Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

Colonel Fujikawa said, “Common soldiers, form two ranks facing each other. Move, you worthless wretches!”

They moved. Now they knew what was coming. It would be bad, but it could have been worse. After a while, Fujikawa would decide it was over.

“Sergeants and corporals, face one another,” Fujikawa added.

Shimizu didn’t let the dismay he felt show on his face. He’d been through this mill before, too. Who hadn’t? Officers hadn’t, that was who. Unlike enlisted men, officers were presumed to be gentlemen. Here, now, they stayed at their stiff brace.

When Shimizu turned to face Corporal Kiyoshi Aiso, who led another squad in his platoon, Aiso’s face was as expressionless as his. The other noncom was a long-service soldier; he had to be close to forty. But his weathered skin and the broad shoulders that bulged under his tunic said he’d grown strong with the years, not soft.

Now, at last, Fujikawa shouted: “Each man, slap the face of the man in front of you! Take turns!”

Corporal Aiso was senior, which meant he got to go first. Shimizu braced himself. Aiso let him have it, right across the cheek. In spite of being braced, Shimizu staggered. His head rang. He shook it, trying to clear his wits. Aiso hadn’t held back, not even a little bit.

Then the other corporal stood at attention and waited. Shimizu slapped him hard. Aiso’s head flew to one side. He shook his head, too. Shimizu came to attention in turn. “The same cheek or the other one?” Aiso asked politely.

“Whichever you please. It doesn’t matter one way or the other,” Shimizu answered.

Aiso hit him lefthanded, which meant his head snapped to the right this time. The older soldier was just as strong with his off hand as with his good one. Shimizu asked whether he had a preference. Aiso just shrugged. Shimizu, a thoroughly right-handed man, struck his left cheek again.

Usually, the noncoms would have kept the common soldiers at it, making sure they didn’t slow down and making sure they didn’t pull their blows. The noncoms were also caught in the web of humiliation today. The regimental officers stalked through the ranks. “Harder!” they shouted. “Keep at it! Who told you you could slack off? What kind of soldier do you think you are?”

Unless Shimizu concentrated, he saw two of Corporal Aiso. He hoped he was just as blurry to the older man. His whole face felt on fire. He tasted blood in his mouth, and he wasn’t sure whether that was blood or snot dribbling from his nose. Probably both. Aiso wasn’t trying to box his ears, any more than he was trying to box those of the other corporal. That didn’t mean they didn’t get walloped now and again. Even Shimizu’s palm started to sting from giving too many blows.

He couldn’t have told how long it went on. Privates started falling over. Cursing officers kicked them. Nobody was trying to get away with faking, not this time. Only when a polished boot in the belly or the spine failed to prod them to their feet were they suffered to stay on the ground.

At last, contemptuously, Colonel Fujikawa yelled, “Enough!”

Corporal Aiso had his arm drawn back for another blow. Shimizu hardly cared whether it landed or not. After so many, what difference did one more make? But Aiso stayed his hand. Shimizu swayed. Stubbornly, he kept on his feet. He didn’t care to crumple where his squad could see him do it. Since most of them were still upright, he would have lost face by falling.

He felt as if he’d lost his face anyway. At the same time, he wished he could lose it. Then he wouldn’t have to feel it any more.

“Go clean yourselves up,” Colonel Fujikawa commanded. “You are disgusting. The way you look is a disgrace to the Japanese Army, too.”

And whose fault is that? Shimizu wondered blearily. But he would never have said such a thing, not even if the Yankees were disemboweling him with a dull, rusty bayonet. Discipline ran deep. After bowing to Corporal Aiso-who returned the courtesy-Shimizu gave his attention, or as much of it as he had to give, back to his squad.

All of them were on their feet now. He didn’t know who had fallen and then got up again. He didn’t intend to ask, either. That would make whoever might have gone down lose face. The whole regiment had lost face. The whole Hawaii garrison had lost face. What point to singling out one or two common soldiers after that?

Heads up, backs straight, they marched off to the barracks. Once there, they lined up at the sinks to wash their bloody faces, rinse out their bloody mouths, and soak their tunics in cold water to get the bloodstains out of them.

“I thought my head was going to fall off.” Shiro Wakuzawa spoke with more pride than anything else.

“We all did,” Shimizu said. The men he led nodded, one by one. His rank usually exempted him from such spasms of brutality. Not this time, though. He was as bruised and battered as any of them. No one could say he hadn’t been through it. No one could say he hadn’t come through it, either. For now, he was one of them.

Senior Private Furusawa said, “If the Americans come again, we’ll be ready for them.”

“Of course we will. Who’d want to go through this more than once?” Even after the abuse Wakuzawa had taken, he could still joke.

“How could the Americans come again?” somebody else said. Shimizu was splashing his face with cold water-which hurt and felt good at the same time-and couldn’t tell who it was. The soldier went on, “They can’t try another raid like that. Furusawa’s right. We’d smash them flat.”

Shimizu pulled away from the faucet blowing like a whale. He shook his head, which made drops of water fly everywhere-and which also reminded him how sore he was. “If the Americans come again, they won’t just raid,” he said. “They’ll run in a pack like wild dogs, and they’ll try to take Hawaii away from us.”

Some of the soldiers in his squad nodded again. Others, men who hurt too much for that, softly said, “ Hai.”

WRITING THE REPORT on how the Americans had caught the Japanese garrison on Oahu flat-footed fell to commander Mitsuo Fuchida. He felt more as if the duty had fallen on him. Before sitting down in front of a blank sheet of paper, he went to pick Minoru Genda’s brain. Genda was one of the few men on the island with whom he could speak frankly.

“It’s not very complicated,” Genda said. “They did something we didn’t expect, that’s all. You can’t get ready for what you don’t anticipate.”

“Easy enough to say,” Fuchida answered. “What do I do for the other forty-nine and three-quarters pages of the report, though?”

As it usually did, Genda’s smile made him look very young. “You can tell General Yamashita and Captain Hasegawa that we won’t get fooled again.”

Fuchida bowed in his seat, there in Genda’s office. “ Domo arigato,” he said, spicing the thanks with all the sarcasm he could. “We’d better not. If we do, we’ll all have to open our bellies.” He wasn’t joking, or not very much. The garrison had put itself through a painful orgy of self-reproach. If it was humiliated again… much more blood would flow than had this time.

“They are going to come sniffing around these islands. They haven’t given up, the way we hoped they would,” Genda said. “Carrier raids, submarines, maybe even flying boats, too.”

“We need better ways to detect them,” Fuchida said.

“The picket boats did their job, neh? ” Genda said. “The skipper of that one was too hard on himself, I think. Why blame him for not looking out for B-25s when nobody else did, either?”

“Picket boats can only do so much,” Fuchida insisted. “Things can sneak past them, or their skippers can make mistakes. Yes, I know we all made the mistake, but we should have known what the Yankees were up to before they got here.”