Pearl Harbour - A novel of December 8th (5 page)

There had been several serious bumps in the situation between America and Japan, dating back to of all things the racism of the city of San Francisco, which had banned Japanese students from its public schools back in 1905; from immigration laws that essentially banned Japanese from settling in America, to the current diplomatic flurry about the takeover of Manchuria. But in general, a broad-thinking Occidental could see the potential of actual cooperation, if handled adroitly.

The Japanese were as anxious about expanding communism as were most Americans, and the Soviet Union was right on Japan’s back doorstep. With this Stalin now firmly in control and apparently drenching his tortured nation in yet more blood, Japan could be seen as a potential counterforce in the region.

But the 5-5-3 treaty had thrown a monkey wrench in the works for the time being. James felt as if he were navigating through a mined channel as he delivered his talk, having to adhere to policy, not able to mention the Soviets by name, and trying to emphasize points of agreement, all done in a language he had learned from his wife, a Nisei, half-Japanese, whom he had met when stationed in Hawaii right after the war; thus his knowledge was more colloquial than formal, and he knew he was making mistakes.

The whole thing had been a bloody embarrassment, not a single question asked by the cadets afterward, a sure sign they had been ordered to behave thus.

The obligatory reception afterward had been polite but relatively short, the various staff of the academy quickly begging off, claiming papers to correct, reports to write, and given the cool reception to James’s speech, Cecil had finally led him out on the excuse that their American guest had endured a most exhausting day and needed to ship out come morning.

“So, how is it here?” James asked. “I mean really?” He paused and looked around a bit cautiously.

Cecil laughed and shook his head. “We can talk freely. No one is listening. They would see that as underhanded and rude to a fellow naval officer to try and eavesdrop or wire my place. Really, on a personal level most of the blokes here have a love of His Majesty’s Navy, more than a few of them serving alongside us during the last war. We can talk.”

James nodded.

“The lads are a delight to work with, best I’ve ever seen. Our navies could use a dose of them, and that’s no mistake. Most come from the back country, curious, same way you have so many in your navy from the Midwest. Entrance exams are brutally competitive, and as you know more than a few have committed suicide when not accepted.”

“They endure eighteen-hour days with no letup. Usual range of subjects, but strong emphasis as well on either English, German, or Russian. Of course that’s where I come in.

“English is the most popular, and it does make me wonder is it because their navy is patterned after ours because we helped them build it, even supplied their first ships,” he sighed and took a drink, “or is it because they think the next fight will be with us.”

“What I would wonder” ..James paused, and instinct actually made him stand up, walk to the edge of the veranda to look over the porch, before settling back down.

“Your houseboy?”

“Gave him the night off.”

James nodded.

“All right, old friend,” Cecil asked, “out with it.”

“Just that some higher-ups remembered you and I worked together in the war. I was asked to come down here and have a chat with you and see what you think. You have your ear to the ground. What do you think?”

“Ah, so you might say I was sent here to spy?”

“Dirty word that,” James replied, imitating Cecil’s clipped style of speech when stirred, “let’s just say, observing.”

“But first you,” Cecil said, and he reached over, putting his hand on James’s knee. “I’m so sorry about your son, James.” James nodded, unable to speak. It had been a year now since his son had died. He knew that if he started to talk about it, he would break down. He coughed shyly, motioning for a refill of his drink, and the two old friends smiled.

Both could be defined as spies, though their specialty was a new field, of radio signal intercepts and cryptology. It had been their job together in the last war, but in peacetime more than a few of the higher-ups were of the old school that “gentlemen did not read gentlemen’s mail” or for that matter intercept their signals and try to decode them, especially if the other gentleman was allegedly an ally. It was a specialization that was a guaranteed slow track for promotion.

Cecil looked off, the crescent moon touching the horizon on the far side of the bay. The campus was quiet, lights out having already been sounded.

He sighed. “It’ll come,” he said softly.

“Go on.”

“They think they’re us in a way.”

“How so?”

“Well, we bloody well ran riot over the world for a couple of hundred years. Plant the flag, build the Empire, assuage any sense of guilt by spreading the gospel and calling it the white man’s burden, but it was imperialism plain and simple; and now that’s done, we see ourselves as being proper gentlemen having done the right thing in spreading our civilization.”

“You could say we did in a way, but still, it was a grab and we made the most of it.”

“You Yankees did the same, though to a lesser degree. They were too polite in there tonight to ask the question, but just what the bloody hell was America doing in the Philippines anyhow?”

“We got stuck with it,” James replied a bit weakly, “after beating the Spanish.”

“And made sure of supplies of rubber, manila, even your busboys for your navy.”

“So these chaps see it as the same. Remember, they are the only, the only non-European nation to have successfully resisted European encroachment. Remember, they thrashed the old czar good and proper back in ‘05, and frankly we all cheered them on when they did it. So now they want, as the Kaiser used to say, ‘their place in the sun.’ “

“Manchuria,” James said.

“Oh please, stand corrected, dear friend. Remember, it is Manchukuo now.”

“Still it was a grab.”

“Who would you rather see have it? Them, that insane Chinese warlord who was terrorizing the place, or the Soviets who were just itching to grab it?”

James nodded slowly in agreement.

“You have to remember that there is a big, deep argument underway in this country. The army sees itself as a continental force and is focused on defeating the Soviet Union and conquering China. The navy sees itself as a Pacific power and has focused on defeating you Americans ever since the end of the World War.”

“They don’t let me sit in the courses where they discuss strategy and planning, but it is clear from conversations with both students and faculty that they have been consistently thinking about war with America here at Etajima for over a decade. They think objective reality about resources will force a conflict sooner or later, and they are determined not to be dictated to and dominated by you Americans.”

“England had its advantages when this new age started. We had mountainsides of coal, plenty of iron, the building blocks of empire. But by God if ever there was a spot on this earth not to start an Empire from, it’s Japan. Smaller than Britain, not counting that frozen northern island of theirs, and yet half again the population, barely 20 percent of the land worth trying to farm, no coal, precious little iron, and yet in sixty years they’ve tried with success to leap onto the global stage.”

“So let them have Manchukuo, if that’s what they want to call it,” James said.

“Ah, but there’s the rub. Did you Yanks stop at the Mississippi? What about all that land you took from Mexico and then Spain back in ‘98? You called it Manifest Destiny and maybe it was. Well, these folks think they have a Manifest Destiny as well.”

“And that is, in your opinion?”

“A unified Asia.”

“Under their dominance of course.”

Cecil smiled.

“If it was us, would we want it any other way?”

James shook his head.

“And there is the race question. They do ask the logical question, why is Southeast Asia run by the French, the East Indies by the Dutch, you in the Philippines?”

“So that will lead to war? Damn all, it would be suicide in the end,” James replied.

“There are far bigger worries for all of us. They might have Manchuria, or whatever they call it, but I dare say the Soviets would love payback for 1905. This little corporal in Germany is getting downright bothersome. Why not play on our side?”

He said it with passion because there was a personal reason behind this as well. His wife was a Nisei, half-Japanese, a wonderful racial mix so typical of Hawaii, where they had met when he was stationed there in the early twenties. Her father was Portuguese, her mother Japanese, and Margaret had inherited the best of both in terms of intellect, beauty, charm. He had to say, as well, that he was one of the lucky few, truly blessed with a mother-in-law whom he outright adored. His own mother had died giving birth to him, his father was remote, distant, and James sensed deep down resentful of a son who had cost him a wife. So he had grown up with a sense of being alone, until Margaret came into his life and with her a mother who took him in as if he were her own son as well. The thought that Japan was emerging as an enemy was hard to swallow in a way. How could the people who had given him such a wonderful family ever truly be an enemy?

Cecil motioned to James’s tumbler, and he nodded agreement for a refill.

“Oh, there are many in their government, and in their navy, who would fully agree,” Cecil continued, while he poured the scotch. “But it gets strange, to Western eyes. It has to do with race, with the gods, with an image of destiny, with their own individual submersion into a greater whole, a submersion that disdains individual worth for the greater good of the family, of the race, of this mystery of destiny. In some ways each as an individual sees himself as nothing more than a mote of dust tumbling on the wind, and that wind is national destiny. Of himself he is meaningless, but a hundred million such specks of dust, driven by the wind of national destiny, can blast down a castle wall, reshape mountains, change the world.”

“You are beginning to sound like some of those mystics from your India.”

Cecil smiled.

“That’s another problem right there, and believe me, they are quick to point to it and ask if it is alright for England to be in the Raj, then why not they in China, bringing order out of chaos the same way we did a hundred years ago.”

“Good points,” James said softly, “but damn all, there are rumors about the brutality of their occupation of Manchuria: executions of civilians, beheadings, torture.”

Cecil nodded.

“Dare I mention what we did in our not-so-distant past? How we put down the Sepoy Rebellion, or what about your Wounded Knee?”

“I know, I know,” James said, sadly, “but this is the twentieth century.”

“Exactly their point, and they want a part of that; and our arguments, when pitched on moral grounds, well, they feel they have the counter. Valid or not, it is their own self-justification, and though we might disagree we must understand that is how they see it.”

They had been speaking in low tones and therefore the knock on the door was startling. Both stood up, falling silent. James felt a moment of paranoia, wondering if Cecil had been incautious.

Cecil went into the house, James following, drink in hand, trying to act casual, though on reflection he realized that their conversation had been completely innocent, just mere speculation, no secrets exchanged or actions agreed upon that might offend their hosts.

The house was a curious anomaly, actually a touch of England in a way. The school had been laid out with advice from the British navy; and as a result several of the buildings, those used by Western instructors and visitors, were European in design, complete to a print over the fireplace of a naval action from the Napoleonic Wars.

With the houseboy off for the evening, Cecil opened the door himself and a smile creased his face.

“Lieutenant Fuchida! A delight to see you!”

Standing behind Cecil, James caught a glimpse of the visitor. He was a naval lieutenant, trim, sporting a narrow, dapper- looking mustache, body lean, and like nearly every naval officer he had met here, obviously in excellent condition. He was a bit tall for a Japanese, and at the sight of James he came stiffly to attention and saluted.

Custom was, James being indoors and with hat off, a salute was not necessary, but he returned it anyway.

“Lieutenant Mitsuo Fuchida, may I present Lieutenant Commander James Watson of the United States Navy.”

James stepped forward to the doorway, and Fuchida, stiffly formal, bowed slightly, hesitated, then shook James’s extended hand. His grasp was warm and firm. Cecil guided their visitor in and held up his glass as a signal.

“If it is your Scottish whiskey, a pleasure,” Fuchida said, with a smile.

Again an uncomfortable moment of silence as Cecil filled the glasses again and held his up.

“To the Emperor,” Cecil said formally, and Fuchida, smiling, held his glass up and turned to the north, facing toward the Imperial Palace as he sipped his drink, then turned back.

“And the honor of your visit?” Cecil asked. “I didn’t even know you were here.”

“I came down from the Koyshu Naval Station to talk with the final-year cadets about choosing aviation,” Fuchida said. “When I heard Commander Watson was here, I decided to come a bit early to hear his talk. And, of course, to see you as well, my old friend. I was a student here in 1921, and any time I can come back to Etajima I love visiting. The world seemed so young and innocent back then.”

“And what did you think of my talk?” Watson asked. Fuchida smiled and motioned to one of the chairs on the veranda, and the three sat down.

“What I expected,” Fuchida said. “Of course you have to follow your orders on such things as I would.”

“So, as we Americans would say, it did not scour with you.”

“Scour?”

“American slang,” James said, “it means that the dirt sticks to the plow rather than dig a good furrow.”

“Scour,” Fuchida said with a smile. “I’ll try and remember that. No, it did not scour, as you say.”