Ghosts of Bungo Suido (2013)

by Deutermann, P. T

  “Don’t make me whimper,” he said, after a while.

  “No whimper, no joy,” she whispered.

  He whimpered.

  “Atta boy,” she said.

  SIX

  On the afternoon prior to Dragonfish’s departure, Gar was summoned to SubPac headquarters for a final briefing. The summons included the exec, Russ West. They arrived at the headquarters building, with its three-star flag fluttering on an antique yardarm outside, and were ushered into the admiral’s office ten minutes later. Gar was surprised to see that the admiral wasn’t there; the chief of staff, Captain Forrester, was. He was even more surprised to find two Japanese men sitting at the admiral’s conference table. One was wearing the uniform of a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander. The other, much older, was dressed in a long-sleeved white cotton shirt and khaki trousers. Captain Forrester made the introductions.

  “Captain Hammond,” he said, “this is Lieutenant Commander Bobby Tanaka from the CincPacFleet intelligence division. Next to him is Mr. Minoru Hashimoto, who has been interned in a POW camp here on Oahu since late 1943.” He turned to the other two. “Gentlemen, this is Commander Hammond and Lieutenant Commander West, the captain and executive officer of USS Dragonfish, which is one of our submarines.”

  Both of them rose at the same time. Bobby Tanaka shook hands with Gar and West. The older man bowed to them individually but said nothing. Gar tried to estimate his age but found it difficult. He was of medium height and very slim. His hair was almost white and his face severely weather-beaten. His hands and forearms, which he kept rigidly to his sides, indicated that he’d spent many years in manual labor of some kind, probably commercial fishing. Standing next to Hashimoto, Lieutenant Commander Tanaka looked positively elegant.

  Gar had met Tanaka before. He was a native-born American whose parents lived in New York City. He had an Ivy League education and, being fluent in Japanese, had probably made some significant, if necessarily classified, contributions to naval intelligence efforts. He’d briefed the sub skippers a couple of times at the Pink Palace, and each time the appearance of a Japanese face in those precincts had caused quite a stir.

  Forrester asked everyone to sit down and then took the seat at the head of the table. “Commander Tanaka, would you explain to Captain Hammond why Mr. Hashimoto is going to go out on Dragonfish’s next war patrol?”

  What? Gar thought. A passenger? On this mission? A POW? Were they nuts?

  “Yes, sir,” Tanaka said. “Captain, Mr. Hashimoto was born and raised in a small fishing village just outside of Kure, near Hiroshima City, on the island of Honshu. He started out as a fisherman’s apprentice, eventually owned his own boat and then a small fishing fleet. He lost all that to a typhoon and then set up a small boatyard near the village, where they repaired hulls and engines. Hashimoto-san’s village and boatyard were seized by the army in 1928 to accommodate the expansion of the Kure naval arsenal. The villagers were basically thrown out of their homes and livelihoods without compensation, and if they complained, the provincial governor simply put them in jail.

  “When the war began, all of the local fishermen and anyone else connected with the fishing industry were put under the authority of the army military district commander at Hiroshima City. You may not realize this, but Hiroshima is an army city. It contains the Japanese Second General Army headquarters, which controls fourteen divisions in Korea and on Kyushu, as well as the Fifteenth Area Army, which has eight divisions in western Honshu and Shikoku Island. Hashimoto-san was one of thousands of civilians who were suddenly under the control of the Japanese army, not known to be a kind and loving institution. He was captured by the Albacore at the end of ’43 off the coast of Shikoku when they shot up a trawler fleet. He was brought to Oahu a month later. He has relatives back on the mainland, who’d left Japan back in 1928 and settled in California. They, of course, are now in one of the internment camps. He’s fifty-nine years old, a widower, and despises what Tojo and the militarists have done to Japan. He’s been cooperative, and looks forward to the day when America defeats the lunatics and can bring sanity back to Japan.”

  “That’s all very interesting,” Gar said. “But why on earth do you want to put a civilian on board for a mission like this?”

  “Your mission involves a penetration into the Inland Sea of Japan, specifically the straits of Bungo Suido. Hashimoto-san knows those waters like the back of his hand. He’s going to guide you through them. In return, you will at some point put him ashore.”

  Gar thought about that for a moment. Then he turned to the old man. “Do you speak English, Mr. Hashimoto?” he asked.

  Hashimoto looked over at Tanaka for guidance. Tanaka nodded his head once. “Some,” he said, in the familiar polyglot accent of the local Hawaiians. “Got pretty good pidgin now.”

  “Hashimoto-san has been given English lessons in the compound,” Tanaka said. “All the Japanese POWs are learning English. It’s part of, let us say, our conversion program. He understands English better than he speaks it. You’ve heard the Hawaiian locals, Captain. He can communicate as well as they can, once you get used to the dialect. He does, of course, speak fluent Japanese, albeit with a provincial accent. Someone from Tokyo would probably make fun of him. He’s brought along something I think you’ll find to be very useful.”

  He nodded at Hashimoto, who reached under the conference table and produced what looked like a rolled-up poster. He stood up, laid this out on the table, and unrolled it, revealing a hand-drawn nautical chart of the western end of the Inland Sea. He slid the chart across the table toward Gar with a short bow of his head.

  A treasure indeed, Gar thought, as he examined the chart. Even though he couldn’t begin to read the Japanese kanji characters, he realized that a local fisherman would know things about that area that not even the Japanese naval hydrographers would know.

  “Captain Hammond,” Tanaka said, “you need to know that the orders to take Hashimoto-san back to Japan come from the top. It was Admiral Nimitz’s office who asked my boss if there were any POWs here in the Islands who knew Bungo Suido and who’d be willing to help the U.S. Navy.”

  “You raise an interesting question, Mister Tanaka,” Gar said. “The question of divided loyalties.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tanaka said. “I know, especially when you consider how most Japanese army troops react to the notion of surrender. But Hashimoto-san was a civilian, and he has a very different perspective. All I can say is that when I discuss this with him, he speaks fervently about the coming destruction of his homeland and curses the militarists who have betrayed the Japanese people. The people in the Seto provinces—Seto refers to the Inland Sea—are very traditional, and they’re being treated like medieval slaves. You go ashore anywhere along the Inland Sea and you’re going way back in time.”

  “Yet the reason the Albacore destroyed Mister Hashimoto’s trawler fleet was because most fishing boats out there are carrying radios and reporting to the military authorities,” Gar said. “They see a periscope, we lose a boat. Excuse me,” he said, glancing at Forrester. “Another boat.”

  “That’s because they’re required to have a soldier on board any time they go to sea beyond the Seto, even for just a day. The army’s secret police, the Kempeitai, are watching them as much as they are watching the shoreline for intruders and spies. This war has been a disaster for the ordinary people in the countryside, and I think they know it’s going to get worse and that, ultimately, there will be an invasion.”

  “That’s very interesting, Commander Tanaka,” Captain Forrester interjected. “But what the captain’s getting at is, can he trust Mr. Hashimoto not to lead them directly into a minefield?”

  “Well, first of all, he wouldn’t have had any detailed information about minefields. When they’d go out, they’d be led out by a Japanese navy minesweeper, and brought back in the same way. Hashimoto was no longer going to sea once the war started, and only went back to fishing when they confiscated his boatyard. What he
does know is the hydrography of Bungo Suido and its approaches, from both directions. He knows where the deep reefs and ledges are, the deep holes, where mines can and cannot not be planted. Things like that.”

  Hashimoto said something in Japanese to Tanaka.

  Tanaka rattled off some lightning-fast Japanese of his own. Even Gar could tell the difference in their accents. Hashimoto listened carefully, nodded twice, said the word hai, and then asked Tanaka another question.

  “He’s asking why your ship is going into the Seto.”

  Gar glanced over at Forrester for a cue as to what he could reveal, but the chief of staff’s face was a professional blank. Understood.

  “Well, Commander,” Gar said to Tanaka, “I’m supposed to open sealed orders after we leave Guam. All I’ve been told unofficially is that we are to try to penetrate Bungo Suido and, assuming we succeed in getting through, conduct a special mission. Hell, you work at CincPacFleet—perhaps you can enlighten all of us?”

  “Sorry, sir,” Tanaka said.

  “Cannot or may not?”

  “May not, sir. Truth is, I thought I knew what you were going to be tasked to do, but once this passenger business emerged, all of us snuffies on the intel staff were cut out of the loop. Anyone asking questions gets his head bitten off.”

  “Well, then, you answer Mr. Hashimoto’s question, because I sure as hell can’t.”

  Tanaka said something in Japanese to the old man, who grunted.

  “What’d you tell him?” Gar asked.

  “It’s a secret,” Tanaka said.

  Got that right, Gar thought. He got up from the table and went to the windows overlooking the sub-base finger piers. A secret mission within a secret mission. The carrier was the ostensible objective, although he had no idea of how they would manage that. Either way, he wasn’t going to talk about that in front of a Japanese civilian, and a POW to boot. What upset him even more was that all these clever staffies didn’t trust him, the commanding officer, enough to tell him what the hell was going on here. Besides hurting his pride they were possibly compromising the mission: If he knew what they were really doing, he might be able to do some planning that would enhance their chances for success, preferably before they cut all ties with Pearl and went west. Taking a foreign national, an enemy foreign national, along for the most dangerous run of their lives was outrageous. They could get his chart translated if they had to, but there was no reason to let a Japanese, even one who now professed loyalty to the American side, come along.

  He made a decision. “No,” he said. “I won’t do this.” He turned to the chief of staff. “I’m the commanding officer of Dragonfish, and obviously I don’t really know what this whole mission is about. I don’t think you do, either. The intel officer here says he doesn’t know. On top of that, I’m being asked to take a Japanese POW on board on what is an obviously either a highly classified mission or a harebrained idea that nobody wants to own up to. I think you need to get somebody else.”

  Captain Forrester stared at him in shock. “Are you asking to be relieved of command?” he asked finally.

  “I say again: If my superiors don’t trust me enough to tell me what’s really going on here, then yes, I’m asking to be relieved of command.”

  “Think about what you just said, Captain, “Forrester said. “Think hard.”

  Gar laughed out loud. “You think I don’t know what people say about me? That I’m some kind of nutcase because I hunt destroyers? You like the results well enough, as I recall, but I’ve seen the looks from the other COs at the Royal. Great score, man, but damn! Well, here it is: You want me to take the Dragon through Bungo Suido? With a Japanese national as my navigator? Then somebody better tell me why.”

  He signaled to Russ, nodded to Tanaka and Hashimoto as politely as he could, gathered up his cap, and left the conference room. Forrester looked as if he’d just been slapped with a wet fish.

  * * *

  Gar finished his dinner at the Royal that night and asked for a Scotch and some coffee. Needless to say, he’d been thinking all day about what he’d said at the meeting with the chief of staff, and wondering if he’d really screwed up. Rising to command of a fleet submarine in wartime was more than likely going to be the pinnacle of his otherwise pretty undistinguished naval career, as he had explained to Sharon DeVeers. Dragonfish’s reason for being was to destroy the Japanese Empire’s ability to wage war, and that was as simple a proposition as he could imagine. Okay, some of his own tactics at sea were unconventional, but the results spoke for themselves. High-value hulls on the bottom. Destroyers blown to pieces, their crews going into the sea while their own depth charges rearranged their innards. A cruel game, but there it was. And every tin can Gar put down meant one less his boat and all the others had to fear.

  The Japs had come to Pearl Harbor and started all this shit, not the other way around. Remember Pearl Harbor wasn’t just a bond-drive slogan to career naval officers. America was going to kick their asses all the way back to Tokyo, and then burn Tokyo and the rest of Japan to the ground. Old Bull Halsey had had it right from the get-go: Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs. He’d heard Japan was a very pretty country. It would be even prettier once all those bloodthirsty, death-worshiping, samurai-sword-toting bastards had joined their ancestors, preferably disguised as well-done chop suey.

  The waiter brought him his Scotch and coffee as he forced himself to calm down. The chief of staff had been visibly upset today, and Gar had this sneaking suspicion that Forrester might be all too ready to relieve him. For some strange reason, though, he didn’t really expect to be relieved of command. He wondered how Uncle Charlie would have handled his outburst, or whether he’d have done such a thing in the presence of the three-star. Either way, he’d drawn one of those famous lines in the sand. The Dragon was supposed to sail at 1000 tomorrow. Unless somebody in authority came to see him to explain this crazy business before tomorrow morning, he’d shut down the engines, double up the lines, and tell the crew to stand down. If another three-striper with a big grin on his face showed up on the pier as his relief, then so be it. God knows there were enough prospective commanding officers hanging around, secretly hoping for someone like Gar to make a mistake.

  He and West had walked back to the boat after Gar’s sudden declaration. Once back aboard, he asked the exec to join him up on the bow, away from the chain of sweating sailors who were busy passing boxes of stores aboard back aft.

  “Okay,” Gar said. “Say something.”

  “I think I’m not ready to be a CO,” Russ said. “I would not have had the balls to say what you did in there.”

  “Sure you would, XO,” Gar said. “Especially if you were being asked to own this bizarre trip.”

  Russ had stared down at the water under the pier for a long moment. “Thing is…”

  “Yeah?”

  “The thing is, we were always taught not to question the orders of our lawful superiors, because there would be times when they knew something we did not or could not know. I’m just wondering…”

  He had him there, Gar realized. “Yeah, me, too, of course,” he said. “But the whole deal goes off the tracks when you realize your own bosses don’t know what the hell’s going on. I think Captain Forrester’s as much in the dark as we are, and that means Uncle Charlie is, too. Especially when it comes to putting all our asses on the line while we depend on some old Jap guy to act as some kind of Injun guide. Remember Custer?”

  “As I remember,” the exec pointed out delicately, “Custer ignored what his Injun guides were telling him about the lebenty-million Sioux who were right over the next hill.”

  “Details, XO,” Gar said with a snort. “I’m the CO, and if I have to trust them, then they have to trust me.”

  “Yes, sir,” the exec had said, even as Gar began to realize that now it was the exec who was probably indulging him, the captain. What he was really saying was, since when did a three-star have to explain his orders to a three-striper? Y
es, they knew the one objective, but Gar still had this niggling suspicion that there was a whole lot more to this business of putting an elderly Japanese man ashore in the Inland Sea. Forrester had shown him the pictures of this mysterious carrier, but then he’d ducked all of Gar’s questions about how they were even supposed to get at it.

  That old refrain kept ringing in Gar’s ears: WTF, over?

  He became aware of a small commotion in the dining room behind him, the sound of chairs moving and people standing up, and then a voice behind him asked, “Are you Commander Hammond?”

  Gar looked up, then hurriedly pushed back his own chair and stood up at rigid attention. “Admiral Nimitz?”

  “May I join you, sir?”

  “Yes, sir, uh, yes, of course, sir.”

  Nimitz sat down, waited one beat, and then indicated that he wanted Gar to sit down as well. Gar pulled his chair back under himself and sat down at semiattention. Nimitz’s face looked like it had been carved out of stone. Gar had seen pictures and thought them posed. Not so. Nimitz fixed those famous ice blue eyes on Gar for a long moment.

  “I am told,” he said finally, “that you want to know why we want you to go into Bungo Suido with the help of a Japanese POW.”

  Gar took a deep breath. It was one thing to posture in front of the SubPac chief of staff. It was an entirely different proposition to defy Admiral Chester Nimitz, face-to-face, but—what the hell, he thought. “Yes, sir, I do. To go into Bungo Suido is to step across the bones of five submarines. So, yes, sir, I do want to know why.”

  Nimitz nodded. “Because I say so,” he said quietly.

  Gar blinked. That was clear enough. “Yes, sir.”

  “I am responsible for the execution of our entire war effort in the Pacific Ocean area. Our objective remains the total and utter destruction of the Japanese war machine, and the total and utter destruction of the Japanese nation’s will to conduct this war.”