1945 (17 page)

Jesus Christ, Joe Nomura thought in admiration, if only the police at home could arrive as quickly as the planes had. He chuckled and wondered just how his new companion would react to having his life saved by a one-armed Jap. Then he realized something else. He, a Japanese American, had just killed two of his brethren. What he found most interesting was that he felt no remorse. They weren't his cousins; they were the enemy. Fuck 'em.

Col. Tadashi Sakei forced himself to wait outside the local police station near Nagasaki while the local representatives of the
kempei
carried out their interrogations.

Normally,
kempei
questionings were carried out with some delicacy and subtlety, and over time, acknowledging that fear of pain and the dark unknown was often a greater motivator to confess than pain itself.

However, time was of the essence, and any recalcitrance on the part of those being questioned was being met with blows from fists, boots, and clubs. He noted that one enterprising young officer was getting some results by using lit cigarettes and burning matches jammed into sensitive parts of the suspect's anatomy, while another was carving chunks of skin off living flesh. As the interrogations went on, the
kempei
were becoming even more creative in their endeavors.

It was incredible that so much had gone wrong so quickly.

From all that had happened, it was simple to conclude that someone had betrayed Japan and that the bombing of the shrine where Hirohito was hidden was no random act.

The first thing they had to do was to find the traitor. Thus the
kempei
had arrested almost a score of men and women who were suspected of having pacifist tendencies. Sakei was relieved to note that most of them were Korean, and, therefore, neither Japanese nor trustworthy. He fervently hoped that the traitor would prove to be a Korean. He would be shamed if any true Japanese turned out to be the traitor.

The lieutenant in charge of the questioning came out of the small building they were using and walked up to Sakei. The lieutenant's arms were covered with blood, along with pieces of flesh and clumps of hair.

"What progress, Lieutenant? We must get on with this."

The lieutenant wiped his sticky hands with a rag. "Two more have confessed to being the traitor, but neither can tell me where the radio is. That means that they and the others were lying in their confessions to avoid the pain. We are continuing our efforts to extract the truth, but I am not confident that any of these people know anything at all. The traitor could have been one of those who already died under questioning, but I doubt that."

"Dammit." Sakei and the lieutenant returned to the building. This meant the traitor was still on the loose.

Sakei entered the building and was immediately assailed by the stench of blood and other body fluids. He looked about him and saw that half a dozen men and women had their hands tied behind them and were hung by their wrists from the roof beams with their feet just tantalizing inches off the floor. This dislocated their shoulders and made every part of their bodies vulnerable to assault.

They were naked and rivers of blood ran down their bodies from bruises, burns, and other open wounds. In a couple of cases Sakei could see where broken bones had split the surface of their skin. He could easily understand where people might confess to the most heinous of crimes if only to stop the agonies being inflicted on them, even if it brought on a swifter death.

Dead bodies were heaped in a corner. These looked at him through vacant eyes, at least the ones whose eyes hadn't been gouged out, and screamed soundlessly at him through gaping mouths where teeth had all been beaten out with hammers. One woman's breasts were bloody stumps, and severed fingers and toes were on the floor.

"You're right, Lieutenant, if they cannot give us the location of the radio, then they are nothing."

The
kempei
lieutenant bowed. "I will find more suspects, Colonel. We will find the traitor."

"Do that. Keep up the good work. In the meantime I will make other arrangements for the safety of our emperor."

The lieutenant beamed at the compliment. "Yes, Colonel. Do you have any special wishes for these people?" He gestured to the remaining prisoners.

"When you are done, kill them and dispose of the bodies where people can see what happens to those who are even suspected of treason."

The lieutenant grinned and saluted. Colonel Sakei left the building and walked the half mile down the dirt road to the compound where Hirohito was quartered.

He found the Son of Heaven well guarded in a cell. He was sitting quietly on the edge of his cot and reading a book. When he saw Sakei, Hirohito put down the book and stared at him.

"What now, Colonel, have you come to play chess with me?"

"No, Your Majesty."

"Why not? Are you afraid you will lose? You will lose, you know, just as you always have. You will lose everything, even Japan , through your foolishness."

Sakei held his temper in check. "Because of us, Majesty, Japan will live."

Hirohito smiled innocently. "Ah, yes. We will live, won't we? Just like when the bombs came and killed so many of your men. And you so foolishly believe a traitor has given away this location when you've got an entire battalion prancing around and making this little place look important to the American pilots. Yes, you are doing a marvelous job of keeping us alive. Very soon, you and all those with you will have succeeded so well that we will all be dead."

Sakei had to acknowledge that part of what Hirohito was saying was correct. It did not take five hundred men to guard the nearsighted and inoffensive Hirohito. It was one of several points that would immediately be corrected. "I will keep you alive, Majesty. We are moving you to a place of much greater safety. One that even the Americans will not dare to bomb."

Hirohito laughed tonelessly. "I doubt such a place exists on this planet, and certainly not in Japan."

Now it was Sakei's turn to smile. "It does, sir. Thanks to the Americans' strange sense of honor, we will find safety in a hospital that is closer to Nagasaki. The Americans will never bomb a hospital that boldly carries the sign of the Red Cross on its roof."

Sakei stood and called for a guard to assist the emperor in gathering his meager possessions.

Debbie had an open invitation to work in the furniture store and help Mr. Ginsberg with his bookkeeping. She did so during the fall whenever she had the time or needed the money. Thus, she didn't really particularly notice when no one called out to her and said hello as she entered the building that Saturday morning. She wasn't expected and Mr. G. and his sales staff of two were probably having a meeting, which, on a slow Saturday, frequently meant analyzing the weekend's football games. With soldiers returning to athletics, no one knew who had good teams or bad, but the consensus was that the collegiate reign of West Point and the Naval Academy was just about over.

She entered the back offices and hung up her coat. Then she heard a strange sound coming from Mr. G.'s personal office. The door was closed, which was unusual. Mr. G. had a thing about keeping it open so he could see what was happening. Curious, she tapped lightly before opening it. Mr. G. was seated behind his desk. He was slumped over and held his head in his hands. The normal disarray she teased him about was all over the floor, as if it had been swept there from his desk, which, for once, was almost bare.

Mr. G. looked up and she could see that he had been crying. For once she wished she had called before coming in. "Mr. G.? Are you okay?" God, what a dumb thing to say, she thought; of course he wasn't okay.

He looked at her for a moment. His eyes were pools of deepest sadness and, to her surprise, seemed to be tinged with rage. "Nothing is okay. Tell me, were the others afraid to enter, or were you not aware?"

Debbie took a seat in the wooden chair across from him. Aware of what? she wondered. "I just came in to do a little work. There was no one outside so I just walked in."

Ginsberg nodded. To her he looked as if he had aged a decade since she had last seen him only a few days earlier. "My faithful staff is doubtless across the street drinking coffee and waiting for me to calm down. A few minutes ago I was quite emotional. Do you wish to know why?"

"Yes," Debbie said timidly.

Mr. G. held a batch of papers in his hand. "I finally got these this morning. They came from a friend of mine in the International Red Cross in France. He's been trying to track down the family my wife and I had in Europe. You will notice, dear Debbie, that I used the past tense."

Debbie cringed. "I heard you."

"Twenty-one of our relatives were alive in Germany and Poland as of a few years ago. Some on the German side, my side, were imprisoned before the war, while those on my wife's side, in Poland, we had hoped were refugees who maybe had fled to Russia. Do you know how many are left?"

"No, sir."

"Four," he said in a rasping voice. "Four out of twenty-one. The ones who went to Buchenwald died a long time ago, only we were never informed. Notifying next of kin of dead Jews was not a Nazi priority. As near as my friend can tell, the people in camps like Buchenwald were worked very hard, fed very little, and finally died of malnutrition or any of the hundreds of diseases that will strike down a weakened body. If they were unable to work for their keep, they were beaten, sometimes beaten to death.

"My wife's people who lived in Poland were swept up by the Germans after the invasion and taken to a place in Poland the Germans called Auschwitz. Do you know what went on there?"

Debbie could only repeat herself. "No, sir."

She'd heard the stories, but, like most people, she'd found them too terrible to be true.

"My friend referred to it as a death factory that may have swallowed millions of victims, mainly Jews, and spat out only their ashes. When the inmates first entered the camp, the healthy were separated from the weak— like the proverbial wheat from the chaff— by some Nazi who had appointed himself God. The weak were stripped of their clothing and valuables and sent into what they were told were showers. When they were all together, they were gassed from the showers and died. Do you know what the healthy Jews had to do?"

Debbie shook her head.

"They had to get rid of the bodies. But first they plundered them for eyeglasses, gold fillings, nice hair, and anything else that might help Hitler. The clothing the dead left behind, even though much was just rags, was sent to German families who had lost possessions because of the bombing."

The thought of it sickened her. Paul had written to her of some of it. He'd seen a couple of the smaller camps and had told of emaciated Jewish refugees wandering Europe. She'd read other accounts in
Time
and elsewhere, but they were as if she were reading fiction. It couldn't happen to her or to someone she knew. Now she knew she'd been horribly wrong.

"But," Mr. Ginsberg sighed, "six survived."

"I thought you said four?"

"Six, and that is the cruelest irony. There were two others who made it through the hells of Auschwitz. They were Polish Jews, a brother and sister in their early twenties. When they returned to the village they'd lived in, the nice Catholic Poles beat them to death for having the temerity to try to reclaim the property that was once theirs. The Russians are in control in Poland, and they have no wish to prosecute anyone for the harmless act of killing Jews. Now that almost all the Jews in Europe are dead, no one cares."

Debbie sagged. She was both Catholic and Polish, and Mr. G. knew that. "I'm sorry. Do you want me to leave?"

He ignored her comment. "What frightens me, Debbie, is that I'm learning to hate after all these years of trying to be a good Jew and not make waves. The war is over but the killing goes on. Now I am convinced that it will never stop for Jews so long as we have to live with non-Jews." He caught the hurt look on her face but did not back off. "I know what others say about me, and the fact of your working here. They say I'm not a bad man even though I'm a Jew, don't they?"

Debbie recalled some of her parents' comments about Jews. Some of their comments were quite harsh. Jews had killed Christ. Jews cheated. Jews were kikes with funny noses. "What about the four?" she asked.

"Three young men and one young woman. The two men are from my wife's side, and the others, a brother and a sister, from mine. The two from my wife's side have already made it to Palestine, while the others are in internment camps in France . The young woman, by the way, was forced to be a prostitute for the German soldiers, even though sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews was forbidden according to Nazi law. Tell me, what is the difference between a concentration camp and an internment camp? Nothing. If you are inside, surrounded by barbed wire, and you don't have the freedom to leave, there is no difference at all."

"What are you going to do?"

"Do?" He glared at her and she realized she had never seen Mr. Ginsberg so angry. "Do? I'm going to get the two in France out of those goddamned camps and over here if they wish. They can't get to Palestine because the British are afraid of offending the Arabs so they won't let any more Jews in, and they certainly won't be safe if they try to return to their homes. No, I will try to bring them here. Then I'm going to work for a separate state for my people, and the hell with the gentiles and the Arabs and anyone who stands in our way."

Debbie stood as well. "Do you want me to leave?" she repeated.

Mr. G. nodded sadly. "I think it would be best." She put on her coat and was headed for the door when he interrupted her. "Debbie, please give me a little time to get over the worst of this."

She smiled slightly. "Of course."

"Good," he sighed. "I will call you, and very soon. I am very fond of you and would not wish to lose your friendship. I also think I will need your help with the paperwork to bring my people over here. And I will continue to pray for your Paul's safe return. Now, on your way out, would you please get those two fools from across the street and tell them to start selling furniture. They are Jews too, thereby proving that even a Jew can be a fool, and I will wish to talk with them about my plans."