Fire Flowers (15 page)

The only other piece was in the
New York Times
, by a man named Laurence. He'd flown as official observer upon the
Bockscar
to Nagasaki. His writing was lyrical, almost poetic, as he described the swollen tub being loaded into the bomb bay on Tinian.

“A thing of beauty to behold, this gadget,” he wrote, as if extolling the virtues of a new refrigerator or vacuum cleaner. The pilot had taken the bomb up to 17,000 feet, and from there, in the air-conditioned cabin of a reconfigured Superfort, Laurence had pondered the fates of those on the ground below.

“Does one feel any pity or compassion for the poor devils about to die? No. Not when one thinks of Pearl Harbor and of the death march on Bataan.”

I'd heard the line so many times now, it seemed worn smooth by repetition.

His tone became rapturous, almost sexual, as he described the blast and the mushroom cloud exploding into the sky:

“The smoke billows upward, seething and boiling in a white fury of creamy foam, sizzling upward, descending earthward . . . ”

Floating over that desolate plain. The city swept away.
Poor
devils.
 

The last paragraph of the article struck me as odd. As if in preemptive defence, Laurence emphasized that there was no “mysterious sickness” caused by radiation in either of the two A-bombed cities. Any such reports were “Jap propaganda,” wily attempts to wring concessions from the Allied powers, a cynical ploy to win sympathy from the American people, with their big hearts and deep pockets.

I lay the paper down, and closed my eyes.

 

Hibiya Park was located auspiciously. To the north lay the Imperial Palace, aloof and remote behind its moat and thick stone walls. At its eastern corner stood the granite fortress of the Dai-ichi Insurance Building, now General Headquarters of the Supreme Command of Allied Powers—SCAP—as contained in the body of General MacArthur, Japan's most recent and now omnipotent emperor. The country's feudal past and democratic future faced off, so to speak, across its patchy fields, and, suitably enough, the park had become Tokyo's premier site for demonstration, a rallying point for the new political parties that had burgeoned in the wake of the war's end.

A small crowd was gathered when I arrived. Up on the bandstand, a stout man in a green jersey was striding about like a boxer, bawling through a whistling microphone. Jeeps lined the flowerbeds, bored military policemen observing the events. The crowd seemed very much of a type—early middle age, circular spectacles, drawn faces. Despite the bitter cold, they were rapt, cheering loudly as the speaker's hoarse voice rolled across the park. Red flags and banners were unfurled and then came the first, eerie, ululating note of a chant. It was haunting and somehow melancholic and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The men began to sing in chorus, their voices welling up above the mud of the park, floating high into the crystalline fall air.

A familiar bulky figure clapped gloved hands and cheered along. I strode over and touched the arm of Mark Ward's woollen overcoat.

He turned to me, eyes bright behind thick spectacles. “Intoxicating, isn't it?”

A phalanx of men and women started to jog back and forth, waving their banners with balletic fluidity. They danced forward, halted on a dime, then went back the other way. I had a sudden impression of migrating geese, of brittle red maple leaves drifting down along the Hudson. I stood there for a moment, letting the feeling wash over me.

Ward seemed cheerfully nonplussed by the whole affair. He scribbled briefly into his leather notebook, then slammed it shut.

“Well, I guess that's enough for one day. How about we get ourselves a drink?”

“That would be grand.”

The night's first hookers stood shivering against the trees at the edge of the park, scuttling out in pursuit of the GIs who sauntered along in pairs. All were very young—their breasts hardly made a bump in their sweaters—and they wore motley woollen skirts and dowdy jackets. Not many were pretty, but there was a certain sharp eroticism in the air that sprang from their brazen approach. After brief negotiation, they pulled their man off into the melding shadows, and, as the sun went down, the edges of the park came furtively alive with the faint, mingled caterwaul of swift, preprandial copulation.

A girl in a grubby yellow dress skipped over and slid her arm through Ward's, as if we were all out for a pleasant Sunday afternoon promenade.

“Okay, Joe—very cheap!” she promised, swinging his arm from side to side.

“No, sweetheart,” Ward said. “I'm not your john. Get on home.”

She frowned. “Very cheap—”

He raised a thick finger in warning, and she dropped his arm, glaring at him. She peeled off along the path with a muttered curse, and Ward watched her go.

“And so the country is truly conquered,” he said, gloomily.

“At least we pay for it. Unlike our Russian buddies.”

He glanced at me sharply. “What good capitalists we are.”

The windows of the Dai-ichi building were still lit, the teams of bright young men burning the midnight oil as they drew up their plans for Japan's future. Down in the plush bar of the Imperial Hotel, the strictly temporal reigned. An old Japanese band played soft Ellington covers, while colonels in well-cut uniforms lounged in armchairs, enjoying the first drinks of the weekend. The waiter brought us whisky and I sipped at mine gratefully.

“So, Lynch,” Ward said, settling back. “How goes life at the
Stars and Stripes
?”

I shrugged.

“That well, huh?”

“Should I be diplomatic, Ward?”

“No need.”

“How should I put it? It's not quite what I visualized when I decided to become a reporter.”

“What did you visualize?”

I considered the question. The eyes of the correspondents at the press club had been shrewd as George Weller told his uncanny story. As he'd slumped in his chair afterward, he'd seemed both noble and pathetic.

“Something more than ‘The Touristic GI.'”

Ward nodded as he slid a large cigar from his breast pocket. He puffed away, squinting at me through the smoke.

“Something eating you, Hal?”

As on the train, I felt encouraged to confide in him. I told him of my hunt through the archives; of the MPs searching the train at Himeji Station; of the trembling girl at Ueno who'd fled from the ruins of Hiroshima.

He stared at me for a long moment, then studied the glowing embers of his cigar.

“I'm afraid I'm not a psychologist, Hal.”

I hesitated. “I never implied that you were, Mark.”

He pointed his cigar at me. “But you must understand that what you witnessed from up there was the greatest feat of destruction in all human history.”

“What's your point, Ward?”

He jabbed the air with the cigar for emphasis.

“The fall of Troy. The sack of Rome. The Mongol Horde. Nothing compared to what happened here. The destruction we achieved in the space of, what, six months? It's no wonder you're a little . . . stunned.”

I was grateful for his tact. “Shell-shocked” was no longer the current expression in any case.

“What's your take on Disease X, Ward?”

He raised his heavy eyebrows. “You heard Weller. He's a strong reporter.”

“You think they're still dying?”

Ward shrugged. “Who knows? You can see why SCAP would want to keep it quiet. It's embarrassing, to say the least. Sinister at worst. Especially if it turns out we knew it would happen all along.”

“There was an article in the
New York Times
. A man named Laurence—”

“William Laurence?”

“That's him.”

Ward shook his big head. “Man's a stooge.”

“He is?”

“Sure.” Ward screwed the remains of his cigar into the ashtray. “He's on the army payroll. He's their cheerleader for the bomb.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes I am.” He nodded, then swallowed the remains of his drink with a grimace. “Are you interested in chasing this, Lynch?”

In my mind's eye, I saw the sparkling inland sea, temple roofs, fishing boats unloading their catch at the silver harbour.

“Maybe so.”

“Might help you sleep at night.”

I laughed. “I doubt it.”

The place had filled up now. Tables of military men brayed and drank, and I gestured to a passing waiter for the cheque.

“Did you ever meet Wilf Burchett?” Ward asked, as we stood for our overcoats. “The reporter who went down to Hiroshima after we landed?”

I remembered the blocked-out article in the London
Express
.

“He's still here?”

“Not for long. MacArthur's throwing him out. But I'll introduce you if you like.”

A blast of cold air met us as we approached the revolving door. It spun about, expelling a group of staff muffled against the cold. A tall Japanese man in a camel coat glanced at us through round spectacles, then touched the arm of a hawklike general. He wore an immaculately cut uniform, his hair parted in dark waves, a monocle screwed into his eye socket. The Japanese muttered something into his ear, and the general glared at Ward for a moment. Ward stared back, rocking on his heels. The general thrust out his overcoat to a boy and marched into the bar, his subalterns skittering behind him.

Ward's nostrils were flared.

“Buddy of yours?” I asked as he shoved his way through the door. The cold air outside stung my cheeks.

“Major General Charles Willoughby,” he said, as he gestured to the doorman for a cab. “G2. Chief of Intelligence. Shady character.”

The doorman blew a whistle, and a taxi veered toward us in the road.

“Born Karl Weidenbach in Heidelberg, Germany. ‘My own dear fascist,' as MacArthur calls him.”

The doorman opened the cab and I buttoned up my collar in preparation for the brisk walk back to my hotel. I thought agreeably of my cosy room at the Continental, the old woman who would bring up a little brazier of charcoal whilst I poured myself another drink.

“How do you know him?” I called.

“Willoughby?” he called back as he clambered inside. He threw his cigar butt onto the road and stamped on it. “He's an old pal.”

The door slammed shut. The taxi drove off along the road, smoke pouring out into the bitter night.

 

I met Burchett two days later in the guest room on the second floor of the press club, the air ripe with the aroma of men in close confinement, unmade beds draped with newspapers and damp underwear. Burchett was packing his kit bag with stacks of notebooks and clippings. He wasn't British, I realised, but a blunt, amiable Australian with a cynical and amusing manner.

“Lucky you caught me. They're slinging me out next week. The bastards.”

He was impressively cheerful. The men at SCAP had removed his press accreditation a month before, a fact which he ascribed to the article he had written, with a typewriter on his knees, in the ruins of Hiroshima, just a few days after we had landed. When I told him I was curious, he raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, you are? Well, you're in the minority. I bet they're still dropping like flies. If there's any of them left, that is. We'd not hear a dicky bird about it in any case.”

“How did you get down there?”

“How? I got the bloody train like anyone else. Caused quite a stir, I don't mind telling you. Bunch of army samurai chappies didn't quite take to me . . . ”

He described landing with the first parties of marines on a beach near Yokosuka. As soon as he entered the surreal wreckage of Tokyo, he rushed to the station and boarded the first train toward Hiroshima, looking for a scoop. The carriage had been packed with Japanese officers, bitter and glowering—it had been the day of the surrender signing aboard the
Missouri—
and he'd been the only white man on the train but for an old German priest.

“Drank some of that sake stuff with them though. Seemed to calm things down a bit. Just goes to show, doesn't it?”

“What about Disease X, Burchett? This—radiation disease?”

His face became suddenly serious. “Atomic Plague. That's what I called it. At first the locals thought it must have been caused by a kind of poisonous gas from the bomb.”

He'd stumbled across a makeshift hospital on the outskirts of Hiroshima, scores of people lying on rush mats, deteriorating almost before his eyes.

“Came in complaining of sore throats. Days later, their gums were bleeding. Then their noses, then their eyes.”

After that their hair began to fall out. The doctors, desperate, injected them with vitamins, but the flesh rotted away around the puncture points.

“Gangrene,” Burchett said, his nose wrinkling with the memory. “You can smell it a mile off.”

Some died soon after. Others held out for a while longer, complaining of an overwhelming inertia, a strange, heart-breaking malaise. Then they died too.

Burchett let out a long sigh. “And that, sir, is more or less the size of it.”

“Who else knows about this?”

He snorted. “Brass are doing a bloody good job to make sure no one does.”

“And do you have photographs?”

“Ha!” he barked. “Did have!”

My stomach tightened. “There's no photographs?”

“Therein lies a tale,” he said. “After I got back to Tokyo, I was ordered to visit a military hospital. No doubt to check I wasn't glowing. Two days later, my camera disappears from my kit bag. Along with my notes, my typewriter, and five rolls of film. ‘Sorry Mr. Burchett, must have been that shady chap on the other side of the ward.' All very mysterious.”

My head began to swim. “There's not a single image of what you've been describing to me?”

He shook his head.

It seemed astonishing, terrifying—that an entire city and its inhabitants could disappear without a trace.