Kirov Saga: Devil's Garden (Kirov Series)

by Schettler, John

  Rodenko could see that there was no room for negotiation with the Captain now. It was as if he had crossed some inner Rubicon, and now saw the days ahead as the decisive moment of this entire affair. On the one hand, he could see what Karpov was aiming for. If they could stop Japan and prevent the war in the Pacific while bettering Russia’s position in the world, it seemed a noble objective. But something told him there was a darkness behind that outwardly glowing aim in Karpov’s mind. He had seen it in the Captain before, and feared it was emerging again, bolder now than ever.

  They left it there, with Rodenko leaving the bridge to resume his rest shift, but it was not long before the radar station again reported contacts in the Tsugaru Straits, heading west, and approaching the ship, and this time they were not simple steamers.

  * * *

  The 9th Torpedo-Boat Division had been training in the bay off Amori for the last week before returning to Sasebo to rejoin the main fleet. It was composed of four Torpedo boats, forerunners of the ship class that would be called destroyers in the years ahead. Commander Kawase flew his Broad Pennant aboard the Aotaka, the first of its class, and he led three more boats behind him, the Kari, Tsubame and Hato. They were no more than small patrol craft 150 long tons each, but very fast at 29 knots. Lined up end to end the 45 meter boats would seem puny next to Kirov, and they carried small 2.2 inch, 57mm guns. Their real purpose was to rush in and deliver their three 14 inch torpedoes to a larger enemy ship, and in this they had considerable success against the Russians in the last war.

  Commander Kawase had picked up the wireless signal from Tatsu Maru, and decided to investigate. He notified his base that he was answering a distress call and following up reports of a large Russian warship in the straits. Yet he was not prepared for what he now saw on the far horizon.

  The tiny two stack patrol destroyers had been steaming at twenty knots when they saw the distant ship, and with each passing minute as they closed the range Kawase’s alarm grew with the silhouette he was peering at. It was definitely a warship, yet the ship’s bow was very different, long and sleek as it cut through the sea, unlike the reverse bows on all the ships he had come to know. He could not see any large cannon on that long deck, only a few smaller guns to note. Yet he knew that a ship of that size would fight broadside, and that many guns could be concealed in the shadows along her sides, swiveling out from the hull on casements to take deadly aim at his tiny patrol boats.

  Now he could clearly see this was, indeed, a Russian ship! It flew the flag of Saint Andrew on its high main conning tower, where he could see something strange rotating in the fading sunlight. The look of the ship reminded him of the tall battlements of Osaka Castle, the high stone fortress of the south that had broken so many armies on its walls. His instinct was to move in closer, and learn more, but something cautioned him, like the voice of a fallen ancestor whispering a dire warning to him. Be cautious here…He made a decision that would save his life, and those of all the men under his charge that day.

  If this was a ship of war, and it certainly looked to be all of that and more, then his four torpedo boats were not about to start the next war here on his command. They would be no match for this monster in any case, and so he wisely decided that his best course was to observe and report. He had come close enough, and gave the order to come about.

  He turned to a junior Lieutenant and calmly told him to signal Amori with a report that would confirm the distress call of Tatsu Maru. It had already been seconded by Kanto Maru, when it hurriedly steamed into port at Hakodate with tales of a massive ship in the straits. “Send this,” he said. “Sighted large enemy warship flying the Flag of St. Andrew. Give our position and tell them we are circling in place. Request instructions.”

  The message sent, it was his to wait for senior officers to decide his fate that day. Thankfully, there were wiser heads in Amori as well, and he was soon ordered to return to base. It was a decision he was glad to hear, even if he was prepared to face danger and even death if so ordered to defend his homeland. One does not fight a dragon with a knife, he thought. They would need no less than an armored cruiser to confront a ship like the one he was peering at through his field glasses. No… Not even that would do. They would need a battleship…they would need many battleships. It was the most frightening ship he had ever seen in his life.

  * * *

  “They are turning away, Captain.” Rodenko knew Karpov could see that, but he wanted to make certain the Captain knew the ships were no longer closing on them. “I do not think they mean to attack.”

  “No, Rodenko, you are correct. I think they merely wanted to get a look at us, and what they saw may have had the desired effect. No doubt they will return to port with tales of a sea monster at large, which would be just what we need at the moment. Fear is a potent weapon, and a contagious disease once it gets rooted in an enemy. I showed them our full silhouette for that very reason.”

  “Those look to be small torpedo boats, sir.”

  “Indeed. Well they pose us no threat unless they get very close. And these do not seem to have the backbone to do that at the moment. Well enough. I think we will turn south.”

  “South, sir? I thought we were heading for Tokyo.”

  “There is no Japanese base of note here in the north. Their main naval facilities are mostly in the south at Kure and Sasebo. I had thought to visit Yokohama off Tokyo, but I think we should first settle the matter with the Japanese Navy before I come calling on the Emperor here. As long as they think they have a navy to oppose us they will never listen to any demand I might make at Yokohama. So first things first. We go south, to show our silhouette to these little people and see what they decide to do about it.”

  “I understand, sir. Helm, come about, and steady on 185 degrees.” He seconded Karpov’s order, but with a deep feeling of foreboding and regret.

  The Captain had the right idea, thought Rodenko. But I think he is wrong about the Japanese. They are bigger men than he may realize.

  Part VIII

  Togo

  “Hear your fate, O dwellers in Sparta of the wide spaces…

  For not the strength of lions or of bulls shall hold him,

  Strength against strength; for he has the power of Zeus,

  And will not be checked...”

  — The Oracle’s Vision, as related to Herodotus

  Chapter 22

  They were once called the Spartans of Japan, a hardy clan of Samurai warriors in the southern province of Satsuma. The decadence that attends to privilege and power in their position had not fallen on them, for Satsuma was not a rich province, and its samurai had to work in the fields like common peasants to eke out a living and provide the rice necessary to sustain them. Rugged and disciplined, they were a rock-like people, constantly training in the arts of war like the formidable Spartans of ancient Greece.

  Every village in the province had its own Gochu, an organization of samurai that recruited all the young men by the age of 15. Here they would be instilled with the virtues of bravery, and the necessity of endurance, and the power of will in ensuring the attainment of both. The samurai were constantly being tested by their senior members, forced to confront their fears and overcome in the face of all hardship.

  With a long and dangerously exposed coastline, the clan had also taken to the development of maritime skills. When foreign devils first came to Japan in their awesomely ugly ships of iron, the Sagumo took note of the power these new machines represented. And one, in particular, drew some very important conclusions when an enemy fleet first darkened the horizon off the shores of Satsuma.

  Born in 1847, he was called Chugoro until coming of age in the youth clans in the spring of 1860 and receiving the adult name of Heihachiro Togo. He joined his Gochu, training and studying each day even as the boys of Sparta were put through trials to forge them into the hardened warriors they became as men. He sang at the Gochu patriotic festivals, recounting the tragic death of the ‘Forty Ronin’ and other heroi
c stories just as the Greeks celebrated and recounted stories of the Iliad and Odyssey.

  A studious and diligent youth, he was well like by his peers, respected, and thought of as possessing a natural quality of leadership without being showy or ostentatious. These same virtues of character, determination, assiduous study, and a quiet disposition that endowed him with a well of calm in battle, would serve him throughout his life. He took up with a favorite schoolmate, Kuroki, who would also take a dramatic role in the defeat of the Great European power of Imperial Russia. The teachers of the Gochu did not realize it at that time, but they were schooling the boys who would become the men to usher Japan into the modern age and lead her onto the world stage with some of the most astounding and decisive military victories ever recorded in history.

  Two years later an incident would occur that would set the course of young Heihachiro Togo’s life. In 1862, a notable lord, a relative of the ruling clan lord of Satsuma province, was traveling home through the village of Namamugi when his procession came upon four British foreigners. Thinking themselves as the equal or better of any man in Japan, the foreigners rudely crossed the path of the lord’s procession, failing to dismount or pay him any respect as he passed.

  The lord’s guards were infuriated at the behavior and deliberate bad manners of the British, and the resulting confrontation left one foreigner dead, beheaded with a single swipe of a samurai guard’s sword, with two of the remaining four seriously injured. Great Britain, however, would not tolerate the abuse of its citizens, no matter where they were found, and protested vigorously to the bakufu, the central government of Japan, which subsequently offered a payment equivalent to 100,000 British pounds in reparation. It was an enormous sum, equal to nearly twenty percent of the current treasury of Japan in silver, yet it was not deemed sufficient by the British. They wanted blood for blood, but the proud samurai of Satsuma province refused to apologize or to execute the guards responsible for the attack.

  A brief, little known war resulted, the “Anglo-Satsuma” war, when ships of the Royal Navy appeared off Kagoshima Bay to express the Crown’s displeasure. A Japanese emissary from Satsuma came aboard the British flagship Euryalus, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Neale. There letters were exchanged presenting the British demands for redress, but the Japanese simply sought to delay any negotiations.

  Impatient after the expiration of their 24-hour ultimatum, the British first seized several steamships anchored in the harbor and belonging to the Satsuma clan, which quickly prompted the Japanese to open fire on the British fleet with shore based cannon. They had waited until the onset of a raging Typhoon to begin this attack, thinking of how the invading fleet of Genghis Khan had been utterly destroyed by a similar “Divine Wind” in a previous century.

  The British had not expected to be opposed, believing that the mere sight of their fleet at anchor would be sufficient to intimidate the Japanese, but they had not taken the full measure of the Spartans of Japan. They escalated by pillaging and burning the steamers they had captured, and then formed a battle line to bombard the town. Five trading junks were set ablaze, and an equal number of peasants ashore were killed in the attack, as the Japanese had wisely ordered the evacuation of the city before the bombardment began.

  One man evacuating was the young samurai Togo, who was ordered instead to a nearby castle on the shore with other samurai to defend it from any British incursion. There he stood behind a cannon on the battlements to witness the British bombardment with his close friend Kuroki.

  “Look how they form a line of battle, Kuroki! They mean to sail past us and then one ship after another will deliver its broadside to any point they desire. This is fearsome power!”

  “Let us hope these stone walls can provide a shield. What of our own cannon?”

  “They seem a meager reprisal in the face of that,” Togo pointed to the bay where smoke from the British guns wafted up to darken the furled sails on the main masts of their ships.”

  “And with ships like that the British can go wherever they please. They can stand off our shores like shadows, like sea dragons waiting to breathe this hot fire on our ports and cities at their whim!”

  “Yes, but let them dare set foot on our sacred land and then see what happens. Our samurai will muster in the tens of thousands to devour them. We will cut them to pieces and feed their entrails to the birds!”

  “I would hope so, Kuroki, but remember, the British have guns as well. They can kill well beyond the range of even the best of our swordsmen.”

  “And we have archers.”

  “They have cannon to bring ashore with their infantry—artillery, mortars, siege guns. My father has seen these things.”

  “Our valor and numbers will overcome them, and the Gods will favor us too. Is this not the heavenly land, Togo? Do not learn fear by watching the British bombard our city here.”

  “Oh no, Kuroki, I do not fear them—but I respect them for what they are and what they can do with the weapons they have, many far superior to anything we have here. No. I learn something else entirely from this.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Just this, my friend… An enemy approaching from the sea must be fought at sea and stopped there, before they can bring the power of their cannons to bear on our sacred homeland.”

  “A good lesson, but I’m afraid it is one we cannot heed at the moment. We have no ships to stop the likes of this at sea. Only these forts and the cannon we should be firing instead of all this talking!”

  “Not at the moment,” Togo said with determination. “Yet one day soon we will have ships like that. Japan is an island nation surrounded by the sea on every side, just as England is. See what the British have done? We must do the same. Japan must have a great navy, the greatest in all the Pacific, if not the world. Only then will we ever ascent to our rightful place in the events of this century. Without a navy, all we can do is sit here under these guns and sharpen our swords in utter frustration, because the British need not ever set foot here to humble us. Those ships can strangle our trade and commerce, and keep us landed here forever if we let them. That must not happen. The next time an enemy comes from the sea, we must be ready to meet them there, and prevail.”

  The incident was one of many after the emperor’s earlier edict to “ban all barbarians” from the Japanese homeland earlier that same year. And after that was decreed, enemies did come from the sea, and from every direction. Navies from France, the Netherlands and even the United States were soon involved in conflicts with the Japanese, who responded with the battle cry, “Revere the Emperor and expel the barbarians!” But the Barbarians were not so easily cast out, just as the realities of the modern world Japan was now entering could not be held at bay.

  From that moment forward, Togo devoted himself to the study of maritime matters and warfare at sea, for he knew the fate of Japan would rest on her ability to defend its shores with a strong navy, just as Great Britain had so ably demonstrated. After studying at home on the Kasuga, a 1290 ton wooden paddle-wheel warship purchased from Great Britain, Togo moved on to the warship Ryujo as a midshipman, a ship that was also built by the British. There he trained under a sub-lieutenant of the Royal Marines, invited aboard as an advisor after sentiments towards foreigners had subsided.

  Togo soon won a scholarship to travel to England and learn the art of warfare at sea from those who were its undisputed masters for centuries, the Royal Navy. He arrived at Southampton in July of 1871 and studied diligently near the site where Admiral Nelson’s famous ship HMS Victory was moored, often visiting the ship and coming to see Nelson as a kind of spiritual mentor, a demigod of the high seas and strangely, as his own ancestor from a previous life. During his years in England Togo had also learned that language, keeping a journal in English wherein he once wrote that he was convinced he was the reincarnation of the British Admiral.

  He learned much of the culture of the West, which had both rawness as well as refinement in his eyes. Though he n
ever quite grew accustomed to the food, the style of architecture or the massive burrows of cities like London, he came to appreciate the iron at the heart of the British character, and the artistry and skill they showed at the making of war. They once called their ships men-of-war, and indeed they embodied that name in every action they undertook on the world stage. In his eyes, Britain was truly great, and deserving of that honorific title. Japan, he thought, must be great as well.

  He was called “Johnny Chinaman,” by the British, a nickname given more out of their own ignorance of Asia and inability to distinguish between Japanese and Chinese in any significant way. Togo resented the label, and fought more than one battle with his English schoolmates to lay it to rest.

  The Japanese trainees were also in the UK awaiting the completion of several battleships they had commissioned. In 1878 Togo was assigned to one of these for the voyage home to Japan. He sailed in Hiei, along with Fuso and Kongo. These were not the ships of the same name that fought in WWII, but their forerunners from the pre-dreadnaught era, the first real fighting ships of the Japanese Imperial Navy. They were actually no more than armored corvettes, using a combination of both sail and steam power for propulsion at a sedate 14 knots and displacing no more than 3,700 tons. By 1908 they had already been retired and decommissioned.