1942 Page 8

  Jake nodded and sipped his wine. His emotions were mixed. On the one hand, he was delighted that Alexa Sanderson would be around for a while, but, on the other hand, he was concerned about what might occur should the Japs make a move toward Oahu. He was getting information about the things the Japs were doing to civilians in Hong Kong and elsewhere. The thought that barbarism could descend on the people of Hawaii was both chilling and terrifying.

  Prime Minister Tojo smiled with genuine pleasure. The war was going well for Japan. “Admiral, I am pleased to inform you that final permission to seize Hawaii has been granted.”

  “Thank you,” Admiral Yamamoto responded warily. He wondered just how much the prime minister and head of the army had known of his plans to go ahead, with or without permission.

  Had permission been refused, the attack would have been categorized as a raid, or a reconnaissance in force, and, assuming its success, the existence of a Japanese base on Molokai would have been a means of exerting pressure on Tojo’s government to take the obvious step of attacking Oahu.

  “The 38th Division suffered about fifteen hundred casualties in taking Hong Kong,” Tojo said. “A small number. These will be replaced, and the division will be ready to depart China in a matter of days. The other regiments that will fill it out are already at ports and ready to embark. I trust you have found enough transports to support this operation?”

  Yamamoto smiled. “Just barely, Prime Minister. Quarters will be cramped and living conditions miserable, but that will only serve to make the soldiers more fierce.”

  Tojo laughed. The idea of a commanding officer being concerned about the comfort of his soldiers was ludicrous. Japanese soldiers were trained with extreme harshness and expected to live in conditions of privation that would cause lesser men to collapse.

  “Admiral, I have addressed your concerns about civilians with General Tadoyashi. To the extent that it is possible, there will be no repeat of what occurred in Hong Kong. I agree that it would be counterproductive for there to be wholesale massacres and rapes of those people whom we would wish to utilize as hostages, or even allies. It could be a political and diplomatic disaster.”

  Yamamoto was relieved. Although the bulk of the terror in Hong Kong had been directed at the indigenous and despised Chinese population, it would be too easy for the troops of the 38th to run amok. Anything resembling a massacre would polarize resentment and make the conquest and occupation more difficult.

  “However,” Tojo continued, “there is always the possibility of incidents occurring during the heat of battle, and the army always has permission to utilize terror against the military population to induce surrender.”

  This time Yamamoto’s concurrence was more reluctant. Tadoyashi’s troops had butchered British prisoners, then raped and murdered the female military nurses they’d captured and threatened the entire garrison with death if they didn’t surrender. The horrified, outnumbered, and outgunned British had immediately pulled down the Union Jack. After that had come the reign of terror against the civilian population.

  “I can only trust in the army’s best efforts,” the admiral said warily.

  “Indeed,” Tojo responded. “On another matter, it now appears that we could have given you one of the better trained divisions from the Siberian border. Our embassy in Moscow is quite convinced that the Soviets will make no move toward Manchukuo. They are far too involved in their counterthrust against the Nazis to entertain any thought of opening a second front against us.”

  Yamamoto shrugged it off. “No matter. Between what the army is providing and the brigade of marines under Admiral Iwabachi, the forces will be more than sufficient.”

  “Very good. And Iwabachi will be the military governor of Hawaii?”

  “Yes.”

  “Again a good decision. Iwabachi is a very stern man who will maintain tight discipline and brook no interference from the Americans under his control. There will be a kempetei field detachment under Colonel Omori to support him.”

  The kempetei were the Japanese version of a secret police. They had wide jurisdiction and powers, and Yamamoto acknowledged that Admiral Iwabachi would be controlled in significant matters by Omori. It was not unusual. The governor would govern the islands, while police and security matters fell under the jurisdiction of the kempetei.

  “Does Colonel Omori speak English?” Yamamoto asked.

  “Fluently. Even more important, he understands the need to pacify the three races that exist in Hawaii. The white Americans will be tightly controlled, while the native Hawaiians will be given every opportunity to support us. The Japanese in Hawaii will be expected to be loyal to us from the first moment.”

  When Yamamoto raised an eyebrow in a silent query, Tojo continued. “We acknowledge and respect that many Japanese in Hawaii have been away from pure Japanese culture for years, even generations, and that some of them might have to be reeducated. We are confident that, with Colonel Omori’s wise assistance, the overwhelming majority of the Japanese in Hawaii will see the wisdom of rediscovering the worth of being Japanese.”

  The meeting ended. When Yamamoto had departed, Tojo yawned. He was tired and under a great deal of strain. Yamamoto was a brave and wise man, and one he greatly respected. Tojo, of course, had his own spies in the navy’s camp and was well aware of the continuing plans for a landing on Molokai. If it succeeded, then more glory would come to Japan and the government headed by Hideki Tojo.

  If it failed, then it was on Yamamoto’s head, and it would be Yamamoto, along with the rest of the naval coterie, who would lose face.

  Tojo chuckled. There were those who thought the lack of cooperation between the army and navy a deplorable state of affairs. But that was not true. Divide and conquer was a fundamental rule of war, whether the enemies were foreign or domestic.

  Tojo was confident the attacks on Hawaii would succeed. Along with Yamamoto and others, he shared concern over what the future might bring to Japan. In a brief while, the Philippines would fall, and they would be followed by the myriad of islands of the southern Pacific. Australia might be intimidated and coerced into a surrender, or at least a peace treaty that would be most favorable to Japan. The future of Japan was bright.

  The stink of the Philippine jungle was almost as bad as the stench of defeat. The crew of the submarine Monkfish thought they could smell both jungle rot and defeat as she cruised slowly eastward from the doomed Philippines. They were incorrect, of course; the fetid land smell was overwhelmed by the combined odors of diesel, sweat, and urine as the cramped sub progressed underwater. The odor of defeat, however, was pervasive.

  Only a few weeks earlier, the naval base near Manila had been home to more than a score of American submarines. It had been the largest concentration of submarines anywhere, and it had been presumed that the subs, along with General MacArthur’s American-Philippine army, would be able to take on anything the Japs had thrown at them.

  It hadn’t worked out that way.

  First, the American army’s air arm in the Philippines had been wiped out a few hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, despite having had warning of the attacks on Pearl several hours earlier. For reasons that might forever be unknown, the news had paralyzed the American command, and they did nothing. Thus, when the Japanese planes finally did attack, they found a situation much like that at Pearl. The vast majority of American planes had been destroyed on the ground, where the Jap fighters had found them parked in neat rows.

  This total aerial superiority enabled the Japanese to attack other American army and naval facilities with impunity. It also meant that the numerous subsequent Japanese landings on the Philippines were largely unopposed.

  Admiral Thomas C. Hart, the senior naval officer and commander of the United States Asiatic Fleet, had been appalled. The Japanese army quickly pushed the small American army and the larger, but poorly trained, Philippine army backward.

  MacArthur’s defenses had proven to be without substance. Manila would f
all shortly and the American presence on Luzon now mainly consisted of the peninsula of Bataan and the fortified island of Corregidor.

  Earlier, Admiral Hart had evacuated all major surface ships from Philippine waters, and only the subs and their support craft had remained. Now, even they had departed, and it was conceded that the Philippines were doomed unless a relief force came from the United States. While some believed that an American fleet was always just over the horizon, the clearer thinkers realized that the islands were going to be conquered by the Japanese.

  Commander Frank Griddle despised himself for being in the position of retreating and for being so relieved that he would not be in the Philippines when the Japs did march through. He thought of himself as a reasonably brave man, but he wanted no part of a Jap occupation and prison camp.

  The Monkfish was an unfamiliar sub to Griddle. He commanded because her regular captain had been felled by some wretched Asian fever. The second in command, Lieutenant Willis Fargo, was inexperienced, and it was decided that Griddle would take the Monk, as she was known, out to sea and retreat to Pearl. Griddle had been on Hart’s staff and had previously commanded a sub. It was a logical choice.

  This had not made him popular with his crew, who both had liked Jacobs and didn’t wish to leave the Philippines without striking back at the Japanese. To date, the Monk had accomplished absolutely nothing to that effect, and their failure was grating on the crew.

  The Monkfish was a reasonably new boat. She had been completed in the latter half of 1939 and was one of the Sargo class of submarines. She displaced 1,425 tons and had a crew of sixty-two. For weapons, she had eight torpedo tubes, four each in the bow and in the stern, and a four-inch deck gun. A pair of 20 mm Oerlikon antiaircraft guns completed her armament.

  Griddle squinted through the periscope and didn’t care for what he saw. Steaming insolently in front of him was a Kagero-class Japanese destroyer, one of the newest in their navy. She was traveling quickly through the water and in apparent ignorance of the existence of the Monk, which was gaining on her.

  At first Griddle had been torn with indecision. His orders were to get to Pearl Harbor as quickly as possible, but how did one not attack an enemy warship? Besides, both he and his crew felt a compelling need to do something, anything, to strike back at the Japs. If he were to do nothing, he might also lose what little respect his crew had for him. Other forays had resulted in no attacks by the Monk, because no Japs had been sighted or because they’d been in shoal water, where a sub couldn’t go, or because the Jap ships had been too well protected. The Monk had not yet fired a shot in anger. Thus, they could not pass up an attack on a lone destroyer in deep water, and one where a converging course would put the destroyer in range within moments.

  Yet another nagging possibility haunted Griddle and the crew. Was there something wrong with their torpedoes, or was it something else? No one knew, but one thing was certain-far too many torpedo attacks by other subs had been fruitless. Good, solid targets had been inexplicably missed, and often at great danger to the attacking subs.

  While a few sinkings had been achieved, it was common knowledge that elite, well-trained crews with first-class subs were accomplishing far less than they should, and that left the torpedo as the reason for failure.

  The torpedo in question was the brand-new Mark 14. That it could go more than two miles at forty-six knots was not an issue. What happened when it got to the target was. The Mark 14 was designed to focus on a target ship’s magnetic field, streak under the ship, and then explode, which, according to theory, would break the back of the target ship and sink it more efficiently than a normal, old-fashioned impact torpedo.

  It was elegant in theory, but it didn’t seem to work out in practice, and this concerned Griddle. If they missed the Kagero-class destroyer, they’d have one pissed-off Jap warship to contend with. Not too much was known about the Kagero class, but Griddle’s periscope view confirmed that she had what appeared to be five-inch guns, torpedoes of her own, and a clustering of depth charges at her stern. A miss or a malfunction by a torpedo could become extremely uncomfortable.

  It was now or never.

  “Range?” Griddle asked.

  “Two thousand yards” was the reply from Lieutenant Fargo.

  Seconds later, four torpedoes were streaking toward the Kagero-class. The target was clear, and they could not miss, not all four of them.

  Griddle ordered the Monk deeper. They would wait it out under periscope depth. Several stopwatches clicked off the seconds to impact. Now they could clearly hear the screws of the destroyer as she churned the water ever closer to them.

  And then the watches were past impact time. Griddle paled. The torpedoes had missed. It was impossible! Not all four of them!

  To their horror, they heard the destroyer coming even closer. She had seen the torpedo wakes and was following them to their source. Griddle didn’t have to see the destroyer to visualize her slicing through the waves toward them at more than thirty knots per hour.

  Then the men of the Monkfish heard splashes. “Depth charges,” Griddle hollered, and the men prepared to hang on for their lives.

  An explosion rocked the Monk, sending equipment and men flying in the narrow confines. There were screams of pain as men caromed off the pipes and deck. Another explosion, this time much closer, hurled Griddle against a bulkhead and then onto the floor. The lights flickered, went out, and returned.

  Griddle had landed on something soft, and he felt his hand go into the mush of a crewman’s skull. The commander couldn’t see out of his left eye, and blood was pouring down his face. Waves of pain flowed over him, and he wondered if he could talk.

  Another depth charge exploded, this one almost on top of the Monk. Griddle felt himself losing consciousness. As he slipped in and out, he wondered if he was going to die. He didn’t want to. There was so much to live for. For one thing, he wanted to kill the son of a bitch who’d invented the Mark 14 torpedo.

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt lit the cigarette he’d just placed in the long holder that was as much his trademark as Winston Churchill’s cigar was his. The British prime minister was en route, and much had to be decided before the two allies conferred and planned for the continuation of the war that was now raging on two oceans.

  But first, there were some unpleasant specifics to clear up. Roosevelt smiled disarmingly at General Marshall and Admiral King. “Gentlemen, just what are the Japanese up to this time?” he asked.

  “We’re not certain,” King admitted. “All indications are that a reconnaissance in force is going to occur, but exactly what the target is, we don’t yet know.”

  Roosevelt inhaled and blew out a perfect smoke ring. He watched it ascend to the ceiling of the Oval Office. “Why don’t you know?”

  “Sir,” King continued, “we can read many of their messages, but not all of them. Part of the problem is manpower, while the other is the fact that their military codes have not been totally broken. A month ago, we had only a couple of score men and women doing this, and they were totally inundated by Japanese communications traffic.”

  “Which may be why we didn’t know about the attack on Pearl Harbor?” Roosevelt mused hopefully. His political enemies were still raking him over the coals for that failure, and he knew it would be a sore point for future generations. He’d been shocked to hear that some Americans were claiming he’d intentionally permitted the slaughter of Americans to get the United States into the war.

  “Yes,” King answered. “Although there were other factors, not the least of which was that the Jap fleet steamed in total silence, which meant there were no messages to intercept. But, getting back to the people working on the Japanese messages, we now have several hundred and will doubtless have more as soon as we can find them and hire them, but they are still learning their job. We have listening posts on Hawaii and the Philippines as well as here in the States, but the situation is still far from perfect.”

  “Not in the Philippines
?” Roosevelt asked with alarm. MacArthur’s command had been reduced to a perimeter that was bound to fall.

  King corrected himself. “The Philippine operation has been shut down and the personnel evacuated. Only Hawaii remains operational outside the United States.”

  “Good. We cannot have anyone with knowledge of Magic falling into Japanese hands. So, where is this Japanese fleet headed?”

  “One of three places,” King said. “Midway, Samoa, or one of the lesser islands in Hawaii. We think it might be Molokai.”

  “And what are you going to do about it?”

  King’s always stern face clouded. “Nothing. Until you release ships from the Atlantic, Nimitz’s Pacific Fleet is a shadow. The Japs can come and go as they please, and there’s damned little we can do about it.”

  Roosevelt glared at him. “You know I cannot give you more ships at this time. We are committed to a Europe-first war. You don’t have to like it, Admiral, but that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  King could only glower. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, plans had been drawn up to cover a number of contingencies. Rainbow 5 was the plan that covered a war with Germany and Italy, and a simultaneous war with Japan. It was predicated on fighting an aggressive but defensive war with Japan until the defeat of the other Axis countries was assured. It accepted the painful reality that the United States could not fight a two-front war at that time. This meant that the Philippines were on their own, as was Hawaii, at least until the harbor facilities could be repaired.

  Rainbow 5 also realized that ultimate victory was linked to the survival of the Soviet Union and Great Britain as allies. At this time, both were on the verge of collapse. Should either fall, the other would likely follow or sue for a separate peace. Thus, the fall of either Russia or Great Britain would leave Nazi Germany dominant in Europe and invulnerable.