Final impact

The profuse and elaborate greetings took up some time when Yamamoto and Onishi made it inside the reception area. The pounding in Yukio’s chest was almost painful as Yamamoto stood in front of him, sizing him up.

“So, Lieutenant,” he said, smiling. “You are to be my divine wind.”

9

D-DAY + 21. 24 MAY 1944. 1003 HOURS.

KO‘OLAU RANGE, HAWAII.

He kept the cave as clean as possible, which meant having to go farther and farther into the jungle to perform his ablutions. It was a dreadful indignity, being forced to shit in a hole and live like a monkey, but he probably deserved nothing more.

He had failed the grand admiral. Failed the emperor. Failed his ancestors and the code of bushido.

Jisaku Hidaka-he could not bring himself to use his military rank anymore-huddled in the shadows of the damp, fetid cave, hugging his knees, shivering with fever, and wondering if it were even possible for him to atone for his miserable faults. Seppuku would not do it. His failure was of so great a magnitude that even the ritual suicide would not attenuate his shame. That was the only reason he had not taken his life.

At least twice before he had written his death poem, laid out his tanto for the killing stroke, and kneeled on a makeshift tatami-in reality, an old cardboard box. But the temptation to live, the thought that he might strike one more blow against the barbarian hordes, had proved too great. Plus, of course, he had no second, no kaishakunin to observe his sacrifice or perform the daki-kubi, the final cut that would all but decapitate him, with his head left hanging by just a thin strip of flesh.

No, Hidaka was alone in this cave, alone with his grief.

He’d fled up here into the Choshiu Range-known as the Ko‘olau to the gaijin-during the chaos of the Americans’ counterattack. He had intended to lead an insurgency that would have rendered the islands useless as a base for the Allies, but he had been cut off, and as far as he could tell all his forces had been destroyed-a good many of them in the first thirty minutes of battle. His personal protection detail, six Tokubetsu Rikusentai marines of the Sasebo Regiment especially trained in bodyguard work, were all gone. Four had died just getting him up here into hiding, when a Wildcat had strafed their jeep. The other two, Corporal Okumi and Sergeant Tsunetomo, had sacrificed themselves in two separate incidents over the last few months, leading search parties away from his hideout.

So now he was alone in the world.

Hidden deep within the folds of the central Choshiu, his cave was large, twisting back nearly a hundred meters into the volcanic rock face of the mountains, the entrance protected by a thick canopy of jungle growth. The army had chosen it early in the occupation to serve as a redoubt in the event of a successful American invasion. A large number of fresh mountain streams ran nearby. His daily trek through the soft, boggy undergrowth to fetch water took him through an alien landscape of fat glossy leaves, creeper vines as thick as a man’s torso, and ancient trees that seemed to hunch over as if ready to come alive and crush him with the swing of a great bough. It was all so different from the world he knew, the smell of oil, metal, gunpowder, and the honest stink of fighting men on board His Majesty’s Imperial Japanese Navy ships.

Hidaka sat near the cave’s entrance, morosely searching the airwaves with his flexipad for a sign that his comrades were still fighting somewhere on the Hawaiian Islands. Every few days he would be “rewarded” with news of a small gun battle or the capture of another “nip holdout.” At least it meant that somebody somewhere was putting up a fight. When his time came he was determined to take at least fifteen or twenty of the white pigs with him. Okumi and Tsunetomo had set up some very clever traps to guard the approaches to the cave, and Hidaka kept a small arsenal behind the solid barricade of black volcanic rocks that they had built up when they first arrived here. Between the razor wire, the spike pits, and the new claymore mines, which were known as “cherry blossoms” to the Japanese, Hidaka was confident that he would give a good account of himself, even though he was a sailor, not a soldier. In the end they were all the emperor’s men, and they bore a sacred duty to carry on the war, no matter how hopeless it might seem. Something, somewhere would turn the tide. The Germans might finish their atomic bomb. The Russians might come out of their coma and attack the West. Yamamoto might yet achieve his strategic masterstroke, the Kassen Kantai.