Occupied City (27 page)

June 6, 1947

The clock showed midnight, then one o’clock, two o’clock. Still there was no answer. The calendar showed Monday, then Tuesday, Wednesday. April, then May, now June. Still there was no answer. So days and weeks have passed,
but thoughts and memories have not. For external time and internal time never correspond and so they remain unchanged, these thoughts and these memories.
And then yesterday the answer finally came; we are to be allowed to interview the criminal Ishii, but only in the presence of the Americans, and only at the criminal Ishii’s residence, and only tomorrow, that is, today.

So an American jeep picked up our own interpreter, our own stenographer and me this morning. Of course, I had not slept, but had spent the entire night preparing for this encounter, not knowing if further interviews would be granted.

We were seated in the back of the jeep, the windows obscured, and driven around the city in various directions for well over two hours until, finally, we arrived at our destination; 77 Wakamatsu-chō, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo.

At the Ishii residence, the atmosphere rather resembled a luncheon party than a criminal interrogation. As well as their own interpreter and stenographer, there were two uniformed officers whom I did not recognize and two men who were quite obviously from Camp Detrick, as well as Lt. Col. McQuail and Mr Waldorf. Ishii’s wife and daughter were also present as well as Ishii’s pet monkey (who, from its friendly disposition towards certain nationalities present, had obviously already met these particular Americans, or else it had been specifically trained to display antagonism only towards citizens of the Soviet Union). And then, of course, there was the General himself.

The criminal Ishii was bedridden and feigning ill health. However, he could not disguise his own inherent arrogance and also his contempt and disdain for the Soviet Union. The man, though, had been well coached by his American friends and so, for example, while admitting that he had authorized and overseen experiments on Chinese and Manchurian captives, Ishii repeatedly denied that any such experiments had been conducted upon Allied or Soviet prisoners.

This diary is not the place to record or repeat the full extent of either my questions or his answers. But, suffice to say, Ishii answered my specific questions only with generalities, denying he could remember, or presently had access to, any specific technical data. To quote him, ‘I cannot give detailed technical data. All the records were destroyed. I never did know many details, and I have forgotten what I knew. I can give you only general results.’

And in an obvious attempt to curtail any further investigation on our part, Ishii was also keen to portray himself as the person who should take full responsibility for Pingfan and N731 –

‘I am responsible for all that went on at Pingfan. I am willing to shoulder all responsibility. Neither my superiors nor my subordinates had anything to do with issuing instructions for experiments. I do not want to see any of my superiors or subordinates get in trouble for what occurred as a result of my instructions.’

However, in regard to his research into plague as a BW agent and the mass production of fleas, Ishii was categorical in his denial,
stating that no such work had taken place. Of course, we know this to be an outright lie and it only confirms that an arrangement has already been made with the US in regard to this information.

And so it went on for almost two hours; vague generalities and professions of guilt, followed by categorical denials and outright lies.

However, a second and final interview with the criminal Ishii has been granted and is scheduled to take place in the criminal Ishii’s residence, again in the presence of the Americans, in one week’s time. At the conclusion of my interview today, I asked Ishii if he would agree to hold the second interview at a different location. To this Ishii replied, ‘I prefer to be interviewed at my house because of my health and also because I am afraid to leave my house.’

But at least now I have one full week in which to consider what action I should take at our next and final meeting.

June
13,
1947

I doubt I have slept more than one or two hours each night of this past week.
My head and my thoughts have been filled with numbers; the numbers of the dead and the numbers of the hurt, the number of my temptations and the number of my sins (all of which I know now to be countless). Repeatedly, I have found myself forsaking the documents, the reports and the transcripts, and returning instead to the Ten Commandments, the thirty steps of the Divine Ladder of Ascent, and the forty days and forty nights Christ spent in the wilderness. How many days and nights have I spent in the wilderness, how far have I fallen from the steps of the Divine Ladder, how many of the Commandments have I broken?

As before, we were picked up and driven around for an hour in an American jeep. Again, as before, at the Ishii residence, the criminal was bedridden. And again, as before, he spoke only in generalities or lies. This was as I had expected.

But the meeting was not entirely pointless for, as I bid him farewell, I handed Ishii a letter. And, for the first time, the man looked frightened and worried. I have no doubt he will show the letter to his American friends. But still, tonight I shall pray he will reply or seek to make contact, if only to be rid of me and the threat of further interrogation.

There is the death and then the mourning, and after the mourning there is the forgetting. That was how it was with our father and our mother; the death, the mourning, and then the forgetting. That is how it should be, how it must be.

But if someone said to me: You should forget your brother now. You must move on. Then I would strike that person down.
I would strike that man down!

For his is a death imagined. There was no body. There is no grave. No damp mound of fresh earth on which to fall, to lie, prostrate in the soil with my tears.

Imagine if we could never forget the dead, imagine if we were always mourning, imagine then a world of tears, everything flooded, everyone drowned. That is my world, this city, all flooded, all drowned.

The Year 2000 43rd of April

An extraordinary incident occurred last night. I had fallen asleep rather early, fully clothed upon my hotel bed, when I suddenly awoke again. I looked at my watch and I saw that it was a quarter to three in the morning and, at that precise moment, a man stepped out of my wardrobe.

The man was Japanese, dressed in black and wearing a beret. He had a pistol tucked into the belt of his trousers. I immediately jumped up from my bed and grabbed the pistol from out of his belt, knocking the beret off his head. I switched on the light and I pointed the pistol at the man.

The man fell to his knees, cowering and shaking. He claimed to be a former BW engineer. He told me he had important information to share with me. He told me he had evidence of war crimes by detachments 100 and 731. He told me he had documentary proof of experiments conducted on Chinese, Manchurian, American AND Soviet prisoners of war. He told me that all of this was in addition to the information and evidence that he knew we already possessed.

Of course, I wanted to believe him and was more than curious to hear his information and to see his evidence. However, equally, I could not help but have my doubts and suspicions about his words and about the man himself. For though he claimed to be a former BW
engineer, he seemed to me to have the air more of a medical man than of a technician.

And though he had fallen to his knees, cowering and shaking before me, though he had offered no resistance when I had disarmed him, I did not believe the man was afraid of me. His actions, it seemed to me, were rather those of a highly trained actor, well versed in the dissemination of lies. And above all else, beneath this façade, it was difficult for me to determine the motivations of the man, what had led him to my room, to my wardrobe, the reasons he had for telling me the things he was telling me, and what reward he sought.

All was a mystery to me.

But still I listened to him. And still I agreed to investigate his claims. But in return, I had something to ask of him. And so I wrote a name on a piece of paper torn from this very martyr-log. And I gave him the name on the paper, telling him it was a test.

And I kept his pistol.

Martober the 86th, between day and night

Terrible dreams, every night, these dreams of Moscow, of the War College. First, of the fleas. Next, of the rats. Then, of the cells. The floorboards ripped up. Replaced with wire nets. And finally, the men.-Barefoot men, naked men. The men thrown into the cells. The men thrown onto the wire. The rats beneath the wire floor. The rats hungry, the rats biting. Up through the wire. Deep into the skin. Infected, plagued. Every night, these dreams. But in the dream last night, on the far wall was written, with blood for ink, in my brother’s hand, the words, ‘Avenge me.’

No date at all. The day was dateless.

The man from the wardrobe visited me again last night. And, as he had promised he would, he returned the page from this martyr-log on which I had written a name. And, as I had feared he would, beneath the name he had written an address – the address I have been searching for this last year. I know now I have no more excuses, only decisions to make.

Don’t remember the date. There was no month, either. Devil only
knows what there was.

Recently, I often think of those rotting, stinking old saints, their fossilized remains dug up from their graves and displayed in the Museum of Godlessness in the former Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square opposite the un-rotting, un-stinking body of the Great Vladimir Il’ich Ulyanov.

Recently, I often think of the decay of the saints and, particularly, the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. I often think those forty days and forty nights were not so long, those temptations not so great, not compared to these years in this city, this wilderness and its temptations.

Every night before I sleep I say my brother’s name three times.-Then I say the Jesus Prayer three times. Finally, I spin the gun’s barrel three times and I pull the trigger, once.

The Great Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy once wrote that God sees the truth, but waits. But this poor citizen now knows, Man also sees the truth, but then he runs.

The 1st date.

The man from the wardrobe was here again. This time he was not shaking with fear, but shaking with anger.

‘You are the same as the Americans, Comrade,’ he spat. ‘I give you information, I give you evidence, but you do not use it for justice, you use it only for your own ends. You are just the same. All the same!’

The man then took out a piece of paper, a document and he read, ‘In 1941, in Ulan Bator and other areas of Mongolia, a Professor Klimeshinski carried out BW experiments on human beings using plague, anthrax and glanders. The subjects of these experiments were political prisoners and Japanese prisoners of war. The prisoners in chains were brought into an 8 man tent, on the floor of which were kept, under wire nets, a number of rats infected with pest fleas; the latter transmitted the infection to the subject of the experiment. The experiments were positive in most cases and infection ended in bubonic plague. Beside the rats, ground squirrels and other rodents also proved efficient intermediary hosts. It is known that the escape of one prisoner infected with bubonic plague started a great plague epidemic among the Mongols in the summer of 1941. To check the further spread of the epidemic, a chase was unleashed with the
participation of many air units, during which some 3 to 5,000 Mongols met their death.

‘
Glanders,’ he continued to read, ‘may be spread by guerillas, secret agents, or airplanes in regions in the possession or under the occupation of the enemy.

‘It is also known that in Moscow, from 1939 to 1940, a group of investigators, with the code name WAR COLLEGE, used infected food to try anthrax on political prisoners and prisoners of war who had been isolated in experimental cells.

‘It is believed that the Russians favour the infection of herds or pastures, or letting loose infected animals in enemy territory as dissemination by aircraft has proven unsatisfactory.

‘However, in conclusion, it is our belief that Stalin will not initiate BW until it is an absolute necessity and only as a last resort should German troops penetrate deep into Russian territory and an anti Soviet revolution breaks out in the country. In that instance, Stalin will order the use of BW agents, alleging that it was first started by the Germans.’

The man from the wardrobe stopped reading and he put away the piece of paper. And then he smiled and he said again, ‘Just the same. All the same. But not me! I will show you, show you all – Japanese, American, Chinese and Soviet – I will show you all. I will teach you all. I will infect you all!

‘First, I will infect Tokyo. Then, the whole of Japan. Finally, the world itself.

‘How you ask – never why, only how; always the first question and always the last – too late, always much too late – is the question why. Perhaps it is because, hidden in your hearts, you already know why. So you only, always ask how –

‘Well simply, I will poison the water supply. I will release fleas. I will release rats. And they will drop like flies – occupiers and collaborators alike – writhing in intestinal pain. There will not be enough ambulances, enough stretchers or beds. They will lie where they fall, one on top of the other, or side by side, their faces up and faces down, their hands raised, frozen and petrified, at their throats, dying in agony, fear and silence. And on your head will be these dead …’