Page 6 of Daikon
THREE
PETTY OFFICER YAGI PEDALED AWAY from the crash site with three of the rings of unidentified metal lashed to the back of his bicycle. He took Seaman Nakamura with him. The test had been Nakamura’s idea, after all. Seaman Wada was left behind to guard the unusual bomb.
“Take us to the chemistry classroom,” Yagi brusquely ordered, unlashing the plum-colored rings. He had them tied up in a cloth, like a little container of ashes.
“The chemistry classroom?” The caretaker appeared to be simple.
“The chemistry classroom!” Yagi snapped. “The chemistry classroom!”
The old man turned and shuffled off to fetch a ring of keys from the guardroom. Another creeping walk down an echoing hallway and a good deal of fumbling, and he unlocked a door.
Yagi scanned the classroom. It appeared to be largely intact. “Do the sinks work?” he asked. “Is the water turned on?”
“The water is on,” said the old man. “But the pressure is low.”
Yagi and Nakamura stepped inside. The caretaker, curiosity piqued, was eager to follow. Yagi closed the door in his face.
It was a laboratory classroom: teacher’s desk and blackboard at the front, desks and chairs for thirty students in the center, a Formica-topped counter down one side and against the back wall.
Dust lay thick on the desks and the dark wood of the floor and floated in the sunlight filtering through the grime-covered windows.
It had been only two years since Nakamura had studied in a classroom like this.
A large glass beaker and a set of scales would be required.
They found them in a cabinet under the back counter.
The beaker was a three-liter model with precise graduations.
The scales, a well-made German set, could measure weights of up to ten kilos.
Nakamura set them both on the counter. Yagi meanwhile was looking through the books on a shelf at the front.
He did not see the textbook Nakamura remembered, Introduction to Chemistry with a green cover.
He found something just as good, however, a volume with the required table printed in the back.
With the book open on the counter, Nakamura placed the first of the metal rings on the scales. It was the thickness of only two fingers and not much wider than his palm. But it was remarkably heavy. Could it be even as heavy as gold?
He tweaked the scales and waited for the balance to settle. “Weight 3,965 grams,” he said. Yagi jotted down the number in his notebook.
Nakamura held the glass beaker over the nearby sink and began to fill it with water, slowly dribbling in the final few drops until the level was at exactly one liter. Then he carefully lowered the ring into the water until it was resting on the bottom, fully submerged.
He squinted at the graduated markings on the glass. The water level had risen to 1.21 liters, perhaps a hair more. “Displacement is 210 cubic centimeters,” he said.
Yagi jotted down the number and formulated the problem: 3,965 grams displaces 210 cubic centimeters of water. So 3,965 divided by 210…
He set to work on the longhand division.
So did Nakamura, writing on the counter with a stub of pencil.
Their answers, Nakamura finishing before Yagi, did not agree.
They rechecked their calculations and Yagi found to his annoyance that he had been wrong.
Nakamura was correct. The specific gravity of the metal ring was 18. 88.
They turned their attention to the table in the back of the textbook.
Water was listed at the top, with a specific gravity of 1.
Aluminum was a little farther down at 2.
6, copper at 8.8, silver at 10.5, lead at 11.
5, mercury at 13.5. There was not much below that, just a handful of truly heavy substances down at the bottom of the list. Only one had a specific gravity in the range of eighteen: 18.
8, to be precise. It came just before gold at 19. 3.
“ Uran ,” Yagi read. The name was unfamiliar. He turned to Nakamura. “What do you know about uran?”
“Nothing,” said Nakamura, slowly shaking his head.
Upon his return to Hikari Special Attack Unit, Petty Officer Yagi reported first to the executive officer, Lieutenant Miyata. Miyata then took him to Lieutenant Commander Sadayoshi Koreeda’s office to report directly to the commanding officer of the base.
“Very strange,” murmured Koreeda, scrutinizing Yagi’s notes and sketch as the petty officer stood at attention in front of his desk. “And you found no explosive material inside?”
“Nothing I could see.” said Yagi. “Just those rings of uran at the end of a long tube running through the center.”
“And how do you know this is uran?” said Koreeda, eyeing the plum-colored rings Yagi had set on his desk.
Yagi explained the experiment he and Nakamura had performed and was rewarded with an appreciative nod. “It was Seaman Nakamura’s idea,” he added, hesitating only a little.
“Perhaps it’s some sort of measuring apparatus,” ventured Lieutenant Miyata. “The prongs on the nose, they could be antennae. For relaying a signal back to the aircraft.”
“Possibly. Perhaps.” Koreeda considered Yagi’s sketch for another moment, then shook his head. “No, a measuring apparatus would have a parachute attached. It would need to fall slowly as it took readings. I think this must be a bomb. A very strange bomb. The interior… it’s just an empty tube?”
Yagi nodded. “Just an empty tube. Polished and smooth, like a gun barrel.”
“And the outer casing?”
“Heavy steel. Painted black. In three sections, bolted together.”
“Did these sections appear designed to break open?”
Yagi thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. The casing is strong, hardly dented. The bolts would have to be removed to open it up.”
“And you… you feel all right?”
Yagi’s eyes darted to the commander’s, realizing what Koreeda was thinking.
“I feel fine,” he said.
“And your men,” said Koreeda. “No ill effects?”
Yagi shook his head.
“Well, perhaps then we can rule out a biological weapon.”
Koreeda picked up one of the uran rings and marveled again at the weight. He tapped it, tested its hardness with his thumbnail, then sniffed it.
He turned to his XO. “Lieutenant Miyata, send Yagi in a truck to recover this object. I want it brought back here. It is to be wrapped up in a tarpaulin. Double layers.”
Dismissed from Lieutenant Commander Koreeda’s office, Petty Officer Yagi fueled one of the base trucks with a precious quarter tank of diesel and set out with Seaman Nakamura and two new recruits to return to the crash site.
They took the portable tripod hoist and winch from the workshop, together with additional tools and blocks of wood for stabilizing the bomb once they got it onto the back of the truck, and a tarpaulin for encasing it as per Koreeda’s instructions.
To Yagi’s amazement, the bomb was too heavy for the hoist and the winch, which could handle a maximum load of three thousand kilos.
The only way to move it was to lift one end, put blocks under it, then lift the other end.
In this manner the bomb was laboriously raised step by step up out of the rice paddy, a process that took more than two hours.
It took another hour to raise it from the road up onto the back of the truck, the leaf springs straining when they took the full weight.
Twilight was coming on when the truck set out with its load for the drive back to Hikari, Yagi not exceeding twenty kilometers an hour and slowing to a walking pace on the rougher stretches.
Arriving back at base, he reported first to Lieutenant Miyata, then proceeded with Miyata to the main workshop to get an accurate weight for the object using the heavy-duty hoist.
Commander Koreeda by this time had come over from his office for a personal inspection. After conferring with Miyata and reassuring himself that the object wasn’t a biological weapon, he moved closer to look it over, then peered inside the open end using Yagi’s flashlight, handed to him by Miyata.
“Total weight 4,300 kilos,” the lieutenant informed Koreeda. The commander looked up in surprise at the number. It was four times the bomb load of an Imperial Navy heavy bomber.
Yagi, smeared from head to foot with dirt and sweat, had to make an effort to stand at attention beside the truck. Another few minutes, he glumly thought, and the mess hall would be closed. If dinner hadn’t been set aside for him, someone was going to get punched in the head.
“All right,” said Koreeda, returning the flashlight to Miyata, who in turn passed it back to Yagi. “Secure it in one of the old workshops down by the water. I want it well away from the main buildings.”
Yagi released the tension from his back and climbed up into the truck.
He heard Commander Koreeda’s voice behind him: “Well done, Lieutenant Miyata.”
Returning to his office, Commander Koreeda drafted a cable. “Send this to Kure,” he said, handing it to his clerk. “And to the Second General Army as well.”
Kure Naval District, headquartered at Kure eighty kilometers to the northeast, encompassed the whole of southern Japan, including Hikari.
The Second General Army encompassed a similar region.
That Koreeda included it in his communication was in line with the Army-Navy Cooperation Agreement signed four months before.
The cable was sent. It read: Possible new-type bomb recovered from B-29 crash site, Hikari, Yamaguchi Prefecture. Length: 3.04 m. Diameter: 71 cm. Weight: 4,300 kg. Metal tube like gun barrel, diameter 16 cm, runs through center. Metal rings removed from inside, 25 kg, identified as uran.
The communication attracted little attention at Kure.
Vice Admiral Kanazawa and his staff were still preoccupied with the devastation wrought by American and British aircraft, which had sunk every surviving large Japanese warship still in the harbor just two weeks before.
No one even bothered to request confirmation of the remarkable weight, which Koreeda had half expected.
The cable was routinely forwarded to the office of the Navy Chief of Staff in Tokyo, but no particular notice was taken there either.
Koreeda’s message met with similar indifference at Second General Army headquarters in Hiroshima.
The staff there had a myriad of more pressing things to worry about as they prepared for the coming American invasion and the final decisive battle for the homeland.
As at Kure, the message was forwarded to Tokyo, in this case to the Ministry of War.
It was there, at the War Ministry, that someone finally took notice.
His name was Lieutenant Colonel Shingen Sagara, an Imperial Army officer in the Ordnance Bureau.
He was impressed by the reported weight of the recovered object, further evidence of the massive capabilities of the B-29.
It was the final sentence, however, that attracted his particular interest.
“Uran,” he murmured, running his thumb down the scar on his lip.
Uranium.
He read the word with understanding. He knew what it meant.