11/(60-63) Mighty Smokey Over Tokyo

Slim Novel 11 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage


60. “The Darkest Hour is just before the dawn”

She switches to national radio. For a moment, martial music and Sanya lowers the sound, waiting because the music precedes the announcement. A woman's voice interrupts and says a speech will follow honoring the Armed Forces Day.

   “Honoring the Armed Forces Day!” Kimi almost shrieks, supporting her bulge with both hands on each lower side. “After the mess they've made, they ought to commit suicide.”

   “Hush, it may be something important. Even at their worst they sometimes drop hints.”

   It is straight out of Army General Headquarters and by General Anami the latest military El Supremo or, as Kimi thinks recalling Tommy's Americanism, “Bum of the Month.”

   According to General Anami, things are going good. A ‘final decisive battle’ is now in Leyte Gulf where the Yankee Monkee will be totally destroyed. A sign of Monkee madness is his cowardly air attacks on cities but the people should keep up their brave determination as sons and daughters of the great samurai tradition of Bushido – the warrior way. In the end, spirit will certainly triumph over materials and numbers. Millions of hearts and minds of the nation focused through His Heavenly Highness will smash the materialist monkee evil empire.”

   The voice of General Anami rises, “And so, on the eve of another glorious, victorious Armed Forces Day we pay homage to the spirit of great samurai of past, the fallen of our wars and the soldier and sailor who daily give lives for the Motherland. Remember always - the darkest hour is just before the dawn. Ten thousand years of life to our Heavenly Sovereign! We shall go ever onward: men, women and children of Japan in the ancient Yamato spirit of victory or death.”

   Martial music replaces the general's ending shout. Sanya looks grim and Kimi holds her bulge and takes a breath.

   The darkest hour just before the dawn, she thinks. But will she and Baby see another dawn? Closing eyes tight she clings against Sanya as pain peaks. The patriotic music continues but something else too.

   Sanya stiffens. “The siren!” She stands and grabs her air-warden helmet from the wall. “You must get down to the bunker at once!”

   “But my pains,” Kimi cries. “Too much! Too soon! Can’t move!”

    Sanya gives her slap across the left side of face. “Ten minutes in here could be an inferno! No time to argue!” She hurries off to round up the few remaining helpless with her skeleton staff.

   The Sanya slap is Zen-like. Kimi's mind clears and focuses on survival. Getting up and wrapping her quilt about her she rushes from the room.

61. Mighty Smokey Over Tokee-Yo

One thousand miles away and 3 hours earlier, the American Air Force General Curtis LeMay watches as the last of 300 sleek B-29 bombers takes off in the deepening tropical twilight. Then, grunting “Well done for starters” to aides and newsmen, he heads for a radio shack to follow the reporting of what is to be the most massively destructive bombing in history. “Operation Meeting House”. It is a tactic General U.S. Grant succeeded at, 80 years before in a different war and with different tools. It is to Hit the weakening enemy with everything you have. It also took a leaf from the U.S. General Sherman’s idea of bringing the war home to the enemy. Each B-29 carries 6 tons of incendiaries and almost no fuel reserve and the air armada will sweep in at low altitude to confuse Japanese radar, to conserve fuel and to prevent bombs from being blown off target. The goal is to set fire to the wood buildings in downtown Tokyo, inflicting maximum civilian burn and inhalation deaths and casualties. Choice of late night is to catch the people home in bed.

At 10:40 PM, only bare minutes after sirens screech, several twin-engine, double-body P-38s streak in low and fast out of the east and north ejecting mile long streaks of flaming jelly that cross each other producing a fiery giant x-marks the spot zero-in on the Downtown. Then the B-29s drop their loads – 1800 tons of firebombs – along points on a grid oriented by the fiery cross so as to leave no area of target untouched.

   At the moment the first bombs drop, Radio Honolulu whose short wave is being beamed to the air armada puts on the most popular American song of the March 1945 Hit Parade, A Hubba, Hubba, Hubba (Actual title, Dig You Later), from the soundtrack of the Hollywood movie, Doll Face, and sung by Perry Como, a son of Italian immigrants, to sons and daughters or later descendants of other immigrants who manned the B-29s. The lyric that brought a chuckle to the airmen goes:

A hubba-hubba-hubba, shoot me some skin!

A hubba-hubba-hubba, where to begin?

A hubba-hubba-hubba, well I really know!

It was mighty smoky over Tokee-yo!

A friend of mine in a B29, dropped another load for luck!

As he flew away, he was heard to say:

“A hubba-hubba-hubba, yuk yuk!”

A lot of yuk-yukkng went on over Tokyo and when the air fleet headed homeward 2 hours later, the flames could be seen as far as 150 miles out at sea.
   Were a heavenly Greek chorus to comment on the human scene it might intone “As ye sew, so shall ye reap.” In Tokyo that night as in other Japanese cities earlier and later, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as in Germany where similar back-to-the-stone-age bombing was going on, the people of the war-starting nations – civilian & soldier, men & women and even the children ought to have learned that everyone from the age of understanding and with the ability to understand is responsible for policies and acts of their government and that no excuse - whether it be emotional detachment, illiteracy or brutal repressive dictatorship - removes the responsibility. As the Ancient Greeks said: Hubris brings on Ate ("ah-teh") whose execution comes back in the form of bombs, terrorists destruction in cities, and personal violence against noncombatants of all ages, beliefs and genders. But because the nation uses stupidity and ignorance as a main means of controlling its population – the people never learn and at intervals need to be killed to get rid of the dumbos who pay not only for the stupidities and crimes of their leaders but also for their own moral and intellectual laziness.

(To hear and see the authentic Hubba, Hubba, Hubba from 1945, click the following YouTube Perry Como - Doll Face 1945 - Dig You Later A-Hubba ... - YouTube  (Ignore the several second preceding Japanese commercial. or click it out your lower right hand corner arrow)

62. Shit Storm Hits

Kimi enters the hospital's bunker as the American P-38s start flying the x marks the spot, A minute later, crouching by the exit, choking in acrid fumes that already fill the courtyard, she gazes with horror at the leaping flames in the outside street, while from above a roaring of hundreds of powerful propellers shakes the ground. She looks toward Hospital. Out its front door, she sees Sanya guiding 5 patients, but they move so slowly. Just then the entrance erupts in flame hundreds of feet into the night and a blast knocks her down and singes her hair, eyebrows and lashes. The heat is intense. Getting up and wrapping the quilt about her head and body, she runs from the bunker into street, the north end of which is blocked by wall of fire.
   The River!  Sanya's instruction unifies Kimi's thought and she hurries south, the quilt held tightly around her. In the flickers of flame light, she sees other desperate people coming out of alleyways; most are burned horribly. Yet she hears no whimper or wail – a strange silence and like a swollen human tide the people tread toward the hoped-for cool, soothing Sumida River. Pausing to look back she sees the sky alight with flame – some white, some red – and a wave of fire and sparks showering the Hospital. Her attention is caught by movement on her left – a man bursting out from a flaming flimsy wood-frame house onto the street, clothes afire as well as hair. As she watches horrified, the skin on his bare arms blisters and the flesh beneath sizzles like strip of meat on brazier. He falls almost at her feet, giving off a bad smell.
   On her right, a fire set by a bomb, feeding on an old wood house and helped by the wind, flares outward and upward, whirling a hundred meters up into the night, crossing alley and road to find new fuel in the terribly flammable wood, bamboo, straw and paper of the houses. At one place along her way on left she notes a family of 6 trying to save their house with feeble splash of bucket water and by shoveling sand. But the heat becomes too intense and they join the mad human exodus.

   Ahead, standing in the congested road, she sees 5 gas-masked firemen in gray rubber coats trying to redirect and inform the panicked people. As she gets close, she hears them shouting over and over “Do not go to the River! It is boiling from burning oil. Follow us to Shelter!” But most of the crowd surges on. Dazed and bewildered, she follows but a fireman, noticing her pregnant bulge, grabs her right forearm and will not let go. “Sister, you must not go that way, it is certain death! Stay with us, we shall get you to nurses.” He guides her to the motorized fire cart which holds a 100-gallon water cylinder with pressure pump and hose. She staggers after him, the skin of her face starting to feel burnt. He hoses her down with mildly warm cleansing water and it cools by its quick evaporation from skin. He puts his right arm around her back, reaches under her knees with left hand and sweeps her up in his arms, placing her down gently on a moist blanket in rear of cart and helps her fit a gas mask over face and tightens strap behind head. Then after shouting to driver to start for next destination he and fellow firemen take positions along side of the firetruck as it inches its way ahead on a smoky street crowded with would-be survivors.

   Lying on blanket, Kimi can see over the side and out the rear. Everything is on fire even grass. As they pass, a woman suddenly bursts onto street from house, Kimono aflame, with infant strapped to back. Kimi points her out to a fireman but he merely shrugs.
   She asks. “Can't you hose her down?”

   “If we stop for every burning person we waste water and gasoline  uselessly. The baby is certainly dead and mother will follow it to heaven.”

   Their first stop is large central water tank in the Ginza section. Gusts of hot wind whip the area, causing the cast-iron tank on 4 metal-pipe stilts to sway dangerously. Survivors huddle under the tank. Some cling to bicycle, one carries a dead chicken in burning bag, a woman presses a dead baby to breast and an older woman, a grandmother, Kimi guesses, crouches with arm enfolding 4 small children- 2 boys and 2 girls.

   “It was terrible” the old woman says, “terrible. When the bombing started I ran to the River with my husband and grandchildren as we’d been told to do. The shallows were full of people hoping to escape the fire’s heat but then the oil-filled water started to burn and they all got boiled. Oh the screams – terrible! The bridge became packed with people but, when flames from the water below heated the metal grills and walkway, the people started frying and most of them jumped into the water and were boiled like potatoes. My husband lost his head in fear and ran off not even glancing back to see if we were alright. I guess he thought we slowed his escape. After all, men are worse than useless in times of death. – they start the wars then desert the women and children.”

   The firetruck starts on its way with Kimi bumping along in back, her labor pains forgotten in the excitement of staying alive. But a feeling in her rectum like constipated lump of stool needing expulsion reminds her it will not be long.

   The firemen's next stop is the Yoshiwara district where prostitutes of the lowest caste are kept like slaves and sometimes, still, exhibited in cage. It is enclosed in high metal fence and someone – perhaps an owner – had padlocked the front gate, the sole entrance and exit, for the night before the air raid started. The firetruck passes the gate and Kimi sees it is too late for assistance. Inside, a raging inferno lights the scene. The wire fence is melted and metal grill white hot. In the eerie glow dozens of charred figures lie sprawled within, clothing burned away and bodies smoking. Kimi buries her face in hands and weeps for her unlucky sisters.

63. “Cut Open My Chest and Let Some Air In”

Next stop – Buddhist temple of Higashi Hongwanji, considered sacred and safe from bombs. With the first siren, hundreds flock into its great wooden structure. In vain! Like dry autumn leaf to flame it burns in a gigantic flash; and, as arriving firemen begin spraying their frail stream over the huge red & yellow phoenix-bird roof, it collapses, and as it falls gives off a deep-pitched boom and huge exploding sparks display, and further feed ferocious flame into one vast funeral pyre. The firemen stand helpless, then return to vehicle and head for next stop – the Meiji Theater – a big brick building in Tokyo central. As they pull to curb, Kimi notices several helmeted police stacking bodies along the pavement near curb. “What happened?” she asks.

   Glad for a moment's rest, a soot-covered middle-aged man takes out brown handkerchief from right rear-pant pocket, wipes his face slowly and then replies. “This was a designated shelter but the fire heated it like an oven and started the stage-curtain burning and now it is one big crematory. Excuse me I must get to work". He returns to stacking charred bodies while newly arrived firemen join other firemen fighting the fire. A few survivors sit unattended moaning. Kimi wanders among them trying to comfort.

   “We could hardly breathe,” says one woman clutching a charred dead baby to breast. “The lights failed and I thought we would all burn up and die but I saved her, I saved my baby.”

   “Yes, yes,” Kimi puts wet towel over the woman's black blistered forehead.

   At another spot a small girl cries “Mommy! Mommy!” while nudging a sprawled still body of a woman from whose mouth a telltale froth of smoke-inhalation death issues. “Wake up! Wake up! Mariko needs Mommy. Wake up please. Mariko is frightened.”

   Kimi tries to take her to the cart for evacuation but the child refuses.

   Nearby a middle aged man writhes in agony and at her approach he looks up pleadingly and cries “I need air to breathe! I'll go crazy if I don't get relief! Please cut open my chest and let some air in!”
   Just then a small truck pulls to the curb and 5 nurses in khaki fatigue jackets and military monpe knickers jump from rear, along with white-coat doctor and start aiding the the casualties.

   “What's this?” exclaims the doctor noticing Kimi's pregnancy and at that instant Kimi feels something give way below and suddenly fluid is dripping down her legs.

   Doctor sees it. “Water broke! This is no place to drop a baby.” He summons the nearest nurse a short girl with bobbed hair. “Take her somewhere not too far where there is less smoke. Then see what you can do.”
   For next, click 11.(64-66) Birth Amidst the Rubble - Dawn Child -...