Rising Sun (5 page)

Lytle gathered them around him. He was reasonably sober now. Perhaps it had something to do with the presence of other and more senior officers.

“Tomorrow we’ll be issued weapons and we’ll start in with physical training and shooting, although it looks like we’ll be getting shit for equipment.”

“It won’t matter much if all we’re gonna do is patrol the beaches,” Stecher muttered.

Lytle continued. If he’d heard the comment, he didn’t let on. “Additionally, there are a lot of Marines in the area, and we’re ordered to steer clear of them so there are no incidents.”

Stecher wanted to go to war, but even a rookie like Farris knew they were in no condition to fight. They were out of shape, poorly trained, and, he had to admit, poorly led, and that included by himself. If they were sent into war now, they would be slaughtered. Hell, even a bar fight with a bunch of Marines would be a one-sided farce. Perhaps it would be best if all they did for a long while was patrol California’s beaches.

CHAPTER 3

THERE WAS LITTLE ROOM FOR A MEETING OF ANY KIND IN A sub, but Merchant, Dane, and Torelli managed to find space in the glorified closet that served as a dining area. When Torelli found that the other two were going to discuss Dane’s experiences as a young man in Japan, he invited himself in. It was, he genially reminded them, his sub. They were running on the surface and fresh air was streaming down the open hatches, trying to make a dent in the accumulated stench.

Dane explained that his father had owned an export-import business mainly dealing with low-priced, often cheaply made, Japanese goods imported into the United States. And, yes, this did include the ridiculous paper parasols that decorated cocktails. His occupation required him to make a number of extended trips to Tokyo and, when Tim was old enough, he scheduled them for the summertime so the boy could go with him. Tim learned Japanese through immersion. His father spoke only Japanese to him during these forays and, to amuse him, taught him how to read it as well.

“Can you write it?” Torelli asked.

“Nope. Never could get those little squiggles in the right order.”

“It’s amazing they can,” said Merchant. “But then, I feel the same way about Arab writing and they probably feel the same way about us. Did you ever speak to any of their military?”

“Yes, sir, and that gets to the point of what I want to say. The first summer I was there, I more or less kept quiet for the first few weeks and just listened to conversations, and some of them were about me since most Japanese didn’t see all that many white people, and especially not a teenager. Diplomats and businessmen sometimes, but kids? Never. The average Japanese living outside the big cities and the commercial areas rarely saw anybody who wasn’t Japanese like them.

“I wasn’t confident enough in my own speaking abilities at first. Then one day I was simply playing the dumb tourist when I heard a bunch of young naval officers talking about me. They never dreamed I could understand them, what with me being an ignorant barbarian and all that, and they were making all kinds of crude comments about the little white boy who doubtless had a tiny white dick. Finally, when I’d had enough, I turned and confronted them. I told them in Japanese that their rudeness was a disgrace to their families and their ancestors. I thought they’d shit they were so shocked.”

Merchant laughed. “I’d have paid money to see that.”

“They actually apologized and after that we became sort of friends. They were delighted to pick the mind of an American and I enjoyed learning about them, even though some of what I found out scared me. Tell me, have either of you heard of the code of bushido?”

Torelli answered. “Code of the warrior or something like that. Kind of medieval, I’ve heard.”

“Right,” said Dane, “but it’s something that many of them, particularly the officers, believe in totally and utterly, no matter how insane it may sound to us. Let me give you an example, because I actually discussed this with them. Say you’re the pilot of a plane and the plane is badly damaged during an attack on enemy ships. You’re not going to make it back to base, so what do you do?”

Torelli laughed. “That’s easy. You look for a place to set down or bail out.”

“Would you surrender?”

“Of course,” Torelli said, puzzled. “I wouldn’t like it, but if that’s the only alternative to a useless death, why not?”

“But they won’t, because they don’t consider such a death useless,” Dane continued. “Surrender is dishonorable and against their definition of the code of bushido. To them, surrender is a disgrace. They and their families would be humiliated. Any man who surrendered would no longer exist. I’ve heard that their pilots don’t even wear parachutes because it’s dishonorable to bail out and try to save one’s life. No, what they said they would do is aim that plane toward an enemy ship or installation and crash into it, finding glory in stupid flaming death. We all at least think we might have to die for our country, but the Japanese will actually search it out to satisfy their warped sense of honor.”

“That’s nuts,” said Torelli.

“By our way of thinking, yes, but not by theirs, and even many of their enlisted men believe that, probably in part because it’s been beaten into them by their officers, and I do mean literally beaten in. In short, they will not surrender. Oh, they’ll reluctantly retreat and regroup and in order to fight again another day, but they won’t surrender. They’ll die and they will try to take as many of us with them as they can. Picture a wounded Japanese infantryman with a hand grenade hidden on his body. Just when an American medic comes up to help him, he pulls the pin and kills everyone around him; thus dying gloriously.”

“And you believed them?” Torelli asked.

“I believe that they believed it sincerely when I spoke with them. Whether they would actually do it, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all. I did talk with a Shinto priest, and he told me that what the military is professing is a radicalized version of bushido in which death is considered a duty. Taking others along with you would be a bonus.”

Merchant took a deep breath. “Dane, to your knowledge, has this craziness happened yet?”

“I don’t know. When we get to San Diego, I’d like to look over some reports. By the way, it’s only the real Japanese who feel that way. They’ve drafted others into their army, like Koreans and Okinawans, who definitely believe in surrender and do not feel bound by the code of bushido. But…they all look alike, don’t they?” he asked wickedly.

“Assuming you’re right, I can see a lot of what we used to call atrocities occurring,” said Merchant. “Nobody’s going to want to take the chance of taking someone prisoner and then having that prisoner try to kill him. They’ll just shoot the Jap son of a bitch and I wouldn’t blame them.”

“There’s more, Captain, and this is just as amazing. Their army and navy hate each other. I mean, we have our rivalries, but they really don’t go all that much farther than the Army-Navy game and a few drunken brawls afterwards. Can you imagine one service jeopardizing the fate of the country because of really intense jealousies? Can you even think of the American Army invading Mexico without telling either President Roosevelt or the navy?”

“Not really,” said Merchant. “In fact, it’s utterly inconceivable, almost as illogical as suicide.”

“But that’s exactly what the Japanese Army did in Manchuria and China, and the Japanese Navy boys I talked with are totally, thoroughly pissed. I’ll bet you a dollar the attack on Pearl Harbor was at least in part a payback for the army’s unannounced move into China.”

Merchant stood up abruptly and bumped his head on a pipe. “Damn it,” he snarled and rubbed his skull. “Dane, when we do get to safety, I want you to write up a report, a paper, on what you learned.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just curious,” Torelli asked, “but did the combination of war and Depression damage your father’s business with the Land of the Rising Sun?”

Dane chuckled. He was very proud of his old man. “Not really. He saw the war coming and sold out a few years ago to a group of Japanese businessmen who probably, hopefully, lost their shirts. He thinks the combination of the war and the Depression is going to cause a real-estate explosion in the United States when the war ends, so he’s buying up vacant properties in areas around major cities. If he’s right and the war doesn’t last beyond 1950 or so, he’ll probably be rich. I’ll be his heir, of course.”

There was a sudden commotion on deck and the conversation was over. Torelli shouted orders as men tumbled down from the conning tower in a well choreographed dance that only looked like chaos. Ships had been spotted on the horizon, and the submarine quickly and quietly slipped under the sea. Ships meant the enemy. There were no American warships in this area of the Pacific. With luck, their low silhouette had not been spotted.

Back in their bunks, they waited, helpless to do anything about the peril they were in. Dane wondered if the air had just gotten staler and hotter, or was it just his imagination. He’d never been claustrophobic, but being prone and helpless in a too-small cot in a sub maybe hundreds of feet under the ocean was a truly frightening experience.

An explosion shook them, rattling everything in the sub. They were being depth charged. Dane wanted to run and ask Torelli what was happening, but that was painfully obvious. The Japanese had somehow spotted them and were attacking.

Another explosion, this one much closer—it almost threw him out of his bunk. He held on tight and the lights went off. For an utterly horrible instant, they were plunged into total darkness. Dane thought they would plunge to the bottom of the Pacific and be there forever, dying slowly, gasping like fish on the floor until the air finally ran out.

After an eternity, the lights flickered and came back on. Someone in the group was screaming and sailors pounced on him, stuffing a rag in his mouth. Dane was shocked to realize that cold water was dripping on him. Were they sinking? His heart began to pound as if it wanted to explode from his chest.

He smelled urine and wondered who’d pissed himself. He checked, and thankfully, it wasn’t him.

Another set of explosions shook them, but these were farther away. Even better, the leak had stopped. After what seemed an eternity, Torelli approached them.

“I think we got away. One of their floatplanes saw us and we were damned lucky. Maybe they thought they got us or maybe they just don’t give a damn. From now on we’ll travel submerged during the day and on the surface only at night. In the meantime, we’ll stay submerged for a couple of hours to make sure the Japs have cleared the area. It may take us a little longer to get to San Diego, but I’d rather be safe than sunk.”

Only Torelli’s eyes betrayed the fact that he was as frightened as they were. He took an obvious deep breath and the fear disappeared. “We identified two
Kongo
-class battleships and two aircraft carriers. We were too far away to get a specific make on them, although one carrier might have been the
Akagi
, but their course said they were headed toward Hawaii. We got off a radio signal, fat lot of good that will do. Hawaii’s got nothing to fight with, at least nothing that flies or floats, and the army in Hawaii will just be a sitting duck. I hate to think what those carrier planes and the battlewagons’ fourteen-inch guns could do to a defenseless city like Honolulu.”

Dane sagged back on his too-small bunk and thought about the Japanese flotilla headed toward Hawaii. What would happen to the people in paradise, he wondered? What would happen to Amanda Mallard?

* * *

Amanda and her roommates cowered amid other tenants and passersby in the basement of their two-story frame apartment building while waves of Japanese planes flew over Honolulu and Pearl Harbor.

“There can’t be much left to bomb,” said Grace Renkowski. At thirty-five, she was the oldest of the three roommates. The Japanese planes had been overhead almost constantly since morning. Hawaii was almost defenseless, little more than a punching bag. When the attacks began, they’d watched as a handful of American planes rose to meet the Japanese horde. They’d been saddened and sickened as the brave American pilots had their planes blown from the sky by Japanese Zeros that seemed to dance among them. There were few parachutes and those that did blossom were attacked by the Japanese and shredded, the pilots falling to their deaths.

“Why don’t we have any good planes!” lamented Sandy Watson, the other roommate. She was twenty-three and, like the others, a civilian contract nurse.

Or good leaders, Amanda thought. Somebody should go to jail for this litany of disasters. Why weren’t we prepared when the first attack on Pearl Harbor occurred? She’d been in bed on December 7th after a normal Saturday evening dancing with young officers. She’d awakened to the explosions and the improbable fact that Pearl Harbor was being attacked and the fleet slaughtered before her eyes. Why did so many good young men have to be killed and wounded before somebody woke up to the fact that the Japs wanted to kill us? And now it was even worse and not very likely to change.

The explosions changed in volume. One of the older men in the basement with them nodded solemnly. “Those aren’t bombs, girlies, those are shells. The damned Japs are close enough to shoot at us with their ships.”

Normally, Amanda would have resented being called a girlie, but this was too serious for trivialities. If Japanese warships were close enough to shoot at land-based targets, would the Japanese soon be landing troops? God help them if this was the invasion they all feared and anticipated.

After half an hour, there was silence. The all clear sounded, and they left their shelter and went outside. The area around her apartment was largely untouched, although a few small fires burned and were being attacked by neighbors with brooms and buckets. The old man explained that the fires were probably caused by American shells being shot into the air and coming down on something flammable. The harbor was again in flames as the giant fuel tanks that provided oil, the lifeblood of the fleet, sent enormous clouds of black smoke billowing thousands of feet into the sky. The only good news was that there didn’t appear to be a Japanese landing force approaching the shore.