1942

Lieutenant Goto was exhausted. It had been a long time since he’d been out in the field, and he was definitely out of shape. But at last they were driving the Americans before them like the animals they were.

Goto heard a noise and turned around. Captain Kashii had hacked the head off an American corpse. Kashii took the head and put it on the hood of his truck.

“Interesting hood ornament, isn’t it?” the captain asked with a cackle. “Not as exquisite as a Rolls-Royce’s, but it satisfies me.”

“Indeed,” said Goto. Kashii’s action confirmed Goto’s opinion that the disaster at Pearl Harbor had deranged the captain. Instead of being aggressive, Kashii’s actions had been wild and irrational. For instance, why did he insist on the troops returning to the trucks even for small advances? They had been ambushed while in such vulnerable columns, although the attacks seemed to have stopped since the last couple of marines had been killed.

The American marine Kashii had beheaded had been captured barely alive but had died while Goto was trying to extract information from him. From his papers, they learned that he’d been an officer. A shame he hadn’t told them anything.

They’d been able to get information from the local population fairly easily. The short trail from Hilo was littered with scores of dead and dying Hawaiians, whose agonies had motivated others to talk freely. Several villages, swollen with people who’d fled Hilo, were nearby, and the occupants had been easy to terrorize. As a result, they were closing in on the handful of Americans who remained on the loose. There weren’t more than a dozen left, and there were still more than three hundred Japanese chasing them. The end was inevitable. He only hoped that this Novacek would be captured alive, along with the woman who had so angered Colonel Omori.

Of course, some of the guerrillas would have scattered, but they would be found in short order. When it was over, Goto and Kashii could return to Hilo, although Goto wondered just what they’d be returning to. If the bad news coming from Pearl was even remotely correct, Japan was in danger of losing the Hawaiian Islands.

Goto thought this was almost beyond credibility. Japan did not go to war to be defeated. What had happened? It had to be betrayal, and it had to have come from the Americans they were chasing. If Japan was forced to quit Hawaii for a short while, it would not be the fault of the military.

Gunfire in the distance grabbed Goto’s attention. “We’ve caught them,” Kashii shrieked and waved his bloody sword in a circle around his head. “Back to the trucks, we’ll circle behind them.”

Goto wondered at the logic of the move. The Americans were only a mile or two away. They should be pressed by men on the ground, not by soldiers in trucks driving over harsh terrain that caused the column to stretch out at times and pile up at others. On the land they were traversing, men in trucks moved more slowly than men on foot. Using trucks for the pursuit would give the small American force a chance to squeeze away and delay the inevitable.

But then Goto saw the irrational glint in Kashii’s eyes. No, the lieutenant decided, he would not attempt to discuss tactical or logistical matters with a lunatic waving a sword.

In the two days since the first American attacks, wave upon wave of fighters and dive-bombers had hurled themselves at the bottled-up Japanese fleet. American bombs and bullets found a wealth of targets trapped in the harbor and unable to maneuver. And they steadily destroyed both ships and the antiaircraft defenses that remained. Thus, with each succeeding attack, the Japanese navy had less with which to defend itself.

In a frenzy, Admiral Yamamoto focused everything on moving the hulk of the Akagi. In only a short while, there would be nothing left of his fleet. He had waited too long, and now all six of his carriers were lying in the mud of Pearl Harbor. Fortunately, he thought with some irony, two had sunk upright in shallow water, which deceived the Americans into thinking they were still afloat. As a result, he still had two of his four battleships, the Yamato and the Kongo, while the Americans concentrated on re-sinking the dead carriers.

The old battleship Haruna had been sunk, and the Yamato’s sister ship, the Musashi, had suffered a truly ignominious fate. In an effort to pull the Akagi out of the channel, she had been used as a tug, and the exertions, combined with an inexperienced crew, had resulted in a blown engine plant. If and when the remainder of the Japanese fleet managed to sortie, the Musashi would be scuttled. In the meantime, she would function as a floating battery.

Along with the two battleships, there remained four heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and a dozen destroyers. All of the ships were damaged but seaworthy and would put up a fight. All he had to do was get them out of Pearl Harbor before they too were destroyed.