Mr Two Bomb (9 page)

Apparently I was missing the most extraordinary display of pyrotechnics. Although most people think of Little Boy as being that towering grey mushroom cloud, it was preceded by a rainbow of light, with every colour in the spectrum rippling high over Hiroshima. For a few seconds, the hypocenter was a tower of iridescent vermillion, damson, orange and magenta, a thing of the most unimaginable beauty. Some believe that it was the souls of Hiroshima’s dead, liberated from their bodies and soaring straight to heaven. Or was it nature’s rainbow wreath of mourning?

Only after this brief flowering did that bleak grey toadstool of death appear in the sky, and forever afterwards it has become Hiroshima’s calling card. It is our signature and, whenever you see it, you think of us.

The picture itself, the mushroom picture that has been used a million times over, does have a certain iconic quality. It was one of the defining moments of the 20th Century. One might almost argue that, with its long stem and its billowing, symmetrical cap, it has certain aesthetic qualities. But for those of us who were there, we cannot see that picture of the toadstool without also recalling the thousands of people who at that very moment were in their death throes.

For a while I lay there among the box-kites, wondering if anything was broken, exploring the sensations of life. An incredible silence, I particularly remember that, in stunning contrast to the explosion and its aftermath.

I hauled myself out of the pile of smashed kites and dusted off the worst of the bamboo shards and paper. The warehouse still seemed to be filled with thick mist. My feet, my beautifully booted feet, at least were fine. I pointed my toes, bent my knees and eased my torso and neck from side to side. Akiba’s beating was still painful, but it did not feel as if there was anything that would not mend.

From the far side of the warehouse I could hear Motoji moaning. I walked over to him. The dust was so thick that I could barely make out the wreckage on the floor. Motoji looked like a crumpled heap of old clothes that had been tossed into the corner of the room.

“Help,” he said weakly. “Help me.”

“Can you get up?”

“I will try.” I took Motoji’s gnarled hand and pulled him up. It was wet with blood. He was shaky on his feet.

“Where are you hurt?”

“My shoulders.”

I squinted in the half-light, at first unable to make out what I was looking at. A length of bamboo had been driven right through his shoulder-blade, while another spear of bamboo had lanced through his upper-arm.

“What is it?” he asked, nervously. He was trembling and looked as if he was about to faint.

“We must go outside.”

Holding tight onto his forearm, I led Motoji through the wreckage and to the door. The handle was jammed by the twisted door-frame. I kicked the door from two paces and it burst open. Motoji followed me, tottering a few steps before collapsing by the wall.

I took a moment to marvel at the infernal tower of dust that was spiralling out of the centre of Hiroshima. The cloud was unbelievable. It did not make sense.

Up until then, I had thought that the warehouse had sustained a direct hit. What else could do so much damage? But as I stared out over Hiroshima, it dawned on me that we had been on the very periphery of the explosion.

The bomb must have wiped out the whole city. Across Hiroshima hung a grey pall of smoke, with shards of red flame darting through the dust-cloud. Above it, like some hellish memorial stone, this tower of smoke and dust was growing before my very eyes. It must have been 10 kilometres high before it billowed outwards. And if ever you have wondered whether the devil has a mark, that grey toadstool was it. Swirling with toxic fall-out, that cloud would ultimately be responsible for many more deaths than the actual Pikadon.

All around us were little wisps of fire, burning in the air, like flaming marsh sprites. They were the last radiated traces of Little Boy, flickering and dancing in the breeze, before with a puff and a sigh they were gone.

Motoji stared blearily out over the river. I knelt down to examine him more closely. The two pieces of bamboo were barely thicker than my thumb, but had been driven through his body with the most incredible force.

“You’re badly hurt,” I said. “The bamboo has come out the other side.”

“I have been punished,” he said weakly, eyes flickering up to mine.

“Stop talking nonsense. We have been hit by a bomb.”

“I have been punished,” he said again. “I have been punished for doubting that we would win the war.”

“I very much doubt that.” Unbelievable as it may seem, many of Hiroshima’s victims did initially believe that they personally were being punished. Later on, they simply switched to believing that this extreme punishment had been visited on the whole city of Hiroshima. And why were we being punished? We were apparently being castigated because, for the duration of the war, we had led such a charmed bomb-free life. Never mind that for months the Yankees had been specially saving Hiroshima for something rather different. But you could never argue with those people.

I stared at the blood that was oozing through the dust on Motoji’s shirt. “Let me bind you up,” I said. “You need to get to a hospital.”

“But what about the Major?” he said. “Go and see that Major Akiba is alright.”

“I think you need binding first.”

“Go and find the Major!” Motoji said through gritted teeth. “He is more important than I. Go!”

I shrugged. I did not much care either way, though I suppose I marginally preferred Motoji to Akiba. I trudged back through the warehouse, past all the heaps of ruined kites and over to the far door. The entire wall was yawing inwards after being hit head-on by the shockwave. The door was twisted in its frame and I had to jemmy it with a wood-spar. Once I had forced an opening, I grabbed the edge to give it a tug. I winced. The door was hot to the touch and its jagged surface tore at my skin. I kicked it a little further open before squeezing through the gap.

I had walked outdoors again. Our common-room and Akiba’s office had been obliterated, the two rooms reduced to nothing but a pile of masonry and tiles. Akiba’s desk had disappeared while the filing cabinets were twisted beyond recognition. There was a slight smell of wood, though the dust had been cleared by the breeze.

I thought Akiba had gone for help. Where else could he be? I was all but on the verge of returning to Motoji when I heard a slight twitch from the rubble. Could there be something alive under that metre-high pile?

I stalked over to where the noise had come from, kicking at the tiles and the wood. Perhaps I was intrigued. I hauled at a piece of board and there under it was a face – a red round face, but so injured that it was unrecognisable.

Over the next two days, I would see much worse. But that first body that I saw was so shockingly grotesque that the sight of it still haunts me. It was Akiba, and his breath was coming in a hoarse rasp, the blood bubbling out from the wounds at his throat. His face, his entire face, seemed to be a sort of shimmering green, as if he had sprouted thick animal fur.

I grabbed him underneath the shoulders and pulled him out from the rubble. The whole of his front, almost to his knees, was covered with this bristling green fur. I tentatively touched his face and he let out a low animal moan.

When I touched his skin, it was the same sensation as when I had levered the door open; jagged, razor-like shards. Akiba had taken the full burst from the windows, the shards of glass driving hard into his body. I saw many other victims with similar injuries, where the glass was buried deep to the bone. The splinters had punched clean through his tunic, while his throat seemed to have sprouted a bloody green stubble. He could not even see me as his eyelids had been peppered with glass.

Akiba’s lips opened, trying to form the words that he wanted to say, but the glass splinters had even constricted the movement of his mouth.

From head to toe, his every nerve ending was in torment. Like many others, for the rest of his short life the only sensation he would know would be pain – nothing else. I doubt that you could have devised a more hideous torture.

For perhaps a minute, I stood over him, intently studying his face. The glass shards seemed to be sprouting out of his puffy red skin. I only knew it was Akiba from his khaki uniform and brown boots.

I knelt down by his face. “Can you hear me?” I asked.

Akiba’s face twitched and his lips opened a fraction as he sighed the one word, “Yes.”

“What would you like me to do?” I whispered.

The words were indistinct, unclear. But I thought that I could make out, “Please kill me.”

“You want me to kill you?”

His head moved forward a few centimetres, nodding his agreement. His voice was barely a sigh easing from his throat. “Please.”

My mouth was so close to his ear that I could see the individual puncture marks from the glass, thrusting out like the quills of a porcupine. “I thought that is what you said,” I whispered. “Goodbye.”

Without a backward glance, I returned through the warehouse to Motoji. How petty, how spiteful, that makes me sound. Yes, if I had been kind, I would have smothered him. Even though I could not abide the man’s presence, I could have put him out of his misery.

But I did not. I left him there to fry in the sun, knowing that every moment alive would be another moment of agony.

Just the first of my many misdeeds over the next two days. I am not proud of it. But I must tell my story as it occurred.

At least I hated Akiba. That is not an excuse for my quiet little gloat before I left him to his long death. Anyone with even a gram of compassion would have killed him, regardless of any personal animosity.

But what I will say is that soon enough I would be ill-treating many more of Hiroshima’s victims; and the ones that I treated worst of all were the ones that I actually cared about.

With an electric jolt, I remembered Sumie. Was she hurt? Surely not. How could a single bomb have caused such an unholy trail of havoc, stretching for kilometres on end?

But as I looked back to the city, smouldering there in that strange grey twilight, I had a twinge of foreboding. I started to make off for Sumie’s boarding house, but had only gone a few metres before I was brought up short by Motoji. Still slumped by the side of the wall, he called out and beckoned me back.

My spirits slumped at the sight of him, but at that early stage after the bomb, my callousness was not quite so deeply engrained. I turned and walked back.

“How was the Major?” he asked.

“Dead.”

“And –” Motoji fingered at a scalp wound which was dribbling blood down his cheek. “Where are you going?”

“To get help.”

Motoji’s eyes flickered over me, almost enviously taking in my lack of injuries. Why was I uninjured while he was hurt? It was a look that I would come to know well over the next week, as if I should have felt guilty for not being maimed.

“Could you find a bandage for my wound?” he asked.

“I will see,” I said. “I will see if I can find one.”

“Please. I must see my wife.” How horribly stricken Motoji looked, hunched up against that wall, with those two spears of bamboo jutting out from his body.

“I will see what I can do.” I did no such thing. I started to walk off, as if searching for supplies, but the moment I had turned the corner, I was off towards the city. It is true that it would have taken just a few minutes to have bandaged Motoji up with some canvas from the warehouse. But what concern was it of mine if Motoji was wounded? Would he have done anything for me? I did not give a damn about the man. Besides, I was worried about Sumie. The city, flickering with flame and with that immense roiling cloud overhead, looked like it was coming to the boil.

I did not feel bad about leaving Motoji or Akiba. Takuo, though, was different. I found her lying on the concrete some 400 metres from the warehouse. I assume that after I had chatted to her at the bomb-shelter, she had gone for a walk on the waterfront. She had been caught out in the open in the full glare of Little Boy’s explosion.

She was topless. Her top and bra had been blown off her body, her full breasts red and tender. Even then, even while she was in that most pitiful state, a flicker of lust charged through me. I was struck by how the whorls and circles of her patterned shirt had been branded into her skin. Over her shoulders and across her back were etched the black lines of her bra straps. It was a sight which I was to see many times over. Black absorbs the heat, while white reflects it, so fate was even playing its part in the matter of what clothes you wore that morning. Those who had worn black were much worse off than those who had worn white. And those who had even been partially shielded from the bomb fared far better than those who had faced the full flash-burn.

Poor Takuo had never had a chance. I found her slumped on her side, her head pillowed on an elbow. She had been trying to crawl to the water’s edge, but had given up.

She was still conscious. Her eyes flicked up at me, but there was no expression on her face. “Water,” she breathed. “Water. Water, please.”

I looked about me. The river water was tidal and brackish. But a few metres away was a muddy puddle. I scooped up a gritty handful in my cupped hands and brought it to her lips.

Takuo drank greedily, burying her nose into my hands to lick up every drop. “More,” she said. “Please.”

I scooped up handful after handful. I spent perhaps a minute with her. A minute – that was what this once beautiful woman was worth to me; I was only prepared to give her a minute’s worth of water before I went on my way.

After the fifth handful, Takuo let her head fall back onto her arm and gave me a little smile. “Apart from my husband, you are the only person to see me like this.”

I caressed the side of her cheek with my knuckles. “Lucky me.”

“Will you –” Her gaze never faltered from my own. “Will you take me to him?”

“I -” I paused, deliberating over whether to tell the outright lie. “I will need a handcart.”

“Will you find one?” How pathetically vulnerable she looked, just lying on that open piece of concrete, with her dusty black hair cascading over her red raw shoulders. Even the very colours of her shirt, the green and the blue, had been burned into her skin.