owner and his rank. One of my dive partners, Mitsu Ogawa, later tells me that the man’s name was Weng and that he commanded a hundred troops. I wonder if it is Weng’s armor, helmet, weapons and bones that lie together in the mud. Other artifacts tell us that the preparations for the invasion were hasty. Many of the ceramic jars are sloppily made, misshapen and badly fired, rushed into production for the war. The ship’s massive anchor may also be proof of haste. Unlike the one-piece stone weight for the anchor at Hakozaki Shrine, this anchor’s stones — and others found nearby at Takashima— are made of two crudely shaped pieces. The anchor for the ship now being excavated dragged in the mud and broke apart where the two stone weights were joined by wood and lashings — a fatal shortcut.
After our dive ends, we get into a discussion on the dock with Kenzo Hayashida. What sank this ship? The anchor is set tight, as if the ship dragged in heavy waves and then broke up. A storm might have sent the ship into the shallows and smashed it into the many pieces the Japanese are recovering. “The question is whether there was one storm,” says Hayashida, or “several centuries of storms.” I get his point. The periodic typhoons that lash this coast sweep into Imari Bay and churn up the seabed. The breakup and scatter of the huge wooden wreck being mapped by the archeologists may be the result of generations of storms, not a single catastrophic kamikaze sent by the gods. The timbers of the vessel also show evidence of burning. Did this ship go to the bottom as a result of a Japanese attack with a straw-filled “fire ship?” The fragmented remains may never reveal all their secrets, but they have already enabled archeologists to refute a few stories. Hayashida, who bases his opinion of just how many wrecks should be on the bottom of the bay from 1281 on years of surveys and the information they provide, firmly believes that the figure of four thousand is a gross exaggeration. “How many ships?” I ask him. “Maybe four hundred,” he answers with a smile.
Over the next week, we make more dives and watch as more artifacts slowly emerge from the mud. Broken timbers from the ship, including the sockets where a mast would have fit into the bottom of the hull; shattered planks; ceramic bowls and pots once filled with provisions; weapons and armor; and personal possessions, like a small delicately cast bronze mirror, are reminders of the individuals behind the myths and the big sweep of history. The personal items and bones are all that remain of the forgotten warriors who came here, on the orders of Kublai Khan, to expand an empire and an emperor’s prestige, and instead met their deaths far from home. I think of all the dead of 1281. And I think of the millions who died later in the 1930s and ’40s, victims of what was, if not a false legend about the kamikaze, then a distorted and exaggerated one that was used to justify the militaristic expansion of a “divine empire” and a brutal war.
CHAPTER NINE
BURIED IN THE HEART OF SAN FRANCISCO
Standing on the Clay Street wharf in San Francisco, Etting Mickle stared at the advancing wall of smoke. Since late the previous evening, he had listened nervously to the roar of flames. The bright glow in the sky, the flying sparks and the hoarse shouts had seemed distant, but now, well into the new day, the wind shifted. With terrifying speed, fire raced across the waterfront.
One block west of where Mickle stood, the ship
Deep inside the excavation, the backhoe carefully pulls back layers of sand. When the scrape of the huge bucket exposes a dark-stained layer, I raise my hand to stop the huge machine and pick up the high-pressure hose. As water washes over the area, sand streams away to reveal ashes, burned wood, melted glass and twisted metal. Tips of charred pilings become visible alongside the fire-scarred planks of
Today, the ship lies 24 feet beneath street level. Lining the construction fence on the streets above are hundreds of spectators drawn to the incongruous spectacle of a ship lying deep in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district. Whether you approach San Francisco by air or sea, or by car across the Bay Bridge, the view is dominated by the high rises of the financial district as they march up from the Embarcadero to the slopes of Telegraph, Nob and Russian hills. The distinctive profile of the Transamerica Pyramid rises above some of the city’s few standing survivors of its youth. The relatively low two- and three-story brick buildings of Jackson Square are the last visible remnants of San Francisco’s infamous “Barbary Coast,” survivors of the 1906 earthquake, fires and urban renewal. They are survivors from another era, perched in the midst of a modern city.
Directly beneath the financial district lies an immense archeological deposit that dates back to the origins of San Francisco during the gold rush. Six major fires and innumerable smaller conflagrations have devastated the city. After the destruction wrought by the fires, entire burnt districts were filled over. The debris of those fires lies buried beneath the modern city. The astonishing collection of items that came to be buried beneath San Francisco attracted comment even during the gold rush. The
Now, I stand watching the high-pressure hose strip away the shroud of mud and sand as history emerges from the buried ashes of a long-ago fire. The oak planks of the ship’s hull are solid, and the wood is bright and fresh. Even more amazing is the stench of burned wood and sour wine rising from the charred debris. A century and a half ago mud, water and sand sealed the wreckage of the ship so perfectly that time has stood still.
The product of the venerable New England seafaring town of Newburyport, Massachusetts,
