Book

It was another hot and humid winter day in Los Angeles, My mother and I had resorted to buying storage units at auction in hopes of possibly pocketing a profit with the units unknown contents. This last storage unit we purchased was a hail mary, it needed to have at least twelve hundred dollars inside it to cover the rest of our rent and outstanding bills. After haggling with the auctioneer and other people we ended up purchasing the unit for two-hundred dollars more than we wanted but again we needed to make a profit and as soon as possible. The moment we purchased it, I stepped inside the compartment scanning its contents quickly as we still had to pay auctioneer at his office. As I scanned, I noticed a large amount of what seemed like office equipment, filing cabinets and what seemed like an American flag on a stand tucked away in a corner. In a sarcastic tone I proclaimed “what a great deal this was” and “to go get the paperwork to get this done as soon as possible.” As I followed the owner and my mother toward the exit, I noticed this old workbench with two cardboard boxes atop it as I passed it I saw what was an old black book about twice the size of todays smart phones. With out any real reason too other than that I like books to draw inside. I picked it up without looking at it as I thumbed the pages and felt the leather strap that bound it and put it in my back pocket on the way out.

As we walked towards the front of the rows of storage units I looked up and noticed the winding freeway scape that twisted in every direction above, around and beside us. A razor wire fence separated us and a small dirt path from one freeway that was now filled with with tents effectively turning it into a small shanty town, there only buffer a three foot piece of concrete dividing them and hundreds of speeding cars. As we walked I watched them mill about their small encampment, all noise drowned out by the surrounding endless mass of vehicles. I thought to myself how horrible it must be to watch people day in and day out driving anywhere they wanted to go while they were stuck there — “excuse me?”, I snapped out of my trance and noticed before me two suits who are now notifying us that unit we just purchased was not ours to buy and was actually government property. So with that we written a check plus one hundred dollars for our trouble, which I had negotiated no thanks to my mother who said we should be “good” Americans, what ever that means.

On the way out of the parking lot I inspected the check we were on our way to cash and noticed that it was detailed intricately in a way I had not seen before. I told my mom, “we should have asked for more money; that stuff was so important.” She told me to be happy with what we got as she was handed the cash from the teller.

As I sat in the car headed to my job I thought to myself “its not enough and I’m not getting paid in time, what are we going to do?” I decided not to voice my concerns out loud for fear it would do more harm than good. Before I knew it we had arrived at the soul sucking corporate wasteland that is my job with a half hour to spare before my shift began. I thanked my mum and gathered myself for another eight hours of a job I can’t stand, but keep working for the same reason everyone else does. As I approached the building I checked myself myself as I usually do to make sure I had my keys, phone, etc. As I checked myself over I felt the small black book I had wedged behind my wallet. I froze. I wondered how many laws I had broke if any? On the way inside the building I nodded to the security guard while showing him my ID and hustled onto the elevator. As I transcended the 13 floors to my workspace I fingered the small book in my pocket with my thumb and forefinger and wondered. I remembered back at the storage unit where I took the book that there were many more of these small books, boxes of them actually. The doors to the elevator swung open to my floor where I got off and swiftly found my cubicle. I threw all my stuff in the corner, turned on my computer and started digging in my pocket to get the book out. As I fumbled to get the book out of my pocket I dropped it and in doing so a picture partially came out. I picked up the book and its enclosed contents and spread it out on the desk.

My eyes fell first on the picture for it was the most shocking of the evidence before me. The person I was looking at was so emaciated I was not sure of their gender although I could tell they were of asian decent, the only other clue was in that I could tell the photo was old, 1930’s to 1940’s old. As I inspected the photograph I realized by its size and framing it was produced for the reason of identification. The figure was gaunt eyes vacant and hopeless, I wanted to find out what happened to this individual I set the picture aside and began to search the small black leather bound book for clues — “how are those reports coming?!” My boss exclaimed as I moved some documents over the book. I had lost track of time and it was ten minutes past the beginning of the workday. I lied to him saying that “they were mostly ready and would have them to him by noon. With out acknowledging me he moved on to the new girl who he had been using his management powers to scare her into submission, its always the same when someone new starts working. They learn quickly that shit trickles down hill, people like my boss, the power trippers, the gas lighters they get far because the values they're willing to disregard.

After I felt safe from my hawk of a boss and getting a little work done I decided to get back to the real task at hand. The book. The first page wasn’t much to look at from the yellow rectangular border on the paper it was where the photo had originally been place and underneath written in English was who now know was a man:

“Tadaaki Okado”

birth date 9/8/1880 born in Tokyo, Japan

Citizen of Japan

Length of residence of the united states: 19 years 9 months

Address: 569 hemlock st. San Francisco California

Height: 5 ft 3 in

Weight: 109 lbs

Hair color: Black

Distinctive marks: birth mark under left arm

It came to me that this must be copied down information from its original source but for what reason? As I was about to turn the page to the second I noticed up in the left corner on the inside cover was a red stamp that said, “operation paper clip”. At that moment my blood ran cold and I thought I may have stumbled into something way over my head. For those of you unfamiliar project paperclip is when the U.S. made citizens out of war criminal scientists to keep the soviets from getting them first. In this mad dash scramble to acquire all of the scientist, German and Japanese including their valuable intelligence and research before the soviets got to them first, the allies discovered a unit called 731. 731 was not a normal Japanese military unit there main focus to take killing to the next level using all different means of achieving it no matter how appalling. Another main long term goal of the facility was to find the limits of human body by way of experiments. They used humans usually with political dissidents or even random people kidnapped from the Mongolian countryside, they even used American P.O.W.s for the sick experiments. The experiments ranged from breeding thousands of rats with bubonic plague which they then gathered the fleas from said rats and dropped them on unsuspecting towns, to vivisection without any sort pain relief.

The United States of America granted the Japanese government a pardon for the head of unit 731 in exchange for the research of all of the terrible things they did in that unit during the course of the war and I barely scratched the surfaced of what they have done. Had I uncovered the continuation of this horrific program to some extent after the war in the United States?! I may be potentially sitting on a bombshell. No longer than a moment had crossed my mind my mother called which is weird because she’s working and knows I am too. But before I could pick it up the call was ended, I try calling her back but can’t get through. A sickening feeling begins to spread throughout my body, and I continue to the next page. The page seemed to have water damage and was much harder to make out, it seemed to detail maybe a medical history I couldn’t be sure. I continued to look through the book which was disintegrating in front of me, noticing disturbing phrases here, “blood type switch test” and there, “vivisection with/ without sedation”. I decided this was too big for me and sought out a reputable journalist with the resources to treat this book with kind of respect it deserves to harness all of its potential secrets with modern technology.

I hadn’t gotten anything done at my job so I gave up sleuthing for the day to finish my work. It was late by the time I got home, exhausted I crashed onto my bed with all my clothes on and end waking up to the sound of blaring alarm clock. Confused I looked down at my phone and saw an alarming amount of missed calls mostly from my mom. I called her back a realized just from the tone of her voice something was wrong, my mother is not a paranoid woman, she loves everything and everybody. But today I did not recognize her, she was saying that she felt she was being followed ever since we left the storage unit facility. She had noticed that lock on her house had be tampered with. She called the police to find out if there was intruder still in the house but when cops came. It end up just being one police officer, my mother was confused as he walked up to her and said just one thing before leaving her stunned, “im not sure what it is they want from you, but you better give to them before they take something you can’t replace”. None of this made sense to her of course, but it did to me.

I hung up and began documenting every last piece of the book making backups of it on flash drives, and one flash drive I only put a couple pages of the book just to prove that I have it. And with all the boyish hope and courage I could muster I mailed the flash drive that held only a small portion of the book along with a 20,000$ dollar ransom to my moms house who I was certain was being watched.

I told them that money be given directly to my mother and that if I or my mother are murdered that the copies I had made and dispersed would be given to many credible news sources around the world to war hating peace loving citizens like myself.