“Respectfully, sir, I was told to discourage such rumors by the Admiral.”
“Of course,” said Nishimura, a little mocking echo of what Harada had said a moment earlier. “However, rumors do not compel the fleet admiral to pull all his most important ships out of the home waters, do they? I think there is more to these stories than the wild imaginations of sailors in the bars of Yokohama. Very well, I see that dinner is being served. Let us enjoy the meal, and talk again after. Would you be interested in a tour of the island? I can certainly arrange that.”
“You are most kind,” said Harada, “but I have pressing business aboard ship.” And no, there won’t be a tour arranged for you there, he thought. That’s what this one was angling for. He’s heard something, and more than he should. Either that, or interests on the Imperial General Staff have contacted him and asked him to go fishing here with this little dinner party. I must be very cautious.
Throughout this exchange, Fukada remained discretely silent, but he could easily perceive the polite thrust and parry in the conversation, and he knew enough to stay out of it. If asked a direct question, he would speak, but otherwise, his was to be a quiet presence, but one without opinions. Deference to the Captain was expected, and he knew how to play the part.
At that moment, and half way through the dinner, there came a quiet but persistent knock on the door. Nishimura turned his head with a look of displeasure. “What is it?”
A man entered, walking quickly up to the General and handing him a slip of paper, which Nishimura read silently. “Well,” he said. “It seems we have an uninvited guest tonight. An enemy submarine has attacked a supply ship in the Strait of Malacca. Kasigi Maru has been hit!”
Harada stood up immediately. Bowing as he did so. “General, I thank you for your hospitality, but it is clear that I have urgent business to attend to. Mister Fukada, we must depart for Takami immediately.”
Urgent business indeed, thought Nishimura. See what you find out there, Captain, because this message was, of course, pre-arranged. I’ve had my time with you, and I see that you are just another tight lipped Navy man, most likely thick with Yamamoto if he entrusts you with this mission. You will find nothing, for there is no submarine, nor any ship by the name of Kasigi Maru. Let us see how you like chasing after ships no one has heard of.
He smiled, then turned to an aid waiting quietly by the door. “Bring my pen and paper. I must draft a special message to go out in a secure pouch on the next plane north.”
That message would be sent to the Imperial General Staff, and was also a pre-arranged code, just a single kanji character that read “Sakura,” the word for Cherry Blossoms. Only one man would understand what it meant—that the ship Nishimura had been told to look for and report on was there at Singapore.
Nishimura was not the only one interested in the doings of that ship. The Imperial General Headquarters was also curious, particularly one Hajime Sugiyama, Chief of Staff. It was a ship, he was told, that had already demonstrated the ability to fire and use rocket weapons similar to the secret ‘Project Okha’, or Cherry Blossom. There was a great deal of rivalry between the Army and Navy, and Sujiyama wanted to know everything he could about the rumors now circulating—of a ship called Mizuchi, of battles fought in the Sea of Okhotsk, and of a ship named Takami that appeared nowhere on the official register of commissioned vessels in the Navy.
Yes, he was most curious.
When they returned to Takami, Harada and Fukada went straight to the bridge, immediately checking sonar and radar stations for any reports. There was nothing out of the ordinary.
“We have what looks like a small commercial freighter in the Strait of Malacca,” said Ryoko Otani, the Lieutenant on the SPY-1 System. “I’ve tracked them heading southeast around Pulau Sugi, and into the South China Sea.”
“Probably supplies for the forces still at Palembang on Sumatra,” said Fukada. “Those airfields have been abandoned due to the heavy ashfall, but the garrison left there still has to eat.”
“Ensign Shiota,” said Harada. “Have you been monitoring local signals traffic here?”
“Yes sir, but there’s been nothing unusual.”
“No S.O.S. or distress calls of any kind on the military channels? Nothing from a ship designated Kasigi Maru?”
“No sir, nothing.”
“Look that ship up in the WWII ship registry.”
A moment later Shiota reported that there was no ship by that name. “I’ve got a Kasi Maru, Hasuga Maru, Kage Maru, Kasato Maru, but no Kasigi. That oiler that serviced us was the Kuroshio Maru. Could that be it, sir?”
Harada gave Fukada a look. “What do you make of this?”
“The General seems to have been pulling our leg.”
“Yes, but I wonder why? Was he just irritated that I wouldn’t say anything about the ship or the operation?”
“Anybody’s guess, sir. He was a sly bastard, that much was certain.”
“Right,” said Harada. “Finished his little interview and then got rid of us…. But if that is so, the messenger thing had to be all pre-arranged.”
“It seems that way, sir.”
Harada filed that away mentally, with a note to be extra cautious with Nishimura in the future. He thought about reporting the incident to Yamamoto, but it sounded too trivial to bother the Fleet Admiral with something like that. Yet it was clear to him that the General had gone on a little fishing expedition, and that was grounds for some discomfort.
Three days later they picked up two contacts at 18 knots rounding the cape and entering the Singapore Strait, and they were not commercial ships. Two grey sisters emerged from the low rolling fog in the strait, and the bridge crew finally got a close look at the new battleship class they had fought with up north, but never really got close enough to see.
“Beautiful beasts,” said Harada, his eyes lost in his field glasses. “They look a lot like the old American Iowa class in profile, clipper bow, built for speed, and triple turrets.”
“Ships that never were,” said Fukada. “You won’t find them in the WWII ship registry database either. That has to be Satsuma and Hiraga.”
“Then Admiral Hara can’t be far behind with the carriers.”
He arrived two days later, on the 18th of September, in a well escorted group that now hove to in the strait off Bantam Island, about 30 kilometers south of the main city of Singapore. Hara wanted no prying eyes noting his ship types, and planned to transit the Singapore Strait the following day, after the oiler Kuroshio Maru serviced ships needing to refuel. There was Japan’s newest carrier, the Taiho, looking very much like the one that had entered service much later in the war by that same name.
“Strange how the history here rhymes,” said Harada.
“The Great Phoenix,” said Fukada, looking at the ship with equally great interest and admiration. “That one is over 37,000 tons out there, but it could still make 33 knots if this one is anything like the original design. It was supposed to have belt armor up to 152mm, and two armored decks. I just hope they filled those voids around the aviation fuel bunkers. Look at those guns. We’ve got that single 127mm deck gun forward, well that baby has twelve 100mm guns, dual purpose, though they were really there for air defense. And she’s supposed to have over fifty 25mm guns as well, on seventeen triple mounts. That’s a lot of lead when they get to firing.”