End of the Beginning

by Harry Turtledove

  “I understand that,” Fletch said. “My wife’s there, though—if she’s still alive, anyway.” He didn’t say anything about the divorce that had been in progress. It wasn’t final when the fighting started. Jane wouldn’t have kept on with it since then . . . would she?

  He’d got the doctor’s attention. “Oh,” the other man said. “We are letting men in that situation onto the island. It won’t happen tomorrow, though, or the day after. You’ll have some hoops to jump through as far as the paperwork goes.”

  “Let me at ’em!” Fletch said. “After what I went through with the Japs, I’ll never worry about that kind of crap again.”

  “You’re not the first guy I’ve heard that from, either,” the doctor said. “One way or another, it’ll get sorted out. In the meantime, try to be patient—and the breakfasts are still good for you, even if they aren’t the most exciting thing in the world.” All of that was undoubtedly good advice, which didn’t make Fletch like it one bit better.

  AFTER THE JAPS TOOK WAHIAWA, they set up a community kitchen in the elementary school to share what little there was to eat. The U.S. Army troops who retook the town kept the kitchen going. These days, it doled out K-rations and C-rations and big, tasteless chocolate bars called D-rations. The joke was that if you ate one of those, it was in you for the D-ration.

  Jane Armitage was not inclined to be fussy about what kind of food she got. There was plenty of it: the only thing that mattered to her. No, one more—she didn’t have to give herself to Japanese soldiers if she wanted to go on eating (to say nothing of breathing).

  No one had thrown her time in the brothel in her face—yet. She didn’t think any of the other women had had trouble with it, either. If the Japs dragged you in there, kept you in there with bars on the windows, and screwed you whenever they felt like it, you pretty plainly weren’t collaborating. That meant you got to stand in line behind the people who damn well were.

  Several women collecting their rations had hair clipped down to stubble to show what they were. They’d collaborated with the occupiers on their backs, but they’d done it for fun or for advantage, not because they had to. Most of them were local Japanese—most, but not all. One was a tall redhead who had been—maybe still was—married to somebody from Fletch’s old unit. She got her food and sat as far away from everybody else as she could. Her belly bulged. The baby was due any day now. Jane would have bet anything in the world that it wouldn’t have red hair.

  But women who’d gone to bed with Japanese soldiers were only the small change of collaboration. Everybody stared when Yosh Nakayama came into the community kitchen. The nursery man stolidly collected his ration tins, sat down not far from Jane, and started to eat. He’d translated for Major Hirabayashi and relayed the Japanese commandant’s orders to the rest of Wahiawa. But he’d also done everything he could to get crops in the ground when Oahu was hungriest, and nobody’d ever claimed he’d informed on people. Jane knew he’d done what he could to keep her out of the brothel, though she’d been too dumb to realize it till too late. Some wanted to string him up. Others thought he deserved a medal. He went on about his business, there in the eye of the storm. It wasn’t as if he could hop in a plane and fly off to Tokyo.

  There had been informers. Some of them had slipped out of Wahiawa before the U.S. Army came in. Jane hoped they were getting the shit bombed out of them in Honolulu. That would start to give them what they deserved. And some had tried to stay and brazen it out. Again, a lot of those were local Japanese who’d bet on the wrong horse. You could understand them even if you despised them.

  But Smiling Sammy Little, who had the biggest used-car dealership in Wahiawa, was as Anglo-Saxon as George Washington. And he was in the guardhouse. He’d rolled over and wagged his tail for the Japs. They were on top, and he’d wanted to stay near the top: it seemed as simple as that. Figuring out how many people were dead because of his toadying wasn’t so simple. Jane hoped he’d get it in the neck.

  Somebody lit a cigarette. Jane’s nostrils twitched. Along with almost all the other smokers on Oahu, she’d had to lose the habit during the Japanese occupation. The soldiers’ rations included little packs of cigarettes. Jane had smoked a few. They still made her dizzy and nauseated, the way they had when she was just learning how. She intended to keep at it till it seemed natural again.

  As soon as she was done eating, she went back to her apartment. As long as she stayed in there with the door locked, things had a harder time getting at her. She started to head for the bathroom, then checked herself. She’d taken endless showers. They didn’t wash away the memory of all the hands that had groped her. She didn’t know how many times she’d douched with salt water. That couldn’t make her forget all the times she’d had to open her legs for the Japs. And, now that she had toothpaste again, she also brushed her teeth over and over. She remembered how they’d made her get down on her knees even so.

  She was going to remember, going to have to deal with, all that the rest of her life. She was damned if she could see how. Maybe she was just damned, period. The Japs hadn’t cared what they did to her. All they’d wanted was a few minutes of fun each. If that left her ruined for the rest of her days, so what?

  She snorted. They hadn’t cared about the rest of her days, not even a little bit. They’d intended to use her, use her up, and then knock her over the head. Who was she kidding? The only thing that had saved her was the U.S. reinvasion.

  Slowly, she made herself straighten up and peer into the mirror over the sink. She still looked like death warmed over. But if she gave in to despair, didn’t the Japs win a battle inside her head? It felt that way.

  Living well is the best revenge. That held a lot of truth. She wasn’t what she would have been if the Japs had left her alone, and that was a damn shame. But she wasn’t a slut or a basket case just because they’d done their goddamnedest to turn her into one. And if anybody didn’t like it . . . “Tough shit,” she muttered. She’d never liked the way Fletch swore. Maybe now she understood it a little better than she had when they were married.

  She hoped Fletch was still alive. After what she’d seen, and after the stories soldiers told about what the Japs had done at the POW camp up by Opana, she knew the odds weren’t the best. She hoped anyhow. She might not have wanted to stay married to him. She didn’t hate him, though, and he’d done what he could for the country.

  And when he found out what the Japs had made her do, he’d probably want to spit in her eye. She sighed, wishing some of the K-rations came with a little bottle of bourbon instead of cigarettes. Somebody in Washington should have done something about that. She sure as hell needed a drink now, and she was sure plenty of servicemen needed one even worse. They had to do without, and so did she.

  Life isn’t fair, she thought. Her laugh was as bitter as—what was that stuff in the Bible? Wormwood, that was it. They’d used it to flavor absinthe, one more kind of booze she couldn’t have. As if I didn’t find out about that the hard way.

  SANDBAGGED MACHINE-GUN NESTS AND CONCRETE pillboxes sprouted like pimples on the smooth green skin of the lawn around Iolani Palace. Trenches zigzagged from one to the next. The Japanese weren’t going to give up the Kingdom of Hawaii’s center of government without a fight.

  Senior Private Yasuo Furusawa understood that. It was at least as much a propaganda point as a military one. As long as Iolani Palace stayed in Japanese—nominally, in Hawaiian—hands, the kingdom Japan had reestablished here remained a going concern. Strong Japanese forces also hung on in the gray, boring office buildings west of the palace. So did the remnants of the Royal Hawaiian Army. From what Furusawa had heard, some of King Stanley Laanui’s Hawaiians had fought with fanatical fervor. Others, unfortunately, had hardly fought at all.

  Commander Genda looked northwest, the direction from which the U.S. Marines were likeliest to come. Then he looked back over his shoulder toward the palace. Like Honolulu City Hall to the east, it hadn’t been badly damaged. As if picki
ng that thought from his informal aide’s mind, Genda said, “The Americans want to keep these places in one piece if they can. They intend to use them after they finish the reconquest.”

  “Yes, sir.” Furusawa nodded. He’d figured that out for himself. He’d also realized Captain Iwabuchi didn’t intend to let the Americans have anything in Honolulu in one piece if he could help it. Here, he could. He kept insisting the Japanese would throw the Americans back. Commander Genda, Furusawa noted, claimed nothing of the sort. That also made sense to Furusawa, however little he liked it. The USA held an even more dominant position here than Japan had during the first invasion.

  “How long do you think we’ve got, sir?” Furusawa asked.

  Genda shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. We’ve already held out longer than I thought we could. The special naval landing forces are . . . dedicated men.”

  “Hai,” Furusawa said. That was a diplomatic way of calling them maniacal diehards, which would have been just as true. The Army had orders against retreat. Its men knew better than to let themselves be captured. But the special naval landing forces rushed toward the enemy like lovers going to meet their beloved. They hurt the Americans, and sometimes even threw them back. The price they paid, though!

  “I wish Captain Iwabuchi would not order charges,” Genda said, again thinking along with him. “They are wasteful, especially when we cannot replace our losses. Better to make the Yankees come to us and pay the price.”

  “Would he listen if you told him something like that?” Furusawa asked.

  Genda gloomily shook his head. “He would just call me soft. Maybe he would be right. I don’t know anything to speak of about commanding ground troops. What’s your opinion, Senior Private?”

  “Mine?” Furusawa was flabbergasted. He didn’t think a superior had ever asked him that before. He wished someone would have done it sooner. Now . . . “It probably doesn’t matter much one way or the other, does it, sir?”

  The naval officer looked at him in surprise. Furusawa wondered if he was in trouble. Then he laughed at himself. Of course he was in trouble. Before long, all the Japanese soldiers and men from the special naval landing forces would be dead. How could he land in trouble any worse than that?

  After a moment, Genda started laughing, too. “Well, Furusawa-san, you’ve got the right way of looking at things—no doubt about it. All we can do here is all we can do. Once we’ve done it . . .” He licked his lips. “Once we’ve done it, they’ll start defending the Empire a little closer to the home islands, that’s all.”

  Furusawa sent him an admiring glance. Defending the Empire closer to home sounded much better than dying to the last man here. They both meant the same thing, but how you looked at it did count.

  A mortar bomb crashed down not far away. Furusawa and Genda both huddled in the trench. You couldn’t hear a mortar bomb coming. It announced itself by blowing up. Huddling in a trench wouldn’t do you any good if the damn thing came down on top of you, either.

  More mortars opened up on the Japanese positions in front of Iolani Palace. So did regular U.S. artillery pieces. You could hear those shells coming in. The louder the scream in the air, the closer to you they were. Some were very close, close enough to throw dirt on Furusawa.

  “They’re coming! They’re coming!” someone shouted.

  Furusawa popped up when he heard that. He might get killed if he did, but the American Marines would surely kill him if he waited in the hole. He squeezed off a couple of rounds from his Springfield. The U.S. barrage hadn’t knocked out all the Japanese strongpoints. Machine guns spat death at the big men in green uniforms. Some fell. Some ducked into doorways or dove behind piles of wreckage. Some drew back.

  “We still have teeth,” Furusawa said proudly, even if he had no idea whether he’d hit any Americans.

  “Hai.” Commander Genda jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. Smoke rose from the palace. A couple of shells had hit it. “In the end, they won’t care whether they destroy it. A pity—it’s a nice building. I hope . . . the people inside are all right.”

  He didn’t talk about any one person in particular. Senior Private Furusawa had a pretty good idea which person in the palace mattered most to him, though. When Furusawa came to Hawaii from Japan, he’d never expected to meet a queen. There hadn’t been any queen here then. He couldn’t fault Genda’s taste. Queen Cynthia was a striking woman, even if her coppery hair and green eyes made her seem more like some kami than a proper human being.

  An American with one of their automatic rifles started squeezing off short bursts to make the defenders keep their heads down. A bullet snapped past Furusawa’s ear. He ducked. So did Commander Genda. Furusawa sighed. His superior’s romance probably wouldn’t have ended well anyhow. It surely wouldn’t now.

  LES DILLON’S FIRST GLIMPSE of Iolani Palace was almost his last glimpse of anything. As he ran up Hotel Street—not the good part, worse luck—and turned right on Richards, a burst of enemy machine-gun fire cut down the Marine next to him. The man, a replacement whose name Les had never learned, probably died before he finished crumpling to the pavement. Three slugs in the chest would do that to you. Les knew he could have caught the burst as easily as the other guy. Dumb luck, one way or the other.

  He dove headlong into a doorway. Letting the Japs have another good shot at him would be stupid. Not everything that happened in combat was luck, not even close. If you gave the enemy a target when you didn’t have to, you almost deserved to get nailed.

  The Japs kept shooting as if they thought somebody would outlaw ammunition in an hour and a half. To Les, the long bursts they fired from their machine guns showed poor training. If you fired off a whole strip of bullets, or a magazine’s worth from a light machine gun, of course most of them would go high. The muzzle couldn’t help pulling up. Three, four, five rounds at a crack was the right way to do it.

  With all those bullets in the air, though, some had to hit something. The poor damned replacement had proved that the hard way. Calls for corpsmen rang out again and again. Les admired the Navy men who accompanied the Marines more than he could say. Combat wasn’t their proper trade, but they went anywhere he and his buddies did. And they put themselves in harm’s way every time they rescued a man under enemy fire. When corpsmen got liberty along with Marines, they had a hard time buying themselves drinks.

  Mortars and artillery pounded the Japanese in front of Iolani Palace. Les wouldn’t have wanted to be a Jap, pinned down by superior firepower and with no place to go. But he’d already seen the slant-eyed monkeys had no quit in them. Maybe that barrage knocked out some of their strongpoints, but the ones that survived kept right on shooting.

  Dauntlesses roared down out of the sky to bomb the Japs. The ground shook under Les. Blast slugged him like a Sugar Ray Robinson right—and he wasn’t even the target. No, he wouldn’t have wanted to trade places with the Emperor’s samurai.

  Marines started dashing across Richards toward the palace grounds. Even after the dive bombers came in, the Japs had plenty of machine guns waiting for them. And snipers in the buildings on this side of the street took a toll, too.

  A lieutenant from another company dove into the doorway with Les. “We’re going to have to clear this whole block,” he said.

  “What? You and me?” Lieutenant or no lieutenant, Les was ready to tell him to piss up a rope if he said yes to that. Combat was one thing, and bad enough all by itself. Suicide when suicide wouldn’t do you or your side any good was something else again. As far as Les was concerned, the Japs were welcome to that.

  But the officer, who’d probably been born about the time when Les started going over the top in France, shook his head. “No, no, no,” he said. “I’ve got some men following me. If they don’t get chopped up too bad, they’ll be along.”

  “Okay, sir. That’s business,” Les said. The junior officer wasn’t asking his men to do anything he wouldn’t do himself, and he’d got here ahead of them. Les asked, �
��How are they fixed for grenades?”

  “Lots,” the lieutenant said, which was the right answer. While waiting for the rest of the Marines to get there, Les kicked in the door. If Japs had lurked right behind it, he would have been dead long since. He went inside, his heart pounding. Then he had company, lots of company. It helped—some.

  Clearing that block across the street from the palace grounds was as nasty a job as he’d ever been part of. The Japs, as usual, wouldn’t retreat and wouldn’t surrender. They had grenades, too. He would hear them banging the damn things on a helmet or against a wall to start their fuses. That would be the signal to duck into an office or back around a corner when you could, then to move forward again once the enemy grenades went off.

  It might as well have been trench warfare. Along with the grenades, it came down to hand-to-hand more than once. Some Hawaiians fought alongside the Japs. Instead of being small and tough, they were big and tough, and no more inclined to surrender than Hirohito’s boys.

  “Just my luck,” Les panted after the Marines finished a knot of them. He had blood on his bayonet and blood on his boots. The stink of it filled the air. “Some of these Hawaiian fuckers quit as soon as they got the chance—but none of the ones I ever ran into.”

  “Maybe they don’t like you, Sarge,” a Marine said.

  “Wouldn’t be surprised,” Les said. The other leatherneck had put a bayonet into the kidneys of the Hawaiian he’d been fighting, so he couldn’t complain about undue familiarity. “Got a butt on you? I’m out.”

  “Sure.” The Marine handed him a pack.

  He took one and lit it with a Zippo. “Thanks, buddy. Damn, I needed that.” He gratefully sucked in smoke.

  “I believe you,” the other Marine said. “Some of the people here, they’d rather have cigarettes than food, and they’re so goddamn skinny, they look like they oughta go into the hospital. It’s a funny business.”