The Final Storm: A Novel of the War in the Pacific

  4. USHIJIMA

  BENEATH SHURI CASTLE, OKINAWA

  MARCH 30, 1945

  The barrage from the warships had slowed, then finally stopped completely, thick clouds of smoke drifting up from the coastline, all through the hills. The artillery fire had lasted for more than an hour, and he knew it would come again, like the perfect chime of a precise clock. There would only be a short time for his men to emerge from the cover of the caves. His officers knew it as well, and the orders had been given, the soldiers scrambling out over the hillside, some retrieving wounded, others doing what they could to secure and strengthen the camouflage that blanketed most of the troop positions closest to him. For more than a week now the barrages of fire from the great warships had been a magnificent spectacle, aimed at every part of the island, streaks of red and white light, bursts of fire, thunderous shaking that sent dust even through the deepest caves. But the caves were secure, no cracks in the concrete, no sign of weakness in the rocks that surrounded him. He knew that several times the Americans had been lucky, direct hits, a single shell coming down straight into a cave. The results were catastrophic for the men inside, entire squads blasted to bloody shreds, sometimes nothing left at all. But those were rare, and all over the island his men kept their positions, low in the earth, far back in the natural and man-made caverns that ran beneath so much of the island like some great honeycomb.

  He had no fear for himself, knew that no matter how much artillery came down around him, or burst into the enormous walls of the castle above him, there was almost no danger. The cave behind him wound deeply into the hillside, a labyrinth of offices and living space for hundreds of his troops. No one had yet seen a bomb or a shell from the great warships that could penetrate a mountain. And yet, he thought, they continue to try. Can they truly believe that we would spread ourselves out on open ground, that I would position my army in shallow trenches, perfect targets for their fire? They must believe it, or they would not continue this … absurdity. Day after day the fire begins precisely on schedule, as though we will have forgotten the shelling that came the day before. The Americans are an amazing people, possessed of wealth and resources and utterly without wisdom. He stepped forward to the very edge of the cave’s opening, watched the quick work of the men down below, most of them already scampering back into hiding, the hillside growing quiet again, no movement but the drifting smoke. He raised his eyes to the sea again, still marveled at the amazing variety of ships, and their number. No country on this earth has a navy this large, he thought. The British perhaps. But the Americans have outshone even them, and now they send those ships to me, anchor them around my island as though I should cower in fear, as though I should be intimidated by how superior they are, and how hopeless our fight will be. No, I will never be intimidated. Arrogance does not defeat an enemy, and certainly, by this grand show, they display their arrogance. He scanned the ships, spread out far to the horizon, the smaller patrol boats, torpedo launchers, supply and troop carriers, and farther away, the warships, destroyers and cruisers and the enormous battleships. It was those that intrigued him most of all, hulking giants whose fire engulfed each ship in enormous clouds of smoke, their heaviest guns launching artillery shells that rolled through the air like railroad cars. The impact of those shells had thundered beneath his feet, as though the whole island quivered from the mighty blasts. Many of those heavier shells came closest, and he knew why, thought, they are trying to find me, my staff, my headquarters. They know we are up away from the beaches, and they must believe that this great castle above me is a symbol that we will grasp in our hands until they force us to let it go. Perhaps we will. But they can fire every shell in their arsenal and they will not harm us, no matter what they do to our symbols.

  He focused on the smaller ships, closer to shore, could see motion, newly arrived transports, moving in behind and beside the destroyers that would protect them. He had asked the question already. How many are there, how many ships can they bring to this one place? He had tried to count them himself, but his field of vision was limited to the southern coasts. Someone on my staff will have done that by now, and I will see the number on paper, but then, tomorrow there will be more, as there have been every day for a week. He shook his head, a wave of despair. There are some in Tokyo who still believe the Americans will strike us at Formosa, that all of this is merely a feint. Those people hold so tightly to their own arrogance, and perhaps they have more arrogance than our enemies. They read my reports and dismiss my staff for exaggerating, insist that we are in a panic because of a few ships. Who among them will come here and see this? Who will stand on this ledge and watch what I have watched? How many of them still believe that all we must do is stand up and wave our swords and cry out the name of our ancestors and the Americans will melt away into the sea?

  They were foolish questions, answered months before, when he had been assigned to command the enormous garrison on Okinawa. In the beginning he had more than a hundred thousand troops on the island, good troops, veterans, skilled commanders. But the Imperial High Command was not confident that the enemy would come to Okinawa, Japanese intelligence reporting often that there was debate in the American headquarters, that Formosa could be the target instead. And so the order came, the order he fought bitterly against, to remove the Ninth Division, twenty-five thousand of his finest soldiers, and transfer them to Formosa. And now, he thought, when it is so clear what the Americans have planned, will I receive those good men back here? Of course not. It is too late. It would be suicide to send those transports through the American fleet. He rolled those words over in his mind. Yes, that is after all what I am being asked to do, what every soldier in my command is being asked to do. We will be sacrificed in the desperate hope that we will draw the Americans down with us, that by giving up our lives for our emperor, we might also kill so many Americans that they will give up this war.

  That … is arrogance.

  The first puff of smoke came again, a small gunship close to the beach to the north, and he knew it was a signal, that in seconds the entire fleet would begin their shelling again. He knew the staff would be concerned, the secretaries fearful, knew that his aides were lurking anxiously in the earthen corridor behind him. But the larger ships were not yet firing, and he had learned the routine. The smaller ships would pepper the beaches first, intense clouds of smoke rising up far below. Yes, he thought, they are certain we are there. It is an assumption I would make, in their place. Strike hard at the first line of defense, obliterate any troops along the water, those men I should have put close to the landing places, where their troops are the most vulnerable. He made a weak smile, allowed himself one small piece of satisfaction. There is no one there, you foolish people. All your admirals and generals and the brilliant minds that design your assaults … you think you know the Japanese ways. You think we are predictable. But I will surprise you, as you have been surprised so often before. You do not learn. You have been bloodied on so many islands where you thought you would waltz ashore to festivals of half-naked native girls. So, now you will correct that mistake by erasing us with your artillery, as though we would sit in our holes along the beach and wait to be destroyed. Good. Waste your ammunition. Convince yourselves that we have been annihilated. And then, when you do not find our bodies among the sand and rocks, you can wonder if we have run away. Perhaps we have been so frightened by you that every night, thousands of us have slipped off this island and fled back to Japan.

  He knew his tactic was controversial, that his instructions from the Imperial Command in Tokyo had forbidden any unopposed landing by the enemy. He had been furious with the inflexibility in Tokyo, was furious about that now. You tell me how to fight this enemy and then you cut off my hand, strip me of a quarter of my strength. You tell me that this island must not fall and then you offer me no way to prevent that, no way at all. So I will fight the Americans with the weapons I have, not the weapons that you dream of. Every man in my command will give up his life
by taking ten of theirs. That is the fantasy I must believe. That is the fantasy my army already believes. And the decision makers in Tokyo will never dirty their minds with the truth. They will continue to play with maps and pretend that we are invincible.

  “Forgive my intrusion, sir!” The voice was loud, as it was always loud, the fat-faced man pretending to grovel toward Ushijima’s authority. “I see the enemy still chooses to spend his wealth by killing snakes and snails! Your plan is brilliant in its execution, sir. It will ensure total victory!”

  Ushijima said nothing, respected the honesty of his subordinates. But he understood quite well that General Cho’s words held no honesty at all.

  Isamu Cho held the same rank of lieutenant general, but the command on Okinawa belonged solely to Ushijima. Cho had accepted the position of chief of staff, had served Ushijima with perfectly annoying deference. Ushijima knew more about Cho than he would ever discuss with the man, that Cho had been a fiery militant whose activities throughout the 1930s had nearly branded him a traitor. He was a rabble-rouser from the army’s most disgruntled ranks, the men who thought the emperor too passive, renegade officers who insisted that the Japanese army should destroy every enemy with a swift and bloody hand, whether or not that strategy had any basis in reality. Implicated in various plots to overthrow the army’s more moderate command, Cho had survived politically only by accepting a post in China during the earliest days of the brutal invasion of Manchuria. Later Cho had been a primary force behind the destruction of the Chinese city of Nanking, which included the slaughter of its citizens, an act of barbarism that had shocked even the most aggressive militants in Tokyo. But there was little soul-searching in the Japanese army, their mission accepted by the careful and utterly efficient indoctrination that spread to the entire Japanese people. Every schoolchild had been taught of the shido minzoku, the outright cultural and genetic superiority of the Japanese race. That the Japanese should claim territories far beyond their island borders was accepted as perfect justice. The civilians had been educated to believe that it was only by a cruel trick of fate that the Japanese islands had been denied the wealth of natural resources, and so oil and rubber and iron would be taken from those inferior lands who had been so unjustly blessed. If the people of those far-distant lands were not grateful to assist in strengthening the Japanese culture, then the Japanese army would subjugate them and use them for labor. Already armies of slave labor had been used to build the bridges and roadways and airfields necessary for Japanese transportation. It mattered little to the Imperial Command if some of those laborers were in fact enemy prisoners of war. The Geneva Convention was an inconvenient irritant when the priority was to put food into Japanese mouths and fuel into their homes. What the civilians had not been told was that if any of those hordes of slave laborers became unfit, by disease or the abuse of their captors, few of the Japanese commanders in the field had any qualms about eliminating them altogether. The viciousness among the Japanese soldiers who dealt with the captives had concerned some in the Imperial Command, but no one there had issued any kind of order that it be stopped. The army’s militants were far too powerful and far too dangerous to the moderates in Tokyo. And many of those who fought a private war of conscience had come to accept that Japan’s desperate need for raw materials meant that sacrifices had to be made, and that no one outside Japan was qualified to judge Japanese morality.

  As Japanese forces extended their empire to the limits of what their military could support, there had been the rare circumstances where Emperor Hirohito had blunted the behavior of his armies, holding back the sword, which the army saw as an annoying compromise. When the eyes of Tokyo looked elsewhere, those officers would often continue with the same viciousness against their conquered peoples that the more moderate officials in Tokyo found appalling.

  The navy was entirely different, but in the Japanese hierarchy that mattered little to the army commanders. The two branches of the Japanese military were completely separate, no overlap of authority. And so there was very little cooperation in the various campaigns that had spread Japanese troops, ships, and planes across such a wide swath of the hemisphere. As difficult as it was logistically to maintain Japanese successes across Burma and Indochina, New Guinea and the Philippines, as well as China and the ocean of islands to the east, the lack of cooperation between the two services also produced a crippling handicap for their overall strategy. The army and navy commanders spent too much of their time and energy competing for the resources each needed to make war. To the disgust of the senior admirals, the army more often prevailed, and everyone close to the emperor understood why. Emperor Hirohito had a much greater grasp of ground tactics than anything that happened at sea. If the army had needs, they would be met.

  Cho stood to one side, allowed him to pass, Ushijima adjusting his eyes to the lower light from the bulbs along the walls of the corridor. Behind him the larger guns from the battleships had begun their shelling again, the rumble coming up through the floor as the shells impacted.

  “The Americans will run out of powder before this is over, don’t you think?”

  Ushijima did not look back, let Cho’s idiotic glee drift past him. He saw the light of an office ahead, turned through the doorway, saw four women, neatly dressed, perched behind a row of desks, working in unison at typewriters. Standing behind them, like a mindful schoolmaster, was Colonel Yahara, who, after General Cho, was Ushijima’s most senior staff officer. Yahara seemed to avoid looking at Cho, made a short bow toward Ushijima, said, “Sir! We have nearly completed the reports of enemy activity from last evening. I have alerted the radio room to be prepared to transmit. Is there anything you wish to add?”

  Ushijima had enormous affection for Yahara, the man totally opposite in personality from the abrasive and conniving Cho.

  “Nothing to add. The Americans will certainly continue their shelling until it is too dark to see. They take pride in their work, and certainly their admirals wish to see the damage they are inflicting on us. Today should be no different than yesterday.”

  “We shall drive their pride into their bellies at the point of the bayonet!”

  Ushijima avoided the bombast coming from Cho, but the man did not wait for a reply, was quickly gone. Yahara seemed not to notice, moved close to the back of a chair, leaned over the shoulder of one of the secretaries, a pretty woman who did not acknowledge him.

  “Yes, you may complete that for my signature.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  Ushijima studied the woman’s face, saw no fear, thought, good. She is not one of the playthings. And Yahara is not so crude. We will all leave that to General Cho.

  “When you have completed this task, Colonel, come to my room. I should like you to give me your latest reports on the progress of the construction of the caves.”

  “I shall be there in two minutes, General, if that is acceptable.”

  Ushijima tried to maintain the formality, but Yahara was far too likable, a cheerfulness in the man that showed clearly how much he loved his work.

  “You may have three. I do not wish you to break an ankle running through these dark hallways.”

  “Do you miss your days in the classroom, Colonel?”

  Yahara was still standing in the doorway, seemed surprised by the question.

  “I am pleased to be here, General.”

  “Sit down, Colonel. This is not an inquiry. You may relax. If General Cho insists on joining us, then we will button our coats and stand at attention. Please. Sit down.”

  Ushijima was seated on a small rug, his legs bent inward, a small cup of tea beside him. Yahara made a short bow, sat across from him, and Ushijima pointed to the teapot, said, “Pour yourself a cup. I’m not in the mood for alcohol just now. Is that acceptable?”

  “Of course, General. Thank you. Tea is always acceptable.”

  “Relax, please. Perhaps I should have brought you some sake. It is not necessary that you be so nervous around me. General Cho ha
s secured a case of rather outstanding Scotch. I can summon him, if that would be more to your liking.”

  Yahara seemed to know that Ushijima was toying with him, shook his head.

  “I would not ever consider depriving General Cho of his fine whiskey. I have learned that when he is in a festive mood, it is best to stay in my quarters.”

  “I would never admit this to anyone else, Colonel, but Cho makes me somewhat uncomfortable as well. I suppose he does that to everyone. I think he rather enjoys that. I would suppose that when he was a boy, he was the schoolyard bully.”

  “I would agree with you, General. But, no, I have come to respect General Cho, and to obey him when it is appropriate.”

  Ushijima laughed.

  “When is it not appropriate?” He saw hesitation, laughed again. “Yes, I understand. If I tell you one thing and he tells you another, you know very well whom to obey. I cannot fault General Cho for his enthusiasm. He is the picture of the samurai, is he not? He will attack anyone at any time with complete disregard for himself. Is that not what we are all supposed to do?”

  Yahara seemed puzzled.

  “Yes, certainly, sir.”

  “So, what’s wrong? Is the progress on the caves in the south going well?”

  “Oh … yes, quite well, sir. I have tried to employ the Koreans and the Okinawans whenever possible, rather than overwork our own troops. But our people are much better at the labor. I am sorry to say that within the last few days, our schedule has been altered by the arrival of the Americans. I do not believe we will have time to complete my design before their ground assault begins.”