“I don’t know,” the lieutenant said. “I guess the brass know. I hope they do, anyway. Oh—I forgot. You haven’t had any news up here for a while.”
“No news and not much in the way of supplies, either,” Pete said. “Does this mean we’ll get supplied? We need food and ammo and damn near everything else.”
“Not my area, Captain, sorry. Did you hear about the President?”
Pete shook his head. “No—is FDR okay?”
The lieutenant paused, then said, “He died. About a week ago, in his sleep.”
Pete was stunned beyond belief. Roosevelt was the only president he’d ever known. He felt as if a family member had died. He was silent for a moment, and said, “So it’s President Wallace now?” He could barely picture Henry Wallace; it had been a long time since he’d even seen a picture of the Vice President.
“No, don’t you remember? FDR fired Wallace for being a commie.” Vice President Wallace had been endorsed for reelection in 1944 by the American Communist Party.
“Oh, yeah,” Pete said. “So it’s President…” He looked expectantly at the lieutenant.
“Truman,” the lieutenant said. “Harry S. Truman.”
“Truman,” repeated Pete. “I don’t know a fucking thing about him.”
The lieutenant laughed. “I don’t think anybody else does, either. I guess we’ll see.”
“Roosevelt dead,” Pete mused. He looked at the ravine and the exhausted faces of his own men. Suddenly, shockingly, he sat down on the rocky ground and started to cry.
• FRIDAY, 20 APRIL 1945 •
BATAAN HOUSE, SWPA FORWARD HEADQUARTERS,
HAGUCHI, OKINAWA, 1859 HOURS (X-DAY + 24)
The General stood at his window, looking out across the deceptively peaceful bay. He was alone, but even so he posed with his cigarette held like a baton in his right hand, his elbow crooked to bring his forearm parallel to the floor. He frowned, watching the reds and oranges of a spectacular sunset.
The view was soothing but couldn’t distract him from the painful truths writ across the pages of reports littering his normally tidy desk. The casualty reports were appalling, and they spread across the spectrum of the services. So far during Operation Olympic the navy had lost more than two hundred ships, many of them transports crowded with troops. The marine and army casualties on land had, in the first days of the battle, surpassed the estimates for the entire campaign. And the air forces…what did it matter that the USAAF and navy pilots ruled the skies, when the enemy planes were not trying to challenge that air superiority? When the enemy pilots, instead, gave up their lives willingly, even enthusiastically, in the cruelly effective kamikaze attacks?
There was a great map on the wall of the conference, but the General didn’t so much as glance at it—for he had it fully memorized, including the daily, and all too insignificant, advances since yesterday. The truth remained: only a small portion of Kyushu had been taken. In some of the coastal valleys the infantry had advanced far enough to secure some small airfields—only thirty percent of the runways planned for the eventual Kyushu base. That base was necessary for the next phase of the operation—but how could there be a next phase? If it was like this all over again….
All those troops, advancing at such cost, clawing their way for each square yard of ground—and paying for that real estate with irreplaceable blood! It was too much, and it could not continue. Everyone was second-guessing him: Marshall, the annoyingly blunt new President, the Chiefs, even his normally dependable friends in the press.
He would not be pressured, but he could see the future better than the rest of them. There was only one thing to do: halt offensive operations on Kyushu. The army and marines would have to dig in where they were, and hold on for dear life against the inevitable counterattacks. But at least it would bring an end to the litany of disaster, of loss, that had thus far been the story of the campaign.
The Battle of Kyushu would be declared a victory, of course—Sutherland could handle that task. But the losses could not be denied. And even armchair generals would be able to see that the advance, on any map, came up well short of logical objectives.
But he knew what he had to do, and he would do it. He pressed a buzzer on his desk, summoning a stenographer, and even before she came in he was drafting the simple statement of orders in his mind.
There will be a general consolidation along the current lines. Marine and army formations are not to advance, except in cases of clear tactical importance. Instead, they are to entrench and prepare to defend the ground already seized….
• SATURDAY, 21 APRIL 1945 •
HIROSHIMA, 2030 HOURS
My dear Taiki-san,
How wonderful it was to get your telegram and hear that you are here, on Honshu! Even if you are all the way up in the Kanto, it still seems to me that you are close to home. I know you must wish to command troops, to lead men in battle, but Mother and I take comfort in knowing that you are guarding prisoners in a camp near Tokyo, rather than facing death on Okinawa or in the Philippines.
We received your telegram right after Father’s funeral. It was kind of you to send it—we know how busy you are. I think you would have been pleased by the funeral. Uncle Fuji made a nice speech, and we dropped Father’s ashes from the Aioi Bridge into the River Ota. They are in the ocean by now, mixed with the memories of all our ancestors.
But O! Taiki-san, how we miss you. Mother’s health continues to fail—she is stronger than Father was, but grows weaker by the day. Of course, you know that she would never complain. She needs food, but she insists she is full, passing a little extra of her portion to me or—surprise!—the baby.
Hah! I can see your eyebrows rising in consternation, dear brother. But the baby is cousin Otomi. He is staying with us this winter. Auntie Ui is working in a factory, and so Mother and I are taking care of Otomi. He is a happy baby, a real giggle-bunny, and brightens both of our lives. I know you will be pleased and proud when you can finally come home and meet him.
Until that day, I pray for your safety and good health!
Your sister,
Michiyo
EIGHTEEN
Western Pacific
• FRIDAY, 27 APRIL 1945 •
NAKAMURA-YA OKIYA AND UMENOJIMA OKIYA, GINZA DISTRICT, TOKYO, JAPAN, 2100 HOURS (OPERATION OLYMPIC, X-DAY + 39)
Under her thick, formal makeup and carefully styled expression, it was hard to tell what a geisha was thinking, but War Minister Isokoru Yamamoto knew this geisha very well. Toshiko, elder sister at the Nakamura-ya okiya, held her bow for just a little too long, averted her eyes with an almost furtive glance to the side. She was clearly disturbed about something.
“Koben-wa, Toshiko-chan,” he said, his voice muffled under his white gauze mask.
“Eighty-sen!” she replied, with every outward sign of pleasure. “What a joy it is to have you grace our house with your presence once again. Shall we play a game of mah-jongg, just you and I?”
The man known sometimes as Eighty-sen had pressing business, but if Toshiko wanted to talk with him privately, he suspected it was important enough for him to alter his plans slightly. “Any game with you, dear Toshiko, is always a treat,” he said. “Though it will be a shame to take your hard-earned money away from you yet again.”
She laughed, a beautiful high-pitched titter, and brought her hand to her mouth. “Such a wicked man you are, Eighty-sen,” she teased. “Don’t be so sure whose money will end up where.”
She took his arm and led him around a shoji screen, then through a small hallway to a set of sliding doors. Inside was her office, efficient but not nearly so beautiful as the rest of the geisha house. “Please, Eighty-sen,” she said, “sit down. May I serve you some tea?”
“Thank you, Toshiko-chan,” Yamamoto said, taking off his mask and resting himself on a floor cushion. “And how may this humble client be of service to the most beautiful and most talented of all geisha?”
Toshiko simpered. “Such a fla
tterer you are. But don’t stop. It’s part of your charm. Along with your mediocre mah-jongg playing, that is.”
Yamamoto grinned. There were not many people left in the world who felt free to tease him like that. “What can I do, Toshiko-chan?”
“My girls…hear things, you know? And of course anything said to a geisha is always kept in strictest confidence. But”—her eyes turned toward the thin paper of the sliding door and her voice lowered—“some of the officers who come here, the younger ones especially, are talking about… things. Terrible things.”
Yamamoto leaned forward. “Dear Toshiko, take your time. I know this is difficult, and there is much you cannot say. But please tell me what you can.”
She shot him a look of gratitude. “They’re talking with contempt about great men. Claiming these men might seek a dishonorable peace, saying that they are showing weakness rather than strength at the enemy’s challenge.”
“And what do they propose to do about such dishonorable leaders as those?” Yamamoto asked.
“Assassination,” whispered Toshiko.
“And has my name been mentioned?”
“Y-yes. Some people are saying you’re playing both ends against the middle.”
Yamamoto nodded. “Accurate enough, I suppose.”
“Are you in favor of surrender?” Toshiko asked.
“I am in favor of Japan,” he replied. “I am in favor of the Emperor.”
They sat for a few minutes in silence, sipping their tea. “We’re going to lose, aren’t we?”
“That’s not at all certain,” Yamamoto said. He held up his three-fingered hand. “Several options still remain to us. We can lose…” He folded one finger down. “We can lose…” He folded down the second finger. “Or we can lose.” He folded down the remaining finger. After a minute, he lifted his fingers up again. “We can lose our lives.” Again, he folded down a finger. “We can lose our honor.” The second. “We can lose our nation.” The third went down, and he lowered his hand. “These are important options, neh?”
Toshiko kept staring at the space where Yamamoto’s raised hand had been. “We’ve been incredibly lucky the fire-bombing didn’t burn us out of business. But I lost three of my geisha in that first awful raid.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Others have suffered far worse. And those three are now beyond suffering, at least until they are reincarnated. Karma.” She looked at Yamamoto directly. “Save our people, Eighty-sen. I will pray every night for your safety. And I’ll have the girls gather all the information on what the young officers are plotting.”
Yamamoto stood and bowed, then tied his gauze mask back on. “In that case, Toshiko-chan, it may be you who saves the empire.”
After changing into a kimono, he slipped across the garden courtyard that separated the Nakamura-ya from the Umenojima. His mistress, the beautiful retired geisha Umeryu, whose real name was Chiyoko, was the only one he trusted for these clandestine meetings, and again she had everything in readiness.
He greeted his guest.
“Konichi-wa, Eighty-sen,” General Korechika Anami, the army minister, said. “I have to say that if nothing else comes of this, I have finally been honored by this beautiful geisha with a gift that all men desire.”
Yamamoto cocked an eyebrow.
Anami laughed. “A geisha nickname! Ever since you told me yours, I have been deeply, terribly envious. I confessed this envy to Umeryu, and after some thought, she gave me a name.”
“He is now Otoya,” Umeryu said. She bowed from her kneeling position. “Because he spins in the opposite direction.” When she raised her head, both men could see her charming smile. After all these years, Yamamoto still found her breathtakingly erotic.
Yamamoto laughed. “Konichi-wa, Otoya-san,” he said, bowing as if to someone he’d just met. “Let us hope our opposite directions can be harmonized.” He sat down at the small wooden table and took a proffered cup of sake. “To the Emperor,” he toasted.
“To the Emperor.”
Later:
“You’re a wise man, Eighty-sen,” the army minister said, tossing back another cup of sake.
Yamamoto matched him. It was a matter of pride, navy versus army. “No, Otoya-san, you do me an undeserved honor.”
“In your great wisdom, I wonder if you can solve a dilemma that has been puzzling me of late.”
“Whatever my poor sake-soaked brain can do, it will do, but I’m afraid its capacity is even more limited than usual.”
Anami waved the remark off. “We venerate our ancestors and our history, do we not?”
“Yes, Otoya-san, we do. My intellect can stretch at least that far. I hope that was the question, but I’m afraid it was not.”
“If we venerate the wisdom of our ancestors, then how did we let these children get us into this mess?” His voice roared. His fist wrapped around his empty sake cup as he slammed it on the table.
Yamamoto instantly sobered. The conversation had finally, naturally, turned to substance. He nodded. “Ever since the Manchurian incident, the captains and the majors have driven this war, rather than the generals, admirals, and ministers.” The Manchurian incident of September 1931, an act of sabotage carried out by Japanese army officers and blamed on the Chinese, had provided a pretext for the annexation of Mukden. The first volley of what would become World War II, and intended to salve the Japanese military with easy victory over China, it was an act that had led directly and unequivocally to the current situation, fourteen years later.
“I have heard,” Anami said, his voice muting, “they stand ready to assassinate anyone who doesn’t choose to join them in their glorious self-immolation. It’s the damned Buddhists. They’re at the root, you know.” The practice of Zen Buddhism in Japan had long been associated with the military classes.
Yamamoto merely grunted. “I want to thank you, Otoya-san, for your statement of conditions.”
Anami laughed and held out his empty cup for a refill. “You’re a sneaky one, Eighty-sen. If someone else had come up with a standard, I could have argued against it to my heart’s content. Because I was ‘privileged’ to draw it up myself, I had to think through all aspects of the campaign to determine the right answer. It was not an easy chore.”
“But a chore only you could have done, my dear friend. And the burden you felt would have been felt only by a man of honor.”
It was Anami’s turn to grunt. “The damned thing is likely to be my death warrant. Both our death warrants. The children will cry when the father cannot produce the moon on command, and lash out. We are under their control. The rules of a well-ordered world have been turned upside down.”
“But what we have is better than youth, my opposite friend. We have wisdom. We have a unified Supreme Council,” Yamamoto said.
“And we both have geisha nicknames,” snorted Anami. “That, surely, must count for something.” All three laughed.
“Perhaps it does, at that,” Yamamoto said. “Opposite and cheap together. That sounds like a fortune-telling result, doesn’t it?”
“Does it tell our fortune, Eighty-sen?”
“Perhaps. You are aware, for example, that the Americans have dramatically reduced their military activities on Kyushu?”
“Of course. They are soft people, and Ketsu-Go has caused them a great deal of pain. Now they have ceased marching into our guns, however, and so it is harder to kill them.”
“Perhaps, for the first time since 1942, the initiative has returned to us? Maybe our combined fortune suggests that if we are to allow the idea of an endpoint to take hold, we should simultaneously increase our military efforts, thereby convincing the young ones that our intention is to continue at all costs.”
“How does it say that, Mister Cheap Manicure?”
“In their hurry to strike at the Home Islands, the Americans have bypassed several significant positions. General Yamashita on Luzon, for example, commands a sizable force.”
“Yes—he has been resis
ting in the northern mountains.”
“As has General Yokoyama Isamu’s Sixteenth Area Army on Kyushu. Perhaps the time has come for both of them to turn to the attack? And the same with our substantial forces on the south end of Okinawa. I understand that there are hundreds of Special Attack Force aircraft still concealed there—the aerial tokko the gaijin are now calling kamikaze. I think an attack on a new objective would prove destabilizing to the Emperor’s enemies on both fronts.”
Anami nodded, his head wobbling a little unsteadily. “I think you’re absolutely right, and I will order it immediately, War Minister Eighty-sen.” He moved to stand up but slipped back down immediately. “Tell me, Eighty-sen, why it is that you consistently offer brilliant advice that solves my problems and yet I don’t really trust you?”
Yamamoto scratched his bald head with his three-fingered hand. “I think it’s because you know that the other faction feels exactly the same way. The man who tries to bridge the gap between these opposing sides is always looked at with suspicion. Who is he? What does he want? What game is he really playing?”
“And what game, He-Who-Gambles-With-Geisha, are you really playing?”
“Know my objective the same way I know yours, Arrow-That-Spins-Counterclockwise. You are doing what you think is best, based on your experience, judgment, wisdom, and love for the Emperor. So am I. Nothing is concealed. Everything is available for your inspection.”
Anami’s brow wrinkled as he tried to think about Yamamoto’s words. “I will solve this another time, Eighty-sen. I think your advice is probably good, I think you’re probably right, but there’s something about you I still don’t trust.”
Yamamoto smiled. “As I said, all the others feel the same way.”
• TUESDAY, 1 MAY 1945 •
KIYAMA-GUSUKU RIDGE, SOUTHERN OKINAWA,
0617 HOURS (X-DAY+42)
Ensign Fujioka Tadao bowed with great dignity and accepted the small bowl of sake offered by his mechanic. He raised the vessel, his silk flying scarf draped like a mantle over his slim shoulders.
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