1945

by Robert Conroy

Paul was not consoled. "I should have used the tank sooner."

  Perhaps you should have, Monck thought. But that was hindsight. Paul had fought the battle and won it. He was the one who had to make the decisions and not anyone else. He had done what he had to and done it when and how he felt was right. Morrell didn't know it yet, but he truly was a hero.

  "If you had used the tank sooner, it might have been knocked out and been useless. No, Paul, the berm shielded the tank until the right moment."

  Paul appeared to accept the statement. "All right, I guess, sir. What's the latest on Major Ruger?" Word had reached him that Ruger had been found just barely alive and under a pile of bodies and rubble.

  "He's alive, but very badly wounded. With a little luck, he'll make it, but he won't ever be the same again."

  "What'd he lose?"

  "His legs. Both above the knee. They were terribly crushed and couldn't be saved."

  "He's lucky, sir. He won't have to go back to fighting."

  "Nor will you, Paul." Monck turned to Parker and ordered, "Get these men off this hill."

  "Yes, sir," Parker said. "The relief from the 77th is just a little ways behind us. They'll be up in about an hour."

  "Now," Monck snapped. "I want these men off this hill now."

  The Japs weren't coming back, and the survivors of Round Top needed to get as far away from the hill as possible. Monck wanted to get them back to a land of clean clothes, showers, and food. They needed to forget the nightmare landscape that was Round Top as soon as possible.

  "Leave the tank," Monck ordered Morrell. It was probably too risky to drive the damn thing downhill anyhow. God only knew how they'd gotten it up there in the first place. "Leave everything. Just get down off this hill." Again Monck turned to Parker. "When they meet up with the column from the 77th, they can use their trucks to take them to the rear."

  Paul managed a small smile. "Sounds good to me, sir. Then maybe we can begin to put this behind us."

  As Paul walked away to gather his men, Monck wondered if anyone would be able to forget what had happened on Round Top and any of the thousands of other battlegrounds on Kyushu. He hoped they wouldn't.

  CHAPTER 85

  DETROIT

  Debbie Winston sat in the chair in her bedroom. Her bare feet were tucked under the long flannel nightgown. It was the middle of the night and she couldn't sleep. Too much was happening in her life.

  Days earlier, the final end of the war had been almost anticlimactic. There'd been no dancing in the streets and few parties had been thrown to celebrate it. Instead, there'd been a feeling of enormous relief coupled with worry that this peace would also somehow fall apart. After all, hadn't the Japs surrendered once before? This time, thank God, it looked as if it would stick.

  Debbie's brother, Ron, might yet be drafted, but not until after he finished high school. No fighting was going on, which meant he would be safe, unless, of course, he got sent to Palestine, where a small war raged. Maybe, she thought wryly, a little military discipline would help the spoiled and sulky little snot grow up. God only knew he needed it.

  She took a deep breath and again read the letter from Paul. He was safe and unharmed, although his choice of words and phrases said there were things he wasn't ready to talk about, or at least put down in a letter.

  This was not all that surprising. She had read with horrified fascination of the final desperate battles on Kyushu. One article in Life magazine had mentioned a place called Round Top as an example of the savage intensity of the final conflict. Not until reading Paul's letter did she realize he had been at Round Top. The thought that he had been so close to death had further reinforced her strong feelings for him.

  Her friend Ann, whose boyfriend had returned an amputee from the war, had reached over and held Debbie's hands. "All you can do is be there for him. Hold him, listen to him, and understand that he's seen and done things that no one should ever have to endure and that we cannot possibly imagine, no matter how much we read or hear about them."

  Paul's letter had been hopeful that he'd be stateside fairly soon, and the newspapers had confirmed it. Those men who'd borne the brunt of the fighting on Kyushu would be coming home in a hurry. They would be replaced by a far smaller number of Americans who'd be taken from the units forming for the now canceled invasion of Honshu.

  If she was going to be there to help him through his nightmares, they were going to have to get married fast so she'd be there during his nights. She grinned to herself. She hoped Paul would realize the good that would come from their being wed as quickly as they could arrange it.

  Debbie looked out the window of her second-floor bedroom. Snow was on the ground and she wondered if it would still be there when Paul returned. She hoped it would. That would mean they'd be together soon.

  CHAPTER 86

  KYUSHU, NEAR MIYAKONOJO

  Mitsu Okimura walked over to the bunk where the young man who was now her good friend sat propped up and reading a book. When he saw her, he dropped the book on his lap and smiled.

  Mitsu shyly returned the smile, but decided to be a nurse before succumbing to the pleasure of his company. She pulled back the covers and checked the wounds on his leg. The infections had almost all but disappeared, and the color of the surrounding skin was healthy. In a way, this dismayed her, as it meant he might be well enough to move on.

  "Will I live?" Joe Nomura teased her. She was so serious, he thought, but so pretty.

  "Very likely," she answered primly, but the twinkle in her eye betrayed her.

  It was an easy thing to say now. Earlier, it had not been so definite. Nomura had shown up at the hospital almost delirious with fever and with a leg swollen to twice its normal size. Dr. Tanaka had considered amputation but decided against it because the young man had already lost an arm. Tanaka, with Mitsu assisting, had spent hours probing the infected flesh for the pieces of shrapnel that had caused the problem. Against all odds, they had succeeded through a combination of Tanaka's skill, and American sulfa and penicillin. There would be scars, but they would recede over time. When he was fully healed, Nomura wouldn't even limp.

  Mitsu dropped the blanket back over his legs. "I have a question for you."

  "Ask it."

  "Several times I have had night duty and come by to see how you were. On a couple of occasions, you were thrashing in your sleep and speaking words I didn't quite understand."

  Joe was touched that she would single him out for such care. Peace had brought a dramatic reduction in the number of patients, which meant she was free to indulge in him if she so wished. That she so wished was a pleasant thought.

  The American field hospital he'd been trying to reach had closed up and moved for the same reason- no more customers. But now, what did he tell her? Well, he would begin with the truth, at least a little of it.

  "It was probably English, Mitsu. I speak it very well."

  Her eyes widened. "I thought so. I have learned a little of it here, and I thought I recognized some of the words. Have you been to America?"

  He laughed. She said it as if it were some sort of holy place. "Yes. I spent some years in Hawaii."

  "I would like to see America someday," she said solemnly. Mitsu eased him out of the bed and up to a standing position. He put his arm around her slight but strong shoulders, and she put hers around his waist. It was time to strengthen his legs so he could walk unaided. Already she suspected he didn't need to have his arm about her, but it was rather pleasant so she did not comment on it. So too she liked the feel of his body under her hands.

  "Wouldn't you be afraid of all the Americans?" he asked.

  "No," she said firmly. "At least not anymore." Proximity to the American hospital had shown her that the GIs were nothing but little boys who were as normal as Japanese men, just larger and louder.

  "But what about the war, Mitsu? Weren't they your enemy?"

  Mitsu was puzzled. Why had he said your enemy rather than our? "Once I hated the Americans. Now I
realize that the whole war was an evil wrong that should never have happened. Now I realize too that the Japanese people were duped by warlords. No, Jochi, the Americans are not my enemy. They never were."

  They stepped outside. It was chilly, but far from unpleasant. Besides, he could feel one of her small breasts against his side, and that was definitely keeping him warm. In the distance, he saw a car coming down the road.

  "Mitsu, did you hear about American-born Japanese who helped the Americans invade Kyushu by spying on the Japanese and performing acts of sabotage?"

  She nodded against his shoulder in such a way that he couldn't see her face. "And you're one of them, aren't you?"

  Joe took a deep breath. At least that's over with, he thought. "Yes. Will you hate me for that?"

  Mitsu looked up at him. Her dark eyes were clear with understanding. "You served your country. How could you be hated for doing that? Tell me, did anything you did truly help end the war?"

  He laughed, surprising her. "Yes, Mitsu, it definitely did."

  She smiled and squeezed him. "Then that was good and you are good." The car was drawing closer. Probably more American doctors looking for possible radiation-sickness victims, she thought. They couldn't quite believe there weren't any at the hospital.

  "Jochi, when you leave, where will you go?"

  "Back to Hawaii."

  "I wish to go with you."

  He was stunned and thrilled. She felt as deeply as he did. He hadn't been imagining it. They'd only known each other for a couple of weeks, but it felt like forever.

  "What about your family?" Mitsu's mother and sister had been located in the north. There had been a brief reunion and a parting that had left Mitsu unsettled.

  "They will soon move to Yokohama to be with cousins. I have no desire to be with them. They are rooted in self-pity and the past, while I wish to live in the future. Now, will you take me with you to Hawaii?"

  "Of course." He pulled her closer to him. The car had stopped almost directly in front of them. "It won't be a problem. I think I'm owed some pretty big favors by some very important people."

  The car doors opened. OSS agents Peters and Johnson stepped out. They grinned happily and waved when they saw Joe. Joe laughed. "What the hell took you guys so long?"

  CHAPTER 87

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  "Gonna miss you, Jim," President Harry Truman said as he reluctantly accepted his secretary of state's letter of resignation. "You did a helluva job under some rotten conditions."

  Byrnes shrugged, but the compliment pleased him. He had hoped to give it another year or so at State, but the pressures of the job in the past several months had accelerated the overall deterioration of his health. All his ambitions were now behind him.

  "Harry, if I want to live to enjoy my retirement, I'd better go now. At any rate, General Marshall will do an outstanding job as my replacement. Sometimes I get the feeling Marshall's been prepping for this all his life. He's the man to shepherd the new world as it develops."

  After a few minutes of small talk, Byrnes departed, leaving Truman with his many thoughts.

  First and foremost, World War II was over and now the world was learning the true nature of nuclear warfare. Scientists from many nations were examining the ruins of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kokura, and the residue of the straits bomb. Radiation, so casually dismissed as a factor in earlier calculations, was being redefined as a deadly killer that never stopped killing.

  Truman knew that a portion of the world's population would forever castigate him for using the terrible weapon, but he had done so with a clear conscience and the hope that the bomb would bring an early end to the war. That the war had not finally concluded until the early months of 1946 was sad, but not as awful as it could have been for either side had it dragged on even longer.

  In the war's beginning, many predictions had called for fighting the Japanese until the latter part of the 1940s. "The Golden Gate in '48" had been the GIs' sarcastic lament. It meant that they themselves did not figure to get home until 1948. Truman considered himself responsible for doing much better than that.

  The "peace with honor" had been less than the unconditional surrender of Japan that FDR had first declared was requisite. American military occupied less than a third of Kyushu and were negotiating with the Japanese government for long-term leases for naval, air, and army bases in the Kagoshima, Ariake, and Sasebo areas. After the boys came home, the total number of Americans at the several bases would likely be less than a hundred thousand and would be more concerned with Russia than Japan. That American troops would be coming home had offset any resentment that perhaps the Japs had gotten off too easily. Of course, newsreel films of the devastation in Japan reinforced that the Japs had been brutally beaten.

  Joseph Grew was ensconced in Tokyo with several hundred civilian and military "advisers" who now worked with the new Japanese government. Homma and Ozawa had announced their intention to resign and retire from public life. Hirohito had renounced his claim to being a godhead, and democratic elections were being planned. The political face of Japan was being restructured.

  Japan had withdrawn any claims to Formosa or Korea, although Okinawa would revert to Japanese control. Japanese garrisons, many starving and in wretched condition, had almost all departed from distant parts of the Empire and, like their brethren on the home islands, were being disarmed by their own government while American representatives watched. It was all astonishingly peaceful now.

  War crimes were a touchy issue. Many of the major possible criminals were already dead. Anami, Sugiyama, and Tojo, to name a few, had either been killed or had committed suicide, while Ishii seemed to have disappeared. Even so, an international tribunal made up of representatives from Spain, Portugal, the Vatican, Switzerland, and Sweden would judge those the United States wished to prosecute.

  Homma would not be prosecuted. There was substantial evidence that he might not have known the Bataan Death March was occurring. He had accepted moral responsibility for the atrocity insofar as he had been in command of the Japanese forces involved. In light of his subsequent actions in bringing the war to an end, he was given the benefit of a reasonable doubt.

  Truman received the latest on casualties for Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu. The total stood at just under 350,000, and almost a third of those were dead. It was a staggering addition to the total of 300,000 Americans killed in all the other battles of World War II.

  Many of the wounded were physically and mentally maimed for life. The medical profession took justifiable pride in that so many of the wounded would live, whereas, in prior wars, they would have succumbed to their wounds. While they might be crippled, they would at least have a chance at some kind of life.

  It further grieved Truman that almost half the Allied POWs in Japanese hands the previous summer had died of various causes. These included starvation, mistreatment, murder, and death from American bombs and shells directed at where the Japs had placed them.

  All of this, Truman thought, to conquer an area of Kyushu that was only a little larger than the state of Delaware. The hills must have been painted with dead. He thought it incredible that only a few months before, he and his advisers had debated just how hard, or even if, the Japs would fight. Now they knew. The Japanese had fought like tigers for their homes and their way of life. How could he and his advisers have been so wrong?

  If he wanted good news, all he had to do was check what was happening to the Soviet Union. With their economy in shambles, ostracized by the Western nations, and living on plunder stolen from Eastern Europe, the Russians were now having a difficult time. In China, the collapse of the Nationalists and the departure of the Japanese had left a power vacuum. When both the Soviets and the Chinese Communists had tried to seize control, their forces had collided. Now, Chinese Reds and Russian Reds were killing each other, and the Russians, at the end of a long and tenuous supply line, were definitely getting the worst of it.

  The Russians ha
d also been forced to withdraw from Korea, this time urged on by a Korean national named Syngman Rhee, whose irregular armies had made life miserable for the Soviets. The Soviets' inability to succeed in Asia was not lost on European nations, which were gaining confidence in their dealings with the far from omnipotent Russian bear.

  Only in the Middle East were American troops in any danger. Palestine was in ferment, and the British had informed Truman that they were no longer interested in policing it. Now that the British had Hong Kong back, there was little motivation for them to hang on in the bloody and not so Holy Land that had already claimed a number of lives.

  The Arabs hated the United States for helping out the Jews, but that could not be helped. France and Holland were on Truman's back to help them reclaim their colonies in Southeast Asia, but he'd be damned if he would aid either country to enslave other human beings.

  "What a helluva complicated world we live in," he said to the wall. He checked his watch. It was time for a drink.

  POSTSCRIPT

  Many of the characters were people whose roles in "real" history were, of course, different from those shown. However, care was taken to make their behavior in the story consistent with what is known about them, their personalities, and their motives. To satisfy the curious, here is a summary of what actually happened to a number of those historical characters.

  Truman, of course, was elected president in his own right in 1948 and subsequently fired Douglas MacArthur over his handling of the Korean War. MacArthur was replaced by Matthew Ridgway, who is generally given credit for stopping the Chinese. George C. Marshall became secretary of state and sponsored the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe, while Omar Bradley became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  Most of the other Americans retired shortly after the end of the war.

  The Japanese were not always so lucky.

  After the war, Hirohito renounced any claims to divine status and continued to reign as emperor until his death in 1989. He was then succeeded by Crown Prince Akihito.