Seen from the front, the enormous Victorian desk behind which King Stanley sat seemed wide as Akagi’s flight deck. Poor Akagi! For a moment, pain for Genda’s lost ship stabbed at him, dagger-sharp. He bowed to the king, not least to make sure his face didn’t show what he was thinking. “Your Majesty,” he murmured.
“Hello, Commander. Nice of you to come to see me for a change.” Stanley Laanui slurred the words so Genda had trouble understanding them. Was he drunk this early in the morning? Whether he was or not, he alarmed the Japanese officer. Did he know about Genda’s visits to Queen Cynthia? If he did, what did he aim to do about them? If he kept a pistol as well as a bottle in one of those drawers… But the not very kingly King of Hawaii went on, “This Captain Iwabuchi is a lot nastier than General Yamashita ever was.”
Genda believed that. The commandant of the special naval landing forces struck him as hard and determined even by Japanese standards. “I am so sorry, your Majesty,” Genda said. “You know he has many worries.”
“Like I don’t!” the king exclaimed. “They won’t hang Iwabuchi if our side loses.”
He was bound to have that right. Genda couldn’t imagine the Japanese naval officer letting himself be captured. Iwabuchi would surely die in battle or commit seppuku before permitting such a disgrace. “Do not be hard on him,” Genda said. “Remember, he helps defend your country.”
“Oh, yeah,” King Stanley said. “He’ll defend it till everybody in Honolulu’s dead.”
Genda had no doubt Captain Iwabuchi intended to defend Honolulu just that way. “This is war, your Majesty,” he said-use was making his English more and more fluent. “This is not a game. We cannot stop and ask to begin again. It goes to the end, whatever the end may be.”
“If I’d figured the Americans were coming back, I don’t know that I would have let you stick a crown on my noggin,” Stanley Laanui said.
“Believe me, your Majesty, I do not want the Americans here any more than you do,” Genda said.
“Japan does all it can to beat them.”
“Hawaii’s doing everything it can, too,” the king said. “That’s why I sent my army up to join the fighting.”
“Hai,” Genda said, and not another word. Any other word might have been too much. But after a moment he did find a few that seemed safe: “I hope the Army will fight strongly for us.”
“Why shouldn’t it?” the king asked.
Genda said nothing. The question had too many answers-because the soldiers might not be loyal to the King of Hawaii, because they didn’t have all the weapons they needed to fight first-rate foes like the U.S. Marines and Army, because they had no combat experience, because some of them were either cutthroats or men looking for enough to eat and not really warriors at all. They’d all been trained since they joined up, but how much did that mean?
Only one way to find out. By now they’d be up near the line. Whatever Japanese officer they reported to would use them. Why not? They would surely kill some Americans. If they died themselves, even in swarms, so what? Better them than precious, irreplaceable Japanese troops.
King Stanley was doing his best to act like a proper ally. Genda admired him for that. He also pitied him. Japan didn’t want a proper ally here in Hawaii, any more than she wanted proper allies in any of the countries she’d conquered. She wanted puppets who would deliver natural resources and do as they were told.
Hawaii had no natural resources to speak of. Sugar? Pineapple? Neither would have been worth a single Japanese soldier or sailor. Hawaii’s position was its natural resource. Under the Rising Sun, it shielded everything farther west and made it hard for the USA to help Australia and New Zealand. Under the Stars and Stripes, it was a spearhead aimed straight at the rest of the Japanese Empire.
It behooved Japan to hold on to Hawaii as long as she could, then. How long that would be… “We will all do the best we can, your Majesty,” Genda said.
“How good is that?” King Stanley demanded. “You can hear the American guns off to the north. Sounds like they come closer every day, too. You don’t see anything but American planes any more. They shoot up anything that moves. They’ve damn near killed me two, three times by now. How can you stop them, Commander? Answer me that, please. Answer me that.”
“We will do the best we can,” Genda repeated. “We have more courage than the enemy does.” He believed that was true, even if the Marines were not to be despised.
The king looked at him. “What difference does courage make if they drop bombs on your head and you can’t do anything about it?”
“Well…” The question was too much to the point. Genda found he had no answer. He feared none of his superiors did, either.
LES DILLON HAD ALREADY DISCOVERED THAT SOME OF THE JAPS FIGHTING THE Marines carried Springfields, not Arisakas. That made sense; after the Army threw in the sponge here, it must have handed over a zillion rifles, plus the ammo to shoot them for a zillion years. But it made him have a harder time telling by ear who was shooting at whom.
That was doubly dangerous right now, because the enemy in front of his platoon didn’t seem to be Japs at all. They spoke English as well as half the Marines, and they wore what looked like U.S. Army khaki, not the darker shade Japan preferred.
He wasn’t the only one who’d noticed, either. “Who are you guys?” a Marine yelled through the racket of gunfire.
The answer came back at once: “Royal Hawaiian Army! Get the fuck off our land, haole asshole!” A burst from a machine gun punctuated the words.
Royal Hawaiian Army? Les blinked. He knew the Japs had given Hawaii a puppet king. He hadn’t known-he hadn’t dreamt-anybody besides the Japs took the King of Hawaii seriously. Not sticking his head up, he called, “Why aren’t you people on our side, not the enemy’s?”
That got him another burst. He’d been smart to keep low-tracers went right over his foxhole. Whoever was handling that gun knew what to do with it. “Japan never took our land away from us! Japan never took our country away from us!” another Hawaiian shouted. “The USA sure as hell did!”
Yeah, but that was a long time ago. The words died unspoken on Les’ lips. It might seem a long time ago to him. To the noisy bastard on the other side of the line, it wasn’t even the day before yesterday. For that matter, you couldn’t talk about the Civil War with a lot of Southerners-Captain Bradford included. It wasn’t the Civil War to them, either. It was the War Between the States… or, if they’d been drinking for a while, the War of Damnyankee Aggression. Whatever you called it, it happened long before Hawaii joined-or was joined to-the United States.
He tried another tack: “Why fight now, for Chrissake? You can’t win, and you’ll just get shot.” He knew damn well the Japs wouldn’t surrender. He’d seen them fight to the death in hopeless positions too many times to have any doubts on that score. But maybe the Hawaiians were different. If he could do things on the cheap instead of putting his one and only irreplaceable ass on the line, he would, and gladly.
No words came back this time. One more burst of machine-gun fire did. Whatever the men in front of him had in mind, surrender wasn’t it. He muttered to himself. Sooner or later, he’d find out what those bastards in old-fashioned khaki were worth.
It turned out to be sooner. Not long after dark fell, a runner brought word that the Marines would go forward the next morning, half an hour after sunrise. Les almost opened fire before the man stammered out the countersign to his hissed challenge. When he got the news instead, he half way wished he had shot the fellow.