At 7:30 p.m. on 16 October time, six hours after the explosion, US Secretary of the Army Stim, who was attending a meeting with President Roosevelt in Washington, received a top-secret telegram from an overseas intelligence station at the residence of the British delegation outside Washington, D.C., which read: "The patient underwent surgery this morning, and the diagnosis has not yet been completed, but the results seem surprising and have exceeded the expected consequences. Details will be reported later. The next morning, Stimson received a second telegram saying, "The doctor has returned, and the truth is unbelievable." The little girl was stronger than her eldest brother, and her eyes could see from here that Highhall (Stimson's estate on Long Island, New York, meaning the flash of an explosion could be seen from 400 kilometers away) ...... "The translator at the U.S. Army's Washington Confidential Center was stunned, thinking that Secretary Stimson, who was in his 70s, had become a father again. The report was sent back through American spies in China and was sent to Roosevelt in time. That night, an unknown British [***] officer, while recording the day's meeting, wrote: "President Roosevelt looks unusually tired today, and his face is elongated. ”

The reason why Roosevelt was so uncomfortable was not entirely because China tested the first atomic bomb in human history, but because, on this very day, the Chinese army landed in California.

Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California.

The sky was still dark, and the waves were crashing against the hulls of the troop carriers from time to time, and the troop carriers were swaying and staggering forward in the waves.

No one can sleep. As soon as the morning dawn assault landing craft was about to be lowered into the water, the first troops were about to take the boats, split the waves, and wash up on the beaches of California. On this troop transport, in this entire fleet, everyone knew in their hearts: in a few hours, the death of some of them would come.

Masao Fukui, a soldier of this book, lay on his back on his bunk, closed his eyes, but did not feel sleepy at all. All he could hear was a wave of whirring and whirring, because the brothers would take a nap from time to time. One of them even said out loud: "I'm not going!" I'm not going! This shouted that the soldier opened his eyes, and he stared at the cabin for a long time, and the illusion in his mind gradually dissipated, and the mess that appeared in front of him was a hammock, a naked human form, and a piece of equipment hanging there dangling and swinging. No, you have to go to the toilet. He scolded softly, shrugged his body up twice, and finally sat up, and as soon as his legs reached out of the bed, his arched back collided with the steel pipe hanging on the hammock above. He sighed, reached for the shoe that was tied to the post, and slowly put it on. There were five floors of bunks, and his bunk was the fourth one to the top, and he hesitantly climbed out of bed in the dimness, for fear that if he was not careful, he would step on the person in the hammock below. When he reached the ground, he cautiously walked through the bags and bags to the bulkhead door, and tripped over someone's gun on the way. After passing through a cabin that was also so chaotic and difficult to enter, I arrived at the toilet.

Water vapor is steaming in the toilet. The only freshwater shower is still in use here; Ever since the troops got on board, the freshwater shower has never been empty. Walked past a few seawater showers, but no one used them, but someone was rolling dice inside to gamble money. After the shower was the pit, he sat down on the dripping open plank ring. I forgot to bring a cigarette, but fortunately there was a brother not far away, so he asked for one, and while smoking, he looked at the black, watery, cigarette-butted ground under his feet, and listened to the sound of water rushing in the manure tank under the pit. He didn't really have any reason to come, but as soon as he sat down, he didn't really remember it, because it was cooler after all, and the smell of toilets, seawater, bleaching powder, and the faint cold smell of metal stained with water was not as uncomfortable as the strong smell of sweat in the cabin. He sat there for a long time before he slowly stood up and pulled out his green military trousers, thinking that it would take a lot of effort to get back to his bunk. He knew that when he returned to his bunk, he would just lie there and wait for the dawn, and he secretly said in his heart: It is better to get up to the day, whether it's good or bad, or to get up soon. On the way back, he remembered that when he was a child, he also had a time when he couldn't sleep before dawn, and that was the day he was born.

Someone inside said, "What's wrong? Pustules? Be careful, tomorrow the Mi Guoyan's cannon will blow off your monkey's head. Then he threw the money on the blanket, and the people inside didn't take it seriously, but Fukui shivered, and he felt uneasy in his heart, and felt that it was a sin to say this. He hurriedly and silently recited "Buddha bless" several times. Somehow, he seemed to see his corpse on the beach, with no head at the base of his bloody neck.

He unconsciously thought in his heart: if he died, I wonder if the army would transport his bones back to China? Will his wife Fumiko Nakayama come to his funeral? He was self-pitying, thinking vigorously, and for a while he really wished to see Wenzi's sad eyes for him. Fumiko is a confidant after all. But what I wanted to think about was Fumiko, but what appeared in front of me was her blurred face. He thought hard about it, and wanted to savor her eyebrows and demeanor, but at this moment he couldn't recall it, and the unpredictable impression was like a song that seemed to be forgotten, and just as he was about to touch a little tune, he strung it on to other familiar tunes.

When he got out of the toilet, he felt tired and panicked because he had been lying on the bunk for most of the day, and he slipped quietly onto the deck without paying attention to the sentry. After staying in the cabin for a long time, I felt cold and swishing when I got on the deck. He took a deep breath and cautiously groped in the darkness for a while before he gradually recognized the outline of the ship. The moon had come out, and a faint silver glow faintly outlined the cabins and equipment on deck. He looked around, and then realized that the propeller was quietly hitting the water, and the hull was swinging gently, in fact, he had already felt the swing of the hull in the cabin, and the hammock had been swaying. He felt a lot more relieved inside, for the deck was almost empty. There was still a sailor on duty at a nearby gun emplacement, but compared to the cabin, this place was really an out-of-this-world world.

Fukui walked over to the railing and looked out to sea. The boat at his feet did not seem to move at all, and the whole fleet seemed to have stopped moving, and was searching for a way out in the water, like a hound tracking its prey, until the trail was cut off in the middle of the pursuit. There are shadows of undulating mountains in the distant sky, and there is a peak in the middle that rises to the sky, and after the peak, the mountain falls again, and the top of the mountain is as low as one. He thought to himself: this should be America. But then he shrugged his shoulders again: What if it was the United States? It's the same everywhere.

Thinking about his future situation, he couldn't help but feel at a loss, and he couldn't afford to fight a little hard. Yes, tomorrow when you land, your feet will be soaked in water, and your boots will be filled with sand. One by one, the landing craft were lowered, the trucks were brought ashore one by one, and a large pile was unloaded on the beach. If you're lucky, you won't encounter U.S. artillery fire, and there won't be too many snipers left. Not only was he afraid, he was tired of it. After this battle is over, there will be another battle, and after the next battle is over, there will be another battle, and there will never be a time for things to end. He looked sullenly at the water, rubbing his neck, and felt that the tall and thin frame was about to fall apart. It's about one o'clock now. In three hours, the bombardment will begin, and a terrible breakfast will have to be stuffed in three bites before it can be cold.

What's the solution? It's just a day. The reconnaissance detachment he was in was still relatively lucky, at least tomorrow he could still say that. The reconnaissance detachment was organized into the beach service team, and it was estimated that there would be a week of reconnaissance duty on the beach, and by that time the task of opening the road and exploring the road had already been completed, and the war had long since become a familiar and familiar routine. He spat again, his thick, scarred fingers rubbing the swollen and protruding knuckles of his other hand.

He reached out to his belly and scratched it, then he touched it again, and after touching it for a while, he suddenly stopped. I forgot to bring my lifebelt! Without thinking, he wanted to go back to the cabin to get it, but this time he made himself angry. "Look at what you did for this, you don't dare to go west if you face east." He took a sip. "It's a bit of a stretch to memorize so many rules!" However, he still secretly calculated: Do you want to get it? Thinking about the results, he grinned wryly. "Forget it, people can only die once anyway."

He said this to Nobutake Okada. Nobutake Okada was a young man, and only a few weeks after he was assigned to the reconnaissance detachment, the task force was formed in the division, and he boarded the ship to attack the place. I remember that one night, he and Okada Nobutake were on the deck together, when suddenly the air raid siren sounded, and the two of them hid under a life raft together, only to see the entire fleet of ships rushing in the dark water, and the gunners on the nearby gun emplacements were nervously waiting behind the guns. The incoming enemy plane was a "Wildcat" fighter, and more than a dozen searchlights were desperately focused on one target. Hundreds of arcs of tracer bullets intertwined in the air into fiery red patterns. It was a completely different scene from the battle scene he had experienced before, and he did not feel nervous or tired in the middle of it, but it was like watching a color movie, like admiring a picture on a wall calendar, and he only felt that the picture was magnificent and breathtaking. He could see it in a daze, and not far away a red fireball lit up on a ship, and a bomb exploded, but he didn't even bow his head.

It's a pity that his emotions have been ruined by Okada Nobutake - Okada Nobutake opened his mouth: "Oops, I remembered!" ”

"What do you remember?"

"My lifeguard is out of breath."

Fukui laughed. "I'll teach you a trick. In case the boat is about to sink, grab a big mouse and ride it ashore. ”

"Hey, I'm not kidding you. Well, I'd better inflate it. As he spoke, he touched the black ground, touched the mouth of the pipe, and blew the lifeband to his heart's content. Fukui thought it was funny when he looked at it. This young man is still young. The young boys who have been trained at the moment are full of consciousness to abide by the rules of the army. Fukui felt a little sad. "You're going to be foolproof now, right, Okada?"

Okada Nobutake's tone looked very conceited: "I'll tell you, I don't do anything that happens to luck." What if our ship is bombed? Even if I fall into the water, I must be prepared. ”

At this moment, the distance slowly skimmed the coast of the California Peninsula, and it looked like a huge ship. Fukui thought to himself: Yes, even if Okada Shintake falls into the water, he can be prepared. This kind of young man has just made a few miles, and his girlfriend has not been found yet, so Guan Bao will save up money for marriage first. Will such a person still not follow the rules of the army! He leaned down and leaned over the railing, looking out at the water. Although the ship was weak and seemed to be moving, the whirlpool behind the ship turned very quickly. The moon had disappeared behind the clouds, and the sea was dark and terrifying, as if it harbored some evil intentions. From the side of the ship to the fifty yards around, there seemed to be a halo of light around the hull, and beyond that, there was a groggy and boundless blackness, and the shadows of the undulating peaks and hills of the California Peninsula could no longer be discerned. Where the boat passed, a heavy wave was set off, and along the waves, I saw the sea water whirlpooling, turbulent and agitated, rolling up thick turbid foam, rolling away. Fukui looked at it for a long time, and it suddenly dawned on him that a sense of compassion arose spontaneously: he seemed to understand all of a sudden what people wanted to be unfulfilled. For the first time in many years, he remembered the scene of his return from work in the mine at dusk in the winter of that year: it was snowing everywhere, but his face was gray and yellow, and as soon as he stepped into the house, he sat down silently to eat his meal, and his mother, who served him soup and food, was on the side with a straight face. His home was an unpleasant, empty one, and his family was becoming more and more divided from each other—he would not have remembered his home if he hadn't encountered depression in his heart all these years. However, looking at the sea at this moment, there was an unprecedented amount of sympathy in his heart, and he felt that he could understand his mother and sisters and brothers who had almost forgotten. He understood a lot of things, and all kinds of sad things and embarrassing people in the years of wandering came to his mind. He also recalls a time when he was drunk and robbed on the steps in front of Ueno Park near Ishibashi. It was only at this moment that he could have this kind of feeling—the bumpy experience of half a life, the upset life on the ship, and the atmosphere on the eve of the landing tonight, finally condensed his mind at the moment.

But his compassion lasted only a few minutes. Of course, he figured things out, but he knew that these were irreparable, so he couldn't raise any energy in his heart. What's the use? He sighed, and the deep feeling was gone. There are problems in the world that can never be solved. It's just too complicated! I can only wear some by myself, otherwise I will be like Okada Shintake, always worrying about all kinds of trivial things in life.

He didn't want to like that. He stared blankly at the sea for a long time. I can't find any sustenance in my soul, and I always feel that it is not pleasing to see anything. He snorted in his nose and listened to the sea breeze chasing around the boat. It was as if every cell around him was sentient, aware that time was passing by second, and that it was getting closer and closer to dawn. Once tonight is over, there will be no more opportunities for this kind of solitude for months.

He smiled bitterly, grabbed the railing, and felt the sea breeze blowing on his face, and the sea breeze also brought a strong smell of grass and trees on the shore, and he unconsciously took a deep breath.

He was distracted, and his knuckles were clenched. It seems that tomorrow's battle will not be too hard, but the reconnaissance detachment will definitely be busy enough, just be busy a little, and it may not necessarily kill them. There have been many battles, and he has less than ten old qualifications left in the platoon. He has participated in many landing operations, and he is often bombarded as soon as he gets off the ship, and even if he gets all the way to the beach, he often can't resist the bombardment and comes back. Sometimes he just thinks he's dead. To this day, he still can't figure out how he got his life back.

I remember the last time, he took a rubber boat to smuggle landing. This matter was laid out from the beginning; They are doomed—but what can they do? He recalled how they got off the destroyer a few hours before dawn and set off in a rubber boat, but they did not expect that the low tide was too strong to reach the shore, and they were discovered by the squadron. The Chinese fired at them with anti-aircraft guns, and they were beaten to the ground. None of the rubber boats they were in were not shot and shot, and they all began to sink. He remembered being in the boat next to them. There was a kid who was paralyzed with fright. He cried and shouted, trying to shoot signal flares to cover the destroyer's guns, but his hands were so shaky that he couldn't even grasp the signal guns.

All the people were terribly afraid. Because the Chinese artillery fire is too fierce. Eleven of the seventeen men in their squad were killed in battle, including the captain.

He suddenly remembered the famous conditioned reflex experiment done by the famous psychologist: he always rang the bell every time he fed the dog; As soon as a dog sees something to eat, it naturally secretes saliva.

There was a soldier on board, just like the dog in this experiment. He has been overseas for a long time, and he has fought a lot of battles. At first, his fear was closely linked to the whistling of shells and the sound of explosions on the ground. But over the years, the horror had been so great that any sudden noise would have caused panic in his heart.

He had just been lying in his bunk, and he would tremble as soon as someone spoke loudly and urgently, whenever the puff of the engine changed, whenever someone kicked the guns and equipment on the ground. He only felt that his nerves had never been so tense, and he couldn't stop sweating while lying on the bunk, and he trembled when he thought of the dawn.

(To be continued)