead man anyway. They were all dead. So why not just do it?
Navigator Kamibeppu’s voice in his headphones: “Thirty degrees.”
Kan looked over at Yagi. The petty officer’s eyes were closed, but he was awake, his gloved right hand rhythmically moving, rolling in his imagination the dice he had neglected to bring.
On the ground, in a quiet moment, Kan would have asked him what he thought.
It would be easier if they did it together.
But here, enveloped in the roar of the engines—what could be said beyond a few shouted words?
Kan returned to gazing at the guillotine switch, an arm’s reach away, directly in front of his face. To stare at it until dawn surely would drive him insane.
Another glance at Yagi. His eyes were still closed.
Kan pulled off his left glove and leaned forward and removed the wire from the switch, the extra precaution he had added back at Tama Airfield.
All that remained was to lift the locking bracket and throw it.
Should he do it now? He leaned back and pondered this for a while, visualizing the moment, his heartbeat thundering in his ears, louder than the engines.