A phone call in the middle of the night preceded the formal report that came across the desk in the War Department the next morning. The preliminary evaluation was that some damn valve had gotten stuck, causing an explosion which took half of the Oak Ridge site with it. Showed what you got for putting so many eggs in a basket halfway overrun with Jews and reds.
***
"They're really not going to test it?"
"It's the only shot we've got. They say they can't afford to burn up an extra billion dollars and any more time. Army's already chomping at the bit to march their way to Tokyo. With all the delays, if we sit on our hands much longer… that's a lot of dead kids."
"What about the math? The calculations have been ran and reran and the odds are a little over three parts in a million—"
"God help us."
***
I watch the waves lap at the black shore of this island and I can but think of my home so near across the horizon, and yet so far. Our position has been heavily fortified to play our part in the decisive action. Like moles, we have burrowed deep into the volcanic crag and busied ourselves constructing concrete warrens. The system is extensive, with specialized traps of isolated, purified air so that we might survive incendiary bombing or gas. The resources allocated to us, given the general condition of the war effort which every man knows from the grimness on his face but does not voice, astound me. Provisions to last months are stockpiled.
It begins to make more sense to me why so much ammunition and steel has been set aside for our garrison of this rock that is so strategically insignificant when the men from the Health Ministry begin to arrive. Their eyes are cold, as if looking right through us. Even compared to soldiers who are not strangers to the unpleasantries of war, these men carry a kind of hardened apathy to their gaze, an unapologetic, purposeful disinterest in their manner of carrying themselves that chills me to my bones. With them comes crates of classified documents prized above our lives. If there is risk of them being compromised by the enemy, the standing order is that destruction of these papers is paramount and must be ensured before we are allowed to preserve our honor by suicide.
We do not expect the American to come until after the typhoon season, which means uneasy months spent preparing for battle as best as we are able. We are soldiers sworn to the Emperor, and we will fulfill our duty as best as we can. If we die, it will be with our swords in hand.
***
The rumble is enormous, a quaking felt even deep under meters of rock and bunker that rattles our teeth. I have experienced battleship bombardment before, but the intensity of the impact thundering from above was incomparable. Despite bracing for the monotony of hours, if not days, of enduring the pulverizing force from within our dugouts, as suddenly as it came, it is over. An eerie sensation comes over me as my comrades rush to their action stations, a foreboding weight settling in the pit of my stomach that, like a bowstring drawn too tight, thrums with dread. There is a whistling flow of the cool air within the complex as I ascend to ground level.
Throwing open the shutter reveals that the surface has been annihilated. Every green shrub has been vaporized and the pillboxes are charred rubble dispersed over the scorched, tortured rock. But there are no shellholes or craters or even the remains of incendiary canisters or bomblets. It is as if a cataclysmic tide of flames had swept everything away, a spiteful wind of devastation cast by an angry spirit.
The air is thin and we can hardly breathe standing here, as if the only fresh oxygen is escaping from within our tunnels to which we retreat. There is no sign of an American landing visible from any of our periscopes, no ships or planes in the sky. Our increasingly frantic attempts to make contact by radio are met with silence. The world has contracted to our isolated fortress, a brigade of haggard men who look at each others' faces, seeing