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Chapter 7: Yoshi's Mission.
A mission to hell
Frank, Melanie, and the six children had successfully escaped the holocaust, meaning that they got away alive. In real terms no one escaped out of the reach of this catastrophe that has changed the face of the world more deeply than any other event in history. When the sky lit up, and minutes later the terrible thunder shook the plane as if some primordial force was poised to rip it apart at its seams, people became frightened and confused. Most were too overwhelmed to scream, but many did.
It wasn't until a long time after the noise had abated that the people in the plane, too, fell silent again. No one seemed to be physically hurt. Still, a great injury appeared to have been inflicted on the soul. An elderly Japanese man who hadn't said a word since the plane had taken off in Seattle occupied the seat next to Frank's. His face was cold and distant, as distant as Japan itself. To Frank, Japan was a mystery. In spite of the Toyotas, cameras, and computers, Japan was only known to him through vaguely remembered adventure stories that he had loved as a boy. As if time had stood still, Japan remained to him a frontier that had kept its face carefully veiled, a mysterious mini-continent afloat in a misty sea.
When Frank noticed the man beside him, he saw the same character reflected in him; - unemotional, mysterious, silent, afloat in a misty sea of thoughts that posed unanswerable questions. It seemed to Frank as if the seat beside him was empty. Only when the brightness of the bomb had flooded the plane did Frank notice a change in the man's expression. He moaned. He uttered some indecipherable words. His face became grotesque. Every muscle tightened and twisted. With his eyes closed his hands began shaking. He remained in this state until the roar of the blast came and passed them by. Then he receded back into the stupor of his blank stare.
Gradually, after what seemed like a long time, The man began to speak. "I know what is happening to them!" he said to Frank.
Frank nodded quietly, as if words were too painful to be used.
"I have been there," the man said, "I have seen the suffering, the hopelessness, - burnt figures crying for water, unrecognizable human shapes twisted in pain. I have helped as a rescuer once..."
"In Hiroshima?" Frank interrupted him.
"Nagasaki," the man said quietly, almost reverently. "I was searching for my wife for three days. I never found neither her, nor our small daughter. I had been in Osaka at the time of the blast. Our daughter wanted a special doll for a birthday present, a large doll, which could speak. She had wanted one for a long time. Those were hard to get."
The man paused. It appeared had for him to continue. "I still have it the doll at home, you know. Our daughter's birthday never came. It would have been her fourth birthday that year. Friends told me that I should think myself fortunate to have been away at the time, that I was lucky to be still alive. But I couldn't see it that way. I still can't. I should have died with them. It would have been easier."
Frank turned and reached his hand out to him.
"It is impossible for someone who wasn't there to comprehend the suffering that was endured," said the man. "I know that's why you are afraid, now, to go to Japan," he added with his first faint smile since they left, grasping Frank's hand; "You are afraid that some long forgotten sentiments will be stirred up."
Frank cautiously agreed.
"My friend, you underestimate us!" the man replied. "The bombing was an immeasurable tragedy, incomparable to any other in our history, but it was the consequence of a war. Every Japanese man, woman, and child knew that our country was at war, and that it was a war that we started. They also knew instinctively that in a war mankind's humanity becomes suspended. War excuses everything. War becomes a vacation from sanity. I kept telling myself that we started this ugly trend ourselves. We started it at Pearl Harbor where we killed thousands of people without warning and destroyed much of America's Pacific Fleet. We also launched an attack against Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippine Islands, the Wake Island, and the Midway Island. We launched a massive surprise offensive extending throughout the pacific region. We started a trend of attacking and killing without cause, which became an avalanche working against us, which has never stopped. Nagasaki and Hiroshima became a milestone in this avalanche. It took me years to connect Nagasaki to Pearl Harbor and to the wider war in the Pacific that we started. And it took me more years still to begin to see all of these events as a failure of society that has nothing to do with war. That deeper failure takes us back to the distortion of the image of mankind that Aristotle represented with his mythology about slave races and master races. That single treachery became the greatest curse in human history. Rome was its first victim. Japan followed the same course. We should have never fallen into this trap. We saw ourselves as one of those master races, like the British Aristocracy saw itself, and Hitler did in Germany. We were a stubborn nation in this regard. We were very proud and determined to win that war against humanity. We were so focused of ourselves as rulers that we couldn't see the world around us as a world of human beings. Hiroshima didn't cause us to put our weapons down. Our high-nosed self-esteem was like a national disease..."
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