The British and Empire troops had almost entirely withdrawn across the Johore Strait, which meant that only the small island that contained the city of Singapore remained of all Malaya. The British had been outmaneuvered by the Japanese, who’d moved through the jungles instead of using the roads and, when on the roads, had mounted many of their troops on bicycles, enabling them to travel with astonishing swiftness.
“When that occurs,” Knox continued, “the Japanese will control all of the western Pacific and be in a position to attack Australia. We will find it very difficult to fend off an invasion down there.”
Roosevelt nodded grimly. “Would they do that?”
“It would be a tremendous reach,” King answered, “and doubtless not in their original plans. However, neither was Hawaii. Success breeds ambition and this is no exception.”
“Perhaps ambition will be their downfall,” Roosevelt murmured, and the others nodded. “Tell me, Admiral, when can you mount a counterattack and retake the Hawaiian Islands?”
King was surprised. A counterattack of any force was a contravention of the policy of Germany First. “We need more ships, and we need an army. According to General Marshall, we will have an army well before we have the ships. Let’s face it, sir; even though we have a number under construction, ships take years to build, while a soldier can be trained in far less time. If we are going to counterattack by the end of this year, it will be largely with what resources we have now. If you want to wait until the end of 1943, then we will have a fair degree of dominance.”
Roosevelt nodded. “What would you need to attack now?”
“Carriers, sir. And a solution to the torpedo problem with our submarines. The days of the battleship are over, except to protect the carriers and for shore bombardment. I wouldn’t let any of our battleships go against that Japanese giant unless the odds were heavily stacked in my favor, like the British finally wound up with against the German Bismarck.”
Roosevelt and Knox agreed. Until the Yamato made her entrance, the German Bismarck had been the largest warship ever. She’d finally been sunk, but not until she’d been crippled by torpedoes from planes, and only then by the concentrated fire of several Royal Navy battleships and cruisers. The recently arrived information about the Yamato had stunned them. Confirming pictures were en route, and it had already been decided that the public would not see them for a long while. Nor would anybody comment on the possibility that there might be a sister or two of the Yamato under construction in Japanese shipyards.
“You have three carriers in the Pacific, do you not?” Roosevelt asked of King.
The question was rhetorical. The Enterprise and Lexington had been in the Pacific at the time of Pearl Harbor, and the Yorktown had arrived shortly after. That left the Ranger, Saratoga, Wasp, Hornet, and the small Long Island operating in the Atlantic.
Roosevelt smiled for the first time during the meeting. “Why do we need carriers in the Atlantic? The German surface naval threat is nonexistent, and the fleet carriers are little use against their subs.”
Knox responded. “They will be used to support amphibious operations.”
“Which,” Roosevelt said, “will not occur for some time. And, when they do occur, can’t the carriers be moved from one ocean to another fairly rapidly? After all, isn’t that mobility part of their purpose?”
King liked what he was hearing. “At last count, the Japs had nine or ten carriers, but several of them were small, like the Long Island. While they doubtless have others under construction, they suffer from the same time constraints we do. Also, light carriers like the Long Island are better suited for use against German U-boats, which is why we are converting merchantmen to small carriers. The fleet carriers serve no purpose, other than political, in the Atlantic.”
The president winced at the word political, and Knox averted his eyes. The very close relationship between Roosevelt and the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, was an ongoing sore point with King and others who felt that the president was far too deferential to British concerns.
“Be that as it may,” Roosevelt said, “you shall have your carriers. Not all at once, mind you, as we cannot give even the slightest hint that we are shifting our focus away from helping England and Russia. Perhaps we can do something sooner than late 1943. I leave it to you to come up with a suitable plan.”
King was pleased. He had won part of the battle for the Pacific. With carriers, he could strike at the Japanese. It would be too late for Hawaii, of course, but it would occur. Now he could get on with other problems. The torpedoes were a nagging situation. Did they work properly or not? Then, of course, there was the problem with carrier-based planes. Right now, the Japanese Zero ruled the skies, and all the carriers in the world wouldn’t change a thing unless there was a good plane on them. Almost all the American carrier planes were F4F Wildcats, which hadn’t been tested in battle. King and the other admirals were certain that the Wildcat was superior to the P-36 or the P-40, but just how much better was the question.
All in all, though, King was pleased. He’d gotten the promise of reinforcements and seen the president apparently shake off his unexpected case of nerves. On a really good note, King hadn’t been invited to have one of the president’s famous martinis. Maybe he’d been too blunt with his commander in chief, but that was okay. In King’s opinion, the President of the United States made a lousy martini.
Colonel Shigenori Omori and his kempetei detachment landed on the second day of the invasion. By that time, the Japanese perimeter on Oahu extended several miles inland, and there was no danger from American artillery, which had been either overrun or knocked out by Japanese airplanes and the big guns from the warships.
Omori thought that Hawaii was a beautiful place, and he briefly enjoyed the serenity of walking the beaches and watching the majestic waves as they crested on the clean white sand. He did not, however, permit himself to linger over these thoughts. The time for luxury would come later. Instead, he examined the smashed American defenses, where the dismembered and bloated bodies of the dead still lay where they’d fallen. At least they had died warriors’ deaths, he thought. Not like the prisoners who clogged the pens and clustered in numbed groups within their barbed-wire compounds.
Omori walked to one of the pens, where he looked through the fence at the face of the enemy and was unimpressed. “If they were Japanese,” he said, “they would be considered as dead. These, however, don’t seem to care.”
His aide, Lieutenant Goto, laughed. “The Americans aren’t warriors. They have no sense of duty or pride. These creatures remind me of Chinese beggars. They are less than human and should be treated as such.”
Both by virtue of his position as aide and as a result of his political connections, Goto felt that he could speak more freely than a normal subordinate. Omori tolerated it, sometimes even appreciated it. Even though Goto was occasionally a brute, he was intelligent, a good aide, and not a sycophant, and his connections were a fact of life.
Omori and Goto continued their examination of the area. The civilian population had not escaped completely. Several mangled and bloated bodies were visible in and around the blasted villages, and a number of ragged islanders, mainly native Hawaiian, watched in confusion as the Japanese army moved past them. Any American civilians in the area appeared to have escaped or been killed.
“Schofield will fall shortly,” Omori said. “And then we will be on the threshold of taking both Pearl Harbor and Honolulu. At that point, it will become essential that we end the battle quickly. A prolonged struggle for the island is not in our interests. That being the case, what do you think General Tadoyashi will do and how might we help him?”