Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

They came out of the north. From the sea, of course, Shimizu thought. One second, they were tiny in the distance. The next… Shimizu just had time to shout, “Take cover!” before the big, blunt-nosed fighters opened up on the column of marching men.

There wasn’t much cover to take. Shimizu threw himself flat by the side of the road and hoped for the best. Bullets rattled off asphalt, thudded into the ground… and made wet, splashy noises when they struck flesh. When a couple of them struck flesh too close to the noncom, he decided any cover was better than none. He jumped into the closest rice paddy.

Even as he crouched in the water, he unslung the Springfield and held it up to keep the muddy water from fouling the rifle. Considering how much he disliked it, that proved how thoroughly orders about maintaining a clean weapon at all times had been beaten into him.

He was far from the only soldier who went into the paddies. Not all the men were as fastidious about their rifles as he was. Some even ducked their heads under the water as planes flew by at treetop height, guns blazing. Shimizu understood that, but he wouldn’t have wanted to do it himself. He assumed they fertilized the paddies here with night soil, the way they did in Japan and China.

Combat always seemed to last forever, even if in truth it was usually over in a hurry. This was hardly combat at all. Shimizu admired the handful of men who stood there and fired at the American planes. He admired them, yes, but without wanting to imitate them. The enemy here had things all his own way-and then he was gone, off to make misery somewhere else on Oahu.

Dripping and filthy, Shimizu dragged himself out of the rice paddy. Soldiers who’d flattened out and lived were getting to their feet, many of them with dazed expressions on their faces. Not all the men on the highway and by it were getting up again, though. Too many never would. The iron smell of fresh blood and the latrine stench of punctured bowels fouled the tropical air. Wounded men moaned. Bodies and pieces of bodies sprawled in ungainly postures. What had the Americans been firing? When one of those bullets hit a man, it tore him to pieces. The regimental physicians, those of them left alive, ran from one writhing soldier to another, doing what they could. Whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be enough.

“Forward!” called Colonel Fujikawa, the regimental commander. “We have to move forward! Are we going to defend this island against the American invaders or not?”

“Hai!” It was a ragged, shaken chorus, but a chorus nonetheless. Takeo Shimizu tried to ignore the wobble in his own voice when he joined it.

The American fighters strafed them again half an hour later, this time from behind. The Americans had to be flying home, back to the carriers that had brought them so close to Oahu. Where are our carriers? Shimizu wondered again. What’s happened to them? The enemy planes roared off to the north, leaving many more dead and maimed behind them. Wasn’t that answer enough?

Shimizu had come ashore on a north-facing beach, not two years earlier. Now he would have to keep the Yankees from doing the same. He didn’t think he would have to wait for them very long, either.

AFTER THE YUKIKAZE GOT INTO PEARL HARBOR, Commander Minoru Genda demanded a car to take him to Iolani Palace. The officers there laughed in his face. American bombers had left the harbor a shambles. If there were any running motorcars, they were reserved for people more important than a mere commander off a sunken ship.

He’d had to pull strings to get his hands on a bicycle. Pedaling hurt, but the ankle wasn’t broken. The Yukikaze ’s doctor had assured him of that much, anyhow. With it tightly wrapped, he could manage. As he rolled east, he saw what the American bombers had done to Hickam Field. Many of the airplanes flying off it still survived, but the runways themselves were cratered wastelands that reminded him of the worst photos he’d seen of First World War battlefields. How soon before Japan could get those planes flying again? Soon enough to attack the enemy invasion fleet that was bound to come? He dared hope so, anyhow.

Hope, at the moment, was as much as he could do. Admiral Yamamoto had warned about this kind of U.S. response all along. The summer before, the Americans had tried to do it on the cheap, and they’d paid. And, all too plainly, they’d learned, and they’d worked. Had any of their factories and shipyards stood idle for even a moment from that day to this? Genda feared-yes, feared-not.

Honolulu itself hadn’t been hit so hard. Genda pedaled past a battered barracks hall, but the bombers hadn’t tried to knock the city flat. Had they wanted to, they could have done it. They’d spent their bombs more wisely, though-and then they’d flown off to Kauai! Somehow, somewhere, the Americans had managed to carve out a landing strip on the island right under Japan’s nose. With Oahu secured, the Japanese hadn’t worried much about the other main Hawaiian islands. That turned out to have been a mistake.

We can’t afford mistakes against the Americans, Genda thought unhappily. They’re liable to beat us even if we don’t make any. He didn’t think Rear Admiral Kaku had made any mistakes in the naval battle just past. That hadn’t kept Akagi and Shokaku from going down. Overwhelming numbers and munitions could defeat even the finest tactics. If we’d had twice as many carriers- Genda broke off. He knew the answer to that. We would have hurt the enemy more and lost all our ships anyhow.

Maybe-probably-the fundamental mistake had been going to war against the USA in the first place. But what else could Japan have done? Let FDR dictate what she could and couldn’t do in China? For a proud and touchy empire, that would have been impossible. He sighed. Sometimes a problem had only bad solutions.

Soldiers drilled on the Iolani Palace grounds. Some were King Stanley Laanui’s Hawaiians. Genda eyed them with more than a little worry. Would they really fight against the Americans? If they didn’t, they might prove dangerous. Maybe giving the puppet King of Hawaii even a toy army hadn’t been such a good idea.

Most of the men on the smooth green grass were Japanese, though. They weren’t Army men; they belonged to the special naval landing forces, and wore greenish uniforms rather than khaki and black leather rather than brown. “What will we do to the Americans?” shouted the Navy captain leading their exercises.

“Slaughter them!” the soldiers yelled back.

“Do our lives matter?” the officer asked.

“No, Captain Iwabuchi!” the men replied. “Our lives mean nothing! Dying gloriously for the sacred Emperor means everything!”

Genda was relieved to pull up in front of the entrance and let down the bike’s kickstand. It wasn’t that Captain Iwabuchi and his men were wrong-far from it. But Genda had more subtlety in him than the man in charge of the special landing forces. He sighed. Much good that subtlety had done him.

The Hawaiian guards at the bottom of the stairs and the Japanese at the top saluted him as he slowly and painfully ascended. “I must see General Yamashita and the king,” he told the Army lieutenant in charge of his countrymen. “At once.”

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant had seen him before, and knew who he was. He sent one of his men into the palace. The soldier returned a moment later. He nodded. So did the lieutenant. “Go on up to the general’s office, then.”

“Arigato gozaimasu.” After thanking the junior officer, Genda climbed the koa -wood staircase to the second story. He limped into the Yellow Room, where Tomoyuki Yamashita supervised the Japanese occupation of Hawaii.