“Yeah.” Les looked down at the Camel between his index and middle fingers. A thin, curling ribbon of smoke rose from it. “Wonder how come you want ’em so goddamn bad. They don’t do that much for you—not like booze or anything—but they sure get their hooks in.” He shrugged. “Fuck, what difference does it make?”
“None I can see,” the other Marine answered. “We’re gonna have to clean out the stinking palace next, won’t we? Boy, that’ll be fun.”
“Yeah, maybe even more fun than we just had here.” Les took another drag. His eyes crossed as he tried to focus on the glowing coal. “Well, we knew pretty damn quick this was gonna be a game of last man standing. Can’t be that many Japs left.”
“Here’s hoping,” the other Marine said.
WHEN PROPAGANDA AND MILITARY NECESSITY RAN into each other, propaganda had to take a back seat. Minoru Genda understood that. Unfortunately, the Americans did, too. They were methodically knocking down Iolani Palace above his head. They might even get propaganda mileage out of that—something on the order of, We had to destroy this historic building to liberate it. Before long, Japan would be in no position to contradict them.
If not for the basement, which had been the preserve of servants and bureaucrats in days gone by, the palace would have been uninhabitable. As things were, Genda took refuge there with a few Japanese soldiers—his unofficial runner, Senior Private Furusawa, among them—and with King Stanley Owana Laanui and Queen Cynthia.
King Stanley was holding up better than Genda would have expected. He was holding up better than a lot of the soldiers, in fact. He gave Genda a crooked smile and said, “Well, this didn’t work out the way we expected, did it?”
“Please excuse me, your Majesty, but it did not,” Genda said. “Karma, neh? We did the best we could.”
“I know. I’m not mad.” Stanley Laanui laughed. “I oughta be, huh?”
“What do you mean?” Genda asked cautiously. If the King of Hawaii knew about his affair with the Queen . . . Genda almost laughed, too. What difference did it make now? No matter how you sliced it, none of them was going to live much longer. A couple of 105mm shells slammed into the palace to underscore that. Something up above Genda fell over with a crash—one of the cast-iron columns supporting the second story?
But King Stanley said, “If you’d picked somebody else to put a crown on, he’d be in the hot seat now, and I’d be off somewhere else thinking, Better you than me, you poor, sorry bastard.”
“You were a good king,” Cynthia Laanui said. “You are a good king.” She set a hand on his arm. Genda had to work to keep his face impassive. She might have had fun with him—she had had fun with him—but she did love her husband. Or if she didn’t, she wouldn’t show it now, not when everything was falling apart.
“No offense to you, sweetheart, but I always did want to give the USA one right in the eye,” Stanley Laanui said. “I was just a little kid when that damn Dole and the rest of those pirates hijacked the kingdom, but I always figured I owed ’em one. So I tried to pay ’em back—and now they’re paying me back.” Up above, something else came down, hard enough to make the floor over their heads shake. Whatever it was, it had almost come through the floor.
A machine gun mounted at the edge of the dry moat began to chatter. If the U.S. Marines wanted Iolani Palace, they would have to pay the price for it. They did want it, and they were paying.
“All over now,” King Stanley said. “All over.” He had a U.S. Army .45 in a holster on his belt—a brute of a pistol that would knock over a horse, let alone a man. He took it out and looked at it. “Better to go this way than to let those shitheads catch me and hang me.” No Japanese could have put it better.
“Yes,” Cynthia said softly. She eyed the pistol with a strange fascination—half longing, half dread. “They wouldn’t let us go on living for very long, and they’d have fun with us before they did hang us or shoot us. We did what we did, and it didn’t quite work—you’re right—and now it’s time to close the door.”
Stanley Laanui glanced over to Genda. “Shall I give you one between the eyes before I finish Cyndi and me?” he inquired. The way things were, he might have asked the question anyhow. But the words held a certain bitter edge. Hedoes know, Genda thought. His gaze flicked to Cynthia. She must have realized the same thing, for she couldn’t hide her surprise and alarm.
Genda decided not to show he understood everything King Stanley meant. Bowing, he said, “No, thank you, your Majesty. I will not live through defeat, either, I promise you. But we have our own way of ending.”
“Hara-kiri?” the king asked. Genda made himself not wince as he nodded; seppuku was a much more elegant, much less earthy way to put it. King Stanley grimaced. “Better you than me, buddy. I want to get it over with in a hurry.”
“It will be fast enough,” Genda answered. He turned to Senior Private Furusawa and spoke in Japanese: “Will you please serve as my second? Things here cannot go on much longer.” As if to underscore that, the machine gun at the edge of the moat started hammering away again.
“I would be honored, Commander-san,” Furusawa said. “I will do it quickly, so you do not suffer.”
“Domo arigato,” Genda said, and then went back to English: “It is arranged.”
“Okay,” Stanley Laanui said. His mouth twisted when the machine gun abruptly fell silent. “You ready, sweetheart?”
“I don’t know.” Queen Cynthia’s voice shook. “I don’t know if anybody can be ready, but you’d better not wait.” She nodded to Genda. “Good-bye, Commander. We tried our best.”
“Hai. Sayonara.” Genda looked down at the floor.
The Hawaiian royal couple went into a little room off the central hallway. A shot rang out, and then a moment later another one. Genda opened the door. If either of them needed finishing, he would take care of it. But Stanley Owana Laanui, while he might not have made much of a king, had done what he had to do here. He and his redheaded queen both lay dead, each with a neat gunshot wound to the temple—and a nasty exit wound on the other side.
“Sayonara,” Genda whispered again, and went back outside. He nodded to Senior Private Furusawa. “The time has come,” he said, and sat cross-legged on the floor. Baring his belly, he drew his Navy-issue katana from its sheath. He’d never used it before. He should have had a wakizashi, a samurai’s shortsword, but he would have to make do.
“As the blade touches you, sir?” Furusawa asked.
“Let it go in first,” Genda said. “Then.” He looked up to the ceiling. “With this, my death, I atone for my failure here. May the Emperor forgive me. May my spirit find its home in Yasukuni Shrine.” He drove the sword home. The pain was astonishing, unbelievable. Discipline forgotten, he opened his mouth to scream. Then everything ended.
WHAT WAS LEFT OF THE TOP TWO FLOORS of Iolani Palace belonged to the USA again. Japs and Hawaiians sprawled everywhere in blood-soaked, unlovely death. So did too goddamn many Marines. Japs, and maybe Hawaiians, too, were still holed up in the basement. Every so often, they would fire up through the floor above them. That was a nasty angle when a bullet hit; two Marines, one in Les Dillon’s platoon, had had their balls shot off.
The Japs had driven back three attacks on the basement from outside. Now the Americans were trying something different. Marine engineers were setting up a shaped charge on the ground floor of the palace. It would blow a big hole in the basement’s roof. With luck, that would let leathernecks get down there and go toe-to-toe with the enemy.
Luck, Les thought. Some fucking luck. The Japs down there would die. So would a lot of Marines. He was too likely to be one of them.
Another bullet crashed up through the floor. By luck that really was good, that one missed everybody. Getting shot at from below was still goddamn scary. Several Marines fired a round or two down through the floor at the Japs they couldn’t see. Then they all went somewhere else in a hurry, so the slant-eyed sons of bitches wouldn’t nail them by shooting back w
here the bullets had gone through. Their boots clumping around overhead probably gave the enemy a hint about where they were anyway.
Through all the chaos, the engineers went on working. One of them looked up at Les and said, “Okay, we’re about ready to blow this bastard.”
“Hear that, people?” Les called to the other Marines. “Get your grenades ready. We’ll see how many of those fuckers we can blow to hell and gone before we go down there ourselves.”
Another engineer lit a fuse. The Marines drew back. After a sharp, surprisingly small whump!, the charge blew a hole about four feet square in the floor. Along with his buddies, Les chucked grenades through the hole as fast as he could. Some fragments came back up. They bit one man in the hand. The Marines kept on tossing grenades into the basement. They didn’t want live Japs anywhere near that hole. Les didn’t see how anybody could live through what the enemy was getting, but the Japs had surprised him before.
“Come on!” he said, and let himself drop through the hole. He was down there by himself for only a heartbeat. More leathernecks dropped down with him. He saw a few twisted bodies close by. Then a bullet cracked past his head. Sure as hell, some of Hirohito’s warriors still had fight in them.
A Marine with a tommy gun sprayed death as if from a garden hose. After that, it was the usual chaos of a firefight, made worse because it was at such close quarters. Les was too busy to be afraid and too afraid to be anything else. He charged forward yelling like a banshee, and at least one of the fierce roars that burst from his throat started life as a terrified shriek. Even if he knew that, with luck the Japs wouldn’t.
Hell, they’ve gotta be as scared as I am, went through his mind in one of the brief moments when he wasn’t shooting or throwing a grenade into one of the rooms off the central hallway or using his bayonet. He’d already used it more here in Hawaii than he ever did in the trenches in 1918. If the Japanese soldiers he faced were afraid, they sure didn’t show it. Les wasn’t showing it, either, but he knew what was going on inside his own head. To him, the Japs might have been targets on the firing range, except they had the nasty habit of fighting back.
He fired and stabbed and used his rifle butt once or twice. He got a cut on one forearm, but it was hardly more than a scratch. If he wanted more oak leaves for his Purple Heart, he supposed he could get them. But he didn’t much care. The Purple Heart wasn’t a medal anybody in his right mind wanted to win.
More and more Marines jumped down into the basement. They went forward faster than they could get killed or wounded. Before too long, no more enemy soldiers were still standing. The Americans went through the basement, methodically finishing off wounded Japs. “Save a couple for prisoners,” Les called. “The brass wants to grill ’em.”
He got grumbles from the men down there with him. “After what those mothers did to our guys, they ought to grill ’em over a slow fire,” one of them said.
“Save a couple,” Les repeated. “Maybe what we squeeze out of ’em will save enough of our guys while we’re cleaning out the last of ’em to make it worthwhile.”
“Maybe.” The Marine didn’t sound convinced, but he didn’t shoot the unconscious Jap at his feet, either. The enemy soldier showed no gunshot wounds, but he was out cold. Les wondered if he’d got the Jap with his rifle butt, or if one of the other leathernecks had done it.
He shrugged. That didn’t make much difference. The fighting right here was over. He could enjoy the breather—for a little while.
“CAN YOU HEAR ME?” a voice asked in Japanese.
Yasuo Furusawa forced his eyes open. His head hurt worse than after the worst hangover he’d ever had. “Hai,” he whispered so he wouldn’t have to hear himself. The man looking down at him was Japanese, but wore civilian clothes. They were in a tent: that was canvas behind the other man. Furusawa tried to take stock, but didn’t have much luck. “What happened?” he asked at last.
“You were in Iolani Palace. Do you remember?” the other man said.
“Hai,” Senior Private Furusawa repeated, again as if from very far away. He remembered finishing Commander Genda. Genda had died as a samurai should. And he remembered a hole blown in the ceiling, and U.S. Marines jumping down into the palace basement roaring like tigers. He remembered trying to fight off a big one . . . and that was the last thing he did remember. That meant . . . “ Zakennayo!” he exclaimed. “Am I . . . ?” He couldn’t make himself say the words.
The other man nodded. “Yes, you are a prisoner of war. You were taken while unconscious. It is not your fault. You did not surrender.”
That helped—about as much as bailing with a bucket helped keep a battleship afloat. “A prisoner!” Furusawa said in despair. The knowledge hurt almost as much as his head, which said a lot. Furusawa squeezed his eyes shut as shame washed over him. “My family is disgraced forever.”
“Your family doesn’t know,” the other man said. By his old-fashioned accent—and by how thin he was—he had to be a local Japanese working with the Americans. “No one will tell them till the war is over. You can sort it out then. Meanwhile, aren’t you glad you’re alive?”
“No.” Furusawa shook his head, which also hurt. “What . . . What will they do to me?” You could do anything to a prisoner, anything at all.
As if picking that thought from his mind, the local Japanese said, “America follows the Geneva Convention. No one will torture you for the fun of it, or anything like that. You will be questioned, but it will only be questions. Do you understand?”
“I hear you,” Furusawa said wearily. He heard gunfire, too, not close enough to be alarming but not that far away, either. “We’re still fighting!”
“Yes, but it’s mopping up now,” the other man said. “Honolulu will fall. Oahu will fall. The war will go west.”
Furusawa wished he could call a local Japanese a liar. He knew he couldn’t. He’d been sure Oahu would fall since his own countrymen couldn’t keep the Americans off the northern beaches. Hawaii would no longer be the Empire’s eastern shield. Now the USA could use the islands against Japan. Shigata ga nai, he thought. He certainly couldn’t do anything about it.
“Are you hungry? Are you thirsty?” the other man asked.
“Hai.” Furusawa sat up on the edge of the cot where they’d put him.
“I’ll get you food,” the local Japanese said. “There are guards outside. Don’t try to leave. It would be the last thing you did.”
Furusawa hadn’t thought of leaving. He barely had the strength to sit. The local Japanese went out. He spoke in English. Someone answered him in the same language. He hadn’t been lying, then. Furusawa hadn’t thought so. The other man came back in a few minutes with U.S. ration tins and a cup of coffee. Furusawa ate greedily. He felt a little more alive when he finished.
“You were in the palace basement, neh?” the local Japanese said. Furusawa nodded, and didn’t wish he was dead right afterwards. The other man—who was, Furusawa slowly realized, an interrogator—went on, “Do you know what happened to the man and woman who called themselves King and Queen of Hawaii?”
“Hai.” Why not answer? What difference did it make now? What difference did anything make now? This felt more like a strange life after death than anything else. “He shot her. Then he shot himself. They didn’t want to be captured, either.”
“Well, I can believe that,” the local man said. “They would have had a hard time of it.” He paused to look at a notebook. Questions he wanted to ask? “Do you know who the Navy officer who committed seppuku was?”
“Commander Genda.” With a certain mournful pride, Furusawa added, “I had the honor to act as his second.”
“Lucky you.” The interrogator’s tone proved him more American than Japanese.
“I thought so.” Furusawa paused and winced. It felt as if someone were trying to drive a blunt spike through his skull. “Please excuse me. My head hurts.”
“I believe that. They say you’re lucky it didn’t get broken for good,�
� the local Japanese answered. This is luck? Furusawa thought. The local Japanese held out two white tablets. “Here are some aspirins. They may help a little.”
Poison? Furusawa wandered. But, as a druggist’s son, he recognized aspirins when he saw and smelled them. He swallowed them with a last little swig of coffee. “Arigato,” he said. Maybe the interrogator meant it. Maybe the Americans were easier on prisoners than his own people would have been—were. He could hope, anyhow.
And hope was all he could do. He’d fought as long and as hard as he could, but now, for him, the war was over.
XV
KENZO TAKAHASHI WONDERED IF HE’D BEEN SMART TO MAKE SURE HIS GIRLFRIEND was all right. For the first few days in the shelter under the Sundbergs’ house, things had been pretty quiet. He and Elsie and her folks could go up and use the bathroom. They could come out at night during lulls and get avocados out of the trees in the back yard. They could even sleep in beds if they wanted to, though that was risky. You could get caught when the shooting picked up again.
Now, though, the fighting had moved east. Too much of it was right in this neighborhood. The Japanese special naval landing forces didn’t yield ground till they had to. By the pounding U.S. forces were giving them, they would have to before long. In the meanwhile, though . . .
In the meanwhile, what had been a quiet, prosperous residential street turned into a good approximation of hell. Shells burst all the time. Machine guns stuttered and chattered. Rifles barked. Planes flew low overhead, strafing anything Japanese that moved—and anything that moved that might be Japanese. Coming out would have been suicidal. Kenzo had long since lost track of how many bullets tore through the house above them.
Mrs. Sundberg cried softly. “Everything we worked so long and hard to build and get . . .” she choked out.
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