War and Remembrance (196 page)

The controversy will go on while human life survives. Some of the arguments:

The Japanese would have surrendered anyway, without being bombed by radioactive lumps. They had sent out peace feelers. The American code-breakers knew from their diplomatic messages that they wanted peace.

Yet the Japanese rejected the Potsdam ultimatum.

Truman wanted to keep the Russians out of the Japanese war.

Yet at Potsdam he did not waive Stalin’s commitment to attack Japan. He had Marshall’s advice that the Russians could not be kept from attacking if they wanted to.

An invasion of Japan would have caused far more Japanese deaths, let alone American ones, than the Hiroshima casualties. The Japanese army leaders controlled the government, and their plan to fight invasion called for a bloody scorched-earth battle to the last like Hitler’s. The bomb gave the Emperor leverage to force a decision for the peace party in his councils.

Yet the B-29 bombardments and the submarine blockade might have done so too, in time to scrub the invasion.

If not, and if the Soviet Union had materially aided an invasion, the
Red Army would have occupied part of the land. Japan might have ended partitioned like Germany.

Yet whether the Japanese think the deaths at Hiroshima were an acceptable price for warding off that possibility is far from certain.

This much is certain.

The uranium weapon had been perfected barely in time for use in the war. There were two bombs available; only two, one of U-235, one of plutonium. The President, the cabinet, the scientists, the military men, all wanted the bomb rushed into combat. Harry Truman later said, “It was a bigger piece of artillery, so we used it.” There were worried dissenting voices: few, and futile. The momentum of all that expenditure of money, manpower, industrial plant, and scientific genius was irresistible.

War scares nations, by murdering their people, into changing their politics. Here was the ultimate expression of war, after all, a child’s handfuls murdering a city. How could it not be used? It did scare a nation into changing its politics overnight. “Greatest thing in history!” said President Truman at the news of Hiroshima.

Greatest thing since canned beer.

Byron came through the plane gate leading by the hand a pale small boy in a neat gray suit, who walked docilely beside him. Rabinovitz recognized Louis, though he was taller and thinner.

“Hello, Louis.” The boy looked solemnly at him. “Byron, she’s fine today, and waiting. I’ll drive you there. Did you hear about the atom bomb?”

“Yes. I guess that’s the end, all right.”

Walking to Rabinovitz’s very decrepit Citroën, they made the common talk being repeated all over the world, about the terrific news.

“Natalie says she’s ready to go home, now that you’ve got him,” Rabinovitz said as they drove. “She thinks she’ll recuperate better there.”

“Yes, we talked about that last time I saw her. Also she has property. Aaron’s publisher has been in touch with her. There’s quite a lot of money. And that villa in Siena, if it’s still standing. His lawyer has the deeds. It makes sense for her to go back right now.”

“She won’t go with you to Germany, that I can tell you.”

“I don’t expect her to.”

“How will you feel there yourself?”

“Well, the U-boat men are just professionals. I’ve got a job to do with them.”

“They’re murderers.”

“So am I,” Byron said without rancor, stroking Louis’s head. The boy sat on his lap, soberly looking out of the window at the sunny flat green
fields outside Paris. “They’re the conquered enemy. We study their equipment and methods as soon as possible after surrender. That’s standard.”

Silenced for a minute or so, Rabinovitz said abruptly, “I think she’ll stay in America, once she goes there.”

“She doesn’t know what she’ll do. First she has to get well.”

“Would you come with her to Palestine?”

“That’s a tough one. I know nothing about Zionism.”

“We Jews need a state of our own to live in, where we won’t get massacred. That’s all there is to Zionism.”

“She won’t get massacred in America.”

“Can the Jews all go there?”

“What about the Arabs?” Byron asked after a pause. “The ones that are there in Palestine already?”

Rabinovitz’s face as he drove became grave, almost tragic. He looked straight ahead, and his reply came slowly. “The Arabs can be grim, and they can also be noble. Christian Europe has tried to kill us. What choice have we? Palestine is our traditional home. Islam has a tradition to let the Jews live. Not in a state of our own, not as yet, that’s a new thing in their history. But it will work out.” He glanced toward Louis, and caressed the quiet boy’s cheek. “With a hell of a lot of trouble first. That’s why we need him.”

“Will you need a navy?”

Rabinovitz briefly sourly smiled. “Between you and me, we have one. I helped organize it. A goddamn small one, so far.”

“Well, I’ll never be separated from this kid, once I’m demobilized. That much I know.”

“Isn’t he very quiet?”

“He doesn’t talk.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. He doesn’t smile, and he doesn’t talk. He hasn’t said a word to me yet. I had a time getting him released. They had him classified as psychologically disabled, some such fancy category. He’s fine. He eats, he dresses and cleans himself, in fact he’s very neat, and he understands anything you say. He obeys. He doesn’t talk.”

Rabinovitz said in Yiddish, “Louis, look at me.” The boy turned and faced him. “Smile, little fellow.” Louis’s large eyes conveyed faint dislike and contempt, and he looked out of the window again.

“Let him be,” Byron said. “I had to sign more damned papers and raise more hell before I could pry him loose. It’s lucky I got there when I did. They’re shipping about a hundred of these so-called psychologically disabled kids to Canada next week. God knows if we could ever have traced him there.”

“What’s the story on him?”

“Very sparse. I can’t read Czech, naturally, and the translation of the card was pretty poor. I gather he was picked up in a woods near Prague, where the Germans took a lot of Jews and Czechs and shot them. The bodies were just lying around. That’s where somebody found him, among the bodies.”

As they walked into the sunny garden of the convalescent home, Byron said, “Look, Louis, there’s Mama.”

Natalie stood near the same stone bench, in a new white frock. Louis let go of his father’s hand, walked toward Natalie, then broke into a run and leaped at her.

“Oh, my God! How
big
you are! How heavy you are! Oh, Louis!”

She sat down, embracing him. The child clung, his face buried on her shoulder, and she rocked him, saying through tears, “Louis, you came back. You came back!” She looked up at Byron. “He’s glad to see me.”

“Sort of.”

“Byron, you can do anything, can’t you?”

His face still hidden, the boy was gripping his mother hard. Rocking him back and forth, she began to sing slowly in Yiddish,

Under Louis’s cradle,

Lies a little white goat.

The little goat went into business
—

Louis let go of her, sat up smiling on her lap, and tried to sing along in Yiddish, in a faltering hoarse voice, a word here and there,

“Dos vet zein dein baruf,

Rozhinkes mit mandlen
—”

Almost at the same moment, Byron and Rabinovitz each put a hand over his eyes, as though dazzled by an unbearable sudden light.

In a shallow, hastily dug grave in the wood outside Prague, Berel Jastrow’s bones lie unmarked, like so many bones all over Europe. And so this story ends.

It is only a story, of course. Berel Jastrow was never born and never existed. He was a parable. In truth his bones stretch from the French coast to the Urals, dry bones of a murdered giant. And in truth a marvelous thing happens; his story does not end there, for the bones stand up and take on flesh. God breathes spirit into the bones, and Berel Jastrow turns eastward and goes home. In the glare, the great and terrible light of this happening, God seems to signal that the story of the rest of us need not end, and that the new light can prove a troubled dawn.

For the rest of us, perhaps. Not for the dead, not for the more than fifty million real dead in the world’s worst catastrophe: victors and vanquished, combatants and civilians, people of so many nations, men, women, and children, all cut down. For them there can be no new earthly dawn. Yet though their bones lie in the darkness of the grave, they will not have died in vain, if their remembrance can lead us from the long, long time of war to the time for peace.

The history of the war in this romance, as in
The Winds of War,
is offered as accurate; the statistics, as reliable; the words and acts of the great personages, as either historical, or derived from accounts of their words and deeds in similar situations. Major figures of history do not appear in times and places not historically true.

World Holocaust,
the military treatise by “Armin von Roon,” is of course an invention from start to finish. Still, General von Roon’s book is offered as a professional German view of the other side of the hill, reliable within the limits peculiar to that self-justifying literature. Except where directly challenged by Victor Henry, Roon’s facts are accurate, however warped by nationalism his judgments may be.

The reliability of detail in the well-known battles, campaigns, and events of the war — Singapore, Midway, Leyte Gulf, the Tehran Conference, the sieges of Imphal and Leningrad, and the like — will, it is hoped, be evident to the informed reader. The notes that follow deal with little-known or unusual historical elements of the story, and with passages where fact and fiction are especially intertwined.

The exploits of the fictional submarines
Devilfish, Moray,
and
Barracuda
are improvisations on actual wartime submarine patrol reports. The death of Carter Aster is based on the famous self-sacrifice of Commander Howard W. Gilmore of U.S.S.
Growler,
for which he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Aster, however, is a different and fictional character.

All other Navy vessels in the novel are actual and their movements and actions follow the historical record. All admirals in the Pacific are real personages and are treated like the major political figures. The story of the heavy cruiser
Northampton,
except for the fictitious captains Hickman and Henry, follows its war diary from Pearl Harbor to its sinking at the Battle of Tassafaronga.

The names of the pilots and gunners in the three torpedo squadrons at Midway proved surprisingly difficult to recover and verify, so quickly is the record fading. The rosters printed in the novel are the result of a long search. Any reliable corrections will be welcomed for future editions.

The story of the
Izmir
is a fictionalization of actual illegal voyages of refugees from the Nazis, who reached Palestine in this way or died trying.

“The Wannsee Protocol” is a historical document, and as described in the story, only one copy out of thirty of this top-secret record was preserved, through an accident of bureaucratic overthoroughness. Disclosure of a smuggled photocopy to the American legation in Bern is fictional, as are the characters in the legation.

Americans caught in Italy by the war were interned in Siena, as narrated. Those caught in southern France were first interned in Lourdes, then moved to Baden-Baden, as in the story; and harshly bargained for by the Germans thereafter, for more than a year.

The Comte and Comtesse de Chambrun are real figures; the comte did administer the American Hospital in Paris. The German ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz, is historical. Werner Beck is a fictional character.

The Joint Declaration of the United Nations in December 1942, which led to the Bermuda Conference, is history. Its text is given in full in the novel. Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long is an actual person, whose conversation and actions are drawn largely from his own writings and his congressional testimony. Foxy Davis is fictitious.

The Bermuda Conference happened as described. The public reaction that gradually ensued, and the establishment of the War Refugee Board, are facts.

The main source for the furor in 1943 over Soviet suppression of Lend-Lease facts is Admiral William Standley’s autobiography. This Soviet practice, incidentally, continues to the present day. General Yevlenko is fictional.

“The Declaration of the Three Powers Regarding Iran” (referred to in the text as “The Declaration of Iran”) is a historical fact, as is the general outline of how it came about; though of course Victor Henry’s conversation with the Minister of the Imperial Court, Hussein Ala — a real person — is invented. General Connolly of the Persian Gulf Command is an actual officer, and the description of Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union through that corridor is factual. The fictitious Granville Seaton describes true Persian history.