Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

COMMANDER MINORU GENDA WALKED PAST THE FRONT ENTRANCE TO IOLANI PALACE. Fairy terns, almost whiter than white, floated through the blue, blue Hawaiian sky. The flag of the newly restored Kingdom of Hawaii fluttered on five flagpoles above the late-Victorian palace. Seeing that flag made Genda smile. The Hawaiians had gone out of their way to accommodate both Britain and the United States, with the Union Jack in the canton and red, white, and blue horizontal stripes filling the rest of the field.

Much good it did them, the Japanese officer thought. White men economically dominated the Kingdom of Hawaii for years before America overthrew it and brought the islands under U.S. control.

Well, things were different now. The Stars and Stripes no longer flew over Iolani Palace. The building no longer housed the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii, as it had for decades. King Stanley Owana Laanui-King by the grace of God and, much more to the point, by that of the Emperor of Japan-reigned here now, along with his redheaded Queen Cynthia. And, where King Stanley reigned, Major General Tomoyuki Yamashita, who’d commanded the Japanese Army forces that conquered Hawaii, ruled.

Japanese soldiers stood guard at the top of the stairs leading up into the palace. They weren’t big men-few of them had more than a couple of inches on Genda’s five-three-but, with their businesslike Arisaka rifles, they didn’t need to be. At the base of the stairs stood a squad of the revived Royal Hawaiian Guard. Putting the tall men at the bottom and the small men at the top 2 minimized the size difference between them. King Stanley’s guardsmen wore pith helmets and blue coats with white belts: purely ceremonial uniforms for purely ceremonial soldiers. They carried bayoneted Springfields-the Japanese had captured them by the thousand from the U.S. Army-but Genda had heard the rifles’ magazines held no cartridges.

The Royal Hawaiian Guards came to an even stiffer brace as Genda strode by them. He nodded back, politely acknowledging the compliment. He turned a corner and then another one, heading for the back of the palace. More guards, both Hawaiian and Japanese, stood there. Another stairway led up into the building. And a shorter, narrower set of steps led down into Iolani Palace. Genda chose that stairway.

In the nineteenth century, the basement had been the servants’ quarters. It had also housed the storerooms where the kahili -the feather-topped royal staffs-and the palace silver service, the wine, and other necessities were kept. Because at the last minute the architect had added a walled dry moat around the palace, the basement rooms had full-sized windows and weren’t nearly so dark and gloomy as they would have been otherwise.

In front of one of the rooms along the wide central corridor stood two Japanese sailors in landing rig: their usual blues modified by black-painted steel helmets; infantrymen’s belts, ammunition pouches, and canteens; and white canvas gaiters. Like the sentries outside, they carried Arisakas.

“Yes, sir? You wish…?” one of them asked when Genda stopped and faced them.

He gave his name, adding, “I have an eleven o’clock appointment with Admiral Yamamoto.” He didn’t need to look at his watch to know he was ten minutes early. Being late to a meeting with the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet was inconceivable.

Both men saluted. “Hai!” they said in unison. The sailor who’d spoken before opened the door for him. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto worked at a plain pine desk, nothing like the ornate wooden dreadnought in King David Kalakaua’s Library on the second floor of the palace, the one General Yamashita used. Genda thought that most unfair; Yamamoto outranked Yamashita, and should have taken over the finer work area. But he hadn’t done it. He was in Hawaii only temporarily, and hadn’t wanted to displace the permanent garrison commander.

Yamamoto got to his feet as Genda walked in. They exchanged bows. Yamamoto was only slightly taller than Genda, but had a wrestler’s stocky, wide-shouldered body. “Sit down, sit down,” he said now.

“How are you feeling? Better, I hope? You look stronger than you did, and you have more color, too.”

“I’m much improved, sir. Thank you,” Genda said as he did sit. He’d had pneumonia when the Japanese Navy squared off against the U.S. forces trying to retake Hawaii. Despite the illness, he’d come up from Akagi ’s sick bay to the bridge to do what he could to help the Japanese carriers against their American opposite numbers. He didn’t take credit for the victory, but he’d taken part in it. More than a month after the fight, he was starting to feel like his old self, though he hadn’t got there yet.

“Glad to hear it. I was worried about you,” Yamamoto said with gruff affection. Genda inclined his head. Most of a generation younger than the admiral, he was Yamamoto’s protege. He’d planned the biggest part of the Pearl Harbor operation and the invasion of Hawaii. He’d planned them-and Yamamoto had rammed the plans through, turning them into reality. And now… they were meeting in the basement of Iolani Palace.

“The Americans have been very quiet since we stopped them,” Genda remarked.

“Hai.” Yamamoto nodded. “I think they will stay quiet a while longer, too. I am going to take this opportunity to go back to Japan. Now that Hawaii is settled for the time being, we have to talk with the Army about what to do next. Australia… India… And of course they’ll want to take another bite out of China, and they’ll expect our help with that.”

“So they will,” Genda agreed. The Americans had offered to keep selling oil and scrap metal to Japan-if she got out of China. War, even a risky war like the one against the USA, had seemed preferable to the humiliation of bowing to another country’s will. Did the Yankees tell Britain to leave India and her African colonies? Not likely! Did the Yankees hesitate to send in Marines when one of their little neighbors got out of line? That was even less likely. But they thought they could order Japan around. Bitterly, Genda said, “We don’t have round eyes. We don’t have white skin.”

“True enough.” Yamamoto nodded again, following Genda’s train of thought. “But we’ve shown the world that that doesn’t matter.” He set both hands on the cheap pine desk. As a young officer, he’d lost the first two fingers of his left hand at the Battle of Tsushima, in the Russo-Japanese War. He’d lost two fingers-but the Russians lost most of the fleet that sailed halfway around the world to meet the Japanese. And they lost the war.

Genda had had his first birthday in 1905. Like any of his countrymen, though, he knew what the Russo-Japanese War meant. It was the first modern war in which people of color beat whites. And now the Japanese were beating the Americans and the British and the Australians, too.

Yamamoto said, “I hope I don’t have to come back too soon. American radio broadcasts make it very plain the United States is not abandoning Hawaii. I hoped the USA would-I hoped our victories would make them see they could not win, and so make peace. But that hasn’t happened. Karma, neh? They have more people and more resources and more factories-many more-than we do. My guess is that they will try to bring all of them into play. That will take some time.”

“We will be building, too,” Genda said stoutly.

“Hai,” Yamamoto said once more. But that was only acknowledgment, not agreement, for he went on, “They can build faster than we can. I hope what we have done here in the Eastern Pacific has bought us the time to take and use the resources we need to stay a great power in the modern world. I hope so… but time will tell.”