End of the Beginning Read online

  “Plenty of people would,” Kita said. “They want to forget they ever heard of Japan or the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Opportunists.” He laced the word with scorn. “They probably have American flags in their closets, waiting to come out when the time is right.”

  “I’m still here,” Jiro said, reflecting that both his sons thought him an idiot for clinging to the land where he was born. His still being here prompted another thought. “Please excuse me, Kita-san, but where is Chancellor Morimura?”

  “Somewhere up at the fighting front,” Kita answered. Jiro blinked; the skinny official with the doelike eyes hardly seemed a military man. But the consul went on, “I have learned he is a graduate of Eta Jima, invalided out of the Navy because of stomach trouble. He went into, ah, other work after that. Now, though, with every man needed to hold back the Americans, he has returned to the warrior’s life.”

  Tadashi Morimura—was that even his real name?—a graduate of the Japanese naval academy? Jiro had trouble imagining it, let alone believing it. But it was plainly true. And what “other work” had Morimura been doing? By the way Consul Kita said it, the man had been a spy. “I’m—amazed, Kita-san,” Jiro said.

  “So was I,” Kita answered. “You think you know someone, and then you find you didn’t know him at all.” He shrugged. “Shigata ga nai.”

  “Hai.” Jiro nodded. He’d thought Morimura a friend, not an operative. Things looked clearer than they had. No wonder Chancellor Morimura had introduced him to Osami Murata. He’d wanted the radio man from Tokyo to use Jiro as a propaganda tool. And he’d got what he wanted.

  If I saw Morimura now, I’d punch him in the nose, Jiro thought. He laughed at himself, even here. The younger man would probably mop the floor with him. He shrugged. Well, so what? Sometimes you have to do things like that, just to show you’re no man’s puppet. He felt as if he wore strings on his wrists and ankles.

  Nagao Kita might have been reading his mind. “I am sorry to have to tell you this, Takahashi-san,” he said. “I fear it will make you less likely to stay loyal to the end.”

  He was right to fear that, too. But Jiro said only, “I’ve come this far. I can’t very well jump out of the boat now.” It’s too late. It wouldn’t do me any good. Because he had the consul at a momentary disadvantage, he felt he could ask, “How does the fighting look?”

  “They push us back,” Kita answered bleakly. “We fight with great courage, shouting the Emperor’s name and wishing him ten thousand years. For all we do, though, they rule the skies, and they have more tanks and artillery.”

  “This is not good,” Jiro said.

  “Honto. This is not good,” the consul agreed. “I don’t know what we can do about it, though, except die gloriously, not retreating even a centimeter, dying rather than yielding the ground we have conquered.”

  That did sound glorious. It also sounded like a recipe for defeat. Modern Japan had never been defeated in a foreign war. She’d beaten China and Russia. She’d sided with the Allies in World War I, and beaten Germany in China and on the seas. The idea that she could lose was unimaginable—except that Jiro had to imagine it. He asked, “What will you do, Kita-san, if, if—the worst happens?”

  “I am a diplomat. The rules for me are different from the ones for soldiers,” Kita replied. “I can be exchanged.”

  Jiro had an inspiration. “I am a Japanese national. Can I be exchanged, too?” If Hawaii returned to American hands, he wouldn’t want to stay here. Most people would hate him for siding with Japan. They might do worse than hate him. They might decide he was a traitor and hang him or shoot him.

  Consul Kita looked surprised. “Well, I don’t know, Takahashi-san. I would have to do something like put you on my staff, I suppose.”

  “Could you?” Jiro asked eagerly. Going back to Japan would mean leaving his sons behind. He knew that. But Hiroshi and Kenzo had their own lives. And they were Americans, as much as he remained Japanese. They might be glad to see him go. They’d probably be relieved if he did.

  “Depend on it.” Kita scribbled a note to himself. “We will go on hoping that black day does not come. But if it should, we will see what we can arrange.”

  “Domo arigato, Kita-san.” Jiro bowed in his chair. There was one thing he wouldn’t have to worry about. Of course, he still might get killed, but that didn’t bother him the same way. It wasn’t certain, and he couldn’t do anything about it one way or the other. If Japan lost, though, American vengeance was as sure as tomorrow’s sunrise. Now he’d done what he could to escape it.

  WHEN MINORU GENDA PEDALED OVER TO IOLANI PALACE, something had changed. He needed a moment to realize what it was: the big, tough-looking Hawaiian soldiers who’d guarded the bottom of the stairway up to the front entrance were gone. He asked one of the Japanese guards at the top of the stairs what had happened to them.

  “Sir, King Stanley sent them up to the front.” The noncom’s tone made it plain he had nothing to do with anything his superiors did. “He sent the whole Hawaiian Army to the front.”

  The whole Hawaiian Army had about a battalion’s worth of men. “Did he?” Genda said. “Our officers approved it?”

  “Sir, would those Hawaiians be there if they hadn’t?” the noncom asked reasonably.

  “I suppose not.” Genda still had doubts, but he wasn’t about to discuss them with an underofficer. The occupying authorities had let King Stanley Laanui form an army of sorts because they’d nominally restored Hawaii’s independence, and independent countries always had armies—of sorts. At the time, nobody—doubtless including King Stanley—had imagined the Hawaiian Army might actually have to fight.

  For that matter, nobody knew which side it would choose to fight on. Did the soldiers think of themselves as Hawaiians, loyal to the ancient kingdom, or as Americans on masquerade? Were there some who felt each way? If there were, the tiny army might have its own tiny civil war.

  If it did that while it was holding some of the line . . . well, what followed wouldn’t be pretty. And yet the Japanese officers who presumably knew it best had let it go forward. Genda hoped they knew what they were doing. Too late to change it now, either way.

  His ankle didn’t bother him too much when he went up the stairs to the library. He’d interviewed Stanley Laanui there, along with other possible candidates for the revived Hawaiian throne. Now the room again belonged to a distant relative of David Kalakaua, the King of Hawaii who’d had it built.

  Seen from the front, the enormous Victorian desk behind which King Stanley sat seemed wide as Akagi’s flight deck. Poor Akagi! For a moment, pain for Genda’s lost ship stabbed at him, dagger-sharp. He bowed to the king, not least to make sure his face didn’t show what he was thinking. “Your Majesty,” he murmured.

  “Hello, Commander. Nice of you to come to see me for a change.” Stanley Laanui slurred the words so Genda had trouble understanding them. Was he drunk this early in the morning? Whether he was or not, he alarmed the Japanese officer. Did he know about Genda’s visits to Queen Cynthia? If he did, what did he aim to do about them? If he kept a pistol as well as a bottle in one of those drawers . . . But the not very kingly King of Hawaii went on, “This Captain Iwabuchi is a lot nastier than General Yamashita ever was.”

  Genda believed that. The commandant of the special naval landing forces struck him as hard and determined even by Japanese standards. “I am so sorry, your Majesty,” Genda said. “You know he has many worries.”

  “Like I don’t!” the king exclaimed. “They won’t hang Iwabuchi if our side loses.”

  He was bound to have that right. Genda couldn’t imagine the Japanese naval officer letting himself be captured. Iwabuchi would surely die in battle or commit seppuku before permitting such a disgrace. “Do not be hard on him,” Genda said. “Remember, he helps defend your country.”

  “Oh, yeah,” King Stanley said. “He’ll defend it till everybody in Honolulu’s dead.”

  Genda had no doubt Captain Iwabuchi
intended to defend Honolulu just that way. “This is war, your Majesty,” he said—use was making his English more and more fluent. “This is not a game. We cannot stop and ask to begin again. It goes to the end, whatever the end may be.”

  “If I’d figured the Americans were coming back, I don’t know that I would have let you stick a crown on my noggin,” Stanley Laanui said.

  “Believe me, your Majesty, I do not want the Americans here any more than you do,” Genda said. “Japan does all it can to beat them.”

  “Hawaii’s doing everything it can, too,” the king said. “That’s why I sent my army up to join the fighting.”

  “Hai,” Genda said, and not another word. Any other word might have been too much. But after a moment he did find a few that seemed safe: “I hope the Army will fight strongly for us.”

  “Why shouldn’t it?” the king asked.

  Genda said nothing. The question had too many answers—because the soldiers might not be loyal to the King of Hawaii, because they didn’t have all the weapons they needed to fight first-rate foes like the U.S. Marines and Army, because they had no combat experience, because some of them were either cutthroats or men looking for enough to eat and not really warriors at all. They’d all been trained since they joined up, but how much did that mean?

  Only one way to find out. By now they’d be up near the line. Whatever Japanese officer they reported to would use them. Why not? They would surely kill some Americans. If they died themselves, even in swarms, so what? Better them than precious, irreplaceable Japanese troops.

  King Stanley was doing his best to act like a proper ally. Genda admired him for that. He also pitied him. Japan didn’t want a proper ally here in Hawaii, any more than she wanted proper allies in any of the countries she’d conquered. She wanted puppets who would deliver natural resources and do as they were told.

  Hawaii had no natural resources to speak of. Sugar? Pineapple? Neither would have been worth a single Japanese soldier or sailor. Hawaii’s position was its natural resource. Under the Rising Sun, it shielded everything farther west and made it hard for the USA to help Australia and New Zealand. Under the Stars and Stripes, it was a spearhead aimed straight at the rest of the Japanese Empire.

  It behooved Japan to hold on to Hawaii as long as she could, then. How long that would be . . . “We will all do the best we can, your Majesty,” Genda said.

  “How good is that?” King Stanley demanded. “You can hear the American guns off to the north. Sounds like they come closer every day, too. You don’t see anything but American planes any more. They shoot up anything that moves. They’ve damn near killed me two, three times by now. How can you stop them, Commander? Answer me that, please. Answer me that.”

  “We will do the best we can,” Genda repeated. “We have more courage than the enemy does.” He believed that was true, even if the Marines were not to be despised.

  The king looked at him. “What difference does courage make if they drop bombs on your head and you can’t do anything about it?”

  “Well . . .” The question was too much to the point. Genda found he had no answer. He feared none of his superiors did, either.

  XII

  LES DILLON HAD ALREADY DISCOVERED THAT SOME OF THE JAPS FIGHTING THE Marines carried Springfields, not Arisakas. That made sense; after the Army threw in the sponge here, it must have handed over a zillion rifles, plus the ammo to shoot them for a zillion years. But it made him have a harder time telling by ear who was shooting at whom.

  That was doubly dangerous right now, because the enemy in front of his platoon didn’t seem to be Japs at all. They spoke English as well as half the Marines, and they wore what looked like U.S. Army khaki, not the darker shade Japan preferred.

  He wasn’t the only one who’d noticed, either. “Who are you guys?” a Marine yelled through the racket of gunfire.

  The answer came back at once: “Royal Hawaiian Army! Get the fuck off our land, haole asshole!” A burst from a machine gun punctuated the words.

  Royal Hawaiian Army? Les blinked. He knew the Japs had given Hawaii a puppet king. He hadn’t known—he hadn’t dreamt—anybody besides the Japs took the King of Hawaii seriously. Not sticking his head up, he called, “Why aren’t you people on our side, not the enemy’s?”

  That got him another burst. He’d been smart to keep low—tracers went right over his foxhole. Whoever was handling that gun knew what to do with it. “Japan never took our land away from us! Japan never took our country away from us!” another Hawaiian shouted. “The USA sure as hell did!”

  Yeah, but that was a long time ago. The words died unspoken on Les’ lips. It might seem a long time ago to him. To the noisy bastard on the other side of the line, it wasn’t even the day before yesterday. For that matter, you couldn’t talk about the Civil War with a lot of Southerners—Captain Bradford included. It wasn’t the Civil War to them, either. It was the War Between the States . . . or, if they’d been drinking for a while, the War of Damnyankee Aggression. Whatever you called it, it happened long before Hawaii joined—or was joined to—the United States.

  He tried another tack: “Why fight now, for Chrissake? You can’t win, and you’ll just get shot.” He knew damn well the Japs wouldn’t surrender. He’d seen them fight to the death in hopeless positions too many times to have any doubts on that score. But maybe the Hawaiians were different. If he could do things on the cheap instead of putting his one and only irreplaceable ass on the line, he would, and gladly.

  No words came back this time. One more burst of machine-gun fire did. Whatever the men in front of him had in mind, surrender wasn’t it. He muttered to himself. Sooner or later, he’d find out what those bastards in old-fashioned khaki were worth.

  It turned out to be sooner. Not long after dark fell, a runner brought word that the Marines would go forward the next morning, half an hour after sunrise. Les almost opened fire before the man stammered out the countersign to his hissed challenge. When he got the news instead, he half way wished he had shot the fellow.

  He lay in his foxhole, trying to grab whatever uneasy sleep he could. That wasn’t much. Little firefights kept breaking out all along the line. Maybe the Hawaiians knew something was up, or maybe they just wanted to prove they had balls. He would have been happy to take it on faith.

  The U.S. barrage started as soon as morning twilight painted the eastern sky gray. Volley after volley of 105s crashed down on the enemy positions in front of Les and his buddies. Mortar bombs added to the weight of flying metal. He’d seen heavier bombardments in the last war, but this was plenty to cut a man into screaming hamburger if he stood up in it—and maybe if he didn’t, too. The Royal Hawaiian Army wouldn’t have faced artillery fire before. He wondered how the Hawaiians liked it.

  Under cover of the booming guns, half a dozen Shermans clanked up toward the line. Les was glad to see the big, ugly iron monsters. They could clear out the strongpoints that survived the artillery—and some always did. And they drew enemy fire, too. Infantrymen always aimed small-arms fire at tanks. Les didn’t know why—rifle and machine-gun bullets couldn’t penetrate armor plate. But he’d seen it again and again. If the Hawaiians were shooting at the Shermans, they wouldn’t be shooting at him so much. He approved of that. Oh, yes. He approved of that very much indeed.

  His belly knotted as soon as the 105s fell silent. He knew what was coming next. And it came. Captain Bradford yelled, “Come on, men! Up out of your holes! Follow me!”

  Grunting, Les scrambled out of his foxhole and ran forward. He bent over. He zigged and zagged. He knew none of that would do him a damn bit of good if the bullet with his name on it was out there flying. A Boche machine gunner had taught him that lesson once and for all time in 1918, and he still had the puckered scars to prove it.

  Bullets cracked past him. The Hawaiians weren’t dead, and they weren’t paralyzed, either. Too fucking bad, he thought. When you heard a crack, a round came much too close. He ducked automatically whenever he
did hear one. He’d been ashamed of that till he saw everybody else did it, too, which sure hadn’t taken long.

  He’d fought in trenches before, in 1918 and here. That was the worst war had to offer. The Germans had been tough. The Japs here were even worse, because they didn’t give up and they kept coming at you till they were dead or you were. So he had standards of comparison. The fifteen or twenty minutes till the Marines killed the last man from the Royal Hawaiian Army were the worst minutes of his life—even worse than the time Cindy Lou Callahan’s father caught them in bed together and ran for his shotgun, which went a long way towards explaining how and why Les joined the Marines.

  The Hawaiians wouldn’t give up, either. They wouldn’t retreat. They didn’t just stay in place and die. They kept making countercharges at the Marines, screaming and swearing and throwing grenades. Like anybody who’d done any fighting, Les vastly preferred bullets to his bayonet. The bayonet got blood on it in those trenches. So did his Kabar. So did the butt end of his rifle. He killed one bastard with his bare hands in an animal tangle of flying arms and legs. If he hadn’t tucked his chin down tight to his chest, the enemy soldier might have broken his neck instead of the other way round.

  Afterwards—but only afterwards, when the red madness of battle eased—he wondered why the Hawaiians sold their lives so dear. Did they think the USA would hang them for traitors and they had nothing to lose? Did they really hate Americans? Or were they simply as much caught up in the madness as the men who faced them? He couldn’t even ask a prisoner afterwards. There were no prisoners. Like Napoleon’s guards, like the Japanese who’d given them guns, the men from the Royal Hawaiian Army died but did not surrender.

  Once the last of them had died, Les Dillon squatted in a muddy trench and lit a cigarette. He’d just finished bandaging a Marine’s leg. He hoped the man wasn’t hamstrung. All he could do was hope; he was no corpsman. Another Marine who’d also come through unhurt stared at him from about ten feet away. He too had a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Fuck,” he said, and then again: “Fuck.”