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Edited on Sat Nov-13-04 02:00 AM by BigMcLargehuge
I am writing a historical novel about The Rape of Nanking. At this point, Chapter 24 (well, almost all of it at least), our main characters Hideki Kubo and Masamune Jiro are within the city walls. This is the morning of December 13th, the first day of the Rape.
As usual, the novel appears here in DU format, the novel itself is in standard manuscript format.
24
The street was virtually empty except for a few ruined bodies, no doubt victims of the dynamite blast that blew open the gate, and piles of Chinese Infantryman uniforms scattered along the street. Kubo recognized their origin by the yellow armbands still pinned to the right sleeves.
Almost the entire platoon was there now, at the crossing corner beside the gate, slowly fanning up the mostly empty roads leading to the heart of the capital. Kubo and Jiro pressed against the crumbling concrete brick wall of some nameless burned out hulk at the corner and waved for the others in the 2nd platoon to join them; within five minutes everyone who could walk was clumped there with them.
“Where’s the corporal?” Kamakura asked.
“I haven’t seen him since we charged,” Kubo answered.
“Did anyone see him fall?” Jiro asked.
The others shook their heads.
Kubo frowned and said, “Someone should go back and look for him.”
“We don’t have time for that now,” Jiro snapped, “we’re supposed to hold this block. If Shima is dead someone will tell us. For now we go house to house and root out any enemy soldiers.”
The squad paused for a second.
"What?” Jiro barked, “Get moving! Kubo, Sachi, Kensu, you’re with me, the rest of your pair off and start searching up to the end of the block. Mishima and Otani stay here and keep the street clear. Shoot anyone who resists.”
“Wait,” Kubo said, “look, this corner leads into the Safety Zone… We can’t go in…” He pulled down a flier pasted against a telegraph.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jiro read over the sign. “What do you mean we can’t go it? We can go anywhere we want…”
“When I was summoned to the Field HQ tent this is one of the things I had to translate. General Asaka and Nakajima said they would take the westerners plan under consideration. Until we hear different we shouldn’t go past any of these fliers. I don’t want to get in trouble for disobeying a restriction put on my General Asaka…”
“Fine. We stay here then, but we can still work up this way, on the North side of the street. Same orders. Enter every house. Every room. Shoot anyone who resists.”
“Can we take things?” Kensu asked.
“Huh? Yes stupid. Take what you want. I don’t care.” Jiro grunted.
The sounds of battle washed through the narrow Nanking streets like rainwater as the 2nd Squad worked up into the row of shops lining the wide boulevard running North through the city; all of them vacant. Once Kubo spotted a blue-clad figure darting across the open intersection, but the man moved too fast and Kubo couldn’t aim. Later the squad encountered a small group of Chinese soldiers who readily dropped the weapons and raised their arms to surrender.
By early afternoon the city surrendered to the chaos. Ho Ga tanks careened up and down narrow cross-streets, the refugees scattered during the initial invasion flocked to the Safety Zone. The 2nd Squad watched the flood of refugees moving slowly southeast from the Hsaikwan Gate towards the few block under the administration of the westerners. They kept their prisoners, all ninety eight of them, corralled in a bombed out building surrounded by high concrete walls and broken timbers.
“This is madness,” Kubo said as Jiro glanced back at the mass of prisoners kneeling in the dirt behind them, “we haven’t seen a single officer yet and it’s been hours.”
“Maybe we should send someone out to scout for one. We can’t keep these Chinks here under guard forever. Pretty soon they might realize that we can’t shoot them all if they mutiny.”
“Maybe we should just let them go… we have their guns.”
“Don’t be stupid. As soon as we do that we are complicit in whatever mayhem they cause. What if they commandeer one of the field guns or something…”
“I’ll go then,” Kubo said, “I can work my way east all the way back to the outskirts of the city if I have to. I’ll find someone who can help us.”
“Take someone with you, just in case.” Jiro yelped out for a volunteer but none on the 2nd made a sound.
“I’ll go alone. We have the city, and I have my rifle just in case. Besides, if someone shoots me, they can easily shoot two of us.”
Jiro frowned.
“I’ll be back,” Kubo said then placed his hand on Jiro’s shoulder, “don’t worry. We came this far safely. I won’t let you down by dying when we are so close to victory.”
Jiro nodded and said, “Just come back.”
Kubo scavenged a full canteen from one of the other soldiers, shouldered his rifle, and started northwest. He kept to the sidewalk as much as possible but the ruble from the morning bombardment spilled out every dozen meters or so and forced him back into the wide open. The rifle and machine gun fire had died down since they blasted the gate and it seemed that, except for clumps of refugees who turned the other way when they laid eyes upon him, the city was relatively safe. Each street bore the scars of prolonged bombing; every one or two intact buildings would lead to a gap of broken concrete and splintered timber. It was like someone had punched the teeth out of the face of Nanking. Kubo picked carefully through the rubble but anything of value had already been scavenged. He’d seen the same thing happen in the other cities and towns they assaulted, where refugees would pour into freshly smashed houses and take whatever wasn’t destroyed; sometimes they were digging for bodies, but usually it was for things. Like the corpse dogs, he thought of them then too, swollen on rotten human meat scavenged from the heaps of the dead outside every village; fat now and brave, and learning to work in packs.
Kubo moved carefully past the alleyways that fed the main street. Hiding a squad a Chinese in the narrow span between the buildings would be easy. He listened first, then when no unusual noise presented itself, he’d crouch and peer around the corner.
He reached intersection where North Zhongshan Avenue cut diagonally through the city to the southeastern corner. Each side hosted elaborate old structures, temples, guesthouses, and markets mixed with more modern storefronts, hotels administrative buildings, schools, and offices. Although random bomb craters still smoldered along the street and some of the buildings, like so many other in the city, were smashed, Kubo marveled at the remaining beauty only slightly tarnished by the ferocity of the war. The elegant sloping red tiled roofs, the tall spires of ancient pagodas, trees and bushes that had been tended faithfully for hundreds of years, and the old houses; so narrow and tall and so old they looked liked they’d grown into the city and not been built by human hands.
Kubo saw more refugees on North Zhongshan Avenue than for the entire length of the march to the capital. Tens of thousands of them crowded Northwest to Ichang Gate, even more Southeast at the intersection of Central avenue and North Zhongshan Avenue. In the chaos he saw the familiar beige uniforms and long rifles of his comrades from some other battalion herding them south along Central Avenue. There must be an officer there, he thought, and started down the southeastern side of the wide avenue.
Beside him stretched the homes and business providing the perimeter of the Nanking Safety Zone, and each building, lamppost, and telegraph pole displayed several of the fliers he’d seen in the Field Headquarters tent.
The city was eerily quiet now, subdued, as if the initial fear of the Japanese invasion dissipated with the fleeing Chinese troops. Some windows displayed Japanese flags, others the nationalist flag hung upside down, while fewer still offered only a stark white flag.
The street was littered with the remains of a looting spree that must have ended only as the first of the city gates exploded inward; shop windows smashed, display cases splintered, carts overturned, paper and silk scraps blew along the cobblestones with the increasingly brisk and cold wind.
Kubo passed the carcass of a horse, still harnessed to an overturned cart. Something had sheared off a large chunk of the animal’s skull. Blood pooled around its head. He heard voices then, female and speaking loudly in Chinese. Kubo stopped at the border of the Safety Zone and peered down into a mass of refugees. He couldn’t see the source of the commotion from here, but only that a large gathering of people seemed to shift and bump like honeybees in a hive. One voice rose above the others, a desperate wail. An older woman emerged from the throng, she held the crumpled body of an infant close to her breast. Kubo knew it was dead by the way the arms and legs dangled like those of a broken puppet. The woman screamed and yowled while others circled to comfort her.
The woman saw Kubo and froze, but only for a second before storming up the street towards North Zhongshan Avenue.
Kubo glanced sideways hoping she wasn’t approaching for his sake, but he was alone. He unshouldered his rifle slowly and held it at his side, muzzle outwards, towards the crowd.
She continued forward, undeterred.
Kubo saw her eyes, red from crying, cheeks flushed and tear stained.
She thrust the tiny corpse forward, wailing.
Kubo took one step backwards and chambered a bullet, “stay back,” he said but his voice failed.
She was close now, only a few meters away.
The crowd broke ranks and retreated slowly once Kubo brought the rifle up to his shoulder and gently fingered the trigger but the woman continued. She held the dead child in her arms, its little limp body lolled over, the eyes were open as was its mouth. Blood dripped down through the swaddling clothes from a wound in the side.
The woman screamed and dropped to her knees, and although Kubo spoke no Chinese he knew she accused him, them, all of them, all of Japan. He took another step backwards and glanced down the wide avenue. Most of the crowd at the intersection with Central Avenue had dispersed leaving a few dozen Japanese soldiers to secure the street.
The woman wailed and screamed louder. She pounded the street with her fists and wailed over the child.
Kubo backed away. Her voice followed him for another two blocks, past the burned out hulk of some government building, past a garden festooned with rubble and an shattered machine gun emplacement, obviously blasted from the air as pieces of Chinese bodies spread outwards from a central crater.
The whole city had the suffocating atmosphere of a graveyard, the cold air only made it more oppressive, and the echoed screams from the hundreds of thing alleyways and crevices sounded like the wails of restless phantoms intent on tormenting the living.
Kubo wiped his forehead and shuddered.
“You there!” Someone barked, in Japanese.
Kubo whirled around to see a Colonel and a small cadre of infantrymen emerge from the blown out front of a grand hotel. They carried bottles in each hand, and some of the soldiers struggled with arms full of booty. “Private Kubo, Sir!” he snapped to attention as the Colonel approached.
“Who are you with?” The Colonel stuffed his bottles into the arms of a nearby private.
“1st Platoon, 2nd Squad, sir!”
The Colonel nodded, then leaned in close to Kubo’s face. He caught the fetid reek of unwashed mouth and rice wine and tried not to wince.
“And where is your squad private?” The Colonel ‘s words slurred, but only slightly.
“Sir, they are holding prisoners near Hanxi Gate.”
“Prisoners? How many?”
“Sir, 98 prisoners, sir.”
“Civilians?”
“No sir, infantrymen sir.”
“98 Infantrymen? That’s good! Take us to them!” The Colonel burst out laughing, then following suit, his followers joined him in the merriment.
Kubo turned on his heel and started back to where Jiro and the others waited while the Colonel and his men followed. The woman, still wailing over the dead child, hadn’t moved from her place in the street. She stared up at the soldiers as they moved towards her then slowly rose to her feet with the child cradled, again, against her breast.
The Colonel stopped the group, “Your rifle, give it to me.”
Kubo stared for a second then slowly handed his Arisaka to the officer.
“Too much noise in this city,” he said, raised the rifle to his shoulder, pulled back the bolt to load a shell, and aimed.
The woman continued towards them.
The Colonel fired a bullet through the woman’s throat. Blood erupted from her mouth and nose. She gurgled loudly, then staggered twice before falling to her knees. She toppled forwards, face down, never letting go of the infant. A pool of fresh blood spread out around her head and into the veins of the cobblestone street.
The commotion brought a surge of refugees tumbling out into the North Zhongshan Avenue from the street leading into the Safety Zone. The Colonel fired a shot over their heads and many of them immediately retreated. A few struggled to quickly gather the woman’s body and drag it back out of the Japanese line of fire.
The Colonel fired another shot over their heads.
The refugees left the child’s body.
“Private Kubo,” The Colonel said while handing back the rifle, “seems they forgot something.”
Kubo did not answer.
“Throw their garbage back in with them…”
“Yes sir,” Kubo answered and jogged over to where the child’s body lay. He knelt slowly over it then gently took the corpse in his arms and walked towards the entrance to the zone.
“I said throw it!”
Kubo paused, muttered a short prayer for the child, then flung the little body out of sight between two buildings at the corner. He saw their eyes then, hundreds of them, staring up from the recesses of the Zone.
The Colonel and his men arrived and pushed around Kubo to the mouth of the street. The crowd pushed back further. “Ignore them,” the Colonel answered, “animals, dogs, rats, all of them…” He spat on the ground and waved his men and Kubo back.
They continued on until Kubo saw Jiro’s body silhouetted against the stark white cement of the ruins where the prisoners waited. The groups converged at the entrance to where the Prisoners waited, still on their knees in the rubble and still under guard.
“Private Jiro, sir.” Jiro said and snapped to attention.
The Colonel brushed past and stopped at the opening to the makeshift holding cell, “Fuji, get word back to the others that we have 98 prisoners here that need to be dealt with… there are too many for us to handle with only a squad and a quarter. I want least two more squads here in under twenty minutes.”
Private Fuji bowed clumsily, trying not to drop his armload of wine bottles. He placed the alcohol on the sidewalk and sprinted southeast back towards Hanxi Gate.
“You there,” The Colonel pointed at Otani, “you get these men lined up in rows of 15 and stacked here along the wall. Make them put their hands at the back of their heads. Push them in back to front. If any of them resist, shoot them.”
Otani saluted and began prodding the prisoners into the described formation with his bayonet.
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