The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 3 | Issue 2 | Article ID 1884 | Feb 15, 2005

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One Man's Justice

Mark Ealey, Yoshimura Akira

One Man’s Justice

By Mark Ealey and Yoshimura Akira

Mark Ealey translates and IntroducesYoshimura Akira’s novel probing the moralequation underlying the Pacific War in a novelthat explores American firebombing ofJapanese cities and the Japanese revengekilling of U.S. POWs.

Throughout history, acts of hypocrisy havecome easily to the world’s Great Powers. In1938, in reaction to Japan’s “barbarous”bombing of Chinese civilians, the United Statesplaced a “moral embargo” on the supply ofplanes and aviation equipment to Japan. Oneyear later, U.S. President Franklin D. Rooseveltissued the following appeal:

The President of the United States to theGovernments of France, Germany, Italy, Polandand His Britannic Majesty, September 1, 1939

The ruthless bombing from the air of civiliansin unfortified centers of population during thecourse of the hostilities which have raged invarious quarters of the earth during the pastfew years, which has resulted in the maimingand in the death of thousands of defenselessmen, women, and children, has sickened thehearts of every civilized man and woman, andhas profoundly shocked the conscience ofhumanity.

If resort is had to this form of inhumanbarbarism during the period of the tragicconflagration with which the world is nowconfronted, hundreds of thousands of innocenthuman beings who have no responsibility for,

and who are not even remotely participating in,the hostilities which have now broken out, willlose their lives. I am therefore addressing thisurgent appeal to every government which maybe engaged in hostilities publicly to affirm itsdetermination that its armed forces shall in noevent, and under no circumstances, undertakethe bombardment from the air of civilianpopulations or of unfortified cities, upon theunderstanding that these same rules of warfarewill be scrupulously observed by all of theiropponents. I request an immediate reply.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

For a number of years thereafter, the UnitedStates did indeed refrain from targeting civilianpopulations in its bombing campaigns againstthe Axis powers. Less than seven years later,however, at a time when Roosevelt was stillpresident, American strategic bombing wastaking a toll on German and particularlyJapanese civilians in numbers previouslyunknown in the history of warfare. With thefirebombing of Japanese cities in the spring andsummer of 1945, and culminating in thedropping of the atomic bombs, the hypocrisy ofthe “moral embargo” was exposed as clearly asin the fiction of “The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” espoused by the Americanfoe, Japan. By the summer of 1945, bombingcivilians had become so routine that three daysafter the destruction of Hiroshima tens ofthousands more people were incinerated inNagasaki, and the last mass bombing raid onthe already shattered city of Tokyo occurredjust hours before Japan’s surrender on August15. In seven short years, the Americaninterpretation of the bombing of civilian targetshad conveniently changed from branding it as

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an act of “inhuman barbarism” to making it thecenterpiece of the American way of war and astrategic imperative that would dominate allfuture wars.

We know from horrific images and records ofatrocities at Nanking that Japanese inhumanitytowards the Chinese people was often deliveredwith the bayonet and the sword. By contrast,t h e A m e r i c a n f l i e r s i n t h e i r B - 2 9Superfortresses were comfortably distancedfrom their victims, sowing death fromthousands of feet up in the sky. In the fire-bombing of 64 Japanese cities in the spring andsummer of 1945, each mission comprisedhundreds of B-29s loaded with clusters ofnapalm-filled incendiaries to set houses alightand anti-personnel fragmentation bombsdesigned to deter those who rushed to fight thefires.

International readers have been treated toample description of Japanese war atrocities inhistories, novels and films, but rarely have theyencountered the depiction of U.S. military actssuch as the terror bombing of civilians or otherillegal acts. Yoshimura offers precisely thisperspective.

After Japan’s surrender, the commander of theU.S. 20th Air Force, General Curtis LeMay, wasquoted as saying: “Killing Japanese didn'tbother me very much at that time... I suppose ifI had lost the war, I would have been tried as awar criminal. Fortunately, we were on thewinning side.” As LeMay suggests, the conceptof criminality in war was firmly embedded inthe equation of victory and defeat, or as theJapanese saying goes: kateba kangun,makereba zokugun (“The acts of the victoriousarmy are justified, but those of the defeated arecondemned.”)

Of course, none of the victors faced charges inthe Tokyo War Crime Trials. However, in thefinal days of the war, acts of vengeance werecommitted against captured bomber crews. A

total of 16 captured American pilots and crewmembers were brutally killed in Fukuoka inAugust 1945, some by vivisection in a newphase of the murderous experiments carriedout earlier in China in biowarfare Unit 731. Tenmore American POWs were killed in the atomicbombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and onewho escaped into the streets from theshattered ruins of the Hiroshima Military PoliceHeadquarters is said to have been beaten todeath by an angry mob as his countrymen inthe Enola Gay, mission accomplished, headedback to their base at Tinian.

Two works of literature stand out in addressingthe killing of American POWs in Fukuoka. EndoShusaku deals with the dehumanizing of thoseinvolved in the vivisection of downed Americanfliers in his book “The Sea and Poison,” andYoshimura Akira recalls the executions ofbomber crewmembers in his thought-provokingexamination of the logic of war crimes, “OneMan’s Justice.” Yoshimura is a prolific writer inthe “technohistory” and documentary-stylefiction genre and many of his works focus uponthe experiences of the people of Japan in thePacific War. He writes not to justify, but toinform, seeking to remind readers of theexistence of another perspective.

New Zealander Mark Ealey is a freelancetranslator specializing in Japan’s foreignrelations. One Man's Justice was his second ofsix book-length translations, following on fromYoshimura Akira’s Shipwrecks (1996.) Here is aportion of Chapter 3 of One Man’s Justicedescribing the last two days of the war from thepoint of view of fictional character KiyoharaTakuya, one of the executioners of the capturedbomber crewmen. Written for Japan Focus andposted on November 30, 2005.

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At 11:31 P.M. on June 15, 1944, a report camein to Western Command Headquarters from theelectronic detection post on Cheju Island that

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unidentified aircraft were progressingeastward. Forty-five minutes later, reportswere received that the aircraft had crossed theline between Izuhara on Tsushima Island andthe island of Fukue in the Gotoh Archipelago,and had then crossed the line between Izuharaand Hirado in western Kyushu, meaning thatthe aircraft were traveling at around fourhundred kilometers an hour. At first it wasthought that they might be Japanese spotterplanes, but none were capable of flying at thatspeed, and as no friendly aircraft had beenreported taking that flight path, it was judgedthat this intrusion must represent a force ofenemy heavy bombers heading for the northernKyushu area. The tactical operations centerreacted by immediately contacting theNineteenth Air Force Division and the WesternRegion anti-aircraft batteries on specialhotlines, and Takuya, as duty officer, in thecommander’s name issued a full air-raid alertfor the northern Kyushu area.

Forty-seven aircraft attacked Kokura andYawata that night, but they met with suchdetermined resistance from fighters that thebombing they did manage before heading backto China was virtually ineffective. SevenAmerican bombers were shot down during theattack.

Those at Western Command Headquarters hadassumed that the intruders were B-17s, butinspections of wreckage of aircraft shot downnear the town of Orio in Fukuoka Prefectureand Takasu in Wakamatsu City determined thatthe planes had in fact been the latest Americanstrike bomber, the B-29 Superfortress. A crewmember’s own film of B-29s during flight,discovered amid the wreckage of one plane,confirmed the appearance of the new aircraft.

Subsequently, raids by U.S. bombers based inChina were made on Sasebo on July eighth; onNagasaki on August eleventh; on Yawata on thetwentieth and twenty-first; and on Ohmura onOctober twenty-fifth, November eleventh and

twenty-first, December nineteenth and Januarysixth of the following year but after that, withthe B-29 bases being switched to Saipan,attacks from mainland China stopped.

During those months, assisted by pinpointdetection of incoming aircraft by electronicdetection stations and spotters, the fightersensured that bombing damage was kept to aminimum, claiming a total of fifty-one bombers,and losing only nine of their own number.

Of the American crew members who baled outof their disabled aircraft, not counting thosewho died in the descent, seventeen survived tobe taken prisoner. These men were escorted bythe kempeitai to defense headquarters inTokyo.B-29s operating from bases in Saipan began aconcerted bombing campaign on urban targetssuch as Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, and inMarch 1945 they again turned their attentionto the Kyushu region. Defense by theNineteenth Air Force Division was so effectivethat the numbers of American f l iersparachuting into captivity increaseddramatically. Previously it had been the casethat such prisoners of war were to be escortedto camps in Tokyo by the kempeitai, but inearly April, the Army Ministry issued adirective to the western regional commanddelegating authority, stating that the crewmembers should be “handled as you see fit.”

Six days after that order was received, akempeitai truck carrying twenty-four Americanfliers pulled up at the rear entrance of theWestern Region headquarters. The men wereunloaded and shepherded in pairs into cellsoriginally designed to hold local soldiersawaiting court-martial.

That evening, together with a staff officer fromthe tactical operations center, Takuya wasassigned to watch over the prisoners in thecells. The captive crewmen had just been giventheir evening meal trays, so when Takuya

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entered the holding cell area he saw tall, well-built men, some brown-haired and some blond,sitting in their cells eating rice balls flavoredwith barley, or munching on slices of pickledradish.

Takuya stood in the corridor and stared. Theprisoners behind the bars were the firstAmerican fliers he had ever set eyes upon.

Takuya, as the officer in charge of the airdefense tactical operations center, was amongthe most knowledgeable of the headquartersstaff about the Superfortress bomber. Everytime B-29 units intruded into the Kyushu regionairspace, his staff painstakingly followed theirincoming flight path and then tracked them asthey headed off over the sea after completingtheir missions. Details such as the B-29’s totalwingspan of 43 meters, its wing surface area of161.1 square meters, its fully laden weight of47,000 kilograms, its top speed and altitude of590 kilometers per hour at 9,500 meters, itsmaximum range of 8,159 kilometers with a 3-ton load of bombs, its ten 12.7-millimetermachine guns and one 20-millimeter cannonand its maximum bomb load of eight tons, wereetched into Takuya’s mind, and he had becomevery familiar with the appearance of theSuperfortress by examining photographs of theaircraft both in flight and as wreckage on theground.

B-29s over Tokyo

His hours of meticulous study of the B-29enabled Takuya to deduce the likely target bydetermining the speed and course of theincoming bombers, and then, by calculating theintruders’ time spent in Japanese airspace, howmuch fuel remained, and from that, theprobable course and timing of their escaperoute.

To Takuya and his colleagues who had followedthe movements of these aircraft so faithfullysince the previous year, the squadron of B-29swere a familiar, almost intimate presence. Butnow, seeing these American fliers standing andsitting on the other side of the bars, Takuyarealized that all along his perception of theenemy had been limited to the airplane itself,and that somehow he had forgotten that therewere human beings inside the aircraft.

He was surprised that most of them looked tobe around twenty years of age, some as youngas seventeen or eighteen. It shocked Takuya tothink of the Superfortresses he had tracked someticulously, constructed with the latestequipment and instrumentation, being mannedby young men scarcely past their teens.

Some of the men were the same height as theaverage Japanese, but most were around sixfeet tall, and all were endowed with sturdyframes and well-muscled buttocks. To menused to a diet of meat, the rice balls andpickled radish must have hardly even rated asfood, nevertheless they munched away at theirportions, licking grains of rice off their fingersand biting noisily into the pickles.

Their facial expressions varied. Most avoidedeye contact with their captors, but some, whosefacial muscles were more relaxed, gazedimploringly toward Takuya and his colleague.Others cast frightened glances at them.In the end cell a fair-haired man on a straw-filled futon on the concrete floor lay eating arice ball. A dark bruise from a blow to the facecovered the area from his nose to the point of

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his right cheekbone, and bandaging on his ribcage was visible through his unbuttoned jacket.

“This one’s been shot with a hunting rifle,”whispered the slightly built legal officer,appearing suddenly from behind. Takuyalooked into the cell as the lieutenant read outthe report prepared by the kempeitai on thisparticular American prisoner. The man hadbeen a crew member of a B-29 involved in anight raid on Yawata and Kokura on the twenty-seventh of March. When his plane was hit, hehad parachuted out into the woods near Ono inthe Oita area. People from a nearby villageseeing this had run out to find the man andclubbed him with sticks before shooting himthrough the shoulder and right lung with ahunting rifle. Evidently the wounded flier hadbeen handed over to the police by the villagers,and then on to the kempeitai, who hadarranged for him to receive medical treatmentbefore being transported to Western RegionHeadquarters.

The man was obviously aware that people werewatching him from the other side of the bars,but he ignored them, staring up at the ceilingas he ate. The man seemed to Takuya to havelong eyelashes and a remarkably pointed nose.

When he heard how the villagers had beatenand shot this American, Takuya realized thatdespite his being a military man, bound by dutyto clash with the enemy, his own feelings ofhostility toward the B-29 crews paled incomparison to the villagers’. To this point, hiscontact with the enemy had been limited toinformation about aircraft detected byelectronic listening devices or seen by spotters.In contrast, inhabitants of the mountainvillages no doubt felt intense hatred when theysaw B-29s flying over, perceiving the objectiveof the bombers’ mission to be nothing less thanthe mass slaughter of civilians such asthemselves. This hatred was the driving forcebehind their outbursts of violence toward thedowned crew members.

Tokyo firebombed.

It occurred to Takuya that these twenty-fourAmerican fliers in front of him were theembodiment of an enemy who had slaughtereduntold numbers of his own people. They hadcome back again and again to devastateJapanese towns and cities, leaving behindcountless dead and wounded civilians. The ideathat these men were receiving rice ballsdespite the virtual exhaustion of food suppliesfor the average Japanese citizen stirred angerin Takuya toward those in headquartersresponsible for such decisions.

“Look at the awful shoes they’ve got on,” saidthe officer, with raw contempt in his eyes.

The prisoners’ shoes were all made of cloth,reminiscent of those ordinarily worn whenembarking on nothing more adventurous than acasual stroll. Some were torn at the seams.Judging from the obvious inexperience of theyoung men manning the bombers, and fromtheir shoddy footwear, Takuya wonderedwhether the much-vaunted American affluencewas starting to wane.

After that day Takuya was never assigned towatch over the cells, but he nevertheless took aspecific interest in the decision over what to dowith them. No doubt the Army Ministry haddelegated authority over the fliers because theintensified bombing attacks ruled out the

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transportation of prisoners to a centraldestination. This was evident from the concisewording of the order, “handle as you see fit,”but even so, the precise meaning of “as you seefit” was unclear.

Takuya thought back to the first raid by B-25North American medium bombers just fourshort months after the start of the war. A forceof sixteen enemy planes had taken off from anaircraft carrier and flown at low level into theTokyo and Yokohama area to bomb and strafetargets before retreating toward China, whereeight crew members from two planes whichcrash-landed near Nanchang and Ningbo hadbeen captured by the Imperial Army. Auniversity student at the time, Takuyaremembered reading in the newspaper how thecaptured fliers had been tried by a militarycourt on charges of carrying out bombingattacks designed to kill and wound non-combatants in urban areas, and strafingdefenseless schoolchildren and fishermen. Allhad been found guilty as charged and somewere sentenced to death, others to prisonterms. Takuya remembered seeing aphotograph of the fliers wearing black hoodsover their heads as they were led to theirexecution. [1]

The fact that executions had been carried outafter that raid surely left little room for debateover the fate of the twenty-four prisoners nowin their custody. Once the B-29s moved theirbase of operations to Saipan, they began toconcentrate their attacks on urban area ingeneral, as opposed to military installationsand munitions factories. The Superfortressesgradually switched their targets, dropping hugequantities of incendiary bombs on medium-sized and even smaller towns outside theKyushu and Shikoku areas. The extent of thedevastation was immense; according to reportsfrom central headquarters, evidently alreadymore than one hundred thousand people hadbeen killed and over nine hundred thousanddwellings razed to the ground, affecting over

two and a half million people. These fire raidswere serious violations of the rules of war, sosurely the handling of B-29 crew memberswould not be bound by provisions regarding thecustody of normal prisoners of war.Processing these prisoners began withinterrogating them to acquire informationwhich might help headquarters staff in theirefforts against the bombing raids, and asofficer in charge of anti-aircraft intelligenceTakuya observed the interrogations. Therewere more general questions about the numberof aircraft at the bases in Saipan, the runways,hangars, followed by specific questions aboutthe scale of various kinds of facilities andwhether or not there were plans for expansion,question about the capabilities of the B-29, itsweak points, and the flight paths used to entera n d l e a v e J a p a n e s e a i r s p a c e . T h einterrogations were carried out bothindividually and in groups, and the capturedcrew members replied to the questions posedby interpreter Lieutenant Shirasaka withsurprising candor. The content of their answerswas consistent and there was no indicationwhatsoever that they had tried to coordinatetheir approach to the interrogation. All showedsome signs of fear in their eyes, but every sooften one of them would shrug his shoulders,casually gesture with his hands and even relaxthe muscles of his face slightly with the hint ofa smile.

One nineteen-year-old crewman lookedShirasaka straight in the face and said he hadtaken part in twelve raids on cities such asTokyo, Nagoya and Kobe. There was nomistaking the pride in his expression.

When asked to describe the scene inside theaircraft after dropping the bombs and turningback over the Pacific Ocean toward Saipan, onetall, blond twenty-two- or twenty-three-year-oldsmiled as he said something in quick reply.Shirasaka seemed momentarily taken aback,but then told the others that the American hadsaid that on the way back the B-29 crew

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members would listen to jazz on the radio.Other fliers had replied to the same question bysaying that crew members would show eachother pornographic photos during the flightback to Saipan.

When he heard Shirasaka’s translations ofthese almost nonchalant remarks Takuya feltthe urge to lash out at the prisoner. WhileTakuya and his comrades had been doing theirutmost to minimize the damage to theircountry, these fliers had been treating thebombing raids as sport. He had seen numerousphotographs of wrecked B-29s with pictures ofnaked women painted on the fuselage besideflame-shaped marks indicating the number ofbombing raids the aircraft had made, but nowhe knew that these men felt no remorse at allfor having destroyed the lives and property ofso many Japanese civilians.Until that point, Takuya’s image of the enemyhad been focused upon the aircraft itself, butnow the people who flew it, dropped the bombsfrom it, and manned its weaponry became hisenemy. If there were twelve crew per plane andone hundred bombers taking part in a raid, thisrepresented nothing less than one thousandtwo hundred of the enemy bent on raininghavoc and destruction upon Japanese citizens.Each time he heard that Japanese fighters wereengaging the intruders, in his mind’s eye hepictured the American machine gunners firingtheir weapons. When the bombers had reachedtheir target, he imagined the bombardierlooking through his sights and pressing thebutton to open the bomb bay.

With the American landings on Okinawastarting on March twenty-sixth, air raids on theKyushu region intensified dramatically. Thefollowing day, there were attacks by over twohundred B-29s, during daylight hours and thenat night, on munitions factories in the Kokuraand Yawata areas, and on the thirty-firstapproximately one hundred seventySuperfortresses attacked Air Force bases inTachiarai, Kanoya and Ohmura. On both the

twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth a force ofapproximately seven hundred thirty enemywarplanes operating from aircraft carriersattacked Air Force and naval targets on theKyushu eastern coastline and in areas ofKanoya, Kagoshima, Miyazaki and Sasebo.

Into April there were repeated raids on theTokyo and Nagoya areas, and on the sixteenth,locations in Kyushu were attacked by acombined force of about one hundred bombersand fighters. Raids targeting mainly Air Forceinstallations in Kyushu were carried out on theseventeenth by approximately eighty B-29s andthen from the twenty-first to the twenty-ninthby a total of around eight hundred fortySuperfortresses. Takuya was kept franticallybusy collecting data and issuing air raidwarnings.During this time Takuya came to think thatthese twenty-four prisoners would likely all beexecuted, but on the afternoon of theseventeenth of May, he heard that two of theprisoners had been removed from the holdingcells and transported by truck to the Faculty ofMedicine at Kyushu Imperial University. Theaide to the chief of staff who had told Takuyathis said that one of the men was the crewmanwho had been shot through the lung with ahunting rifle and that the other was a flier whohad serious problems with his digestive organs.Both, he said, were going to the UniversityHospital to receive treatment.

On hearing this, Takuya had thought thatsurely there was little need to take people tohospital for medical treatment if they were tobe executed soon, but he assumed there wassome policy of having the prisoners asphysically sound as possible at the time of theexecution.

Into May the air raids became more relentlessstill. In the eight days between the third andthe fourteenth around two hundred fifty B-29sand sixteen hundred fifty carrier-borne aircraftattacked targets all over Kyushu.

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Just after midnight on the twenty-third, a forceof twenty B-29s dropped a large number ofmines in Kanmon Strait before heading eastback over the ocean at around 1:40 A.M. In theair battle enacted under a canopy of stars, theinterceptors shot down four bombers andinflicted serious damage on four others. Takuyarelieved one of his junior officers on the nightshift, taking off only his jacket before slippinginto the bed in the rest area just off theoperations room.

Awaking at eight the next morning, Takuya atea simple meal of sorghum with barley ricebefore heading out to the tactical operationscenter, a concrete structure half set into theground behind the headquarters building. Onthe way he saw two prisoners being led alongthe corridor and out the back door. Both woreblack cloth covers over their eyes andhandcuffs locked in front of their bodies. Theywere accompanied by a doctor assigned tomilitary duty and five soldiers carrying rifleswith bayonets fixed. The prisoners were pushedonto the deck of an army truck parked in theyard behind the building and the rear flaps ofthe truck’s old tattered hood was pulled downand fastened. An army medical officer was withthem, and Takuya guessed that these prisonersmust also be going to the University Hospital,although there were no obvious signs that theywere wounded or ill in any way.

The truck moved slowly out of the yard anddown the slope, flicking gravel from its reartires.

By this time in late May, Western RegionHeadquarters staff were working frantically totighten defenses in their region as part ofImperial Army Headquarters’ decision toengage the enemy in a final decisive battle onthe Japanese mainland.In the Okinawa area, the American invasionforce comprising around fourteen hundredwarships and almost two hundred thousandarmy and navy personnel had already forced a

bridgehead on the island, but tenaciousresistance slowed the American advance. Inresponse to these landings, the Japanesemobilized a special attack force centered uponthe battleship Yamato, with kamikaze suicideunits smashing themselves relentlessly againstthe oncoming American warships. Thekamikaze attacks represented a menace to theAmerican force, but as their only feasibleapproach to Okinawa was a course followingthe line of the Nansei Islands, they were easilydetected by radar, allowing the Americans tointercept them with large numbers of fighterplanes. As a result, losses were significant andthe majority of planes in these units were shotdown before they could reach their destination.

The American ground troops, assisted bybombardment from warships and strafing fromfighters operating off aircraft carriers,gradually pushed forward, and while theJapanese defenders provided determinedopposition, they were eventually forced toretreat into the southwestern corner of themain island of Okinawa, where they were nowplaying out the final act of their resistance.

With the fall of Okinawa a matter of days away,High Command predicted that the Americanswould lose little time in turning their effortstoward a full-scale invasion of the Japanesemain islands. Based upon this assumption,plans were drawn up for the ultimate battle todefend the homeland, which centered onintense analysis of the enemy’s situation.Essentially, the Americans’ weak point was thatthey had to rely upon greatly extended supplylines stretching across the Pacific Ocean, andin contrast to previous battles where Japanesetroops had little choice but to make desperatebanzai charges on far-flung Pacific islands, itwas hoped that in a defense of the mainlanditself the Japanese would have a decidedadvantage. Levels of available manpower werestill high, and if the local populace was unitedin its support of the defensive effort, it wasjudged that there was a significant chance of

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victory. Public declarations were made that thisdecisive battle would by no means be adefensive struggle, and that it was indeednothing less than an all-out offensive againstthe enemy.

There were numerous opinions as to thespecific locations the Americans would targetfor their invasion, but in the end it wasassumed that they would most likely select thesouthern Kyushu area, as that would allowthem to use Okinawan airfields as forwardbases to provide fighter cover for the groundtroops. In terms of specific landing points, itwas anticipated that the invasion would becentered upon the Miyazaki coastline, AriakeBay and points on both the west and southcoastlines of the Satsuma Peninsula.

Imperial Headquarters relocated a number ofunits from Honshu to Kyushu and placed themunder the command of the Western RegionalHeadquarters. In accordance with orders fromTokyo, the extra troops were stationed aroundthe locations judged most likely to bear thebrunt of an invasion and with the cooperationof local authorities and the general public,work was begun on the construction ofdefensive positions. In addition, High Commanddispatched a staff off icer to WesternHeadquarters, and other young officers whohad completed a course of training at theImperial Army’s Nakano “School” ofsubterfuge, and specialized in intelligenceactivities were chosen to take command of, andbegin tactical preparation for, units specificallydesigned to penetrate and disrupt the invadingforces.

At the end of May, operating from repairedairfields in Okinawa, the Americans began aconcentrated bombing offensive on the Kyushuarea. First, on the twenty-eighth of May acombined force of around seventy bombers andfighters attacked targets all over SouthernKyushu, and subsequently, there were raids onboth the second and third of June by a total of

four hundred twenty carrier-borne aircraft,followed by another combined force of aroundthree hundred bombers and fighters attackingAir Force facilities in Southern Kyushu.

By now the struggle in Okinawa had reached itsfinale, with the surviving defenders and largenumbers of civilian refugees retreating to makea last stand at the southernmost tip of theisland. An air of gloom hung over the westernheadquarters as staff listened in on thewireless communications of the defenders inOkinawa.

On the ninth of June, Takuya was told by thestaff officer attached to the tactical operationscenter that eight of the American prisonerswere dead. Evidently those eight were the oneswho had been taken in pairs from the holdingcells at headquarters to the faculty of medicineat Kyushu Imperial University.

He had been told that the first two captivestransported to the University Hospital went toreceive treatment, but it now seemed that theyhad actually been executed by medical staff.The prisoners had been sent to their deaths bystaff officer Colonel Tahara and medical officerHaruki, who had come up with the idea of usingprisoners condemned to death as guinea pigs inexperiments for medical research, and sorequested that Professor Iwase of the FirstDepartment of Surgery use his good offices tofacilitate this.

The two prisoners were anesthetized with etherand carried to the anatomy laboratory, wherethey were laid on separate dissection tables.Professor Iwase operated to remove portions ofthe lobe of each of their lungs, but both mendied after massive hemorrhaging when arterieswere severed in the process. Subsequently, inpairs, another six prisoners were brought to theanatomy laboratory, each undergoing surgeryon their stomach, liver, or brain, the completeremoval of the gallbladder, or injection ofrefined seawater into their arteries. All six died

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on the operating table during this experimentalsurgery, and evidently both staff officer ColonelTahara and medical officer Haruki werepresent on each occasion.

“They were all well anesthetized and in a coma,so maybe it was a painless way to be executed,”whispered staff officer Tahara, adding that thebodies had been cremated on Abura-yama andthe ashes buried.

The other staff in the Tactical OperationsCenter learned about the eight prisonersduring the course of that day. Colonel Taharainstructed them not to mention what hadhappened to anyone else, telling them that theofficial stance was to be that these prisonershad been sent to Imperial Headquarters inTokyo.

While Takuya felt no particular emotion abouttheir death, it struck him that executing themby means of experimental surgery was ratherunusual. Still, regardless of the method used,he did not falter in his belief that it was onlynatural that they should die for their sins. Infact, more than anything, he felt increasinglyindignant that the remaining prisoners werestill alive in the headquarters compound anddepleting precious food stocks.

That evening, in the Headquarters JudicialDepartment, the remaining sixteen prisonerswere arraigned before a formal militarytribunal, and based upon a reexamination ofthe transcripts of their interrogations it wasconfirmed that every one of the fliers had takenpart in bombing urban targets. All were foundguilty of charges of murder of non-combatantsand based upon the tenets of international law,all were sentenced to death. [2]

The following day, another seventeen fliers whohad been captured after parachuting fromB-29s shot down over Kyushu were delivered tothe rear entrance of the headquarters buildingin a kempeitai truck before being put into the

holding cells together with the previous batchof prisoners. However, the cells were too smallto handle the influx of prisoners, and with fourmen in each it was almost impossible for all ofthem to lie down, so the Judicial Departmentmoved immediately to convert the litigants’waiting room in their part of the building intoan extra holding cel l for some of thenewcomers.

During the next few days, Takuya found himselfvirtually confined to the Tactical OperationsCenter. On the eighth of June, reconnaissancephotographs taken by a plane flying over U.S.Air Force facilities in Okinawa were deliveredto headquarters showing that airfields in Northand Central Okinawa, plus those on Iejima,were fully operational, and confirming theexistence of at least five hundred twenty-threefighters and bombers. Takuya and his comradesall sensed that an intensification of attacks onKyushu was impending and that the stage wasset for the decisive battle for the homeland.

On the evening of the eighteenth of June, themood at Western Headquarters grew somber.On the radio they had heard the farewellmessage from Lieutenant-General UshijimaMitsuru, commander of the Thirty-second Armyin Okinawa to Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo,informing his superiors that he was about togive his life for the Emperor’s cause. “While toa man, our forces have fought with supremeheroism over the last two months, the enemy’soverwhelming numerical superiority on land,sea and air has meant that this struggle hasentered its closing stages. I most humbly reportthat the final preparations are in hand to leadthose surviving soldiers to a glorious death.”

The final battle for Okinawa was a struggle ofapocalyptic proportions. According to reportsfrom pilots of reconnaissance planes, thepummeling of the southern tip of the island byconcentrated bombardment from warships,ground-based artillery and bombing was suchthat it looked as though there had been a huge

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volcanic eruption, with streams of tracerbullets, raging fires and plumes of grey andblack smoke all adding a macabre effect to thehellish scene. Since the battle for Saipan in thestruggles for the islands across the NorthPacific, non-combatants not only had beenembroiled in the conflict but also had lost theirlives, together with the soldiers of eachdefending garrison. No doubt this tragedy hadbeen repeated in Okinawa, with scores of oldmen, women and children losing their lives inthe bombardment or choosing to die by theirown hands. [3]

That same night, the news came that a force offifty B-29s based in Saipan had attackedHamamatsu and another thirty had raided thecity of Yokkaichi, both attacks involvingincend iar ies and bo th resu l t ing inconflagrations so destructive that the targetswere virtually burnt to cinders. To date, thenumber of aircraft counted as having beeninvolved in bombing raids on targets in Japanhad soared to over twenty thousand, claimingaround four hundred thousand lives, destroyingone million six hundred thousand homes andproducing six million three hundred thousandrefugees.

The next morning brought blue skies, with themeteorological office forecasting fine weatherall over Kyushu. To those in the tacticaloperations center, this meant a drasticallyincreased likelihood of large-scale bombingraids, and orders were issued for spotters to beparticularly vigilant.

The daylight hours passed uneventfully, andwhen the sun dipped low in the evening thebright red of the western sky signaled thatanother fine day would follow. Within minutesof the sunset the sky was a mass of twinklingstars.That night, around 7:50 P.M., a report came infrom an electronic listening post set to coverthe Hyuga coastline that a force of aircraft washeading northwest over that quadrant of the

Kyushu defensive perimeter. As there wasnothing to suggest that this representedfriendly aircraft on patrol, Takuya immediatelyassumed that it was a force of B-29s fromSaipan and issued an air raid warning to allareas of northern Kyushu.

Knowing that a lone Superfortress had flown areconnaissance mission over Fukuoka theprevious night, Takuya expected that beforelong Kyushu’s largest city would bear the bruntof an attack. Tens of thousands of tons ofincendiaries had already reduced major urbancenters such as Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka toscorched wastelands, but so far attacks onKyushu had mostly been limited to militarytargets or munitions factories, and the islandhad been spared the saturation raids aimed atrazing towns and cities to the ground. Okinawawas now completely in American hands, and ittook no stretch of the imagination to gauge thattheir next move would be to obliterate thecities of Kyushu before launching their invasionforce onto Kyushu’s beaches.

Red lights lit up on the otherwise darkenedmap of Kyushu on the wall of the operationsroom as one after another reports of aircraftintruding into the perimeter came in fromelectronic listening points. The sequence of thelights indicated that the enemy bombers wereproceeding on a course toward northernKyushu.

Processing the incoming data, Takuya realizedthat this force, comprising around seventyaircraft, had split into two separate groupssomewhere over Hita City in Oita Prefecture.Around ten planes were continuing straight ontheir original course while the other sixty hadpulled around slightly toward the northwest. Itwas presumed that the aircraft on theunchanged, straight course were on whatwould be the fifth mission to drop mines in theKanmon Strait area, adding to the total ofeighty planes which had already done so, andthat the other, larger group was heading for

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Fukuoka. When incoming reports confirmedbeyond a doubt that Fukuoka was indeed thetarget, the Tactical Operations Centerimmediately issued an air raid warning for thecity and its environs.

The first word that intruders had enteredFukuoka airspace came from Dazaifu, justsoutheast of the metropolitan area, and wassoon followed by reports of aircraft sightedabove the city itself. Takuya knew from thedata received that the bombers were likelydeploying at low level over the city and by nowwould have started their bombing runs. Itseemed that the intruders which had followedthe line of the Nakagawa River into the city haddropped their load on Shin-Yanagi-Machi andthe Higashi-Nakasu area, resulting in a surgeof reports of fires raging in those areas.

Those in the tactical operations center, setpartially into the ground and encased inreinforced concrete, were removed from thethunderous blasts of exploding bombs and theclamor of a city in the throes of incineration.Takuya and his fellow officers stood staring atthe red lamps on the map of Kyushu stretchedacross one wall. The lights indicating theFukuoka urban area remained on, as did thosepositioned to represent Kanmon Strait,confirming that the smaller force of ten aircrafthad reached its predicted target.

Takuya sat motionless, staring at the map onthe wall in front of his desk. Although the skyabove the headquarters building was swarmingwith enemy planes, and the area around theirsafe haven was likely engulfed in flames, theatmosphere within the operations room wasalmost tranquil. As officer in charge of anti-aircraft intelligence, Takuya focused hisattention solely on imparting information aboutthe movements of enemy aircraft, and to himthere was no difference between planesdirectly above and planes attacking some moredistant region within the defensive perimeter.

Anti-aircraft batteries and searchlight unitsalong the Kanmon Strait coastline had beenreinforced in late May, and reports were nowcoming in that these units were engaging theSuperfortresses dropping mines in shippingchannels. Two hours after the initial sightings,these bombers seemed to have finisheddropping their mines and had turned backsouth. Around the same time, reports began tocome in that the force which had targetedFukuoka had started to move in a southerlydirection. The Superfortresses had clearlycompleted their mission and were headingback.

One by one red lamps went out as the smallerforce of intruders headed south from KanmonStrait, then joined up again over Hita City withthe main force which had ravaged Fukuoka,and changed to a course directly southeast. Ashort time later the aircraft were detectedcrossing the line between Hosojima in MiyazakiPrefecture and Sukumo in Kochi Prefecture.Similar reports followed from the listeningpoints covering the line between Aojima furtherdown the Miyazaki coastline and Sukumo overin Shikoku, confirming that the bombers wereabout to disappear across the Hyuga Sea backtoward Saipan.

Orders were issued to give the “all-clear” for allareas of the Kyushu region, and only now wasTakuya able finally to leave his desk. Theenemy planes were officially recorded ashaving left Japanese airspace at 3:37 A.M.,seven hours and forty minutes after the originalintrusion.

Takuya wanted to see for himself what thesituation was like outside the confines of theoperations room, and the lack of incomingreports meant in effect that he had finished hisduty for the night, so there was no reason whyhe could not slip away from the post for a shorttime.

Delegating the remaining duties to his

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subordinates, Takuya hurried out of the roomand down the dimly lit corridor. The moment heopened the outer section of the double steeldoors he was consumed by a deafening roar.Each breath he took of the superheated airseemed to scorch the inside of his lungs.Everything on the outside, the trees, theheadquarters building, the ground, was brightred. Powerful gusts of wind lashed thebranches of trees, and scurries of singed leavesdanced across the ground.

Takuya stepped away from the steel doors andran a few paces to the edge of the backyard,where he stopped, riveted by the terrifyingscene before his eyes. Huge swirling towers offlames reached skyward from a seethingconflagration covering an almost endlessexpanse below him. One thunderous roarfollowed another, resounding like wavescrashing into a cliff, hurling sheets of fire andangry streams of sparks into the night sky. Thebarracks just to the west of where Takuyastood had been razed, and a frenzied swarm ofsoldiers were using hoses and buckets to throwwater onto the headquarters building. The menwere all as tinged red as everything else was inthis glimpse of the inferno.

Takuya had heard reports about cities beingdevastated by incendiaries, but the destructionhe was witnessing far surpassed anything hehad ever imagined. Like masses of toweringwhitecaps soaring up from a tempestuous sea,a myriad of flames seemed to press upwardfrom the heart of the blaze. His face felt so hothe thought it must be burning, and the billowsof smoke stung his eyes.

The city contained neither military installationsnor munitions factories, so the purpose of thefire raid could only have been to kill and maimcivilians and reduce their dwellings to ashes.The thought flashed through his mind that thescene he was witnessing had been repeatedtime and time again in other cities and townsall over Japan, with innumerable non-

combatants being sent to their deaths. [4]

The strength of interceptor fighter units inKyushu had been dramatically reduced throughU.S. bombing attacks on Air Force facilities inthe area, and that night, too, there were noreports of Superfortresses being shot down byfighters, so the anti-aircraft batteries had moreor less been left to defend the island’s skies bythemselves.Takuya blinked painfully as he gazed into thesea of flames.

#

Dawn came.

Reports came flooding into the tacticaloperations center outlining the level of damagein Fukuoka Ci ty . The f i res had beenextinguished by around 6 A.M. but apart fromthe Tenjin-machi and Hakozaki-machi areas,the entire city center had been burnt to theground, with an estimated ten thousanddwellings destroyed in the fires. Early reportssuggested that the death toll would beextremely high.

Subsequent reports described citizens who hadfled during the night returning to survey thesmoldering embers of what had been theirhomes starting around ten o’clock thatmorning; shortly after that several dozen suchpeople had gathered around the front gate ofthe headquarters complex clamoring for theexecution of the captive fliers. There were saidto be a large number of women among thecrowd, and moreover, some of them had beenweeping as they screamed out for the crewmento be killed. No doubt they were infuriated atthe thought that the Americans were still aliveand had remained safe from the blaze thanks tothe firefighting efforts of the garrison. Whilethe prisoners might also have been afraid atthe thought of being burned alive, they alsomight have felt some kind of satisfaction inknowing that it was their compatriots who were

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raining death and destruction on the citybelow.

Takuya had little difficulty understanding thethinking of the people who had gathered infront of the main gate. The prisoners not onlyhad burned to death thousands of defenselessold men, women and children, but were nowbeing kept alive with a steady supply of foodthat the average person in the street could onlydream about. Surely there was no reason to letthem live any longer.

“What the hell are they up to in headquarters?They should execute them as soon as possible,”muttered Takuya to himself.Medical Officer Haruki’s name was on the listof dead. In conjunction with his work as deputyhead doctor at the military hospital adjacent tothe headquarters building, he had been giventhe honorary rank of lieutenant, and he wasattending a doctors’ meeting when the air raidstarted the previous evening. Evidently he hadbeen unable to make it to safety when theirbuilding caught fire. The fatality reports alsolisted the names of several non-commissionedofficers and numerous enlisted men and civilianemployees working at headquarters. Word alsostarted coming in of family members ofheadquarters’ staff killed in the firestorms thathad ravaged the city’s residential areas.

Takuya could hear all this news being reportedas he worked at his tasks as anti-aircraftintelligence officer. A deterioration in theweather meant that raids were unlikely fromSaipan-based aircraft, but all the same, as thepossibility of more short-range attacks bybombers flying up the line of the Nansei Islandsfrom bases in Okinawa could not be ruled out,Takuya was paying particular attention toreports coming in from the southern Kyushuregion.

Takuya had just finished eating a late lunch ofsorghum with barley rice and a piece of saltedsalmon when a staff officer from headquarters

briskly entered his room, stepped up toTakuya ’s desk and announced in animpassioned voice, “It’s on.”At Takuya’s puzzled look, the lieutenant blurtedout that it had been decided that eight of theprisoners in the holding cells were to beexecuted, and that this was to be carried outimmediately in the courtyard of what used tobe a girls’ high school, directly behind theheadquarters complex. Takuya was told thatthe prisoners were to be decapitated, and thatheadquarters staff with considerableexperience in kendo had already been selected.Takuya was to arrange for two of hissubordinates to be made available toparticipate in the executions.

Takuya nodded his understanding andbeckoned the two sergeant-majors sitting onthe other side of the room to come over to hisdesk. When he told them they would be takingpart in the executions the color drained fromtheir faces and a look of trepidation came totheir eyes.

“One good clean blow. Don’t let us down,”growled Takuya.

The two men stood stiffly to attention as theybarked their reply.

They were men with much longer servicerecords than himself, including combatexperience at the front, and Takuya could notcomprehend how they had the gall to showeven a trace of apprehension at the mention ofthe executions. Rumor that one of the men hadreputedly succeeded in beheading two Chineseprisoners with successive blows made theirattitude all the more enraging to Takuya.Possibly their stint at office work on the homefront had dulled the mental hardness theywould have honed on the battlefield.

Takuya watched as they put on their servicecaps, picked up their swords and left the room.By then, a weather report had come in that rain

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had started to fall in southern Kyushu, and inline with this, no sightings of enemy aircraftwere reported. Takuya’s subordinates workedaway collating the mountain of damage reportsreceived from the city.

Around two o’clock the door opened and thetwo sergeant-majors walked in, one behind theother. Takuya searched their faces for a hint ofemotion. They were both pale but there was astrangely radiant look in their eyes. Theirbrows glistened with sweat as though they hadcome from vigorous exercise, and a tangibleheat emanated from their bodies.

They stepped toward Takuya’s desk and in ananimated voice one reported, “Dutiescompleted, sir!”

“How was it? Did all go well?” asked Takuya.

“Yes sir, we each executed one prisoner,”replied one of the sergeant-majors, exhilarationlingering in his eyes.

“Well done,” said Takuya, nodding his approval.The two soldiers returned to their desks and

wiped their brows with hand cloths.

Takuya heard that four regular officers andthree non-commissioned officers had taken partin the executions that day, including LieutenantHowa Kotaro of the paymasters’ section, theonly man who had volunteered. A graduate ofTokyo Commercial University, Howa was amild-mannered man known for his skill atwriting tanka poetry. That morning he hadhurried down through the smoldering ruins ofthe Kojiya-machi area of Fukuoka to the housewhere his mother lived. It had burnt to theground, so he waited for his mother to returnfrom wherever she might have sheltered duringthe air raid. Casting his eyes over the sheets ofroofing iron scattered across the ruins at theend of the little alleyway, he saw a black objectresembling a scorched piece of timber. Whenhe looked more closely and saw the gold-capped teeth showing from the gaping burnthole that had once been a mouth, he realizedthat this was the charred corpse of his mother.He wrapped her body in a piece of singed strawmatting and asked a neighbor to look after ituntil he could come back to give her a properfuneral. Howa returned to headquarters andbegan working silently on his mother’s coffin.Those attached to the tactical operations centerwere in charge of organizing the executions,but when Howa heard that the American flierswere to be killed, the request he made to thestaff officer in charge of the operations room tobe allowed to take part was so compelling thathis name was added to the list. A member ofthe kendo club during his university days,H o w a w a s t h e o n l y m a n a m o n g t h eexecutioners to decapitate two of the prisoners.

While these executions temporarily relieved thefrustration Takuya felt, each time he steppedoutside the operations room and caught thehorrific sight of a city razed to the ground,irrepressible anger and pain welled up insidehim. According to reports issued by themunicipal office the death toll was over onethousand, with over fifty thousand families

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losing their homes and untold thousands ofpeople injured in the conflagration. Everywherethere were dazed people sifting through theashes of the scorched ruins. Here and theregroups of men, women and children satlistlessly on the side of the road. Viewing suchscenes, and contemplating the fact that thesepeople were destitute because of the B-29 fireraids, he thought it an injustice that theremaining prisoners were still safe inside theheadquarters building.

The day after the incendiary attack on FukuokaCity the key members of the Headquarters staffmoved to caves near Yamae Village in theTsukushi area, leaving behind only those doingwork related to anti-aircraft intelligence. Afterthe attack on Fukuoka, the U.S. Air Forcestarted saturation bombing raids on other maincities and towns in Kyushu. First, on thetwenty-ninth of June, a force of ten B-29sbombed Nobeoka in Miyazaki Prefecture, andthen Kanoya in Kagoshima Prefecture.Beginning in July, attacks were made on citiesand towns such as Kurume, Yatsushiro,Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Oita, Omuta andMiyazaki.

Among those left to work on anti-aircraftintelligence tension mounted as preparationswere accelerated to meet the expectedAmerican landings on Kyushu. Defensiveearthworks were being constructedeverywhere, artillery pieces placed in cavesfacing the sea and special kamikaze attackaircraft hidden in underground shelters.

Plans were also being made to strengthen themobile reserve, the Thirty-sixth Army, byredeploying three infantry divisions from theChugoku and Kinki areas, and by moving thepride of the mainland defensive forces, twoelite armored divisions and six reserve divisionsfrom the Kanto region ready to meet the enemyin Kyushu.

With such crucial forces being readied, Takuya

began to sense that the last decisive momentsof the war were close at hand. If the remainingarmies played their part in the grand defensivestrategy prepared by Imperial Headquarters, itwould be possible for Japan to deal theAmerican forces a body blow. There was nodoubting Japan’s advantage in terms of supplylines, and willingness of the ten millioninhabitants of Kyushu to do their utmost tocontribute to the success of the defensiveeffort. While Takuya did not doubt that Japanwould be victorious in the coming battles, henow had a premonition that he himself wouldnot live through the titanic struggle about tounfold. At least, he hoped, he would succumbknowing that he had inflicted the greatestdamage possible on the enemy.

That summer was much hotter than average.The steel doors had been pushed wide open,but because the tactical operations center wasencased in a thick layer of reinforced concreteit was oppressively hot inside the building, thelone fan sending a stream of hot air across thedesks. Sweat dripping from their brows,Takuya and his colleagues went on working atprocessing incoming information and preparingthe anti-aircraft defenses to meet the nextbombing raid.

Toward the end of July there was a dramaticincrease in the number of enemy aircraftparticipating in each attack. On the twenty-eighth, a total of 3,210 planes attacked targetsin the Kanto, Tokai and Kinki regions, whilearound 650 carrier-borne planes made bombingand strafing sorties over Kyushu, some of thelatter aircraft even going so far as to attacktargets in the Korea Strait and the southernregion of the Korean Peninsula. The followingday, the twenty-ninth, a force of 361 carrier-borne bombers and fighters attacked targets incentral and southern Kyushu. The same areaswere attacked by 379 aircraft on the thirtieth,148 planes on the first of August, and another220 on the fifth of August. The fact that theseattacks were concentrated on military and

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coastal installations was judged to be anindication that the American invasion of Kyushuwas imminent, and Western CommandHeadquarters was on a constant alert for newsthat the invasion fleet had been sighted.

Near-windless days with clear blue skiescontinued, and the morning temperatures onAugust sixth augured another sweltering day.Forecasting another large-scale attack thatday, the tactical operations center issuedorders for no relaxation of the full-alertconditions in all areas of Kyushu.

Just after eight in the morning Takuya lookedup from his desk, his attention caught bysomething distant, yet quite audible. A strange,almost rending sound, as if a huge piece ofpaper had been violently ripped in two.Seconds later a palpable shock wave jolted theair. His subordinates all sat stock-still andlooked in bewilderment. No enemy planes hadbeen reported intruding into Kyushu airspace,and the sound they had just heard was clearlydif ferent from anything they had yetexperienced. Takuya thought it had perhapsbeen a distant peal of thunder.

Later that day, as expected, a combined forceof 180 bombers and fighters from bases inOkinawa attacked targets in southern Kyushu.Takuya was kept busy processing incomingreports and issuing orders to anti-aircraftdefense units in that region.That afternoon a communiqué from ImperialHeadquarters in Tokyo notified them of thetruth about the ominous sound and shock wavethey had felt that morning. The message statedthat at 8:15 A.M. two B-29s had intruded intoJapanese airspace on a flight path over theBungo Channel before sweeping northeasttoward Hiroshima, where one of them haddropped a special new-type bomb which hadcaused extensive damage. It went on to advisethat on no account was the extreme state ofalert to be relaxed.

Western Command Staff tried in vain to contactthe Central Region Command Headquarters inHiroshima by telephone, but before long theyreceived an updated report from ImperialCommand in Tokyo to the effect that Hiroshimahad been completely devastated, and tens ofthousands of people killed or wounded.Considering that the sound and shock wavefrom the explosion had carried a full twohundred kilometers from Hiroshima toFukuoka, Takuya and his colleagues realizedthat this bomb must possess a fearfuldestructive power far exceeding that of normalbomb technology.

Over the next several hours, a range of reportscame in about the new bomb. Evidently, afterbeing dropped it had descended attached to aparachute and had exploded several hundredmeters above the ground, unleashing a blindingwhite flash of light, and punching a turbulentyellowish white mushroom-shaped cloud up toten or twenty thousand meters into the sky.

The next day, the seventh, Imperial Commandmade a brief announcement on the radioregarding the bombing of Hiroshima. First, thatthe previous day, Hiroshima had been attackedby a small number of enemy B-29 aircraft andhad suffered extensive damage; and second,that surveys were under way to establish thenature of the new weapon that had been usedin this attack. While reports from ImperialCommand had mentioned nothing that specific,information had now been received to theeffect that this new weapon was probably whatwas being called an “atomic bomb.” The termitself was new to Takuya and his staff, but fromthe incoming reports it was clear that theweapon’s destructive power was somethingcompletely unheard of.

That evening Colonel Tahara, the staff officerassigned to the tactical operations center,returned from a visit to Air Force OperationalCommand. The aircraft he had travelled in hadstopped off in Hiroshima en route back to

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Fukuoka. He described how the city had beenreduced to ruins, with corpses ly ingeverywhere.

An air of oblivion hung over the staff in theheadquarters building, and few uttered even aword. Each struggled to understand how, inaddition to devastating fire raids on towns andcities throughout the country, the Americanmilitary could unleash a new weapon of suchdestructive power expressly designed to killand maim a city’s civilian inhabitants. As freshreports trickled in detailing the situation inHiroshima, Takuya felt with increasingconviction that the American military hadceased to recognize the Japanese as membersof the human race. Evidently all the buildingshad been demolished and a large portion of thecity’s population annihilated in an instant. How,thought Takuya, did the thinking behind thisdiffer from the mass incineration of a nest ofvermin?

Two days later, on the ninth of August, news ofgrave concern was received at headquarters.The Soviet Union not only had unilaterallyrenounced the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact,but had also declared war on Japan. The RedArmy forces were already advancing across theborder with Manchuria to engage theKwantung Army. It was clear that the timing ofthe Soviet offensive was linked to the droppingof the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and that withthe Russians commencing hostilities, Japan wasnow surrounded by enemies on all sides.Takuya sensed that the day he would be calledupon to give his life for his country was near.

That morning at about 7:40 A.M., a report camein from electronic detection posts that aircrafthad crossed the line between Aoshima inMiyazaki Prefecture and Sukumo in KochiPrefecture on Shikoku Island; subsequentlythey were detected crossing the line betweenHosojima in Miyazaki and Sukumo, so an alertwas issued, followed by a full air raid warning.But as spotters reported no sightings of

intruders in that area of Kyushu, the order tosound the all-clear was issued at 8:30 A.M. Thehigh state of alert was maintained in thetactical operations center, and when a reportwas received from aircraft spotters on KunisakiPeninsula that two Superfortresses had beenseen heading westward, the order to sound theair raid warning alarms was reissued at 10:53A.M.

The fact that only two B-29s were sighted, as inthe attack three days earlier, pointed stronglytoward the likelihood that one of theseintruders was carrying a bomb of the typewhich had devastated Hiroshima, and thecourse of the aircraft suggested that theirtarget was a city in the northern Kyushu area.

The two aircraft continued west until theyreached the city of Kokura, where they circledfor a short time before the dense cloud coverevident ly forced them to switch to acontingency target to the southwest. Judgingfrom the aircrafts’ flight path, the tacticaloperations center staff speculated that thetarget had been switched to the city ofNagasaki and so radio and telex messages weresent to that city straightaway to warn them ofthe approaching bombers and advise thateveryone should be ordered to evacuateimmediately. To avoid panicking among thepopulace, however, no mention was made ofthe possibility that the bombers were carryingthe same type of weapon which had destroyedHiroshima.

Virtually incapacitated with anxiety, Takuyaand his colleagues sat mesmerized by the redlamps on the wall map indicating the movementof the two B-29s. The lamps showed the planesmoving inexorably over the Ariake Sea andthen down across the northern section of theShimabara Peninsula, approaching Nagasakifrom the northeast and seeming almost to stopfor a moment over the city before heading eastand then disappearing off in the direction ofOkinawa.

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Queasy with foreboding, Takuya sat at his deskand waited for damage reports from Nagasaki.The only solace was the fact that they heard nosound nor felt any shock wave like thatexperienced when the new bomb was droppedon Hiroshima.Before long, however, his worst fears wererealized. A report came in from Ohmura AirForce Base that a brilliant white light had beenseen a split second before a thunderousexplosion had rocked the ground where theystood, and a huge mushroom-shaped cloud hadrisen skyward above Nagasaki. There was nofurther communication until, after some time,reports began flooding in that the city hadsuffered extensive damage, some informationeven suggesting that the bomb had beendropped on a residential area in the northernpart of Nagasaki. The bomb was obviously ofthe same type as the one which had destroyedHiroshima. The thought that the tragedy whichhad been visited upon Hiroshima had now beenreenacted in Nagasaki made it impossible forTakuya to remain sitting calmly at his desk.

That day, Takuya heard that eight prisonershad been executed by headquarters staff whohad been relocated to the caves near YamaeVillage. Apparently the executions had beencarried out in the woods near the municipalcrematorium at Higashi-Abura-Yama, to thesouth of Fukuoka. Among the staff were anumber of officers from the Nakano “School” ofsubterfuge, readying themselves for theirmission of infiltrating enemy lines once theAmericans landed. Evidently these men hadused the blindfolded prisoners as targets to testthe effectiveness of Taiwanese Takasago tribehunting bows provided by a local archery club,but with such poor results that the idea ofusing them as weapons was abandoned. Afterthe abortive experiment, the prisoners weretaken one by one into a small clearing deeperin the forest, where they were beheaded. Thebodies were then wrapped in straw mats andburied in shallow graves.

Distracted by the thought of the devastationinflicted upon Nagasaki, and frantically busyprocessing data and issuing air raid warningsand all-clear signals following the attacks by acombined force of approximately three hundredbombers and fighters on targets all overKyushu that day, Takuya registered what hadhappened to the American prisoners, but hadno time to ponder their fate.

The following day, the tenth of August, anothercombined force of about 210 bombers andfighters darkened the skies of Kyushu,pummeling Kumamoto and Oita cities withincendiaries. In the course of two hours in themorning of the eleventh, over 150 aircraftwreaked havoc on the city of Kurume,destroying 4,500 homes. There was no respitefrom the raids; around 200 planes attackedKyushu on the twelfth followed by another 150B-29s on the fourteenth. Massive quantities ofbombs were dropped on Kyushu, and therewere even reports of large numbers ofschoolchildren being killed in the relentlessstrafes attacks by American fighter planes.

By now, urban centers in Kyushu had beenreduced to ashes, munitions factories all butdestroyed, and food supplies diminished tosuch an extent that those living in the vicinityof the main cities and towns were on the vergeof starvation. The destruction of most portfacilities, the dropping of large numbers ofmines into the sea, and the lurking menace ofenemy submarines made maritime transportvirtually impossible, and, from the last ten daysof July, the frequency of daytime sorties by U.S.fighters over southern Kyushu virtually ruledout rail transport during daylight hours.

On the evening of the fourteenth of AugustTakuya heard from a colleague some news suchthat he could hardly believe his ears. Evidentlythe man had been told by an officer attached tothe headquarters staff in the caves at Yamaethat there were indications that some centralgovernment officials were prepared to accept

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the unconditional terms of the PotsdamDeclaration, and that at noon of the followingday, the fifteenth, the Emperor would bemaking a radio announcement of momentousimportance. Apparently the broadcast wouldeither ratify the acceptance of the Declaration,or reject it, with the likelihood of the formerbeing very strong.

Surely this couldn’t be true. The deployment ofreinforcements, the preparation of weaponryand strengthening of the defenses around thepredicted landing points in Kyushu werecomplete. Military installations and munitionsfactories may have been destroyed and citiesmay have been razed, but there were stillenough forces left to repel the Americans. Thedecisive struggle was yet to come; before itsoutcome was clear, it should be unthinkable toeven consider surrendering.

This supposedly reliable information fromgovernment sources in Tokyo surelyrepresented nothing more than the view of asmall group of weak-kneed politicians, thoughtTakuya. Their likes should be exterminatedimmediately for harboring such treasonousthoughts on the even of the decisive battle forthe homeland.

Takuya felt discomposed as he attended to hisduties. When he heard the seeminglyinterminable reports of American bombers andfighters attacking targets across the entirecountry, he couldn’t help but think that thistalk of surrender must be mere groundlessrumor. Enemy aircraft were just as active thatday as on any other day, with around 250Superfortresses attacking targets in the Kanto,Fukushima and Niigata areas over a total offour hours starting just before midnight on thefourteenth. Within hours of those raids, a forceof around 250 carrier-borne aircraft made yetanother wave of strikes on the Kanto area inthe two hours after sunrise. Surely, thoughtTakuya, if the suggestion that the purpose ofthe Emperor’s impending radio broadcast was

to accept the Potsdam Declaration carried anycredence, this would have already beenconveyed to the Allies, who would in turn haveordered the American military to ceasehostilities. The fact that a total of as many as500 aircraft bombed and strafed targets allover the country from the night of thefourteenth through into the early hours of themorning of the fifteenth was indeed proof thatthe war between the United States and Japanwas continuing unabated.

After regaining his composure, Takuya stole acouple of hours’ sleep before returning to hispost at 8 A.M. The weather forecast was forclear skies and high temperatures, so morelarge-scale air raids were expected in thecourse of the day.

As noon approached Takuya ordered his staff toassemble in the operations room, the menstanding rigidly to attention in two neat rows.As he waited for the broadcast he thought thatthe Emperor could only be taking this unheard-of step to deliver words of inspiration to hispeople before the curtain went up on the finaldecisive battle for the homeland.

The hands of the clock reached noon, and aftera recording of the national anthem theEmperor’s announcement began. It wasdelivered in a strange, high-pitched voice,reminding Takuya of the prayers he’d heardrecited by Shinto priests. Takuya and hiscomrades stood stiffly at attention, their headsbowed. The sound quality of the radio in thetactical operations center was excellent, andthe transmission of the Imperial rescript couldbe heard clearly by all present.

Takuya listened intently to every word andlifted his head in disbelief on hearing the words“We have ordered Our Government tocommunicate to the Governments of the UnitedStates, Great Britain, China and the SovietUnion that Our Empire accepts the provisionsof their Joint Declaration.” This “joint

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declaration” obviously referred to the PotsdamDeclaration, acceptance of which meantnothing less than unconditional surrender.

Takuya felt suffocated. He couldn’t believe thiswas happening. He had known that the warwould some day come to an end, but his notionof that end was always that Japan would be thevictor. Beyond a doubt, the current fortunes ofwar clearly favored the enemy, and it mighttake months, even yeas, before the tide couldbe turned and victory claimed. By this stage, inhis mind, the victory he had envisaged hadbeen deferred to the more distant future, apoint in time which Takuya felt less and lessconfident he himself would reach. In any case,it was unthinkable that the war should end indefeat. And to concede defeat in this fashion,before the decisive battle for the homeland,was even more inconceivable.

When the broadcast finished, Takuya felt faint,and had to consciously prevent his knees frombuckling. The Emperor’s words echoed insidehis head, leaving no room for other thoughts.

Takuya’s men all stared in his direction, thebewilderment on their faces revealing that theyhad failed to comprehend the broadcast. Someeven seemed buoyed by the Emperor’s words,having interpreted the message as a veiledexhortation to redouble their efforts on the eveof the final struggle. Clearly the men wereconfused by the lack of direct mention of theword “defeat,” and did not realize that Japanwas about to surrender to the Allies.

Takuya turned toward the men, and in anemphatic tone said, “It’s all over. We’ve lost.”His strength draining from him, he shuffledback behind his desk and slumped into hischair.

The men remained as they were, staring atTakuya in disbelief. Moments later, muffledsobs could be heard from among the ranks.Propping his elbows on his desk, Takuya fixed

his eyes firmly on the knots in its surface.

Eventually the men started to move silentlyback to their own desks.

Takuya pondered what would happen after thesurrender. American warships would likely putU.S. troops ashore all over Japan, and enemyaircraft would swarm onto surviving airfieldsdelivering loads of soldiers and weapons. Nodoubt the victors would waste little time inmenacing the populace into submission as theywent on to occupy all of Japan. Physically soundmales would be forcibly relocated to worksomewhere as laborers, and most likely, youngwomen would become the object of the victors’sexual desires. Those who resisted, he thought,would be thrown into prison or shot.

As if time had stopped, Takuya remainedimmobilized in his chair, a look of physical andmental exhaustion on his face.The door opened and staff officer ColonelTahara came in. When one of the men calledthe room to attention, Takuya stood up andbowed to his superior.

The colonel walked up to Takuya. “You heardHis Majesty’s speech. We’ve had direct wordfrom High Command that the Emperor hasagreed to accept the Potsdam Declaration.Orders are to burn all documentation at once,”he said hurriedly before disappearing out thedoor again.

Takuya turned to the men and barked out theorder. “Burn every document in the building.Now go to it!”

That defeat could become a reality with suchfrightening ease dumbfounded Takuya. Hisnotion of defeat had involved all branches ofthe Japanese Imperial forces choosing deathbefore dishonor, and his own demise had beena certainty in that scenario. He realized thatthere was nothing left for him to do. By now,High Command would have already conveyed

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the news about the cease-fire to the air defensespotters and those manning the electronicaircraft-detection posts, so there would be nomore incoming reports to process, no moredata to assess, no more air raid alerts to issue.His duties had come to an end.Unable to watch his men piling documents intoboxes, Takuya left his desk and stepped out ofthe room. The corridor was busy with stern-faced men carrying armfuls of paper to and fro.Takuya walked down the hallway and outthrough the steel doors at the rear of thebuilding.

The sunlight was so brilliant that for a momenthe felt dizzy. The trees, the ground, the stonesall seemed to be parched white. A sensationcame over him as though the air was seething,engulfing him in a myriad of tiny air bubbles.He squinted as he fought the dizziness. In therear courtyard, the soldiers had already starteda bonfire and were burning the piles ofdocuments that had been carried out throughthe back door. The fire was burning fiercelynow, the flames flickering like red cellophanein the midday sun.From the rear entrance to the building, amongthe soldiers carrying bundles of paper,appeared the lieutenant from the legal affairssection, walking straight toward Takuya. Hispursed lips were dry and his eyes glistened.Stopping in front of Takuya, he explained thatthe request he was about to make was an orderfrom the major sent as a staff officer from HighCommand.“The prisoners are to be executed. You are toprovide your two sergeant-majors to help. If wedon’t deal with the last of them before theenemy lands, they’ll talk about what happenedto the others. There are seventeen left. It’s tobe done s t ra ightaway . Peop le f romheadquarters staff up near Yamae Village arewaiting.”

Takuya unders tood that to those a theadquarters, the prisoners’ execution was asimportant a task now as the burning of all

documents. They had already been sentencedto death, and the fact that hostilities hadceased had no bearing whatsoever on theirexecution.

While his duties collecting data and issuing airraid alerts had finished, Takuya now once againsensed that his destiny was linked to that of thecaptured fliers. He had followed their actionsfor days and months on end, had busied himselfto the very last collecting data about theaircraft which dropped the atomic bomb onNagasaki, had personally issued the air raidalert and the order to evacuate the city. Morethan most, Takuya had been in a position toknow the full extent of the damage caused bythe bombing and strafing attacks carried out bythese men. So far his duties had assigned him apassive role, but that was all over now, and thetime had come, he thought, for him to activelyshow his mettle. Only then would his duties befinished.

At the time of the previous two executions,Takuya’s responsibilities as officer in charge ofthe tactical operations center had kept him athis post, but the Emperor’s broadcast releasedhim from all duties. I want to participate in theexecutions, he thought. Taking the life of one ofthe prisoners with his own hands would be hisfinal duty. The lieutenant had said that theexecutions would be carried out in order todispose of remaining evidence, but for Takuyait was something personal, something he had todo as off icer in charge of air defenseintell igence.

“Count me in too,” said Takuya.

The lieutenant nodded. “We’ll be leaving soon,”he said, then hastened back into the building.

Takuya followed him through the steel doorsand hurried down the corridor to the airdefense operations room, where he called outto one of the sergeant-majors. The man hadbeen removing documents from a filing cabinet,

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but came quickly over to Takuya when hisname was called. His expression did not changein the slightest when he was told that he was totake part in the executions. A firm “Yes sir” wasall he said.

Takuya ordered the second of the two sergeant-majors to continue burning the documents.Putting on his service cap, he walked out of theroom followed by the first sergeant-major.

The prisoners, blindfolded with black cloth andtheir hands tied together with twine, werebeing loaded onto the decks of two truckspulled up outside. Takuya couldn’t help beingstruck again by the physical size of the men infront of him.

A sergeant and a couple of lance corporalsjumped up onto the deck after them and pulleddown the canvas cover. The trucks moved offslowly past the bonfire and down the gentleslope.

Takuya and the sergeant-major stood under acherry tree watching the hive of activity in thecourtyard as soldiers holding bundles ofdocuments hurried out to throw the papersonto the fire, then scurried inside for more. Theair was dead calm and no sound was heardabove the snapping of the fire.

The major from High Command and thelieutenant from the legal affairs sectionstepped out of the rear entrance accompaniedby two enlisted men. They joined Takuyawatching the bonfire while the soldiers ranover toward the garage. Moments later, anengine’s roar was heard and a truck roundedthe corner of the building and stopped in frontof them. The major and the lieutenant jumpedup into the cab while Takuya and his sergeant-major clambered onto the deck. A number ofsoldiers were already sitting on the deckholding shovels, picks and coils of rope.

The truck moved off. Takuya sat down on a coil

of rope and looked at the charred ruins of thecity from under the rolled-up canvas hood.Reports released in the days that followedwould state that nine hundred fifty-threepeople had been killed in raids on Fukuoka, andover fourteen thousand homes destroyed. Overtwo thousand people had been killed in bothKagoshima and Yawata and more than twentythousand in Nagasaki, with the estimated deathtoll from air raids on all eighteen cities inKyushu being close to forty thousand. Theexecution of a mere seventeen prisoners, hethought, would hardly temper the outragecaused by the deaths of so many defenselesscivilians in the fire raids.

The truck moved past piles of rubble and burntroofing iron that seemed almost to quiver in thehot haze. Takuya stared at the clouds of dustbillowing behind the truck as it rumbledforward. The engine raced as the truck beganclimbing the winding road up the hill. Beforelong the grassy slopes on either side of theroad gave way to forest, with branches of treesbrushing noisily against the sides of the canvashood.

Moments after the truck came out onto a flatstretch of road, it pulled over to one side, closeagainst the face of the hill. Takuya jumpeddown off the truck’s rear deck and saw thatanother two trucks and a smaller, khaki-coloredvehicle had arrived before them. A sergeantstanding on the road saluted Takuya andpointed to their left in the direction of abamboo grove.

Takuya and the others stepped off the roaddown onto the raised walkway between twoareas of paddy fields. Frogs launchedthemselves into the still water as the menthudded down onto the path. Within secondsTakuya and his comrades had left the track andwere walking through the dense thicket ofbamboo beyond the paddy fields. Mosquitoesbuzzed everywhere and Takuya waved his handbusily from side to side to keep them away from

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his face.

When they emerged into a small clearing hesaw some officers and enlisted men fromheadquarters. The prisoners, blindfolded withstrips of black cloth tied around their heads,were sitting huddled on the grass. Takuya wentover to them.

To a man, the prisoners sat dejectedly withtheir heads hung forward. One was mumblingwhat might have been prayers, and another, avery large man, was straining so hard againstthe rope around his wrists that he was almosttoppling over.Takuya noticed a group of officers fromheadquarters standing off to one side, apurplish grey plume of cigarette smoke driftingstraight up in the still air. When Takuya pulledout one of his cigarettes and lighted it with amatch, a few other officers stepped over to himand lit theirs from the flame. Puffing on hiscigarette, Takuya stood gazing at the huddle ofprisoners. The shrill chirring of what seemedlike thousands of cicadas in the undergrowtharound the small grassy clearing had reached acrescendo, intense as a summer cloudburst.The sickly sweet smell of wet grass hung in theair and the whirring of insect wings could beheard close by.

“Shall we get it over with?” said the major,throwing his cigarette into the grass andturning toward Takuya.

Almost as though they had been waiting for himto issue the order, two enlisted men steppedforward and pulled a young blond prisoner tohis feet. The American dwarfed the soldiers oneach side of him.

They pulled him forward, but with legsobviously weakened from his time in captivity,he moved uncertainly over the grass. The majorfollowed, and the four men soon disappearedinto the forest.

Takuya stood smoking his cigarette, as thoughmesmerized by the noise of the cicadas. Theglossy dark green leaves of the trees glistenedin the sunlight. As Takuya stared in thedirection where the four men had gone, he feltsweat trickling down the small of his back.

Before long he notice some movement betweenthe trees. The major appeared, sword in hand,followed by the two enlisted men. The major’sface was expressionless except for a faint hintof a smile at the corner of his mouth.

Another prisoner was dragged to his feet, a big,red-bearded man with a remarkably pointednose. As soon as Takuya laid eyes on thatmuscular frame he instinctively steppedforward. He’d thought that this man had beenexecuted long ago, but there was no mistakingit, this was one of the fliers who during theinterrogations casually replied that the bombercrews relaxed by listening to jazz on the radioon the way back to base. The man was held onboth sides by the two soldiers and led offtoward the path into the woods. Takuyafollowed close behind. He could almost feel theeyes of the other officers and men burning intohis back. It doesn’t have to be perfect, he toldhimself. As long as I can end this man’s days.

The prisoner was led off along a narrow trackthrough the vegetation. Takuya gazed fixedly atthe man’s thick neck muscles as he walked intothe forest. [5]

Posted on February 25, 2005.

Notes

[1] The Doolittle Raid of 18 April, 1942.[2] The Japanese approach to captured airmenwas to withhold POW status from thoseinvolved in the bombing of civilians and to treatthem as war criminals.

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[3] The Battle of Okinawa claimed the lives ofbetween one quarter and one third of thecivilian population. The role of the IJA inabusing Okinawans and coercing them to taketheir own lives rather than be captured hasgreatly contributed to postwar ill-feelingtowards mainland Japan. See: Hein L. andSelden M.: Islands of Discontent: OkinawanResponses to Japanese and American Power,Inagaki Takeshi. Okinawa: higu no sakusen[Okinawa: a strategy of tragedy].( Tokyo:Shinchosha, 1984) and Appleman, Roy E., et al.Okinawa: The Last Battle. U.S. Army in World

War II, 1948. (Reprint. Washington, DC:Historical Division, Department of the Army,1971.)[4] Joe O’Donnell, Japan 1945. A U.S. Marine’sPhotographs from Ground Zero documents thedestruction and early stages of reconstructionin Fukuoka, permitting comparison withHiroshima and Nagasaki in photographs takenin fall 1945 and early spring 1946 (Nashville:Vanderbilt University Press, 2005).[5] See transcriptions of the interrogations ofJapanese military involved in the execution ofAmerican flyers in Fukuoka.