Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

“What?” Shimizu asked. “What could be good about a mess like this?”

“Simple, Corporal: it’s not our fault,” Wakuzawa answered. “Whatever they do, they can’t blame this on us poor soldiers. The Navy? Hai. Us? Iye.” He shook his head. “If they can’t blame it on us, they can’t make us wallop each other on account of it.”

“You hope they can’t, anyway. If they want to bad enough, they can do whatever they please,” Shimizu said. Private Wakuzawa looked alarmed-and had reason to. Shimizu went on, “But I think you’re right. This one’s the Navy’s fault. I’m glad I’m in khaki right now.”

WHEN GENERAL YAMASHITA summoned Captain Tomeo Kaku to Iolani Palace to confer with him, Captain Hasegawa’s replacement asked-ordered, really-Minoru Genda to accompany him. Genda understood that. He sympathized with it. His superior was brand-new here, and naturally wanted someone along who sympathized with his side of things, to say nothing of someone famous for having facts at his fingertips.

All the same, Commander Genda could have done without the honor.

Had the Navy sunk the American submarine, things wouldn’t have been so bad. The enemy would have paid for his daring. But there was no sign that the Yankees had paid even a sen. That one flier had bombed what he thought was a sub. Afterwards, though, there’d been no oil slick and no floating debris. Odds were he’d attacked a figment of his excited imagination.

Up the stairs to the palace entrance trudged Captain Kaku. He was a stumpy man with bulldog features, less friendly and casual than Hasegawa. One pace to the rear, one pace to the left, Commander Genda followed him. The guards-Army men-at the top of the stairs gave grudging, halfhearted salutes. They weren’t quite insolent enough to be called on it, but their attitude still stung. They might as well have shouted that Navy men deserved no better.

Kaku affected not to notice. Because he chose to do that, Genda had to match his self-control. It wasn’t easy. Despite his slight stature, Genda was a fiercely proud man.

“What can we do?” Kaku murmured as they walked into the entry hall. “We deserve to be mocked. First those bombers, and now this!” He let out a long, sad sigh. He’d taken over for Captain Hasegawa only the day before the submarine raid, but plainly saw it as his fault.

They went up the koa-wood staircase to King Kauakala’s Library. The last time Genda was in the room, he and Mitsuo and Fuchida and a couple of Army officers had asked Princess Abigail Kawananakoa if she wanted to become Queen of Hawaii. As far as Genda knew, plans for reviving the monarchy hadn’t gone any further after she said no. Someone needed to keep working on that. Other potential sovereigns were out there.

But the monarchy could wait. Now Major General Tomoyuki Yamashita sat behind King Kauakala’s ponderous desk. Yamashita was a ponderous man himself, and only looked more massive looming over that formidable piece of furniture. He had set one chair in front of the desk, intending to leave Captain Kaku out there alone and vulnerable to take whatever he felt like dishing out.

The general shot Genda a baleful glance. Genda wondered whether Yamashita would order him out or make him stand. By Yamashita’s scowl, he was thinking about one or the other. But he must have decided either would have been too raw. Grudgingly, he pointed to another of the leather-backed chairs against the wall. Genda set it beside the one meant for Captain Kaku. The two Navy officers sat down together.

“Well?” Yamashita growled. “What do you bunglers have to say for yourselves?”

“If it weren’t for our ‘bungling,’ sir, you wouldn’t be sitting where you are right now,” Genda said.

Now Yamashita looked at him as if he were a bug in the rice bowl. “If that submarine had decided to aim for this building, I could have been killed sitting where I am right now.”

“I am very sorry about that, General,” Captain Kaku said. “Submarines are hard to detect and hard to hunt. That makes them good for nuisance raids like the one the other day. I am glad the boat did not turn its gun this way.”

Genda wouldn’t have missed General Yamashita. He didn’t think Kaku would have, either. The forms had to be observed, though. Too much truth was destructive of discipline.

“How do you propose to make sure this sort of outrage doesn’t happen again?” Yamashita demanded. “Aside from the damage it does, look at the propaganda it hands the Americans.”

“So sorry, General,” Kaku repeated. The Americans had handed Yamashita a stick, and he was using it to beat the Navy.

“We are increasing patrols, sir,” Genda put in. “The new Kawanishi H8K flying boats will help. They have much longer range and greater endurance than the H6Ks they’re replacing. We’re flying them out of the Pearl City base that the Yankees set up for their Pan American Clipper planes.”

“There are no guarantees, sir,” Kaku added, “but they do have a better chance than anything else we’ve got.”

“They’re heavily armed, too,” Genda said. “If they spot a sub, they also have a good chance of sinking it.” He paused for some quick mental calculations, then nodded to himself. “They might even be able to reach the U.S. mainland from here. That would pay the Yankees back for what they did to us. If we could drop bombs on San Francisco, say…”

He’d captured Yamashita’s imagination. He’d hoped he could. “ Could they get there and back?” the general asked.

“It would be right on the edge of their range if they took off from here,” Genda answered. “They could do it more easily if we had a submarine out in the Pacific to refuel them.”

“Could you arrange that with Tokyo?” Yamashita asked, suddenly eager.

Genda and Kaku looked at each other. Neither one smiled. “Possibly,” Kaku said. “It might take some persuading, but possibly. If you would add your voice, Yamashita- san, that would be bound to help.” Genda still didn’t smile, though how he didn’t he couldn’t have said. After what the Americans had done here, Tokyo would leap at the chance to strike back. He was sure of that. Regaining lost face would appeal to the Navy and Army both.

Major General Yamashita nodded. “You may be sure that I will.”

Once Captain Kaku and Genda were out on the lawn outside the palace, the new skipper of the Akagi did smile, in relief. “That went better than I hoped it would,” he said. “Thank you very much, Commander.”

“My pleasure, sir,” Genda answered with a polite bow.

JIM PETERSON DIDN’T need long after volunteering for an outside work detail to realize he’d made a mistake. He’d thought nothing could be worse than the POW camp by Opana. That only proved he’d been sadly lacking in imagination.

He and his fellow suckers were set to work repairing a stretch of the Kamehameha Highway. The Japs had graders and bulldozers. If they hadn’t brought their own, they had the ones they’d captured here. They didn’t want to use them. Maybe they were short on fuel. Maybe they just wanted to find a new way to give their prisoners hell. The whys didn’t really matter. The what did.

The POWs had picks and shovels and hods and mattocks and other hand tools. They broke rock. They carried rock. They flattened chunks of rock till they had a roadway. At first, they’d all been eager to show the Japs what they could do. That hadn’t lasted long. Soon sense prevailed, and they started doing as little as they could get away with.

That didn’t mean they didn’t work. Oh, no-far from it. The Jap guards were harder on them than the whip-cracking overseers in Gone with the Wind were on the slaves. Peterson had no trouble figuring out why, either. If a slave died, his owner was out a considerable investment. If a POW died here… well, so what? Plenty more where he came from.