Chapter 3
There was little room for a meeting of any kind in a sub, but Merchant, Dane, and Torelli managed to find space in the glorified closet that served as a dining area. When Torelli found that the other two were going to discuss Dane’s experiences as a young man in Japan, he invited himself in. It was, he genially reminded them, his sub. They were running on the surface and fresh air was streaming down the open hatches, trying to make a dent in the accumulated stench.
Dane explained that his father had owned an export-import business mainly dealing with low-priced, often cheaply made, Japanese goods imported into the United States. And, yes, this did include the ridiculous paper parasols that decorated cocktails. His occupation required him to make a number of extended trips to Tokyo and, when Tim was old enough, he scheduled them for the summertime so the boy could go with him. Tim learned Japanese through immersion. His father spoke only Japanese to him during these forays and, to amuse him, taught him how to read it as well.
“Can you write it?” Torelli asked.
“Nope. Never could get those little squiggles in the right order.”
“It’s amazing they can,” said Merchant. “But then, I feel the same way about Arab writing and they probably feel the same way about us. Did you ever speak to any of their military?”
“Yes sir, and that gets to the point of what I want to say. The first summer I was there, I more or less kept quiet for the first few weeks and just listened to conversations, and some of them were about me since most Japanese didn’t see all that many white people, and especially not a teenager. Diplomats and businessmen sometimes, but kids? Never. The average Japanese living outside the big cities and the commercial areas rarely saw anybody who wasn’t Japanese like them.
“I wasn’t confident enough in my own speaking abilities at first. Then one day I was simply playing the dumb tourist when I heard a bunch of young naval officers talking about me. They never dreamed I could understand them, what with me being an ignorant barbarian and all that, and they were making all kinds of crude comments about the little white boy who doubtless had a tiny white dick. Finally, when I’d had enough, I turned and confronted them. I told them in Japanese that their rudeness was a disgrace to their families and their ancestors. I thought they’d shit they were so shocked.”
Merchant laughed. “I’d have paid money to see that.”
“They actually apologized and after that we became sort of friends. They were delighted to pick the mind of an American and I enjoyed learning about them, even though some of what I found out scared me. Tell me, have either of you heard of the code of bushido?”
Torelli answered. “Code of the warrior or something like that. Kind of medieval, I’ve heard.”
“Right,” said Dane, “but it’s something that many of them, particularly the officers, believe in totally and utterly, no matter how insane it may sound to us. Let me give you an example, because I actually discussed this with them. Say you’re the pilot of a plane and the plane is badly damaged during an attack on enemy ships. You’re not going to make it back to base, so what do you do?”
Torelli laughed. “That’s easy. You look for a place to set down or bail out.”
“Would you surrender?”
“Of course,” Torelli said, puzzled. “I wouldn’t like it, but if that’s the only alternative to a useless death, why not?”
“But they won’t, because they don’t consider such a death useless,” Dane continued. “Surrender is dishonorable and against their definition of the code of bushido. To them, surrender is a disgrace. They and their families would be humiliated. Any man who surrendered would no longer exist. I’ve heard that their pilots don’t even wear parachutes because it’s dishonorable to bail out and try to save one’s life. No, what they said they would do is aim that plane toward an enemy ship or installation and crash into it, finding glory in stupid flaming death. We all at least think we might have to die for our country, but the Japanese will actually search it out to satisfy their warped sense of honor.”
“That’s nuts,” said Torelli.
“By our way of thinking, yes, but not by theirs, and even many of their enlisted men believe that, probably in part because it’s been beaten into them by their officers and I do mean literally beaten in. In short, they will not surrender. Oh, they’ll reluctantly retreat and regroup and in order to fight again another day, but they won’t surrender. They’ll die and they will try to take as many of us with them as they can. Picture a wounded Japanese infantryman with a hand grenade hidden on his body. Just when an American medic comes up to help him, he pulls the pin and kills everyone around him; thus dying gloriously.”
“And you believed them?” Torelli asked.
“I believe that they believed it sincerely when I spoke with them. Whether they would actually do it, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all. I did talk with a Shinto priest, and he told me that what the military is professing is a radicalized version of bushido in which death is considered a duty. Taking others along with you would be a bonus.”
Merchant took a deep breath. “Dane, to your knowledge, has this craziness happened yet?”
“I don’t know. When we get to San Diego, I’d like to look over some reports. By the way, it’s only the real Japanese who feel that way. They’ve drafted others into their army, like Koreans and Okinawans, who definitely believe in surrender and do not feel bound by the code of bushido. But…they all look alike, don’t they?” he asked wickedly.
“Assuming you’re right, I can see a lot of what we used to call atrocities occurring,” said Merchant. “Nobody’s going to want to take the chance of taking someone prisoner and then having that prisoner try to kill him. They’ll just shoot the Jap son of a bitch and I wouldn’t blame them.”
“There’s more, Captain, and this is just as amazing. Their army and navy hate each other. I mean, we have our rivalries, but they really don’t go all that much farther than the Army-Navy game and a few drunken brawls afterwards. Can you imagine one service jeopardizing the fate of the country because of really intense jealousies? Can you even think of the American Army invading Mexico without telling either President Roosevelt or the navy?”
“Not really,” said Merchant. “In fact, it’s utterly inconceivable, almost as illogical as suicide.”
“But that’s exactly what the Japanese Army did in Manchuria and China, and the Japanese Navy boys I talked with are totally, thoroughly, pissed. I’ll bet you a dollar the attack on Pearl Harbor was at least in part a payback for the army’s unannounced move into China.”
Merchant stood up abruptly and bumped his head on a pipe. “Damn it,” he snarled and rubbed his skull. “Dane, when we do get to safety, I want you to write up a report, a paper, on what you learned.”
“Yes sir.”
“Just curious,” Torelli asked, “but did the combination of war and Depression damage your father’s business with the Land of the Rising Sun?”
Dane chuckled. He was very proud of his old man. “Not really. He saw the war coming and sold out a few years ago to a group of Japanese businessmen who probably, hopefully, lost their shirts. He thinks the combination of the war and the Depression is going to cause a real estate explosion in the United States when the war ends, so he’s buying up vacant properties in areas around major cities. If he’s right and the war doesn’t last beyond 1950 or so, he’ll probably be rich. I’ll be his heir, of course.”
There was a sudden commotion on deck and the conversation was over. Torelli shouted orders as men tumbled down from the conning tower in a well choreographed dance that only looked like chaos. Ships had been spotted on the horizon and the submarine quickly and quietly slipped under the sea. Ships meant the enemy. There were no American warships in this area of the Pacific. Wuth luck, their low silhouette had not been spotted.
Back in their bunks, they waited, helpless to do anything about the peril they were in. Dane wondered if the air had just gotten staler and hotter or was it just his imagination. He’d never been claustrophobic, but being prone and helpless in a too small cot in a sub maybe hundreds of feet under the ocean was a truly frightening experience.
An explosion shook them, rattling everything in the sub. They were being depth charged. Dane wanted to run and ask Torelli what was happening, but that was painfully obvious. The Japanese had somehow spotted them and were attacking.
Another explosion, this one much closer—it almost threw him out of his bunk. He held on tight and the lights went off. For an utterly horrible instant, they were plunged into total darkness. Dane thought they would plunge to the bottom of the Pacific and be there forever, dying slowly, gasping like fish on the floor until the air finally ran out.
After an eternity, the lights flickered and came back on. Someone in the group was screaming and sailors pounced on him, stuffing a rag in his mouth. Dane was shocked to realize that cold water was dripping on him. Were they sinking? His heart began to pound as if it wanted to explode from his chest.
He smelled urine and wondered who’d pissed himself. He checked, and thankfully, it wasn’t him.
Another set of explosions shook them, but these were farther away. Even better, the leak had stopped. After what seemed an eternity, Torelli approached them.
“I think we got away. One of their floatplanes saw us and we were damned lucky. Maybe they thought they got us or maybe they just don’t give a damn. From now on we’ll travel submerged during the day and on the surface only at night. In the meantime, we’ll stay submerged for a couple of hours to make sure the Japs have cleared the area. It may take us a little longer to get to San Diego, but I’d rather be safe than sunk.”
Only Torelli’s eyes betrayed the fact that he was as frightened as they were. He took an obvious deep breath and the fear disappeared. “We identified two Kongo-class battleships and two aircraft carriers. We were too far away to get a specific make on them, although one carrier might have been the Akagi, but their course said they were headed toward Hawaii. We got off a radio signal, fat lot of good that will do. Hawaii’s got nothing to fight with, at least nothing that flies or floats, and the army in Hawaii will just be a sitting duck. I hate to think what those carrier planes and the battlewagons’ fourteen-inch guns could do to a defenseless city like Honolulu.”
Dane sagged back on his too-small bunk and thought about the Japanese flotilla headed toward Hawaii. What would happen to the people in paradise, he wondered? What would happen to Amanda Mallard?
* * *
Amanda and her roommates cowered amid other tenants and passersby in the basement of their two-story frame apartment building while waves of Japanese planes flew over Honolulu and Pearl Harbor.
“There can’t be much left to bomb,” said Grace Renkowski. At thirty-five, she was the oldest of the three roommates. The Japanese planes had been overhead almost constantly since morning. Hawaii was almost defenseless, little more than a punching bag. When the attacks began, they’d watched as a handful of American planes rose to meet the Japanese horde. They’d been saddened and sickened as the brave American pilots had their planes blown from the sky by Japanese Zeros that seemed to dance among them. There were few parachutes and those that did blossom were attacked by the Japanese and shredded, the pilots falling to their deaths.
“Why don’t we have any good planes!” lamented Sandy Watson, the other roommate. She was twenty-three and, like the others, a civilian contract nurse.
Or good leaders, Amanda thought. Somebody should go to jail for this litany of disasters. Why weren’t we prepared when the first attack on Pearl Harbor occurred? She’d been in bed on December 7th after a normal Saturday evening dancing with young officers. She’d awakened to the explosions and the improbable fact that Pearl Harbor was being attacked and the fleet slaughtered before her eyes. Why did so many good young men have to be killed and wounded before somebody woke up to the fact that the Japs wanted to kill us? And now it was even worse and not very likely to change.
The explosions changed in volume. One of the older men in the basement with them nodded solemnly. “Those aren’t bombs, girlies, those are shells. The damned Japs are close enough to shoot at us with their ships.”
Normally, Amanda would have resented being called a girlie, but this was too serious for trivialities. If Japanese warships were close enough to shoot at land-based targets, would the Japanese soon be landing troops? God help them if this was the invasion they all feared and anticipated.
After half an hour, there was silence. The all clear sounded, and they left their shelter and went outside. The area around her apartment was largely untouched, although a few small fires burned and were being attacked by neighbors with brooms and buckets. The old man explained that the fires were probably caused by American shells being shot into the air and coming down on something flammable. The harbor was again in flames as the giant fuel tanks that provided oil, the lifeblood of the fleet, sent enormous clouds of black smoke billowing thousands of feet into the sky. The only good news was that there didn’t appear to be a Japanese landing force approaching the shore.
Shouting and screams distracted them. Scores of people were headed toward a grocery store. The plate glass windows were broken and a small elderly Japanese man was futilely waving a broom at the mob pouring in while others left with armloads of bread, beer, canned goods, and anything else that struck their fancy.
The owner grabbed a looter’s arm and was knocked down. The looter and a couple of his companions kicked and stomped the poor man until he lay bloody and still. A woman, probably the grocer’s wife, emerged screaming. Her face was bloodied and bruised. She fell down beside the injured man and continued to scream. A police siren wailed and the crowd vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Amanda and the others ran to the fallen man and began to check him over. “He’s breathing,” she said. The woman’s howls diminished into sobbing. Grace tried to comfort her while Sandy and Amanda helped the man who was having trouble breathing.
“Maybe broken ribs,” Sandy said and Amanda concurred. “And perhaps a heart attack, too.”
An ambulance arrived and they helped put him inside along with the woman who was indeed his wife. Some neighbors tried to board up the store even though it had been pretty well stripped of anything valuable. The cops took their statement although they could add nothing to the obvious. Nor did anyone recognize any of the looters.
“I wonder if the stupid bastards in Washington can see this,” Grace said as she looked at the desolation that had once been a family’s livelihood. That it had been caused by Americans and not the enemy made it even more difficult to swallow. “I voted for Roosevelt and look what he’s gone and caused.”
“I don’t think the politicians in Washington can see much of anything,” Amanda said. She too had voted for FDR over the Republican Wendell Wilkie, as had most of America. “But I do think this shows just how helpless our situation is. Are we all agreed that we have to do something?” They were. “Good, now let’s go see Mack.”
* * *
The Japanese Marines were formally called “Special Naval Landing Forces,” and were proud of their training, their skills, and their ferocity in combat. They were well led, and always fought efficiently and bravely. And they never surrendered. Like their elite counterparts in the U.S. Marine Corps, they were the ones who would land on hostile beaches and fight their way to victory. A number of them had even been trained as paratroopers and they rightfully thought of themselves as a truly elite force.
There were those who thought this was a suicide mission, but Captain Seizo Arao dismissed such complaints. He had a hundred men on the tramp steamer. Her counterfeit markings said she was Spanish, a neutral, which meant that she was safe from undue notice as she approached the Pacific coast of Panama.
A clumsily applied paint job proclaimed her as the Santa Anna Maria. She was tawdry and harmless looking, which offended Arao’s sense of military professionalism, even though he recognized the necessity for such a slovenly disguise. Soon the time for skulking would be over and his men would commence attacking, bringing the war to one of America’s economic and military treasures, the Panama Canal.
In the ship’s hull, the hundred men of the Special Landing Force detachment waited eagerly and stoically, shrugging off their discomfort as a temporary and trivial inconvenience. They were honored to have had been chosen to attack the Panama Canal, which they all knew was a vital means of moving American ships from the Atlantic into the Pacific where they would confront the Japanese Navy.
Not only would the hundred men fight as soldiers, but they would also be mules, carrying large amounts of explosives. The normally stern and stoic Captain Arao had joined in the laughter when he heard his men joking that one accident with the dynamite and they’d all be back in Tokyo in time for dinner. It was good to have men like that.
They anchored a few miles north of the Pacific terminus of the canal and waited for darkness. They were not alone. A number of other ships were waiting for their turn to cross to the Atlantic. The Americans who ran the canal had stepped up their security, especially before ships could enter the canal, but they could not closely watch so many ships still at sea. Perhaps they’d ultimately get curious and check the hold of the Santa Anna Maria, but the men should be gone before the Americans even began to wonder about the Spanish-flagged tramp. With only a little luck, she would journey safely back to a Japanese base.
The Americans had a small army base at Fort Clayton, close to the Miraflores Lock, but it was on the other side of the canal. National Guard soldiers were supposed to be garrisoned there, but Japanese intelligence could not tell how many men were in the fort, or their state of preparedness. It probably wouldn’t matter. National Guard troops were known to be poorly trained and would be not present much of a problem. No matter, Arao thought, they would be through with the Miraflores Locks before the bumbling Americans could react.
Shortly after midnight, the Japanese Marines departed the freighter by lifeboat and landed on a sandy beach south of the canal. The Santa Anna Maria would wait for two weeks in case there were survivors from the attack on America’s military strength. Arao’s wish was for complete success and many survivors, but he would gladly settle for success and a glorious death.
The Panama Canal was only fifty miles long, a short distance for Arao’s men; especially since they were only going a few miles inland to the first series of locks at Miraflores. However, they soon found themselves exhausted and confused as they traveled through the steamy heat and the dense jungle foliage, which they had to do to stay hidden. The Americans doubtless had soldiers near the canal and, no matter how poor they were, Arao’s men didn’t want to meet them, at least not yet. Prudently, Arao decided to wait and let his men rest. They were tough and hardened as only a Japanese soldier can be, but a well-rested soldier was a much better fighter than a fatigued one, and the next several days promised to be exhausting enough.
Thus, it was after midnight of the third night when they finally made their move. Their entry was laughably easy. Barbed wire surrounding the locks was cut and half of Arao’s men poured through. These had the job of neutralizing American security while the rest carried double loads of explosives and detonators.
They had no idea how well the locks were protected, so they simply swarmed out, looking for the enemy. Their instructions were to use their rifles only as a last resort. Bayonets and officers’ swords would be best.
Arao led his men around a corner of a building that looked like a maintenance shack. Two men in overalls looked up in disbelief at the apparitions racing toward them. Arao’s sword whipped the air. The first man was beheaded in an instant, and a Japanese Marine rammed a bayonet into the chest of the second. Arao laughed and wondered if it would it all be this simple?
It wouldn’t be. Screams and gunshots split the air. Damn, he thought, somebody was awake. He laughed and howled with pleasure. Let the fight begin. Sirens wailed and lights came on. Rifle fire increased in volume and a machine gun opened up, chattering insanely and shooting wildly. It looked like some American soldiers were on duty and willing to fight.
Arao exhorted his men to move more quickly and place their charges, while his lieutenants established an effective perimeter to keep the Americans from interfering with them. His plan was uncomplicated—he would blow the gates closest to the ocean and move inland in the direction of Gatun Lake, destroying as he went. Both Miraflores Lake and Gatun Lake were artificial, created by the construction of the canal itself. The lakes not only served as a highway for ships, but as reservoirs for the canal area. They were well above sea level, and a few well placed charges would drain the entire complex. He laughed as the first charge went off, blowing a set of gates to smithereens and sending a torrent of water gushing down to the ocean. Wouldn’t it be marvelous, he thought, if any ships attempting to use the canal had to slither through the mud of what used to be Gatun and Miraflores Lakes?
Hours later, Arao realized his error. He should have begun his destruction of the locks farther up at Pedro Miguel where the water from the Calebra Cut waited to flow to the Pacific and not so close to the ocean itself. Still, success was within reach. The Americans had been slow to realize the threat, but when they did, they’d attacked with a vengeance. He’d lost nearly half his men, many of them to low flying and obsolete American biplanes who’d caught them out in the open and cut them down with machine guns. His men had shot down one plane that had flown too low. They’d ambushed Americans who were slow to recognize the artfully placed ambushes he’d set for them. Americans were brave, he concluded, just not very smart. Now he was at the last of the locks he needed to destroy.
Rifle and machine-gun fire ripped through the air and mortars exploded around him. All the charges were placed. He gave the signal and drew his sword, then dashed up the wall of the cut to where the rushing water wouldn’t reach him. He would die with his sword in his hand and not beneath a wave of scummy water rushing from the lake like a Pacific tsunami. The explosion ripped the final gates and water from a few miles above him began to flow freely to the sea. Arao laughed harshly. It had taken the Americans many years to dig the Canal. How long would it take them to fix it?
Bullets ripped into his body and he fell to the ground, gasping in pain and shock. His sword flew out of his hand and, before he could reach it, an American soldier picked it up and shot him again.
“Leave him be,” yelled an American officer. “We want a prisoner, not another dead Jap.”
Arao didn’t understand the words, but their intent was plain. The Americans wanted to take him prisoner. He would not let that happen. He had succeeded, but his men were all dead and soon he would be as well. He was lying on his stomach and he managed to take a grenade from his belt. He pulled the pin but kept the trigger down. He groaned piteously to gain sympathy. It was easy, and it was the truth. He was in agony from his wounds and death would be welcome.
The officer who wanted him alive and a medic rolled him over. The last thing Arao saw in this world was the look of horror on the American’s faces when they realized he was holding a live grenade.
* * *
The women had earlier guessed that Mack was somewhere between fifty and eighty. He was small, wizened, and withered. His skin was baked brown by the sun, and covered by a multitude of tattoos. He never said where he came from and no one knew if Mack was his first or last name or none of the above. He lived in a shack on the beach near the small town of Nanakuli, a few miles west of Honolulu. Mack was one of the few residents of the area not of Hawaiian ancestry. Nobody minded. He was friendly, spent his money locally, and sometimes brought business to the area’s poor restaurants and bars.
He greeted the three women with a smile and threw his cigarette into the ocean. The nurses had been customers, good customers who’d enjoyed both his tours and his company. Mack owned a forty-foot twin-hulled sailboat of a type called a catamaran, and he made a living of sorts taking tourists and locals sailing in the clear waters around Oahu. He especially liked taking scantily clad young and not-so-young ladies out on his boat. As he told his few friends, he was old, not dead, and, besides, every now and then one of the vacationing old maid school teachers from New Jersey or some other dull place felt liberated enough by being in paradise to get herself laid by a genuine tattooed Hawaiian who owned a sailboat.
These three nurses had been fairly frequent visitors and, while not raving beauties, were pleasant enough in the two piece bathing suits many young women liked to wear, or with their regular clothing wet and plastered against their young bodies. He hadn’t screwed either of them yet, but that was correctable. In his opinion, Amanda was too thin and Sandy too plump, but either would do in a pinch. Grace, however, was a little older and shapelier, and seemed more worldly. In Mack’s opinion she was prime for the plucking.
The women were skilled enough sailors that he didn’t have to hire others to crew his cat when they were on board, which saved him money and they got free rides. He smiled and thought he’d really like to give Grace a free ride.
It was not a bad life, but war clouds had gathered and he was afraid his pleasant and near idyllic life was coming to an end. Fuck.
“Ladies, how can I help you?”
“How far can you sail this thing?” Amanda asked with a smile.
Mack shrugged. It was a most intriguing question. “How far do you want to go?”
“California,” Grace said.
If Mack was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Kinda been thinking along those lines myself. I think paradise is about to get damn near ugly, hellish if you will.”
“Will you take us?” Amanda asked.
Mack paused before answering. He hadn’t anticipated the question. “Do you know what you’d be getting into? I’d rather have three men than three women. Men are stronger.”
Amanda smiled tightly. “But no men are lining up to go with you, are they? And besides, we asked first. And since we’re smaller than the average male, we won’t take up as much room or eat as much, now will we? And don’t forget, we do know how to sail the cat.”
“Like I said, do you have any idea what you’d be getting into? It’s maybe two thousand miles or more to California and even if we got lucky, it’d likely take us a month or two. For us to make it, we’d need a lot of food and water so we don’t die. There’d be no privacy whatsoever. There’s a cabin on the cat and a one-holer inside leading to the ocean, but that’s for tourists. If we sailed, the cabin and everyplace else would be full of supplies. Any of you genteel ladies want to pee or poop, you’d have to hang your butts off the boat and solve your problem that way.”
“Or we could jump into the ocean to relieve ourselves and scare all the little fishies away,” Amanda said sweetly. “Don’t worry, we can do it. Besides, we’ve done it before.”
“And if we guess wrong about the currents or the wind doesn’t cooperate,” Mack continued, “we could die a long and painful death in the middle of the ocean where nobody will find us.”
“On the other hand,” Amanda rebutted grimly, “we could die of starvation here on Oahu, or be raped and murdered when the Japs come ashore, which they will surely do, sooner or later. We’ve talked it over and we’d rather take our chances on your sailboat. We’d much rather do something to save ourselves then wait for the worst to happen. We’d also rather do it sooner rather than later while we’re still strong enough to do it.”
Mack appeared to think for a moment, then nodded. “I want money, a thousand dollars apiece, and that’d be above and beyond anything we spend getting set up for this cruise.”
“Why?” asked a surprised Sandy.
Mack smiled. “Because, sweetmeat, this catamaran is my living here. Assuming we make it to California, I’m going to have to pick up the pieces of my life and actually start earning a living. California ain’t Hawaii. There they actually expect you to work instead of letting the sun bake your ass. Shit, I might even have to get a job in a factory,” he said in mock horror.
Amanda thought quickly. She had fifteen hundred dollars in the bank. Whether they sailed or not, pulling it out before there was a run on the banks now seemed like a prudent idea. Sandy was a saver, too, but she had no idea how much Grace had. Whatever it was, they would make do.
“A deal,” she said.
“Fine. Now we ain’t leaving tomorrow or anything like that. I say we take a month to get ready, and that includes you nice ladies getting the money, finding supplies that won’t perish or need cooking, and spending every weekend and any other time you can with me learning more about how to sail this beautiful boat that I named after my ex-wife.”
Amanda was surprised. She hadn’t known Mack had an ex-wife or that the catamaran had a name. “What’s the cat’s name?”
“The Bitch.”