End of the Beginning Read online

  “Same to you,” she said. “I used to have it, but it seems to be gone now.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. He’d just got back on his bicycle when air-raid sirens began to wail. When he saw the swarms of American planes tearing up Hickam Field again, he feared Japanese luck in Hawaii was gone now, too.

  FLETCHER ARMITAGE WAS DIGGING an antitank ditch north of Wahiawa when American planes roared by overhead. He wanted to laugh in the face of the worried-looking Jap guard who rode herd on him and his fellow POWs. He wanted to scream, All right, motherfucker! You had it your way for a while. Now see how you like taking it for a change!

  He wanted to, but he didn’t. He didn’t get out of line at all, in fact. The Japs had been jumpy even before those planes came over. Fletch hadn’t known why, but their wind was up. They started beating people up for no reason. If you gave them trouble on purpose, you’d be lucky if they just shot you. They’d probably bayonet you and leave you to die slowly under the hot sun.

  And yet . . . There were a hell of a lot of prisoners and not very many guards. Before, it hadn’t seemed to matter so much. The Japs were top dogs, and they knew it and so did the men they guarded. But if all of a sudden they weren’t guaranteed top dogs any more, an awful lot of Americans owed them plenty—and wanted to pay it back, with interest.

  More fighters and bombers flew by. The noise of explosions not too far away said something—probably Wheeler Field—was catching hell again. Unlike the big, heavy bombers the day before, these planes were coming in low. “Son of a bitch,” Fletch said, staring up. “Son of a bitch.”

  “What is it?” another POW asked.

  “They changed the wing emblem on our planes,” Fletch answered. “They took out the red ball in the middle of the star. When did that happen?” What else had his country done while he wasn’t looking—couldn’t look? All at once, he felt like Robinson Crusoe, trapped on a desert island while the rest of the world went on about its business.

  “No talk!” the closest Jap guard shouted. “Work!”

  Like any POW, Fletch worked no harder than he had to. He doubted he weighed even 110 pounds. He had little strength and less stamina. The Japs didn’t care. A lot of the work they’d had the POWs do was designed more to wear out and destroy men than for serious military reasons.

  No more. Fletch could see how this ditch would slow an armored attack. The mud of the rice paddies wouldn’t help tanks, either. The U.S. Army had done its best to fight when the Japanese invaded. Now the Japs were getting ready to do the same.

  And they’re making me help them, the sons of bitches! Fletch wanted to scream it. Under the Geneva Convention, they weren’t supposed to make him do work like this. Since he was an officer, under the Geneva Convention he wasn’t required to work at all. Did the Japs care? Not even slightly.

  “Work!” the guard yelled again, and bashed somebody in the side of the head with the butt end of his Arisaka. The luckless POW staggered and fell to his hands and knees. The guard kicked him in the ribs, and went on kicking him till he lurched upright once more. Blood running down his cheek, the prisoner dug out another spadeful of earth. He didn’t say a word. Complaining only got you deeper in Dutch. Keeping your head down as much as you could was a hell of a lot smarter.

  It was most of the time, anyhow. Though Fletch obediently dug, he kept looking at that Jap guard out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t the only POW doing that, either—oh, no. Up till now, it had looked as if the Japanese would hang on to Hawaii indefinitely. That being so, you had to go along—at least some—to get along. But if this place would be under new management (or rather, the old management again) pretty soon . . .

  Yeah, you slanty-eyed son of a bitch, I’ll remember your face in my nightmares for the rest of my days. Do you have nightmares now, you bastard? If you don’t, I bet you will pretty soon. Serves you right, too.

  Along with glancing at the guard, Fletch also looked south toward Wahiawa. Jane was still okay. He’d seen her. He knew. Maybe they could patch things up again. If Hawaii returned to the old management, why not? Anything might be possible then, anything at all.

  X

  PLATOON SERGEANT LES DILLON SPENT AS MUCH TIME AS HE COULD ON THEValdosta Liberty’s deck. It was cooler and less cramped there than down below. He went below to eat in the galley—the rule was that no food left it—and to use the heads. He slept down there, too, and played poker. Other than that, no. Besides, when he was below he couldn’t see what was going on.

  His troopship had been zigzagging west and south ever since sailing from San Diego. Other converted freighters and liners—and the destroyers escorting them—filled the Pacific as far as his eye could see. He thought this was a bigger fleet than the one that had sailed and then turned tail the year before. He couldn’t prove it, but it looked that way.

  He was sure the course changes were quicker and more precise than they had been the last time around. When he remarked on that, Dutch Wenzel nodded. “I guess even the swabbies can learn something if you give ’em enough time,” the other platoon sergeant said.

  “Looks like you’re right. Who would’ve believed it?” Les said. They stood only a few feet away from a couple of the Valdosta Liberty’s sailors. The sailors pretended not to hear. If they’d felt like brawling, Les was ready. What would Captain Bradford do to him? Make him miss the invasion? Not likely! The worst they could do to him was to send him in no matter what he did on the way.

  That thought had hardly crossed his mind before the troopship’s loudspeakers crackled to life. “Now hear this!” an exultant voice said. “Now hear this! Our ships have whipped the Japanese Navy, and so we are good to proceed to our destination. Beautiful, romantic Hawaii coming up!”

  The deck exploded in cheers. Sailors and Marines all yelled as if it were going out of style. Les joined in as enthusiastically as anybody else. So did his buddy. People around them were still shouting and screeching when he suddenly sobered. “What are we jumping up and down about?” he said. “We just won the chance to get our heads blown off. Aren’t you glad about that?”

  “Fuckin’-A I am,” Dutch answered. “And so are you, you sandbagging son of a bitch. Otherwise we’d both be gunnies by now.”

  “Well, shit. When you’re right, you’re right,” Les said. He and Wenzel had both turned down the chance for a third rocker under their sergeant’s stripes so they could go along on the failed attack the year before instead of training boots at Camp Pendleton. Then they’d ended up at Pendleton anyhow, still at their old grade. Life was a bitch sometimes.

  The racket from the Valdosta Liberty’s engines got louder. The ship sped up. So did all the others in the invasion fleet. Wenzel grunted. “They don’t want to waste another minute, do they?”

  “Would you?” Les answered. “They’ve wasted a year and a half already, and then some. About time we took Hawaii back. It’s not right for Hotel Street to belong to somebody else, goddammit.”

  “There you go!” Dutch Wenzel laughed. “Now I know what I’m fighting for: cheap pussy and overpriced booze.”

  “Suits me fine,” Dillon said, and Dutch didn’t contradict him.

  As Dillon always did when he was up on deck, he looked out into the ocean to see if he could spot a periscope. The odds were long. In this miserable tub, the odds of being able to dodge if a Jap sub did fire a torpedo were even longer. He knew all that. He looked anyhow. It was like snapping your fingers to keep the elephants away: it couldn’t hurt.

  “Wonder how far from Hawaii we are,” Dutch said.

  “Beats me,” Les answered. “Ain’t a hell of a lot of street signs in this part of the Pacific. We’ll get there when we get there, that’s all.”

  They got there three days later. They must have sailed past the battle between the American and Japanese carrier forces, but not a sign of it remained. The ocean kept its own secrets, kept them and buried them deep.

  As the troopships approached the north coast of Oahu, the batt
lewagons and cruisers and destroyers that had accompanied and escorted the U.S. carriers were giving the landing beaches hell. The boom of the big guns echoed across the water. When the shells roared in, they rearranged the landscape pretty drastically.

  Les watched with enthusiastic approval. “The more they knock the snot out of the Japs, the easier the time we’ll have,” he said.

  Dive bombers took off from the carriers and pummeled what Les presumed to be Japanese positions, too. Their bombs kicked up even more dust and dirt than all that high-caliber artillery. It was, more and more, an aviator’s world. What does that make me? Les wondered when the thought occurred to him. A minute later, he shrugged. It makes me necessary, that’s what. They can blow Hawaii to kingdom come, but I’m the poor, sorry son of a bitch who lands there with a bayonet on the end of his rifle and takes it away from the Japs. Boy, am I lucky!

  He couldn’t even blame his draft board, not when he, like every other Marine, had volunteered. The Army was the place for draftees, and welcome to them.

  In spite of everything U.S. aircraft had done to the island, a few Japanese planes did get off the ground and attacked the fleet. The Hellcats and Wildcats overhead went after them like dogs after marauding wolves, but they made hits, too: here a cruiser, there a troopship. When flames and smoke burst from that other ship full of Marines or dogfaces, Les swore horribly: those were his countrymen getting hurt.

  Here and there along the beach, Japanese field guns fired at the fleet. Shells splashed into the water around the warships. They returned fire. The Japs might have been wiser to stay quiet. When they drew notice to themselves, bigger U.S. guns did their damnedest to smash them flat.

  Somehow, Dutch looked away from the astonishing spectacle ahead. He nudged Les. “Here come the LVIs.”

  That made Les glance back over his shoulder, too. Sure enough, the landing craft—Landing Vehicles, Infantry, in official alphabetese—were coming alongside the Valdosta Liberty, as they were alongside the rest of the troopships, including the one that was on fire. Maybe that was a way to get the men off as fast as possible. Maybe it was more on the order of routine gone mad.

  Whatever it was, Les didn’t have time to worry about it. He nodded to the men with whom he’d be going into battle: mostly kids not old enough to vote, some of them hardly old enough to shave, leavened by a sprinkling of the old breed, veterans like himself. He’d been wondering what to tell them when the moment finally came. Now it was here. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said. “Just like the book, and everything’ll be jake. Right?”

  Their helmeted heads bobbed up and down. Despite the most realistic training the Corps could give, most of them had no idea what being under fire was like. Their big eyes, tight lips, and somber faces said their imaginations were working overtime. Les remembered how scared he’d been when he got up to the line in France. He soon discovered everybody else was just as scared, including the Germans.

  Were the Japs on the beach—and there were bound to be Japs on the beach—scared, too? They were supposed to make the Hun look like a Sunday-school teacher. Could they be scared? Les hoped so, but he wouldn’t have bet anything above a dime on it.

  “My company!” Captain Bradford shouted. “Take to the boats!”

  Marines climbed over the rail and scrambled down nets stretched over the side of the Valdosta Liberty. Men had been moving from ships to boats like that as long as there’d been ships and boats. As far as Les was concerned, there had to be a better way. You could get smashed between ship and boat, you could fall into the water and drown, or you could fall into the boat and break your ankle. None of those helped the country one goddamn bit.

  A couple of men already in the LVI steadied Dillon as he swung down from the net into the landing craft. “We got you, Sarge,” one of them said.

  “Thanks,” Les told him—he was a long way from too proud to be glad for the help. As soon as his own feet were steady on the steel deck plates, he reached up to help other descending Marines. They got everybody into the LVI without seeing anyone hurt. Les hoped that was a good omen. He also knew damn well the record wouldn’t last once they hit the beach.

  Diesel engine belching and farting, the LVI pulled away from the troopship. Another one chugged up to take its place. Along with countless more, it wallowed towards Oahu. Les couldn’t see out; the sides of the boat were too high. All he could see besides those steel walls were other Marines in green dungarees and jackets and camouflage helmet covers like his—and, for variety, the sailors running the LVI, who wore helmets painted battleship gray along with blue dungarees and shirts.

  Even if he couldn’t see out, he knew when the landing craft got close to shore. The American naval barrage fell silent, to keep short rounds from coming down on the LVIs. As soon as the warships’ guns ceased fire, the Japs on shore opened up with everything they had. They’d kept a lot of their weapons quiet after all. Shells and mortar bombs started splashing down among the oncoming boats.

  One burst close to Les’ LVI. Fragments clattered off the boat’s side, but none got through. “Thank you, Jesus,” said a Marine behind the sergeant. Les found himself nodding. He’d never been a churchgoing man, but he wouldn’t turn down anything he could get right now.

  Every now and then, enemy rounds didn’t come down among the American landing craft but on one or another of them. Then it wasn’t splash-blam! but clang-blam! Les winced every time he heard that, the way he would have winced at hearing a drill in a dentist’s office. And the drill might be for him next, depending on what the dentist had to say. And one of those clang-blam!s might be for him next, too, depending on Lord only knew what.

  “Come on, goddammit. Get to the beach, goddammit,” somebody was saying, over and over again. After a bit, Les realized the words were coming out of his own mouth. He wasn’t saying anything everybody else wasn’t thinking.

  The LVI’s bottom grated on sand. It rumbled forward anyway. It wasn’t so amphibious as an amtrac, one of the tractors really designed to work on both land and water, but it could get around a bit when out of its proper element. A couple of swabbies undogged the loading gate. It kicked up a splash when it fell open; the LVI hadn’t quite made it to the tide line.

  “Out! Out! Out!” Captain Bradford screamed. “Spread out and get off the beach as fast as you can! Move!”

  Marines poured from the landing craft. Mortar rounds were bursting on the beach, too, throwing up plumes of golden sand. Machine guns stuttered out death from the undergrowth not nearly far enough away. Japanese tracers were blue-white, not red like their American counterparts. Bullets from those machine guns and enemy rifles kicked up sand spurts, too.

  Men went down. Some of them and their buddies shouted, “Doc! Hey, Doc!” for the Navy corpsmen who served the Marines. Others lay where they had fallen. No medic would help a man blown to hamburger by a mortar bomb. Neither would anything else, not till Judgment Day.

  Les charged past a Japanese soldier sprawled on the ground all bloody with his long-bayoneted rifle beside him. He thought the man was dead—till a shot rang out behind him. He whirled. The round had come from an American rifle. A Marine said, “The son of a bitch was playing possum. I saw him grab for his piece, and I let him have it.”

  “Thanks,” Les said. Had the Jap got a shot off, it would have gone into his back. One of those Japanese blue-white tracers snapped past his head. He threw himself down into a shell hole and fired back, muttering, “Welcome to fucking Hawaii!”

  CORPORAL TAKEO SHIMIZU THOUGHT HE’D KNOWN EVERYTHING war could do. The bombardment from the U.S. Navy ships gathered off the northern beaches of Oahu showed him he was wrong. Just getting to the beaches had been a nightmare. The air attacks his regiment suffered bled it white before it ever reached its positions. And when it did . . .

  If this wasn’t the end of the world, you could see it from here. Shells roared in on the Japanese positions. They sounded like freight trains rumbling across the sky till they got close, w
hen they began to scream. The guns from the destroyers and cruisers were bad enough. When the battleships opened up, you could see the huge shells coming. The earth shuddered when they hit. Fragments screamed and howled. Blast picked you up, flung you around, and slammed you down like a 250-kilo sumo wrestler on a mean drunk.

  As the bombardment went on, men started screaming. Shimizu didn’t blame them. He did some screaming himself, as he had when the bombers came over his barracks. Here and there, soldiers broke and ran away from the beach. Sometimes their own comrades shot them. Sometimes enemy shells took care of it before the Japanese could.

  To add insult to injury, dive bombers roared down and dropped bombs on whatever the shells happened to miss. We did this to the Americans. They fought afterwards, Shimizu thought. We have to do the same. But how? He didn’t dare stick his head up out of the hole where he huddled. Looking at the enemy was asking to be destroyed. Just huddling here was asking to be destroyed.

  When the shelling and bombing paused, Shimizu was too shaken to respond for a moment, or maybe longer than a moment. More slowly than it should have, duty reasserted itself. “My squad!” he sang out. “Are you alive?” He supposed he should have put that better, but it was how he felt.

  “Here, Corporal!” Shiro Wakuzawa called from a nearby foxhole.

  “And me!” Yasuo Furusawa said. A few other men also let Shimizu know they were there. And someone not far away groaned from a wound—a bad one, if the noises he made meant anything.

  That was too bad, but Shimizu had bigger worries on his mind. After things stayed quiet for a little while, he did look out toward the Pacific through the leaves and branches camouflaging his position. “Zakennayo!” he exclaimed.