Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

“Who?” Furusawa asked. That could have meant either the enemy or the Japanese high command.

“The Yankees,” the corporal answered. “When the wind blows from them to us, you can smell their cigarettes. When was the last time you had one?” Naked longing filled his voice.

“Please excuse me, but I don’t smoke,” Furusawa said.

“Ai!” The noncom’s disgusted grunt might have meant, Why do they saddle me with idiots like this? Furusawa’s cheeks heated. The corporal went on, “Well, even you’ll know they don’t send many smokes from Japan. I haven’t had one for weeks. American tobacco’s good, too-better than what we use ourselves. I’m tempted to sneak over there and cut somebody’s throat just so I can steal his cigarettes.”

He sounded as serious as a funeral. “Are cigarettes worth risking your life for?” Furusawa asked.

“Why not? I’m going to get killed pretty damn quick anyway,” the corporal said. “Cigarettes or hooch or pussy-might as well have fun while I can.”

That made more sense to Furusawa than it might have to a lot of his countrymen. “You don’t think we can win?” he said.

“Win, lose-who gives a shit? They’ll use us up either way.”

And that made sense to Furusawa, too, however much he wished it didn’t. All the phrases the Japanese Army used to convince its men to fight to the end no matter what came bubbling up in his mind. He didn’t bring any of them out. But even thinking them at a time like this showed he’d been more thoroughly indoctrinated than he thought. What were such words worth on a real battlefield, with the stench of death and its lesser cousin, the stench of shit, all around?

Words were worth enough to send young Japanese men into the face of enemy guns by the hundreds, by the thousands. A lot of those young Japanese men were part of that battlefield stench now. How could anything be worth more than a man’s life? The words said the country was, the Emperor was. And the young men, or most of them, believed it.

He knew what questioning it here and now would get him: a bullet in front of the ear or in the back of the neck, unless some officer who heard him decided to make him into an example for other doubters. In that case, he’d die a lot slower and hurt a lot more while he was doing it.

He opened a ration can he’d taken from a dead American. A lot of the food the enemy ate was nasty, but he got lucky this time-it was chopped, salty meat. It wasn’t anything he would have got back home, but it was like something he might have got. He wolfed it down. As he did, he remembered the cans of the stuff called Spam he’d found for his squad when the Japanese were conquering. He sighed nostalgically. Now that-that had been really good.

Not five minutes after he’d finished, the Americans started shelling the Japanese line. Furusawa huddled in his hole, right next to the can he’d dropped. Had the kami decided to discard him the same way? Getting discarded hadn’t hurt the can. If his time was here, he hoped he would be as lucky.

Huddled next to him, the corporal who wanted a smoke said, “Stinking Hawaiians. It’s their fault we’re in this mess.”

He didn’t mean Japan. Japan’s problems weren’t the Hawaiians’ fault. But those of this particular knot of Japanese soldiers were. Furusawa said the most he could for the men of the Royal Hawaiian Army:

“Some of them fought well.”

“And some of them damn well didn’t,” the noncom snarled as a nearby shell burst sent splinters screeching overhead. “Some of them ran away. Zakennayo! Some of them surrendered, the worthless turds.” Furusawa had run away. He would have been dead if he hadn’t. The corporal had probably run away, too.

Surrender… That was scarier than the artillery barrage. You didn’t just disgrace yourself if you gave up. You disgraced your family, too. Who could say what the authorities would do to them if word that you were a prisoner got back to Japan? And it wouldn’t be only the authorities. Who would go to a druggist whose son had thrown down his rifle? Who wouldn’t turn away when a man like that, a man who had raised such a worthless son, walked by? Who wouldn’t talk about him behind his back? — not that he wouldn’t know what all his neighbors, all his former friends, were saying.

Mortar bombs hissed down along with the shells. Furusawa really dreaded mortars. You could hardly hear them coming, and they dropped straight down into foxholes. You couldn’t hide from them, the way you could from ordinary artillery. If one of them decided to rip you up, there you were-sashimi-and you couldn’t do a thing about it.

Then, as suddenly as a Hawaiian rain shower, the bombardment stopped. Furusawa and the corporal looked at each other, each one making sure the other was still breathing and hadn’t been blown to red rags without even a chance to scream.

Shouts in harsh English came from the north. So did bursts of machine-gun fire to make the Japanese keep their heads down. And so did clanking rattles that sent fresh ice walking down Furusawa’s spine. Tanks! He’d seen the new U.S. tanks before-always from some little distance, or he wouldn’t be here worrying about them now. They were bigger and tougher-looking than their Japanese counterparts, not that any Japanese tanks were close by. Their cannon would wreck machine-gun nests, their machine guns would chew up infantrymen, and what could a poor damned foot soldier do about them? Not bloody much.

Furusawa popped out of his hole a couple of times to fire at the oncoming Marines. Bullets cracked past him whenever he did. He took his life in his hands even to try to shoot. But he knew the Yankees would run up and kill him if he didn’t fight back. The risk of death against its certainty… You braced yourself, you took the risk, and you hoped for the best. If no bullet found you, you did it again.

A burst of machine-gun fire from one of the U.S. tanks almost tore his head off. He crouched in the hole, shuddering. Then the machine gun swung elsewhere, to torment other luckless Japanese soldiers.

As soon as it did, the corporal with whom Furusawa had been talking sprang up and ran toward the tank, which was horribly close. He scrambled onto the metal monster before the bow gunner could swing his weapon back to bear on him. Through the din of battle, Furusawa heard the noncom tap two grenades on his helmet, or possibly on the side of the tank, to start their fuses. He opened a hatch and chucked them in. Then he jumped down and tried to get away.

One of the American tankers cut him down with half a dozen rounds from the submachine gun he carried as a personal weapon. The grenades went off: two muffled thumps inside the big steel box. An instant later, much bigger booms followed-the grenades must have touched off the tank’s ammunition. The big machine ground to a halt. A thick column of greasy black smoke rose from it.

Five men and a traveling fortress slain. The corporal’s spirit would have a lot to be proud of as it took its place with so many others in Yasukuni Shrine. Furusawa admired the man’s bravery, and admitted to himself he couldn’t match it.

Seeing the tank go up in flames made the Yankees hesitate. It filled the Japanese with new spirit, at least for a little while. Another soldier used a bottle full of burning gasoline to disable a second tank, though Furusawa thought some of that crew got away. He hoped the new loss would make the Americans draw back. It didn’t. They might have lacked the stubborn stoicism of Japanese troops, but they were brave, tough men.

“Give up!” someone shouted in Japanese. “You won’t be harmed after surrender! You’ll be fed and treated well.”

Only a long burst of machine-gun fire answered that call. The Americans must have found a local Japanese to do their talking-to do their lying-for them. They’d done that when the American Army was advancing, too. You listened to those wills-o’-the-wisp at your peril. Furusawa had seen men do what they said and then get shot down.