Page 9 of Daikon

FIVE

Kan began watering the plants, hauling pails back and forth from the tap nearest the water tank, which somehow was still standing.

He hurried along at a shuffle, forearms straining, grunting like the workmen he had disdained in his youth.

His flapping shirt was soon wet through.

Sweat streaming down his forehead caused his Harold Lloyd eyeglasses to slide down his nose.

Watering finished, he sat on the blackened steps to rest. As he gazed at the plants and his breathing slowed, his mind went back to his home in Asakusa.

It had been a nice little property near Senso-ji Temple, a well-built old house with space behind for a garden, six kilometers from the Riken, which he said he would walk every day for his health but rarely did.

The garden. They had planted flowers there together, grubbing in the dirt with smiles on their faces. Chrysanthemums. And cosmos. And roses. She liked roses. Then they sat on the back veranda and drank barley tea as they admired their work.

The back veranda. It had been their quiet retreat from the city, then their place of shared joy, for it was there that she had told him she was pregnant.

It was in an evening in late spring, the sky shading from coral to violet.

His eyes went wide at the news; then he burst out laughing and seized her in his arms. He had been so inept when they were courting, such an utter fool.

And yet it had been his own awkward words that she now whispered, the words that had become the most meaningful expression of the love that existed between them.

Garbo loves Taylor, she had said.

And he had replied, no longer foolish: And Taylor loves Garbo.

He rose from the steps and returned to the tap to wash his face and meager torso and rinse out his shirt. He handled the garment with care, like fine silk. Wartime clothing had become so shoddy that it could not stand up to a vigorous scrub.

He was still at the tap when Miss Yokoyama found him.

“A Colonel Sagara at the War Ministry just called,” she said. “He wants to talk about Project Ni-Go. He says it’s urgent.”

Kan straightened up, anxiety sweeping through his body.

He had always had a nervous disposition, but lately it had become worse.

He tried to reason himself back to calmness.

If this colonel wanted to discuss Ni-Go, it was only natural that he should be sent for.

In the absence of Dr. Nishina, he was the only one left at the Riken with intimate knowledge of the work that had been done.

But why this interest now, months after the project’s demise?

Perhaps the summons was a trap, a way to get him to the War Ministry to be arrested.

Kan often wondered why he hadn’t yet been arrested, in the seven weeks since the Tokkō, the Thought Police, had come for his wife.

“You’ll need to change your clothes,” Miss Yokoyama gently prompted, for Kan was just standing there, seemingly lost. His mind had been badly affected by the strain of the past several months.

“Yes,” replied Kan, looking down at his worn-out work pants, baggy and cinched up with a piece of string. “Yes, I must change.”

He returned to his room in the surviving dormitory building to comb his hair and put on a presentable outfit, a People’s Uniform minus the jacket because it was too hot.

His prewar leather shoes, resoled three times, were the only quality item of apparel he still owned.

Beyond that there were a few books on a shelf, three dented metal bowls, a handful of utensils, some odds and ends, and an urn.

That was the extent of Keizo Kan’s worldly possessions.

Since time was pressing, Miss Yokoyama urged him to take Dr. Nishina’s bicycle for the five-kilometer journey south through the city.

It was the quickest way to get to Ichigaya, with streetcar service curtailed and electric trains no longer running into what was left of downtown.

Dr. Nishina wouldn’t need it. He was away until Sunday.

Kan exited the Riken’s front gate, pumping hard at the pedals, past the weathered sign giving the facility’s full name, Rikagaku Kenkyūjo, from which the contraction Riken was derived—the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Tokyo’s Komagome district.

He passed the post office and the elementary school, now closed, and turned south at the police station.

It had been the first place he had gone to look for his wife back in June.

The way south along Hakusan-dori was clear now, the debris from the firebombings pushed into mounds along the side of the road.

The pavement itself remained damaged from the intense heat.

Kan had to weave from side to side as he went, skirting ruts and potholes, passing the occasional bicycle and cart but mostly people on foot.

On both sides, through Komagome and past the Toyo University campus, through Maruyama Shinmachi and Hongo, there was nothing but ruin—empty shells of burned-out concrete and brick buildings, empty lots where wooden structures had been.

Some of the scorched blank spaces, as at the Riken, had been transformed into vegetable gardens, a return to primitive existence in what had been until recently the world’s third largest city.

Up ahead loomed the low tiers of Korakuen Stadium.

Kan had brought his four-year-old daughter, Aiko, here to see the circus on New Year’s Day in 1943.

And he had returned with several of his coworkers for the sumo summer basho on a rare day off in 1944.

The usual venue for the basho, the Ryogoku Kokugikan, had been turned into a military factory by then, and the wrestlers looked depressingly thin.

He continued on to the next corner and turned west to follow the train line, the Kanda River and Suidobashi Station on his left, the roof over the station platform burned completely away.

A little farther along, he passed the district police station.

He had been here as well. He had visited half a dozen police stations in the city—bowing low, his eyes downcast—as he made inquiries about his wife and learned nothing.

Seven weeks and he still did not know why she had been arrested or where she was being detained.

There was only one road curving up Ichigaya Heights to the Imperial Japanese Army’s walled compound on top.

Kan dismounted and walked his bicycle up it, after being cleared at the guardhouse at the foot of the hill.

By the time he reached the second guardhouse at the top he was starting to tremble.

He gave his name to the guard in a quavering voice and was allowed to pass on, the guard pointing him to a large building off to the right.

Kan proceeded through the complex on foot, pushing the bicycle.

It seemed irreverent, perhaps even criminal, to ride it up here.

He looked around as he went, overawed by the two dozen buildings, the largest among them the Military Academy, Imperial General Headquarters, and the Ministry of War.

It took him a moment to realize what was so striking.

The entire compound, eight hundred meters long and five hundred meters across, was undamaged.

Trees on the hillside leading up had been burned, but the buildings here atop Ichigaya Heights were untouched.

The War Ministry was painted in a patchwork of gray to break up its outline.

It stood three stories high and was built in the form of a rectangle, a hundred meters long on the front and not much less on the sides.

There were thirty-six windows on each floor across the front.

Add the same number across the back, plus twenty-two windows on one side and twenty-two on the other, equals one hundred sixteen, times three floors.

Kan did the math in his head, trying to settle his nerves as he made his way to the building’s front entrance. A tower rose above the stone portico to a height of six stories, a clock at the top, minute hand at twenty, hour hand at nine.

Four hours slow.

Or it had stopped altogether.

Keizo Kan was aware that he was visibly shaking as he bowed and stood in front of Colonel Sagara’s desk. Sagara motioned him into a seat, ordered tea to be brought, then launched into an interrogation.

“Project Ni-Go,” he began, tapping the file under his hand. “I’m going to ask you some questions.”

“Yes, Sagara-chūsa,” said Kan, looking down at his hands, pressed on the top of his knees.

“The explosive nature of uranium. Explain it to me.”

Kan risked a glance up at the colonel. Sagara’s eyes were on him, intense and unblinking, his finger tapping a rapid cadence on his desk. He seemed genuinely intent on getting an answer, not on making an arrest.

“Uranium,” Keizo Kan stammered. “Uranium is… It… Uranium has—”

He stopped. He took a deep breath. He tried again.

“Uranium… is mainly composed of uranium-238 atoms. Ninety-two protons and 146 neutrons equals 238. Uranium also contains a second type of atom in small amounts, less than one percent, uranium-235. Ninety-two protons and 143 neutrons equal 235. And there are also occasional stray neutrons.”

He paused and drew in another breath. He was starting to calm down, his hands no longer shaking. He was more comfortable in his element, talking like this.

“When a stray neutron encounters a U-238 atom,” he continued, “nothing happens. But when it encounters a rare U-235 atom, it attaches itself to it and the atom becomes U-236, which is unstable and breaks apart, releasing three additional neutrons and generating a small amount of energy. In natural uranium, nothing more happens after that, because there are so few U-235 atoms for the released neutrons to react with.”

“Less than one percent,” Sagara said.

Kan nodded. “Yes, less than one percent of U-235 in natural uranium.”

“And in Project Ni-Go, you were attempting to increase that concentration.”