Blood Red Sun

by Mertz, Stephen

  As they walked past the bonfire, Okada lighted a cigarette. “I wonder if that is the funeral pyre for the Imperial Japanese Army. Cigarette, Major?”

  “Thank you, no.”

  “Of course, I forgot.” Okada smiled, or was it a smirk? “Major Hatanaka, the pure of heart, the pure of spirit, who lives only for duty and Emperor.”

  “As do we all. And I have done some checking on you, Major Okada. Before the war you were associated with any number of questionable activities in the Tokyo and Yokohama underworld. You, Major, were a gangster.”

  “Do not be insolent with me.” The ice in Okada’s eyes glittered. “If your plans for this night succeed, Hatanaka, I will be very much a part of things.”

  “We will succeed.”

  “For now, Major, I should like you to bring me up-to-date on the situation here,” Okada continued.

  “Some would say that I’m crazy, discussing this with an officer of the Kempeitai. It is Baron Tamura I accommodate, not you. I want that understood between us.”

  “Your report.”

  “You must have known of the meeting of staff officers General Anami called just now in the bomb shelter, or you would not have been waiting for me.”

  Okada looked sideways at Hatanaka as they walked. “You are the war minister’s protégé. His star pupil. You said last night you were sure he would lead the army in a last battle for the homeland.”

  “His mind is changed. General Anami has considered the necessity of a coup to remove the traitors from around the Emperor, to insist on more favorable terms, but since the War Council met this morning with His Majesty, I regret to say that General Anami now regards those of us who still feel that way as traitors. He told us in the meeting that since the Emperor has directly expressed his decision on two separate occasions, we have no choice but to obey. He knows there are those among his staff who feel as I do but he did not single us out. He said only that anyone who disagreed would have to do so over his dead body.”

  “Was that all?”

  “He urged us not to commit seppuku.”

  “Madness. Where would the army be with all of its officers committing hari-kari?”

  “You are not samurai. You cannot understand. They wish to apologize to their Emperor for their defeat.”

  “You are not ready to commit seppuku just yet, are you, Major? They would die in apology to His Majesty. Tonight, you intend to defy him.”

  “His Majesty’s decision to surrender was a mistaken and ill-advised judgment,” said Hatanaka. “We best serve the Emperor by disobeying him, and the state by rebelling against it. We are not revolutionists. The revolutionists are the men who are forcing Japan to surrender. Japan cannot surrender! It is not part of our national policy. We are only trying to make sure that the old, natural Japan survives. We’re not revolutionists; we’re traditionalists.”

  Okada cast a glance about them. “Major, please. We are with you, you know that.”

  “I wish you could tell me how Baron Tamura will assist us. I am gratified he approves of what we endeavor to do and that he has approached us through you, but can you not inform me more fully—”

  “I cannot,” Okada interrupted, “but know this. The army command is bewildered by what is happening, just like the men. They don’t know what to do. This will be used in your favor.”

  “Tonight our force will occupy the Imperial Household Ministry,” Hatanaka said fervently. “The Palace will be cut off from all outside contact. Liaison with the Imperial Guards Division has already been established. Necessary preparations have begun. If just a few officers start an uprising, the whole army will follow. All efforts will be concentrated on helping the Emperor to preserve Japan, not destroy it. We shall not dishonor our Imperial Majesty, nor ourselves.”

  They completed a walk around the War Ministry.

  “I will inform the Baron,” Okada said. “Know, Major Hatanaka, that you are not alone.”

  Chapter Five

  Keiko spent that afternoon writing in her journal, trying to understand her mind and her feelings. Her entries in the journal had become increasingly sporadic during her years as a typist at the war ministry. The daily grind there provided little to write about and by the end of the day, which is when she preferred to write, she would be too tired after the twelve-or thirteen-hour days to keep her eyes open. Weeks at a time would pass without her bothering to make an entry.

  It had not been so this past week.

  After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the pronounced change of the atmosphere in the corridors and offices of the ministry had compelled her to note in her journal the pervading sense of despair she sensed growing day by day.

  Her uncle had excused himself and disappeared into his study after their return to the castle. She understood now that her “position” here was in fact nothing but a charitable act on his part. He was doting on her, as he always had. To the Baron, her independence was a show of womanly conceit to be humored.

  The silence between them after she had spoken her mind in the car had not been resolved. She wrote about this. She had been born with a compulsion to set her thoughts down on paper which had ultimately led to her study of journalism at UCLA. But as she now recounted and explored on paper the feelings which had prompted her to speak her mind to the Baron, she became restless with her inability to define her feelings or to express them even to herself.

  The Baron emerged from his office to dine with her, as was his custom when she was home. Dinner was a subdued affair. They barely spoke across a table laid out with lacquered boxes of rice and an oval dish bearing lobster, and for long stretches the only sound in the spacious, high-ceilinged, dining room was the delicate shuffle of the servant’s slippers across the marble floor.

  After dinner they adjourned to the library, where windows offered a view of a molten orange sun lowering to spread fiery gold across the ocean. She sat, as she usually did, on the couch facing the windows and nursed a long-stemmed glass of white wine.

  The Baron sat at his small writing table, as was his after-dinner custom, making an entry in his journal kept in classic kanji pictographs, the script of his samurai ancestors, using a fine-bristled brush and a black ink cake.

  They generally spent this time together, she usually reading from one of the countless leather-bound books which covered two of the walls from floor to ceiling. But this night she sat and stared at the scene of ocean and setting sun, and when night began to move across the sky she realized she had lost track of time.

  The Baron stood next to her, beside the couch, gazing out at the ocean which had taken on the appearance of shiny black glass.

  “I overheard the servants this afternoon,” she said. “They were talking about the leaflets the Americans dropped this morning. I only want you to know that I know what those leaflets said.”

  “My heart weeps when I contemplate what is happening.” He nodded to his journal on the nearby table. “I was writing of my sorrow. I know I have seemed distant to you lately, Keiko. You must understand.”

  “And I would implore you to understand me. I have lost every one of my friends to the bombings.”

  His delicately boned hands were balled into fists. “They hoped to strangle Japan. It has been their intent since their Commodore Perry sailed his gunships into Tokyo Bay to force upon us the “blessings” of western civilization a century ago. They will strangle Japan if we allow them to, if we surrender, and it will be worse for us than it could ever have been before, after what we have inflicted upon them.”

  “And yet, Uncle, if the official decision is to fight on, will not Japan be caught up in a bloody whirlwind? If there is an invasion, it is said the American troops will rape every woman they find after they have slain the men and children. I know it is a rare privilege you allow me, since a woman does not speak her mind in Japan. You allow me to do so freely. I do not squander the privilege. This matters to me.”

  She saw in his eyes a glint of affection. He rested a hand on her should
er.

  “The blood of the samurai does flow in your veins, child. I, nor any force I could imagine, will ever alter that.”

  A servant stepped in. “The first of the guests is arriving.” Baron Tamura dismissed the servant with a nod.

  “I must take my leave, Keiko.”

  “I did not realize you were expecting company.” She indicated the casual blouse and slacks she wore. “I’ll slip into something more presentable.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, my dear. These are associates of mine. There is no need for you to greet them as they arrive. The national situation is in a state of confusion at the moment, as you can well appreciate. I have been asked to consider some matters and offer my advice, nothing more.” He held her hand in his and patted it paternally. His touch was icy. “I will have them escorted directly to my study as they arrive. Nothing to trouble yourself about.”

  “As you say, Uncle.”

  She stood there for a moment after he left until several seconds passed, then she went to the library door and edged it open ever so slightly until she could see the man her uncle approached in the foyer.

  She recognized him from her job at the ministry. Major Okada, of the Kempeitai; the barrel-chested man whose bulk beneath the military uniform was muscle, not fat. He was bald headed. His extremely thick glasses reflected the lights of the foyer.

  She realized with a little shock that from where Major Okada stood, he was looking directly over the Baron’s shoulder at her. His pockmarked face creased into a smile dominated by a gold tooth in the center.

  It was too late to close the door and pretend she did not see him. She opened the door as if it had been her intention all along.

  Okada and the Baron exchanged bows. Okada said something Keiko could not hear. Her uncle turned to see her standing there for the first time. He frowned. Okada, not seeing the frown, approached her.

  “Ah, my dear Keiko. The corridors of the war ministry have been drab without your charming presence.”

  She knew him only from passing him in those corridors. Whenever he had looked at her, she had felt like rushing away somewhere to bathe.

  The Baron joined them. Keiko saw no choice but to manufacture a smile for Okada. “Major.” She extended a hand which he took and kissed with a gallant bow. The brush of his lips felt like the touch of a reptile.

  He looked up at her without straightening from his bow and spoke to her along her arm. “It is always a distinct pleasure to encounter one who so embodies the grace and charm and beauty of Japanese womanhood.” He had foul breath.

  “Thank you, Major. You flatter me.”

  “I speak only the truth.”

  He straightened but did not release her hand until the Baron said, “Major, the others will be arriving soon. I suggest we await them in my office upstairs. You will excuse us, Keiko.”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course,” Okada repeated. “Charmed, my dear, I’m sure.”

  Okada and the Baron withdrew to the wide stairway to the second level.

  The unclean feeling of Okada’s touch made her skin crawl. She stepped back into the library, closing the door.

  A vehicle crunched to a stop on the driveway outside, beyond the blackout curtains. She hurried to part the curtains slightly, to peer out upon the area beneath the porte-cochere where a military driver was holding open the back door of a staff car. A passenger stepped from the tonneau and walked briskly toward the front entrance, where the illumination came from, beyond Keiko’s line of vision. From that brief glimpse she recognized this man also, again not personally but, as with Okada, from passing him in the corridors of the war ministry.

  It was General Nagano of the Eastern Army, which was charged with the defense of Tokyo and the whole Kanto Plain. Nagano was a tall, thin man with cadaverous features.

  Keiko let the curtain drop back into place. After standing there long enough for the general to be shown upstairs to the Baron’s study, she left the library. She could not think of books and reading.

  She proceeded up the stairway to her room, at the opposite end of the hall from her uncle’s study. Alone in the hall, she could detect no sound of voices from behind the closed door of her uncle’s office. She continued on into her suite of rooms, which consisted of a sitting room, a bedroom, and a bath.

  The surf hammered from far below beyond an open window. Normally she reveled in the coziness of this place, in the knowledge that it was her own place, her own corner of the world, but this night an edginess gnawed at her.

  Another vehicle approached outside. She went to her window to look and caught a glimpse of a military sedan, a twin to the one General Nagano had arrived in. She lost sight of the vehicle as it pulled around the front.

  Three visitors.

  She paced as time passed. No more visitors arrived. The group was complete.

  Not knowing what was being said behind that door was tearing her apart, and she found herself considering doing something she had never done before.

  When she did make up her mind after some twenty more minutes of pacing, she did not hesitate. Something was wrong. She sensed this. She knew it. Her conversations with her uncle this day about the end of the war weighed heavily on her mind, troubled her, and now three military men had come to the castle who had never come here before.

  She went to the window and removed the screen. Leaning it against the wall she grabbed both sides of the window ledge and hoisted herself onto the ledge that ran beneath her window.

  The breeze played with errant strands of her hair, and she remembered the times she had done this long ago, in the daylight, when she was a child growing up alone with no friends to play with, only her books and her daydreams and her own personal castle to explore. She had delighted in discovering places where the tutors would never find her, where they would never even think of looking. But she had never spied on her uncle before.

  Bracing her palms on the wall to maintain her balance, she carefully sidestepped her way along the ledge toward a break in the wall where a narrow slanting section of roof allowed easy access from the ledge, onto the old battlements.

  The pounding surf sounded ominous in the blackness below. The tangy sea air enveloped her. This had been a place where a rebellious teenager could sit for hours and gaze out across the sea, thinking and dreaming.

  She hesitated, feeling she should turn back, not do this. Keiko had never before violated her uncle’s privacy in any way. She felt like a common burglar. But she could not make herself turn back.

  She dashed diagonally across the flat portion of the castle roof to a point directly opposite. She stepped over the parapet, working her way along the ledge there, toward the window of her uncle’s study. There were lights below, enough illumination so that anyone looking directly up at her would see her. She tried not to think about that.

  A breeze picked up from the ocean, cool against the sheen of perspiration coating her face. Her heart hammered wildly against her rib cage. Within a few steps of the open window, she heard Major Okada’s voice.

  He was saying, as if concluding a report, “Major Hatanaka knows nothing beyond what he needs to know. I am positive of it.”

  “Excellent,” another voice said. “If Major Hatanaka’s coup is a success, then we will strike, and total victory will be ours.”

  “The Emperor is nothing more than a feeble-minded puppet in the hands of—” a third began.

  “Silence.” Baron Tamura’s command cracked like a pistol shot. “There will be no such talk about His Majesty. Our Emperor is misguided, no more. At any other time, it could be tolerated.”

  One of the others, not Okada, said, “Japan must fight. We have the men and the will. Why should we surrender? We still have a huge army on the Chinese mainland. We hold 350,000 allied prisoners of war. Am I not right, Colonel Hayashi?”

  Keiko knew this name also, though only by reputation. Hayashi commanded a squadron attached to the 302nd Air Force. His name was often prominently fe
atured in war bulletins.

  “Considerable air strength is being kept in reserve against invasion,” Hayashi replied. “The deficiency lies in pilots and fuel.”

  “General Nagano assures us that a large and efficient land force remains in Japan,” came the Baron’s voice. “But with all that said, we have no alternative right now but to wait for news of the success or failure of Major Hatanaka’s coup.”

  “We should commit all of our forces at once,” Major Okada said. “We are being overly cautious.”

  “We cannot afford to underestimate the consequences of tipping our hand too soon,” said the Baron. “Not everyone in Japan shares our views.”

  He lowered his voice. Keiko, unable to hear what was being said, carefully sidestepped closer to the window. She did not see the chunk of loose brick that her toe nudged from the ledge, but she heard the sound it made when it rattled upon the overhang of the front entrance below.

  “What was that?” Okada snarled from inside her uncle’s office.

  She felt herself rooted to that spot on the ledge. She could never make it back along the ledge and out of sight to anyone leaning out of that window without endangering her own safety, chancing a fall from the ledge. Indecision rooted her there, indecision and rising panic.

  “I’ll see what it is.” The Baron’s voice.

  His face appeared at the open window and he looked first to the left, not seeing anything, then to his right.

  Directly at her.

  Chapter Six

  They plodded silently with rifles ready through the jungle. The trail climbed and dipped, rugged and mountainous.

  Hanklin relinquished point to two of the Filipinos, introduced by Ramone as Castro and Valera, who slashed with their bolos at vines and jungle growth across the trail which tapered off to almost nothing at times and would seem to end. Castro and Valera would hatchet their way through without slowing, with the familiar, methodical skill of men who spent their lives in this jungle. Traces of the trail would reappear, and on they trudged, Ballard and Ramone behind the point men, followed by Mischkie, Evita Ramone, and Hanklin bringing up the rear.