Terminal Compromise

Terminal Compromise.

by Winn Schwartau.

Prologue

Friday, January 12, The Year After The White House, Was.h.i.+ngton D.C.

The President was furious. In all of his professional political life, not even his closest aids or his wife had ever seen him so totally out of character. The placid Southern confidence he normally exuded, part well designed media image, part real, was completely shattered.

"Are you telling me that we spent almost $4 trillion dollars, four G.o.dd.a.m.n trillion dollars on defense, and we're not prepared to defend our computers? You don't have a game plan? What the h.e.l.l have we been doing for the last 12 years?" The President bellowed as loudly as anyone could remember. No one in the room answered. The President glared right through each of his senior aides.

"Damage a.s.sessment Potential?" The President said abruptly as he forced a fork full of scrambled eggs into his mouth.

"The Federal Reserve and most Banking transactions come to a virtual standstill. Airlines grounded save for emergency opera- tions. Telephone communications running at 30% or less of capacity. No Federal payments for weeks. Do you want me to continue?"

"No, I get the picture."

The President wished to G.o.d he wouldn't be remembered as the President who allowed the United States of America to slip back- ward 50 years. He waited for the steam in his collar to subside before saying anything he might regret.

Monday, August 6, 1945.

j.a.pan

The cla.s.sroom was coming to order. s.h.i.+nzo Ito, the 12th graders'

instructor was running a few minutes late and the students were in a fervent discussion about the impending end to the war. And of course it was to be a j.a.panese victory over the American Mongrels.

Ito-san was only 19 years old, and most of the senior cla.s.s was only a year or two younger than he. The war had deeply affected all of them. The children of j.a.pan were well acquainted with suffering and pain as families were wrenched apart - literally at the seams, and expected to hold themselves together by the honor that their sacrifices represented. They hardened, out of neces- sity, in order to survive and make it through the next day, the next week; and so they knew much about the war. Since so many of the men had gone to war, women and children ran the country. 10 and 11 year old students from the schools worked as phone opera- tors. It was an honorable cause, and everyone contributed; it was only fitting. Their fathers and loved ones were fighting self- lessly and winning the war.

Many of the children's fathers had gone to war, valiantly, and many had not come home. Many came home in pieces, many others, unrecognizable. And when some fathers had gone off to war, both they and their families knew that would never return. They were making the Supreme Sacrifice for their country, and more impor- tantly, a contribution to their honorable way of life.

The sons and daughters of kamikazes were treated with near rever- ence. It was widely believed that their father's honor was handed down to their offspring as soon as word had been received the mission had been successful. Albeit a suicide mission.

Taki h.o.m.osoto was one 17 year old boy so revered for his father's sacrifice. Taki spoke confidently about such matters, about the war, about American atrocities, and how j.a.pan would soon defeat the round faced enemy. Taki had understood, on his 17th birthday that his father would leave...and a.s.suredly die as was the goal of the kamikaze. He pretended to understand that it made sense to him.

In the last 6 months since his father had left, Taki a.s.sumed, at his father's request, the patriarchal role in the immediate family. The personal anguish had been excruciating. While friends and family and officials praised Taki's father and fami- ly, inside Taki did not accept that a man could willingly leave his family, his children, him...Taki, never to return. Didn't his father love him? Or his sister and brother? Or his mother?

Taki's mother got a good job at one of the defense plants that permeated Hiros.h.i.+ma, while Taki and his brother and sister con- tinued their schooling. But the praise, the respect didn't make up for not having a father to talk to, to play with and to study with. He loved his mother, but she wasn't a father.

So Taki compensated and overcompensated and pretended that his father's sacrifice was just, and good, and for the better of society, and the war effort and his family. Taki spoke as a juvenile expert on the war and the good of j.a.pan and the bad of the United States and the filthy Americans with their unholy practices and perverted ways of life, and how they tortured j.a.panese prisoners. Taki was an eloquent and convincing orator to his piers and instructors alike.

At 8:15 A.M., the Hiros.h.i.+ma radio station, NHK, rang its old school bell. The bell was part of a warning system

The first sensation of motion in the steel reinforced building came long seconds after the blinding light. Since the rolling earth motions in 1923 devastated much of Tokyo, schoolchildren and households nationwide practiced earthquake preparedness and were reasonably expectant of another major tremor at any time.

But the combination of light from 10,000 suns and the deafening roar gave those who survived the blast reason to wish they had- n't. Blindness was instant for those who saw the sky ignite.

The cla.s.sroom was collapsing around them. In the air was the noise of a thousand trains at once...even louder. In seconds the schoolhouse was in rubble.

The United States of American had just dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiros.h.i.+ma, j.a.pan. This infamous event would soon be known as ayamachi - the Great Mistake.

Tuesday, August 7, 1945

Taki h.o.m.osoto opened his eyes. He knew he was laying on his back, but all else was a clutter of confusion. He saw a dark ceiling, to what he didn't know and he hurt He turned his head and saw he was on a cot, maybe a bed, in a long corridor with many others around him. The room reeked of human waste and death.

"Ah...you are awake. It has been much time." The voice came from behind him. He turned his head rapidly and realized he shouldn't have. The pain speared him from his neck to the base of his spine. Taki grimaced and made a feeble attempt at whim- pering. He said nothing as he examined the figure in the white coat who spoke again. "You are a very lucky young man, not many made it."

What was he talking about...made it? Who? His brain wanted to speak but his mouth couldn't. A slight gurgling noise ushered from his throat but nothing else. And the pain...it was everywhere at once...all over...he wanted to cry for help...but was unable. The pain overtook Taki h.o.m.osoto and the vision of the doctor blackened until there was no more.

Much later, Taki reawoke. He a.s.sumed it was a long time later, he been awake earlier...or had that been a dream. The doctor...no he was in school and the earthquake...yes, the earthquake...why don't I remember? I was knocked out. Of course. As his eyes adjusted to the room, he saw and remembered that it wasn't a dream. He saw the other cots, so many of them, stretching in every direction amidst the cries of pain and sighs of death.

Taki tried to cry out to a figure walking nearby but only a low pitched moan ushered forth. Then he noticed something odd...and odd smell. One he didn't recognize. It was foul...the stench of burned...burned what? The odor made him sick and he tried to breathe through his mouth but the awful odor still penetrated his glands. Taki knew that he was very hurt and very sick and so were a lot of others. It took him some time, and a lot of energy just to clear his thoughts. Thinking hurt - it concentrated the aching in his head, but the effort took away some of his other pain, or at least it successfully distracted him focussing on it.

There were cries from all around. Many were incomprehensible babblings, obviously in agony. Screams of "Eraiyo!", ("the pain is unbearable!") were constant. Others begged to be put out of their misery. Taki actually felt fortunate; he couldn't have screamed if he had wanted to, but out of guilt he no longer felt the need to.

Finally, the same doctor, was it the same doctor? appeared over his bed again. "I hope you'll stay with us for a few minutes?"

The doctor smiled. Taki responded as best he could. With a grunt and the raising and lowering his eyelids. "Let me just say that you are in very good condition...much better than the others," the doctor gestured across the room. "I don't mean to sound cruel, but, we do need your bed, for those seriously hurt."

The doctor sounded truly distraught. What had happened?

A terrified look crossed Taki's face that ceded into a facial plead. His look said, "I can't speak so answer my questions...you must know what they are. Where am I? What happened? Where is my cla.s.s?"

"I understand your name is Taki h.o.m.osoto?" the doctor asked.

"Your school identification papers..."

Taki blinked an affirmative as he tried to cough out a response.

"There is no easy way to tell this. We must all be brave. Ameri- ca has used a terrible weapon upon the people of j.a.pan. A spe- cial new bomb so terrible that Hiros.h.i.+ma is no longer even a shadow of itself. A weapon where the sky turns to fire and build- ings and our people melt...where the water sickens the living and those who seem well drop in their steps from an invisible enemy. Almost half of the people of Hiros.h.i.+ma are dead or dying.

As I said, you are a lucky one."

Taki helped over the next days at the Communications Hospital in what was left of downtown Hiros.h.i.+ma. When he wasn't tending to the dying, he moved the dead to the exits so the bodies could be cremated, the one way to insure eternal salvation. The city got much of its light from pyres for weeks after the blasts.

He helped distribute the kanpan and cold rice b.a.l.l.s to the very few doctors and to survivors who were able to eat. He walked the streets of Hiros.h.i.+ma looking for food, supplies, anything that could help. Walking through the rubble of what once was Hiros.h.i.+- ma fueled his hate and his loathing for Americans. They had wrought this suffering by using their pikadon, or flash-boom weapon, on civilians, women and children. He saw death, terrible, ugly death, everywhere; from Hijiyama Hill to the bridges a cross the wide Motoyas River.

The Aioi bridge spontaneously became an impromptu symbol for vengeance against the Americans. Taki crossed the remnants of the old stone bridge, which was to be the hypocenter of the blast if the Enola Gay hadn't missed its target by 800 feet. A tall blond man in an American military uniform was tied to a stone post. He was an American POW, one of 23 in Hiros.h.i.+ma. A few dozen people, women in bloodstained kimonos and mompei and near naked children were hurling rocks and insults at the lifeless body. How appropriate thought Taki. He found himself mindlessly joining in. He threw rocks at the head, the body, the legs. He threw rocks and yelled. He threw rocks and yelled at the remains of the dead serviceman until his arms and lungs ached.

Another 50,000 j.a.panese died from the effects of radiation within days while Taki continued to heal physically. On August 17, 9 days after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and 2 days after Emper- or Hirohito's broadcast announcing j.a.pan's surrender, a typhoon swamped Hiros.h.i.+ma and killed thousands more. Taki blamed the Americans for the typhoon, too.

Taki was alone for the first time in his life. His family dead, even his little sister. Taki h.o.m.osoto was now a hibakusha, a survivor of Hiros.h.i.+ma, an embarra.s.sing and dishonorable fact he would desperately try to conceal for the rest of his life.

Forty Years Later...

January, 1985, Gaithersburg, Maryland.

A pristine layer of thick soft snow covered the sprawling office and laboratory filled campus where the National Bureau of Stand- ards sets standards for the country. The NBS establishes exactly what the time is, to the nearest millionth of a millionth of a second. They make sure that we weigh things to the accuracy of the weight of an individual atom. The NBS is a veritable techno- logical benchmark to which everyone agrees, if for no other reason than convenience.

It was the NBS's turn to host the National Computer Security Conference where the Federal government was ostensibly supposed to interface with academia and the business world. At this exclusive symposium, only two years before, the Department of Defense introduced a set of guidelines which detailed security specifications to be used by the Federal agencies and recommended for the private sector.