During the last month of the war I was hired by the Shincho, a monthly magazine, to write an essay regarding the bombing of Tokyo and as it turned out the end of the war. Of course, at that time I had no idea the war would end. I never wrote that article, for the Shincho did not survive the end of the war but here are some notes I wrote for that essay.
My friends had all left Tokyo. I refused the kindness of several people who encouraged me to evacuate, or who undertook to provide me with a residence in the country, and I held out in Tokyo. I instead intended to make the air-raid shelter in the ruins of Kosuke Oi’s place, my final base, or final line of defence as the militarists would say, and when in late April Kousuke evacuated to Kyushu I thereby lost my last friend in Tokyo; but when I imagined the American troops eventually landing and myself hiding my breath as the shelter was barraged by heavy artillery fire on all sides, I felt the urge to submit to that fate and prepare myself for it. I thought that I would die but without a doubt I more often believed that I would live. As for my ambitions once I survived among the ruins and rubble, however, I expected nothing more than survival itself.
I may have decided to make a last stand against the Americans but I am timid by nature. On April 4th in 1945, I experienced the first bombing that lasted for two hours all around me. The bombs overhead made the night as bright as day, and when Kousuke, asked from inside the air-shelter asked if they were incendiary bombs I tried to reply that they were flares, but found myself in position where even if I put all my strength into it no voice would come out.
At the time I was working part-time at the Nippon Film Co., and once directly after the bomb attack on Ginza, we stood on Nippon Film Corporation’s rooftop in Ginza with three cameras positioned on the tower of the five-storey building, to film another attack formation. When the formation came everyone disappeared from the streets, even the rooftop anti-aircraft people hid in a covered trench, and there was no sign of anybody. There was no sign of anybody except the people visibly exposed on the roof of the Nippon Film Corporation’s building.
The next formation came directly overhead. I was aware of the strength in my legs being steadily drained, and yet those cameramen, cigarette in mouth, pointed their cameras at the oncoming formation with such extraordinary calm, left me quite astounded and ashamed of my cowardice.
And yet I was in love with grand destruction. The sight of people submitting to their fate is such a strangely beautiful one. All the mansions in Tokyo disappearing as if they had never been there, as if they had never been, nothing but rubble and smoke remaining. An elegant father and daughter with a single red-leather suitcase between them, sitting on the grass. If it weren’t for the ruins in one corner, then it would have looked no different than a picnic. The city-centre likewise was nothing but dust and rubble. I came across a corpse which looked as though it had been struck by a car rather than died in a air-raid. The endless flow of victims coming and going passed without even noticing the fresh blood on the pavement, and if someone did occasionally notice, she would would show as much interest as if looking at a discarded piece of paper.
The faces of the crowds of victims just after the bomb attack were those of innocent children of fate. The ones always laughing were always girls of 15-17, searching among the ruins and tossing things into a burnt bucket, or basking in the sun guarding some scraps of luggage, perhaps these young girls were unaffected by the by the present reality because they were filled with dreams of the future, or perhaps it was due to their great vanity.
It was night so those who had safely escaped the flames now crowded together beside a burning house for warmth against the cold, in a completely separate world from those a few feet away trying to put out that very same fire.
People say that Tokyo during the war was dark but in the following days after the last embers of fire were put out, it was pitch black, and yet I walked about the dark streets late at night with no fear of being attacked and robbed, and slept without locking the doors. Japan was an empty utopia during the war. Even with the unceasing fear of bombing people were always nonchalant so long as they didn’t need to think. I was no different than the rest.
The war has ended now and now both that empty utopia and grand spectacle of innocence are gone. What it will be replaced by is yet to be seen.
