Hiroki's head snapped up and for an instant Matsuo saw anger and, yes, even a flash of hatred in his face, but then it was gone, hidden behind the perpetual mask.
Hiroki sighed and laid the hanko on his desk. "Very well. You have it. Please be brief. What did you want to see me about?"
"Bataan.”
Hiroki smiled. "Our greatest victory so far. We humiliated the British by taking Singapore. And now, with the fall of Bataan, we have handed the United States the greatest military defeat in its history. The Emperor is very proud of his military forces."
"Is he proud of the way they treated the prisoners they took?"
Hiroki's smile vanished. "We do not concern the Emperor with such details."
"Complete disregard for the Geneva Conventions is more than just a ‘detail.' "
Since his return, Matsuo had heard sporadic reports of brutality against military captives and civilian populations. He had assumed them isolated incidents, an unfortunate but unavoidable horror of war. Any war. But after a while he began to sense a pattern. He was investigating them in detail when the reports came in from Bataan. They painted a picture of unrelieved brutality.
Nearly seventy thousand American and Filipino prisoners, all of them weak from hunger, many of them racked with malaria and other jungle diseases, forced to march without food or water at bayonet point like a herd of cattle through sixty-five miles of jungle. Those too weak to march were buried, some while they were still alive. Those who couldn't keep up were bayoneted or clubbed to death and left along the way. Only sixty thousand reached the prison camps.
"It's got to stop. How can we hold up our head as a nation if we persist in such atrocities?"
"The prisoners had to be marched through the jungle. The railways were totally inadequate. We were prepared for twenty-five thousand and were faced with almost three times that number. We thought they would have their own rations but they didn't, and our troops had only enough along to feed themselves. There was no choice."
"I don't believe that for a minute, and neither do you. There is always a choice. And this is not an isolated incident. You are supplying prisoners of war as slave labor to the zaibatsu in the conquered territories."
Hiroki shot up from his seat. "What concern of yours is that? You are an intelligence officer. You should limit your concern to Naval Intelligence! Besides, how can you have respect for these mewling creatures who surrender so easily? They have no honor. No courage. No pride. No shame. Do you know that after they have surrendered and been impounded, they actually ask us to inform their families that they are alive and imprisoned? Do you believe that? A Japanese soldier with the misfortune to be taken prisoner and who could not find the means to kill himself would want his disgrace at being captured hidden from the world!"
This was not the first time Matsuo had run into this sentiment. It had been most prominent when news had come that General MacArthur had fled Corregidor for Australia. Every officer Matsuo knew had heaped ridicule on the general for not standing and dying with his troops. Matsuo had tried to explain MacArthur's reasons but had invariably failed. Now it was so important that he make Hiroki understand.
"They don't think like us. When they've fought all they can and they're outnumbered and victory is impossible, they surrender. They see no shame in surrender when it becomes obvious that their objective will be lost whether they fight on and die, or stop fighting."
Hiroki's features reflected his repugnance. "That is obscene. Unthinkable for a Japanese soldier. He knows that he must sell his life dearly, to take as many as possible of the enemy with him before he dies and then save a last bullet for himself. That is Bushido."
"But Westerners know nothing of Bushido. They come from a different set of religions and values. They view life differently from us. We've got to understand them if we are going to live with them after this war."
Hiroki's expression became smug. "I prefer to act from the assumption that they are going to have to learn to live with us after the war."
"If this open flouting of conventions continues, the Americans will not brook any talk of peace until, as one officer recently put in an American newspaper, ‘The only place Japanese will be spoken is hell!'"
"Such bravado from such a weak-willed race," Hiroki said with a laugh. "No wonder our troops are scything through them like so much wheat. I am only sorry that we did not go to war with these pitiful Western nations sooner. We should have banished them from the Orient long ago. As for peace terms, we will dictate them when the time comes. Mark my words, brother: The day may come when Japanese is spoken not in hell but in Washington."
Matsuo realized that persuading his brother was hopeless. Hiroki was so convinced of Japanese invincibility that it was like talking to a block of granite. Yet he had to keep trying.
"Is there no way I can convince you that we should observe the Geneva Conventions?"
"Why should you bother with me?" Hiroki said blandly.
"Because I cannot get in to see the Emperor. Premier Tojo controls all access to Him. Not only are private conversations forbidden, but I have been refused general audiences with him and am blocked from attending Imperial Conferences. So I have come to you. Next to the premier you are probably the most powerful man in all Japan." As he saw Hiroki puff up slightly, he decided to pursue the appeal to his brother's pride. "One might even say, due to your intimate contacts within both the Army and the Navy, and within the major zaibatsu, that your power exceeds Tojo's. That is why I've—"
Matsuo was cut off by a series of deep, booming explosions from outside. As air raid sirens began to wail, he hurried to the window where his brother joined him. He saw nothing at first, then came the staccato bursts of antiaircraft fire and the sound of a plane. Suddenly it roared into view overhead. Matsuo recognized it at once.
"It's American!"
"Impossible!" Hiroki cried, pressing his face against the glass.
"A B-25 bomber!"
As the plane turned south and disappeared from view, he turned his attention to the noontime crowds and watched them wave and cheer, thinking no doubt that the Japanese Air Force was putting on some kind of show. But this was no show. He saw smoke begin to rise from the industrial quarter in the lowlands to the east. The Americans were here. They had penetrated the sacred airspace over the Imperial Palace.
Matsuo had an uneasy feeling that the war was going to be different from now on.
* * *
Meiko strolled the Ginza at Matsuo's side, her hand in his. Matsuo was quiet, lost in thought. She didn't know what he was thinking, but she knew he had been deeply disturbed by the American bombing raid last week. She tried to break him out of his reverie.
"You'd never know we were attacked, would you?" she said.
He looked at her. "To look at the buildings, no. But look at the faces, Meiko. That's where the damage is."
Meiko looked and had to admit to a subtle change. Since the stunning success of the Pearl Harbor attack, Tokyo and the rest of Japan had been in a state of euphoria. Western dress, while not forbidden by law, was frowned upon and had all but completely disappeared by the beginning of the year. Women and most men wore kimonos; the men who didn't wore a military-style olive drab jacket and a fatigue-like cap. The dress had not changed since the raid, but Matsuo was right. The eyes had changed: Meiko sensed a hint of concern in the euphoria.
"See it? It doesn't matter that the physical damage done was negligible, the raid was a success. The American papers credit a man named Doolittle, and they are playing it for maximum propaganda value over there. But what it has done here is show us that we can go on believing in the invincibility of our armed forces if we wish, but we can no longer consider our defenses impregnable. The war was far away until last week."
"Is that what's been on your mind since the raid?"
"That and other things." He sighed. "I think it's time to end the war. We've accomplished all we set out to do—we're secure from Indochina down through the East Indie
s, across the Philippines and out as far as the Solomons, Wake, and the Marshalls. We have booted America and Europe out of the Orient. It is time to step to the bargaining table."
Meiko's heart leapt. "That would be wonderful. How soon?"
"I don't know." He lowered his voice. "Not soon, I fear. Admiral Yamamoto has argued for it strenuously but the Supreme Command seems intoxicated by its successes. They're talking of taking the rest of New Guinea and then moving on to Australia." He shook his head. "New Guinea, I can see… but even in the unlikely even that we take Australia, we haven't the manpower to hold it."
"When will they say ‘enough,' Matsuo?"
"Perhaps never. If we bring the war to an end now, we can dictate most of the terms. If we allow it to go on too long, I fear someone else will be dictating the terms."
Meiko wasn't thinking about terms. She had more immediate concerns. She remembered the panic that had engulfed her at the sound of the air raid sirens and the sound of the explosions, the contractions in her swelling womb. The raid had opened her eyes to the frailty of this city.
She looked at the buildings around her and thought of their own home: wood. Everything was made of wood, and old wood at that. Tokyo had been rebuilt in the mid-Twenties after the Great Kanto Quake and its resultant fire. That meant that most of the houses in the city were made of wood that had had two decades to dry out. Tinderbox houses divided into rooms within by paper walls, wooden floors covered with mats of straw and rushes. Dry, seasoned wood everywhere. Tokyo was a maze of kindling. Everything was flammable. She looked down--even her shoes, her geta, were made of wood.
Was there anything in Tokyo that would not go up in flames at the touch of a match?
She shivered and leaned closer to Matsuo. "I want this war over. I don't ever want to hear a bomber over this city again."
"Neither do I. And I certainly don't want our child to be born in a war, to grow up in a city that might come under attack at any moment."
...our child…
Meiko ran her free hand over the swell of her abdomen. She was about four and a half months pregnant. But yesterday the midwife had said she looked nearly six months along. Meiko had nearly fainted. That couldn't be. December had been the first month she had missed her menses—November's flow had been scanty, but it had come.
Oh, by all the gods, it mustn't be. It must be our child.
She glanced up and saw Matsuo looking at her strangely. "Is something wrong?"
"Of course not. Why do you ask?"
"Because," he said with a faint smile, "if you squeeze my hand any tighter, at least two of my fingers will fall off."
She laughed and loosened her grip, but the knot inside remained as tight as ever.
MAY
HASHIRAJIMA
The map room of the Yamato was immense. Matsuo gazed around and tried to calculate the number of tatami it would take to cover the floor, but found it impossible in such darkness. The only light was pooled in the center over the plotting table where the captains and senior officers of the Combined Fleet watched intently as groups of ships were moved around the map of the Central Pacific.
Matsuo watched and waited for Admiral Yamamoto to take him aside. After analyzing the intelligence reports from the battle of the Coral Sea earlier in the month, Matsuo had asked for an urgent audience. The admiral had invited him down here to his fleet's anchorage south of Hiroshima to meet him aboard his eighty-thousand-ton flagship, the largest battleship in the world.
"Do you see my strategy for Operation MI?" said a voice at his shoulder.
Matsuo turned and bowed to the admiral, then glanced back at the plotting table. "I believe so."
"This will be the decisive battle. An immense battle. I am committing eight aircraft carriers, eleven battleships, twenty-two cruisers, sixty-five destroyers, twenty-one submarines, and hundreds of planes to the action. We will crush the Pacific Fleet at Midway. Let me show you."
He bellied up to the table and pointed north to the Aleutian Islands where they trailed away from Alaska like the vertebrae of a huge spine.
"We will make a feint here at US soil—Dutch Harbor—on June 3, drawing their attention north. On June 4, we will begin bombardment of Midway Island. And in the course of taking it, we will wipe out what's left of their Pacific Fleet."
Matsuo stared at the plotting table, awed by the enormity and complexity of the operation: six separate attack forces engaging in interlocking offensives. Timing was critical. The expense was mind-boggling, the risk enormous. All for a two-thousand-square-acre speck of coral in the middle of nowhere called Midway. The deck space of the attacking ships no doubt exceeded the surface area of the entire island.
Yamamoto drew him aside and spoke in a low voice. "This will end the war. From Midway we can cut off the American supply line to Australia and directly threaten Hawaii. After this victory, my status will be such that I am positive I can convince Premier Tojo to seek peace terms with the United States. Without Australia as a staging area for a counteroffensive, and with Hawaii in jeopardy, the Americans will come to the table. The war will be over. Japan will have all she needs to assure her primacy for the next thousand years."
Matsuo closed his eyes and sent out a prayer. If only that could be.
He stepped closer to the admiral. "Then it is all the more critical that you listen to what I have to tell you. It could affect the entire outcome of Operation MI."
Yamamoto's eyes narrowed. "Come to my quarters."
He followed the admiral to his cabin where he refused a cup of sake but lit a cigarette instead. They both settled into well-cushioned chairs.
"Speak," the admiral said.
"I believe the Americans have broken our Naval Code."
"Impossible!"
"Exactly my sentiments until our defeat in the Coral Sea two weeks ago."
He saw Yamamoto's head snap up. The press and the radio were full of accolades for the Imperial Navy's "glorious victory" off New Guinea. And in truth, on paper, the battle appeared to be a victory. The Americans had lost the Lexington and suffered serious damage to the Yorktown. They had come out the decided loser in tonnage sent to the bottom of the Coral Sea. But one simple fact remained: The object of the attack had been to capture Port Moresby, which would have led to control of the southern coast of New Guinea, allowing them to threaten northern Australia.
But despite all the damage the Imperial Navy had inflicted, the Americans had stopped them. Port Moresby was still controlled by the entrenched Australians.
Matsuo was sure that Yamamoto was aware of this. A curt, reluctant nod from the admiral confirmed it.
"The Americans were lucky."
"A little too lucky. In all the hugeness of the Pacific, the fact that they should just happen to concentrate their carrier strength in that particular area at the very moment we are launching an offensive against Port Moresby is more than I care to lay off to mere chance."
"The Naval Code is too complex. I can't believe that they have broken it."
The admiral was right about the complexity. The Naval Code was an intricate, multilayered system employing five-digit codes from one book which referred to Japanese ideograms which were, in turn, added to another five-digit group from a second codebook. The idea that Americans could penetrate such a labyrinthine system seemed unlikely in the extreme, but Matsuo had his reasons for believing it had been breached.
"I think they got their break after Colonel Doolittle's raid on Tokyo. Most of the available ships from the Combined Fleet were sent out in pursuit of the carriers that brought the US bombers. Radio traffic was high and, as you know, a radio operator's style on the key is like a signature. If the Americans were listening, they may have been able to identify call signals and ships, names and positions, and to work out a decoding formula from that."
Yamamoto shook his close-shaven head. "I still don't believe it possible."
"Nevertheless, it would not hurt to implement the new code before Operation MI."
"There's no time."
Matsuo fought to keep an impassive expression. He had previously recommended that a change in codes be implemented by May 1, but had been told then that there was "no time." The change had been pushed back to June 1, and now he was being told that it would be pushed back again.
"Sir, it might mean the difference between victory and defeat."
"No more so than a delay of even a few days. We know the Yorktown is in Pearl Harbor for repairs and we know that two other Pacific Fleet carriers are in the waters off Australia. A delay could allow the Yorktown time to return to service and those other two carriers to be repositioned near Midway. Now is the time." He slammed his hand repeatedly on the arm of his chair. "Now! Now! Now! We will take Midway. And after we do, I shall make certain that it is the final battle of this war."
Matsuo inclined his head in deference to his superior's wishes. He knew Yamamoto's reputation as an audacious gambler who rarely lost when it counted, but in his heart he felt the admiral was courting disaster.
JUNE 1
TOKYO
"A disaster! An unmitigated disaster!"
Shimazu watched as Hiroki vent his pent-up emotions. With clenched teeth and wild eyes, he raged back and forth, waving a tally of naval damages suffered off Midway.
Shimazu knew the details. The Americans had somehow anticipated the attack on the tiny island. The two US carriers thought to be safely away off the Australian coast had been there waiting, as had the Yorktown, miraculously repaired and seaworthy after the terrible damage she had sustained in the Coral Sea only weeks before. This time the Yorktown had not escaped—she had been sent to the bottom for good. But an empty victory when measured against the losses inflicted on the Combined Fleet by the American submarines and torpedo bombers: four carriers—Agaki, Hiryu, Kaga, and Soryu—a heavy cruiser, 2,200 seamen, and 234 aircraft lost, and worst of all, Midway island was still controlled by the Americans.
So now it begins, Shimazu thought.