Robert Conroy - Rising Sun

The owner grabbed a looter’s arm and was knocked down. The looter and a couple of his companions kicked and stomped the poor man until he lay bloody and still. A woman, probably the grocer’s wife, emerged screaming. Her face was bloodied and bruised. She fell down beside the injured man and continued to scream. A police siren wailed and the crowd vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Amanda and the others ran to the fallen man and began to check him over. “He’s breathing,” she said. The woman’s howls diminished into sobbing. Grace tried to comfort her while Sandy and Amanda helped the man, who was having trouble breathing.

“Maybe broken ribs,” Sandy said, and Amanda concurred. “And perhaps a heart attack, too.”

An ambulance arrived and they helped put him inside along with the woman who was indeed his wife. Some neighbors tried to board up the store even though it had been pretty well stripped of anything valuable. The cops took their statement although they could add nothing to the obvious. Nor did anyone recognize any of the looters.

“I wonder if the stupid bastards in Washington can see this,” Grace said as she looked at the desolation that had once been a family’s livelihood. That it had been caused by Americans and not the enemy made it even more difficult to swallow. “I voted for Roosevelt and look what he’s gone and caused.”

“I don’t think the politicians in Washington can see much of anything,” Amanda said. She too had voted for FDR over the Republican Wendell Wilkie, as had most of America. “But I do think this shows just how helpless our situation is. Are we all agreed that we have to do something?” They were. “Good, now let’s go see Mack.”

The Japanese Marines were formally called “Special Naval Landing Forces,” and were proud of their training, their skills, and their ferocity in combat. They were well led, and always fought efficiently and bravely. And they never surrendered. Like their elite counterparts in the U.S. Marine Corps, they were the ones who would land on hostile beaches and fight their way to victory. A number of them had even been trained as paratroopers and they rightfully thought of themselves as a truly elite force.

There were those who thought this was a suicide mission, but Captain Seizo Arao dismissed such complaints. He had a hundred men on the tramp steamer. Her counterfeit markings said she was Spanish, a neutral, which meant that she was safe from undue notice as she approached the Pacific coast of Panama.

A clumsily applied paint job proclaimed her as the Santa Anna Maria. She was tawdry and harmless looking, which offended Arao’s sense of military professionalism, even though he recognized the necessity for such a slovenly disguise. Soon the time for skulking would be over and his men would commence attacking, bringing the war to one of America’s economic and military treasures, the Panama Canal.

In the ship’s hull, the hundred men of the Special Landing Force detachment waited eagerly and stoically, shrugging off their discomfort as a temporary and trivial inconvenience. They were honored to have had been chosen to attack the Panama Canal, which they all knew was a vital means of moving American ships from the Atlantic into the Pacific where they would confront the Japanese Navy.

Not only would the hundred men fight as soldiers, but they would also be mules, carrying large amounts of explosives. The normally stern and stoic Captain Arao had joined in the laughter when he heard his men joking that one accident with the dynamite and they’d all be back in Tokyo in time for dinner. It was good to have men like that.

They anchored a few miles north of the Pacific terminus of the canal and waited for darkness. They were not alone. A number of other ships were waiting for their turn to cross to the Atlantic. The Americans who ran the canal had stepped up their security, especially before ships could enter the canal, but they could not closely watch so many ships still at sea. Perhaps they’d ultimately get curious and check the hold of the Santa Anna Maria , but the men should be gone before the Americans even began to wonder about the Spanish-flagged tramp. With only a little luck, she would journey safely back to a Japanese base.

The Americans had a small army base at Fort Clayton, close to the Miraflores Lock, but it was on the other side of the canal. National Guard soldiers were supposed to be garrisoned there, but Japanese intelligence could not tell how many men were in the fort, or their state of preparedness. It probably wouldn’t matter. National Guard troops were known to be poorly trained and would be not present much of a problem. No matter, Arao thought, they would be through with the Miraflores Locks before the bumbling Americans could react.

Shortly after midnight, the Japanese Marines departed the freighter by lifeboat and landed on a sandy beach south of the canal. The Santa Anna Maria would wait for two weeks in case there were survivors from the attack on America’s military strength. Arao’s wish was for complete success and many survivors, but he would gladly settle for success and a glorious death.

The Panama Canal was only fifty miles long, a short distance for Arao’s men; especially since they were only going a few miles inland to the first series of locks at Miraflores. However, they soon found themselves exhausted and confused as they traveled through the steamy heat and the dense jungle foliage, which they had to do to stay hidden. The Americans doubtless had soldiers near the canal and, no matter how poor they were, Arao’s men didn’t want to meet them, at least not yet. Prudently, Arao decided to wait and let his men rest. They were tough and hardened as only a Japanese soldier can be, but a well-rested soldier was a much better fighter than a fatigued one, and the next several days promised to be exhausting enough.

Thus, it was after midnight of the third night when they finally made their move. Their entry was laughably easy. Barbed wire surrounding the locks was cut and half of Arao’s men poured through. These had the job of neutralizing American security while the rest carried double loads of explosives and detonators.

They had no idea how well the locks were protected, so they simply swarmed out, looking for the enemy. Their instructions were to use their rifles only as a last resort. Bayonets and officers’ swords would be best.

Arao led his men around a corner of a building that looked like a maintenance shack. Two men in overalls looked up in disbelief at the apparitions racing toward them. Arao’s sword whipped the air. The first man was beheaded in an instant, and a Japanese Marine rammed a bayonet into the chest of the second. Arao laughed and wondered if it would it all be this simple?

It wouldn’t be. Screams and gunshots split the air. Damn, he thought, somebody was awake. He laughed and howled with pleasure. Let the fight begin. Sirens wailed and lights came on. Rifle fire increased in volume and a machine gun opened up, chattering insanely and shooting wildly. It looked like some American soldiers were on duty and willing to fight.

Arao exhorted his men to move more quickly and place their charges, while his lieutenants established an effective perimeter to keep the Americans from interfering with them. His plan was uncomplicated—he would blow the gates closest to the ocean and move inland in the direction of Gatun Lake, destroying as he went. Both Miraflores Lake and Gatun Lake were artificial, created by the construction of the canal itself. The lakes not only served as a highway for ships, but as reservoirs for the canal area. They were well above sea level, and a few well placed charges would drain the entire complex. He laughed as the first charge went off, blowing a set of gates to smithereens and sending a torrent of water gushing down to the ocean. Wouldn’t it be marvelous, he thought, if any ships attempting to use the canal had to slither through the mud of what used to be Gatun and Miraflores Lakes?