Ghosts of Bungo Suido (15 page)

ComSubPac Headquarters, Pearl Harbor

Captain Forrester gave the usual perfunctory knock on Admiral Lockwood’s office door and then walked in. Lockwood was reading an after-action patrol report and making some notes for his next happy hour with the skippers up at the Palace.

“Whatcha got, Mike?” he asked without looking up.

“Possibly another
Awa Maru,
I’m afraid.”

Lockwood looked up over his reading glasses. “You’re shitting me, right?”

“No, sir, unfortunately not. This just came down from State via CincPacFleet. A damaged Jap freighter made it into Taipei and reported that a second ship, the
Hoshen Maru,
had been torpedoed and sunk, and that it had been carrying four-hundred-plus British POWs. Japs claim it was marked as a hospital ship
and
lit up.”

“Was she precleared, like the
Awa Maru
?”

“No, sir, and this is the first we’ve heard about it. PacFleet thinks it’s a propaganda ploy by the Japs. Problem is that the Brits verify that there probably were some of their POWs on that ship.”

“God
dammit,
” Lockwood said. “Any idea which boat?”

“We’re checking on that, sir. We need the sinking location and, of course, time and date. Ops is researching sinking reports and who’s where out there.”

“
Awa Maru
was cleared through diplomatic back channels as a marked and lighted hospital ship, and we put that out to all the boats. This sounds different, but still—four hundred POWs? God.”

“Yes, sir. CincPacFleet is sending down a JAG officer. If the Japs are going to make a claim, then we’ll need talking points.”

“Okay, keep me advised. You meet with the JAG. Tell him—”

“Her.”

“What?”

“Her—Lieutenant Commander DeVeers. WAVE officer. Connie White said she was the resident international lawyer.”

“Then you definitely meet with her, Mike. Lady lawyers make me nervous.”

An hour later Sharon was escorted into Forrester’s office by one of the yeomen. He stood up to greet her and offered coffee, which she declined. She was wearing whites because there had been an awards ceremony earlier that morning up at Makalapa.

“Miss DeVeers—is that correct?” Forrester asked. “
Miss
DeVeers? I’d address a lieutenant commander as mister, but, um…”

“That’s fine, Captain,” Sharon said, amused at his sudden discomfort as she sat down in front of his desk. The white uniform skirt highlighted some of her best features, and the good captain was having trouble keeping his eyes in the boat. “Did you get our memorandum?”

“Yes, we did. Admiral Lockwood and I are horrified at the thought that one of our boats may have killed POWs. That said, there’s no way our skippers can know what some of their targets are carrying.”

“Yes, sir, we understand that. This is
not
another
Awa Maru,
but the feeling at Makalapa is that the Japanese are going to try to make it into a major international propaganda incident just the same.”

Forrester well remembered the
Awa Maru
case. Through a diplomatic channel opened by the International Red Cross in Switzerland, the United States and Japan had made a deal: If the Japanese agreed to transport 2,000 tons of Red Cross relief supplies for starving Allied prisoners of war being held in Southeast Asia, the Americans would guarantee safe passage for whichever ship carried out the voyage. The Japanese were required to mark the ship as a hospital ship with large white crosses on her sides and special lighting, all of which they did. The ship went to Singapore without incident and delivered the supplies. The Japanese then took advantage of the safe-passage deal to fill her with 2,004 important passengers and thousands of tons of tin and rubber. Because of a communications foul-up, one American submarine failed to get the word and sent the 12,000-ton ship to the bottom during the return voyage. There was but one survivor, the captain’s personal steward, who was picked up by the submarine, who only then learned the name of the ship.

The uproar within U.S. Navy flag channels had been immense when the sub reported the sinking. The sub’s captain had been relieved of command at Guam and court-martialed immediately on orders of Admiral King himself. When Admiral Nimitz reviewed the court-martial proceedings, he was not satisfied with the relatively light punishment awarded to the sub’s captain, so he issued letters of reprimand to all the members of the court-martial.

“Merry Christmas,” Forrester muttered. “What are the next steps?”

Sharon consulted her notes. “We need to know which boat was the likely culprit, and whether or not any special warnings were sent out by SubPac regarding this ship.”

“Culprit?”
Forrester asked. “We only have the Japs’ word that she was marked as a hospital ship or even
was
a hospital ship. They’ve been shipping POWs back to Japan for months now, usually on something called a hell ship, not a hospital ship.”

“Captain,” Sharon said, “please forgive my poor choice of words. We need facts, is what I should have said. Which boat was responsible, if that can be determined. When. Where. What the attack party saw when they fired.”

Forrester’s face showed surprise. “Boat? Attack party—who’ve you been talking to, Miss DeVeers?”

“I spent some time with one of your skippers,” she said. “A Commander Hammond? I believe he’s on patrol right now.”

“That’s classified information, Miss DeVeers. He should not have told you that.”

“He didn’t reveal anything, Captain. They were going back out. It’s what most boats do, isn’t it? He said there was a special mission, but he didn’t offer details and I didn’t ask. We had better things to do with our time.”

Forrester colored a little at that last remark but then quickly changed the subject. “Look here, Miss DeVeers. There’s something I need to know. Is CincPacFleet coming at this incident looking for scalps or looking for a way to pee on this fire?”

“They’re looking for the facts, Captain,” Sharon repeated. “What Admiral Nimitz will do with those facts is beyond your pay grade and mine, I suspect. It’s early days, but this is on the front burner right now, so we’d appreciate any information as quickly as possible.”

“Right,” he said. “We’ll get right on it.”

Sharon stood up to go. Forrester was staring again.

“Will you be my point of contact for this matter, then?” he asked.

Sharon smoothed down her uniform skirt. “If you wish, sir,” she said.

TEN

The Inland Sea of Japan

Two hours later, the Dragon came up to decks-awash. Gar ordered Control to trim the boat down by the stern, which exposed the forward hatch long enough to allow a small team to get a rubber raft out on deck. There was a light fog hanging over the water, and once they opened the hatch they could smell the distinctive odors of rural Asia: charcoal smoke, fish, and a whiff of sewage. There were no lights visible in the fishing village ashore, but Hashimoto had been able to steer them in toward the beach using just the fathometer. He said there was a long reef extending out from the point of land where the town’s main pier was. Once he found that, he knew where they were. Gar thought that it was too bad they had to put him ashore before they made the attempt on Kure.

Tanaka had explained some things about Hashimoto before they left Pearl. The Japanese army’s treatment of POWs was atrocious beyond belief. This stemmed from two things. First, the Japanese had never expected or planned to capture entire armies at the beginning of the war. Second, surrendering to an enemy was an extreme cultural offense in the eyes of the Japanese army. They were expected to fight to the death, because an honorable death in combat was the acme of a Japanese warrior’s entire life. They expected their enemies to match their own martial fervor. To surrender was to forfeit your personal honor and even your identity, as well as to besmirch your family’s honor forever. It was because of how they viewed surrender that they were wholly unprepared to deal with American and British POWs, who had, by surrendering, sunk to the status of pariah dogs. The POWs came to the camps believing that their war was over; in fact, it was just beginning.

Tanaka said that American interrogators, led by a civilian named Otis Cary, had devised a very different strategy to first neutralize the shame and depression of being captured, and then to turn Japanese prisoners into assets by convincing them that, once the war was over, they could play a vital role in rebuilding their nation. This was accompanied by humane, even kind treatment, respect for their cultural rules and mores, and, above all, education. It hadn’t been easy, especially for the few military Japanese POWs captured so far.

Hashimoto’s case was different. It helped that he wasn’t an army man—he’d been a civilian, owner of a successful business until the army requisitioned everything and put him back to work in a fishing boat. His relatives who’d gone to the United States and who’d tried often to convince him to join them before the war were an asset in this argument. He’d agreed readily to the mission of carrying what looked like a thermos bottle into the city of Hiroshima in return for being able to get back to his family again and, possibly, to help mitigate the reportedly awful conditions in the countryside. Gar had initially believed Hashimoto might be playing the Americans, but after a while he’d come to trust the old man’s motives.

As the boat was being readied, Gar took him aside. “Conditions in Japan are going to get much worse,” he told him. “The big bombers are coming, and life will become very hard.”

Hashimoto nodded. He’d made some friends in the crew, especially among the chiefs, and already knew a lot about what was shaping up for his homeland.

“I’ve been thinking about this thing you’re supposed to plant in downtown Hiroshima City. I think it’s a weather instrument, not a weapon. I don’t know what paper rain is all about, but when the bombers come, weather will be important.”

Hashimoto looked at him. “You tell me not to do it?” he asked finally.

Gar shook his head. “No, because I’m probably all wrong about what this thing is. All I’m saying is, once you hide it, get out of the city. Cities in Japan will become terrible places very soon.”

Hashimoto blinked and then nodded again. The word came up that the raft was ready, and Gar offered his hand and wished the old man good luck. Hashimoto shook his hand, stepped back, bowed respectfully, and then climbed up the ladder to the conning tower hatch, his ditty bag in hand.

It took forty-five minutes for the shore party to take Hashimoto in to the beach and get back out again. During that time a thicker fog bank rolled in from the south, and they had to use the radar twice to make sure the current wasn’t taking them toward that reef. This close to shore there was only 100 feet under the keel, which would not offer them much protection if a patrol boat surprised them. Gar was already uneasy about the fact that they’d neither seen nor heard
any
patrol craft; perhaps the Japs thought they were safe this far up into the Seto. The transit into Akitsu had taken them within hailing distance of several small islands, but they hadn’t seen a soul. Gar stayed on the bridge during the boat evolution. The shoreline was visible in the darkness as a deeper shadow, but there wasn’t a single light anywhere. Curfew, he thought. They’re all in the house for the night.

He checked his watch; nautical twilight would be upon them in about ninety minutes. The exec had the conn down in the conning tower. They’d stayed on the battery to avoid detection, but the ventilation system had been sucking in some much-welcomed fresh air while they loitered close inshore. After what seemed forever, the rubber raft materialized out of the darkness and made fast to the port side forward. Gar scanned the shore through the TBT binocs while they got the raft back aboard, deflated it, and humped it down the ladder. Then he heard the clunk of the forward hatch.

“Everybody’s back, and the forward hatch is secured,” Control announced.

“Okay, XO, let’s get out of here,” Gar said. “Once we get five miles off the beach, light off the mains and take us back out to the wait-box. We’ll submerge at dawn, find a layer, and get under it for the day.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the exec said. “Coming to two zero zero.”

Gar stayed up on the bridge as they moved out through the gathering fog. Periodically the radar mast would go high for a brief transmission. Once they got submerged offshore, they’d have about ten hours to wait for darkness and plan their next move. He’d been assuming they’d make their approach to Kure submerged, but the more they’d studied the charts with Hashimoto, the more it looked like they’d have to be running on the surface, if only because of the navigation problem. There were two very narrow channels into Hiroshima Bay, and the water depths off the naval arsenal were such that even periscope depth would be risking running aground. That meant they needed a really dark night and some lousy weather to pull this thing off. They’d also have to calculate how and when to get some charge back into the batteries before they had to submerge again to get out of Hiroshima Bay alive.

Gar finally went down below into Control, where he met with the boat officer, Ensign Brown. “How’d it go?” he asked.

“No probs, Skipper,” Brown said. “Hashimoto told us where to make a landing, which was around a point of rocks from the town. Darker’n a well-digger’s ass out there, so we just paddled until we ran aground on some gravel.”

“I take it no guard towers and searchlights?”

Brown shook his head. “We didn’t see a soul or a light. We could smell the place, though. Eye-watering. Hashimoto said they dried their fish on racks in the open air, and that’s what the stink was. I can’t imagine anyone actually eating that shit.”

“They’re an alien culture, Mister Brown,” Gar said. “We keep sinking all their merchies, they’ll be eating stone soup pretty quick. No sentries, boats, or anything moving out there?”

“Not a thing, Skipper. Dark, and totally quiet. We could see the loom of city lights to the north, probably Hiroshima, but there wasn’t a sound coming from that town, not even a barking dog.”