General Kenney entered and carried a folder over to MacArthur’s desk. He put it down and several eight-by-ten glossy photographs slipped out. Popping the stem of the pipe between his teeth, the General reached down and scrutinized one after another of these shots.
“Look at this, Sir Charles,” he said, extending them to the intelligence officer. Willoughby studied each for several seconds. “What do you see?”
“Obviously they’re clearing space for an airfield, General. A large one, judging from the scale of the trees. Where is it?”
“It down at the bottom end of the Solomons, and it’s going to be the first thing we take back from the enemy—the first rung on the long ladder back to the Philippines!” The General paused for dramatic effect. “Guadalcanal.
“It’s a big island, and the enemy is working on turning it into a major base. The Coastwatchers have given us some preliminary reports—the Japs landed there just a couple of weeks ago and started working on that wharf you see there. Now they’ve landed trucks and earthmovers and what all, with two large labor battalions working on clearing and smoothing the airfield.”
“This strip will be ready for operations by mid-August, and gentlemen, I want it to launch airplanes from the United States of America!”
“But—that’s only a month away!” Sutherland sputtered.
MacArthur swept majestically around the room as if he hadn’t heard. “We’ll need to get the support of such carriers as the navy has managed to keep afloat—George, you say this is too far away for our own bombers to do much?”
“Yes, sir, General. Our B-17s can get over there from Australia, but all our medium bombers—the Mitchells and the Marauders—would be out of range. And never mind any fighters. We’ve P-40s and P-39s based in New Guinea, but they have their hands full just battling the Japs up there. Not to mention that even with external tanks they don’t have the range to get over to the Solomons.”
“Then it will have to be a navy show—sailors and marines.” Willoughby noted pointedly.
“Yes.” The General’s tone was almost triumphant. “But they will be my sailors and marines—and they will be fighting my battle, and winning my victory!”
• FRIDAY, 7 AUGUST 1942 •
IMPERIAL PALACE, TOKYO, JAPAN, 0715 HOURS
In this, the seventeenth year of Showa, the Era of Enlightened Peace, His Imperial Majesty the forty-two-year-old emperor of the Great Empire of Japan took his morning walk in the vast formal gardens of the Imperial Palace, his mind composed and serene. Today he was in a part of the gardens he seldom visited, a section with twisted, narrow footpaths, old trees, and small mossy ponds, all located in the shadow of the palace wall.
He walked slowly, noticing the smallest notes of nature’s beauty: there, the way the filtered cool light through the trees refracts through the drop of water on the oddly shaped leaf. Nearby, the dark green moss filling the deep crevasses in the bark of that tree.
By focusing on the details, he could remove himself from contact with the rest of the world. He could feel as if he were really alone.
Of course, that was an illusion. No emperor was ever really alone. Behind artfully designed fencing and carefully positioned shrubbery there were guards and retainers and various functionaries of the imperial household watching and waiting.
But a man could become alone within the confines of his own mind.
The emperor had used many names and titles in his lifetime. As a child, he was known as Prince Michi. When his grandfather, the Meiji emperor, died, he was invested as Crown Prince Hirohito. When his father, the Taisho emperor, sickened, he became His Imperial Highness Prince Regent Hirohito and took on all the duties of his father’s office. He ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne in the Western year of 1926, taking on the mantle of Dai Nihon Koku Tenno, Emperor of the Great Empire of Japan. In doing so, Hirohito ceased to use the name of his birth. He was simply “the emperor.” After his death, he would be known as the Showa Emperor, or the Emperor of Enlightened Peace. He was the 124th to occupy the Chrysanthemum Throne, scion of the longest-reigning dynasty on Earth. His ancestry could be traced in an unbroken line through Jimmu the first emperor to the goddess Amaterasu Omikami, source of all peace. This made Enlightened Peace Emperor semidivine, the literal Son of Heaven.
The emperor who would be known as Enlightened Peace knelt before a carp pond to contemplate the carpet of wriggling fish. He was pleased to see a frog on the shore, which reminded him of the Basho haiku. “At the old pond/A frog leaps in/Water’s sound.” But when he recited the haiku, the frog did not oblige him by leaping in.
“Don’t you know I’m emperor? You should have hopped in the water when I said so,” he chided the frog, but the unimpressed frog sat there. Well, that was a frog for you. Frogs had no respect for authority. Carp were different. Carp always came up to goggle at you. Clearly they recognized the importance of His Imperial Majesty.
There is a haiku in this, thought the Showa Emperor. He was quite good at haiku. And, most important, having a haiku to work on would give him something to do with his mind during the endless ceremonies that would make up much of the imperial day.
He stood, said a Shinto prayer, turned his back on the little pond, and walked slowly back along the manicured path under the shadow of the Imperial Palace walls. He was hardly aware of the guards, retainers, and functionaries moving with him.
There was to be a morning meeting of the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War. Before the meeting, he would have a premeeting, where he would hear what he was to hear at the meeting. After the meeting, he would meet again with the key people from the meeting, where they would discuss what he had heard at the meeting.
There had previously been a meeting to determine the agenda for the meeting, which he had not attended, and another meeting to settle certain issues that would come before the meeting, and after the postmeeting, there would come various smaller meetings to resolve conflicts and issues that arose from today’s meeting. Most of these would be conducted by members of the imperial household and the genro, a privy council of former prime ministers, imperial confidants, and close relatives.
The formal meeting of the Supreme Council was to be held in the presence of the Showa emperor, but that did not mean they expected him to speak. His presence signified imperial assent to the conclusions of the meeting and was thus essential. However, laws and customs restricted any direct participation on his part.
The meeting was held in a long, rectangular conference room. The metallic print wallpaper gleamed dull bronze in the light of two elaborate chandeliers. The emperor’s dais sat at the open end of a long U-shaped table covered with a checkerboard tablecloth. His highest-ranking military officers and war ministers sat on the two sides of the U. No one sat along the closed end of the U, for then they would be facing the emperor directly, and it was forbidden for mere mortals to look directly at the emperor’s face.
The emperor’s dais consisted of a bare elevated riser with a screen behind it, on which rested a rather uncomfortable low-backed chair and various ceremonial objects. His duty was to sit in that chair for hours at a time, erect and still, hands resting on his thighs, his face composed in a neutral expression. Although he was not expected to speak, the emperor listened carefully, both to what was and what was not said.
It was most interesting to hear what Tojo Hideki, the prime minister, was not saying. Tojo, a former army lieutenant general known as “the Razor,” also held the portfolios of minister of war, home minister, and foreign minister. At this meeting he was acting as war minister and had the floor. Tojo was a strong-featured man with a thick black mustache and tortoiseshell glasses, aggressive and domineering.
“Our victory off Savo Island in the Solomons chain has all the characteristics of the decisive battle,” the war minister announced. He began to give details of the battle. The emperor noted that there was no mention of an American presence on that island that was to be used as an airfield to interdict America
n shipping moving toward Australia. Well, perhaps they were only a minor nuisance; still, pretending those Americans did not exist was … interesting.
Serenely confident in the status of events, Tojo presented the meeting’s real agenda, the argument between army and navy on the next campaign. It wasn’t introduced that way, of course. He gave the floor first to Army Chief of Staff Sugiyama Hajime, who presented a revised version of Operation 21, an invasion of British East India through Burma.
Sugiyama had long opposed an invasion of India, favored by Tojo. Improved intelligence and experience fighting the British had convinced him that the invasion through Burma was now practical. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army, though not much of a fighting force, would provide necessary pretext and the nucleus of a puppet government.
The emperor thought that it must be difficult to be army chief of staff when the war minister and prime minister was himself an army general of distinction. Sugiyama was less than he appeared, because Tojo carried the real power. Would that give Sugiyama the wisdom to appreciate the frog in the garden? Military men often had tunnel vision about power. They believed power had some necessary relationship to weaponry. That was foolish. A gun could not make the frog hop on command, but merely kill it.
The navy, represented by their chief of staff, Admiral Osami Nagano, spoke next. “India represents an attractive opportunity. Of that, there is no argument.” He bowed toward Sugiyama and Tojo. “But to reach the subcontinent will require an almost total naval commitment, including the taking of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, an amphibious assault in Orissa state, and a feint against Ceylon. To do all this and at the same time continue the offensive against the Americans in the Solomons and New Guinea, I respectfully suggest, would put an unacceptable strain on our resources at the present time. India will be there when the Americans are finally defeated, and the British pose no serious threat. Let us supply Bose, by all means, and allow him to appear to be a threat. Perhaps let us engage in a feint in the direction of India. But there is a far more attractive opportunity available to us in the short run.”
Admiral Nagano picked up his pointer and walked over to a map perched on an easel that was located against the wall on the navy side of the conference table. “Here.” He tapped the map with his pointer. “The Samoas. With the American presence in the Solomons all but eliminated, occupying the Samoas would allow us to cut American access to Australia. Shortly, the American efforts in New Guinea would falter, and afterward, we could sweep the South Pacific clear of all opposition at minimal cost. From there, the empire will be secure.” He smiled, bowed, and returned to his seat.
Here, too, what was not said was of greater interest than what was. Nagano was, on the surface, as dismissive of the American threat as both Sugiyama or Tojo, but his plan took them seriously, at least. The threat in the Solomons was “all but eliminated” rather than gone. The New Guinea campaign needed to be starved. American supply lines needed to be cut. Nagano would herd the frog, jabbing it with a sharp stick to make it jump first in this direction, then in that direction, until it did his bidding.
Tojo stood up to rebut. “With greatest respect for the navy’s insightful and brilliant plan, the American efforts in New Guinea will falter in any event, and the South Pacific will shortly be clear of all opposition whether Samoa is taken or not. The Indian subcontinent, on the other hand, is a rich prize in its own right, a worthy addition to the Co-Prosperity Sphere, not merely a strategic bomber base and ship refueling station.”
Tojo believed that his willpower alone was enough to control the frog. And if the frog wouldn’t cooperate, why then, he would kill it. He would never understand that killing it meant that it had forever escaped his control. But then, Tojo had been the head of the kempetai in Manchuria. The secret police always believed that the ability to kill was the ability to control.
It pleased the emperor to think about this for the duration of the meeting. No decision was taken as to whether the next objective would be Samoa or India, nor was it expected that such a decision would be reached at this meeting. Decisions took time. As well they should, for a decision bound everyone, and so consensus was essential.
One of the genro had the title of naidaijin, lord privy seal, for he had custody of all the imperial seals. But that was the least important of the lord privy seal’s duties. Most important was that the naidaijin served as the emperor’s closest confidant, emissary, and minister without portfolio. Its current occupant was Kido Koichi, a member of the nobility holding the rank of koshaku, or marquis. He was also one of the few people the Showa emperor trusted unreservedly. It was because of Kido that the emperor knew the full story of what had happened at Guadalcanal. In his private audience with Tojo and the two chiefs of staff, he could express his displeasure more openly.
“It is true that a human being is smarter than an animal, but one cannot safely conclude that an animal is not dangerous, and one ignores the danger at one’s peril,” the emperor said. “We find it distressing that Our army and navy are arguing about new campaigns when your Guadalcanal Island commander conducted his offensive based on the faulty information that the Americans had only two thousand troops on the island. Are army and navy communicating with one another? Are we so confident in our own superiority that we are underestimating the brute force and number of our enemies? Finish one thing, then contemplate starting something new.” He sat impassively, signaling that the audience was over. Tojo and his chiefs of staff, embarrassed, bowed and withdrew.
“That will make them think, Your Majesty,” said Kido, smiling.
“Let us hope so. Thinking is a habit worth encouraging in Our ministers,” replied the emperor. “Oh—We thought of a new haiku today.” He paused, recited. “Old frog sits by pond/No splash. Orders float in air/Curious carp laugh.”
Kido nodded. “Excellent. A Basho Matsuo reference?”
“Yes,” replied the emperor. “We saw a frog this morning.”
“Somehow I don’t think the prime minister would appreciate the sentiment,” commented Kido, chuckling.
“We agree. It is a failing in his character. And, unfortunately, also a danger to the empire. Ah, but it’s all fate, isn’t it, Kido?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. But we mortals still struggle the best we can.”
“We pray for Our people,” replied the emperor.
“May the Gods grant the prayers of the Son of Heaven,” replied Kido.
• MONDAY, 10 AUGUST 1942 •
SWPA GHQ, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, 1349 HOURS
“Ghormley steamed away?” An incredulous MacArthur stopped his pacing and struck a dramatic pose in front of the wainscoting. “He abandoned the marines without supplies on the beaches of Guadalcanal?” He gestured with the end of his unlit pipe at the small file folder of papers neatly centered and squared on his formal wooden desk. “Unbelievable! A disgrace to the traditions of the United States Navy!”
Admiral William Frederick Halsey Jr.—only the press ever referred to him as “Bull”—tried to interject a word of his own. He was sitting in one of the two leather chairs that flanked MacArthur’s desk. He had just discovered that the comfortable chairs were a MacArthur trap; he had settled so deeply into the chair that he was having trouble sitting forward.
MacArthur’s chief of staff, General Richard K. Sutherland, raised his hand to cover the involuntary grin on his face at Halsey’s discomfort. He loved to see people try to argue with the General.
Finally Halsey managed to squeeze a few words of his own into MacArthur’s monologue. “Ghormley had no choice. He was about to get caught flat-footed by the Imperial Japanese Fleet. The transports would have gone right to the bottom, and with all respect, that wouldn’t have fed or supplied the marines, either.”
MacArthur was in no mood to brook opposing opinion. He fixed Halsey with a dramatic stare, the unlit pipe taking station under his chin like a mortar, and began to orate. “Has the navy never heard of fighting and winning agai
nst daunting odds? If the odds are too daunting for direct combat, has the navy no tradition of running convoys past the enemy at night? And at the very least, has the navy no tradition of making a vow of support to brave men in harm’s way? Where was Admiral Ghormley’s promise to the men of Guadalcanal that he would find a way to get them their supplies no matter what? Where was his push to unload at least one more transport before withdrawing, if withdraw he must, to show he shared the risk? Tell me, Admiral Halsey, does the navy have no traditions of leadership, risk, or inspiration?” He did not pause for Halsey to reply, though the admiral tried to interrupt, to defend navy honor. “Of course it is false, of course it is a calumny, of course the navy has such traditions. MacArthur can easily see the challenges in Ghormley’s situation. Where MacArthur and Ghormley differ is that Ghormley gives up and runs away, and MacArthur never surrenders.”
Sutherland could see Halsey’s face reddening. “Halsey never surrenders either, sir,” the admiral interrupted.
“Good God, man, of course you don’t,” MacArthur replied with an expression of shock that appeared nearly genuine. “I didn’t mean to imply … No, no, Halsey, you’re a fighter. My kind of fighter. I have the deepest respect for you, and for the navy as a whole, a few bad apples notwithstanding. That’s why this Ghormley fellow outrages us both so much. He betrays what you and I both hold dearest. I’m so glad to see you agree with me. In fact, you’ve convinced me that I must do what I must do regardless of the consequences.”
The General pressed a button on his desk and within seconds the double doors of his office opened, and a pool secretary—MacArthur did not use a personal one—entered, sat down, and flipped open her steno pad. Striking a new pose, this one in three-quarter profile, the General pronounced sentence.
“Immediate for Ghormley, COMSOPAC. You are relieved of command effective immediately. Report to MacArthur in Brisbane at earliest possible moment for review of your recent actions.” The steno efficiently transcribed the words in neat Gregg shorthand. She waited until MacArthur nodded his head, then she stood and walked crisply out of the room.
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