“I know the odds.” Gen slipped his goggles over his eyes. The glass spread his eyes like a mask.
“Do you? America outproduces Japan in oil by seven hundred to one. How do you like those odds?”
“That’s why it’s important to get all the oil we can.”
“Really? Do you think a few extra drops of oil in Hawaii make any difference?”
“Every drop makes a difference.”
Harry reached and turned the throttle down.
“No. Listen to me. What makes a difference is Standard Oil and Royal Shell. What makes a difference is a fountain, a flood of oil. Japan used to get ninety percent of its oil from America, sixty percent from Standard and Shell alone. That’s five million gallons a year. Japan hasn’t gotten one drop from Shell or America since June. Most of the oil in Japan goes to the navy, and the navy doesn’t have enough oil to complete an exercise at sea. Don’t ask how I know these things, you know they’re true. Cut off oil and everything will come to a stop. I would guess six months. If Japan goes to war, it has to win by then. The odds? Fifty to one. Worse than Monte Carlo. I know how Naval Operations works. A lot of the planning is done by junior officers like you. Tell them the damn odds.” No deal. Gen could have been a statue on a horse. “I’m only saying, let them know the odds. If there’s a war, it won’t be won with blood and sweat, it’ll be won by the side that has the oil, that’s all.” Still no reaction from Gen. “Okay, try this. Aviation fuel is eighty-nine octane, which the United States has an endless supply of. Japan doesn’t, so it designs the Zero, a wonderful fighter, to fly on piss. American planes will fly faster and farther not because of the pilots but because of the fuel. It won’t be a matter of courage or skill, it will just be better fuel.” Gen might have been stone. Not a word had penetrated.
“The difference is spirit and men,” Gen said.
“Right. By the way, remember Jiro from our gang in Asakusa, how much he wanted to die for the emperor? He made it. He’s in heaven now. I lit a stick for him today.”
“If he died for the emperor, I am happy for him.”
No American sis-boom-bah now, Harry thought. Just pure Japanese.
Gen milked the throttle again and seemed to regard his old friend from a great distance. “I’ll do what I can about Ishigami. You know, Harry, Nippon Air came to me about putting you on the plane to Hong Kong. I backed you up. You shouldn’t be spreading defeatist propaganda.”
“Just numbers, Gen, forget I mentioned them. I appreciate everything you did to get me on the plane.”
“When is it taking off?”
“Monday the eighth.”
“Two days. Okay, I’ll see about Ishigami. You stay out of trouble.”
Gen put the Harley into gear. His hair snapped back as the bike surged and chased its noise along the dock. Across the bay under Yokohama’s verdant bluff, Harry saw ships offloading the wealth of empire: bales of cotton from China, bags of rice from Thailand, sugar and sweet tropical fruits from semitropical Formosa and, from Manchuria-now the Japanese creation of Manchukuo-iron ore and lumber. A German blockade-runner, a gray freighter with a tarp over a forward gun, stood off by itself. The ships of Yoshitaki Lines were everywhere, there wasn’t enough waterfront to go around. Sampans and barges swarmed to other freighters anchored out, the barges loaded until they shipped water. Through the sheer physical effort of a single oarsman, a sampan could move a half-ton of goods. Along the Bund, stevedores in straw hats and padded jackets swung on hooks, clambered up nets and trotted with handcarts between railway cars, men in motion everywhere. The scene put Harry in mind of a drunk bingeing on his last full bottle. But the days when Yokohama swallowed a full measure of sweet Maracaibo crude or clean American diesel the color of honey, those days were gone.
ON THE WAY back to Tokyo, Harry drove by Haneda Field. In the far distance was a white tower and hangars. Harry was tempted to visit Nippon operations and see the plane they were flying to Hong Kong, a DC-3 with a full bar and sleeper seats, but he quelled the urge when soldiers appeared along the edge of the road, and decided it wouldn’t do for a gaijin to show too much interest in an airport. On the other side of the road, however, were ballplayers on a field. It was a small field with grassy slopes for bleachers and a little scoreboard beside a bottle-shaped sign for Asahi beer, but Harry recognized the team’s gray flannel uniforms with black and orange piping even from his car, and he rolled up to a clubhouse of cinder blocks painted green. The ticket window was shut. Harry walked through the turnstiles to the batting screen and joined a couple of reporters who were arguing over who was paid more money, Bob Feller or Satchel Paige. Feller was the biggest star in American baseball, but Paige sneaked around that fact by playing both the Negro league and winter ball.
The Tokyo Giants were taking advantage of the warm weather to hold an off-season workout. Not just for rookies; Harry spotted the home-run slugger Kawakami and the pitcher Sawamura, who once struck out Ruth, Foxx and Gehrig in a row. Japanese were fanatical about practice. Pitchers threw hundreds of pitches a day, which was probably why their arms wore out so soon. Especially with breaking pitches, a Japanese specialty. Every few minutes a fighter plane would pass overhead, towing its shadow across the diamond and up over the slope to the airfield across the road. Otherwise the scene was immaculately normal. One coach hit grounders to the infield, another lofted fly balls toward players stationed in front of the beer sign, pitchers lobbed the ball back and forth on the sidelines. Sawamura had lost two seasons to active duty in China and was resurrecting what had been the league’s best fastball. With each pitch, the catcher’s mitt produced a satisfying pop.
Harry was a Giants fan, and no one on the team ever had to pay for a drink at the Happy Paris. He liked practice almost as much as games. He found a meditative calm in the repetition of the infielders as they broke for the ball, fielded the good hop, set their feet and fired to first. They refused to backhand grounders or dive for liners, but otherwise they were as good as Americans. Also, they played honorable baseball: they would never slide with their spikes high to break up a double play or throw a knockdown pitch. During the season every game had an epic dimension; when the Giants lost, there was mourning throughout Tokyo, and an error on the field demanded an apology from a shamefaced player to his entire team. After games, writers raced back to the office on motorcycles to file their stories. Even at a winter workout like this, when Kawakami, “The King of Batting,” walked to the plate with his famous red bat-fashioned from a sacred tree in a secret forest-the writers studied every swing as if he were a great actor onstage. When he knocked a ball over the scoreboard, they oohed and aahed like children. The Japanese were crazy for home runs.
One of the Giants ran off the field, leaving Sawamura no one to throw to, so he motioned Harry to pick up a loose glove. The pitcher had such a smooth motion and the ball came with such easy velocity that Harry’s hand stung with every catch, but he was damned if he was going to let it get by him or be distracted by a line of bombers coming out of the sun, practicing an approach in close formation. As the planes passed overhead, the gunners in their bubbles seemed near enough to shout to.
When Harry’s arm warmed, the ball went back and forth with more energy. A game of catch was a conversation in which nothing in particular need be said. Motion was all, motion and the elongation of time. Activity around the field-grounders, fly balls, the pitchers’ easygoing throws-took on the steady nature of a metronome. At the batting cage, Kawakami took a cut. The ball rose and hung, spotlit by the sun, as a fighter that had just taken off from Haneda came over the clubhouse. For a moment the ball and plane merged. Then the fighter passed, trailing a shadow that leaped the outfield fence. And the ball came down into a glove and the fielder threw it cleanly, on one hop, to home.