And when he found out what the Japs had made her do, he’d probably want to spit in her eye. She sighed, wishing some of the K-rations came with a little bottle of bourbon instead of cigarettes. Somebody in Washington should have done something about that. She sure as hell needed a drink now, and she was sure plenty of servicemen needed one even worse. They had to do without, and so did she.
Life isn’t fair, she thought. Her laugh was as bitter as-what was that stuff in the Bible? Wormwood, that was it. They’d used it to flavor absinthe, one more kind of booze she couldn’t have. As if I didn’t find out about that the hard way.
SANDBAGGED MACHINE-GUN NESTS AND CONCRETE pillboxes sprouted like pimples on the smooth green skin of the lawn around Iolani Palace. Trenches zigzagged from one to the next. The Japanese weren’t going to give up the Kingdom of Hawaii’s center of government without a fight.
Senior Private Yasuo Furusawa understood that. It was at least as much a propaganda point as a military one. As long as Iolani Palace stayed in Japanese-nominally, in Hawaiian-hands, the kingdom Japan had reestablished here remained a going concern. Strong Japanese forces also hung on in the gray, boring office buildings west of the palace. So did the remnants of the Royal Hawaiian Army. From what Furusawa had heard, some of King Stanley Laanui’s Hawaiians had fought with fanatical fervor. Others, unfortunately, had hardly fought at all.
Commander Genda looked northwest, the direction from which the U.S. Marines were likeliest to come. Then he looked back over his shoulder toward the palace. Like Honolulu City Hall to the east, it hadn’t been badly damaged. As if picking that thought from his informal aide’s mind, Genda said, “The Americans want to keep these places in one piece if they can. They intend to use them after they finish the reconquest.”
“Yes, sir.” Furusawa nodded. He’d figured that out for himself. He’d also realized Captain Iwabuchi didn’t intend to let the Americans have anything in Honolulu in one piece if he could help it. Here, he could. He kept insisting the Japanese would throw the Americans back. Commander Genda, Furusawa noted, claimed nothing of the sort. That also made sense to Furusawa, however little he liked it. The USA held an even more dominant position here than Japan had during the first invasion.
“How long do you think we’ve got, sir?” Furusawa asked.
Genda shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. We’ve already held out longer than I thought we could. The special naval landing forces are… dedicated men.”
“Hai,” Furusawa said. That was a diplomatic way of calling them maniacal diehards, which would have been just as true. The Army had orders against retreat. Its men knew better than to let themselves be captured. But the special naval landing forces rushed toward the enemy like lovers going to meet their beloved. They hurt the Americans, and sometimes even threw them back. The price they paid, though!
“I wish Captain Iwabuchi would not order charges,” Genda said, again thinking along with him. “They are wasteful, especially when we cannot replace our losses. Better to make the Yankees come to us and pay the price.”
“Would he listen if you told him something like that?” Furusawa asked.
Genda gloomily shook his head. “He would just call me soft. Maybe he would be right. I don’t know anything to speak of about commanding ground troops. What’s your opinion, Senior Private?”
“Mine?” Furusawa was flabbergasted. He didn’t think a superior had ever asked him that before. He wished someone would have done it sooner. Now… “It probably doesn’t matter much one way or the other, does it, sir?”
The naval officer looked at him in surprise. Furusawa wondered if he was in trouble. Then he laughed at himself. Of course he was in trouble. Before long, all the Japanese soldiers and men from the special naval landing forces would be dead. How could he land in trouble any worse than that?
After a moment, Genda started laughing, too. “Well, Furusawa-san, you’ve got the right way of looking at things-no doubt about it. All we can do here is all we can do. Once we’ve done it…” He licked his lips. “Once we’ve done it, they’ll start defending the Empire a little closer to the home islands, that’s all.”
Furusawa sent him an admiring glance. Defending the Empire closer to home sounded much better than dying to the last man here. They both meant the same thing, but how you looked at it did count.
A mortar bomb crashed down not far away. Furusawa and Genda both huddled in the trench. You couldn’t hear a mortar bomb coming. It announced itself by blowing up. Huddling in a trench wouldn’t do you any good if the damn thing came down on top of you, either.
More mortars opened up on the Japanese positions in front of Iolani Palace. So did regular U.S. artillery pieces. You could hear those shells coming in. The louder the scream in the air, the closer to you they were. Some were very close, close enough to throw dirt on Furusawa.
“They’re coming! They’re coming!” someone shouted.
Furusawa popped up when he heard that. He might get killed if he did, but the American Marines would surely kill him if he waited in the hole. He squeezed off a couple of rounds from his Springfield. The U.S. barrage hadn’t knocked out all the Japanese strongpoints. Machine guns spat death at the big men in green uniforms. Some fell. Some ducked into doorways or dove behind piles of wreckage. Some drew back.
“We still have teeth,” Furusawa said proudly, even if he had no idea whether he’d hit any Americans.
“Hai.” Commander Genda jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. Smoke rose from the palace. A couple of shells had hit it. “In the end, they won’t care whether they destroy it. A pity-it’s a nice building. I hope… the people inside are all right.”
He didn’t talk about any one person in particular. Senior Private Furusawa had a pretty good idea which person in the palace mattered most to him, though. When Furusawa came to Hawaii from Japan, he’d never expected to meet a queen. There hadn’t been any queen here then. He couldn’t fault Genda’s taste. Queen Cynthia was a striking woman, even if her coppery hair and green eyes made her seem more like some kami than a proper human being.
An American with one of their automatic rifles started squeezing off short bursts to make the defenders keep their heads down. A bullet snapped past Furusawa’s ear. He ducked. So did Commander Genda. Furusawa sighed. His superior’s romance probably wouldn’t have ended well anyhow. It surely wouldn’t now.
LES DILLON’S FIRST GLIMPSE of Iolani Palace was almost his last glimpse of anything. As he ran up Hotel Street-not the good part, worse luck-and turned right on Richards, a burst of enemy machine-gun fire cut down the Marine next to him. The man, a replacement whose name Les had never learned, probably died before he finished crumpling to the pavement. Three slugs in the chest would do that to you. Les knew he could have caught the burst as easily as the other guy. Dumb luck, one way or the other.
He dove headlong into a doorway. Letting the Japs have another good shot at him would be stupid. Not everything that happened in combat was luck, not even close. If you gave the enemy a target when you didn’t have to, you almost deserved to get nailed.
The Japs kept shooting as if they thought somebody would outlaw ammunition in an hour and a half. To Les, the long bursts they fired from their machine guns showed poor training. If you fired off a whole strip of bullets, or a magazine’s worth from a light machine gun, of course most of them would go high. The muzzle couldn’t help pulling up. Three, four, five rounds at a crack was the right way to do it.
With all those bullets in the air, though, some had to hit something. The poor damned replacement had proved that the hard way. Calls for corpsmen rang out again and again. Les admired the Navy men who accompanied the Marines more than he could say. Combat wasn’t their proper trade, but they went anywhere he and his buddies did. And they put themselves in harm’s way every time they rescued a man under enemy fire. When corpsmen got liberty along with Marines, they had a hard time buying themselves drinks.