The Investigation Read online

  I floated by the patients’ rooms, nurses’ station and treatment rooms. Bright lights cast everything in sparkling white. Doctors and nurses wearing dazzlingly white coats rushed about. In my mind, a uniform represented one’s soul – the prisoners were washed out, the guards were dark, the doctors were clean and the nurses were pure. The autopsy room was in the basement, at the far end of the corridor. Sugiyama’s body was lying on a metal gurney in the middle of the empty room. Bruises – blue, black and red – covered his body. I noticed his knees were scratched, and darkly calloused. Dried blood tattooed his smashed forehead. Meticulous stitches sealed his pale, dry lips.

  Eguchi Shinsuke, the head researcher who oversaw autopsies, stood behind the gurney, his face obscured by a surgical mask. I saluted. He held out a dry hand and removed his mask. He smiled broadly. In every way a gentleman, he looked to be in his forties. Men at war aged quickly, but he seemed to have avoided the harsh reality of the times. He guided me out of the door and led me into an observation room reserved for those viewing an execution or coming to collect a body. He placed the autopsy file on the desk and opened it. ‘The primary cause of death was cranial rupture and cerebral haemorrhage, due to a blow to the back of the head. The bruises all over his body are consistent with being hit with a blunt weapon while unconscious.’

  I felt intimidated. The doctor gave me a kind look, then went back to the gurney and covered the corpse with a white cloth. He returned and washed his hands. I smelled something faintly fishy in the cool air. ‘Can you tell me what the blunt weapon was?’

  ‘It’s probably one of the clubs you guards have. The bruises are shaped like the tip of the club. The lacerations on the cranium have the same circumference. The long metallic weapon thrust into his chest caused some real damage. That sharp object punctured the heart.’

  I knew that metal shafts were easy to come by in the prison. Whenever a prisoner came upon a piece of metal he plotted how he would use it to kill someone. Prisoners shaved down spoons into makeshift knives, or they took the mesh netting that kept them at bay, made it stronger by twisting it around itself, filed down the tip and walked around with it hidden in their sleeves. ‘The body was hanging from the second-floor banister,’ I reminded Eguchi.

  ‘Hanging was not a direct cause of death.’

  ‘You mean he was already dead?’

  Eguchi gazed at me over his glasses and shook his head, indicating that he didn’t know.

  I tried another angle. ‘What does it mean that his lips were sewn shut?’

  He shook his head again.

  It was left to me to discover the truth. The results of the autopsy were clear, but the pieces of evidence it scattered failed to create a complete picture. I left and walked down the corridor. I couldn’t wait to leave that white, shining ward. I was more suited to a damp, dark, grey space.

  8 December 1941 dawned the same way as any other morning. The tram clanged its bell and rattled along the street, kimono-clad women rushed past and men glared with angry expressions. That afternoon a university student stepped into the bookshop to tell us that the same important breaking news was being continuously broadcast on the radio. I ran over to the radio shop next door. People were milling around outside the glass doors. I heard an impassioned voice burst through static: ‘At six this morning the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, comprising the army and the navy, entered into battle in the Pacific against American and British forces. The navy air fleet bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, causing massive damage to American battleships.’

  By the time I stepped out of the radio shop I was a boy no more. Men were standing in the streets, intently reading special editions of the paper. Fist-sized letters leaped off the page to punch me in the face: ‘Empire Declares War Against America and Britain’; ‘Navy Attacks Honolulu: Two American Ships Sink in Pearl Harbor’. War had been raging during my entire life; one war began before another was completed, in Manchuria, in China, in the Pacific. But this new war was different; it squeezed the life out of my fellow citizens. The elementary schools were renamed National Schools. Men altered the lapels on their suits, converting them into nationalist uniforms. Private gatherings were proscribed and goods were rationed. The oden plant began to produce food only for the military, and the suit factory began to make military uniforms. Children, taught that even a small nail would become a bullet and pierce the heart of an enemy soldier, scoured their houses for any scrap of metal to donate at school. Air-raid shelters were constructed from sandbags on street corners, though trams continued to run from one sandbag-piled shelter to another as if nothing had changed. Like a parrot, the radio continuously spat out news of victory from various places in the Pacific – Rangoon, Surabaya, the Dutch East Indies. The slogan ‘Wait for what you want until the day of victory’ burned in my ears. I desperately waited for victory, looking forward to the special food distribution that came with good news: sugar, beans and sweets, which would paint our grey hearts with colour. Drill instructors barked terse commands at us as they marched around the school yard. We began with close-order drills and first aid; by the end of the term we’d learned bayonet skills and marksmanship, how to identify American bombers, as well as different evacuation plans depending on the sound and smoke colour of various bombs. We never loosened the gaiters around our ankles; with the fiery belief that we were suffering along with soldiers on the front and in honour of the dead, we resolved that we would dash to the front if called. Our school uniforms could serve as military uniforms at a moment’s notice, but we didn’t think that would actually happen. Although we gathered at Kyoto Station Square to send off with cheers upper-classmen entering the military, we didn’t believe that would ever be us. We still thought of war as unreal, something far away.

  But fate is fair in its dealings.

  One summer day before the end of the term, when I had just turned seventeen, a red note flew in like an air raid and combusted my life. I was in our bookshop, immersed in Oliver Twist, when I heard the glass door slide open and a man call my name: ‘Watanabe Yuichi!’

  His low, gloomy voice shattered my daydreams. I closed my book and came out to the front of the shop, staggering a little in a dream-like trance. The postman, in a nationalist uniform, glanced at me before sticking his face into his mailbag. He flipped through his bundles of letters. I could tell he was trying to avoid my eyes. How many boys’ gazes had he had to avoid? Boys who trembled, as though they were awaiting execution, as though they were young deer caught in a trap. After a long interval he looked up, his face expressionless, and held out a sealed letter and an inkpad. I pressed my thumb on the inkpad and stamped his mail-receipt log. He didn’t meet my mother’s eyes, either. He turned around woodenly. On the envelope were the words ‘Japanese Imperial General Headquarters’. They reached out, grabbed me by the throat and throttled me. I found a red note inside.

  Time of assembly: 6.30, 27 March, Showa 18

  Place of assembly: East side of Kyoto Station Square

  I couldn’t breathe. That was when I realized that words, not bullets or bombs, were killing the soldiers dying in battle. One line of text was powerful enough to turn the world upside down and destroy lives; boys became soldiers, were shipped to the front and were thrown into battle. I dropped the Dickens novel, not because I was afraid of death, but because I was suddenly afraid of words. My mother, who had been sewing up bindings, let out an almost imperceptible sound; red droplets of blood spotted her thumb. She was trying her hardest not to collapse in the face of despair.

  Months later, early on the morning I was to enlist in the army, I rubbed my newly shaved head and thought about my father, who had walked along this path before me. Just like that day when my father went off many years ago, a black train puffed out steam and a military band played a martial song. I wasn’t afraid. Nor did I feel it was unfair that I was to become a soldier. I just worried about my mother, who was too small to open the heavy gate over our shop front by herself every morning.

&n
bsp; After training I was assigned to be a guard at Fukuoka Prison. High walls, sharp barbed wire and cold bars enclosed my future. My youth was incarcerated in a brown uniform. I was strictly isolated from books. No text was allowed. Staid directives were the only things to read, and the only words I wrote were in the log detailing my rounds. Hungry for words, I read everything I could lay my hands on. I devoured incarceration logs, punishment records, directives and administrative documents, even the entrance and exit signs. But they were merely dead words that couldn’t move me. My soul was perpetually malnourished. I wanted to encounter a living, vibrant line of prose. But that was a luxury not afforded a soldier in wartime.

  That was how I walked into war – as though entering dreamland. I wanted to return to my former life. I wanted desperately for the war to end so that I could toss my military uniform aside, replace it with a school uniform and read Stendhal. But I didn’t know when that would happen, or whether the war would ever end. I didn’t know that, instead of the school uniform, I’d be wearing prisoner’s garb when the war was finally over.

  CONSPIRACY

  The inside of the workroom was damp with sweat. Together the prisoners repaired and dyed military uniforms and clothes. This indoor workroom was reserved for skilled long-term prisoners. The less fortunate suffered outdoors in the cold, willing their frozen bodies to make bricks, haul materials on their backs, push wheelbarrows and shovel the cold earth. Any talk during working hours was forbidden; if caught, the prisoners would be beaten within an inch of their lives. Even a brief pause caused work to pile up and invited beatings from the guards. They died from torture, the cold and disease. Families were given ten days to claim the corpses. If nobody showed up, their bodies were donated for research. The squat hill outside sprouted a cemetery for those unclaimed bodies; as the war grew intense and the number of prisoners increased, the cemetery grew in tandem.

  The prisoners tasted their only freedom during outdoor break time from four to five in the afternoon. Exhausted Koreans grouped together near the wall, seeking the wan rays of the sun. They murmured endlessly among themselves, secretively, turning the yard into a noisy marketplace. This ruckus always made the guards tense; those manning the checkpoints made sure to keep their machine guns loaded. These prisoners insisted on their innocence, telling stories to each other. Although they were thieves and thugs and crooks and spies, they had a visceral understanding of each other’s sense of injustice; they all believed that they’d been caught in cunning Japanese traps and falsely accused. They raged in despair.

  I walked along the wall, watching the group clustered together. They were all troublemakers; quick fists were a source of power within the prison. I was well aware that prisoners frequently attacked guards. When unpopular guards were on duty, they purposefully picked fights and disabled machines in their work unit, despite the certainty of beatings and solitary confinement. They quietened down when I approached, gripping the hilt of my club. ‘I’m Watanabe Yuichi! I am the investigator assigned to uncover Sugiyama’s murder. You better cooperate.’

  The men looked me up and down. Prisoner 156, a balding former dockworker, mocked me. ‘I thought the special investigator was from the Special Higher Police. But a brand-new student-soldier? Well, sir, we haven’t done a thing.’

  I’d heard about him. Prisoner 156 had stowed away ten years ago to Shimonoseki, and three years ago he’d received a seven-year sentence for leading a dockworker riot in Tokyo. The Japanese workers were the ones who’d plotted and instigated it, but 156 had been made a scapegoat. I studied each man carefully. One of them spat on the ground and another feigned disinterest, picking dirt from under his nails. I could tell they were hiding something. Then again, everyone in this prison was hiding something.

  ‘I didn’t say you did,’ I snapped. ‘But you might in the future. Your talents lie in fighting, ostracizing, violating the rules and getting sent to solitary, no?’

  ‘A student-soldier? Then you can’t even be twenty,’ Prisoner 945 mocked. ‘A snot-nosed kid investigating a murder?’

  Prisoner 397 turned to him. ‘The warden knows that if this incident gets out, he’s done for. That’s why he’s not calling the Special Higher Police. He’s trying to hush it up.’

  They were all playing with me. My cheeks burned. I wanted to pull my club out and hit them.

  ‘It’s too bad that the guard died, but it has nothing to do with us. Just leave us alone,’ said Prisoner 945 soothingly.

  ‘I’m not going to bother you. But I’m going to uncover who did it.’ I met each person’s eyes as though I were stamping a seal.

  Prisoner 156 frowned. ‘Don’t even think about blaming us. You don’t have any proof. I don’t know anything about how that arsehole died, but I know one thing. He got what was coming to him. So watch out, if you don’t want that to happen to you.’

  I swallowed. ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘I guess so, if it scares you.’

  ‘Don’t you talk back to me. I can send you to solitary.’ My flinty words didn’t have any effect.

  ‘Go ahead, put me in solitary. I can spend a week there – easy. Wanna beat me up? Be my guest. Any wound will heal in a week.’ 156 pounded his chest with his fist and shoved his head towards me, taunting me to club him.

  I glared at him, my hand trembling on the club. I knew I would lose, the moment I pulled it out. I wasn’t Sugiyama. The club wasn’t the solution.

  Prisoner 543 glanced at the watchtower. ‘It’s stupid to kill a guard,’ he commented slyly. ‘Who could have done such a ridiculous thing?’

  Not caring that I was right there, Prisoner 156 snapped impatiently, ‘Why is it stupid to kill an evil guard? Comrade, you know he deserved it!’

  They all turned to look at a man standing far away, whose wide chest bore clear numbers: 331. He continued walking around the yard, oblivious to the men. Then he turned and came closer.

  ‘Comrade Choi!’ 156 called loudly. ‘You tell us. Who do you think killed that son-of-a-bitch?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who killed him,’ Choi answered as he rubbed the tip of his reddened nose. ‘What’s important is who survives.’

  He was clearly addressing me. He looked up at the sky, then at the watchtower with its two guards, a loaded machine gun and a 2,000-watt searchlight that illuminated the prison at night, tracing automatic arcs.

  The waning sun faded. The men’s voices became heated, ignoring my presence, as they argued with one another. A long bugle sounded, signalling the end of outdoor break.

  ‘Disperse!’ I shouted.

  The men slowly parted ways, shuffling their feet. Their toes were poking out of their worn shoes; their yellowed toenails were split and their heels were chapped and cracked. The guards quickly finished the head count. Grousing in Korean, the prisoners went back into the work areas like a herd of sheep. Choi and his men walked along together. I noticed that the fabric on their knees was baggy and threadbare. They must have habitually knelt before someone. Who had brought them all to their knees?

  Back in the guardroom I searched through files, looking for the log listing the names of inmates sentenced to solitary and the length of their stay. The solitary wing was a makeshift cement building in the knoll between the prison wards and the cemetery. It consisted of small rectangular cells, one metre wide by two metres long, closed off by thick steel doors. A prisoner lying on the floor would touch each wall with each shoulder. It was as stuffy as a furnace in the summer and froze like a block of ice in the winter. Being sent to solitary during a heatwave or a cold snap was, for all intents and purposes, a death-sentence. All you got to eat was half a rice ball and half a bowl of miso soup, once a day. Countless men left wrapped up in straw mats, and even if one managed to walk out on his own two feet, his life often hung by a thread.

  Maeda looked over my shoulder. ‘The murderer’s name isn’t written in the log, you foolish boy! It doesn’t matter who it is. Just hang those Koreans upside down and beat them, and they’l
l talk. There’s no harm in giving them a little tap on the hand.’ His eyes creased in a smile.

  Was he actually urging me to force someone to give a false confession? But then that prisoner wouldn’t be the murderer, he would merely be a pitiful liar. I flipped through the solitary log. Even if I did end up interrogating someone, I still had to be prepared.

  ‘There’s nothing useful there,’ Maeda said. ‘It’s filled with Koreans. They’re all troublemakers: 397, 156, 331, 543, 954, 645.’ He smirked. ‘I know all of them, each and every one. Kang Myeong-u, Lee Man-o, Choi Chi-su, Choi Cheol-gu, Kim Gwing-pil, Hiranuma Tochu! Those dirty pig-names are fouling my mouth.’

  I paid no attention to him as I started to scan the records from six months ago.

  Maeda spat on the floor. ‘They love it in there. Those dumb monkeys don’t even keel over.’

  I pointed at the numbers. ‘But last August all the solitary cells were empty for two whole weeks, as if they planned it!’

  Maeda was indifferent. ‘Obviously. It was during the worst heatwave.’