Bob van Laerhoven - Return to Hiroshima

The colonel bites his lips. “The Japanese imperial army will never capitulate.”

“Nevertheless, the generals, or what’s left of them after the bombing of Tokyo, have ordered the evacuation of Okunoshima and the dismantlement of all the Unit 731 test plants. Just when we were working so hard to create the new human being. One more year, Koruzo, just one more year and we would have succeeded in improving the Japanese race.”

The colonel grit his teeth. “Our knowledge will never go to waste, heika. We shall rise above this and begin anew.”

“700,000 firebombs on the capital, Koruzo. B-29s like swarms of flies above the city. Tokyo’s canals full of bodies like chickens boiling in a pot. My father’s propaganda machine has been trying to use censorship and mail screening to disguise the facts, but they’re making a fool of themselves. We’re being cut to pieces. We can’t face up to American military superiority.”

The colonel’s face remained motionless, although the words of the young man he considered the legitimate crown prince had touched him deeply.

“When your father dies, heika…” Colonel Tadao fell silent.

“I will not be emperor,” the eccentric prince continued, apparently unmoved. “Look at me, Koruzo. Who would accept such an emperor? And don’t forget, I am a creature of war and combat, not of an enforced and honourless peace. People still faithful to me at court inform me that father has washed his hands of me. I’m no longer a curiosity, an organism he wanted to study as if I was an object in that infamous botanical garden of his. Now I’m just an irritating liability.”

The colonel wanted to say something, but the prince silenced him with a gesture of his hand. “The people at the court think I’m a creature of the past, with my ideas about war and honour. They refuse to see that I represent the future of the yellow race. They call me arrogant, melodramatic, puffed up by my own self-importance, a dark prince who – you never know – might well be slightly insane.” The young man laughed, but he sounded far from cheerful. “They don’t understand what the divinity of the Japanese emperor means, Koruzo. They claim I want to be larger than life itself. But what else can a man do if the gods are his only measure? Dwarfs! I’m surrounded by them, and they’re suffocating me.”

“Your faithful followers are firmly convinced that you are the next step in the completion of Nippon’s superiority, heika . Follow my advice, I beg you. You must go into hiding. When the time is right, you will ascend the throne of Japan. The results of our experiments here will be of inestimable value in the future. Where the Germans failed, our scholars succeeded: you are the beginning of a super race that will conquer the world.”

The young man straightened his shoulders. It was clear that the fanatical soldier’s words had done him good.

“As you wish,” he said. “I’ll do what you ask, hide myself, take on a false identity. No one will call me Prince Norikazu from now on.”

“How should we address you?” the colonel asked.

The young man sneered. “Let me think about it, colonel. I’m sure to come up with something ‘melodramatic’ and ‘self-important’.”

Takeda has switched off the sun bed and covered the body with a sheet from the bed. The heat of the lamps had shrunk the ropes and they had done their work. The result was disfigured and horrific.

He insists that Beate Becht stay downstairs, but she ignores him. She waits in the doorway, staring at the sheet.

“It’s my fault,” Takeda realises. His voice sounds absent, as if his thoughts are elsewhere.

“What makes you say that?”

“It’s been running around in my head all this time, but I didn’t want to pay attention to it so I told myself it probably wasn’t important. I let something slip when I was talking to Takamatsu. I wanted to intimidate him. I told him I had help.”

I’m not alone. Takeda is convinced that Takamatsu took good note of his words. The man had years of detective experience and had honed his interrogation techniques to perfection. He’s also aware that the chief commissioner is an expert in the principles of ishin denshin, non-verbal communication. He once boasted about it. Takamatsu will doubtless have concluded from the delicate and dangerous circumstances in which Takeda found himself that only a good friend could be behind the ‘help’ he was receiving.

And who was Takeda’s only friend in the department, an outsider like himself?

“What are you going to do?” Becht stares at him wide-eyed. Takeda has the impression that he can see a glimmer of hysteria in them. He still can’t understand why she’s helping him, but he can’t escape the feeling that she’s in too deep and can’t cope. Maybe she’s just an extremely nervous young woman, an artist kicking on the moment. Takeda figures she’s had enough kicks. He decides once again that he’ll be better off without her.

“I’m going to take your film of my conversation with Takamatsu to the Public Security Commission in Tokyo together with the Norikazu documents. I have to move fast. I can still travel freely outside the prefecture, but it’s not going to last.”

“Will they believe you? It’s a pretty strange story.”

“I’m not a fool, Beate: in exchange for dropping the murder charge and the provision of a new life they’ll ask for discretion. Discretion is the greatest good. Such a scandal would shake Japan to its very foundations: a yakuza who should actually be the successor to the throne, living in hiding for decades. The world press would have a field day.”

“I’m going with you. I’ll back up your statement.”

Silence.

“OK,” says Takeda without looking at her. “We leave tonight for Kyoto in the rental car. Once we’re a distance outside the prefecture it should be safe to take the shinkansen .”

He glances over at the figure under the sheet. “I once read that just before you die, when the brain is short of oxygen and is determined to keep control of the body whatever the cost, the senses short-circuit and it feels as if your whole life is flashing by in front of you. I wonder what Adachi saw.”

“And you?” says Becht. “What do you expect to see when your time comes?”

The intimacy of her question surprises him. She’s the complete opposite of his wife.

“Loneliness,” he says. “A sea of loneliness.” He pulls himself together and adds: “But I guess that doesn’t sound very Japanese.”

“It does,” she says.

They make their way down the stairs. “I forgot my bag,” she says. Before Takeda can respond she runs upstairs and back into Adachi’s room.

Halfway up he sees flashlights. He runs up to Adachi’s room and waits in the doorway.

She’s removed the sheet from Adachi’s body and she’s taking photographs of it, one after the other, her lips tight, her eyes concentrated and emotionless, as if she’s withdrawn into a place inside herself where everything is locked out.

The boat was inconspicuous and unmarked, but it was heavily armed. The port of Hiroshima, a low-lying and extensive array of docks, quays and warehouses, had limited military value. It served rather as a repository for the hinterland. It was eight in the morning. Prince Norikazu was standing at the bow looking out over the city as the boat tied up. The company disembarked quickly and in orderly fashion. A Toyota KB truck in military khaki was at the ready. They set off in the direction of the river Aioi. A young soldier wearing glasses pulled back the tarpaulin and caught sight of three planes flying past above their heads. “American planes,” said the soldier next to him. “I heard the air-raid siren earlier, but they sounded the all-clear half an hour ago. They must be scouts.”