Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

“Look, if there’s any sign of trouble, you use that hole, you hear?” he said. “Don’t wait. It’s… pretty bad.”

“We will.” Elsie and her mother spoke at the same time.

“Okay. I better go, then. That’s what I wanted to make sure about.” What he really wanted was to take Elsie back to her bedroom and close the door. He couldn’t say that or do anything about it, not with Mrs. Sundberg standing right there. He just dipped his head awkwardly. “Be careful.”

Elsie wasn’t as shy as he was. She hugged him and gave him a kiss that made him want to take her back there more than ever. And she whispered in his ear: “My time of the month came, so that’s okay.”

“Good,” he whispered back. Worrying about a girlfriend was hard enough. Worrying about a girlfriend who was expecting would have been twice as bad, or maybe four times. After a moment, Kenzo kissed Elsie. Mrs. Sundberg was still standing right there, and she didn’t say a word.

MAJOR GENERAL YAMASHITA HAD MOVED HIS HEADQUARTERS out of Iolani Palace and over to Pearl City. Minoru Genda wished the commanding general hadn’t. For one thing, it gave him fewer excuses to visit Queen Cynthia. For another, it put the defense of Honolulu in the hands of Captain Iwabuchi and the special naval landing forces. Iwabuchi was a samurai of the old go-down-fighting school. He could not have cared less if he took all the civilians and the whole city down with him.

“We still have a lot of sailors at Pearl Harbor,” Genda said. “The Americans put men like that in the line against us. If you want to do the same, sir, they are ready and willing to fight alongside your soldiers.”

“They’ll probably have to.” Yamashita’s voice was gloomy. “The American soldiers who tried fighting as infantry got slaughtered. The same will likely happen to our men.” He glowered at the map spread out on a table in front of him. Blue-headed pins and pencil marks showed the American advance between the Waianae and Koolau Ranges. Despite desperate Japanese counterattacks, U.S. forces ground forward day by day. Yamashita went on, “We don’t really need sailors fighting on land. We need carriers and planes.”

“Yes, sir.” Genda knew too well that all the carriers Japan had left, put together, couldn’t launch half as many planes as the U.S. armada off the north coast of Oahu. He also knew that the planes the Japanese could launch were nowhere near a match for their American opponents. “We have requested reinforcements,” he said. “So far, Tokyo has not seen fit to send them out.”

Admiral Yamamoto was too smart to waste resources like that. Genda hoped he was, anyhow. There would be other battles to fight later, battles where Japan wouldn’t be at such an overwhelming disadvantage. The soldiers and sailors already here could go right on delaying U.S. forces. That was what they were good for now: the land equivalent of a fleet in being. How long they could stay in being was the last important question.

General Yamashita didn’t see things that way. Genda could hardly blame him. “Zakennayo!” Yamashita burst out. “They’re playing games with my men’s lives back in the home islands. I want to fight with some chance of victory. Gallant defeats make fine poetry, but the people the poems talk about don’t get the chance to hear them, neh ?”

“Hai. Honto,” Genda said, and it was true. He shrugged. “We’re at the end of a very long supply line, sir.”

“No.” Yamashita shook his big head, as angry and frustrated as a baited bear. “We were on the end of a long supply line. Now the Americans have cut it off. When we took Hawaii, they couldn’t bring anything in. Now we can’t. This is not a good omen.”

“No, sir, it’s not.” Genda could hardly disagree with that. “We have to hang on as long as we can.” Yamashita made a disgusted noise. “If this were some other part of the world, I’d pull back into the mountains and harass the enemy for months, maybe for years. But this is a terrible jungle to fight a war in, because you can’t live in it. There’s next to no game and next to no fruit.”

“For a long time, we were the ones who took advantage of that, sir,” Genda said. “Escaped prisoners of war can’t live off the countryside, the way they can in Malaya or the Philippines.”

“Prisoners.” Major General Yamashita fairly spat the word. “If we lose here, there are liable to be prisoners. Japan would lose face because of that.” With a scowl, he went on, “I assure you, though, Commander, I will not be one of those prisoners. If you are with me at the final moments, perhaps you would honor me by acting as my second.”

“Of course, sir. It would be my privilege.” Japanese officers, soldiers, and sailors were trained to commit suicide rather than letting themselves be captured. Ritual seppuku was a survival from samurai days.

Back then, a second had used his sword to take off his companion’s head after the latter began the act of slitting his belly. These days, a pistol was more common. Both weapons quickly and cleanly took the victim out of his pain. Genda felt he had to add, “I hope that day does not come.”

“So do I-which doesn’t mean it won’t,” Yamashita said.

Genda bit his lip and nodded. The time might also come when he needed a second-or, if he was rushed or in danger of falling into enemy hands, the inelegance of a pistol or a grenade might have to do. Trying to shove worry aside, he pointed at the map and said, “We may be able to hold them at the narrowest stretch between the mountain ranges.”

“Maybe.” But the commanding general didn’t sound as if he believed it. “Hard to hold in the face of that much air power. And the Americans’ tanks are very good-even better than the Russian machines we fought in Mongolia in 1939.”

Those also had to be new models, because that certainly hadn’t been true of the handful of tanks the Yankees used here in 1941. Japan did not have many tanks-and the ones she did have didn’t match up well against those of the other great powers. The Soviet Union had painfully proved that in the border war just before the fighting in Europe broke out.

A country needed a strong automotive industry to build good tanks in quantity. Japan didn’t have one. We would have, in a few more years, Genda thought. His country had done so much so fast to hurl itself from feudalism headlong into the modern age. Japanese ships and warplanes and infantry weapons measured up to any in the world. But she hadn’t been able to do everything at once. Now the question was, how much would that cost her?

“No more carriers, eh? No more airplanes?” Major General Yamashita said. It wasn’t really a question.

“Please excuse me, sir, but I have to tell you it doesn’t seem likely,” Genda said.

“Too bad. They could let us make a real fight of it.” Yamashita shook his head. “Now… Now I have a hard time holding on to hope. With the enemy in control of the air, with the enemy in control of the sea, all we can hope to do is delay the inevitable.”

“I understand, sir,” Genda said. “Even that can be valuable. It wins the Empire more time to ready itself for the battles that lie ahead.”

“Hai. A small consolation, but a consolation.” Yamashita did not sound consoled. He had to see he would die on Oahu. Genda foresaw the same fate for himself. When there was no escape, all you could do was fight. But he feared for the Empire in those coming battles. If the Americans could bring a force like this to bear wherever they chose, how could Japan hope to withstand them? And American factories and shipyards were still working at full tilt. How long before the United States could muster two such forces, or three?