"Both the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary have been leased to us by Britain's Cunard Line and neither has ever sailed with an escort. They are so fast that most warships simply couldn't keep up with them, and they certainly were able to outrace any submarine. They've made numerous trips across the Atlantic to England and made them without any U-boat attacks, and with even greater numbers of GIs on board. The U-boats were always a much greater menace to shipping than any submarines the Japanese sent out." Marshall didn't add that both he and King thought that virtually all the Jap submarines had been sunk.
"So what happened this time? Did we just run out of luck?"
"It appears that the Queen Elizabeth was guilty of nothing more than stumbling on a waiting Jap I-boat." He added that there would be no further solitary sailings. The fully laden Queen Mary had been recalled to San Francisco. "After all is said and done, bad luck and a mechanical problem with the ship's sonar may be the answer."
"And, after all is said and done," Truman said, unconsciously mimicking Marshall, "how many young Americans are dead?"
Marshall started to answer, but his voice broke with pent-up emotion. He took a deep breath and tried again. "There were just over fourteen thousand unassigned army replacements on the ship. While rescue efforts are still continuing, we have picked up only a little more than two thousand of them, and a lot of them are in pretty bad shape. Admirals Nimitz and King hold out little hope that we will find more than a few more men alive. Rescue ships have plucked several hundred bodies from the waters and will continue that aspect of the recovery effort."
Truman winced. "And if it wasn't for the broadcast from the Jap sub, we wouldn't have yet missed her, would we?"
The killer of the Queen Elizabeth had been identified through his broadcast report as Comdr. Mochitsura Hashimoto and the sub as the I-58. Hashimoto and the I-58 had destroyed the Indianapolis only a few months earlier in circumstances that were chillingly similar.
"General, is this Hashimoto a war criminal?" Truman asked. "Can we promise the American public the satisfaction of a hanging in return for this disaster?"
Marshall again wished that a naval officer was present to respond. "The Queen Elizabeth was a legitimate target and he was under no compulsion to warn her, or do anything else that might have endangered himself. His actions were similar to what many of our own submariners are doing in their actions against Japanese shipping. In fact, Hashimoto may have saved a lot of lives by broadcasting his triumph in the clear, without any encoding. He gave the precise location of the sinking, which was highly unusual. Since the Queen Elizabeth's radio was knocked out within minutes of being hit, that transmission was our only real knowledge of where to begin looking."
Truman had wondered about that as well. "Do you think he did that on purpose to help us get those boys out of the water, or was he trying to show off and rub it in?"
"I don't know. Although rather unlikely, it is just possible that he was trying to save lives by the time he sent his message. If the war ever ends, we might have a chance to ask him."
Truman stood and looked out the window behind his desk. "I'm curious. England had any number of ports where a liner full of soldiers could disembark troops, while we don't yet hold a single good-sized Japanese port. Just where on earth was the Queen Elizabeth going to dock and unload all those troops?"
"She was going to reach a point off Japan where she would be surrounded by a horde of destroyers to protect her. LSTs and other smaller craft would swarm around her, and men would disembark directly onto them. As Nimitz's boys had it planned and rehearsed, the Queen Elizabeth would be emptied in a few hours and be back on her way to Hawaii or California."
But it hadn't gone as planned and almost twelve thousand American boys had been drowned. So far, they'd managed to keep news of the catastrophe out of the newspapers and off the radio. Just how much longer this could keep up was debatable. A few days was the best guess. With the earlier crises of the war behind them, many reporters and correspondents were openly chafing against what they felt was unnecessary government censorship. Several papers had already announced that they would no longer abide by censorship rules, and the attorney general had told Truman that there really wasn't much the government could do about it. Prosecuting newspapers would be politically disastrous and might not result in a favorable verdict in the courts.
A few days, Truman thought. Just a few days and then the world would know that twelve thousand GIs had died not in battle but in getting there. That it was nearly Christmas would make it even more devastating. The atom bomb had killed thirty thousand Jap soldiers a few days earlier, and a conventional torpedo had just killed twelve thousand Americans in what the Japanese were sure to call justifiable revenge. Where was the justice? What the hell use was it to have superweapons when the enemy's old ones worked so damnably well?
Chapter 53
Joe Nomura was about to lose the chess match to the Son of Heaven.
"Check!" he said in an undeniable tone of gloating.
Joe bowed and smiled. "You win, Your Majesty. Would you like another game?"
Hirohito laughed again. "No, beating you four times in a row is enough. You try hard and are improving, but you really aren't a very good player."
"It's been years since I had the opportunity to play, sir." And that was in Hawaii, dammit!
"I know," the emperor said gently. "I did not mean to make fun of you. I enjoy playing chess with you and I enjoy having you to talk with. You are so much less a radical than the good colonel, my jailer." Joe was genuinely surprised. "Oh, I know you are a member of the kempei, which means you should be a fanatic like Sakei, but I see in your eyes that you are wearied by the war."
"I think everyone is, Your Majesty." It was a good, safe answer.
"Of course, but there is a great deal of disagreement over what to do about it. You are aware, are you not, that I am here because I agreed to surrender to the Americans?"
"Yes."
"Anami and the others who took over are afraid that the Americans will destroy Japanese culture. I disagree. I feel that surrender is the only way to preserve it, and there are many who agree with me. Tell me, Captain, what do you see in this camp, and when you leave here and walk through the countryside? Do you see a culture being preserved, or do you see dirty and starving people eating roots and dying of cold? And when you listen to military reports, do you hear that the Americans have been driven from Kyushu or that their planes have stopped bombing our few remaining cities?
"No! Captain, I believe that it is men like Anami and his puppet Colonel Sakei who will destroy Japan if they are not stopped. It is they who threaten the continued existence of Japanese culture, and not your emperor."
Joe said nothing. Even though his few sessions with Hirohito had been cordial, one did not argue with one's emperor. Nor did one agree with him too promptly. There was the concern that he was being tested, but for what? Silence was the best course.
"I understand, Captain, that you will neither say nor do anything that will put you in any jeopardy, and I applaud both your tact and your restraint. Yet again your eyes betray you. You wish you could say something, but don't know how or what to say, do you?"