Hope, at the moment, was as much as he could do. Admiral Yamamoto had warned about this kind of U.S. response all along. The summer before, the Americans had tried to do it on the cheap, and they’d paid. And, all too plainly, they’d learned, and they’d worked. Had any of their factories and shipyards stood idle for even a moment from that day to this? Genda feared-yes, feared-not.

Honolulu itself hadn’t been hit so hard. Genda pedaled past a battered barracks hall, but the bombers hadn’t tried to knock the city flat. Had they wanted to, they could have done it. They’d spent their bombs more wisely, though-and then they’d flown off to Kauai! Somehow, somewhere, the Americans had managed to carve out a landing strip on the island right under Japan’s nose. With Oahu secured, the Japanese hadn’t worried much about the other main Hawaiian islands. That turned out to have been a mistake.

We can’t afford mistakes against the Americans, Genda thought unhappily. They’re liable to beat us even if we don’t make any. He didn’t think Rear Admiral Kaku had made any mistakes in the naval battle just past. That hadn’t kept Akagi and Shokaku from going down. Overwhelming numbers and munitions could defeat even the finest tactics. If we’d had twice as many carriers-Genda broke off. He knew the answer to that. We would have hurt the enemy more and lost all our ships anyhow.

Maybe-probably-the fundamental mistake had been going to war against the USA in the first place. But what else could Japan have done? Let FDR dictate what she could and couldn’t do in China? For a proud and touchy empire, that would have been impossible. He sighed. Sometimes a problem had only bad solutions.

Soldiers drilled on the Iolani Palace grounds. Some were King Stanley Laanui’s Hawaiians. Genda eyed them with more than a little worry. Would they really fight against the Americans? If they didn’t, they might prove dangerous. Maybe giving the puppet King of Hawaii even a toy army hadn’t been such a good idea.

Most of the men on the smooth green grass were Japanese, though. They weren’t Army men; they belonged to the special naval landing forces, and wore greenish uniforms rather than khaki and black leather rather than brown. “What will we do to the Americans?” shouted the Navy captain leading their exercises.

“Slaughter them!” the soldiers yelled back.

“Do our lives matter?” the officer asked.

“No, Captain Iwabuchi!” the men replied. “Our lives mean nothing! Dying gloriously for the sacred Emperor means everything!”

Genda was relieved to pull up in front of the entrance and let down the bike’s kickstand. It wasn’t that Captain Iwabuchi and his men were wrong-far from it. But Genda had more subtlety in him than the man in charge of the special landing forces. He sighed. Much good that subtlety had done him.

The Hawaiian guards at the bottom of the stairs and the Japanese at the top saluted him as he slowly and painfully ascended. “I must see General Yamashita and the king,” he told the Army lieutenant in charge of his countrymen. “At once.”

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant had seen him before, and knew who he was. He sent one of his men into the palace. The soldier returned a moment later. He nodded. So did the lieutenant. “Go on up to the general’s office, then.”

“Arigato gozaimasu.” After thanking the junior officer, Genda climbed the koa-wood staircase to the second story. He limped into the Yellow Room, where Tomoyuki Yamashita supervised the Japanese occupation of Hawaii.

Yamashita looked up from his paperwork. “Welcome, Genda-san,” he said. “Sit down-I can see you’re hurting. Tell me how bad it is.”

Genda gratefully sank into a chair. He gave the general a straight answer: “Sir, I don’t see how it could be any worse. We lost both carriers we sent against the enemy, and most of the supporting ships. The Americans will invade. The Army-and the special naval landing forces-will have to defeat him on the ground.” The cries of the special naval landing forces floated in through the open window. The soldiers sounded ferocious. What difference, if any, that would make…

Yamashita grimaced. “What went wrong, Commander? We won a great victory the last time the Yankees appeared in these waters.”

“Yes, sir-and we had one more carrier, and they had many fewer.” The sheer size of the aerial strike force that sank Akagi and Shokaku still stunned Genda. What it said about the fleet that sent it forth was even more intimidating. And the troopships behind that …

“Very well, Commander. We will do what we can to hold this island,” Yamashita said. “I am sure your Navy forces will help us. Captain Iwabuchi is nothing if not, ah, intrepid.” More shouts rang out from the special landing forces.

As far as Genda could tell, Iwabuchi was a bloodthirsty fanatic. Of course, even if he was, that wasn’t necessarily a drawback in a fighting man. “Between us, sir, can we beat back the Americans?”

“I don’t know. I intend to try,” Yamashita answered calmly. “Whatever we do, we buy time for our positions farther west to strengthen themselves. That was the whole point of this campaign in the first place, neh?”

“Yes, sir,” Genda said. “I’m afraid this won’t be as easy as fighting the Americans was the first time around.”

“We may fail,” Yamashita said. “Success or failure is karma. But no one will ever say we did not do everything we could to succeed.”

Genda didn’t see what he could say to that. He struggled to his feet and saluted. “Yes, sir. I had better go across the hall and brief his Majesty.” He spoke without audible irony; King Stanley might have someone who understood Japanese listening. You never could tell. Genda did ask, “How is morale among the Hawaiian troops?”

“It seems all right so far,” Yamashita replied. “We will use them in ways that appear most expedient.” Genda understood what that meant, though a listening snoop might not have. Yamashita planned to throw the Hawaiians into the meat grinder, to use them in place of Japanese soldiers where things were hottest. That would let the Japanese last longer and stretch further. Reinforcements from the home islands were, to put it in the most optimistic terms, unlikely.

King Stanley Laanui used King David Kalakaua’s library as his office. Now he sat behind the dreadnought of a desk that Genda had used with Mitsuo Fuchida and two Army officers to pick a sovereign to revive the Kingdom of Hawaii. (So far as Genda knew, none of the Japanese support ships had rescued Fuchida. He was gone, lost. He had to be. The certainty of it ate at Genda.).

The King of Hawaii looked up from whatever papers he’d been shuffling-or pretending to shuffle. Stanley Laanui was far from the most diligent administrator in the world. His eyes had always had heavy, dark pouches of flesh under them. Now they were bleary and tracked with red. When he said, “Hello, Commander Genda,” his breath was sweet-sour with the reek of the fruit spirit people here insisted on calling gin.

“Good day, your Majesty.” Speaking English, Genda had to be formal. He gave King Stanley a stiff, precise bow, refusing to show that the ankle troubled him.

“How bad is it?” the king asked. “It can’t be good, by God. You look like a cement mixer just ran over your puppy.”

“It… could be better, your Majesty.” Genda tried to hide how shocked he was. He’d willed his face and eyes to reveal nothing. That he’d failed so badly said how much he’d been through-and probably also said the King of Hawaii was shrewder than he looked. For a man having an affair with the king’s wife, that was less than welcome news.

King Stanley barked bitter laughter now. “If you say it could be better, it’s even worse than I thought. When are the Americans landing?”

“In the next few days, I think. So sorry.” One shock after another for Genda. If the king hadn’t taken him by surprise, he wouldn’t have answered so frankly.