Voyages of the Seventh Carrier

by Peter Albano

  Bernstein spoke up for the first time. “But, sir, we need ours for enciphering and deciphering.”

  “I know, colonel.”

  “And, sir, with your permission, I will make a trip to the Israeli Embassy to pick up our new encryption box.”

  The old admiral drummed on the desk. “Take a dozen seaman guards.”

  “Sir,” Kawamoto said. “With sixteen machine gun posts, two hundred guards, five hundred men repairing damaged compartments, and three hundred men on liberty —”

  “Only three hundred?”

  “Yes, admiral, the other four hundred men in the section refused to go ashore.” Fujita smiled as Kawamoto continued. “We do not have the men to spare.”

  “Sir,” Matsuhara spoke up. “I can serve as a guard for the colonel. Lt. Tetsu Takamura and NAP first class Kojima are doing an excellent job with the new pilots at Tokyo International and Kasumigaura.”

  “The CAP?”

  “I am not scheduled to fly until Monday, sir.”

  “And you, Ensign Ross?”

  “I would be happy to serve as a guard, admiral.” Brent felt a wave of joy at the prospect of seeing Sarah Aranson. He managed an impassive look as Bernstein grinned at him.

  Fujita glanced at the clock. “Gentlemen, the Son of Heaven expects me at sixteen hundred hours.”

  “Banzai! Banzai!”

  “I must prepare myself.” Hands on the table, the little old man pushed himself to his feet. “You may return to your duties.”

  *

  Brent could feel the excitement when the admiral left Yonaga. Standing at attention between Mark Allen and Irving Bernstein in front of rank after rank of officers and men, all in dress blues, Brent watched with pride as the little admiral walked stiffly past. Only on one other occasion, when Admiral Fujita made his first call on Emperor Hirohito in December — the only time he had left the carrier in over forty years — had Brent seen the old man dressed so splendidly. He was resplendent in a single-breasted blue tunic with stand-up collar and slash pockets, hook and eye fastening in front. Rich black lace trimmed the top and front edge of the collar and the front and skirt of the tunic as well as the pockets. More heavy folds of lace layered on the cuffs designated admiral’s rank. Shoulder straps with four cherry blossoms and four more on his gold-braided peaked cap also identified flag rank. His long sword hung from his left side and his tiny hand pushed down firmly, holding the blade at the precise parade-ground angle.

  “Nineteen-forty,” Allen whispered into Brent’s ear. “That uniform is vintage 1940.”

  As the old man reached the top of the ladder, 200 booted heels snapped together as seaman guards in dress blues and flat hats presented arms. Then the tweet and squeal of boatswains’ pipes, the low beat of ruffles as a pair of drummers working their sticks like distant thunder were joined by the flourishes of a quartet of trumpeters whose instruments blasted so close to Brent’s ear that he winced.

  Before stepping on the ladder, the admiral exchanged salutes with the officer on the deck and then saluted the colors. Then led by two guards and followed by two more, the old man walked slowly, stiffly, and unaided down the ladder to a waiting limousine with imperial logos on its sides.

  As the limousine pulled away, it was led by a Tokyo police car and followed by another with red and amber lights flashing. But before the entourage had passed the demolished gatehouse, two Nambu armed jeeps with four of Yonaga’s guards in each joined the escort, one leading, the other following.

  There was thunder in Yonaga as thousands of boots struck the deck, and the blue-clad side party’s cheers were joined by those of hundreds of deckhands and AA gunners who stood by their weapons screaming, “Banzai Fujita!” and waving their helmets. As the limousine vanished into the maze of warehouses and buildings, the cheering faded and the ranks melted away.

  “Brent,” Mark Allen said. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” The ensign followed the admiral to his cabin.

  *

  Befitting his rank, the admiral’s cabin was much larger than the ensign’s with a large oak desk, wide bunk with a real American mattress instead of a flat pad, two upholstered chairs, two telephones, maps of the Pacific and Indian oceans on one bulkhead, the youthful Hirohito astride the usual white horse on another, and the inevitable maze of pipes and conduits overhead.

  Sitting at his desk and toying with a pencil, Mark Allen opened the conversation. “I’ll pick up our new encryption box Monday. You know we’re having trouble breaking that new Arab cipher.”

  “Scimitar Three?” Brent said from his chair facing the desk.

  Allen nodded. “Yes. It’s a bitch.”

  “But, sir, the boys in Washington with the main frame, Micro-Vac fourteen hundred, can chew on it. Our CBC sixteens don’t have the capacity.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon I have been given permission to access Micro-Vac fourteen hundred on our new optical-fiber data link from NIS Tokyo from thirteen hundred hours to eighteen hundred hours.”

  “You’ll need me?”

  “No, Brent. You’d better go with Bernstein. I have cryptographers Pierson and Herrera. They’re competent. Any more cooks would get into each other’s way.” He drummed the pencil. “Pierson has some good ideas on coding sequences and coding keys he picked up from a scrap of plain text. Now we can throw out the garbage and use our old program for Scimitar Two, load our variable sets —”

  “But, sir, you only have five hours.”

  “I know. But, I believe fourteen hundred can chew through it in our allotted time.” He dropped the pencil. Brent saw the clouded look on the older man’s face and knew there was much more than ciphers troubling him. “Brent,” he said, looking up. “Admiral Fujita is a strong influence — on all of us.”

  “Of course, sir. He’s our commanding officer.”

  “With some of us, Brent, he commands more than just military obedience.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Allen picked up the pencil and drummed the eraser. “He has an insidious way of penetrating and controlling men such I have never seen before. He’s a Svengali — I’ve felt it. And you saw the men when he left. That was more than loyalty, more than love, that was allegiance to a deity.”

  “The same thing they feel for their emperor.”

  “Yes. They call it kakutai.”

  “My father talked about kakutai, admiral. The emperor and Japan are one. In fact, they believe the national essence is embodied in Hirohito. Correct?”

  “That’s right, Brent. But his men had added Fujita to the equation.”

  The young man nodded, mind moving ahead of the admiral’s. “And you think I might be slipping into the same pattern of thinking.”

  The blunt statement surprised the admiral. He recovered quickly. “You beheaded a man.”

  “Yes.”

  “I blame myself. I should’ve been there.”

  “It would have made no difference.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “It was the right thing to do.”

  “Not in Kansas City.”

  “We’re not in Kansas City, admiral.”

  “No. But we bring it with us.”

  Brent knuckled his forehead, felt perspiration. “I can’t understand my actions. I can only tell you it seemed right at that moment.”

  “You were commanded?”

  Brent punched the armrest. “Admiral! Please. This is not the third degree.”

  “Answer my question, ensign.”

  The younger man’s breath exploded in a deep sigh. “Yes. By Admiral Fujita. But you must understand, Konoye pleaded, begged. He was convinced I was the only instrument that could restore his lost face — deliver the coup de grace as he believed I should have on the hangar deck.”

  “Yes, Brent, I can understand the samurai’s mind. You know I grew up in Japan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But I’m concerned about you, Brent. You can’t take their values back h
ome with you.”

  “I don’t intend to, sir.”

  “You killed the woman.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you feel sorry?”

  “No.”

  “Elated?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  Brent came erect. “Sir, I’ve killed two Sabbah, one with my hands, the other with a pistol. You weren’t concerned then.”

  “You were angry.”

  “And scared, admiral.”

  “But with Kathryn Suzuki you were nothing.”

  The young man threw his head back and stared at the pipes overhead. “I felt anger and fear when the truck charged us, admiral.”

  The eraser moved across the desktop making a large X. “But when you had her forehead in the sights of your Otsu — when you squeezed off that round, what did you feel?”

  The big, clear blue eyes found the admiral, and the two men stared at each other in silence. Brent spoke slowly. “I felt the same emotion I feel when I step on a cockroach.”

  *

  When Admiral Fujita returned aboard, the expected staff meeting did not materialize. Instead, Brent was resting on his bunk, hands clasped behind his head, wondering about his words with Admiral Allen and the strange, sometimes unbelievable things he had experienced in the past six months. He remembered long ago, when he had first met Admiral Fujita, the admiral had told him how highly he had respected his father, Ted “Trigger” Ross. How Trigger had taken his own life. Died like a samurai.

  The young man stirred uneasily. Was there some of the samurai in all fighting men? Had Bushido merely codified the feelings and conduct of all men who put on uniforms and picked up arms? Certainly, if asked, he was sure Admiral Fujita would make that claim. Yet, the samurai was more dedicated, formal, and sought death eagerly and joyously. He wasn’t taught that at Annapolis.

  He punched the thin mattress. But he had thought that way — fallen into their pattern that day in the Shrine of Infinite Salvation when Commander Konoye bared his neck. He remembered the moment of impact. Fujita’s shouted command. And the feeling of joy — of completion, and of a great void in his life which had been suddenly filled. Filled with what?

  Cursing, he sat up as Fujita’s voice suddenly interrupted. Tinny on the speaker, it was still forceful.

  “Men of Yonaga, I have met with the Son of Heaven, and he is pleased with Yonaga.”

  Because Fujita held the Maritime Self-Defense Force in contempt, considered the Diet a zoo peopled with monkeys, he answered only to the emperor. Only the emperor’s orders would be obeyed. And obviously, the old admiral was pleased with what he had heard in the imperial chambers.

  “His Majesty said only Yonaga stands between Japan and her enemies. He has ordered us to do the thing we all knew had to be done — meet our enemies who are gathering now on the other side of the world and destroy them. With the support of the gods from which the mikado has descended, we cannot fail.” There was a pause and the voice began to sing. “Corpses drifting swollen…”

  Brent recognized the old anthem Kamigayo — the song the crew sang before going into battle in the Mediterranean. And thousands of voices joined, pouring through the vents, the door, the steel itself. The ensign sang along with the few words and phrases he remembered.

  “…in the sea depths, corpses rotting in the mountain grass. We shall die, we shall die for the emperor. We shall never look back.” The speaker snapped off amongst the shouts of “banzai!” and the stomping of boots. Then silence.

  Brent sank back, hands again behind his head. “Definitely not ‘Anchors Aweigh,’” he said to himself. Then he laughed. And laughed. And for a long time he could not control it. When he finally stopped, he was weak and tears had streaked his cheeks. He rolled over, eyes wide open, staring at the bulkhead where Konoye’s sword rested on a pair of brackets.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Because Col. Irving Bernstein had had five years of duty at the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo, he drove the unmarked Mitsubishi staff car to the capital from Yokosuka — a journey of about thirty miles — with Commander Matsuhara at his side and Ensign Ross in the back seat. All three men carried Otsus concealed in shoulder holsters.

  “If Mitsubishi built this sedan as well as the A six M two, she should outmaneuver every car on the road,” Matsuhara quipped in a rare display of humor.

  Bernstein and Ross were pleased with the flyer’s good spirits. Although Matsuhara had indicated his intention to split his time between Yonaga and Tokyo International Airport, he had managed to delay going ashore, sending his wingmen and most trusted fighter pilots, Tetsu Takamura and Hitoshi Kojima, to the airfield to coordinate training. Bomber training was under the old reliable bomber leader, Commander Yamabushi who had moved his staff to Kasumigaura.

  “You will have enough pilots and machines?” Bernstein asked as he wheeled the small sedan through the outskirts of Kawasaki onto a broad expressway.

  “Yes, Colonel, Takamura and Kojima report more volunteers and machines than we can handle.”

  “Are you receiving new aircraft?” Brent asked.

  “A few, but most are old, rebuilt machines.”

  “Engines?”

  “Nakajima has delivered a half-dozen new twelve hundred horse-power Sakaes.”

  “Is that all? What will you do for engines?”

  “You must remember Yonaga was built to operate one hundred and fifty-three aircraft.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” Brent said.

  Matsuhara smiled. “Every aircraft on the ship was designed to use the Nakajima Sakae twelve engine. Each aircraft was backed up with a spare engine.”

  “Then, originally, you had one hundred fifty-three spare engines in your holds.”

  “We still do.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Whenever an engine was pulled, it was sent to the shops, rebuilt and placed in storage. We still have one hundred fifty-three Sakae twelves. We will have no problems with engines.”

  As the small car approached the great sprawl of Tokyo, Yoshi fell silent, staring wide-eyed at the tall concrete buildings, wide highways, and crowded commuter trains that flashed by at one hundred miles an hour speeds on a right-of-way that paralleled the road.

  “Sacred Buddha, what has happened to Japan?” the flyer asked himself.

  “It’s been over forty years for you,” Irving Bernstein remarked.

  “Yes. That is correct.” He looked around. “A different world.” He turned to the driver. “You will pass through the Shimbashi?”

  “That’s the district south of the palace, near the harbor?”

  “Yes. My home was there. Just a kilometer from the Sumida River.”

  Brent felt uneasy, knowing the story of the great fire raid of 1945 and the devastation of the entire area surrounding the harbor. Even the imperial palace had flared up in the great fire storm.

  “We’ll stay on this road, the Aoyami-Dori, until we reach the Kasuga-Dori and then north to the Bunkyo-Ku District. The Israeli Embassy is just north of the Koishikawa Botanical Gardens,” Bernstein said.

  “There are so many cars!”

  “Hah! There’s a fuel shortage. You should’ve seen this place before the oil embargo — we’d be crawling.”

  Matsuhara waved to the north. “Those buildings — I saw New York City once when I was a boy. Now we have the same.”

  “True. Eleven million people live here, Commander. Those towers are the Keijo Plaza Hotel, Center Building, Nomena Building, the Sumitomo Building, and over there, the World Trade Center and more I don’t remember.”

  The pilot pivoted his head to the south. “From my home I could see Fuji-san.”

  “Smog,” Brent said bitterly. “It plagues the world. It would be much worse if we weren’t short of oil.”

  The car climbed a low hill and swung to the left as Bernstein entered the Kasuga-Dori.

  “I can see the harbor,” Matsuhara shouted, pointing. “My hom
e was over there!” His voice thickened. “My wife Sumiko, sons Masahei and Hisaya —” Choking, he turned away from his companions. A tense silence gripped the men.

  Brent broke it. “When I debriefed you, Yoshi, you said you had an uncle, aunt, and three cousins living in Beppu on Kyushu.”

  “Do not patronize me, ensign!”

  “Commander,” Brent retorted. “I’m not patronizing anyone. You do have roots. All of you have roots here. Why cut them off? We all regret the losses you have had to that war and to time itself. We had ours, too.”

  “I do not need the lecture, Brent.” The voice was hoarse, but not hostile. Brent remembered their first meeting; the distilled hatred Matsuhara vented — a malevolence to match Konoye’s. But, thankfully, as they put their lives on the line, side by side, the antagonism faded, replaced by mutual respect, and finally there had been flashes of genuine friendship. Brent knew the commander was exercising care in his choice of words.

  “Perhaps,” Matsuhara continued. “When we have finished with Kadafi, I will find them. And there are probably many more cousins and second cousins by now.”

  “Koishikawa Botanical Gardens,” Bernstein sang out, wheeling the car off the thoroughfare onto a side road.

  After skirting the eastern edge of the sylvan grounds, dense with blossoming cherry trees, elm, birch, and pine, interspersed with streams, ponds, and beds of gaily blooming flowers, Bernstein turned right on a narrow road and stopped in front of a low concrete, fortresslike building. “Here we are,” he announced, reaching for the door handle. “Time to go to work.”

  But only thoughts of Sarah Aranson filled Brent’s mind as he slammed the door. His step was light as he followed Bernstein and Matsuhara up the long walk.

  *

  She was more beautiful than he had remembered. Standing tall in the middle of the office, she was the soldier in her khaki shirt and tight slacks, but the irrepressible female was there, too: pointed breasts peaking under the shirt, rounded buttocks outlined by the tight-fitting pants. The well-formed nose and perfect flesh covering the high cheekbones were tanned, showing a conspiracy of new white lines at the corners of the brown eyes that were soft and warm as they probed Brent’s with a long look that brought his heart to his throat. Nevertheless, the female did not exclude the soldier — a presence that was more than khaki. There was steel in her spine, and the hard metal glinted deep in her eyes — a look that told all: “I am a soldier! I am an equal!” Brent had believed the arcane male camaraderie of war was a bond that could never be shared by a woman or anything female. But as Sarah had told him so long ago, she was an Israeli, and Israeli women learned to fight alongside their men.