The Bomb Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Note

  Map

  Book I

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Book II

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  Book III

  A Factual Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Reader Chat Page

  For Allyn Johnston,

  superb editor, dear friend,

  with love

  Copyright © 1995 by Theodore Taylor

  Author's note copyright © 1995 by Theodore Taylor

  Reader's guide copyright © 2007 by Harcourt, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

  system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should

  be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the

  following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  First Harcourt paperback edition 2007

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Taylor, Theodore, 1921–2006.

  The bomb/Theodore Taylor,

  p. cm.

  Summary: In 1944, when the Americans liberate Bikini Atoll from

  the Japanese, fourteen-year-old Sorry Rinamu does not realize

  that in two years he will lead a desperate effort to save his island

  home from a much more deadly threat.

  1. Atomic Bomb—Marshall Islands—Bikini Atoll—Testing—Juvenile

  fiction. [1. Bikini Atoll (Marshall Islands)—Fiction. 2. Atomic bomb—

  Marshall Islands—Bikini Atoll—Testing—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.T2186Bo 1995

  [Fic]—dc20 95-10683

  ISBN 978-0-15-200867-3

  ISBN 978-0-15-206165-4 pb

  Text set in Century Expanded

  Map by Richard Knauel

  DOM E G H F D

  Printed in the United States of America

  This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, places, organizations,

  and events portrayed, in this book are the products of the author's

  imagination or are used fictitiously to lend a sense of realism to the story.

  Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

  That saved a wretch like me!

  I once was lost, but now am found,

  Was blind, but now I see.

  —John Newton, 1725–1807

  H. G. Wells's 1914 novel, The World Set Free, predicted atomic bombs and atomic war.

  Book I

  Bikini

  1

  Just before the roosters crowed one day in late March 1944, Sorry Rinamu was awakened by great, angry roars from the sky, louder than rolling thunderclaps. Close as the palm-tree tops. Fast moving.

  There'd been no warning that dawn. Thick silence; then the sudden, deep growls from above.

  Terrified, he jumped off his sleeping mat, and ran outside the family dwelling, which faced the quiet lagoon. He was wearing homemade shorts of sun-bleached rice-bag material, his usual clothing day or night.

  His mother and younger sister scrambled out behind him like frightened geese, almost falling over each other. Teacher Tara Malolo, who was living with them that week, came out, too. His grandfather and grandmother followed. There were high-pitched wails and the screams of ajiri, small children, from other village dwellings that faced the beach. Everyone had been deeply asleep, accustomed to the lullaby of the surf, the friendly rustle of the palm trees.

  In the shallow gray light Sorry could see eight blue aircraft circling far out over the lagoon, single file, like a flight of pelicans. Then they turned back toward the thatch-walled, thatch-roofed houses, flying so low thai Sorry could see the outlines of bobbing heads in the open cockpits. The roars grew again. For a moment, as the planes paralleled the beach, then cut sharply over the north end of the island, he thought they'd unload their bombs. Blow up the houses, kill everyone.

  His sister, Lokileni, thought so, too. She stood there in a faded cotton nightshirt, screaming. Slender body shaking. Eyes tightly closed to ward off death.

  His jinen, his mother, Ruta Rinamu, went to her knees in the sand, praying, eyes closed, the tips of her fingers touching her chin.

  Sorry held his breath. His brown eyes were wide with fear. Please do not kill us!

  His jimman, his grandfather, Jonjen, stared at the planes as if his look could drive away the evil vultures. He did not seem afraid.

  His jibun, his grandmother, Yolo, covered her sunken eyes. She feared ghosts and seldom spoke. She was with the spirits of the wind, the tides, the rains, the fishes. Her skin was like crinkly brown paper stretched over her bones.

  Frowning widely, Tara Malolo stared silently at the aircraft.

  Others in the village had come out of their houses and were standing or kneeling on the beach in little groups. Terrified. Frozen. Screaming. Praying.

  The planes continued their second run, coming even lower.

  The first one fired a machine-gun burst at the Japanese weather station, north of the houses. The second did the same.

  As they flew over again, the palm and pandanus trees actually quivered. Sorry could feel the heat of engine exhausts and see the flames spitting from them. Explosions always came with the white men.

  The free-running pigs squealed and ran in circles. Chickens screeched, frightened silly, too, by the noise. The island's six dogs ran under the small cookhouses to hide.

  Sorry covered his ears but kept his eyes open.

  Grandfather Jonjen finally identified the dive-bombers and whom they belonged to. He shouted happily, "Amiricaans, Amiricaans!..." The planes had white stars on their sides, not the red markings of Japan.

  Tara jumped up and down, clapping her hands.

  As the throbbing engine noises began to fade, the shout of "Amiricaans" echoed joyously along the beach. There was laughter and hugging, much excitement. Even the bewildered ajiri were now smiling, though they didn't know why.

  Several of the American navy pilots had waved from their cockpits. One had held up his fingers in a V, the victory sign, new to the islanders.

  Americans! White men from the east. Military men.

  Perhaps that meant that Bikini, northernmost atoll of the Ralik chain, twenty-two hundred miles southwest of Hawaii, would soon be free of Japanese occupation.

  Twenty-six islands and islets, the larger ones palm-and pandanus-tree-covered, formed the atoll, an oval lagoon in the ocean rimmed with coral reefs. Bikini, largest and most beautiful of the twenty-six, was four miles long and less than a half mile wide. All the Rinamus had been born on the island. Only Sorry's late father, Badina Rinamu, and Grandfather Jonjen had ventured beyond the lagoon. Sorry hoped to do that someday, sail to the ailīnkan, the outside world.

  In five days, he would turn fourteen and officially become a man in
island tradition with a family celebration. He was already the main provider of food. He would also become the head of the family, replacing Grandfather Jonjen, who had been acting head since Badina Rinamu died four years ago. Sorry would now be the family alab, representing the Rinamus on the village council, with Jonjen as his legal adviser.

  There could not have been a better early birthday gift than those roaring planes and waving pilots, that gunfire.

  Her fright ebbing away, Lokileni asked, "Will we be free?"

  The Japanese soldiers sometimes demanded the bodies of young girls. Lokileni was only eleven, but she was in danger when the soldiers had too much beer or palm wine. So there was good reason for her to fear them, good reason for Sorry to protect her.

  "I don't know," he answered, mind whirling. "Let's hope so."

  As the engine clatter vanished entirely, the planes becoming dots in the western sky, Sorry looked up the beach toward the gray wooden weather station with its big radio antennae on the roof, target of the machine-gun burst.

  The Japanese soldiers were standing outside watching the aircraft disappear. One man had been killed by the second plane. The others were jabbering excitedly. Sorry could hear them faintly.

  Everyone in the village hated them. They never smiled. They were never polite. The islanders called the squat wooden building mwen ekamijak, "house of fear."

  Once, about a year ago, the sergeant, their leader, claimed Sorry had insulted him. He'd laughed when he saw the sergeant trip and fall down in the sand. The sergeant had made Sorry bow down a thousand times to the doorstep of the mwen ekamijak. A soldier, aiming a rifle at him, had counted.

  That night, to prove he was not a coward, Sorry had waited near the barracks, hidden, the family ax in his hand, for the sergeant to come out. But he never did. Finally, Sorry went home to sleep.

  From time to time, he'd heard the elders talk of killing the soldiers. Serious talk. And he'd joined in. He was ready to use the ax and help chop them to pieces. But the iroij, kindly Chief Juda—descendant of the famed Larkelon, once the highest Ralik chain chieftain—said that many soldiers would then come 250 miles from Kwajalein, a headquarters island, and shoot every man, woman, and child on Bikini. Show no mercy!

  Jonjen had said, "Juda is right. If the soldiers don't send a weather message back to their base for two or three days, a seaplane will come to find out why."

  "There's nothing we can do?" Sorry had asked, wishing his father were still alive. He would fight.

  "Nothing," his grandfather answered.

  Up to the day in 1942 when the Japanese invaded and mined the lagoon entrance, there'd been peace on the atoll for a hundred years or more. No one had a gun. Sorry had never even seen one until the Japanese arrived. The only land enemies had been flies, scorpions, and palm rats.

  Words had been passed along from the outside world, traveling from lonely atoll to lonely atoll like birds on flyways. Outriggers from other atolls and the few ships that ever visited usually entered through Enyu Channel, a wide opening between Enyu Island and Airukji Island. The ships would anchor about a quarter mile off the beach, but the outriggers would ride right up on it. There would be feasts and outsider talk about the wondrous ailīnkan for two or three days, then the visitors would go. After they departed, the people would talk about the talking and think about the talking. Sorry had always listened eagerly.

  Otherwise, what happened daily on Bikini was sunrise and sunset and the gathering of food from the trees and from the sea and making mats and baskets and walls and roofs and twine and talk. Talk about the fish and the weather and each other. The breeze hummed; the pigs rooted; the chickens walked and pecked, walked and pecked. Peace and quiet—until the Japanese arrived.

  "Why did they come here?" Sorry had once asked angrily.

  "Weather conditions are always important to ships and aircraft," Jonjen had answered.

  In the world Sorry knew best, his family lived, worked, laughed, sang, and prayed as if war didn't exist, as if the world stopped at the entrance to the lagoon. Suddenly they were captives, lazy natives, kin to monkeys. The Japanese didn't need to say it. The message was in their eyes: You are inferior. You are worthless.

  "Is it always this way in war?" Sorry had asked.

  "I think so. Innocent people everywhere are harmed," Tara Malolo had answered.

  Along with everyone else, for the past two years Sorry had watched and listened as the soldiers demanded coconuts, pandanus fruit, preserves, and taro, the starchy tuber plant, in addition to catches of seafood. If twelve reef lobsters were caught, the Japanese demanded six.

  Wrinkled Grandfather Jonjen, the village man of God, who walked with a crooked stick and carried the Marshallese Bible almost everywhere he went, said, "The palms whisper 'Peace' all the time, but the soldiers never listen."

  Sorry thought that the only good thing the Japanese had done was build catchments—large cisterns of concrete—to trap precious rainwater that flowed down sheets of corrugated iron.

  He did not know how long he could contain his anger. He did know that if any soldier raped Lokileni he would use the ax, no matter what might happen to him.

  In the 1920s, a new field of scientific research was introduced—study of the nucleus of the atom.

  2

  Memory of the sight, even the roar, of the planes remained with Sorry through mabūn, breakfast.

  In the island tradition, they sat separately: Sorry and his grandfather; and about eight feet away, his mother, his grandmother, Lokileni, and Tara. Early light flooded the serene lagoon.

  Behind the single street of crushed pink coral, there were twenty-six dwellings spread widely along the central part of the island. The eleven families lived outdoors; their cool, high-peaked pandanus houses, with movable thatch walls, were mainly for sleeping. In windy and rainy seasons, the decorated window matting could be unrolled. The song of rain on the leaf roofs had put Sorry to sleep on many summer nights.

  Each clan had its separate small cookhouse, which was waist high and no wider than a spread of arms, but everyone was welcome to eat at any fire pit.

  Breakfast was always leftovers from the night before. Fish or taro root or coconut meat or octopus or clams. Sorry and Lokileni always liked jekaro, the sweet sap of broken palm-blossom stalks, for this meal.

  "I still don't know why the Japanese and Americans are fighting," Sorry finally said, sipping the jekaro.

  His mother answered gravely, "I don't know either. But it seems someone is always fighting out there."

  Jonjen said solemnly, "It is always land and money, everywhere."

  "There has to be more," Sorry said, looking at his grandfather. Though Jonjen's cheeks were sunken like Sorry's grandmother's eyes, his mind was still sharp. Most of his teeth were gone.

  Money was not important to the islanders. There was really no place to spend it. The only money they ever received was from copra, the sun-dried meat of the coconut, supplied by twenty thousand-odd trees. First German marks, then Japanese yen. A small steamship would visit twice a year and a merchant aboard would either buy the copra or trade for it. What money they received went to cloth for dresses and trousers, canvas for sails, utensils, or tools. A shopping trip, by canoe, could take many weeks.

  If possessions alone were counted, Jibiji Ijjirik was the richest man on Bikini. His family had a hand-powered sewing machine. The Rinamus had traded their six-month village copra share one year for a wooden chest of drawers and the ax.

  "Land and money," Jonjen repeated, nodding. "Always land and money, everywhere."

  Parcels of land were owned by clan members on each of the larger islands of the atoll. Nothing was more important to a Bikinian than land, even though it was always claimed by the iroij lablab, the paramount chief, Jeimata, who did not even live on the atoll. A family without some land, even a small parcel on another island, had not achieved dignity. The Badina Rinamus owned land on Lomlik and Bukor.

  In addition to the Rinamus, there
were the clans of Ijjirik, Kejibuki, and Makaoliej. They all treated each other as nuky, kinsmen.

  Still thinking about the Americans, Sorry asked his grandfather, "Will it be the same if the Americans come? Will we be captives again?"

  "We are smaller than ants and easy to crush," Jonjen answered. He was that way, seldom answering directly. Seldom a "yes" or "no," often a "perhaps."

  Except for the pilots of those planes, Sorry had never seen an American, much less met one. He did not know whether they were cruel or kind. Tara said they were usually kind.

  His mother said, "But they may care nothing about the Marshalls. Maybe they'll let all the islands become free if they win. I hope so."

  Jonjen said, after swallowing a chunk of charred tuna, "I've told you before, Sorry, that there was a time long, long ago, the time of the whalers—after the Spaniards, and before the Germans—when we were not so peaceful ourselves. Our warriors went out in canoes to raid any vessel anchored here. Any white man who came to the beach was murdered. There was a lot of blood spilled here in the early days." Grandfather Jonjen, like the other old men of Bikini, was a source of island history. Next to Lokwiar, who was eighty, Jonjen was oldest, at seventy-five.

  In what beginning was known, he'd said there were seven Ralik clans, all from Namu Atoll. There was fierce fighting between them and the first clans of the Ratak chain. Headbanded warriors in canoes fifty feet long, armed with axes made of giant shells of tridacna, the saw-toothed clam, fought. Many were killed.

  While Jonjen was talking, the husky, stern sergeant in charge of the weather station, wearing steel-rimmed glasses, walked by them without even glancing up. With him was another soldier carrying a rifle.

  That was usual. Everywhere they went, the rifle went, too. It always threatened death, even when not pointed at the villagers.

  They were going to Chief Juda's house. Whenever they came up the beach, it was always to give orders to Juda—too mild and giving a man, Sorry thought.

  Staring at the soldiers, he asked himself, What do they want now? Then he stood up, shaking his head in dismay.