“Well?” said Imamura, with just the hint of accusation in his voice, and an equal measure of impatience. “What of the planned counteroffensive against the Americans on Viti Levu?”
Hyakutake, hesitated briefly, a subtlety that indicated his displeasure, with a shade of regret. “It has been less than satisfactory,” he said, with understatement being the preferred manner one would use to disclose a setback or failure of any kind. “Tavua is now in enemy hands, and Sano had to redeploy west of the M’ba River. Yet he now believes he can hold that line against any further enemy advance.
“Interesting that such a redeployment would be part of a planned offensive,” said Imamura. “What of Nandi?”
“General Tsuchihashi still controls the town, harbor, and airfield there.”
“But he has not advanced on Suva as planned?”
“At the moment, that appears to be impossible. The enemy has been reinforced.”
Imamura offered a thin smile. “Very well, General, you and I can drop this pretense that there will ever be a satisfactory offensive that reaches the enemy base at Suva, and delivers that island to our control. And yet, we have committed so many troops to this operation that we now find ourselves in a most unsatisfactory position throughout this entire theater. It was necessary to recall the 20th Reserve Division from Korea, simply to provide troops for garrison duty on the other islands we now control. My question is this, and it was one that was recently put to me by the Navy, by Admiral Yamamoto himself, in fact. Are we overextended? Is it wise for us to continue to utilize our best divisions in the Fiji Group?”
After a brief moment’s deliberation, Hyakutake made a most unexpected admission. Imamura had thought he would continue to put on the brave face, for honor’s sake, and recommend an intransigent defense on Fiji, to the last man if need be. Honor might demand this, but wisdom would flee from such a decision. The General cleared his throat and spoke, with uncharacteristic frankness.
“It is interesting that I should be summoned here with the two words inscribed on this message,” he began. “And I do not fail to notice the interrogative applied to this code. If I am being asked to decide whether or not to spend the forces I now command in a foolish and desperate attack, or even a protracted defense of Fiji, my answer is no. That operation is already a gem that has been shattered, but in this case, I believe it would be better that this tile remains whole.”
“Then you see no prospect for victory there?”
“I do not—at least not with the forces I presently command.”
“Yet you were just reinforced with an additional regiment. What did Kawaguchi do there after he landed, go fishing?”
“Kawaguchi’s regiment was instrumental in stabilizing the situation on the M’ba River line. Sano’s 128th Regiment was shattered defending Tavua, so now Kawaguchi’s troops merely restore the 38th Division to about 80% of normal strength. That said, we have not had any further delivery of supplies and ammunition, and I foresee that this will become a serious problem if the Navy does not address it immediately. Keeping two divisions supplied on Fiji requires an enormous logistical effort. All our birds are in one cage, and so the foxes find it easy to gather around us. If they prevail, what then?”
“This is my question exactly,” said Imamura. “Considering that we have already had to strip Borneo, Sumatra and Java bare just to provide the troops you presently command, I begin to see that we are now very vulnerable to enemy counterattack. They have removed the Marine Divisions that were first landed on Fiji, am I correct?”
“All but one brigade sized force, which we have matched with the Combined Yokosuka SNLF troops.”
Then where have those other Marine regiments gone? We believe they were sent to Pago Pago for rest and refit, but you and I both know they will not stay there long. In my opinion, we must expect that the enemy will attempt further offensive operations in the near future. They are building up strength faster than we are. Intelligence indicates they still have the equivalent of two Marine divisions at Pago Pago, and two more Army divisions in Brisbane, along with another two good Australian divisions that were withdrawn from the Middle East. If we cannot prevail now, with two of our best divisions on Fiji, what will happen when they choose to commit these additional forces against us?
“Shattered Gem,” said Hyakutake. “We will see the forces we have already committed to Fiji destroyed. Sooner or later, this will be the inevitable result. The only way it could be avoided would be for the Army to make a serious commitment to the Strike South force allotment. Yet, considering the burden imposed on us by the enormous commitment of troops and resources in China, our prospects here seem dim.”
“I must agree with you, General Hyakutake. To look at the map now would make it seem that we have won an undeniable victory in this drive south. We have the Philippines, all the Dutch East Indies, control of the entire Solomon Island sector, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and have come as far as Fiji. We even control Ceylon, but to do all this, the troops the Army has provided us have been spread very thin. We hold all the former Dutch colonies with but a single division, the 18th. Nishimura has sent all that remained of the 5th Division to Ceylon, retaining only his Imperial Guards Division at Singapore. The loss of the 2nd Sendai Division on Java when that volcano erupted was a major setback, and even though it is reforming in Japan, this business on Karafuto and the new Siberian front that opened near lake Baikal is most alarming.”
“Which leaves us too few divisions to even hold what we now have in hand,” said Hyakutake. “This is why leaving the bulk of our forces on Fiji is ill-advised.”
“So we are in agreement,” said Imamura. “Yet you know what will be said if I should raise this matter with Imperial General Headquarters. They will say that we have already been given the 20th Division—what more is needed? Yet that division must now be used to strengthen our position in the New Hebrides, and we must do so soon, before the enemy chooses to attack us there. Such a move on the part of the enemy would serve to saw off the long tree limb that your forces now sit upon in the Fiji Islands. We cannot permit that to happen.”
“Then there will be no other reinforcements for this theater?”
“None that I can foresee…. Unless…” Imamura leaned back, taking a deep breath. “Unless we can convince the Army that the prize we have taken in striking south outweighs any benefit that we could possibly obtain by trying to continue this futile campaign in China.”
Imamura knew that he could easily be branded a defeatist with such words, even relieved of command and sent to some forsaken position in outer Mongolia, yet he now perceived that he had found a confederate in Hyakutake, and wanted to secure his support. Now he was going to reveal something that few knew in the Army chain of command. Rumors had traveled in circles through Imperial General Headquarters, but they were nothing more than that—until now.
“General, I have learned that a proposal has been drawn up for a possible accord between our forces in China and the Kuomintang under Chaing Kai-shek. As you know, his forces were locked in an emerging civil war with Mao and his Communist front. It was only our arrival that forced the two sides into an alliance to oppose us, yet Chiang has put out peace initiatives on more than one occasion. We never saw such an accommodation to be advantageous before, but now things have changed.”
“How so?” Hyakutake was very curious about this.
“Fiji has changed things here, Ceylon in the Indian Ocean, Burma, and now both Karafuto and the new front at Lake Baikal. The fact that you and I meet here and reach the conclusion we have come to has not been lost in the minds of highly placed generals at Imperial General Headquarters. General Sugiyama wanted all this—his war in China, here in the South Pacific, and against the United States. Now he begins to see that his arms are too full. The Army cannot carry all that it has grasped, not while so many of our troops remain in China. So Now Sujiyama has come to a new appraisal of the situation.”