The Wreckage (24 page)

At the evening roll call both men were brought before the assembly on the parade square, where Captain Koyagi interrogated them through the interpreter and they confessed again to stealing from the Red Cross supplies. Wish and Harris were stripped to the waist and forced to their knees with their backs against a post, their arms lashed behind them.

Koyagi gave a lecture on the evils of petty theft, explaining that the Red Cross materials belonged to the prisoners as a collective and they hurt only themselves by stealing from one another. Then he nodded to the interpreter.

Wish watched the interpreter and a second guard coming toward them, bamboo sticks in their hands. All of Nishino’s faux cheerfulness was gone, only a sullen resoluteness to the face, a bleak sincerity. Wish thought of Mercedes suddenly, realized she’d been all but absent from his mind for weeks now. As if there was no place for her in the certainties he’d accepted for himself.

He said, “You’ll let Mercedes know for me, Harris.” Knowing Harris had no better chance of surviving than he did. But taking some comfort in the fiction, regardless. “You’ll tell her.”

“All right,” he said.

Wish stared off into the middle distance, thinking of her face the morning he’d stood naked for her out by the Washing Pond. It looked as if she was about to laugh but she lost herself suddenly, watching him. It was a strange act of love, he thought, his standing apart from her naked, she simply taking him in.

He pictured that look on her face now. Lost himself inside it for a moment.

After the morning roll call, Nishino watched the prisoners shuffle off to their workstations or to the vehicles waiting at the gate to take them to the shipyard or one of the coal mines farther out the harbour. There had been a dozen mistakes in the numbering off because of prisoners missing from their habitual spots in the line, and Nishino beat each man as he shouted their correct number. It seemed a deliberate strategy, to garble the language or claim not to know it. His back lit up with spasms every time he swung the stick.

When he left the parade square he went to his barracks and lay down to rest. The nightmarish details out of Hiroshima still running through his head. Every living thing in the city, they were told, human and animal, seared to death. It was barely conceivable, too surreal to credit. He’d never felt angrier or more helpless. Thinking about it exhausted him.

He had no idea how long he’d been asleep when the commandant’s staff assistant shook him by the shoulder. Captain Koyagi wanted to see him. Bad news, Nishino knew. The sun was high as he crossed the square, mid-morning already. The commandant’s office was in the building nearest the camp gate, underneath the watchtower. Nishino had been alone in the room with the officer only once before, on the day he arrived from Mushiroda camp, when he presented Koyagi with a letter of introduction from Lieutenant Sakamoto. The furnishings were spare, a single wooden table along one wall, a filing cabinet, two straight-back chairs before the desk. The only opulent touch was the officer’s chair, an English-style wingback finished in green leather. Koyagi had read the letter standing behind the desk, glancing up from the paper occasionally. He folded it away immediately after finishing it and bowed perfunctorily to Nishino before dismissing him. Nishino had no idea what the letter from Sakamoto contained, but it hadn’t been welcome information to Koyagi. The commandant was professional but cool in his dealings with his new interpreter, giving him the run of the camp and never offering any criticism of his conduct, though Nishino could sense a deep-seated disapproval in his manner.

Koyagi rose from the leather chair when the interpreter came in. They bowed to one another.

“Sit down,” Koyagi said, pointing to the straight-back chairs.

Nishino glanced at them and then back at the officer. Koyagi was almost a head shorter than he was. He said, “I would prefer to stand.”

“As you wish.”

Nishino kept his eyes focused on the top of the desk.

“Do you know why I’ve asked to see you?”

It could be anything, he thought. To tell him the Americans had invaded the country. That the prisoners were to be executed and buried, the camp torched. Events were moving toward some final, apocalyptic resolution and it seemed to Nishino that his fate and the fate of Japan itself were about to be set before him.

Koyagi walked past Nishino to the single window looking out on the parade square. They stood nearly back to back, like two men about to fight a duel.

“How long have you been with the Imperial Army, Private Nishino?”

“Almost six years, sir.”

“You did your field training with Lieutenant Kurakake.”

“Yes.”

“He is a good man. A good soldier.”

“Yes.”

“But soft. This is his one weakness. Softness.”

“I don’t agree, sir.”

Koyagi made a noise in his throat. “Your loyalty to him is commendable. He taught you to kill, Nishino?”

“Of course.”

“How did he do this?”

“We were—” Nishino paused—“with prisoners,” he said.

“Each soldier was ordered to bayonet a prisoner?”

“Yes.”

“Did any soldiers in your unit refuse?”

“Some hesitated.”

Nishino could hear Koyagi turn from the window behind him.

“Tell me, how did Lieutenant Kurakake deal with these soldiers? The weak ones?”

“He beat them with the flat of his sword.”

“And did this suffice?”

“For the most part.”

“For the most part?”

“There was one soldier who was unable, even then.”

“This soldier was named Ogawa. Chozo Ogawa.”

Nishino turned his head to look directly at the captain. He pulled himself more rigidly to attention, shifting most of his weight to his left leg. “Yes sir.”

“Ogawa wept, is this true?”

“He did.”

“And?”

“After the beating failed to move him, Lieutenant Kurakake ordered me to assist.”

“How?”

“We stood side by side and charged prisoners together.”

“How often?”

“Five, six times. Until Ogawa stopped crying.”

“You didn’t despise him for this?”

“Of course I did. He was unfit. He was unfit to be a soldier.”

“Did you know of his connection to Lieutenant Kurakake?”

“Not at the time,” he said. “I did not.”

Koyagi came back around his desk and sat in the leather chair. “Please,” he said, “be seated.”

Nishino’s back was slick with sweat. He felt light-headed. Koyagi motioned to the chairs again and he sat finally.

“I went to officer school with your former commandant at Mushiroda Camp, Lieutenant Sakamoto,” Koyagi said. “We were both sent to Manchuria from military school to take up our assignments with the infantry. Our company commander was a certain Colonel Ogawa.”

“Chozo’s father?”

Koyagi nodded as he lit himself a cigarette. He leaned across the desk and offered one to Nishino. “There were twenty-two raw officers there at the time. We knew nothing about war that wasn’t learned in a classroom. So we were given a weeklong field-operations training session. Do you know who our instructor was, Private?”

“Lieutenant Kurakake?”

“Exactly right. Lieutenant Kurakake.” Koyagi stared at the interpreter, a strange look on his face, a look of mystification and glee. “A lieutenant then and he remains so even now.”

“He prefers to fight.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps that is the reason. He was certainly a good soldier, a good teacher. Those first days he took us around the scenes of earlier battles, showing us what had gone well, what had failed. Asking us to transfer our book knowledge to the field of war. Discussing strategy, tactics. All around us the carnage of the real thing.” He smiled at Nishino. “I was twenty-two years old, you understand. I had never done more than slap a face in my life. I was afraid I lacked the stomach to make that transition.” The officer drew on his cigarette. “On the next-to-last day, Kurakake took us to the detention centre. There was a room full of Chinese incarcerated there and he pointed to these men. Civilians mostly. Villagers. Peasants. Kurakake said, ‘These are the raw materials for your trial of courage.’ And then we were dismissed.

“In the morning we were taken to the site of our
trial
. There were seats set out for the regimental commander, the battalion commanders, the company commanders, all arranged near the edge of a pit three metres deep. And twenty-four prisoners were there as well, bound and blindfolded. That is when it came clear to me, Nishino, what our trial would be. Kurakake bowed to the regimental commander and ordered a prisoner brought to the pit. The Chinese man was carried to the spot and forced to kneel there. Kurakake looked us each in the eye. He said, ‘Heads should be cut off like this.’ There was a bucket of water beside him. He unsheathed his sword and scooped up a dipper of water, pouring it over both sides of the blade. He stood behind the prisoner and steadied himself, legs wide, the sword raised behind his head.”

Koyagi had barely begun his cigarette, but he leaned forward to tamp it out in the ashtray. “I was eighth among the raw officers. When my turn came my only thought was, ‘Don’t do anything unseemly.’ One of the others had lost his nerve and simply slashed the prisoner’s head. He had to strike again and again to kill his man with Kurakake shouting at him, calling him a fool. I didn’t want to disgrace myself. I bowed to the regimental commander and unsheathed my sword. I wet it down as I was instructed and stood behind my prisoner. I held the sword above my shoulder and then swung down with one breath,
Yo!”
Koyagi made the motion with the flat of his hand. “I washed my sword and wiped it down with paper. When I sheathed it I noticed the blade was bent slightly from the force of the blow. And I was changed too, Nishino. As all soldiers are. When I returned to my unit that night I was stronger somehow. I was ready to serve. I felt without a doubt it was my
destiny.”
The officer used the English word, mispronouncing it in an old-fashioned way,
    Nishino said, “I still don’t know why you wished to see me, Captain.”

“Your friend Chozo,” Koyagi said, “he was rejected by the officers’ academy. His father made several attempts to enrol the boy before he died, but it was an impossible fit. It was a great shame to the family, even though he was the youngest. Ogawa’s oldest brother asked Lieutenant Kurakake to take him on, to make a man of him. At the least, to give him a good death. But you know this already.”

“Some of it I know.”

“Lieutenant Kurakake should have refused the request.”

Nishino’s eyes widened. “He could not.”

“Having accepted, he should have let the matter die with Ogawa. But this is Kurakake’s weakness. His softness. He allows too many of the formalities of civilian life to govern in the time of war.”

There was a long pause between them, each man baldly watching the other.

“He has taken good care of you for your service, Private Nishino. Through Lieutenant Sakamoto. Through me.”

“I am not ungrateful.”

Koyagi took a key from his breast pocket and unlocked the desk drawer to his right. He removed a single sheet of paper and set it on the desk where Nishino could see it. “One last gesture of thanks,” he said, “from Lieutenant Kurakake.”

The note had been sent from the
Kempaitai
Chief of POW Camps in Tokyo, addressed to the chiefs of staff of the army in Korea, Taiwan, Kwantung, North China and Hong Kong, and to the commanding officers of all prisoner-of-war camps. It was headed
POW Camps Radio #9 Top Military Secret
.

Personnel who mistreated prisoners and internees or who are held in extremely bad sentiment by them are permitted to take care of the situation by immediately transferring or by leaving without trace
.

Nishino glanced up at Koyagi. The officer was studying his hands. There was more to the message about destroying documents that would be unfavourable in the hands of the enemy, but he couldn’t take it in.

“What does this mean?”

“It means,” Koyagi said, “the time is coming soon when we soldiers may well be judged by the formalities of civilian life.”

“We will never surrender.” Nishino’s voice broke and he spoke louder to tamp the emotion down. “Japan will never surrender.”

“I once believed the same,” Koyagi said quietly. “But this …” He searched for an appropriate word. “This
event
in Hiroshima.”

Nishino said, “I wish to be transferred.”

“There is nowhere to be sent, Private. The army is no longer any use to you.”

“I will not desert.”

“The choice is yours, of course. You have made many enemies among the prisoners here and at Mushiroda. There is blood on your hands.”

“I did not join the Imperial Army to make friends.”

“I’m certain, as well, that you did not join the Imperial Army to become a prisoner.” Koyagi stood from his leather chair as he spoke, not allowing time for a response. He said, “You are dismissed, Private Nishino. Good luck to you.”

Nishino went straight to his barracks. He lifted his kit onto his berth and went through it quickly. He fumbled open a small brown envelope at the bottom of the trunk and shook the medal into his hand. Blue ribbon with red and white stripes. A silver medallion embossed with the head of King George. He had kept it with him through the war. As if he could shame his father this way.

He returned the medal and put the envelope into his breast pocket. He packed the clothes into a shoulder bag and reached under his bed, hauled out several bottles of Osano’s liquor. He packed these into the bag as well and marched straight out into the sunlight. He was blinded for a moment by the brilliance of the day and he closed his eyes against it, heard engines droning above him. He shaded his eyes and looked up to see four vapour trails heading south. As he watched they turned slowly and made their way back toward Nagasaki. The prisoners still in the camp began rushing toward the underground shelters, but Nishino stood and watched the planes pass overhead toward the city. He couldn’t understand why they weren’t bombing. Something dropped from them, three small parachutes, he thought.

And then it seemed another sun came out all at once above the hills around Nagasaki, a second sun shining darkly blue and consuming the world it shone upon.