Days of Infamy

by Harry Turtledove

  “Hai.” The man who’d commanded the air strikes against Oahu nodded. “I don’t know what else we can do, though. Do you?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.” Genda sighed. “But I wish I could think of something. And I wish we hadn’t been chosen as witnesses.” He sent a defiant stare up toward the taller Fuchida. “Go ahead, call me soft.”

  “Not you, Genda-san. Never you.” Fuchida walked along for a couple of paces before continuing, “I might say that of some other men. I might also say you would do well not to say such things to officers who aren’t lucky enough to know you the way I do.”

  Genda bowed. “Domo arigato. This is good advice.”

  They went in through the rounded entranceway. The courtyard inside the barracks was a long, narrow rectangle paved with flagstones. Several Navy officers already stood inside it. Some of them looked grim, others proud and righteous. Also waiting in the courtyard was a squad of special Navy landing troops, in square rig with infantry rifles and helmets (though those bore the Navy chrysanthemum, not the Army star) and white canvas gaiters that reached their knees. They were all impassive as so many statues.

  Two more witnesses came in after Genda and Fuchida. Genda was relieved not to have been the last. Captain Hasegawa of the Akagi, the senior officer present, spoke in a loud, official-sounding voice: “Let the prisoner be brought forth!”

  Out of one of the rooms at the far end of the courtyard came four hard-faced guards leading a young Japanese man. Such a pity, Genda thought. A couple of the nearby officers let out soft sighs, but only a couple.

  Captain Hasegawa faced the young man. “Kazuo Sakamaki, you know what you have done. You know how you have disgraced your country and the Emperor.”

  Sakamaki bowed. “Hai, Captain-san,” was all he said. He was—he had been, before his summary court-martial—an ensign in the Japanese Navy. He’d commanded one of the five two-man midget submarines Japan had launched against Pearl Harbor as part of the opening attack. Four were lost with all hands. Sakamaki’s crewmate had also perished. But Sakamaki himself had floundered up onto an Oahu beach—and been captured by the Americans.

  Hasegawa nodded to the guards and the special Navy landing troops in turn. “Let the sentence be carried out.”

  “Captain-san”—Sakamaki spoke once more—“again I request the privilege of atoning for my dishonor by taking my own life.”

  The skipper of the Akagi shook his head. “You have been judged unworthy of that privilege. Guards, tie him to the post.”

  With another bow, Sakamaki said, “Sir, it is not necessary. I will show you I do know how to die for my country. Banzai! for the Emperor!” He came to stiff attention, his back touching the post driven between two flagstones.

  For that, Hasegawa gave him a nod if not a bow. The senior officer turned to the special landing troops. “Ready!” he said. The guards hurried out of the line of fire. “Aim!” Hasegawa said. Up came the rifles, all pointing at Sakamaki’s chest. “Fire!”

  As the rifles roared, Genda thought Sakamaki shouted, “Banzai!” one last time. His mouth opened wide and he yelled something, but the word was lost in the fusillade. Sakamaki staggered, twisted, and fell. Red had already spread over the front of his prison coveralls. It soaked the back, where the exit wounds were. The young man jerked and twitched for a minute or two, then lay still.

  Captain Hasegawa nodded to the firing squad. “You did your duty, men, and did it well. You are dismissed.” They saluted and marched away. The skipper of the Akagi held up a piece of paper for the officers who’d witnessed Sakamaki’s execution. “I will need your signatures, gentlemen.”

  Along with the others, Genda wrote his name under the brief report that described Kazuo Sakamaki’s failure to die in battle, his humiliating capture (it said he’d asked the Americans to kill him, but they’d refused), the court-martial following the Japanese victory, the inevitable sentence, and its completion. There on the page, everything seemed perfectly clear-cut, perfectly official. Genda didn’t look at Sakamaki’s body. He couldn’t help noticing the air smelled of blood.

  “Thank you, Commander,” Hasegawa said when Genda returned the pen to him. “One more loose end cleared up.”

  “Hai.” As far as Genda was concerned, that was acknowledgment, not agreement.

  After the officers signed the report, they left the barracks one by one. Genda waited on the grass till Mitsuo Fuchida came out. A small bird with a gray back, a white belly, and a crested head of a red even brighter in the sun than Kazuo Sakamaki’s blood hopped along three or four meters away from him, pausing every once in a while to peck at an insect. When he took a step towards it, it fluttered away. He was probably more frightening than the thunderous volley of rifle fire had been a few minutes earlier.

  Here came Fuchida. The red-headed bird flew away. Genda and Fuchida walked slowly back towards Iolani Palace. After a while, Fuchida said, “I didn’t know he tried to get the Americans to finish him.”

  “Neither did I,” Genda said heavily.

  “Too bad they didn’t—it would have saved him the disgrace,” Fuchida said. “But you can’t count on the enemy to take care of what you should have done yourself.”

  “I suppose not,” Genda said. It wasn’t that his friend was wrong. It was only that . . . He didn’t know quite what it was, only that it left him unhappy rather than satisfied. “Too bad all the way around.”

  “Can’t argue with you there,” Fuchida said. “Think of his poor family. All the other men on the midget submarines died as heroes, attacking the Americans. Their son, their brother, was the only captive. How can you live something like that down?”

  “If the officials are kind, they’ll bury the report and just tell the family he died in Hawaii,” Genda said. “I hope they do.”

  “That would be good,” Fuchida agreed. “Still, though, even reports that should be buried have ways of getting out.”

  He wasn’t wrong, though Genda wished he were. “Witnessing one of those will last me forever, even if he did die bravely,” Genda said. “I hope I don’t get drawn for the same duty twice. Plenty of other work I’d rather be doing.”

  “Can’t argue about that, either,” Fuchida said. “A man with a clean desk is a man who doesn’t get enough thrown at him.” Genda nodded. They both headed back toward their desks, which were anything but clean.

  IN JAPANESE, THE name of Hotel Street came out as three syllables: Hoteru. Corporal Takeo Shimizu wasn’t fussy about how he said it. He just wanted the chance to get there as often as he could. Before the war came to Oahu, the street had been geared to making American soldiers and sailors happy. It had taken some damage during the fighting, but hadn’t needed long to start doing the same job for the new masters of Hawaii.

  Before letting the men from Shimizu’s squad go on leave, Lieutenant Horino, the platoon commander who’d replaced Lieutenant Yonehara, lectured them: “I do not want any man here disgracing himself or his country. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir!” the men chorused.

  “You will be punished if you do. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, sir!” they said again.

  “All right, then. See that you remember it,” Horino said.

  “Salute!” Shimizu called. Like him, the other men made their salutes as crisp and perfect as they could. Some officers would forbid a soldier to go on leave if they didn’t like the way he saluted. Shimizu didn’t think Lieutenant Horino was that strict, but why take chances?

  Horino returned those precise salutes with one that wasn’t much more than a wave. A sergeant would have slapped a common soldier till his ears fell off for a salute like that. But officers lived by different rules. “Dismissed,” Horino said. Then he unbent enough to add, “Enjoy yourselves.”

  “Yes, sir,” the men said, Shimizu loud among them. He wasn’t sure that had been an order—how could someone command you to have a good time?—but he wasn’t sure it hadn’t been, either. Again, why take chances? L
ieutenant Horino strode away, sword swinging on his hip. Shimizu eyed the men he’d led since before they got on the transport back in Japan. “You have your passes? The military police are bound to ask you to show them.” He had his, in his tunic pocket.

  “Yes, Corporal. We have them,” the soldiers said. Shimizu waited. One by one, they dug them out and displayed them.

  When he’d seen all of them, he nodded. “All right. Let’s go. You all know what the lieutenant meant about not disgracing yourselves?” He waited. When no one said anything, he spelled it out for them: “Don’t get the clap.”

  “Corporal-san?” Senior Private Furusawa waited to be recognized. Only after Shimizu nodded to him did he go on, “Corporal-san, the Americans are supposed to have medicines that can really cure it.”

  Since his father was a druggist, maybe he knew what he was talking about. Or maybe he didn’t. Shimizu only shrugged. “If you don’t get a dose in the first place, you won’t have to worry about that, will you?”

  Unlike some of the men in the squad, Furusawa was smart enough to know a dangerous question when he heard one. “Oh, no, Corporal,” he said hastily.

  “Good. And remember to salute all your superiors, too.” Shimizu looked the men over one more time. He didn’t see anything wrong with anybody’s uniform. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  They followed him like ducklings hurrying on after a mother duck. That made him proud; even if he was only a corporal, he had a fine string of common soldiers in tow. The civilians the men passed on the street didn’t care that he was only a corporal. They scrambled out of the squad’s way. The Japanese among them knew how to bow properly. The Chinese and whites didn’t, but orders were not to make a fuss about it as long as they tried to do it right.

  Here came a reeling sergeant who’d had a good time somewhere. “Salute!” Shimizu said, and the whole squad did in unison. He hoped everyone did it well. That might not matter, of course. If the sergeant felt like topping off his leave by slapping common soldiers around (and maybe even a corporal, too), he could always find an excuse to do it. But he only returned the salutes and kept on going. He was singing a song about a geisha named Hanako. Shimizu remembered singing that song when he’d got drunken leave in China.

  As soon as he and his squad got to Hotel Street, military policemen rushed up to them like mean farmyard dogs. “Let’s see your passes!” they shouted, their voices loud and angry.

  Shimizu produced his. One by one, his men did the same. The military policemen scowled as they inspected each pass. But there was nothing wrong with any of them. All the information was there, and in the proper form. The military policemen had no choice but to give them back and nod; grudgingly, they did. “Salute!” Shimizu said again. Again, the men obeyed.

  “You keep your noses clean, you hear me?” one of the military policemen growled. “If you end up in trouble, you’ll wish your mothers never weaned you. Do you understand me?”

  “Hai, Sergeant-san!” chorused Shimizu and the men he led. They must have been loud enough to satisfy the sergeant, for he and his pal went off to harass some other soldiers. Shimizu pitied anyone they found without proper papers.

  But that wasn’t his worry. A lot of places that had served food were closed. There wasn’t a lot of food to serve. Bars were open, though. Some of them sported freshly painted signs in hiragana and also, Senior Private Furusawa said, in Roman letters boasting that they served sake. Shimizu was sure it wasn’t sake imported from Japan. They grew rice here. Some of it had probably been taken out of the food store and turned into something more entertaining. He wondered whose palm had been greased to make that happen, and with how much cash. More than I’ll see any time soon, he thought mournfully.

  Almost all the bright, blinking neon signs were in English. One looked as good as another to Shimizu. “I’m going in here,” he said, pointing to one bigger and fancier than most. “Who’s coming with me?”

  Only a couple of men from the squad hung back. “I want to start off with a woman,” one of them said. The other nodded.

  “You’ll last longer if you do some drinking first,” Shimizu said. They shook their heads. Shimizu shrugged. “Suit yourselves, then. But if you aren’t back at the barracks when you’re supposed to be, you’ll wish those military policemen were beating on you. Have you got that?” He tried to sound fierce, and hoped he succeeded. He really was too easygoing to make a good noncom.

  The bar was dark and cool inside, and already full of Japanese soldiers and sailors. The bartender was an Asian man. He spoke Japanese, but oddly; after a little while, Shimizu decided he had to be a Korean. “No, no whiskey, gomen nasai,” he said when the corporal asked. “Have sake, have sort of gin.”

  “What do you mean, sort of?” Shimizu inquired.

  “Made from fruit. Made from fruit here, understand. Is very good. Ichi-ban,” the bartender said.

  A drink was one yen or twenty-five cents U.S. money—outrageously expensive, like everything else in Oahu. “Give me some of this gin,” Shimizu said. “I want something stronger than sake.” He dropped a U.S. quarter on the bar. The silver rang sweetly. The bartender set a shot in front of him.

  He knocked it back. He had all he could do not to cough and lose face before his men. The stuff tasted like sweet paint thinner and kicked like a wild horse. It might have been a mortar bomb exploding in his stomach. He liked the warmth that flowed out from his middle afterwards, though.

  His men followed his lead. The bartender poured them shots, too. Like Shimizu, they gulped them down. They weren’t so good at hiding what the stuff did to them. Some of them coughed. Senior Private Furusawa said, “My insides are on fire!” Private Wakuzawa seemed on the edge of choking to death. Somebody pounded his back till he could breathe easily again.

  By then, Shimizu had recovered his equilibrium—and the use of his voice. He hardly wheezed at all as he laid down a new quarter and said, “Let me have another one.”

  “The corporal’s a real man!” one of his soldiers said admiringly.

  Shimizu drank the second shot as fast as the first. The stuff didn’t taste good enough to savor. It didn’t hurt so much going down as the first shot had. Maybe he’d got used to it. Or maybe the first assault had stunned his gullet. He managed a smile that looked as if he meant it. “Not so bad,” he said.

  “If he can do it, so can we,” Furusawa declared. He put a yen on the bar. “Give me a refill, too.” The rest of the soldiers who’d come in with Shimizu followed suit. They also did better the second time around. Most of them did, anyway: even in the gloom inside the bar, it was easy to see how red Shiro Wakuzawa turned.

  “Are you all right?” Shimizu asked him.

  He nodded. “Hai, Corporal-san.”

  Another question occurred to Shimizu: “How much drinking have you done before this?”

  “Some, Corporal-san,” Wakuzawa answered. Not much, Shimizu thought. He didn’t push any more, though. Sooner or later, the youngster had to get hardened. Why not now?

  They all had another couple of drinks. Shimizu could feel the strong spirits mounting to his head. He didn’t want to get falling-down drunk or go-to-sleep drunk, not yet. Plenty of other things to do first. He gathered up his men. “Are you ready to stand in line now?” They nodded. He pointed to the door. “Then let’s go.”

  Under the Americans, prostitution had been officially illegal, which didn’t mean there hadn’t been plenty of brothels on Hotel Street. It only meant they had to be called hotels. The Japanese were less hypocritical. They knew a young man needed to lie down with a woman every so often. They thought nothing of importing comfort women to serve soldiers in places where there weren’t many local girls (and they didn’t wonder, or even care, what the comfort women—usually Koreans—thought). Here in Honolulu, they didn’t have to worry about that.

  “Senator Hotel.” Senior Private Furusawa spelled out the name of the place. The line of men waiting to get in stretched around the block. Some of them—mo
st of them, in fact—had been drinking, too. Nobody got too unruly, though. Ferocious-looking military policemen kept an eye on things. You wouldn’t want them landing on you, not before you got what you were waiting for.

  A soldier started singing. Everyone who knew the tune joined in. Shimizu hadn’t drunk enough to make them sound good. Some of the soldiers from his squad added to the racket. “You sound like cats with their tails stepped on,” he told them. They laughed, but they didn’t stop.

  More men got in line behind Shimizu and his soldiers. The line moved forward one slow step at a time. He wished he’d had another drink or two. By the time he went in, he’d be half sobered up.

  More military policemen waited inside, to make sure there was no trouble. A sign said 16 YEN, 4 DOLLARS, 5 MINUTES. Four dollars! He sighed. Almost a month’s pay for him. Two months’ pay for the most junior privates. No one walked out.

  He gave his money to a gray-haired white woman who could have looked no more bored if she were dead. She wrote a number—203—on a scrap of paper and shoved it at him. “Is this the room I go to?” he asked. She shrugged—she must not have spoken Japanese. One of the military policemen nodded. Shimizu sighed again as he went up the stairs. He’d hoped to pick a woman for himself. No such luck.

  When he found the cubicle with 203 above it, he knocked on the door. “Hai?” a woman called from within. The word was Japanese. He didn’t think the voice was. He opened the door and found he was right. She was a brassy blonde, somewhere a little past thirty, who lay naked on a narrow bed. “Isogi!” she told him—hurry up.

  Five minutes, he reminded himself. Not even time to get undressed. Part of him wondered why he’d bothered to do this. But the rest of him knew. He dropped his pants, poised himself between her legs (the hair there was yellow, too, which he hadn’t thought about till that moment), and impaled her.

  She didn’t help much. For all the expression on her face, he might have been delivering a package, not plundering her secret places. Because he’d gone without, he quickly spent himself anyway. As soon as he did, she pushed him off. She pointed to a bar of soap and an enameled metal basin of water. He washed himself, dried with a small, soggy towel, and did up his pants again. She jerked a thumb at the door. “Sayonara.”