Mr Two Bomb
MR TWO-BOMB
MR TWO BOMB
WILLIAM COLES
BASED ON A TRUE STORY
Legend Press Ltd, 2 London Wall Buildings,
London EC2M 5UU
[email protected]
www.legendpress.co.uk
Contents © William Coles 2010
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of
this work has be asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
ISBN 978-1-9074611-4-9
All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and
place names, other than those well-established such as towns and
cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.
Set in Times
Printed by JF Print Ltd., Sparkford.
Cover designed by Tim Bremner
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation
to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution
and civil claims for damages.
PRAISE FOR WILLIAM COLES
‘A superbly crafted memoir,’
Daily Express
‘A cracking read... Perfectly paced and brilliantly written,
Coles draws you in, leaving a childish smile on your face.’
News of the World
‘A piece of glorious effrontery… takes an honourable place
amid the ranks of lampoons.’
The Herald
‘What a read! Every schoolboy’s dream comes true in this
deftly-written treatment of illicit romance. A triumph.’
Alexander McCall Smith
‘An outstanding debut novel. A wonderful story of first
love. Few male authors can write about romance in a way
which appeals to women.’
Louise Robinson, Sunday Express
‘Charming, moving, uplifting. Why can't all love stories be
like this?’
Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal
‘Try Dave Cameron’s Schooldays for jolly fictional
japes. It helps to explain the real Dave’s determination
to whip us into shape.’
Edwina Currie, The Times
‘A fast moving and playful spoof. The details are so slick
and telling that they could almost have you fooled.’
Henry Sutton, The Mirror
OTHER WORKS BY WILLIAM COLES
The Well-Tempered Clavier
(Published as Prelude in the United States)
Lord Lucan: My Story
WORKS BY BILL COLES
Dave Cameron’s Schooldays
For my parents, Bob and Sarah
CONTENTS
There were about twelve of us, that I know of, who survived the Atomic bombs of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and the question that I am asked more than any other is this: do I feel lucky? Were the Gods on my side as I lived through the nightmare of not one, but two Atomic bombs? Or were the Gods merely playing with me as I scurried from the hell of Hiroshima straight into that Seventh Circle of hell in Nagasaki?
In short, the crux of the question is: have I been blessed – or cursed?
I understand how perplexing it is for these students of wisdom as they come to me in search of knowledge. On the one hand, it might be deemed unlucky in the extreme to have been in Hiroshima on 6th August 1945. Anywhere else on earth would have been preferable to being in that city on that brilliant blue morning. But to have survived Hiroshima and then to have travelled so unerringly to Nagasaki for a second dose of atomic radiation... that, surely, must be considered ‘Unlucky – to the Power of Two’. And why not add the fact that Nagasaki was never supposed to have been bombed in the first place? That second bomb was originally destined for Kokura on 9th August; at one stage, the B29 bomber was directly over Kokura and within seconds of dropping its payload. But as it was, the clouds closed in, Kokura was saved and Bock’s Car turned South to drop its bomb on Nagasaki, where I had been waiting all of 90 minutes to meet my destiny.
So I appreciate that in many ways I might be considered unlucky.
I have, however, survived. I have pulled through. Not without injury, it has to be said. But I have lived to write my tale – and so, in that respect, I have had the most extraordinary luck.
The bombs are how people best know me. The children on the streets would point me out and the name they gave to me was ‘Two-Bomb San’. With the passing of the years, it has been shortened simply to ‘Two-Bomb’ – and I have come to like the name. It is not the whole of what I am, but nevertheless those two bombs are what have come to define me.
For what it is worth, this is what I believe to be true: I have been lucky. I would go further. I would say I am one of the luckiest men alive. And that is not just on account of having lived through those two bombs and come out the other side. For what I must also take into account is how those two bombs – Little Boy and Fat Man as they were called by the Yankees – have transformed my life, injuries and all.
This, by the way, is not an apology for the bombs. It is not an apology for the Americans; nor for the Japanese. It is not an analysis of the beginning of the war; nor an evaluation of whether those two bombs brought the war to a speedier end. And it is certainly not to demean, or make light of the suffering of all the hundreds of thousands of victims and their families.
Since the war, I have lived in several countries, including that of our old enemy, the Yankees. As a result, this account is not, perhaps, as solemn as many of the stories of the bombs. But then, I am not a solemn person. There has been much misery in my life, but there has been much joy with it. And although I will never forget my days in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – indeed
can
never forget my days in those illstarred cities – I choose instead to count my blessings.
Out of the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were to spring the most incredible shoots; not that I even remotely deserved them. Of all the Atom bomb survivors, or Hibakusha as we are known, there is not a single one who was not more deserving of happiness than myself.
So every day now I give thanks for the great good fortune that has been thrust into my lap; and when I consider also the immense grief that came from those two bombs, I can only weep at the magnitude of my own joy.
There were so many heroes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki: great men and women who rose to the occasion and gave the very best of themselves; and children too, who without complaint have struggled for decades to deal with their injuries.
But I am not like that. I was never a hero and, though I survived both bombs, have never done anything heroic. Well – possibly the once; but even that was probably more animal impulse than a conscious act of courage.
The truth was that before the bombs, I was... I was a despicable human being. How you would have despised me! And had I thought to think it, I would even have despised myself.
The only time I panicked was four hours after Little Boy had exploded into our lives. This was different, I understand, from the majority of Hiroshima’s victims. Most tended to panic within a few minutes of the bomb being dropped, as they began to realise the size of the catastrophe engulfing them.
But during the immediate aftermath of the bomb, I was the most disciplined person in the wreckage of the building. Not even a trace of that hyper-ventilating, blood-rush as panic overwhelms the head and seizes up your brain. No, my one and only moment of blind panic came as the fire-storm swept the city, razing everything in its path.
We had been trying to dig Sumie out of the ruins of her house for over an hour. I could see her, hear her, even stroke her upturned face through the wreckage. But there was too much to move, too many tiles to shift. But I was confident that, given enough time, we would be able to dig her out. I was her tenant, had been boarding with her for three months. And she was my lover.
Little by little, we had been working away at the wreckage of the house, tossing tiles and splintered beams of wood out onto the rubble of the street. After 30 minutes, I caught a glimpse of her face. She had smiled at me and, despite the grey veil of dust, was as beautiful as I had ever seen her. She was in good heart too as she patiently waited to be freed.
“Are you hurt?” she had asked me. That was the first thing she had said. Not for a moment had she complained about her own injuries, or of being trapped in the ruins of her home.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said, hurling another tile over my shoulder. “Can you move?”
“My leg is trapped,” she said. “Is it one of the beams?”
To the side I could see the end of a vast roof-beam poking out from the ruins. I shouted over to Shinzo, who was working on the other side of the wreckage. “Help me!” I called. “We must move it together.”
We pulled and tugged, and the neighbour, that chit of a girl, added her puny weight too, but no matter how hard we hauled, nothing would shift that impossible mass of timber. The beam was square, over half-a-metre across, and perhaps 10 metres long.
“We must clear more wreckage,” said Shinzo, the sweat trickling through the dust that caked his fat, jowly face.
So we continued to haul and tug at the tiles, the thousands of tiles, and all the other smashed and broken bits of wood and plaster that went to make up a standard two-storey house in Hiroshima in those days.
Every so often, I would peek through the hole that we were making towards Sumie and would give her a smile of encouragement. “You will be out in a few minutes.” I tried to sound confident. I suddenly noticed a trickle of blood on her chin. She had bitten right through her lower-lip. “Are you badly hurt?”
“No,” she said, though as she spoke, she winced.
“You always were a hopeless liar.”
“I do not know,” she said – and even then, she still smiled, beaming up at me from beneath the rubble. “I cannot feel anything below my waist.”
“We will get you to the hospital.”
“Do you know what it was? I saw a flash.”
I continued tossing tile after tile over my shoulder. “It was a bomb like I have never seen before. Half the city is destroyed.”
“A single bomb?”
“The warehouse was devastated. And we were over three kilometres away.”
I picked up a piece of masonry and as I threw it onto the street, I looked about me. Carnage such as I would not have believed possible. It was as if a giant hand had smacked down from heaven and crushed everything beneath it. Save for Hiroshima’s few concrete structures, there was not a building that was not either destroyed or yawing crazily to the side. Through the dust and the smoke, as far as the eye could see, Hiroshima had been turned into a wasteland of rubble.