"Against all odds, the Nazis managed one last attack, one last hurrah, and just when we thought they couldn't. We were caught preparing our own plans as if they didn't have any of their own. Are you aware that our latest intelligence estimates are that the Japs still have more than half a million men on Kyushu?"
"I know," said Krueger. "We kill them and they keep replacing them with fresh bodies from Korea and Honshu. Maybe they aren't top-notch soldiers, but they're still fighting. Damned Reds are helping them too. We think we've caused a quarter of a million Jap dead or wounded, but they keep making good the losses."
"Truman will take care of the Russians," Bradley commented hopefully, "but you've got to watch out for the Japs. If the Battle of the Bulge is any guide, they will wait for an extended period of rotten weather when our air forces are grounded and attack then. Unfortunately, they are still getting good weather information from stations in Korea and even from Manchuria. Since the winter storms flow down from up there, they will have several days' advance notice. So will we, of course. Nimitz has already put a number of navy weather experts on ships and has them in the Sea of Japan off Korea and Honshu."
"Good," both other generals muttered in near unison.
"General Krueger, I want your boys to be ready to circle the wagons- and I mean that almost literally- when Nimitz gives the signal that the weather is ripe for the Japs to attack. If nothing comes of it, that'll be fine by me, but I'd rather have a false alarm, even a number of them, than a rehash of the Bulge, where two regiments of the 106th Division were forced to surrender. I don't want to even think of additional American troops being captured by the Japs. I don't care how you do it, but there will be no weak places for the Japs to exploit if and when they do attack."
"What about atom bombs?" Eichelberger queried.
"There won't be a place for them on the battlefield that I envision if the Japs do attack us." Mentally, Bradley hedged the statement. If a suitable target was found far enough from the battle lines, he would consider it.
The door to the room burst open. "Incoming!" yelled a sergeant. "Jap planes on a dead line towards us."
"Shit," said Krueger as the men raced in undignified haste down an earthen corridor to the reinforced shelter. "I guess our little secret's out. I was really starting to get fond of this hole."
Chapter 57
Relations between senior officers of the Japanese army and the navy were generally formal at best. The rivalry was historically intense. Each had its own priorities and each was bitterly jealous of the other, even to the point of orchestrating assassinations in the decades prior to the war.
The army had argued against the southward push of the navy that had brought the United States and Great Britain into the war. At the time of Pearl Harbor the Japanese army was fully involved in a major land war with China- one it had started without seeking government approval- and wished to finish that war before starting any new adventures.
Within a year of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army could only sit and seethe in impotent fury as the Imperial Japanese Navy lost battle after battle and watch in frustration as enemy warships drew ever closer to Japan.
As 1945 drew to a close, only the army remained to defend Japan, and the naval officers who'd been so proud and smug the years before were scarcely tolerated pariahs whose rash efforts had failed the empire. While the navy licked its wounds and tallied its losses, the army had gone on the offensive in China and pushed the Chinese Nationalists southward, forcing the American air forces to evacuate bases from which they'd been bombing the home islands. As a result, many army officers now looked down on their naval counterparts. The army had always felt that Japan's true adversary was the Soviet Union, and it had galled the generals to have to make peace, however temporary, with Stalin, who had broken it that summer.
In this hostile environment, the unique friendship between Lt. Gen. Masaharu Homma and Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa somehow first developed, then flourished. Both were in their late fifties, and each had experienced glory and despair. Both men had pragmatic feelings about the war and felt that it had to be concluded quickly before Japan disappeared.
They also thought that the code of Bushido, which required fighting to the death, was nonsense in the current circumstances. Homma, who had served two terms as liaison with the British army, was well aware of the fighting capabilities and the industrial might of the West. Ozawa had seen that might in more recent action. He had watched in agony as ship after ship of his fleet sank as a result of the hammer blows inflicted by the overwhelmingly powerful Americans.
In 1941, Homma had commanded the Fourteenth Japanese Area Army in the invasion of the Philippines. He had succeeded, but had paid a terrible price for the victory. Instead of the quick and easy conquest that intelligence estimates had promised, the American and Philippine soldiers had fought bravely and held out for months longer than anticipated. The defense of Bataan and Corregidor had upset the Japanese timetable for conquest, and Homma, upon ultimate completion of his task, had been returned to Japan and left in administrative limbo.
Homma was further stung that the Americans had blamed him for the Death March and other atrocities committed by his subordinates. He had ordered that prisoners be treated fairly, but these orders had been ignored. Homma accepted the blame. Morally, he felt responsible. He had conquered a nation but had lost his career.
Ozawa, on the other hand, had merely lost his fleet. Highly regarded and respected, he had been an early proponent of airpower and had skillfully led his carriers in combat until the last of them was overwhelmed in the climactic Battle of Leyte Gulf. A quiet and basically humble man, he knew there was nothing more useless than an admiral without a fleet, and he no longer had a single major surface ship, much less a fleet.
Each man understood the other and their relationship grew. Had the government of General Anami been aware of it, it might have expressed disapproval. But the Anami government had many other and more compelling problems to resolve than to worry about two old officers getting together for drinks and idle conversation.
General Homma's vivacious and tiny wife, Fujito, beamed happily as she answered the door and admitted the admiral. She bowed and took Ozawa's soggy hat and raincoat, then departed to let the admiral and her husband have their talk.
"Your journey here was uninterrupted?" Homma inquired.
"Safe enough," Ozawa replied. "One innocuous car is not going to attract an attack."
Both men knew it was not quite that simple. With fuel rationing so strict that civilian car usage was virtually nonexistent, American pilots had easily concluded that any car or truck on the road was a legitimate military target. Ozawa had been both prudent and lucky. He did not burden his host with the fact that he and his driver had twice bolted from the vehicle during his ten-mile journey out of fear that he had been sighted by Yank planes. He had wiped most of the mud from his uniform trousers from his having hid in a ditch. Homma was too tactful to comment on the stains.
"You are fortunate," Ozawa commented, "that you live far enough away from Tokyo proper to be relatively free of the bombers and the fires." Ozawa's own small house had gone up in flames during a bombing. He now lived with relatives.
Homma nodded. His home in exile was only twenty miles from the Imperial Palace, but it might as well have been a thousand miles from the source of power. At least until recently.