Free Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace

Inspector Kanehara. ‘And he was telling me that SCAP sent the Public Safety Division into the Nerima police station to check the career histories of every single police officer in the building, the dates of all their transfers and appointments…’
    ‘Why Nerima?’ asks Adachi –
    Or Anjo or Ando or
…
    ‘Because some uniformed patrolman complained directly toSCAP that last August, just after the surrender, some former high-ranking Tokkō and Kempei officers at Nerima had changed their names to those of dead or retired men and then transferred to other, better positions and ranks under their adopted new names…’
    No one is who they say they are
…
    ‘While men who had served in the Tokkō and Kempei sections for only a few months were now being purged…’
    No one who they seem to be
…
    ‘Snitch!’ spits Adachi –
    And everybody nods –
    Except me
…
    Now the talk around the table turns to an overnight spate of muggings in the Setagaya area, of a three-man gang with handguns, of possible connections to last month’s armed burglaries in the same area of Tokyo, of the continuing rise in violent crime, the use of guns when we have none and back then to SCAP’s so-called reforms –
    ‘We’ve asked them for guns,’ says Kanehara. ‘More guns. Better guns. Guns that work. Guns with ammunition to match…’
    ‘And they’ve promised us guns,’ says Adachi –
    ‘But that’s all they’ve done,’ says Kanehara –
    The same people, the same place, the same time and the same two conversations every day, meeting after meeting, until there is a knock on the door, until there is an interruption –
    ‘Excuse me,’ mumbles the uniform –
    ‘What is it ?’ barks Chief Kita –
    ‘The mothers are here, sir.’
    *
    It is 8:30 a.m. on the day after the bodies were discovered and there are already twenty mothers here. Twenty mothers who have read the morning paper or heard the news from neighbours. Twenty mothers who have taken out their last good kimonos. Twenty mothers who have called upon their other daughters or their sisters. Twenty mothers who begged the streetcar or train fare to Sakuradamon –
    Twenty mothers looking for their lost daughters –
    ‘They’re quick enough to read the papers,’ Kai is telling me. ‘Quick enough to come down here, but where were they when their daughters went missing? They’re too late now…’
    Inspector Kai and I are walking down the stairs of Metropolitan Police Headquarters to one of the reception rooms –
    ‘There used to be just twenty missing persons a month, before the war. Now we’ve got between two and three hundred…’
    To the reception rooms to face the twenty mothers –
    ‘And forty per cent of them are young women aged fifteen to twenty-five, and they’re just the ones who get reported…’
    The twenty mothers looking for their daughters –
    ‘You watch,’ says Kai. ‘Not one of these mothers will have reported their daughters missing before today.’
    A uniformed officer opens the door to the reception room for Inspector Kai and me. Kai and I enter the room. Kai and I introduce ourselves to these twenty mothers before us, these twenty mothers in their last good kimonos with their other daughters or their sisters –
    These twenty mothers looking for their lost daughters –
    Praying they do not find them here, in this place.
    But because the bodies are at Keiō, because the autopsies have yet to be performed, because the search of the area has yet to be completed, because we have yet to formally open the investigation, Inspector Kai and I have nothing to show these twenty mothers, nothing to tell them, so Inspector Kai and I will ask our men to interview these twenty mothers, to take down the descriptions of their daughters, their heights, their weights and their ages, the places they were going, the people they were meeting, the clothes they were wearing, the bags and belongings they were carrying –
    On the days they were last