This Scorching Earth (7 page)

He walked briskly, and by noon had been through all the main streets of his district. Now, having eaten three dishes of shaved ice, strawberry syrup on top, during the morning, he was ready for Tokyo's glittering center across the river, Ginza. It was time for lunch when he crossed the bridge to Nihombashi. He ate noodles at a little restaurant in the Shirokiya Department Store. Wanting to bring his mother a present, he selected a bolt of cloth—one of the more expensive cloths from under the counter, for the stock was small and consisted almost entirely of the war-time synthetics—and arranged to have it delivered to their home on the following day.

Then he went to see a movie. It was a war movie. Afterwards he walked past the Imperial Palace and took off his cap. Inside the outer moat it was cool under the pine trees, and he stood stiffly at the base of one, hoping a girl would sit nearby and think him handsome and soldierly in his cap and boots. But none did. Everyone was so busy. He'd never seen Tokyo so busy, and was pleased with the war which had given everyone his own higher duty.

After that he ate supper—he forgot where—and drank saké. Eventually he did find a woman, fashionably dressed but none the less available. They drank at a private table, and it was not until he heard the watchman making his rounds near Shimbashi Station that he realized it was ten o'clock and that he should have been home hours before.

But even then he did not leave. He could be home before eleven, and his uncle would be there at least until midnight. His father would be at one of the joro houses in the Susaki district and probably wouldn't be home until morning. So he decided to stay half an hour more, talking with the woman and enjoying her interest.

Later he was to think of the woman, whose name he could not remember having heard and whose face he had forgotten. She was dressed Western style, a rare thing during the war years, and was beautiful. And, had it not been for her, he would have been home, where he should have been and where, for many years afterward, he wished he had remained.

Some of Tokyo had already been bombed, but those few districts were far away, and the people in the rest of the city were not afraid. The radio said that the Americans dropped bombs indiscriminately and that there was no need to fear a mass attack, as the radar would detect the intruders and give ample time for escape. Just a year before, Fukagawa had been bombed, but the damage had been negligible. The bombs fell mostly into the country, and most people decided that the Americans were not very skilled in this important matter of bomb dropping. Fukagawa, near the country, had seemed as safe as Shimbashi, in the center of town.

Tadashi heard the watchman at eleven and was regretfully taking leave of the woman when the call of the watch was interrupted by the air-raid sirens. Earlier in the afternoon, while he had been in the movie, there had been an alert, but the all-clear had sounded immediately after.

Now Tadashi walked swiftly through the exit stiles of Shimbashi Station—secretly rejoicing that his uniform allowed it—and ran through the standing passengers, past the halted trains, to the top level of the building. He didn't really expect to see anything; he only wanted to be soldierly. This would impress the lovely lady.

He arrived at the top level just in time to see the sudden flair of massed incendiary bombs. It was Fukagawa. The planes were apparently traveling in a great circle. It was impossible to say how many there were, but it seemed hundreds. A great ring of fire was spreading. The planes were so low he couldn't see them and could tell where they had been only by the fires that sprang from the earth behind them. There was an enormous explosion, like August fireworks on the Sumida River, and a great ball of fire fell back on the district. A chemical plant had been hit. Minutes later, Tadashi felt the warm gust of air from the blast, miles away.

Later he heard that the planes had come in so low that they escaped the radar. The anti-aircraft could do nothing against planes that near and that swift. The stiff March wind helped spread the flames. Tadashi remembered thinking, at the time, of the canals that cut through the section, and he realized that the people could at least find safety in the water. There would be water enough for all.

He didn't know how long he stood on the top platform of Shimbashi Station watching the destruction of Fukagawa, Honjo, Asakusa, Ueno. It must have been for a very long time, and he wondered why they were so selective—why not the Ginza, why not Shimbashi Station, why not him, Tadashi? He remembered walking up the deserted streets past the closed motion-picture house where he had been that afternoon. It was near dawn when he reached Shirokiya Department Store again. The last pink of the fires had been replaced by the first pink of dawn.

At that corner he first saw those coming over from Fukagawa. Most of them were burned. They carried scorched bedding on their backs, or trundled bicycles with a few possessions strapped to them. They walked slowly and didn't look at him as they passed. He wondered where they were all going. Finally he stopped one old man, who told him that everything had been burned and that everyone had been killed, and his tone of voice seemed to include himself in the death list.

It was at the bridge across the Sumida that he first saw Fukagawa. He couldn't believe it. There was nothing. Nothing but black and smoking ruins, as far as he could see in all directions. He had never known that so much could be destroyed in one night.

On the bridge he found a bicycle that belonged to no one, and on it he started toward his home. Nothing looked the same. There were scarcely streets any more. In cleared places were piles of burned bodies, as though a family had huddled beneath a roof that had now disappeared. They seemed very small and looked like charcoal.

He peddled slowly along the street. Long lines of quiet, burned people, all looking the same, came toward him. He didn't know where to turn north to go to his father's lumberyard. Nothing was familiar. He leaned the bicycle against a smoking factory wall and looked toward where his home should have been but wasn't. The lines of the burned moved slowly by, and suddenly, for the first time in years, he began to cry.

After he had cried he looked at the people again and saw his younger brother coming toward him. They were both amazed. It was fantastic that such a thing had happened. The slowly moving lines parted around them in the middle of what had been a street.

His brother had spent the night at school because he had to finish a war-work project of some kind, and he hadn't heard about the raid until he awoke. He had just arrived and didn't know where their house was either. So they began walking.

Troops had already been brought in and were clearing the streets, or where they supposed the streets had been. They shifted the bodies with large hooks and loaded them, one after the other, onto trucks. Often the burned flesh pulled apart, making their work difficult.

They walked on, past mothers holding burned infants to their breasts, past little children, boys and girls, all dead, crouched together as for warmth. Once they passed an air-raid shelter and looked in. It was full of bodies, most of them still smouldering.

The next bridge was destroyed, so they decided to separate. His brother would go north, and he south. It was the first time they had used the words north and south to each other. They usually spoke of "up by the elementary school" or "down by the chemical plant" or "where we saw the big dog fight that day." His brother started crying and walked away rubbing his eyes. They were to meet at their uncle's house in Shinagawa.

Tadashi walked south to the factory section. The chemical works had exploded and what little remained was too hot to get near. Some of the walls were standing, burned a bright green from the dye, the color of leaves. In a locomotive yard the engines were smoking as though ready for a journey, the cars jammed together as in a railway accident. There were some in the ruins still alive, burned or wounded. Those who couldn't walk were patiently waiting for help by the side of the road. There was no sound but the moaning of an old woman. It sounded like a lullaby.

He saw only two ambulances. They were full of wounded, lying there as though dead. Farther on, prisoners-of-war were clearing the smoking ruins. They wore red uniforms and carried blankets for the removal of the dead.

Eventually he recognized the Susaki district. Yesterday it had been a pleasure center, with gayly-colored decorations, sidewalk stalls, girls peeping from behind lattice-work screens, and music. Now there was nothing. The houses, like the decorations, had been made only of wood and paper and had burned almost at once. Now in the early morning the district was very quiet, and no one moved.

He turned back. The small bridges across the canals had been burned. He had to stay on the large island connected to Nihombashi by the bridge across the Sumida. He looked across the canals and saw people still alive on the little, smoking islands. They shouted and waved, but there was nothing he could do, so he went on. Some were swimming across to the large island. They had to push aside others who floated there face down.

In a burned primary school he saw the bodies of children who had run there, to their teachers, for protection. Later he learned there had been two thousand dead children in that school alone. They lay face down on the scorched concrete floor, as though asleep. The kimonos of some still smoked. The teachers to whom they had fled lay among them.

It Was past noon when, suddenly very tired, he walked back across the bridge, back past Shirokiya where only twenty-four hours before he had been eating noodles, buying his mother a present, stealing a look at his uniform in a mirror. He took a trolley to Shinagawa. It was almost night before he reached his uncle's house. The trolley stopped continually. It was filled with wounded, and others, less wounded, hung from the roof and the sides. He could have arrived sooner by walking, but there was a fascination in the macabre ride from which he could not tear himself away.

At his uncle's house he found his brother and, surprisingly, his uncle. The latter's arm was badly burned, and he was wounded about the face and head. He had come home that afternoon, walking the entire distance. He told them about their family.

They had been sitting around the table drinking beer, his sister and himself. The younger girls had already gone to bed, and his brother-in-law was at Susaki. He said that first the planes bombed the outskirts of Fukagawa and Honjo, then closed the circle, making it smaller and smaller. It was difficult to escape because it happened so swiftly. Almost instantly there was fire on all sides.

By the time the air-raid sirens had begun they heard the explosions, and flames were leaping up in the distance. The airplanes wheeled over them, and the circle of fire was much nearer. They got the little girls up, but by the time they were dressed the fire was only a block away. They tried to escape from the lumberyard, but the little bridge which led to the Tokyo road was burning. So they climbed into the canal in back of the house.

Sticks of bombs were dropping constantly, and finally one of them hit the house. The heat was terrible. Even the logs in the canal began to smoke. They watched the fire spread, in just a few seconds, to the storehouses and then to the entire island. Tadashi's mother and sisters held on to a log and began crying.

Their uncle found a pan and dipped water over their heads and shoulders. The little fur hoods with cats embroidered on them helped protect the children for a while, but when the fur began smoking he tore off the hoods and poured water directly on their hair. The portion of the log above water cracked in the heat, but he kept on pouring water.

There he remained until early morning. About one, the fires burning around them just as fiercely as before, he became very tired. He tried to get a better grip on the log but found his arm so burned that it stuck to the wood. He was unable both to hold up his sister and nieces and at the same time continue to pour water over them. They were very quiet and, he was sure, unconscious. His arm was so tired that he too must have lost consciousness. The pain of his arm's slipping across the the burning log woke him. The mother and two little girls were gone.

The next day Tadashi and his brother went again to Fukagawa. It was now filled with rescue workers. They found their canal and the ruins of their home. Everything was gone. Only the earth and a few stones remained. They identified the house from its unburned foundation stones. Near where the house had been they were removing bodies. He tried to find some of his neighbors but couldn't. Everyone there was a stranger. No one knew where his father's workers were either. They had lived above the warehouse where the finished lumber had been stored.

Later he learned that thirty thousand people had been killed that evening. Some said it was the unseasonable wind that had done the most damage. It spread the fire and the heat. The explosions caused more wind until, about one in the morning, it flew through the flames at a mile a minute.

It was almost a week before the Emperor inspected the ruins. By this time the bodies had all been removed. Already the streets were being re-mapped, and bright wooden bridges connected the islands. The people Tadashi talked to all felt that the Army had delayed the Emperor's arrival. They didn't want him to see how terrible the fire had been. If he had, he would have stopped the war at once. But now, with a new week's fighting begun, he naturally could do nothing about it. It was the fault of the Army.

For the rest of the summer Tadashi's brother went to live with his uncle. Lieutenant Tadashi was sent to Tachikawa Air Base. Then soon it was August, and the war was over. About the same time, Shirokiya sent the bolt of cloth he'd ordered for his mother. There was no house at the address, and they sent him a card about it.