Bomb (9780547537641) (7 page)

Abram suddenly murmured, "Come to me..."

Sorry glanced over the side. In a wide ribbon of sunlight, he saw the dim shape of a shark slide through the drifting sea particles and tiny fish.

"A tiger, but it's small," Abram said. "Keep rattling."

Fish can hear as well as smell, Sorry knew. They listen and often become curious. Sometimes, for big fish, sound is better than bait.

"Another one, also small," Abram said, and leaned out once more to look down at the water. This shark had risen higher and was plainly seven feet long, a young one. It fantailed toward the rattling, then curved away and sank back down into the depths.

"The
jimman
is down there. I can feel him," said Abram. "Rattle harder."

Sorry took another grip on the coconut twine and banged the shells harder against the side of the canoe.

After what seemed ages, Abram said softly, "Here he comes."

Sorry leaned out and his breath caught. What was beside and below them was at least fourteen or fifteen feet long, almost as long as the canoe; mottled gray, an old tiger.

Uncle Abram was now standing, bracing his knees against the sides of the outrigger, body bent slightly forward. He was aiming the harpoon, ready to drive it down. "It is the same one, Sorry. My spearhead is still in his back."

The tiger was swimming alongside and seemed to be eyeing them. He was about five feet below the clear upper surface, moving slowly, keeping pace. The body was so thick that Abram could not have wrapped his arms around it.

For the longest time Abram aimed the harpoon at the great back, and Sorry waited for the plunge of the steel head, the whipping of the coiled line as the monster made his first bloody run, hauling the canoe along as if it were a gull feather. They might be towed for miles.

Sorry's heart slammed as he waited. Silently, he thought,
Now, Uncle Abram, now...

If the tiger suddenly decided to attack the frail boat instead of running, they both might perish off the reef. The tail could crush them; the jaws would finish them.

He waited, wondering if the size alone had frightened his uncle.

Abram waited, poised, the muscles in his arms and back taut.

Finally, with a glance at Sorry, he lowered the harpoon and sat down, a strange look on his face. He placed the harpoon in the bottom of the canoe; the hunt was finished.

Sorry looked over the side. The fifteen-foot tiger was gone. There'd been plenty of time for his uncle to drive the spearhead into the shark. Why didn't he do it?

After a while, Abram spoke. "I couldn't, Sorry. Here he was, years older. Still alive. Did you see my spearhead sticking out of his back? He'd carried it all this time, with honor. He gave me my scar. I gave him his. We're even."

Sorry didn't understand. They'd sailed all the way to Rojkora, six miles south of Bikini. Abram had sharpened the harpoon head until it could cut wood. Hadn't he stood there, the big back only a few feet away? Was he suddenly a coward?

Reading Sorry's face, Abram smiled. "Someday, you'll understand."

***

No more was said about it all the way home.

They talked very little, in fact. Once, Abram said, "Tell me about Tara Malolo."

Sorry told him everything he knew about the teacher.

"She seems very nice," Abram said.

Sorry agreed.

Uncle Abram stayed in the bow for the rest of the trip, resting his head on his knees, sleeping part of the way.

***

Outside their house, where his mother was dyeing table mats with berry juice, Sorry told her what had happened.

She looked out across the lagoon, which was dotted with late afternoon homecoming sails. She seemed to be making a decision of her own. Finally, she said, "Come walk with me," and rose up.

"Come walk with me" was often heard on the island. It was a phrase that sought privacy, a way of being able to talk without being overheard: a way to say special tad important things.

Past the Ijjirik dwelling, where no other ears could hear her, she said, "I have the strangest feeling that my brother has come home to die."

That was in the Marshallese tradition, of course. Die on your home island. Off Rojkora, Abram had said he'd die here. Did he mean soon?

Sorry was stunned. He looked so healthy.

"The first thing he does is go after the tiger shark to settle an old battle..."

Sorry nodded.

"He brought a big bottle of pills with him. I can't read the words on it, but I know it came from London. He carries a smaller bottle of them in his pants pocket."

Abram ill? Come home to die? That was hard to believe.

"Have you asked him about it?"

Mother Rinamu shook her head, frowning at the idea. "You never ask that kind of question. It is too personal." She added, "Don't say anything to anyone. I might be wrong..."

Sorry nodded. He would keep quiet. Yet he knew he would continue to worry.

 

On August 6, 1945, the
Enola Gay,
a U.S. Army Air Force B-29 bomber, released Little Boy over the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Every building within 4,000 yards of the explosion was destroyed. The death count was estimated at over 200,000, including those who died later.

Uncle Abram had listened to the news broadcasts from Kwajalein over the U.S. Armed Forces Radio Network and made notes each evening since a few days after he'd returned home over a year ago. He'd repaired the powerful Japanese radio set in the barracks building. A small gas engine powered the generator and fed electricity to big batteries. The broadcasts were in English.

That was the way he'd learned to speak and write English, he told Sorry. Just by listening to the radio. It was a good way to learn. He'd done it on merchant ships when he was off duty, going to the radio room. Operators helped him with the writing and with the meanings of words. Sorry decided he'd do the same thing—listen and ask Abram about the words he didn't understand.

So at around sunset each day, he went to the council place, and almost everyone in the village sat in a circle to listen eagerly to Abram Makaoliej relate the news. A miraculous event. Mothers and babies and men Jonjen's age and women Yolo's age, everyone, went to listen. No longer did they need to wait for an outrigger from Eniwetok or Rongelap for news from the
ailīnkan.
The outside world had become accessible.

At first, eveiyone went to see and hear the amazing radio, crowding into the wooden building or standing outside it. But they soon realized they could not understand a single word. So Chief Juda decided it would be better for the islanders to go to the council place later and let Abram repeat, in Marshallese, what he'd just heard. The people talked for hours after each broadcast.

Sorry usually went with Abram to the barracks.

This August evening, Abram turned on the black box with its brass dials, warming it up for a few seconds. Then his body jolted forward. His eyes grew wide. His forehead bunched in a frown. His hard hands grasped the radio table until his knuckles turned white.

"What is it, Uncle Abram?" Sorry asked.

Abram held up a hand for silence, slowly shaking his head as if to deny the news. He was making notes.

"What is it?" Sorry asked again.

Abram waved his hand angrily, demanding silence.

A few minutes later, he swiveled around, his face grave. He said slowly, almost in disbelief, "The Americans have invented a terrible new bomb. They dropped it on Hiroshima, a city in Japan, this morning. The Japanese are saying that thousands are dead. The whole city has been destroyed. One bomb. Just one bomb..."

Sorry knew about bombs from the war talk of the last three years. "What kind of bomb?" he asked.

"An atom bomb..."

Atom?
"What is that?"

Uncle Abram shook his head and the next words came out in bewildered pauses while he looked at his notes. "It doesn't use gunpowder ... It uses nuclear fission ... whatever that is ... The heat was over three hundred thousand degrees ... The cloud from it went up fifty thousand feet ... People were turned into ashes in a split second ... Those who didn't die instantly were blinded ... It sounds like a bomb to end the world..."

"One bomb did all that? Killed thousands?..."

"Even the announcer didn't understand how it worked. He said it was a highly guarded secret. Only a few people knew about it." Abram stopped, as if trying to think through what had happened. "The American president said the bomb was dropped only to force Japan to surrender..."

"Have they done that?"

"I don't know." Abram just sat there numbly, saying nothing.

A few minutes later, just past sunset, the people of Bikini Atoll, on their mats in the council place, learned of the atomic bomb.

The lagoon was calm, lit with gold bounced from beneath the horizon. Gold lined the bottoms of the towering clouds to the west. The air was still. The tiny island was at complete and blessed peace. Sorry could not really understand what had happened in the sky over Hiroshima. No one else could, either, including Abram.

At
kejota,
the evening meal, Sorry asked Tara, "Do you think the Americans are happy about all those people dying?" There was confusion on his face and in his eyes. He couldn't imagine that many people losing their lives instantly, with no warning.

Tara frowned at the question. Finally, slowly, she said, "If you had a son or daughter or brother or sister who had been killed by the Japanese, then you might not be unhappy."

"War is a very personal thing," said Abram. "Some of our own Marshallese people were killed on Eniwetok, Kwajalein, Jaluit, Roi, and Namur when the Americans attacked. They weren't soldiers. They died just the same."

"And on Majuro, too," Tara added. She'd gone to college there, of course.

Sorry had never thought of war as being personal. He knew the soldiers killed each other without knowing each other. He'd never thought much beyond that fact. He'd never thought about their families.

"Most of those people in Hiroshima were not soldiers, were they?" Sorry asked.

"I'm sure they weren't," Tara said.

"They were just like us," his mother said.

Like us,
he thought.
Sitting there innocently like us. Jonjen and Yolo and Lokileni and Abram and Tara Malolo and my mother and myself. Suddenly, all dead. Burned alive or blown to bits.

"The old days, when we used the big clamshells for axes, were better," Jonjen said. "It was hand-to-hand. No bombs."

Abram said, "Yes, Grandfather, they were better. The best..."

No one wanted to talk further about all the dead in Hiroshima, and silence fell around the cookhouse.

After the meal, Sorry crossed the ravine and went for a walk along the barrier reef in the early darkness. On some walks, he'd felt close to his father and had shouted questions into the sea roar and wind. This night he had no questions that his father could answer.

Later, on his sleeping mat, he dreamed about the explosion in the sky, the fireball that Abram had described, and woke up screaming.

Three days later, Abram told everyone that another terrible bomb had been dropped, this time on Nagasaki, Japan. He said an estimated 140,000 people had been killed.

Sorry could not understand why it was necessary for so many innocent people to die once again.

Then, on August 14, Abram announced that Japan had surrendered. Sorry joined in the cheers of joy. The world war was over.

Plans for the postwar atom bomb tests, Operation Crossroads, had begun in secrecy during October 1945. Officers in the Special Weapons Division of Naval Operations started searching for a place on which to drop an aerial bomb, then somewhere to explode one underwater. A few days before Christmas 1945, Bikini lagoon was chosen by the U.S. Navy as the target for the world's fourth and fifth atomic explosions. The islanders had no idea they were about to become famous overnight.

Early in February 1946, a large U.S. ship with a strange-looking bow—a bow that looked to Sorry like the bill of a storm petrel—came mysteriously into the lagoon and dropped anchor.

Abram was still asleep. Lately he hadn't seemed as lively as before. Sorry thought maybe the disease, if indeed there was one, had begun to take its toll. He'd mentioned as much to his mother and she agreed.

Though the ship put boats into the water, no one came ashore. The boats went off in several directions. Painted the usual U.S. Navy gray, the ship sat out on the horizon, and curiosity among the islanders grew by the minute. After anchoring, officers usually landed quickly to pay their respects to Chief Juda.

Along with many others, Sorry and Lokileni watched for almost an hour. Then Sorry went to awaken Abram.

"There's a navy ship out in the lagoon but it hasn't sent a boat in," Sorry said.

"Maybe they're just slow today," Abram said tiredly.

Because he could speak English, Abram had become the island's interpreter to the navy. Whenever there was a problem, a need to communicate, Abram was the spokesman.

Sorry waited while Abram pulled on a pair of dungarees and a shirt, then they launched a canoe and went out to investigate.

The USS
Sumner
had guns fore and aft, a single stack, and two masts. Abram said it was the oldest navy ship he'd ever seen. Despite the guns, it didn't appear to be a fighting ship.

They pulled up alongside the gangway and tied up to the float. The young officer stationed there seemed surprised to hear Abram ask, in good English, about the purpose of their visit.

The ensign replied, "We're going to take soundings to determine the depth of the lagoon, then blow up any large coral heads."

"Why?" Abram asked. Sorry wished he could understand all the words. He'd made a lot of progress over the last two years, but the men were talking too rapidly for him to follow the conversation.

"I don't really know," the ensign replied. "But I'll make a guess that we'll probably update the Japanese charts. Indicate depths, any hazards."