by F X Holden
The expansion provoked Japan in 2020 to repeal article 9 of its constitution and embark on a ten year race to build up its armed forces to counterbalance the growing Chinese presence in the south China sea and increased assertiveness over Taiwan, but it had started thirty years too late; through that entire period China had been outspending it six to one. Against China’s hundreds of heavy ships, submarines and now 4 aircraft carriers, Japan could only muster a half dozen missile frigates, 4 smaller helicopter carriers, and a fleet of 20 submarines, a third the size of China’s sub fleet. Japan had relied too long on its alliance with a USA that now had bigger troubles with its old enemy Russia, and was much less interested in involving itself in the problems of far off smaller nations like Japan.
When South China sea tensions inevitably escalated to an armed confrontation between Chinese and Phillipine naval units, resulting in the loss of the Phillipine Navy frigate, the Gregorio del Pilar, the US offered no material support and made nothing but the softest of protests at the United Nations. Japanese politicians watched the US turn its back on its former ally with alarm. When Chinese forces landed on the Taiwanese Pescadores Islands and reclaimed them for China, provoking a political crisis on Taiwan and censure in the UN Security Council, the UK proposed a motion calling on China to withdraw its troops. France voted for the motion, China and Russia against. The US abstained. In Tokyo, the newly formed right-wing government of the Party of Hope convened an emergency session of Parliament, and voted to increase military spending and withdraw Japan from the nearly 80 year old US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty.
So it was not surprising to military analysts when Japan started making diplomatic overtures to China. It softened its stance on key maritime disputes in the South China Sea, and closed its representative office on Taiwan. The hotly disputed Senkaku Islands were declared terra nullius and a joint China-Japan ‘maritime safety’ station began operating on Uotsuri-shima island in 2028. The US responded by cancelling arms shipments to Japan, but Japan was not concerned. It had stockpiled spare parts and ammunition for its US made fighter aircraft and immediately announced a joint-venture agreement between Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation for a Japanese version of the 5th gen Chinese Shenyang J-31 stealth fighter.
The US reacted angrily, announcing that ‘within ten years’ it would close the three US Air Force bases on the Japanese mainland and Okinawa, the US Army Camp Zama base at Kanagawa leaving only the 10,000 troops of US Marine Corp Camp Smedley on Okinawa, which had already shrunk from a peak of 7 facilities, down to just four – the Marine Corp base at Camp Schwab, the Marine Air Corps at Futenma, the joint Marine and NSA intelligence facility at Camp Hansen and the Navy-run port at White Beach. The move was more than pure posturing however. The troops and equipment stationed in Japan were sorely needed in other theatres and in fact were redeployed well ahead of the 10 year deadline, to Guam, Darwin and Europe.
As the US drew down its forces and closed its mainland bases, the Japanese Government hit the US with a massive bill for the cleanup of its former installations, which the US refused to acknowledge. And on Okinawa, simmering civilian resentment against the remaining US presence there had led to violent protests and then ‘citizen occupations’ of the largely deserted US facilities. Acts of violence against US servicemen became commonplace and Japanese police investigation of these was lax.
In 2033, Japan and China signed the China-Japan Mutual Self Defense Treaty. The two most powerful militaries in the Far East were allied for the first time since the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki. China began to support calls for the accelerated withdrawal of remaining US military forces in Japan and in particular, for the US to hand full control of the last US Navy run port facility on Okinawa, at White Beach, to Japanese Self Defense Forces. This, the US also refused.
To mark the occasion of the official signing of the new China-Japan defense pact, the two countries announced the first ever joint naval exercises between the Japan Naval Self Defense Force and the Peoples Liberation Army Navy. China allocated no less than a full carrier task force, based around the Liaoning, to exercise RED DOVE.
The Liaoning may have been the first and oldest of China’s carriers, but it was designated officially as a ‘training ship’ and was the country’s testbed for the newest technologies - a mantle it carried proudly. While its sister carriers fielded older J-15 fighters built on borrowed Russian 3rd gen technology, the Liaoning was nearing the end of very successful trials for the newer J-31s and had been upgraded to be able to field 36 of the navalised ‘very short take off and landing’ stealth fighters. Red Dove was going to be the final exercise before the new J-31 aircraft were declared combat ready and the Liaoning’s pilots had been looking very much indeed to the chance to test themselves against the 24 US made F-35Es of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force, flying off the decks of its two newly modified former Helicopter Destroyers, the Izumo and the Kaga.
At the exact moment Dragon Bird was checking his pot noodles through the security scanner, the pilots of the Liaoning were engaged with the pilots of the Japanese carriers over the sea off Okinawa. Accompanying the Liaoning in this show of Chinese naval power were six Type-055 air defense destroyers, four Type 054A anti-submarine frigates, two Type 093 Shang nuclear submarines and 1 supply ship. Japan had also brought a formidable naval force to the party, with its newly refitted carrier the Izumo accompanied by four Konga class missile destroyers, a Towada class fleet replenishment tanker and two Soryu-E class extended-range submarines, supported by maritime surveillance aircraft flying from Okinawa.
Exercise Red Dove had four more days to run. After which, in a gesture of international maritime fraternity, the combined Japanese and Chinese fleets were going to proceed west and circumnavigate the island of Okinawa before laying to, off the new Japanese military base at Port Naha, the financing of which had been thoughtfully supported by the China Belt and Roads Fund. Although they would be on opposite sides of the island, the combined China-Japan fleets would be docked less than 15 miles from the last remaining US base on Okinawa, US Navy White Beach.
The Japanese government had issued a warning to any Japan-based US warships, aircraft and military personnel to remain in port or on base until the conclusion of RED DOVE, to prevent any ‘maritime misunderstandings’ from occurring due to heavier than usual naval traffic in Japanese waters. A US Navy spokesman responded by stating that its forward deployed Okinawa expeditionary strike group, which included one Ticonderoga class missile frigate and two Zumwalt class destroyers, would operate out of White Beach, ‘as and when US Pacific Fleet Command so desired.’ The main component of the strike group, the venerable 25,000 ton USS San Antonio amphibious transport ship, was in Pearl anyway, for a refit. Off the record, the spokesman told journalists that it would be a cold day in hell when a Japanese admiral told a US admiral where and when he could sail his ships out of a US Navy port.
White Beach, Okinawa, Japan, April 2033
Noriko Fukada had worked at the Kouwa Gardens Nursery near White Beach US Navy Base, for a long time. A very long time. These days, she didn’t get through as much as she used to in her prime. These days she wasn’t getting paid for it either. But she was always at the Nursery at seven in the morning, rain or shine, six days a week. Her speciality was succulents, because Okinawa was full of people who did nothing but work and drink and work and who did not have time for high maintenance house plants. A cactus however – a nice Buiningii or Akagurohibotan-Nishiki – if potted correctly and watered sparingly, any idiot could keep alive. Her favorite customers were not the collectors, the cacti fanatics who she tolerated but did not encourage. They came only to show her how much they thought they knew, to try to teach her, not to listen, not to learn. Noriko loved the students, the twenty something boys and girls, who came to Kouwa Gardens looking for nothing more complicated than a plant for their windowsill, or their desk.
“Something that doesn’t need much light,” they would say. �
�Something that doesn’t need much care.”
“Tell me about yourself,” she would reply. “And I will find the perfect plant for you.” Their stories kept her young.
Most days she would stay at the nursery until lunchtime, unless she was sick, or having a bad day. She would eat with the other workers and listen to their prattle, shake her head at their obsession with gadgets and devices, VR game stars she had never ever seen. After lunch she would walk the two blocks back to her apartment, take a lift to the second floor and gather the things she needed for her afternoon program. In the afternoons she visited the old people. The lonely and the sick and those whose minds had packed up before their body did. She made small cakes for them, and took a thermos of tea with her so that they wouldn’t need to fuss, though often – if they were brought up correctly - they made a big deal out of serving for her, and she let them.
Because in the country which still held the world record for the greatest number of people over the age of 100, Noriko Fukada was a bit of a legend. World famous on Okinawa, she said with a gap toothed smile.
Noriko was born on January 7, 1930. She was nearly twelve when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and opened a new front in the Second World War. She had just turned 15 when the Americans stormed ashore on Okinawa in the biggest amphibious assault of the Pacific war. Her father hid her in the cellar of their apartment as soon as the first shells from the big American battleships started roaring in from the sea. She was only allowed up to the apartment to eat lunch, when her father would update them all on what was happening. He was a fireman, and worked with everyone from sailors to soldiers and policemen, so he knew everything. “A violent wind of steel is coming Noriko,” he told her. “You must be brave and help your mother.” She didn’t want to stay home and help her mother. Her brother, only fourteen years old, had been drafted into the Tekketsu Kinnōtai, the Iron and Blood Corps. She had wanted to go with him, but had been told to go home again. She stood crying beside the line of boys, bereft with shame. An old marine had come up to her and led her to a corner and sat her down. “I have an important mission for you,” he said. “You must survive. Above all else, you must live. If you die there will be no one left who knows the truth about the battle of Okinawa. Bear this temporary shame but endure it. I give you this order, and expect you to carry it out."
She lived. Her father and brother did not. She was pressed into service at a Japanese field hospital, where people from surrounding Maehara and Suzaki were often rounded up and herded onto the roof to wave flags, so that the American bombers would not bomb them. She and her mother nearly starved, troops from both sides raiding their house for food, leaving them nothing.
She lived. She spent the next ten years hungry, a meal a day if she was lucky, many days without. US forces took their farmland to build their bases, paid the local workers poorly if at all. Only in the late 1950s did things start to improve, as the US needed Okinawa as a staging post for its new war, in Korea, and Okinawa became a US territory. She worked as a nurse at a US military hospital, for US dollars, until it was closed down when the island was transferred to Japanese government control in 1972.
That was when she had gotten the job at Kouwa Gardens, working in the nursery shop. She showed an aptitude for cultivation, requested a job in the greenhouse and started in the succulents department, where she had stayed since, except for a very brief and unhappy time in the herb gardens, which she found overwhelming.
She had carried out the order given to her by that old sergeant in 1945, most faithfully. She was one hundred and three years old, and she had lived. Lived through world war 2, the dawn of atomic weapons, Korean wars one and two, the electrification, industrialisation and roboticization of Japan. Lived through a husband, but never had children herself. She had outlived the sorrow of that. She had seen the arrival of wireless, television, games consoles, internet, nuclear, solar, wind and hydro power and VR. She had seen Russians send a man into space, Americans walk on the moon, and the Chinese establish a base on Mars.
But she had never seen anything, or anyone, quite like the woman who walked into the Kouwa Gardens Nursery a year ago. Her hair was dyed platinum blonde, cropped so short it reminded Noriko of one of her favorite cactuses, the Extra Hairy Mammillaria Plumosa. It was a small tennis ball sized succulent with furry white spikes, that produced small, delicate pink flowers, all year round. She was wearing jeans, and poorly fitting t-shirt verging on immodest and US Navy baseball cap. She had metal through her ears, her nose, and a stud in one lip. Tattoos on both arms. She whistled a tune as she entered the nursery, loudly, and badly.
The woman had walked up to Noriko, quite boldly, and started talking to her in English. Noriko made a pretence of not understanding, hoping she would go away, but she had taken an interest in the arrangement Noriko was making – a simple miniature-garden in a rectangular pot, with four varieties in it, suitable for a wide window with an easterly aspect – and started asking questions about it. Noriko soon realized that the only way to free herself of this very embarrassing situation was to sell the woman something, and exchanged a few words with her, eventually selling her a large Biznaga Plumosa, which was much like the Mammillaria, but more vulgar and thus perfectly suited. The woman had departed, whistling, and Noriko had taken the rest of the day off.
That was the first time she met Karen ‘Bunny’ O’Hare.
Bunny O’Hare was staring at the stubbornly unflowering cactus sitting on top of her microwave oven and feeling like she was headed for a cold day in hell. Some days, she woke up in the humidity of an Okinawa morning, got that first cup of coffee inside her and then sat back with her hands locked behind her head, the whole weekend stretching out in front of her like a runway in front of superjumbo jet. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, just a slow takeoff toward total freedom.
This was not going to be one of those days.
She’d had her morning coffee Vietnamese style (with condensed milk because she still didn’t have have a fridge) and checked her email inbox. There were the usual thousand unread messages, but nothing screaming READ ME at her. At that point, she had been thinking maybe it was going to be a superjumbo kind of day. Which didn’t happen too often when you were stationed on the last remaining operational US base in Japan.
Then Master at Arms, James Jensen, knocked on the door.
“Hey O’Hare, wassup?” he said, giving her his usual lopsided health nut linebacker six pack wonderboy grin.
Wassup number one was that as far as Bunny was concerned, Jensen should have been two thousand miles away in Sydney, not standing at the front door of apartment 25 of her off-base apartment across the road from Koza Music Town. Wassup number two was that Agent Smith from the classic Matrix movies was standing there beside him. It was O’Hare’s incontrovertible experience that when a man in his mid 30s dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, dark tie and sunglasses turned up unannounced at your front door and just stood there without mentioning Jehova, then you were about to have a very non-superjumbo kind of day.
She shot a curious frown at Jensen but he just shrugged, “This is Chuck, can we come in?” ‘Chuck’ smiled, but didn’t hold out his hand. He reeked of Spook.
Bunny stepped aside and waved them into the loungeroom of her flat. Her two room flat above the Galaxy Bar, which she could barely afford on her DARPA housing allowance.
Chuck didn’t know where to sit. Jensen solved the problem for him by pushing O’Hare’s newspapers and magazines off her sofa and onto the floor and pointing to where Chuck could park his butt.
“I was reading those,” Bunny told Jensen, pulling over one of her dining chairs.
He looked down at them, “Same magazines and papers that were on the sofa three months ago when I visited.”
“There’s some good articles. Long-read features kind of thing,” Bunny said defensively.
“Open at the same pages,” he said.
Chuck was holding out some sort of badge for her to see and waving it to get her atten
tion, “Ms. O’Hare, I’m from the NSA.”
“It’s Bunny,” Jensen said. “Get it? O’Hare – Bunny? It’s a pilot thing.”
“To friends,” she said, looking at Agent Smith. “And we’re not there yet.” She glowered at Jensen. Jensen was with the Australian Security Service, and she had met him during a terrorist training exercise. So what was he doing in her flat with Chuck here? NSA was the National Security Agency of the USA, otherwise known as the world’s biggest ugliest Cyber Spooks.
When Snowden blew the lid off how the US was spying on all its allies and friends, its own citizens and just about everyone in the world with a computer attached to the internet, it was the NSA he was talking about. They had made an art of being able to read all your emails, strip your hard drives, listen to your phone calls, know what websites you visited and what you did there and they could pull up your last three years of supermarket purchases if they wanted to. But if you were innocent, you had nothing to fear right?
Bunny stared at him curiously. OK, so Jensen was Navy Security Force and Chuckie was a cyberspook. What did they want with a lowly DARPA contractor, like her?
Charles Lestrange (no one called him Chuck) had been asking questions of his own as he’d researched this assignment. Like, what was a DARPA test pilot doing in Okinawa, since DARPA is short for US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. On that point he’d been enlightened by a DARPA program manager Stateside who had described to him his last interaction with Karen O’Hare.
“We have a new opportunity in the Arctic, working on a covert second-strike facility under the ice sheet,” the Program manager had said, staring at his screen.
“Been there, done that, got the frostbite. What else?” she asked. “Somewhere … warmer.”
“Serial interactions in imperfect information games applied to complex military decision making? It’s in Singapore,” he said, hopefully.
