United States of Japan Read Free Page B

burned off and her left eye hanging where her nose should have been. Seared flesh made people look like wax figures that had been disfigured by four thousand degrees of heat. Ruth wondered why there were buckets filled with rusted nails until she realized it wasn’t oxidation but blood that stained them. Three of the men lying down had planks and metal pipes sticking out of them. Bodies were being carted in by soldiers and civilians.
    “W-what happened here?” Ruth inquired.
    “They set off a super weapon,” a patient stated. “Most of San Jose was destroyed.”
    “San Jose!” Ruth exclaimed. “H-how?”
    “I was on the outskirts of the city when I saw an explosion that looked like a mushroom,” another offered.
    “It was more like a bonsai tree made of black clouds that kept on growing. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    “There was a flash and, after that, I couldn’t see anything.”
    “Yeah, that flash.”
    “It was quiet right before.”
    “Everything was on fire and there was an earthquake that didn’t stop. Then the black rain came.”
    “Black rain?” Ezekiel asked.
    “I thought it was oil,” a woman with a burnt face stated.
    “My dog’s fur fell out and I could see his jaw through his melted skin.”
    “There were corpses everywhere and the black rain didn’t stop for an hour.”
    “It was some new weapon the Japs built.”
    “It wasn’t just a weapon!” a man with a soot mask for a face shouted. His left arm was missing and bandages covered his entire body. “I saw a man taller than a building with red eyes right before the explosion.”
    “You’re crazy,” someone said, and a few others chimed in.
    “I’m not! I saw it right before the explosion and I knew something bad was going to happen.”
    “You’ve lost your mind, fool! There’s no such thing as a man that big.”
    “I saw it too,” another voice stated. “It made the whole ground shake and I saw it spit fire into the sky.”
    “What was it?”
    “Haven’t you heard the Jap Emperor has supernatural powers? That’s what all of this is. He destroyed San Jose with his powers. We have no chance against something like that.”
    “The Japs warned us. They told everyone to evacuate San Jose, Sausalito, and Sacramento, or the Emperor would rain down fire from heaven. But we laughed at them, thought they were just blowing smoke up our asses.”
    “Why didn’t our God protect us?”
    No one could answer that and the silence was even more unnerving than the ubiquitous wailing that had been there a moment before.
    Ruth was trembling. Ezekiel put his arm around her and rubbed the side of her shoulder.
    “What are you two doing in here?” a doctor snapped. “Get out of here right now!”
    They were escorted out by a nurse.
    “I’ve heard the Emperor is a god,” Ruth said as they stepped outside, and her hand went to the cross around her neck. “Maybe he can do all these things? I mean, is there any other explanation?”
    Eight blond men and women with swastika armbands walked by, speaking with a Japanese officer. They were using their cameras to record the victims, asking questions in German, none of which either could understand. Their excitement was only matched by the inquisitiveness apparent in their vociferous tone.
    “I have no idea,” Ezekiel answered her. Both were terrified by the notion of a walking god who could destroy a city. “Let’s get back to the bus,” he weakly suggested.
                                  LOS ANGELES
    July 4, 1948
    10:23am
----
    Tanks marked with the rising sun of the Japanese flag were rolling down the streets of Los Angeles. Hundreds of bombers soared through the air like a cloud of locusts, led by a fleet of the deadly high-altitude Mansyu Ki-99s. The city reeked of smoke, explosives, and corpses as families wept for their lost ones. Buildings were on fire, houses continued to crumble, and the streets had been decimated into fields of debris.