“Run out? Then you cannot obtain any more from the designers of this ship?”
“No sir, none of the men and women who designed and built Takami have even been born yet, and our missiles cannot be reproduced, reverse engineered, or manufactured anywhere on the earth at this time. Once they are gone, we will have our radars as a valuable asset for fleet intelligence, but the missile shield will be expended. This is yet one more reason that argues to the truth of what I have told you. The designers are 80 years away, and quite frankly, since we do not even know how we come to find ourselves here, I must also admit that we have no idea how we might return to our own time. At the moment, we are marooned here, and needing fuel, we reasoned that we would have to make our presence known to the most reasonable man in the fleet. This is why we came to you, sir. You alone will know how this ship might best serve our nation now.”
“I see…” Yamamoto just looked at Harada, and at his First Officer. “You might have told me this ship was a highly secret project, and created by a small splinter group nested within the military. You might have said the ship was built for some other purpose, perhaps as a seaplane tender, and then secretly modified to receive and use these new weapons. That I would be unaware of such a development would be improbable, but still within the realm of possibility. But you did not tell me that at all. Instead you simply hand me the impossible, an explanation that no man could ever believe, and one that prompts an otherwise proper and courteous officer like Admiral Ugaki to call you a fool, because he clearly thinks that is what you make us both out to be. Well, I am not a fool, and I do not think you are one either. Who would do such a thing, build such a ship, crew it with uniformed men, and come to me with such a story? Why would they do this?”
“Because it is the truth,” said Harada flatly. “Yes, we could have lied to you tonight, and perhaps you would have believed that lie, at least for a while, until you had tested that story to the extreme and found it to be a falsehood.”
“So instead you concoct an utter fantasy?”
“No sir, instead I simply related the fact of the matter. What I have told you is as real and true as the deck of this ship, built with materials, I might add, that do not even exist today. I could show you our computers, machines that process and analyze the signals received from our radars. We use them in that capacity, and for many other tasks, and they have not even been invented. Yet, they are here. I can place your hand on one, show you how it operates, and you will be unable to dismiss it as a fantasy, I assure you, any more than you can dismiss what we showed you this night. Reality bites, Admiral. It leaves its teeth marks in you, no matter whether you believe in it, or not. The men who died on those planes got the worst of it tonight, and that was a difficult thing for me to do—a difficult thing for me to order my men to do.”
“To strike down our enemies is every man’s duty and honor,” said Ugaki.
“Well sir, here is another thing you may find difficult to believe. In our day, the Americans were not our enemies, but our stalwart allies. In fact, the radars and missile systems used on this ship were first developed by the United States in the late 20th Century, and that technology was then shared with the Japanese Navy. So it was more than ironic that I just used American designed missiles from a future neither of you could ever see or comprehend, to kill American made bombers in a past that I still struggle to believe. We all do. Each day we awake and cannot believe what is before our eyes. Each night we sleep and think to dream this all away, but when we open our eyes, there sits the battleship Yamato, a ship that cannot exist, at least as far as we are concerned. It sailed these waters for the last time on April 7, 1945.”
“What are you saying?” Ugaki stood up, his eyes flashing with anger.
“I am saying Yamato was sunk by the American naval air force on that date. It was struck by no less than nineteen torpedoes, off the coast of Okinawa as our nation fought a last terrible battle for our survival before the end came, and with a terror that neither of you can imagine. In telling you this you will have the answer to the riddle you just posed, Admiral Yamamoto. Why tell a man the impossible when he might have swallowed the improbable? Because to tell you the truth, and to have you accept it as fact, then we have yet one more weapon at our disposal here—information. The war you are fighting now is our history. It is all written up in books sitting down in the ship’s library. You can go there with me if you wish and read them. Perhaps even see photographs of yourselves that have yet to be taken. Would that convince you? Would such a shock finally force you to accept what I have told you is the truth? And it may also shock you even more now to know that I can tell you the day and hour that each of you are fated to die.”
Chapter 29
The things they were hearing now sat scornfully upon the mountain of outrage these men have piled before us, thought Admiral Ugaki. How dare they say such things, speak of the death of the flagship of the fleet, speak of our own demise like this? If Yamamoto were not here, I would surely take this man’s head. I would strike a man five times in the face with my fist for simply failing to salute properly, yet look at the latitude Yamamoto extends these men! To kill them here and now would, of course, be unpardonable, so I must defer to the Fleet Commander’s wishes and hide behind a thin veil of manners. Yet I will be quite the ugly bride, and both these men will certainly know it. Does Yamamoto believe any of this nonsense? Why does he even treat with these men any further? We should simply order them to go slit their bellies and then commandeer this vessel, begin an investigation as to how, when, and where it was really designed and built, and find out who is behind it. Doesn’t the Admiral see that?
“Now you begin to try even my patience,” said Yamamoto, much to Ugaki’s relief. “It is never polite to speak of another man’s death, that is unless you are prepared to take his life.”
Harada bowed deeply. “I mean no disrespect, but it was necessary to convey to you the degree to which the knowledge we possess can be useful. Had I come to you with the story you suggested a moment ago, saying this ship was a secret project within our own government, then you could never truly believe any of what I must now tell you. I had grave doubts about revealing what I will say next, and again, I beg your forbearance. Try to hear what I say in light of the great undertaking you personally set in motion when you insisted that Japan should attack the Americans at Pearl Harbor. I know you had your own reservations concerning this war. I know that you believed our fighting spirit—seishin—would push the blood in our veins as we strove for a victory that might be beyond our grasp. Many others had such reservations, men like Admiral Hara, who came to Admiral Ugaki’s cabin aboard Nagato after the senior officers of the fleet were addressed at Hiroshima Bay. I was not there to hear that speech, because I was not yet born to this world.”
“How can you know this?” said the stern faced Ugaki. “That was a private meeting, which now leads me to accept my suspicion that you are all operatives of the Kempeitai!”
“No sir, as artful and intrusive as they may be, not one man among them would know anything about what I will now reveal here. Hara expressed his doubts about waging total war. He asked if we might not simply strike south to seize the resources of Indonesia, while avoiding action in the Philippines against the Americans, but you told him it was too late to change the plans, that every diplomatic option had run its course, that we now had no choice except this war with the United States. A week after that conversation you began writing Senso Roku, the Seaweed of War, your personal diary.”