One Man's Justice Page 14

  Takuya stood and thought for a moment. He wouldn’t have another chance to buy a hat, and if for seventy yen he could change his appearance and thereby make himself a little safer, maybe it wasn’t so expensive after all.

  He took seven ten-yen notes from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed them to the hawker in return for the hat. The young man counted the notes without saying a word, before stuffing them into his trouser pocket and looking past Takuya for the next customer.

  As he walked away from the stall, Takuya took off his old service cap and put on the mountaineer’s hat. A satisfied smile came to his face as he realised not only that the size was just right, but also that the brim of the hat would cover part of his face, just as his army cap had done.

  The smell of food whetted his appetite. Sure that he had long overstayed his welcome at the Fujisakis’, Takuya felt decidedly uncomfortable whenever he joined them for a meal. The idea of getting something to eat here in the market was appealing, and it would save him having to impose on them at mealtime again. Crowds were milling around in front of the men and women hawking plates of boiled oden, curry and rice, fried fish and bowls of rice gruel. He threaded his way across the flow to a little tin shack with a notice in front advertising bowl-size servings of tempura on rice. He placed his order and the middle-aged woman on the other side of the table scooped two helpings of rice into a bowl and passed it to the man standing next to her, her husband evidently, to put some pieces of vegetable tempura on top and pour on some broth before handing it to Takuya as he sat down at the table.

  The deep-fried vegetables were more batter than anything else, but the rice and the broth poured on top were both piping hot and delicious. Takuya savoured each grain of rice and each sip of broth, reluctant to swallow them and cut short the ecstasy. Finishing every last scrap in the bowl, he pulled out two ten-yen notes from his pocket and handed them to the woman. It was somewhat ironic, he thought as he moved away from the tin shack, that there was so much food here in the black market when not far away the talk was of ten million people facing death by starvation.

  When he got back to the Fujisakis’ that day, the father told him that he had just spoken on the telephone to the factory owner who had offered Takuya the job earlier. Evidently the man from Himeji had been so impressed with Takuya’s courteous and well-spoken manner that he was very keen to take him on.

  ‘Everything he has now he has earned by the sweat of his brow, so if you work hard it won’t go unnoticed,’ said Fujisaki’s father in an unusually cheerful tone.

  Going to his room, Takuya took his clean loincloths and shirts down off the improvised washing-line and stuffed them into his rucksack before retracing his steps down the corridor to the living-room, where Fujisaki, in his mother’s absence, handed over the ration book Takuya had lent them.

  Kneeling on the tatami mats in front of Fujisaki and his father, Takuya expressed his gratitude for their hospitality, bowing so low that his forehead almost touched the floor. He repeated the performance for Fujisaki’s wife when she came out of the kitchen. The slowness of her movements suggested that she was not too far from giving birth.

  He went out to the factory and politely said goodbye to each of the workers before stepping out through the door at the back on to the road. The rain had stopped, and the sun was trying to force its way out from behind the clouds.

  6

  After dark the rain started falling again; it was light at first, but soon turned into a veritable downpour.

  In the back of the truck there was a stack of corrugated iron, obviously salvaged from one or more bomb sites, a large box of nails and a collection of carpenter’s tools. Terasawa, the man who had hired him, climbed up under the truck’s hood with a pile of bedding in his arms and sat down behind the driver, a young man by the name of Kameya. Takuya sat down on the precariously small seat to the left of Kameya.

  The engine roared to life and off they went into the rain. The hood stretched far enough forward to protect the driver from the elements, but the left side of Takuya’s body was fully exposed to the rain. Soon his left trouser leg was so wet that spray came up from the saturated cloth, and in no time at all his left shoe felt as though it was filling up with the water running down his leg. His glasses were covered with drops of water, so he put them away in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  Kameya did his best to avoid the potholes along the way, but once they came out on to the main road the ride was so bumpy that Takuya had to hold on tightly for fear of being bucked right out of the vehicle.

  Occasionally a powerful beam of light would approach from behind. Each time Kameya pulled over to the left and slowed to a crawl as the light closed on them. There would be a tremendous blast from a horn and a US Army truck or Jeep would rumble past them.

  ‘The Ame-chan scare me something wicked,’ said Kameya, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. ‘The other day I saw a truck driven by a Japanese overtake an American Jeep. The Jeep sped up and forced the truck off the road. They dragged the driver out of the cab and beat the living daylights out of him.’

  After another hour of driving through the rain they pulled over and parked in an open space beside the road. The strain of trying to avoid the deeper-looking puddles and keeping a grip on the steering-wheel as the truck bounced in and out of big potholes had obviously taken its toll on Kameya.

  When they came to a complete stop, Terasawa asked where they were. ‘Just past Suma’ was Kameya’s reply.

  After a short break they were back on the move. The going seemed a little easier once the rain eased off somewhat, but the truck’s engine was straining so much that it sounded as though it might blow up any moment. After crossing a long bridge, they turned right and followed the road running along the embankment on one side of a river.

  ‘This is Himeji,’ said Kameya. Before long the neat row of houses came to an end, and wide, empty spaces opened up on both sides. The truck’s headlights illuminated the area in front of them, and Takuya realised straight away that they were driving through another vast tract of bombed urban wasteland.

  The truck turned into a narrow lane before stopping in front of some ramshackle houses.

  Takuya stepped out of his side of the cab after Kameya had alighted from the right. His jacket and trousers were wet and heavy from the rain, and he felt chilled to the bone. Not far away he could see a train, the line of dim lights from its carriages chugging off to the right through the red-tinted smoke belching out from its smokestack. Takuya followed Terasawa and Kameya into the house.

  Terasawa disappeared off to the other end of the house, while Kameya pulled a couple of futons from a pile of bedding in a corner of the room next to the entrance. After helping to set them out, Takuya stripped off his wet clothes, put on a dry shirt and loincloth he’d kept in his rucksack, and lay down on the futon.

  As he closed his eyes, he could hear the train whistle in the distance.

  He awoke to the sound of Terasawa’s voice. Kameya pushed aside his bedcovers and sat up, rubbing his eyes. The rain had stopped and the morning sun shone brightly.

  The clothes he had been wearing the previous day were still wet but, carrying his towel, Takuya followed Kameya outside dressed in his shirt and loincloth. Terasawa was standing with his hands cupped under the end of a broken water pipe sticking out of the ground, washing his face.

  Takuya stood beside the lead pipe and surveyed the area around them. In every direction scorched ruins stretched endlessly toward the horizon.

  His gaze settled on a point away to the north. Takuya had been on Sanyo line trains through this area before, but as it had always been at night he had never actually set eyes upon what was left of Himeji city. He knew that Himeji’s White Egret Castle was one of the most famous of its kind in the country, but seeing it there in the distance, towering majestically above this desolate wasteland, rooted him to the spot in awe. The main donjon and a smaller one nestled into its side seemed to soar above the castle’s stee
p white walls. Maybe it was because the air was so clear after the rain, but the whiteness of the donjon and turret walls seemed unusually bright in the morning sun, in vivid contrast to the green of the trees on the slopes surrounding the castle.

  The sight of the castle, untouched in the middle of this scorched wilderness littered with rubble and burnt roofing iron, was bizarre. It must have been caught in the same firestorm that consumed the town, but as far as Takuya could tell, there was no trace of damage.

  ‘The town was burnt beyond recognition. The Kawanishi Aircraft Works were just to the east of the castle, so they pounded that whole strip on the twenty-second of June, and then a really big fire raid on the night of the third of July burnt most of what was left. This area was hit on the same night,’ said Terasawa, wiping his face and neck as he gazed out over the ruins.

  ‘The castle did well to survive all that,’ said Takuya, staring at its white walls in the distance.

  ‘The night of the big fire raid, we fled up into the hills. When we came back the next day the castle was standing there, untouched. Everything around it had been burnt to ashes. Some of the pine trees just outside the castle walls caught fire and burnt, but the castle itself was unscathed. I can’t tell you how happy I was when I saw it,’ said Terasawa, keeping his eyes on the White Egret Castle as he went on to explain that most of the white plaster walls and the outlines of the moats had been camouflaged with netting because of concern that the castle would provide a perfect landmark for enemy bombers.

  ‘The netting made her look really drab during the war, but when they took it off she was just as beautiful as she’s ever been,’ said Terasawa, obviously entranced by the sight of the castle and its towering white donjons.

  Takuya’s first job was to clear the burnt remnants of the previous set-up from the factory grounds. He and Kameya lived on site and two other men came in each day to work.

  Terasawa’s only son had been killed in the war in China, so he now lived alone with his wife.

  The Himeji–Kobe area had boasted the highest number of factories manufacturing matches in Japan, and in contrast to the complete destruction of the factories within metropolitan Kobe, those concentrated along the coast near the town of Shirahama had somehow escaped the firestorms, and were continuing production with what poor materials were at hand. With matches already being produced, Terasawa was desperate to get his factory running again to make the boxes needed for them.

  Terasawa’s wife went out shopping virtually every day, coming back in the evenings with her rucksack full of food bought from acquaintances in farming-villages in the countryside or fishing-hamlets along the coast. She was a good-natured person who did her best to look after her husband’s workers, sometimes even making shirts for them out of pieces of cloth she’d found along the way.

  Trying to be as casual as he could, Takuya scrutinised the newspapers every day. He was most interested in anything concerning the investigations into Western Regional Command. Any information he could gather, he thought, must help him get a clearer picture of how safe, or indeed how dangerous, his situation was.

  He found no coverage of matters concerning Western Regional Command, but there was a sudden spate of articles about the Class A war criminals, as well as details of those being tried overseas and in Japan for crimes in the B and C Classes. He couldn’t help but notice that the words ‘death by hanging’ and ‘death penalty’ appeared frequently in all this writing. Both were used in an article about the verdict in a case against men found guilty of executing American airmen in Honshu. He read the article over and over again to himself.

  One day towards the end of May, Takuya was poring over that morning’s newspaper when he spotted an announcement made by a SCAP press secretary. It read: ‘The Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in Japan has instructed the Japanese government to move immediately to freeze or confiscate any or all personal assets or property owned by people already arrested and incarcerated, or by criminals yet to be arrested and incarcerated. In particular, the possession of precious metals such as gold, platinum or coins, as well as stocks and bonds or bank deposit books will be subject to direct control.’

  A harsh step indeed, thought Takuya. Not only would SCAP punish those found guilty of war crimes, but now it would go so far as to seize their property as well. If the individual had owned a house, the house and all its contents would be confiscated and the family turned out on to the street if the authorities saw fit. Surely this was no different from the laws of the feudal Edo period, which had punished a criminal’s family for ‘complicity by association’.

  His mind drifted to his family back in Shikoku. His only property at his parents’ house was his post office savings book and some government bonds, and his family wouldn’t suffer in the least if those were confiscated. Even so, if the police decided to make a thorough search of the house, in the course of their investigation they would no doubt put considerable pressure on his parents and brother and sister to reveal what they might be hiding. Maybe they were even shunned by those around them for having spawned a war criminal.

  Noticing that Takuya seemed preoccupied with one particular article, Terasawa’s wife called out to him, her expression quite different than usual.

  ‘Are you worried about your family back home? Is there something in there about Okinawa?’ she asked sympathetically.

  Takuya breathed a sigh of relief, reminded again that assuming an Okinawan identity had been a wise choice. If he could relegate Takuya Kiyohara to the past and become Higa Seiichi, maybe he would be able to lead a safe life from now on. In the short time since choosing it he had grown used to his new name. Maybe he was finally on the right track after all.

  Despite long periods of heavy rain they made good progress clearing the factory grounds, and by the middle of June the task was complete. Terasawa had Kameya use the truck to bring in stacks of old boards, coils of wire and sheets of metal framing which he’d somehow acquired from merchants in town. Takuya and the other three men toiled away between downpours, following Terasawa’s instructions as they laid the foundation for the new workshop.

  The food situation in Himeji was just as bad as it had been in Kobe. Regulations governing the economy were still in place, and foodstuffs were subject to particularly strict control. The newspaper was full of articles about passengers at railway stations in the Himeji area being ordered off trains to have food they had bought or bartered at farms and fishing-villages confiscated. According to the newspaper, those caught transporting food more than once were charged under the economic control regulations, and all forms of black market activities were frowned on by the authorities.

  In these circumstances, the food served in Terasawa’s house became increasingly bland with each passing day. Most meals consisted of biscuits made from cornflower, salt and water, or bread baked with little pieces of sweet potato in it, and the only time rice appeared was in a thin soup or rice porridge. The Terasawas ate the same food as their live-in workers, and sometimes, as a special treat, Mrs Terasawa gave them some potato sweets or tobacco she had managed to buy on the black market.

  The rainy season ended and summer came.

  Prices continued to rise at a frightening pace. Postcards jumped from five sen to ten and then to fifteen in the space of a week. The monthly subscription rate for newspapers went from one yen and sixty sen to eight yen, and prices of goods on the black market virtually doubled overnight. Terasawa grumbled every day that he could barely keep up with the price rises on the building materials he needed to start up his factory again.

  Takuya knew how fortunate he was to have found a job with Terasawa. In contrast to when he had had to sponge off Nemoto and Fujisaki, here he had a job, and the food on the table was part of the remuneration for his labour. Everyone, including the Terasawas, was friendly to him; all were quite happy calling him ‘Higa’ and obviously saw nothing suspicious about his claim to be from Okinawa. He was also completely used to wearing glasses, and by now was fee
ling a good deal more secure about his situation.

  Occasionally, and quite unexpectedly, Takuya imagined that he heard something like the woman’s name uttered over and over again by the American airman before he was killed. At other times, quite suddenly, he recalled the moment when his sword cut into the back of the airman’s neck, and the strange sight of the man’s knees jerking up violently came back to him. Each time this happened he felt unnerved, and more often than not he tried to calm himself down by furtively taking his pistol out of his rucksack and cleaning it behind the large pile of burnt iron and debris on the factory grounds.

  If captured, he would be made to stand in the dock, told that he was to receive the death penalty, and then dragged to the gallows. When he imagined the agonising wait for that moment of truth, he thought it would be much better to take his own life. The American he had executed had managed to keep his composure to the end, but Takuya was not at all confident that he would be able to do the same.

  There was still no word in the newspaper about the investigation of those in Western Regional Command. Shirasaka had already explained to him that high-ranking staff officers, including the commander himself, had been interrogated, and his younger brother had told him that the police had been to their house. But even so, it made him uneasy to think that there had been nothing in the newspaper about the executions, despite the fact that a good number of arrests must have been made by now.

  When Takuya opened the newspaper after work on the twentieth of July, his eyes were drawn to a short article at the bottom of the front page. As he read it, his last vestiges of hope that the full truth about the executions would evade the investigators slipped away. Takuya could almost feel the colour drain from his face as he lifted his eyes from the newspaper. Under the headline ‘Professor Iwase Commits Suicide’, it read, ‘War crime suspect Professor Kotaro Iwase of the Faculty of Medicine of Kyushu University hanged himself on the afternoon of the seventeenth in his cell at Fukuoka prison. He was fifty-four years old.’