That was the theory anyway. Like all the Army's plans it assumed the enemy were going to do just what the Army expected. Admiral Soriva was seaman enough to know that things never went according to plan. Still, that was in the lap of the gods. Now, he had to get his battleships ready for sea. There was an amphibious warfare group a carrier covering force, and a replenishment group as well. All of them parts of moving a battle fleet around. And it had to be done without annoying the Americans. The Army really had no idea what was involved in.
Chapter Two Kick-Off
Road from Thafa to Houayxay, Laos
Colonel Toshimitsu Takatsu threw the papers across the back seat of his car. The fools were going to destroy everything, they seemed to have some sort of death wish. They would throw away everything Japan had spent two decades and millions of lives building; destroy it out of some blind hatred of everything European. These orders were perfect examples. Pointing out that other provinces were economizing on resources by taking comfort women for the Japanese garrison from the local population instead of importing them from Korea. Instructing other provinces to do the same. Were they determined to start a civil war - again? After just bringing one of them to an end? Taking women and forcing them to service the garrison would start one nicely.
If other things didn't first. Taxes for example. Other provinces were raising large sums for the Japanese treasury by squeezing the peasants until their bones squeaked. Oh, the tax rates weren't bad in themselves - but they were when the authorities demanded payment four, five or six years in advance. The peasant farmers were doing what they always did, they hid their crops and hid their livestock. Or, if that failed, they left.
By learning to defy the authorities in small ways, they were also learning to defy it in larger ones. Of course, what was happening up North was even worse. The idea had seemed so sensible. Instead of having the peasants in large numbers of small farms, each owned by a single family, consolidate them into large units run by the state. Much more efficient, it should increase production greatly. So why were the peasants resisting so hard? Last time Takatsu had heard, the death toll up there had reached over 150,000. And resistance was still continuing. Madness.
The local leader they had running things up there didn't help either. Nguyen Tat Thanh, A small-minded, stupid functionary with a thirst for personal glory and a total lack of moral backbone. He'd been a faithful servant of Stalin's communists and, when Russia had abandoned communism, transferred his allegiance to a communist warlord called Mao. When he'd been killed, Nguyen Tat Thanh had transferred his allegiance to the Japanese. Now he pranced around in Hanoi, wearing a Japanese uniform and proposing these mad ideas on how to reorganize the country. Poisonous insects like that were going to destroy everything. Bushido was supposed to stand for honor and virtue and moral courage, not fooling around with farms and abducting peasant girls.
He was doing things differently. He'd cut the taxes down to a level the peasants could live with. He'd thrown the “recruiters” out of the villages and towns and told them he'd slit their bellies if they showed their faces in his province again. Japanese soldiers who abused local people found themselves in deep trouble, assigned to the dirtiest, most degrading tasks, those who treated the locals fairly and honestly were promoted and honored. A sergeant caught extorting money from local merchants had been executed in public. The local population would never love the Japanese troops, but they didn't oppose them. Even though he was taxing them less as a proportion of their crops, he was bringing in more revenue. Why couldn't others do the same?
Because they were foolish and dishonest and corrupt. That was the truth of it. Because the Japanese Army wasn't what it had been and it had deserted the true traditions of Bushido. All the provincial governors cared about was extorting bribes, assembling a harem and scoring points with the high-ups so they could be assigned to new provinces with more bribes, more women, and more chances of advancement. They didn't care about their duty anymore and weren't interested in advancing the cause of Imperial Rule. Instead, they looked only to themselves and their own ambitions. They had become Mandarins, not representatives of His Imperial Highness and were driving the local population to mutiny.
There was enough trouble brewing as it was. Oh, not in his province, the trouble hadn't spread here yet. There wasn't enough discontent to cause trouble and wouldn't be. Not as long as he could keep the Japanese rule as light as he could. But in other provinces, trouble was starting. Japanese soldiers would go out alone and not return, Or would be found dead, stabbed in brothels or strangled in back-alleys. Couldn't his brother officers see that abusing and exploiting the local population could only cause such things? But, even in this province, Takatsu made certain he had an escort whenever he traveled. There was an armored car in front and a truck with an infantry squad behind. Besides, he didn't travel outside his town that often, the roads weren't good enough, mostly just dirt tracks. He'd heard that Thailand was building blacktop roads near the border, well, more fool them. Spending money on roads that could be better spent on upgrading their army. Japan had scores to settle with Thailand.
The explosion tore all four back wheels off the armored car and sent the front half, complete with turret, bouncing across the road. All Takatsu could see was the billowing cloud of red dust boiling upwards with dark shadows inside. His car swerved to a halt as his driver avoided the gaping crater where the armored car had been. Takatsu was working on instinct, he was already bailing out of the back of his car when the truck behind slammed into it.
The crunching impact spun both vehicles around, throwing some of the infantrymen from the back. The rest started to jump out over the sides, the first dropping as a light crackle of rifle and machinegun fire started. Then there was the screaming sound of rockets. Three RPG-2s hit Takatsu's car turning it into a fireball. The Japanese infantry were seeking cover as machinegun bullets stitched into their truck. Some dived into the ditch beside the road, Takatsu screamed “No” but it was too late, a directional mine exploded and spewed metal fragments down the axis of the ditch. What seemed to be cover was really a deathtrap.
The survivors were firing back now, their rifles cracking as they sought out targets. It was ironic, the Japanese Army had converted from 6.5 millimeter to 7.7 millimeter rifle ammunition in 1939 and, less than a decade later, converted back again when the Japanese Army had finally adopted a self-loading rifle. Now his troops, or what was left of them were firing but Takatsu couldn't tell the difference between them and the ambushers. Both seemed the same, were the ambushers Japanese?
Whoever they were, they'd wiped his command out. The armored car crew were dead and their vehicle destroyed, not just destroyed but disintegrated. His driver was dead; he'd never made it out of Takatsu's staff car. Of the twelve infantrymen and the driver in the truck, some were around its wreckage, more blown to pieces in the ditch. Only three were left alive and even as he watched, one of them was killed. Takatsu drew his pistol, racked the mechanism and cursed as it went off. The Type 94 pistol had a design fault that made accidental discharges all too frequent. One light tap on the sear was all it took. Takatsu threw it away, absently noting that it had discharged again when it hit the road. Then he picked up one of the infantry rifles, previous owner having no further use for same. The Japanese Army was proud of its new battle rifle but in truth it was just a copy of the Russian SKS chambered for 6.5 millimeter and modified to give selective fire.