The Day the Cherry Blossoms Fell

It was an overcast Saturday morning in the usually sunny city of San Diego on September 22, 1945. Sherry prepared for her early overtime shift doing clerical work in the office. She dressed up in her fitted jacket with peplums, and navy pencil skirt and styled her hair by taming the curls into defined rolls. Her three-year-old baby Clifford whined as she placed him in his booster seat, while Grandpa Ernest produced a thunderous snore in the back of the family's Chevrolet Fleetline.  

"Well, Papaw!? 

Her Grandpa jerked awake. "Huh? What?"

"I said, what do you feel like eating later this evening?"

"Oh. Don't matter, Dear, whatever the ration book allows us." Grandpa said in his hoarse voice.

Grandpa Ernest was a WW1 veteran with strong patriotic sensibilities who respected the military ration mandates like a religion. He found a purpose volunteering at the local Naval Base and helping the brave young troops out there. Sherry would happily drop him off three times a week.

The last four years had changed their lives indefinitely, Sherry for example was now the sole breadwinner of her household, a stark contrast from when the war began. It was a new normal for her to endure, but she found satisfaction in sustaining the foundation for her family. Though, she still counted the days for her husband's imminent return after Germany and Japan had surrendered. She'd need to wait until he would complete his remaining repatriation duties in Berlin.

Those were crucial years when San Diego had transformed overnight from the city it was today. While Americans were encouraged to support the country by purchasing war bonds, the Blitz-boom town had a thriving work force mass producing B-24 bombers and aircraft parts on assembly lines. With all that production, they encompassed the largest Navy base in the West Coast.

Sherry would obsess over the military news, collecting clippings and thinking about the contributions from Robert Oppenheimer's inventions. In just 21 days after his plutonium and uranium invention, "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" would kick start the beginning of the nuclear age, a state of affairs even Oppenheimer had feared.

Sherry would watch old footage of the theoretical physicist on TV somberly speaking after watching the mushroom clouds rise from the floors of the Jornada del Muerto desert basin in New Mexico. He famously said, "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds...”

"Well...?"

"Well, what papaw?"

"Well, aren't you gonna drop me off at the Navy Lodge? You've only been staring out the windshield for the last five minutes!"

"Sorry, I just feel rotten inside...I can't explain what it is..."

"You sure it wasn't that meatloaf from last night?" Grandpa teased.

"Oh, you're a hoot, Papaw."

Sherry dropped Grandpa off, and drove away tuning the Motorola radio in search for some light tunes, something to clear her thoughts from the fear and anxiety. She'd often revert back to memories of her husband. Herman always brought her white daisies and strolled with her on the boardwalk of Coronado Beach. Their ritzy affair animated in her head like a motion picture as she turned the dial to the smooth vocals of "The Man I Love" by Dorothy Lamour, a song that reminded her of him.

Someday he'll come along, The man I love

And he'll be big and strong, The man I love

And when he comes my way

I'll do my best to make him stay

He'll look at me and smile, I'll understand

Then in a little while, He'll take my hand

And though it seems absurd

I know we both won't say a word

*****

Lieutenant General Fukushima Maresuke sat by his infantry squad by the beach along with the brave Private officer, Teuro Onoda. He ate with the rest, the local cuisine in the country, tortillas with grilled steak and beans.

"If only we had some wasabi and gravy with this meal!" joked one of the petty officers huddled around the campfires in The North Territory of Baja California.

The General had found any ounce of enjoyment from them to be bothersome. "Enough!" he exclaimed. "Follow me to witness the reason we've been sleeping like stray beach dogs these last few months."

"Yes, General."

He guided them over to the warehouse they built. Then removed the tarp from the special crate brought in from their long ranged submarine plane.

"Don't forget these guilty pleasures are temporary! We're here to show the Western world true fear. When they discover what Unit 731 has accomplished, these foreign devils will pay! And the Empire of Great Japan will rise again!"

Private Onoda, glided his hand against the metallic encasing, and leaned his ear. In a way he could almost hear the immense power and engineering behind it. He was happy to partake in the attack on U.S. shores. General Fukushima lead the secret battalion in Mexico to initiate Operation Cherry Blossom at Night on his own volition. Onoda and the troops had not known the higher authorities had gone as far as forbidding the attack.

"Do you feel it, Private?"

"Yes, General. A fine craftsmanship of the Imperial Army."

The delivery of their capsule took several weeks to arrive, through an extensive journey from their secret biological research facility in Harbin, China. It was a vile tainted place, disguised as a water purification facility, where they had conducted several of their most heinous war crimes.

The Young officer Onoda returned to the bonfire where he previously sat, staring at a photo of his two brothers, Yudai and Hiroto Onoda, two fallen soldiers who had perished during the Pearl Harbor attacks. He tossed the photo in the brewing flame, and watched as the embers slowly decayed it.  

The General had joined in and sat opposite the roaring flames and Onoda.

"You seem uneasy, Private."  

"Forgive me, General. I am just pondering about my remaining family." Private Onoda held his tantō sword with his two hands and gestured it to The General. "Please sir. If there is any way to give this to my mother, I would be honored."

The General grabbed it and stooped his head low.

` "The fate of this empire rests on this enterprise, Onoda. Now's not the time for regrets. I know it may seem like the odds are great amongst us, but remember what the Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said. "Even the fiercest serpent can be overcome by a swarm of ants.". And first and foremost, never forget the Meiji proclamations and your duty as a soldier.

Private Onoda recited as he was taught and obeyed. "Should an emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the state."

Fukushima nodded. "Very well, soldier."

Onoda was honored to fight. His family came from a long lineage of servicemen. His father had fought in the Russo-Japanese war in 1904, and his lineage could be traced as far back to the Edo Period, where his great grandfathers were intermediate samurais.

Later that bleak morning in the dawn of a rising sun in Mexico, Onoda had been soaring up in his floatplane, an Aichi M6A Seiran disguised as an American plane to evade detection. The young officers watched as the clouds dissipated into the skies and he scavenged for the geographical location he would hit.

While the turbulence swayed him back and forth, Teuro closed his eyes and remembered flicking the pebbles on the dirt with his two older brothers playing "Ohajiki" together. Those memories felt somehow more fresh than ever before. 

***** 

Back in the peninsula, the General stepped away in a private room, away from his troops. He placed the end of his Arisaka rifle to the side of his hip. He stooped down to honor the indomitable spirit of the young officer Teuro Onoda as he watched him soar bravely from the windows. Then he felt a wave of sickness from his dishonorable actions. He'd disobey a surrender treaty and tricked the young officers to join in his rebellious mission, neglecting the repercussions of those actions. He knew he could not return back. The General took a deep breath and thought of a fitting action for his treason, he unsheathed and positioned Private Onoda's sword to his stomach and proceeded to disembowel himself, his blood sprinkled down like falling leaves from a sakura tree. 

The young officers in his squad would later discover him and cremate the remains. They spread the ashes by the Pacific Ocean, 9,241 km from their homeland.

*****

Meanwhile, Onoda was now above the main city of the Birthplace of California, he pulled the crank of his airplane and watched as the eight-thousand pound bubonic device spiraled down to decimate the radius beneath it. Onoda cranked the emergency button to release his parachute after the device had successfully been released. He hoped to have an opportunity to survive the destruction. His plane spiraled to a nearby building as he descended below and wrestled the strong gusts of the winds.

Sherry pulled over the side of her road when she heard the explosion, it was a deafening sound, the flames and gases roared through the buildings, and a green smog shortly followed, overtaking the skies. The clouds had been left dyed to an eradiated greenish-grey hue, while the birds rained down like giant droplets of rain. Sherry screamed after seeing the scurries of thousands of rats run away from the blast from the sewers and nearby buildings.

She heard another explosion in a building, of Onoda's plane crashing. She watched Onoda covered in soot and gliding down in a rough landing, tangled to a tree.

He unbuckled himself from his harness and spotted Sherry gawking.

"You bestial American imperialists! You get what you deserve!" he screamed when he noticed her staring along with other confused people who looked terrified.

"Invader!" Sherry screamed.

She watched the foreign man in his military fatigues approaching in the middle of the road without an awareness of where he stood.

Teuro Onoda continued yelling aggressively. "My brothers did not die in vain!". He clutched for his Nambu pistol, but his holster had been empty. The weapon could have been anywhere from where his parachute ejected him.

Then as expected, from his disregard of the surroundings, a fleeing vehicle rammed into the imperial soldier, launching him against the concrete floors.

*****

Private Onoda woke up with a sharp pain around his body, completely bound with tight rope and blinded by the absence of light in the basement he found himself in. He squirmed and shouted obscenities in his language.

He stopped to listen to a baby giggling joyfully in another room.

Then Sherry appeared from outside, holding her toddler against her chest, they both wore gas masks.

Sherry furrowed her brow and gazed at Onoda angrily. "I don't know what's going on out there, but I have a feeling you have something to do with it. So you're not going to rot out in the street just yet. Not until, I can reach a policemen or someone in the Navy and get some answers!"

"What did you say? Big foreign pig!"

"Right! The more you speak, the harder the beatings, you monster!"

Private Onoda struggled to understand her, he eventually tired himself out in his restraints. When he woke up, Sherry had learned a little of what he had been unleashed into her city. The news stations had issued a state of emergency, and addressed the casualties from the attack. It was only a few thousand, but the city had been in shambles with the infections spreading quickly.

"Where am I..." Onoda said waking up. 

Sherry scowled at him. "Why!? The President said your country had surrendered..." Sherry cried and pleaded for answers. She refused to let him out. She blamed him for the skin irritations on her baby.

Luckily, her bunker had been filled with supplies and the gas masks.

"Get me out of here...!" he screamed in Japanese.

Sherry couldn't understand a word he said but knew she hated him. She grabbed the end of her husbands rifle and jabbed him with the end to shut him up.

Several minutes later, a bucket of freezing cold water had awakened him. 

"I said speak! You must speak English? They must've taught you if you were going to attack our country so cruelly! Speak, I said!"

Onoda stood silent now, having breathing spasms from the chills of the cold water, but was content to wash away the urine on his clothes. He had been sitting for two days now, but had been secretly slicing the rope away with a knife he hid in his ankle. 

He waited for Sherry to leave the room before making his escape.

Sherry came back with a plate of food. "Even though you don't deserve to eat, I can't have you dying before-."

She noticed the broken rope dangling and dropped the plate.

She quickly ran out of the room. 

Onoda chased after her. She screamed and tossed miscellaneous items from the bunker. One of them striking Onoda on the forehead. He was furious when he grabbed her and pinned her to the floor. Sherry kicked and screamed but, Onoda held her hands down strong. He picked up a heavy blunt object and lifted it above his head.

Then he heard the baby again, babbling and crawling to his mom.

"Please!" Sherry yelled heavily sobbing and reached for Clifford. 

Onoda froze. He took a moment to breath.

He placed the item down and headed back to the first room to grab the old rifle Sherry had held earlier before leaving the building.

The soldier could not get away from the parasitic infection he unleashed. He immediately felt the rashes on his arms begin to worsen, the more he spent outside, the more severe it had gotten. His skin had been inflamed, and his eyes were bright red from the harsh irritation. It feels like a slow death from a thousand cuts, while the fleas were eating away into him, biting him repeatedly, he used his shirt to cover his eyes and face.

Sherry waited a few minutes before she headed outside from the hatch door and towards her main house to grab supplies. She had been wearing the gasmasks as she passed to the house and quickly locked the doors.

There were people wandering desperately in the neighborhood. They quickly noticed her with the gas masks. With their desperation and pain, they started to break and kick the door, smashing windows in the house. 

"Get away from me! I don't have anymore!"

"Where did you get that mask!?"

Another woman in the group cried out. "What makes you so special!"

"Please! I don't have anymore. I have a three-year-old!" yelled Sherry.

Onoda watched in a fetal position, and noticed Sherry losing the fight with the group breaking in. They tugged the mask away from her face and confronted the baby crying on the floor.

Onoda noticed and ran to the desperate people. He fought them away and pointed his weapon. They fled. Then he placed the mask back on the baby and handed him to Sherry lying in the living room black and blue. Onoda walked back outside while his painful rashes on his pale skin had been left blistering red.

Sherry noticed how badly he had gotten. "Get in here!" she yelled, Onoda approached inside. "Thank you for saving me back there" she said. "Even though you caused all of this, and you deserved to die. Maybe God will find forgiveness in you. I know I won't..."

She ran him a warm bath in the bunker and handed him some medication and lathered him in an ointment from the medical kit.

"Thank you." the soldier mustered out in his broken English.

Several weeks went on, when Onoda protected Sherry and her baby from hungry, desperate, and violent wanderers. He devoted himself to protect the child the best he could, fetching medicine and food back inside from the outside, looted buildings. 

He named baby Clifford "Yudai" which meant brave child. Sherry and Teuro had learned to communicate in broken English and Japanese together.

Sherry tuned into the airwaves and heard rumors, Truman vowed the attacks would not go unreciprocated. The government announced a televised press conference for the American public left clamoring for a response.

Sherry and Onoda both eagerly watched as President Harry Truman gave the speech on public TV regarding the state of the Pacific War and attacks on San Diego. "A month ago on September 22, 1945, the Imperial Army despite their notice to surrender had deliberately released a pathogen agent in San Diego, California. The United States of America had been given full authority for an all out invasion on the Pacific island of Japan with the aid of the Soviets."

Truman had also announced a new federal agency to be created, one year earlier than anticipated in light of the horrendous attacks. The Center for Disease Control would help combat the thousands inflicted from the new bubonic plague spreading across the country. The surrounding cities around San Diego county would be quarantined and shut down for the meantime while the troops brought in aid.

Sherry would need to wait a few more years before seeing her husband.

In a top secret joint conference, the President would also approve to detonate two additional plutonium devices, they strategically chose the cities of Okinawa and Tokyo.

Several weeks later, Onoda is horrified by the turmoil of the news and footage of his home country. He would take his life shortly after, and end a fading line of a military generation withered in blood.