Fire Flowers by Ben Byrne Page B

burning flesh had ground into my skin. Floating on my back in the water, staring up at the planes in the sky. The day I returned to duty, I was told to prepare for a photo mission. We were to map out a bombing approach. To identify primary targets around the naval base out in the eastern city of Hiroshima.
    Ward was standing over by the window. He hurled out the remains of his cigar, and it flew into the night in a shower of embers.
    The next day at thirteen hundred, operations staff were hunched over my prints. LeMay suddenly turned, desperate with impatience, and hollered for a bona fide
 
primary target.
    â€œSir?”
    He stared at me.
    â€œYou see a white, T-shaped bridge, sir?”
    â€œShow me.”
    I walked over and pointed. “See? Right in the centre of the city. Clear as day. Couldn’t miss it if you tried.”
    Ward shoved up the window. He turned to me in the darkness as I wiped the clammy perspiration from my forehead.
    â€œAre you bothered by what you did up there, Lynch?”
    Floating over that charred plain one week later, eerie and desolate. The rivers trickling slowly through the char.
    â€œYou were just an observer, Hal.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    The train came out from behind a hill and curved around a stretch of coast. Black waves in the distance rippled with moonlight.
    Ward gave a sudden, jaw-cracking yawn.
    â€œOkay, Lynch. Maybe we should get our heads down.”
    I rubbed my eyes. “You’re probably right.”
    He looked up at the miniature berths, wincing. “Oh, my aching back . . . ”
    When we woke, the ruins of Tokyo were visible in the grey light of dawn. Naked children stood outside hovels at the bottom of the embankment, waving up at the train as we passed. At the station, we slung our kit bags over our shoulders and made our way through the departing crowd. Ward held out his hand.
    â€œIt was good talking to you, Lynch. Look me up at the press club sometime. There’s some folks you might be interested in talking to.”
    â€œOkay, Ward. Thanks.”
    â€œWell then. I’ll see you.”
    He held up his hand and shouldered his way through the crowd, off to write up his story about procurement scandals and Allied corruption. Eugene and I wandered blearily back to the
Stars and Stripes
office to file our own piece: “The Touristic GI visits Historic Himeji Castle.”

11
T HE R YOKAN (
Hiroshi Takara
)
    I woke up in the cavern of the ticket hall, my breath puffing in icy clouds. Wisps of vapour floated from the men and women slumped on the floor, as if they were a horde of sleeping dragons. I stood up and picked my way around their mats, dodging the pools of milky vomit that stank like rotten soybeans. At the foot of the concrete staircase, an old man shivered, clutching wretched fingers to shield his eyes from the dawn sunlight. I edged around him warily.
    Smallpox
. The tunnel people had complained of splitting headaches at first. Then they started to shiver and moan. The rashes came soon after that, bubbly freckles that crusted into sores and spewed white pus all over their faces, as if they’d been stung by a swarm of wasps. The skin of the sickest ones stayed smooth as glass though. Eerie patches of purple welled up and raced across their bodies like patterns on a naval map. They died soon after, mouths gaping, as if something had taken them by surprise.
    The children wore rags over their faces and stayed well away from the sick. But Koji had come to me a few days earlier, complaining that he was exhausted and that his mouth stung. When he held up his shirt for me to examine him, I was sure I could see a mark on his chest, like a shadow on a snowy field.
    Outside, a frost had covered the city with a sheet of glittering white. It lay crinkled on the wasteground behind the station and on the jagged mounds of scrap metal in the yard. For just a moment, the city was silent, transformed into a secret,