Ghosts of Bungo Suido (43 page)

“Commander Hammond,” White interrupted, “you will have your chance to make a statement when the time comes. In the mean—”

“I believe the time
has
come, gentlemen,” Gar said quietly. “I think this entire hearing happened for one reason and one reason only—someone is desperate to protect the image of the Pacific Fleet submarine force now that it’s peacetime again.”

“That’s not true,” Forrester shouted from the back of the room. Admiral Lockwood held up his index finger in Forrester’s direction, indicating that he should be quiet.

Gar stepped around from behind the table and looked straight at Lockwood. “A collaborator,” he said, “is a POW who does favors for the enemy in return for better treatment. To get food when the rest of the prisoners are being starved. To work in the office instead of at the bottom of a coal mine. To not be beaten on a daily basis. To get medicine if he needs it. A collaborator is someone who goes over to the other side. I did not do that.

“You seem to think that I could have escaped. I’m here to tell you that that was impossible. In Europe? Maybe. In Europe, the prisoners of war on both sides looked a lot like the enemy, didn’t they. In Japan, all POWs looked like
gaijin,
foreign devils, white-faced, round-eyed, bad-smelling, and much too tall. The general population knew damned well that it was these foreign devils that were killing their sons and husbands on faraway islands, sinking their ships, cutting off their fuel, medicines, and food, and burning down entire cities. The fact that they started it didn’t figure into how they felt at the local level. If an American flier parachuted into the countryside, he was cut to pieces with farm implements the moment he landed. Sorry, Admiral. There was no point to an escape.”

He paused to gather his thoughts. “I did not collaborate with the enemy. Everything I told them, much of which was fantasy, made it clear that they were going to be invaded and destroyed, that there was no way out of what was coming. I told the captain of that carrier that his ship was doomed if he tried to make it to Yokosuka, and it was. I could see it in their faces—they knew it, even if they couldn’t speak it. You want proof that they knew it? They had a plan, a plan they practiced at all the camps. Know what that plan was, Admiral?”

Lockwood shook his head.

“They had a policy in place throughout the prison camp system: When the Allies finally invaded Japan itself,
all
the POWs throughout the empire were to be executed immediately.
All
the POWs. Did you know that, sir?”

“I think I read that somewhere,” Lockwood said.

“I didn’t read about it, Admiral: I was
there.
I experienced it. Hell, I was next. We were all on the verge of being beheaded when the second bomb went off over Nagasaki. I think the only thing that saved us was the fact that the camp commandant’s entire family lived in Nagasaki and he just lost it out on the parade ground when he saw that cloud. The next thing we knew, a column of army regulars showed up, and the camp officers were ordered to abandon the camp.”

Gar took a deep breath. “There were no collaborators in the Jap prison camps, Admiral. There were only prisoners. Sick, starved, filthy, despondent, battered, and, in too many cases, dying prisoners. This inquiry that you and your chief of staff have allowed to happen is an outrage. The two of you have forgotten every
thing
and apparently every
one
you commanded during the war, and now you’ve reverted back to being the kind of navy that got caught with its pants down right here in Pearl Harbor.”

“Commander Hammond,” Martell said. “That’s
enough
. I can’t allow—”

“Wait,” Lockwood said. He turned to Captain Martell. “By what authority did you convene this court?”

“Well, by yours, Admiral,” Martel said, frowning. He waved a piece of paper. “ComSubPac. It’s on your letterhead, sir. The naval district is just the admin.”

Lockwood looked across the room at Forrester. “Mike, did you sign the convening order to proceed with this court of inquiry?”

“Yes, sir, I did,” Forrester said. “After you and I talked, of course, and—”

“Does that mean I can retract that decision? Aren’t I the convening authority within the submarine force?”

“Yes, sir, of course, but—”

“Captain Martell, since I started these proceedings, it seems to me I can stop them. I need some time to reconsider what I’m going to do about this allegation of collaboration. I believe I have two options: one, to proceed to a formal accusation and a general court-martial, or two, to dismiss the whole thing. In the meantime you and your members can stand down. I will be in touch. Mike, let’s go. Commander Hammond, don’t leave town.”

With that admonition, Lockwood and Forrester left the courtroom. Gar and his attorneys stood there, none of them sure what to do next. Captain Martell picked up his cap and told the other two captains to come with him. Captain White glared at everybody and then stomped out of the court after the members. The only one left was the CincPacFleet public affairs officer, who was staring in astonishment at the departing captains. “Can anyone tell me what the hell just happened here?” he asked the nearly empty room.

Sharon smiled at the PAO. “Commander Hammond here,” she said, “either just got himself off the hook or he did a lateral arabesque from the frying pan into the fire, if I can mix my metaphors, and all by speaking very convincingly and yet very much out of turn.”

“Not for the first time, either,” Gar said with a wry grin. “Anyway, what could go wrong now, hmm?”

FORTY

That afternoon Gar took a taxi downtown to Waikiki Beach. He rented a lawn chair and an umbrella and then found a beach huckster who could round up an ice bucket and a bottle of Scotch and make it appear beside his lawn chair right there on the beach. There were returning sailors and soldiers on the beach, along with a surprising number of young women. He wondered where they’d all been during the war. There it was, that phrase: during the war. Now that the war was over, he wondered how many men felt like he did, that there was a big-ass letdown gathering itself just over the horizon.

Earlier he’d gone to lunch at the O-club with his two lawyers. They talked about anything and everything except the proceedings at the court. Sharon kept smiling at him, but it was a sympathetic smile. She asked him what he was going to do for the rest of the day, and he said he was going down to the beach and get boiled. She thought that sounded like fun, but first the two of them faced the prospect of going back to headquarters for a séance with the indomitable Captain White. Lieutenant Falcone said he thought he’d go back to the BOQ and call in sick. Sharon said she was actually looking forward to it, as there were some things she wanted to say to the good captain.

The sun was warm, the breeze a comfort, and the Scotch was cold, but Gar’s efforts to get drunk fizzled out. In his weakened condition it wouldn’t take much whisky to make everything go away, but then he’d just end up sick and hungover. Besides, he had things to think about, like the future. Based on the general tenor of Uncle Charlie’s remarks at the end of the court session, he didn’t really expect a court-martial. That said, he knew he was finished in the navy. There’d certainly be no promotion now, and he’d probably get an assignment offer that would make it clear they wanted him to retire and simply go home. He didn’t want to go back to coal country in Pennsylvania, but there was an empty house and fifteen very pretty acres waiting for him to just turn on the lights and move back in. His parents had been able to hold on to the place only because of Gar’s Depression-era contributions, so he didn’t think any of his relatives would care. He’d have to buy a car—did he have the money for that? There was so much about life back in the States that he didn’t know. He could make a running surfaced attack on a Jap destroyer, but how was he going to get all the way back to Pennsylvania? Bus? Train? He thought about that and fell sound asleep.

He was startled awake by the sound of a beach chair scrunching down into the sand next to him. The sun was in his eyes as he woke up, but then he saw that it was Sharon standing in front of him, looking shapely indeed in a white bathing suit.

“You pass out or were you just napping?” she asked as she flipped a towel onto the chair and then sat down next to him.

He hefted the bottle of Scotch and saw that it was only one-quarter down. “I think I just fell asleep,” he said. “Couldn’t manage a proper drunk.”

“Here,” she said. “Let me help you with that.”

He grinned and passed her the bottle and one of the glasses the beach man had brought him. “Ice in the bucket,” he said.

“Straight’s the way to do Scotch,” she said. “Put water in it and you get a damn headache.”

“Spoken like an expert,” he said. “How’d it go with Captain White?”

“Oh, him. I went into his office, closed the door, took off my clothes down to my skivvies, and then screamed at the top of my lungs. His staffies came running in and I started crying hysterically and pointing at him. They were, how to put this—aghast?”

He laughed. “I’d like to have seen that,” he said. “But really—did you two part friends?”

“We parted on a highly professional basis,” she said. “Lawyer to lawyer. We spoke at length, as the expression goes, until I brought up Mrs. White.”

“That sounds to me like a spider fight,” he said. “But he’ll be polite from now on?”

“Oh, yes, I do believe he will,” she said. “And you were right about him and Forrester—they were trying hard to hang you out to dry. For the sake of the Service, as he so reverently put it, but I get the feeling there’s still more to this, and I’m still not sure what it’s about.”

“Minoru Hashimoto, perhaps?” he said.

“Yeah, what was all that? Hashimoto didn’t come up in our little tête-à-tête. Should he have?”

“Lockwood called it a sideshow, but the sealed orders were clear—Hashimoto first, then go raise hell if you can.”

“The admiral said he never saw those sealed orders.”

“I’ll bet there’s a copy up at CincPacFleet headquarters,” Gar said. “The orders were signed out by Admiral Rennsalear.”

“Christ, you’re thin,” she said, running her fingers over his rib cage. Her fingers lingered, but he was too tired to react.

“I’m positively fat compared to some to some of those guys,” he said. “The Brits had been in captivity since early ’42. They were walking cadavers. I heard that over a third of them died in Guam after liberation.
Fucking
Japs.”

“Wait till you read what they found in eastern Germany and Poland,” she said. “The Nazis were every bit as monstrous, only on a much bigger scale.”

“I’m tired of all of it,” he said. “Tired, tired, tired. And sad. We won. Whoopee. I can’t even look out onto the ocean without wanting to just weep.”

“Hey,” she said. “I booked a room nearby. Why don’t you and I go there right now and just, oh, I don’t know, lie down? Hold each other? You can let go and I’ll just keep you company. How’s that sound?”

“Like heaven,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, sea dog,” she said. “This whole thing has been a really big deal.”

It’s not over yet, either, he thought as they gathered up their towels. He could remember telling her how good he was at being a CO, and that he was something of a lone wolf. Well, there were two situations where you found a lone wolf: when he was a natural-born predator, and then again when the pack finally drove him out.

FORTY-ONE

The summons came at noon the following day. The BOQ front desk called him and told him that his presence was requested at SubPac headquarters at 1300, with his counsel. Gar had to assume SubPac had notified Captain White’s office, since he did not have a telephone. He showered, shaved, and put on his service dress khakis. He didn’t want to think about the previous night with Sharon. He’d ended up drinking too much, bawling like a baby, and then falling asleep. The good news was that she hadn’t seemed to mind very much in the morning. He was pretty sure they hadn’t made love. He liked to think he would have remembered that.

The yeomen in Admiral Lockwood’s office were very polite when he arrived. Gar couldn’t tell if that was because he was a condemned man and everybody already knew it, or they didn’t want whatever he had rubbing off on them. Five minutes after he got there, Sharon and Falcone showed up. Sharon looked fine, but Falcone looked like he wanted to try out the
dive, dive
command and simply disappear. While they waited in the anteroom, two very serious-looking captains arrived and were ushered directly into Lockwood’s office. The yeomen told them it would be just a few minutes more.

“Who are those guys?” Gar asked.

Sharon shook her head. “Not from PacFleet, that I know of,” she said. “Never seen them before.”

“Maybe they’re executioners,” Gar said.

“No,” Sharon said with a straight face. “Executioners are always enlisted.”

Gar chuckled. Falcone tried to smile but couldn’t quite pull it off.

Lockwood’s aide appeared in the doorway. “The admiral will see you all now,” he said, indicating that they should go in.

Gar went first, followed by the two JAG officers. Lockwood was at his desk. Forrester was standing behind him with a folder. The two captains were sitting in armchairs to one side, looking at Gar as if sizing him up for a coffin.

“Reporting as ordered, Admiral,” Gar said. He didn’t salute, because the navy never saluted indoors.

“Very well, Commander,” Lockwood said. Gar couldn’t exactly read Lockwood’s expression, but he sensed that it wasn’t Uncle Charlie sitting there anymore. Rear Admiral Forrester spoke.

“Commander Hammond, I have been authorized by the chief of naval personnel to propose a course of action to settle, as it were, this allegation of unlawful conduct by a prisoner of war during wartime.”

Gar blinked. Forrester was talking as if he weren’t standing right there.

“You are talking about me, Admiral?” Gar asked. He saw Lockwood roll his eyes.