Days of Infamy

XV

IN HIS NAKAJIMA B5N1, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida listened to the reports coming in from the flying boats and from the float planes the fleet had launched to search for the American carriers and their surrounding vessels. He didn’t think he would have long to wait; the Japanese knew about where the enemy would be.

And he proved right. He hadn’t been airborne long before a float-plane pilot found the foe. “Range approximately 150 kilometers,” the pilot shouted. “Bearing is 045.” He paused, then shouted again: “They are launching planes! Repeat-they are launching planes!”

We’re up first, Fuchida thought. Good. Ignoring the growing ache in his belly, he spoke to his radioman: “Relay the position to our aircraft.”

“Hai, Commander-san,” First Flying Petty Officer Tokunobu Mizuki said. He took care of that with his usual unflustered competence.

Fuchida worried that the Americans would intercept the float plane’s signal and learn where the fleet was. He shrugged. With their electronics, they would see from which direction the Japanese strike was coming and trace it back anyhow. Maybe we should have thrown them a curve, thought Fuchida, a baseball fan. Probably too late to worry about it now.

“Shindo here, Commander.” The fighter pilot’s voice, calm as usual, sounded in Fuchida’s earphones.

“Go ahead,” Fuchida said.

“Question, sir,” Saburo Shindo said. “If we spot the American airplanes on their way to our fleet, do we peel off and attack them, or do we continue with you?”

“Come with us,” Fuchida answered without hesitation. “We’ll need your help to keep the Wildcats off us, and the Zeros up over our ships will tend to the Americans.”

“All right, sir. That’s the way we’ll do it, then. Out.” Lieutenant Shindo broke the connection. Fuchida smiled to himself. Shindo, no doubt, would be telling the fighter pilots of the decision. Just as surely, he wouldn’t raise his voice while he did it. With his machinelike competence, Shindo might have come out of the Mitsubishi aircraft plant himself.

Somewhere not too far away-and drawing closer by several kilometers every minute-an American officer was likely listening to the same question from one of his subordinates. How would he answer it? How would his answer change the building battle? We’ll see, Fuchida thought.

As when planes from the Japanese carriers attacked the Enterprise and then the Lexington — and as when aircraft from the Lexington delivered their alarming counterstroke-the two fleets here would not draw close enough to see each other and turn their guns on each other. This war was overturning centuries of naval tradition.

Sudden excited gabble filled Fuchida’s earphones. Dryly, Petty Officer Mizuki said, “Some of our men have spotted the Americans’ airplanes, sir.”

“Really?” Fuchida matched dry for dry. “I never would have guessed.” Mizuki chuckled.

A moment later, Fuchida saw the Americans himself. They were flying a little lower than the Japanese, and noticeably slower: their torpedo planes were lumbering pigs, obsolete when compared to the sleek Nakajima B5N2s in Fuchida’s strike force. American torpedoes weren’t all they might have been, either. Several duds had proved a hit from them wasn’t necessarily fatal, or even damaging.

Would the Wildcats climb up and try to strike the Japanese? Fuchida hoped so. They were slower than Zeros in everything but an emergency dive, and gaining altitude would cost them still more speed. Shindo and the rest of the Japanese fighter pilots had to be licking their chops.

But the Wildcats pressed on to the south, not leaving the attack aircraft they were assigned to shepherd. Fuchida nodded to himself. He would have made the same choice. He had made the same choice for his side. He ordered Mizuki to radio word of the sighting back to the fleet.

“Aye aye, sir,” the radioman answered. “I would have done it without orders in a minute if you hadn’t spoken up.” From a lot of ratings, that would have been a shocking breach of discipline. Mizuki and Fuchida had been together for a long time. The petty officer knew what needed doing in his small sphere as well as Fuchida did in the larger one.

Each strike force slightly adjusted its course based on the direction in which the other had been flying. If the Americans had thrown a curve… Fuchida refused to worry about it. He already had the approximate bearing from the Japanese reconnaissance aircraft.

He had the bearing. He knew how far he’d come. Where were the Americans, then? All he saw was the vast blue expanse of the Pacific. He didn’t want the men he led spotting the fleet ahead of him. He was their leader. Didn’t that mean he ought to be first at everything?

No matter what he wanted, he wasn’t quite first. But he spied the enemy warships just after the first radio calls rang out. Like the Japanese, the Americans used cruisers and destroyers to surround the all-important carriers. The smaller vessels started throwing up antiaircraft fire. Puffs of black smoke marred the smooth blue of the sky.

A couple of shells burst not far from Fuchida’s bomber. Blast made the Nakajima shake and jerk in the air. A chunk of shrapnel clattered off a wingtip. It seemed to do no harm. The B5N1 kept flying.

“Torpedo planes, dive bombers-work together,” Fuchida called. “Don’t let the enemy fighters concentrate on one group. Fighters, protect the attack planes. Banzai! for the Emperor.”

Answering “Banzai! ”s filled all strike-force frequencies. Here came the Wildcats that had been orbiting above the American fleet. Muzzle flashes showed they’d started shooting. The four heavy machine guns they carried were not to be despised. If they hit, they hit hard.

As if to prove as much, a burning Zero spun toward the Pacific far below. A Wildcat followed. It was out of control, the pilot surely dead, but it didn’t show nearly so many flames as the Zero. Wildcats could take more damage than their Japanese counterparts. They could-and they needed to, for the Japanese had an easier time hitting than they did.

“Level bombers, line up behind your guide aircraft,” Fuchida called out over the radio. The tactic had worked extremely well above Pearl Harbor. The level bombers scored a surprising number of hits there. Back in December, though, their targets lay at anchor in a crowded harbor. Now they were twisting and dodging all over the sea. Hits wouldn’t come easy. We can only do our best, Fuchida thought.

Down below, antiaircraft fire caught an Aichi dive bomber as it was about to heel over and swoop on a carrier. Instead of diving, the Aichi fell out of the sky, rolling over and over and breaking up before it hit the water. Two more brave men gone. Two more spirits in Yasukuni Shrine.

Fuchida switched places with the second plane in his group of five. First Flying Petty Officer Akira Watanabe was the best pilot in the Japanese Navy, and his bombardier, First Flying Petty Officer Yanosuke Aso, was also the best. They needed to pass right over the center of the enemy fleet. As always, hitting carriers came first.

“Be ready!” Watanbe called to the pilots behind him. His plane bounced upward as the bombardier released the load. Fuchida’s B5N1 also lurched in the air as its bombs fell free. More bombs tumbled down from the planes that followed him. Suddenly, the aircraft was lighter, more maneuverable. And it needed to be. Mizuki, who handled the rear-facing machine gun as well as the radio, opened up on something-presumably a Wildcat-behind the bomber.

Now that Fuchida didn’t have to fly slow and straight for the bombardier’s sake, he threw his Nakajima into aerobatics as violent as its engine and frame could stand. The rest of the planes in his group were doing the same thing-all but one. That one, flames shooting from the wing root and the engine cowling, plummeted down toward the sea.

Petty Officer Mizuki let out a wordless shout. Fuchida corkscrewed away to the left. Planes usually broke to the right, to take advantage of the torque from their props. He hoped his maneuver would catch the Yankee on his tail by surprise. And it did-the Wildcat shot past him, close enough for him to see the American’s startled face. If only he had a forward-facing machine gun… But he didn’t, and the Wildcat got away.

Now-what had the bombs done?

LIEUTENANT SABURO SHINDO was not a happy man. His Zero was still a better plane than the Wildcats he faced, but the Yankees had come up with something new, something that made them harder to shoot down. They flew in groups of four, two pairs of two separated by the radius of a tight turn. Whenever he drew a bead on one plane, the enemy pilots in the more distant pair would turn sharply toward him. That move warned the man he’d targeted to turn away sharply, spoiling his aim. And if he pursued too far trying to get it back, he came right into the line of fire of the more distant pair.

The first time the Americans tried that weave on him, he almost shot himself down walking right into it. He thought they’d got lucky then. When they did it twice more in quick succession, he realized it wasn’t luck. They’d worked out a tactic to take advantage of the Wildcat’s powerful guns and give it a chance to survive against the otherwise superior Zero.

“Be careful!” he shouted to the pilots he led, and warned them what to look for. He hoped they would listen. In the heat of battle, who could tell?

Not all the Japanese had the chance to listen. Several Zeros had already gone down. The Americans’ weave, no doubt, had done to them what it almost did to Shindo.

But Wildcats were also falling out of the sky. And the ones that mixed it up with Shindo’s Zeros weren’t attacking the Aichis and Nakajimas that accompanied them. Those were the ship-killers, the planes that had to get through at any cost.

Bombs burst around the American carriers. Shindo saw no hits, but even near misses would cause damage from casing fragments and from the effects of blast on enemy hulls. A Nakajima B5N2 raced towards a carrier. Its torpedo splashed into the sea. A heartbeat later, the torpedo bomber turned into a fireball. The torpedo was away, though.

The carrier started to slew to starboard. Too late, too slow. The torpedo struck home just aft of amidships. Nothing wrong with Japanese ordnance-Shindo watched the explosion. The enemy ship staggered like a prizefighter who’d just taken a right to the chin.

“Banzai! ” Shindo yelled, there in the cockpit. “Banzai! ”

He lost sight of the carrier for a little while after that. He was dealing with a Wildcat that had somehow got separated from its comrades. The pilot tried to dogfight him instead of diving away from trouble. The Yankee discovered what a lot of his countrymen had before him: that didn’t work. A Zero could turn inside a Wildcat. A Zero could, and Shindo did. He shot up the American plane till at last it nosed down and crashed into the ocean.

By then, the Americans on the carrier had got her moving again, even if not at top speed. Saburo Shindo gave American engineers and damage-control parties reluctant respect. They knew their business. Here, knowing it didn’t help. An Aichi dive bomber swooped down out of the sky, releasing its bomb at what seemed just above the height of the bridge. As the Aichi screamed away, its prop and fixed landing gear almost skimming the waves, the bomb hit dead center.

Where the ship had staggered before, she shuddered now. She lost power and lay there dead in the water as flames leaped up from her. That, of course, was an invitation to the Japanese pilots. Another torpedo and what Shindo thought was a bomb from a level bomber slammed home. The carrier began to list heavily to port.

One down, Shindo thought. Two to go.

WHEN MINORU GENDA heard American planes were on the way, he climbed out of the sick-bay cot where he’d been lying. Weak as he was, it felt like a long climb, too. He found a box of gauze masks like the ones the pharmacist’s mates wore, and fastened the ties around his ears. Masuku was the Japanese name, borrowed from the English.

“Here, what are you doing? You shouldn’t be up and about! Kinjiru! ” One of those pharmacist’s mates caught him in the act of leaving. “Get back where you belong, right this minute!” He was just a rating, but thought his station gave him the right to boss officers around.

He was usually right, too. Not here. Not now. Slowly but firmly, Genda shook his head. “No. We’re going into battle. They need me up there.” He had to stop and cough halfway through that, but he spoke with great determination.

“In your pajamas?” the pharmacist’s mate said.

Genda looked down at himself. Then he spied his uniform jacket hanging on a hook welded to the sick-bay door. He threw it on over the thin cotton pajamas. “This will do. Now get out of my way.”

If the pharmacist’s mate tried to stop him by force, the man could. Genda didn’t have the physical strength to oppose him. But he had a blazing strength of will, and the bigger, healthier man gave way before him. I might as well be Japan against the United States, he thought, and headed for his battle station.

When he reached the bridge, Captain Tomeo Kaku took one look at him and snapped, “Go below.”

An order was an order. Dejectedly, Genda turned to go. “Wait,” Admiral Yamamoto told him. To Kaku, Yamamoto went on, “Genda-san is not as well as I wish he were. But the illness affects only his body. His mind remains what it always was, and it is keen enough that I think he will be valuable here.”

“As you wish, sir,” Kaku answered. Most Japanese officers would have left it there, especially when a godlike man like Yamamoto had spoken. But Akagi ’s new skipper showed he had nerve, for he continued. “I was concerned for the commander’s well-being, sir. He would be safer down in sick bay.”

Yamamoto laughed raucously. “If we are hit, Captain, nothing and no one on this ship is safe. Or will you tell me I’m wrong?” He waited. With a small, sheepish smile, Kaku shook his head. “All right, then,” Yamamoto said. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?” He moved aside half a pace to make room for Genda beside him. Genda bowed and took his place. Yamamoto barked a question at a signals officer: “Zuikaku and Shokaku are properly dispersed from us and from each other?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” the young lieutenant replied. “They are following your orders, just as you gave them.”

“Good.” Yamamoto turned the word into a satisfied grunt. “We won’t leave all our eggs in one basket for the Yankees.” For Genda’s benefit, he added, “They’ve grouped their carriers very close together. We have them all under attack, and we’ve struck a hard blow against at least one.”

“I’m glad to hear it, sir,” Genda said, wishing he could have had more to do with the operation under way. Before he could say anything else, the thunder of antiaircraft guns from the screening ships and, a moment later, from Akagi herself penetrated the steel and bulletproof glass armoring the carrier’s bridge.

“All ahead full,” Captain Kaku called down the speaking tube to the engine rooms. He stepped to the wheel. “I have the conn.”

Genda didn’t like Kaku as much as he’d liked Captain Hasegawa, whose outspokenness had got him sent back to Japan. No denying Kaku could handle a ship, though. Akagi was a converted battle-cruiser, but he handled her as if she were a destroyer, sending her twisting this way and that across the broad expanse of the Pacific.

None of which might matter even a sen’s worth. No matter how swift she was, no matter what kind of evasive action she took, Akagi was a tortoise when measured against the airplanes attacking her. Antiaircraft guns and, most of all, the Zeros overhead would have the biggest say in whether she lived or died.

Admiral Yamamoto folded his arms across his broad chest. “We’ve done our part,” he said. “We have put this force in a position where it can achieve victory. Now we rely on the brave young men we have trained to give it to us.”

“Yes, sir,” Genda said. Maybe I should have stayed below, he thought. What can I do up here? The fight will go as it goes, with me or without me.

A plane smashed into the Pacific, two or three hundred meters ahead of the Akagi. Genda couldn’t be sure whether it was American or Japanese. American, he thought, for after the column of seawater it kicked up subsided there was no flame floating on the ocean. As if to show the contrast, a Zero went into the sea a moment later. The stricken Japanese fighter lit its own brief funeral pyre.

“A second Yankee carrier under attack, sir,” the signals officer reported. “Heavy American resistance.”

“They need to make a coordinated attack,” Genda said: “torpedo planes and dive bombers together. That way, the enemy won’t be able to concentrate on any one group.”

“Send the message,” Yamamoto told the signals officer. “Send it in Genda’s name.”

“Sir?” the lieutenant said in surprise.

“I’m sure it’s not necessary, Admiral,” Genda said quickly. “Commander Fuchida will have given the same order-he knows all there is to know about these attacks.”

“Send it,” Yamamoto repeated. “The Americans already know where Akagi is-they’ve proved that. And Fuchida and everyone to whom he relays the message will be glad to hear Genda-san is on his feet.”

“Domo arigato,” Genda whispered, and punctuated the words with a couple of coughs.

“Torpedo in the water on the port side! ” Captain Kaku was swinging the helm hard to port even before that alarmed cry rang out. Genda didn’t know whether he would have swung the carrier into the torpedo’s track or away from it. His specialties were air power and attack planning. He’d never been anything more than an ordinary ship-handler.

Tomeo Kaku was definitely out of the ordinary. He hesitated not even for an instant, wrenching Akagi around so she offered the torpedo the smallest possible target. Now Genda could see the wake, drawing closer with hideous inevitability. The track looked very straight-but the torpedo slid past, missing by no more than five or ten meters.

“Not bad, Captain.” For all the excitement in Yamamoto’s voice, he might have been talking about the soup course at a fancy dinner.

Two American torpedo planes went into the drink in quick succession, both before they could launch. The Yankees were still flying the hopelessly slow Douglas Devastators they’d used when the war broke out. The pilots in them were brave men. They had to be, because they attacked in flying death traps. The Devastator was far slower and less agile than the Nakajima B5N2. Like most American planes, it could take a lot of battle damage-but not as much as the Zeros and the ships’ antiaircraft guns were dishing out. Another torpedo plane crashed, and then another.

“I hope they haven’t drawn all the fighters down to the deck with them,” Genda said. “We’ll need some up high for top cover against dive bombers.”

“Send that, too,” Yamamoto told the signals officer. He gave Genda a smile. “You see? You are earning your keep. Thank you for coming up.”

“Thank you, sir,” Genda said. “I’m sure someone else would have thought of it if I hadn’t.”

Admiral Yamamoto shook his head. “I’m not. Too much going on in the heat of battle. People get excited pursuing the enemy and make mistakes. They get so caught up in the now, they forget what may happen five minutes further down the line.”

“Torpedo! ” The cry rang out again. In spite of everything the Japanese could do, another Devastator had got a fish in the water.

“I’ll tend to it,” Captain Kaku said. Then he laughed. It was gallows humor, as he proved a moment later: “And if I don’t, you can tie me to the wheel, and I’ll go down with the ship.”

“That is not a good tradition,” Yamamoto said severely. “Not at all. The Empire loses brave, able men who could still serve it well.”

Kaku only shrugged. “You may be right, sir, but it’s a way for officers to atone for failure. Better than living in disgrace, neh? ” He didn’t wait for an answer, but spun the wheel hard. Akagi answered the helm more slowly than a destroyer would have, but still turned into the path of the oncoming torpedo. As she swung that way, her new skipper let out a sigh of relief. “Track on this one’s not as straight as the last one was. She’ll miss us by plenty.” Plenty was about a hundred meters, or less than half the carrier’s length. Maybe Captain Kaku was trying to impress Yamamoto with his coolness, or maybe he really did have more than his fair share.

So far, so good, Genda thought. Then, in almost the same instant, he heard the shout he really dreaded: “Helldivers! ”

MITSUO FUCHIDA’S B5B1 still had bombs left in the bomb bay. That kept him loitering over the battle above the American fleet in the hope of doing more harm. Actually, he wasn’t sure he or any of the other level bombers had done the Yankees any harm yet. He knew they’d scored near misses. Hits? He shrugged in the cockpit. Moving targets were much tougher than ships tied up in a harbor.

Next time, it’ll be all torpedo planes and dive bombers, he thought with a twinge of regret. We’ll save the level bombers for shore installations.

“See anything behind us, Mizuki?” he called through the intercom. He checked six whenever he could, but Mizuki faced that way all the time.

“No, sir,” the radioman answered. “Pretty quiet up here. Not a lot of Wildcats left.”

He was right. Most of the fighters that had flown over the American fleet had gone into the Pacific. Too many Zeros and Japanese attack aircraft had gone down with them, though-too many skilled pilots, too. No one could say the Americans hadn’t fought hard. No one could say they weren’t brave, either. They’d done everything with their Wildcats anyone could imagine, and a little more besides.

And it hadn’t been enough. One of their aircraft carriers, smashed by torpedoes and bombs, had already sunk. Another lay dead in the water, burning from stem to stern. They were abandoning ship there. And the last enemy carrier had taken at least two bomb hits. Damage-control parties on that ship must have worked like fiends, for she wasn’t burning. But she wouldn’t be operating aircraft for quite a while, either, not with those holes in her flight deck she wouldn’t.

Two U.S. destroyers and a bigger ship-a cruiser or a battlewagon-had also taken damage. Fuchida was inclined to shrug them off. They were small change in a modern naval battle.

An Aichi dove on the surviving carrier. It got shot down before it could drop its bomb. Fuchida cursed. He spoke to his bombardier: “I’m going to make one last run at that ship myself. Give it what we have left.”

“Hai, Commander,” the bombardier answered. “I am ashamed not to have served my country and the Emperor better.”

“Don’t be,” Fuchida said. “You’ve done everything as best you could. War is a hard business, and we’re going to have to revise some of our doctrine. No shame, no blame. If there is blame, it goes to me for not flying the plane straighter.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank you very much,” the bombardier said. “You’re kinder than I deserve.”

Fuchida concentrated on going straight over the surviving U.S. carrier. He had no more bombers following him; formations had broken down during the past wild… He looked at his wristwatch. Could this fight have lasted only forty-five minutes? So the watch insisted. He couldn’t say it was wrong, but he felt as if he’d aged years.

“Ready there?” he called to the bombardier. “Coming up on the target.”

“Yes, sir… Bombs free!”

The Nakajima rose as the bombs fell. With the whole bomb load and a lot of its fuel gone, it was as light and lively as it would ever be. “We’ve done everything we can do here,” Fuchida said. “Time to go home now.”

“Yes, sir,” the bombardier said again, and then, in sudden excitement, “Hit! That’s a hit!”

Was it? Fuchida had thought they’d made hits before, only to watch U.S. warships steam on, apparently undamaged. Why should it be any different here? Another look at his fuel gauge told him he didn’t really want to linger to find out.

He swung the B5N1 south. Japanese warplanes were leaving the battle by ones and twos and forming into larger groups as they flew: Aichis and Nakajimas protected by Zeros. Too many Japanese planes and pilots weren’t leaving the battle at all. But they’d done what they set out to do. Without air cover, the Yankees couldn’t possibly hope to invade Hawaii. And their air cover was smashed to smithereens.

Then another question occurred to him. How were his side’s carriers faring?

THE FIRST DIVE bombers called Helldivers had been biplanes. A movie about them was one of the things that interested the Japanese in the technique. Not least because of the film, Japanese Navy men still often called any dive bomber a Helldiver. Only in nightmares had Minoru Genda ever imagined Helldivers screaming down on a ship in which he served.

A bomb burst just off to port. The great gout of water it threw up drenched everyone on the bridge. It soaked Genda’s masuku, too. He took the worthless cloth thing off and threw it away. An ensign was rubbing at Admiral Yamamoto’s dress uniform with a towel. Yamamoto shoved the youngster away, saying, “Never mind. I don’t have to be pretty to fight a war.”

Engine roaring, the dive bomber streaked away just above wavetop height. Two Zeros pursued it. They quickly shot it down, but it had already done what it set out to do.

Captain Kaku swung Akagi hard to port. Someone on the bridge made a questioning noise. Kaku said, “They will expect me to turn away from the bomb burst, so I will turn towards it. Maybe I will throw off their aim.”

No one else said a word, not even Yamamoto. Kaku was Akagi ’s skipper; how she was handled rested on his shoulders. And when a bomb burst to starboard, even closer than the first one had to port, everybody cheered. An explosion so close was liable to damage the hull, but the carrier’s crew could repair wounds like that at their leisure.

“Sir, Zuikaku is hit!” the signals officer reported to Yamamoto. “Two bombs through the flight deck-major damage.”

Before Yamamoto could answer, another American dive bomber stooped on Akagi. Captain Kaku was already swinging the carrier toward the last burst.

Maybe the American pilot guessed with him this time. Maybe his luck just ran out. Either way, the bomb hit the carrier a few meters ahead of the forwardmost elevator. Deck planking, jagged chunks of the steel beneath it, and flight-crew men all flew through the air.

Genda braced for yet another bomb, but no more came. A plane crashed into the sea not far from the wounded Akagi. Genda thought it was a dive bomber, but he couldn’t be sure. Flight-crew men dragged hoses across the deck toward the hole in the ship. Down below, damage-control parties would be doing what they could to restore and repair.

“Can we land planes?” the signals officer asked. “Our strike force is coming home.”

“We can land them,” Genda said. “I wouldn’t want to try to launch, but we can land-if we don’t get hit again, that is.”

He cast a wary eye up to the heavens, but it seemed as if no more dive bombers would come roaring down on the Akagi. He dared hope not, anyhow. And then word came from the flight deck: the surviving American planes were flying north. Genda wondered where they would land with two of their carriers destroyed and the third crippled. Maybe they would ditch in the Pacific, as the crews from the B-25s had done. That would save some of the fliers, even if the planes were lost.

He looked out at the flight-crew men and damage-control parties working on Akagi. He thought of the pounding Zuikaku had taken. And he thought of what the Japanese strike force had done to the American carriers. Turning to Admiral Yamamoto, he said, “Sir, this fight reminds me too much of a duel of submachine guns at three paces.”

Somber pride in his voice, Captain Kaku said, “Maybe so, but we had the better gunners today.”

“Today, yes,” Yamamoto said. But it wasn’t quite agreement, for he went on, “What will the Americans throw at us the next time? What will we have to answer?”

SABURO SHINDO WASN’T sure how many Wildcats he’d shot down. Three, he thought, but it might have been two or four or maybe, if he was very lucky, even five. All knew was, his Zero still flew, and some Americans didn’t.

Quite a few Japanese didn’t, either. Nothing had come cheap today. The Americans had fought ferociously. They’d fought ferociously-and they’d lost. What Japan had paid was worth the price. The invasion fleet behind the carriers, wherever it was, would come no farther. Shindo was sure of that. Without air superiority, trying a landing on Oahu was an invitation to suicide.

“Attention! Attention!” A radio alert blared in his earphones. “Planes from Zuikaku, divert to Shokaku or Akagi! Attention! Attention! Planes from Zuikaku, divert to Shokaku or Akagi!”

“Zakennayo! ” he muttered. So the Yankees’ strike force had done damage, too. That was… unfortunate. The Americans might be-were-clumsy and none too skillful, but they’d given it everything they had. Not enough, though. They had no carriers left that could land planes, while Japan still had two.

If all the Japanese planes from the strike force had come home safely, Akagi and Shokaku wouldn’t have been able to accommodate them. As things were, that wouldn’t be a problem.

And here came the survivors from the U.S. attack, heading north toward who could say what? They were scattered all over the sky. Shindo saw enemy fighters and dive bombers-no torpedo planes. Had the defenders knocked down all of them? He wouldn’t have been surprised; the Devastator couldn’t get out of its own way.

Shindo dove on a dive bomber. He didn’t think the Douglas Dauntless’ pilot saw him till he opened fire, and maybe not even then. The American plane never tried to take evasive action. It heeled to the right and arced down into the sea.

One more small victory. Shindo flew on towards Akagi.

WHILE MITSUO FUCHIDA was in combat, he’d-mostly-forgotten about the ache in the right side of his belly. He couldn’t ignore it any more. It felt as if an angry dragon had sunk its teeth in there and didn’t want to let go.

I have one thing left to do, he told himself. I have to get this plane down. My radioman and my bombardier are depending on me. After that… After that, he intended to head for sick bay as fast as he could go. Genda and me, he thought. We’re two of a kind. He wondered how his friend was doing.

His first glimpse of Akagi came as a shock. Because she was landing planes, he’d assumed she’d come through the American attack unscathed. Now he found out what such assumptions were worth. Had that bomb struck near the stern instead of at the bow, the whole strike force would have been trying to come down on Shokaku — and wouldn’t that have been a lovely mess?

A Zero landed on Akagi. Fuchida circled, waiting his turn and watching the fuel gauge. He was low, but not too low. He could last long enough-he hoped. An Aichi dive bomber followed the fighter down. Men from the flight crew hustled to get each new arrival off to one side and clear the flight deck for the next. Another Zero landed. Was that Lieutenant Shindo’s plane? Fuchida thought so, but he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure of anything except how much he hurt-and that his turn came next.

He lined up on Akagi ’s stern with extra-fussy care. He always hated to get waved off and have to go around again. Feeling the way he did right now, he hated the idea ten times as much. The landing officer signaled that he was a little high. Obediently, he brought the B5N1’s nose down. No arguments today. Whatever the landing officer wanted, the landing officer would get.

Down came the bomber, straight and true. Fuchida checked once more-yes, he’d lowered his wheels. The landing officer signaled for him to land. He dove for the deck. A carrier landing was always a controlled crash. Most of the time, controlled was the key word. Here, for Fuchida, crash counted for more. The impact made him groan. The world turned gray for a moment. The Nakajima’s tailhook caught an arrester wire. The bomber jerked to a stop. As color returned to things, Fuchida remembered to kill the engine. He was proud of himself for that.

He slid back the canopy and, moving like an old man, got down from the plane. One of the flight crew who’d come to push the bomber out of the landing path looked at him and exclaimed, “Are you all right, Commander?”

“So sorry, but no,” Fuchida answered as his crewmen also left the B5N1.

“Are you wounded?”

“No. Sick. Belly.” Every word took effort.

“Don’t worry, sir. We’ll get you to sick bay,” the man from the flight crew said. And the sailors did, helping him down to the compartment. Usually, it was almost empty; wounded men crowded it now. Had Akagi caught fire, the place would have been a death trap. Damage control must have done a good job.

A doctor in surgical whites eyed Fuchida from over a masuku. “What’s the trouble?” he asked. Fuchida explained his symptoms in a few words. The doctor said, “Ah, so desu. Could be your appendix. Lie down.”

“Where?” Fuchida asked-the beds were all full.

“On the deck.” The doctor sounded impatient. Fuchida obeyed. The doctor peeled him out of his flight suit and jabbed a thumb into his belly between his navel and his right hipbone. “Does that hurt?”

Fuchida didn’t bounce off the steel ceiling, though why he didn’t he couldn’t have said. He didn’t scream, either-another marvel. In lieu of that shriek, he gasped, “Hai.”

“Well, it’s got to come out. Can’t leave it in there-liable to kill you if we do.” The doctor sounded perfectly cheerful. Why not? It wasn’t his appendix. Fuchida lay on the deck till the doctors got another surgical case off one of the operating tables. They helped him onto it. The fellow who’d poked him in the belly stuck an ether cone over his face. The stuff made him think he was being asphyxiated. He feebly tried to fight back. The struggle was the last thing he remembered as blackness swept over him.

THE B. F. IRVINE ’S engine started thudding away again for all it was worth. Lester Dillon had served aboard warships. He didn’t think much of freighters. He doubted this one could make better than fifteen knots unless you threw her off a cliff. By the racket and the vibration, she was sure as hell trying now.

He’d gone to the head a couple of times. Otherwise, he’d stayed in the poker game. He would have been a fool to bail out; he was up close to two hundred bucks. You could have a hell of a good time in Honolulu for a couple of hundred bucks.

When he said as much, though, Dutch Wenzel looked up from his cards and asked, “Who says we’re still heading for Hawaii?”

“Well, fuck,” Dillon said. That was a damn good question. He waited till the hand was done. He dropped out early; Dutch ended up taking it with three queens. Then Les stood and stretched. “I’m going up on deck, see what I can find out.”

“I’ll come with you,” Wenzel said, which effectively broke up the poker game. Everybody pocketed his cash. The cards belonged to Dillon. He stuck them in his hip pocket and headed for the narrow steel stairway up to the B. F. Irvine ’s deck.

Sailors in tin hats manned hastily mounted antiaircraft guns. Les didn’t laugh out loud, even if he felt like it. The swabbies didn’t look as if they’d ever drawn that duty before. Marines could have done it a hell of a lot better. But Dillon hadn’t come up there to scoff at the sailors.

He glanced at his watch: half past three. He looked at the sun: astern and a little to starboard. He swore in disgust. “We’re heading east,” he said, spitting out the words as if they tasted bad-and they did. “Fucking east, goddammit. We’re running away like sons of bitches.”

A petty officer hurrying by paused. He might have been thinking about chewing Dillon out. But either a look at the platoon sergeant’s stripes or a look at the other Marine with him changed the rating’s mind. All he said was, “You ain’t got the word?”

“Down there?” Dillon jerked a thumb toward the passageway from which he’d just emerged. “Shit, no, Navy. They don’t even give us the time of day down there. What is the skinny?”

“Two carriers sunk-two of ours, I mean-and the third one smashed to hell and gone. God only knows how many pilots lost.” The petty officer spoke with the somber relish contemplating a really large disaster can bring. He went on, “We hurt the Japs some-don’t know just how much. It doesn’t look like they’re chasing us. Why the hell should they, when we ain’t got any air support left? Sure as hell can’t go on without it. So we’re heading back to port, fast as we can go.”

“Oughta be zigzagging, then,” said Dillon, remembering his trip Over There as a young man. “Otherwise, we’re liable to make some Jap sub driver’s day.”

The Navy man pointed to the bridge. “You wanna go talk to the skipper? He’s just dying to hear from you, I bet.”

“We’re all liable to be dying,” Dillon said. But he took not one step in the direction the petty officer had indicated. Would a Navy officer listen to a jar-head sergeant? Fat chance. Anyhow, all the troopships should have been zigzagging, not just the B. F. Irvine.

He took another look down the deck. Along with the men at the antiaircraft guns, the ship did have sailors at the rail, some with binoculars, looking for periscopes. That was better than nothing. How much better? Time would tell.

Behind him, Dutch Wenzel started swearing with a sudden impassioned fury. “What’s eating you?” Les asked.

“If I’d known we were gonna get our butts kicked here, I would’ve let ’em make me a gunny,” Wenzel answered. “We won’t be coming back this way for a while-better believe we won’t. When we do, we’ll have some of the new fish with us, too. I could’ve got that new rocker and still had a chance to hit Hawaii.”

“Oh,” Dillon said. “Yeah. Hadn’t even thought of that.” He too contemplated rank gone glimmering. “Too late to worry about it now, and it ain’t the biggest worry we’ve got right now, either. Maybe we’ll get another crack at it once we make it back to base.” If we make it back to base, he added to himself.

Vince Monahan came up on deck. “Let’s pick up the game again. You guys have got a chunk of my money, and I aim to get it back again.”

Les said, “Just don’t shoot at the Japs with aim like that.” They went below, reclaimed their spot-no mere privates had presumed to occupy it-and got down to business. Dillon took out the cards. “My deal this time, I think.”

JOE CROSETTI AND Orson Sharp listened to the bad news coming out of the radio in their room. “The Saratoga and the Yorktown are definitely known to be lost,” Lowell Thomas said in mournful, even sepulchral, tones. “The Hornet has suffered severe damage at the hands of the Japanese, while two cruisers and a destroyer were also hit by Jap aircraft. Our own gallant fliers inflicted heavy blows on the enemy fleet. They struck at least two and maybe three Jap carriers, as well as several other enemy warships.”

That was all good, but nowhere near good enough. The American carriers should have knocked out their Japanese rivals, then gone on to gain dominance over whatever land-based planes the Japs had in Hawaii. The plan must have looked good when the American fleet set out from the West Coast. Unfortunately, the Japs had had plans of their own.

Thomas continued, “Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who commanded the American task force, has issued the following statement: ‘Our movement toward the Hawaiian Islands has failed to gain a satisfactory position, and I have withdrawn our ships. My decision to attack at this time and in this way was based on the best information available. The Navy and the air did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.’ ”

A singing commercial extolling the virtues of shaving cream came on. Orson Sharp said, “Well, you can’t stand up and take the heat any better than that.”

“Yeah,” Joe said glumly. “I only wish he didn’t have to. What the hell went wrong?” He often felt funny about cussing around his roommate, because Sharp so scrupulously didn’t. He couldn’t help himself today. “God damn it, we were supposed to whip them.”

“I think we sold them short again,” Sharp said. “We didn’t figure they’d have the nerve to attack Hawaii at all, and then they did. And they licked us there and in the Philippines and down in the South Seas, but they had numbers and surprise on their side. We’d lick ’em if we ever got ’em even-Steven.”

“Well, sure,” Joe said. But it hadn’t turned out to be well, sure. The American carrier force and the Japanese had met on equal terms, and the Japs had come out on top. That wasn’t just shocking. It was mortifying.

Patiently, Sharp said, “Looks to me like we sent a boy to do a man’s job. We wanted to do something fast, pay the Japs back for what they did to us. And we tried it, and it didn’t work. We’ll try again-we have to try again. I just hope we do it right next time instead of fast.”

Joe eyed his roomie. “When the next war comes, you want Thomas or H. V. Kaltenborn or whoever’s in back of the microphone to go, ‘Admiral Sharp has issued the following statement,’ don’t you?”

“Not if it’s a statement explaining why what we tried didn’t work,” Sharp replied.

He didn’t make a big fuss about things. He hardly ever did. But he had his eye on one of the top prizes, sure as the devil. Joe owned no ambition higher than roaring off the deck of a carrier and mowing down Zeros one after another. The way Sharp thought about the bigger picture and how things fit together made him want to do the same.

Lowell Thomas returned. He talked about big German advances in southern Russia, and about the Afrika Korps’ push to Alamein. The next stop after that was Alexandria and the Nile. “The upcoming Fourth of July holiday,” he went on, “promises to be the most anxious for this great nation since that of 1863, when Meade’s army met Robert E. Lee’s at a little Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg.”

“Gettysburg,” Joe echoed. To all but a dying handful of graybeards, it was only a name from a history book. None of his family had been on this side of the Atlantic when men in blue and men in gray tried to kill one another with muzzle-loading muskets and cannon. The weapons, by modern standards, were laughable. The fury with which the soldiers on both sides had wielded them was anything but.

“We’ll do what we need to do,” Sharp said. “If it takes a little longer than we figured at first-then it does, that’s all. When the Federals marched down to Bull Run, they thought they’d win in a hurry, too. It didn’t work like that, but they didn’t lose, either, not in the end.”

“You’ve got a good way of looking at things, you know?” Joe said.

His roomie shrugged. “Hey, I wish we’d done it the easy way, believe me. If we have to do it the hard way, then we do, that’s all.”

Joe eyed him. “Anybody ever tell you you’re too sensible for your own good?”

“Besides you, you mean?” Sharp asked. Laughing, Joe nodded. The other cadet said, “Oh, I’ve heard it a few times. But my guess is, the people who say it aren’t sensible enough.”

He sounded dead serious. That only made Joe laugh harder. He said, “God help the Japs when we turn you loose on them.”

Now Orson Sharp was the one who laughed. And Joe had been joking. But, while he’d been joking, he probably hadn’t been kidding. How many pilots had the Navy lost in the failed attack on Hawaii? Too damn many-Joe was sure of that. A lot of what had been the first team wasn’t there any more. If the United States tried again-no, when the United States tried again, for he too was sure the country would-a lot of the guys who flew off the flattops would be rookies like him.

Yeah, he thought. Just like me.

FOR THE FIRST time in Kenzo Takahashi’s life, the Fourth of July wasn’t a holiday. It was a little slower than usual, because it was a Saturday. But no firecrackers spit and snarled. No fireworks displays were scheduled for the evening. No admirals and generals made pompous, boring speeches about the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Instead, both the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin ran banner headlines: GREAT JAPANESE VICTORY! and JAPAN SAVES HAWAII! respectively. Both got more paper than the occupying authorities normally doled out to them. The Japanese wanted them to make a big fuss about this. Japanese-language newspapers shouted even louder.

Kenzo wanted to believe all the shouts were a pack of lies. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t just that no American planes appeared over Oahu and no American fighting men splashed ashore. Word always got around when the Japanese were telling tall tales. Kenzo wasn’t sure how. He supposed some people still had shortwave sets and listened to news from the mainland, even if they took their lives in their hands when they did it.

He kept hoping he would hear that Japan was inventing a battle that hadn’t happened or exaggerating about one that hadn’t gone so well. He kept hoping, but nobody said anything like that. It looked as if those gloating headlines were nothing but the truth.

His father had no doubts. Jiro Takahashi rubbed it in. “You see?” he said as he and Kenzo and Hiroshi lined up for their rice that evening. “You see? This is what happens when the United States fights Japan. Twice now, big battles-and who won? Who won, eh? Japan won, that’s who!”

“Banzai,” Kenzo said sourly.

That only made his old man mad. He’d known it would, which was why he did it. “You should always say that with respect! With spirit!” Jiro growled. “You don’t joke around with it!”

Kenzo hadn’t been joking. Before he could say so, Hiroshi stuck an elbow in his ribs. He gave his brother an Et tu, Brute? look. But Hiroshi only shook his head, ever so slightly. And Kenzo realized his brother was right. If he sounded too American, somebody in earshot was liable to report him to the occupying authorities. His father wouldn’t-they might disagree, they might quarrel, but he knew his old man would never betray him. Some stranger who might get some cash or some extra food, though…

“Yeah,” Kenzo said in English. “Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Hiroshi told him.

“What are you two going on about?” their father asked. Neither one of them answered. He sniffed. “You’re so proud of your English. How much good does English do you now?”

They didn’t answer that sally, either. The line snaked forward. Kenzo held out his bowl for rice and vegetables. Some people had to live on this and nothing else. Kenzo would have been happy out on the Pacific now, not just for the sake of food but because he and his father didn’t fight so much when they had bait and hooks and ahi and aku and lines and sails to talk about. Everything came back to politics on dry land… and everything that had to do with politics was going his old man’s way.

Once he got fed, he took the bowl off by himself to eat in peace. He even waved Hiroshi away when his brother started to follow him. Hiroshi just shrugged and found somewhere else to go. To Kenzo’s relief, his father didn’t come after him.

A lot of the trees that had been proud parts of the botanical garden were long since gone to firewood. Shrubs and bushes and ferns persisted. Why not? They weren’t worth pulling up and burning. He sat down on the grass close by a jungly clump and started eating. With automatic ease, he scooped up rice with his hashi and brought it to his mouth.

He started to laugh, not that it was funny. He told anybody who’d listen that he was an American. No matter what he told people, what was he doing? Sitting on the ground and eating rice with chopsticks. Circumstances seemed to be conspiring to turn him into a Jap no matter what he wanted.

He told himself Elsie Sundberg wouldn’t think so. No matter what he told himself, he had a hard time believing it. After what had happened out in the Pacific, she’d probably figure him for a Jap now, no matter what he’d told her. And if she didn’t, her folks would.

At just short of twenty, gloom came easily. Getting rid of it was harder. Kenzo washed his bowl after he finished eating. The chopsticks were cheap bamboo. Even here, even now, they weren’t in short supply. He threw them in a corrugated-metal trash can.

Then he looked west, toward Pearl Harbor. No, no fireworks tonight. The U.S. Navy was gone from these parts. Everything else that had to do with the United States seemed gone, too. So where was there a place for a person of Japanese blood who thought he had the right to be an American?

Anywhere at all?

MINORU GENDA COUGHED behind his masuku. Admiral Yamamoto looked around Akagi ’s wardroom with affectionate amusement. “Is this an after-action conference or a sick-bay gathering?” he asked.

“Sorry, sir,” Genda said. If not for the conference, he would have been back in sick bay. Commander Fuchida sprawled across three chairs at the doctor’s orders. He was a long way from being over his appendectomy. Captain Ichibei Yokokawa of Zuikaku had a bandaged left shoulder. A ricocheting bullet from a Wildcat had wounded him. He was lucky it had lost most of its momentum before striking; a.50-caliber round could kill from shock without penetrating anything vital. Of course, if he were really lucky he wouldn’t have been wounded at all.

“We did what we set out to do when we sought this battle,” Yamamoto said. “The Americans will not come forward. They will not invade Hawaii. The islands will remain our bastion, not theirs.”

“Well done!” Captain Tomeo Kaku said. “And I say, ‘Well done!’ to the crews of Shokaku and Zuikaku in particular. However fine the ships are, they are new, and their crews do not have so much experience working as a team as Akagi ’s does. But no one will say they are not veterans now.”

“Arigato,” said Captain Jojima Takatsugu of Shokaku. Captain Yokokawa started to nod his thanks, then grimaced and thought better of it. Eyeing that thick pad of bandages on his shoulder, Genda couldn’t blame him.

“We are not finished, though,” Yamamoto said sternly. “This is a victory, but not one that will end the war. The Americans paid a high price, but they will be back when they feel strong enough. We have to see what we paid, what we can do to make good our losses, and how best to face the Yankees when they return-for they will.”

“Are you sure, sir?” Captain Kaku asked. “How many times must we crush them before they know we are their masters?”

“How many times?” Yamamoto shrugged. “I don’t know. I do know that what we’ve done so far isn’t enough. We have awakened a sleeping giant, and we have yet to see everything he can do.”

“What is our best course, then, sir?” Genda asked.

“To make these islands strong. To make the fleet that protects them strong,” Yamamoto replied. “American arms factories and shipyards are just now getting up to full war production. What we have seen is not a patch on what we will see. Fuchida-san! ”

“Yes, sir!” Fuchida still sounded fuzzy-from painkillers, Genda suspected-but Yamamoto’s voice could and would galvanize anybody.

“What were our aircraft losses?” asked the commander of the Combined Fleet.

“Just over a hundred planes, Admiral.” Fuzzy or not, Fuchida had the numbers he needed at his fingertips. Anyone who came to a meeting with Yamamoto unprepared deserved whatever happened to him.

The admiral grunted. “Could have been worse, I suppose. But these were highly trained men, some of the best we had. How soon can we replace them, and how good will the replacements be?”

“As for numbers, sir, we can replace them as soon as the new pilots and radiomen and bombardiers arrive from Japan,” Fuchida replied. “Quality… Quality is harder to gauge. Nothing but experience can make a man a veteran. The fliers from Shokaku and Zuikaku know this now.”

“Hai,” Yamamoto said noncommittally. He rounded on Captain Yokokawa. “How long before Zuikaku is back in service?”

“Sir, she’ll have to return to Japan for repairs,” Yokokawa answered. “There’s no help for it. We’re lucky we kept her afloat after the pounding she took. The Americans pressed their attacks with all their strength.”

Another grunt from Yamamoto. He hadn’t been aboard Zuikaku or seen for himself how she was fought. All he could know was that she’d taken much more damage than either of the other Japanese carriers. He said, “A pity the Americans did such a good job of wrecking the navy yard here before they surrendered.”

“They were thorough,” Genda agreed.

“Have the engineers looked at what we’d need to do to get the yard operational?”

Genda’s specialty was air operations. But he was also the man with the answers; Yamamoto’s wasn’t the only head to turn his way. He said, “Sir, I’m told it’s not practical, since we would have to bring all our fuel from Japan. You might want to talk with the engineers, though, to see if things have changed since the last time I checked with them.”

“I’ll do that,” Yamamoto said. “Having to take a ship back more than five thousand kilometers to get it repaired is inefficient, to say the least.”

“The Americans had no trouble maintaining a yard here,” Captain Takatsugu said. “What they can do, we should be able to do, too.”

Just for a moment, Admiral Yamamoto looked angry. Genda knew what to watch for, and when to look. The eyebrows that came together, the lips that thinned… The expression vanished almost as fast as it appeared, but Yamamoto did not care for officers who failed to think things through before they spoke. “The Americans are only a little more than half as far from Hawaii as we are. And they have more fuel than they know what to do with. They had no trouble shipping some of it here. We, on the other hand…”

He didn’t go on, or need to. Had the USA not cut off oil shipments to Japan, the war never would have started. If everything went well from here on out, Japan wouldn’t have to depend on a rival for the oil she desperately needed. The formerly Dutch East Indies would see to that.

Yamamoto let Captain Takatsugu down easy. “We fought well,” he said. “As long as we do that, all will be well for us.”

“Hai.” Several officers agreed with that. Some of them sounded relieved, too.

Turning to Captain Kaku, Yamamoto said, “I am pleased at how well the damage-control parties have worked here on Akagi. That she can launch planes again is a credit to her officers and men.”

“Thank you very much, sir.” Kaku modestly looked down at his hands. “We were lucky that only one bomb hit us. And the repairs, of course, are emergency makeshifts. She needs much more work.”

That was an understatement. Genda had seen the gaping hole in the hangar deck. The bomb would have done even more damage had it struck while planes were stored there and not in combat.

“I understand,” Yamamoto said. “But you’ve done what’s essential. If the ship has to fight, she can. I don’t expect the Americans to come back to these waters for some time, but I might be wrong. In case I am, we’ll need every carrier and every plane we can get our hands on.”

Genda looked north and east. He didn’t expect the Americans back any time soon, either. They’d just had a lesson. Now they knew how much they didn’t know about conducting carrier operations. With luck, that would be enough to keep them thoughtful for some time. In the meanwhile, Japan would grow stronger, and so would her grip on Hawaii.

Admiral Yamamoto dismissed the meeting. Shokaku ’s skipper, and Zuikaku ’s, went over the side and down to the boats waiting to carry them back to their carriers. Genda stood with Fuchida on the Akagi ’s battered flight deck. Because of the stitches in his belly, Fuchida listed to starboard. The deck put Genda in mind of a man who’d had a head injury and went around forever afterwards with a steel plate in his skull. The repairs here were ugly, but they were functional.

Even through the masuku, Genda tasted the sweetness of the tropical air. He asked Fuchida, “How are you doing?”

“Not so well,” his friend answered. “But I’m getting better. How about you?”

“The same, more or less,” Genda said. “We made it through the fight. That’s the most important thing. Now we take our time recovering.”

Fuchida nodded. “That’s right.” He looked back toward some of the planes parked on the flight deck near Akagi ’s stern. “From now on, I think we’d better equip all the Nakajimas with torpedoes. In a sea fight, they have a much better chance of scoring a hit than level bombers do.”

“Put it in your action report, Fuchida-san,” Genda said. “It makes good sense to me. As long as we don’t dither between one and the other, we’ll be all right.”

“That would be bad, wouldn’t it?” Fuchida said. “Suppose the enemy caught us while we were switching from bombs to torpedoes in combat. Can you imagine what a Helldiver hit would do then?” He shuddered at the idea.

So did Genda. A carrier caught betwixt and between like that would go up like an ammunition dump-which, in effect, she would be. No damage-control party in the world could hope to save her. With a deliberate effort of will, he made himself dismiss the frightening possibility. “It didn’t happen,” he said firmly. “It won’t happen, either.”

BEING ABLE TO walk straight felt wonderful to Mitsuo Fuchida. The three weeks since his appendectomy felt like forever, but the doctors had finally taken the stitches out of his abdomen. The one who did the work said, “If people look at you when you go to the public baths, you can tell them you started to commit seppuku but changed your mind.”

He’d chortled loudly. Fuchida didn’t think it was so funny. For one thing, the scar wasn’t quite in the right place for that. For another, the feel of the sutures sliding through his flesh as the doctor snipped them and pulled them out one by one was-not painful, but distinctly unpleasant.

Now he strode across the lawn to one side of Iolani Palace toward the folding chairs set up there. Genda and the two lieutenant colonels, Minami and Murakami, rose to greet him. They bowed. So did he. It made his belly twinge, but only a little.

The Coronation Pavilion hadn’t been used for its original function for most of a lifetime. It hadn’t gone altogether unused since then, though. King David Kalakaua had built it directly in front of the palace, connecting it to the veranda there with a bridge. After he held his coronation ceremony in 1883, the pavilion was moved to the side and became the home of the Royal Hawaiian Band. Now it would again see the crowning of a monarch… of sorts.

Fuchida wasn’t sorry to sink into a chair by Genda-who still wore his masuku — and the two Army officers. Other Japanese military men, including Admiral Yamamoto (who’d stayed in Honolulu for the ceremony) and General Yamashita, filled most of the seats on the left side of the aisle. Others were taken by representatives from the Foreign Ministry and by allied diplomats: men from Germany and Italy, from Romania and Hungary and Bulgaria, from Croatia and Vichy France, from Manchukuo and Siam, from the Japanese puppet government of China in Nanking, and from the even less powerful authorities Japan had set up with the aid of nationalists in Burma, Malaya, and the Philippines.

On the right side of the aisle sat local dignitaries: some Hawaiian noble-men and — women, some members of the former Territorial Legislature (most but not all of them of Japanese blood), a couple of justices from the former Territorial Supreme Court, judges from lesser courts (some of them were Japanese, too, and one an immense Hawaiian), and various other prominent people. Fuchida was a little surprised at how many haoles had chosen to attend, the men in formalwear, often even including top hats, the woman in fancy gowns, most of them of glowing silk.

Some people were conspicuous by their absence. Fuchida leaned toward Genda and murmured, “I see Abigail Kawananakoa decided not to come.”

Genda nodded. “None of the other candidates we interviewed is here, either. Did you expect anything different?”

“No, not really,” Fuchida admitted. “I’m glad this many of the Hawaiian alii did show up.” He chuckled. “Now the ones who did and the ones who didn’t can start cutting each other dead at parties.”

His friend laughed at that till he started to cough. He sent Fuchida a reproachful stare once the spasm passed. “See what you made me do.”

“So sorry,” Fuchida said. They grinned at each other.

Under the ribbed copper dome of the Coronation Pavilion-decorated with Hawaiian coats of arms and supported by eight concrete columns-stood the Anglican Bishop of Honolulu in full ecclesiastical regalia. Fuchida wondered how the haole had been persuaded to officiate. Maybe Stanley Owana Laanui had taken care of that. Fuchida suspected the bishop would have been more likely to listen to him than to the Japanese occupying authorities. Or maybe the occupiers had just held a gun to his head and told him that doing what he needed to do would improve his chances of living to get a little grayer. He was here. That was what counted.

The Royal Hawaiian Band was here, too, though displaced from its usual venue. The bandmaster raised his baton. The band struck up a tune. Fuchida would not have recognized it, but he knew what it was: “Hawaii Ponoi.” The Hawaiian national anthem was particularly appropriate to the occasion, with words by King David Kalakaua and music by Henry Berger, the fork-bearded Prussian who’d created the Royal Hawaiian Band.

On the right side of the aisle, people sang in both Hawaiian and English. Fuchida caught some of the latter:

He nodded to himself. Yes, that fit the spirit of the day very well.

And here came the coronation procession. First were the bearers of the royal insignia, both imported and native. One man carried the dove-topped royal scepter; another, on a velvet cushion, the golden ring of state; two more bore puloulous — tabu staffs ornamented by crowns of black and white cloth that showed the world the king’s sacrosanctity.

Behind them walked a Hawaiian noblewoman carrying the royal cloak made entirely of yellow mamo feathers. The mamo had been hunted into extinction for those feathers, of which each bird had only tiny patches under the wings. The feather cloak was almost extinct, too; it had been taken out of the Bishop Museum-over the curator’s loud objections-for the occasion.

More Hawaiian nobles followed. They had attendants bearing kahili, which reminded Fuchida of nothing so much as the sponges on sticks used to swab out cannon. Here, though, the sponge part was replaced by red and yellow feathers, which produced a much more pleasing effect. Two of the nobles carried the royal crowns, which were made on the European pattern (though decorated with golden taro leaves) and studded with diamonds, opals, emeralds, rubies, pearls-and kukui nuts.

And behind them marched Stanley Owana Laanui himself, in white tie and tails. With him came the prospective Queen of the restored Kingdom of Hawaii. Cynthia Laanui was a smiling, busty redhead only a little more than half her husband’s age. Fuchida had no trouble figuring out what he saw in her. What she saw in him might be a different question altogether.

The new royal couple went up the half-dozen steps that led into the Coronation Pavilion. The noblewoman who bore the royal cloak carefully draped it over Stanley Owana Laanui’s shoulders. The cloak fell to his ankles. It was, without a doubt, an impressive garment, and one no sovereign anywhere in the world could match. Stanley Laanui took the ring of state and set it on his right index finger. He grasped the scepter in his right hand.

“Let us pray,” the Bishop of Honolulu said. Raising his hands in benediction, he went on, “May the Lord bless us and keep us. May He make His face shine upon us and give us peace. And may He find good what we do here today. This we ask in the holy name of our Savior, His Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

“Amen.” The response came from the right side of the audience, from some of the diplomats on the left side, and from the new royal couple. Fuchida nodded once more. The prayer said enough to satisfy the occupying authorities, yet not so much as to make a mockery of the bishop’s conscience if, as was likely, he didn’t favor the Japanese cause.

Wearing no expression whatever, the bishop set one crown on Stanley Owana Laanui’s head, the other on Cynthia Laanui’s flaming locks. “God bless the King and Queen of Hawaii,” he said in a voice also empty of everything.

Flashbulbs popped. Newsreel cameras had been grinding away all along. The audience applauded, perhaps more politely than enthusiastically. Fuchida and Genda, Minami and Murakami looked at one another and smiled as they clapped. They’d got the job done.

“I thank you,” King Stanley said, looking out over his subjects-and his masters. “The American annexation and occupation of Hawaii were not only illegal and immoral but also disastrous for the Hawaiian people. There are less than half as many Hawaiians alive today as there were fifty years ago.”

Is that why you have a redheaded Queen? Fuchida wondered. Stanley Owana Laanui went on, “Now that these islands are free again, I intend to make them into a kingdom that can feed itself and support itself instead of being caught like a fly in a spiderweb of ties to the mainland. Cooperation with the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere will help Hawaii to achieve this goal.” That was nicely done: he admitted being a puppet without ever naming Japan.

“Now we do not have to pretend to be Americans any more,” he said-in English. Did he notice the irony, or did it slide past him? Fuchida couldn’t be sure. The new King was shrewd, but whether he was really clever was much less obvious. He finished, “We may choose our own friends once more. With the help of those friends, we will continue to live untroubled lives here in the heart of the Pacific. Thank you.”

The Kingdom of Hawaii’s… friends had sunk two U.S. carriers and smashed up a third. As long as they could keep that up, Hawaii would remain untroubled-by the Americans, anyhow. As Fuchida applauded once more, he caught Genda’s eye. Now they had to make sure the newly revived kingdom stayed as independent as Japan wanted it to be-and not a bit more.