Deke didn’t care what the others thought. Maybe they were right, that he had gone crazy, at least for a minute, but he felt calm now. He took one last look at Ben’s body, small and lifeless on the sand. Just a short time ago, Ben had still been living and breathing. Deke was no stranger to death, having seen his share of tragedy in a hard childhood, but that didn’t mean he would ever really get used to it.
“I’m sorry, Ben,” Deke muttered. “I’m sorry that I let you down.”
Looking into the green, tangled wall of vegetation in front of him, he realized that he wasn’t afraid.
He was angry.
Finally, Deke reached for his rifle, picking it out of the sand. He gave Ben’s body one last look, then started into the jungle after the others.
Chapter Three
The weeks leading up to the landing had been the quiet before the storm for the thousands of Japanese troops ordered to defend Guam to the last man. For weeks on the island, the Japanese had been digging in, awaiting the American attack.
The sea had remained empty, but for how long?
They had hoped that their own fleet would crush the Americans in the Philippine Sea and prevent them from reaching Guam, but they had not even seen a glimpse of a Japanese ship for several days. Long before the American fleet came into sight, supplies had begun to run low.
“When will the enemy be here, sir?” wondered Private Kimura, a young soldier assigned to Captain Mitsuyuki Okubo. The two of them were making their way through the crews of soldiers laboring to build defenses, with Okubo noting the best places to position snipers.
He knew that one well-placed sniper could delay an entire company — he had seen it on Guadalcanal, and he planned to repeat the strategy here.
It was a measure of the situation that the private was more fearful of the Americans than of asking the intimidating captain questions.
“Do not worry about them surprising us,” Okubo said. “They will let us know when they are here. You can be sure of that.”
“Will we win the battle, sir?”
Okubo frowned. He glared at the skinny, tired-looking private. He did not like to hear soldiers express doubt. Doubt led to defeat. As the great samurai-philosopher Miyamoto Musashi had once written, “No fear, no hesitation, no surprise, no doubt.” These were the elements of victory.
Okubo could have berated the private — even beaten him with impunity if he wished. The rules for treatment of enlisted soldiers were very different in the Japanese military from those in the United States forces. However, other soldiers nearby had paused in their labors to listen for the captain’s answer. Okubo felt that this was an opportunity to instill confidence rather than fear.
“Do you know about the Battle of Takatenjin?” he asked.
“I do not know this battle, sir.” The private looked near panic, as if he must have overlooked some aspect of his military indoctrination.
“This battle took place many years ago, in 1574, to be exact. It was the time of the samurai and shoguns. My ancestors were samurai serving a small shogunate known for its excellence in warfare when they were attacked by a much larger force. They held their ground and fought with honor, never doubting that they would be victorious. In the end, the enemy forces withdrew to lick their wounds, having underestimated the small but superior force. We are going to fight the Battle of Takatenjin all over again. Soon, we will all fight together as samurai.”
Kimura and the other soldiers seemed to stand a little straighter. If Okubo was feared, he was also respected. Captain Okubo had just compared them to samurai. They might be tired, dirty, and hungry, but they felt proud to be the defenders of this island. Besides, they all knew that Captain Okubo, descendant of an ancient family, was as close to a living, breathing samurai as they could expect.
Kimura raised a hand against the sun’s glare and stared out to sea, as if he could glimpse the American fleet that must surely be on its way. Just the day before, enemy planes had once again attacked the airfield on the level portion of the island. Aircraft on the ground had been destroyed, and craters had been punched in the concrete. Japanese planes had finally driven off the enemy, and crews of Korean and Chamorro slaves now worked to fill the holes so that the airfield would be serviceable again.
Not lost on Okubo was the irony that the Americans were trying to destroy the airfield that their own engineers had so laboriously built on this remote island that they, many years before, had received as one of the fruits of victory in the Spanish-American War. Just after the victory at Pearl Harbor, Imperial Japanese forces had invaded Guam and overwhelmed the small detachment of US Marines.
Since then, the island and its precious airfield had been in Japanese hands, enabling their fighters and bombers to reach deep into the Pacific. By early 1942, using their network of islands to extend their reach, the Japanese commanded more than 20 percent of the planet’s surface, extending all the way from occupied China to the Aleutian Islands on the Americans’ doorstep. Some had thought that it was not enough and had urged the invasion of Australia or even of the West Coast of the United States.
But those ambitions had faded as the tide of battle had slowly turned against Japan.
Now it seemed that the Americans wanted the island back. But to do that, they first seemed intent upon wrecking it. With their seemingly endless resources, the Americans did not doubt that they could build back whatever they destroyed, denying the enemy use of the airfield in the process. Okubo was not sure if this strategy smacked of wisdom or arrogance.
His story about the long-ago samurai battle finished, the soldiers who had been listening bent back to their work, digging tank traps and other obstacles to impede the invasion force. Okubo moved on, with Private Kimura trailing at a respectful distance from the stern officer.
In a sense, Okubo believed himself to be one of the Emperor’s new samurai, carrying on the traditions of those fabled warriors. After all, Okubo came from a family that had descended from these samurai. Okubo even looked the part. He was tall for a Japanese, or even for an American, close to six feet with a muscular build under his rather corpulent frame, which made him physically intimidating to other Japanese, who tended to be much smaller and slighter.
His grandfather had even been a viscount in the Meiji era. These titles had been reserved for the oldest and most distinguished families within the Japanese aristocracy, known as the Kazoku. Although the title had passed down through the line of eldest sons that did not include Okubo’s own father, his family name was one that was well respected, his heritage unquestioned.
With their roots in the samurai tradition, ancient families such as Okubo’s had won their lands and titles through an adherence to the harsh warrior code known as Bushido.
Instead of a samurai sword or katana, which Japanese officers carried as a badge of office, Okubo carried an excellent Arisaka rifle with a telescopic sight. The rifle stock was customized for his slightly larger frame, and unlike most military rifles, it did not bear the royal chrysanthemum symbol that marked it as property of the Emperor. This was because the custom rifle had been purchased by Okubo, similar to how officers provided their own swords.
Many samurai in ancient times had been renowned archers rather than swordsmen, and in his youth, Okubo had been an accomplished archer. Okubo considered the rifle to be his modern version of the bow. Time and again, he had proved his skill with this rifle. At Guadalcanal, for example, he had lost count of the enemy soldiers he had killed, striking terror into the invaders’ hearts. He had been lucky to narrowly escape during the rescue mission carried out by the Imperial Japanese Navy.