style="font-size:15px;"> The apartment belonged to the man’s mistress; the car was paid for by the Rikken Laboratory in western Tokyo. Both the woman and the car had been made possible by the man’s recent appointment as head of the nuclear physics division of Rikken. Known as the “Father of the New Physics” in Japan, he had built his country’s first cyclotron—a 26-incher. His next project was construction of a gigantic 60-incher weighing 220 tons.
At barely five feet, Chinda Nishikawa was sometimes mistaken for a dwarf. His withered left arm was deformed at birth, and he dragged his left foot when he walked. As happens, the strength that should have gone into his arm and foot went into his mind. He was a true genius with a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Imperial University in Tokyo. He had studied at Cambridge under Ernest Rutherford, a Nobel Prize laureate, and at Niels Bohr’s Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. He had become an expert in cosmic rays and quantum mechanics.
In 1940 and 1941 Nishikawa had published four well-received papers on fission experimentation. One was entitled “Induced (Beta) Activity of Uranium by Fast Neutrons,” prompting a leading American scientist, Arthur H. Compton, to postulate that Japan’s work in atomic research was at about the same advanced stage of development as Americas’.
Doctor Nishikawa had discovered a new uranium isotope, U-237, which was the same chemically as U-238 but different atomically.
That cool fall morning the hire-car transported the distinguished gnome of an atomic scientist to his office in the Rikken Laboratory, a mammoth complex of 54 buildings erected in 1917.
On his desk Nishikawa found notification that the anxiously awaited research grant from the Japanese air force had reached Rikken’s accounting section. If Doctor Nishikawa had been demonstrative, and physically able, he would have leaped onto his desk and danced a jig. With this money he could move ahead rapidly with several projects. One of them was a nuclear weapon—a bomb—for the air force.
The Japanese navy also wanted to give him money to develop nuclear weapons for them. Fine. He would take their money, too. The more the better. He had more ideas than they had money.
Sadly, Dr. Chinda Nishikawa was an unpleasant man. He was terse, rude, inconsiderate, and arrogant. His new mistress did not like him at all and regretted she had entered into their patron-protegee arrangement. His wife was thankful her husband had a mistress, since it meant he would seldom be home to torment her and their two children, who feared him as if he were an ogre from a Japanese folk tale.
Chapter 7
San Francisco, California
March 1942
Events seemed to come in clusters.
For months an uneasy Bill Macneil had bided his time. At last, more was to happen in one day than during the three months since that date in December 1941 that would “live in infamy.”
He strode toward his off-campus apartment, breathing deeply the morning air of another fine San Francisco day. The morning mists were being defeated by the warming sun. He had finished his two early classes and had nothing to do except study until his three o’clock.
Since it was Friday, he wondered if he should fly up to the Mount Shasta area for more training with his mountain rescue team or stay home and study for mid-terms. If he stayed, he might go to Chinatown tomorrow for Shanghai cuisine. An added attraction would be the lovely waitress of Chinese extraction who often favored him with languid looks from her dark, almond-shaped eyes. Unconsciously, Bill quickened his steps and took a sharp breath.
A block from campus he passed two young men in obviously new army uniforms. One of them had sat near him in a physics class last semester.
“Hey, Macneil. You signed up yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Better hurry. War will be over.”
Bill didn’t argue. He walked on, knowing the war would be hard and long. He would like to have seen Japan beaten to her knees and ground into the earth immediately, but he knew the Japanese too well. They would put up a stubborn resistance.
Bill knew the Japanese were capable of acts both puzzling and contradictory, even to him. Only last week, for instance, he had read that shortly after sinking HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast of Malaya, pilots of the Japanese naval air force had flown low over the site of the sinkings and dropped bouquets of flowers on the ships’ watery graves. “Because,” the pilots later explained, “the British warships died such beautiful deaths.” An amazing people.
That event did nothing to diminish Bill’s hatred of his former neighbors for what they had done at Nanking, but it did warn him that if he was to fight against them in the Pacific, he might face other danger-laden unpredictabilities.
Taking two letters from his mailbox, he glanced at the return addresses, then mounted the three flights in a burst of energy.
Inside his two-room apartment, he stroked his black cat Satan and hurriedly gave him a saucer of milk. Flinging his jacket over a chair, he flopped onto the sofa and hungrily tore open the letter from his father. He had gone no farther than the date and “Dear Son,” when the doorbell rang.
With an impatient grunt, he opened the door to find an army captain in full uniform. His lapel insignia was a sphinx, with which Macneil was unfamiliar.
“Bill Macneil? I’m David Spencer. I’d like to talk to you.”
Stuffing his father’s letter in his pocket, Bill gestured for the officer to enter, wondering what business the army had with him, although they would have a grip on him soon enough.
Captain Spencer was dark and almost as tall as Macneil. He was lean and seemed fit. He had prominent teeth, oversize ears, and a mobile mouth under a trim moustache.
“I saw you looking at my insignia,” he said, taking a straight chair. “Not many people know it. It’s military intelligence. Have you read your mail yet? The letters are from your father and Helma Graf.”
“What the devil! Did you read my mail? You have no damned right to—” Bill was furious.
“Simmer down, Macneil. We’re at war. We can do a lot more if we choose to. I didn’t read your letters, but I suggest you go ahead and glance through the one from your father. I know you’ve been waiting for it, and we can probably have a more productive chat after you’ve seen what he has to say.”
His eyes still hot with resentment, Macneil removed his father’s letter from his pocket and ignored the army captain for the moment.
Dear Bill,
I am aboard a Swedish repatriation vessel scheduled to dock in Goa within the hour. I would like to mail this letter here and so haven’t much time.
The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor before even I thought they would. All our assets were frozen, but I managed to transfer most of our movable holdings out of Japan before then.
I was holding space for Umeko, Shipton, and myself on this ship but in the last week before sailing, Umeko came down with uremic poisoning occasioned by kidney failure. It’s her diabetes, of course. The doctors absolutely forbade that she be moved. She’s in the Seventh Day Adventist hospital in Shinjuku, in good hands.
Shipton insisted on staying with her. He
