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3.
1945 Operation Jitensha (Bicycle)—Except for a speck on the horizon, and a cloud above that speck, the South Pacific Ocean tended into infinity in all directions.
World War II raged around the globe, but this moment on a late April day seemed silent and primordial, as if mankind did not yet exist. The only killing was by a pelican snatching a sardine, with a muted splash, and flying off.
That distant speck was the mountainous coast of Peru.
Tropical sky sweltered ominously in a gray-blue haze. Wind brought alternating whiffs of distant, rotting jungle and chalk-dry highlands. The ocean surface heaved and sank in ever-shifting crests and troughs laced with yellowed foam. Sunlight stabbed into resistant water. Shifting hills of heavy water looked translucent near their thundering, collapsing tops with kelp and splinters of wood tumbling over.
A periscope suddenly sliced through the water's surface in the direction of Peru. The looking-glass left a knife-cut wake of swirling foam. Ten minutes of cautious scanning, plus coded messages from several spy ships disguised as fishing vessels, eased for the moment any fear of Allied patrol planes in the area. A steel conning tower broke through and heaved up above the water. Gliding at a smart 10 knots, a vast torpedo shape breached amid rips and tears of flying jade sea water. Acres of dark steel plating glistened as sheets of sea water clunging momentarily by their own tension, and then crashed down like broken glass.
Japan's largest submarine, one of the mammoth I-400 class, rode on the surface like a building lying on its side—399 feet long and four stories tall. She carried a crew of 145 sailors and thirty officers, scientists, engineers, and technicians. As soon as she breached, a hatch atop the conning tower opened. Several petty officers with binoculars rushed out. They threw themselves chest-first against the rails to begin scanning for enemy activity.
Operation Jitensha (Bicycle) was on. It was late in the war, Japan was losing, the situation was desperate, and dangerous action must be taken.
Diesel generators roared to life. Thick bluish gray smoke smelling of burned oil drifted away over the waves. A large hydraulically powered deck hatch swung open toward the tower. A rectangular opening now gaped. From the opening's shadows rose a steel elevator platform. On the lift stood a ring of sailors and in the center, tied down by its floats, was a sea plane.
High up on the sail, the boat's captain and several intent Army scientists watched the proceedings avidly. They would momentarily begin reporting back directly to the High Command in Tokyo about the operation's progress.
The platform rose until it completed the final twenty-foot stretch of a 115-foot flight deck along the top of the boat's spine. The several I-Class subs of the Imperial Japanese Navy were, in effect, underwater aircraft carriers designed for long-range operations against the U.S.A. On this mission, two of the ships had sailed to Peruvian ocean waters on a top secret germ warfare mission. Both subs had steamed rapidly near the surface. They had false superstructures to disguise them as tramp steamers, although a flyover by an Allied patrol plane, at just the right angle of light, might have spotted the enormous bulk under the surface. Now this sub's companion boat had refueled her and then turned north for a suicidal mission (the Panama Canal, but she would be sunk before getting near enough to send her own planes aloft to bomb the locks).
Aboard the remaining I-Class, technicians unfolded the unmarked Comet float plane's wings. The pilots tested the plane's new 1,560 hp Mitsubishi Kinsei-62 14-cylinder, two-row radial nose-mounted engine—revving it in test bursts. When all was ready, sailors unyoked the wheels from the deck plates.
Pilot and navigator nodded to each other under their long, glass-paneled canopy. The pilot waved and grinned at the deck crew. Sailors lined up and saluted. The pilots returned the salute. Moments later, a 85-foot-long pneumatic catapult sent the plane careening into the air. Yawing and pitching uncertainly for a moment, the Comet straightened out. Pulled by its powerful engine, the plane climbed at 2,000 feet per minute.
High over the Pacific Ocean, the Comet, having climbed to just under 35,000 feet (seven miles), leveled off, and raced toward the interior of South America.
The pilots maintained radio silence to avoid being picked up by Peruvian defense forces. The government of Manuel Prado had recently severed ties with the Axis Powers and seemed ready to declare war on Germany and Japan, in return for U.S. support in Peru's war with neighboring Ecuador. Far below, grayish water gleamed in the morning sun. The sun shone in a clear blue sky marked only with thin, distant clouds. The thin coastal strip, or Costa, loomed ahead one moment, with the steep slopes of the Andes mountains a few miles back. The land ahead was one of the most arid on earth, despite its proximity to the Pacific Ocean.
The Comet flew at full cruising speed, 300 mph given the pontoons, on a bearing of east by northeast. The aircraft seemed to gobble miles as it shot toward the hulking mass of the Andes, which loomed ahead, swathed in a thin cloud layer. They crossed the coastline near Puerto Caballas and immediately flew over the Nazca Valley with its enigmatic line drawings scratched for miles into the sandy soil. Shooting straight ahead, the propeller plane roared into the heart of ancient Inca territory, toward the lost empire's most deeply guarded and dangerous secret.
The unmarked, enigmatic plane flew past the ancient capital of Cuzco, to the south a bit, and then almost over the high sanctuary at Macchu Pichu. Soon, the Andean highlands lay behind, and now came the slope down into the jungles that would eventually lead to the Amazon Basin where half the rivers of South America drained into the Amazon River and out into the South Atlantic. But this was still Peru, which contained the westernmost expanses of dense jungle whose eastern extents lay in Brazil.
* * * *
Tokyo, on that spring day in 1943, displayed timeless beauty in the form of cherry blossoms falling like light snow over temple roofs. But the war was turning against Japan, and her true situation was better represented in a dark, smoky conference room at the Naval Operations Offices in Tokyo Bay. A dozen tense men in Army and Navy uniforms stood smoking and listening in a pillared hall while a young Navy officer waving a pointer stood before a slide projection screen. On the screen was a map of northwestern South America, including Peru. The Army officers present were from a chemical and biological warfare unit. The Navy officers represented the functional reality that Operation Jitensha (Bicycle) was largely a naval operation.
Outside the Naval Operations conference room, around the Tsukiji Fish Market area near Tokyo Bay, pinkish-white blossoms tumbled through the sunny air. By contrast, the air inside was heavy with the smoke from military issue cigarettes as well as hard to get in wartime Tengu and Peacock brands.
The young Navy officer in dark uniform pointed to the next slide: a map of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Peru. "Our I-400 Class submarine will surface to discharge a modified seaplane—Yokosuka D4Y Suisei (Comet)—two-seat carrier dive bomber, with range 1575 kilometers (945 miles). Flying empty, dragged somewhat by pontoon landing gear, the aircraft will fly at 500 km/hr (300 mph) and reach its destination in one hour."
Pausing to look at stony faces around him in the smoky conference room, the officer continued: "The mission will be accomplished within several hours as the two officers go on shore to collect specimens that they have been trained to recognize. The return journey will be in one hour."
Maj. Gen. Shunji Sato interrupted the young officer. Sato was head of Unit 731's Canton branch, and had been flown in from China especially for this briefing. He would report back to the commander of Unit 731, Lt. Gen. Ishii Shiro, the microbiologist doing human experiments on countless Chinese and other Allied prisoners. "Lieutenant, you realize that the war is at a crossroads and we must not fail in this Peruvian mission. How do we know the intelligence behind this effort is solid?"
The officer clicked his heels and bowed deeply. "Sir, our source is one of the many thousands of Japanese ex-patriates living in Peru. While these people, scattered through much of South America, are of course regarded with justified suspicion among loyal Japanese, many of them are poorly treated in their new homelands. Many of them resent their Caucasian rulers and would like to see those regimes weakened. As a result, our source, who bears a Japanese surname and is the son of first-generation immigrants to Lima, is one of those overseas Japanese who has developed a considerable loyalty to our Emperor. Although Peru has become officially hostile to open Axis activities, we still enjoy considerable support from Chilean and Argentine Axis supporters."
"Hah! Spies, you mean, which is not the same as saying openly loyal allies or devoted soldiers." Sato puffed hungrily on his strong cigarette during this explanation, and now exhaled yellow-white tendrils of smoke from his mouth and nostrils while turning to the man beside him. That was Major Tomio Karasawa of the Headquarters unit. He leaned close and said softly: "Major, let's make sure that this new weapon does not leak out into enemy hands. The results would be disastrous not only for Japan, but for the entire world."
Karasawa nodded sharply and unscrewed a silvered fountain pen to make notes on a pad of finest quality sube rice paper. "I will begin a file on it, Sir, and coordinate with Intelligence."
Sato added for emphasis as he smoked his Peacock cigarette to his fingertips: "Japan cannot afford for this information to leak to enemy newspapers and anti-Japanese propaganda radio."
The officers continued to hear testimony from several colonels. One, a biochemist, proclaimed: " Our source in Peru has introduced us to a treasure trove of priceless biological warfare agents that will make Japan number one not only in Asia, but across the entire earth." Cigarette smoke veiled the listeners' worried eyes, glittering spectacles, and gritted, exposed teeth as they considered the ramifications of unleashing such a powerful nightmare upon the world.
Already, things seemed to be silently going wrong. Thousands of miles away in the South Pacific, the I-400 class submarine waited dangerously past her deadline as the two aviators did not return. Every passing hour exposed the giant submarine to further danger from patrolling enemy aircraft.
* * * *
Nearly 11,000 miles away from Tokyo, on the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains in Peru, looking toward the Amazon Basin rather than the Pacific Ocean, a different smoky scenario played out its timeless beauties and terrors. As the Andes sloped downward and eastward from high, dry, freezing cold above a mile high toward the jungles of the continent's center, an ancient fold lay open in the cliffs hundreds of feet above the tree line. This thin fissure that dropped straight down was dark inside with jungle growth, widening in a steep drop to a yawning volcanic caldera in the high jungle. The volcano had been extinct for eons, and the blasted remains of its crater were thickly overgrown with lush growth. The crater contained a lake a quarter mile across, which glittered dark blue in the filtered light coming down through the fissure. In the middle of the lake lay an island the size of several aircraft carriers, formed by cooled lava left from the volcano's last eruption. This plug, rising several hundred feet above the steaming lake surface, was covered with green forest growth that should harbor a great variety of living organisms, but looked strangely quiet, motionless, and devoid of bird life.
The Comet followed the minutely detailed maps held by her navigator. They located the natural fissure in the Cordillera Orientale slope near the beginning of the vast Manu River rain forest area. Spiraling down to half a mile altitude, the float plane entered the magical-seeming environment of the fissure. Below, as the two men looked out speechlessly, was a circular lake, colored dark blue. In its middle rose a 300 foot high island covered in green tree crowns that masked what looked like rocks and buildings. As they descended, a mile-high granite rock face with two curving, sheltering arms was on their west, while on their east the endless jungle opened up. On the east, there was endless blue sky in a swollen humid haze over the topmost canopy. The plane kept circling lower. They saw a few wheeling gulls and hawks, and even two condors circling high up, but lower down there was a noticeable void of bird life. As they circled lower and lower, they gaped at what looked like an abandoned city on the island in the middle of the caldera. The architecture was oddly sinuous, superimposed upon the more massive, squat stonework typical of most South and Central American civilizations. The two men caught only glimpses of the buildings buried in leafy tree crowns. Soon, the aircraft set down on the glassy, opaque surface near the island's shore. The water had a stony quality, like green jade. Bits of fog drifted over the surface amid a brooding stillness. The two men slid back the plane's canopy and threw out a large package—their life craft, which hit the water and inflated in staged popping noises. The two men clambered out, coughing in the noxious air. They carried backpacks containing hatchets, flashlights, and anything else they might need during a stay of several hours. They knew that their I-400 class submarine was by now submerged and hiding from U.S. and other Allied planes, for the boat was a juicy target, and its mission was too important for it to be lost to some random accident. The two pilots in the caldera about 500 miles away were well aware of the sub's vulnerability, and worked with a sense of urgency to get their mission over with.
The air was thick and sulfuric, almost unbreathable. Coughing and wheezing, they rowed the raft toward a slimy little shore under a dark overhang of thick forest leaves. They climbed out and made their way through thickets of thorns toward the beckoning cities that had been abandoned centuries earlier. Not even the Inca had ventured into this place, though most likely they had known of it. The city had the characteristic pyramids and monolithic statues of the region. It also had great, multi-colored growths that hung like sconces and pediments on the buildings. Here and there, a huge round sphere opened its mouth and exhaled a black trail of swirling spores. Too late, the men realized they had stepped into a place whose treasures would not easily be given up. The inhaled the earthy, metallic, odd scent of the place. Their lungs filled with a dull mushroomy taint that slowed their stop and made their hearts labor in their chests. They staggered about the streets of the lost city in awe, forgetting their mission, as a different set of realities took over. Here was a city sculpted in fungi. Its creators had long disappeared, having died in a lost war with an insidious enemy. Now it was the turn of these two Japanese pilots to succumb to the powers of this place. The two men sank to their knees, then slowly collapsed face-down. Even then, green and white molds began to cover them as if they were slowly drowning in decay.
After a long silence, the two pilots returned to their rubber raft. Each, visible only as a dark silhouette in the deep shade under so much jungle growth, carried two large, round objects—one under each arm. As they emerged from the shade, they looked perfectly normal and calm as if nothing had happened. Placing their burdens in the dinghy, they pushed off and started paddling to their quietly waiting sea plane.
Suddenly, from the outer shores of the caldera, where vines and leafy tree branches hung over the edges of the volcanic crater, arrows hissed over the water. Arrows cut through the drifting fog and crossed over waters bubbling with subterranean gases that killed birds dead if they even flew near the water's surface. The two Japanese pilots, even in bulky flight suits, were pierced by multiple arrows and slid into the water. Their bodies sank below the surface. The rubber raft drifted toward the float plane but gradually deflated and sank bubbling under the surface.
Copper-skinned Guardians stippled with white and red dots stood watching as their handiwork found its proper result.
Frantic radio exchanges between I-400 and her network flew back and forth with Tokyo. Lingering through the night, as Allied sub hunter planes flew out on routine patrols, the disappointed monster finally sank beneath the waves and cruised back toward the homeland.
The float plane in the jungle remained sitting on the waters for many years, until finally its pontoons rusted through in the extreme warmth and moisture. The plane tipped nose forward into the water and disappeared beneath the surface. A trail of oily, rusty bubbles boiled up through the alkaline waters, and then all returned to normal. By then, men had walked on the Moon and other great events had come and gone. The new Millennium came amid a welter of violence in New York City and elsewhere. New fanatics appeared and human history rolled on. Wars came and went, their reasons forgotten as soon as the last body bags rolled off the evac planes. But there was one more chapter to be written on Unit 731—to be added to Major Tomio Karasawa's memoirs—carried thousands of miles through Burma and China, and eventually to show up in San Diego, California.
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