Blood Red Sun

by Mertz, Stephen

  “We cannot change the course of destiny,” said the Baron. “But we shall give history cause to remember who we were and what we stood for. This will be the legacy of Bushido.”

  From Yokohama north through Kawasaki and Tokyo, where the main highway followed the contours of the Bay and cut east, the passing scene was one of unending devastation.

  When the remains of Tokyo were behind them and the country finally opened up, Mischkie gave the jeep more gas on the open stretch of highway. The breeze cooled their sweat.

  There was not a trace of an American presence on the streets and roads they traveled. Pedestrians stared enigmatically at the jeep traveling past with the three American soldiers and a young Japanese woman aboard.

  At one point Mischkie commented, “This Emperor of yours sure knows how to lay down the law. A month ago these people would have chopped us to hamburger.”

  Hanklin swung around in his seat to regard Keiko.

  “How about it, miss? You folks don’t really buy that hogwash about your Emperor being descended from a sun goddess, do you?”

  “Why do you find that so difficult to believe?” she asked. The question caught Hanklin off guard.

  “Uh, I dunno, just sounds kind of silly, is all.”

  “Is not much of western civilization built upon the concept that your lord once walked this Earth, and was he not a son of God?”

  “Uh …” was as far as Hanklin got, and the sentence trailed off.

  Mischkie was grinning widely. “She’s got you there, Tex.”

  Hanklin studied her. “Uh, yeah, I reckon she does at that.”

  That concluded the conversation for awhile, until they were approaching Chiba, some ten miles along where the map detailed how the highway would drop south on the eastern shore of the Bay.

  The countryside became more hilly, more forested, the further south they traveled.

  Except for the brief exchange with Hanklin, Keiko spoke only to give occasional directions. She sat staring straight ahead as she had since leaving the hotel, her dark tendrils of hair loosened by the wind. Ballard thought again that she was a beautiful woman.

  “I have a question, Keiko.”

  “I will tell you what you need to know when we arrive at our destination.”

  “I’m not talking about where we’re going, I’m talking about where we’ve been. Why did you show up at the hotel last night to warn us about those ninja assassins?”

  “Why should my motives concern you?”

  “I’m curious. I know why you said you did it, for your country, for peace. That took great courage. You must hate and fear us. I know about your motives. I’m wondering where that courage came from.”

  “It is true, I should hate you. I should hate all Americans for the suffering I have seen, the suffering wrought by your bombs.”

  “Why don’t you hate us?”

  “Because I understand in my heart that what happened to us in the end is our fault, no one else’s.”

  Mischkie overheard this. He called back over his shoulder to her as he drove.

  “You still feel that way after we dropped those atom bombs on your people?”

  “I know about Bataan,” she said, “and Pearl Harbor, and the atrocities committed by our military throughout this part of the world. America lost so many men. Is it to be wondered that your hearts would be filled with anger and vengeance? You must remember, I have lived in America. I know you to be a coarse but amiable race, not warlike by nature.”

  “The last four years have changed that plenty, gal,” Hanklin put in. “These days we’re warlike as hell.”

  “And, I know this,” she concluded. “If our military leaders had such a weapon, they would have certainly used it against you.”

  “You’re a honey, all right.” Mischkie admired her in his rear-view mirror. “I sure as hell hope you aren’t leading us into a double-cross, sister.”

  She looked at Ballard again, briefly.

  “You do not think it is a trap, or you would not be letting me take you like this, just the three of you.”

  “We’re only supposed to reconnoiter,” Ballard told her.

  “We’ll run for it if we have to.”

  “As you say, Sergeant.”

  Mischkie grinned. “Don’t believe that one, huh, sweetheart?”

  “I saw Sergeant Ballard in action last night,” she said. “I expect you men to be of the same caliber. I think you will be the ones to deal with what I will show you.”

  “Then why not tell us where the hell we’re heading?”

  Hanklin demanded irritably.

  Ballard said to Keiko, “You’re giving yourself leeway to change your mind if you decide to.”

  “Perhaps.”

  The reply was softly spoken.

  She lapsed back into silence.

  Chiba was more agricultural than industrial and had been spared the heavy bombing, but signs of suffering and of a conflict lost were everywhere. The streets in town were clogged with refugees, farmers, and demobilized soldiers. Pantalooned housewives scrounged for food, hunger and desperation in their eyes. Many of them did not even look up as the jeep drove past.

  At the southern tip of town, they passed a small square where a crowd of ten or twelve people could be seen shouting at each other amid much waving of fists and some clubs. A teenage boy crouched fearfully, shielded by two people who must have been his parents. A man raging, on the verge of violence, was being restrained by those near him from lashing out at the teenager. Half of the crowd shouted encouragement, the other half pleaded for the boy to be spared.

  Keiko said sharply, “Please, you must stop. There is trouble.”

  “It ain’t our trouble, lady,” said Hanklin.

  She reached over, touched a hand to Ballard’s left hand, placing her palm upon the back of his hand.

  “Please stop,” she pleaded emphatically. “They will kill the boy. This sort of thing has been happening all over Japan! We must stop it.”

  “Pull over,” Ballard told Mischkie.

  The jeep braked to a stop practically unnoticed by the small mob. Keiko leaped to the ground. She strode toward the center of the excitement.

  Ballard did not take his eyes off her. He felt Hanklin and Mischkie glancing at him inquiringly.

  “This could be her changing her mind,” said Mischkie. “Think she’s going to try and take a run-out powder?”

  “That, or it’s a trap,” said Ballard, a finger curled around the trigger of his M-1. “Or it’s the real thing.”

  “Why’d you have me stop, Sarge?” Mischkie wanted to know.

  “Curiosity. Let’s see what happens.”

  Keiko stepped between the two factions, striding over to stand directly between the parents shielding their boy and those restraining the man inciting the others to join him in doing the boy harm. The people seemed to defer to something in her bearing, or perhaps, thought Ballard, they were responding to whatever she was saying as she addressed the two factions in her language, her delivery precisely cadenced, her tone reasoning and persuasive.

  Hanklin said, “Sounds like she’s trying to talk some sense into their fool heads.”

  “She’s an aristocrat,” Ballard said, “and they know it.”

  “She ain’t the hoi polloi, that’s for damn sure.”

  “She’s got to be tied in with someone big,” Mischkie put in. “You’re right, Sarge. That little girlie is upper crust all the way.”

  Having begun by ordering back those who would harm the cowering teenager, before long Keiko was moderating some sort of compromise between the two factions.

  There was a general backing down on both sides. Finally, although continuing to glower angrily at the boy, those who wanted to assault him swung about and walked away, leaving the child and his parents and those with them to disperse in other directions.

  Keiko returned to the jeep. She rejoined Ballard in the back seat.

  “They said the boy stole a loaf of bread,�
�� she explained. “In these times, that is the worst crime. They wanted to publicly whip the child. They would have killed him. The boy admitted stealing the bread for his family. It happened only today. The parents did not know. They promised to return the loaf of bread.”

  Ballard leaned over and tapped Mischkie on the shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They drove on.

  “Do I stay on the highway south?” Mischkie asked.

  “This highway south, yes.”

  Hanklin leaned around to look her way.

  “That was good work back there, miss. And we’re much obliged you didn’t try running out on us.”

  “Yeah,” Mischkie nodded. “Would have been a shame to have to shoot you just when we were getting to like you.”

  Ballard grunted. “Excuse him,” he advised Keiko. “That’s what passes for humor in America. Mischkie sometimes thinks he’s Bob Hope.”

  “I understand American humor,” she said.

  “Well, now you’re talking,” Hanklin grinned. “Any gal with a sense of humor is okey-dokey with old Tex, yes sir.”

  “I said I understand American humor,” she deadpanned. “I did not say I appreciate it.”

  “Ouch.” Hanklin winced. He turned around to continue riding with eyes front.

  “That must have been quite a speech you gave them back there,” Ballard said. “You inspired them. I could see that. What did you say?”

  “May I ask why you should want to know?”

  “Same reason I had Mischkie stop when you asked us to. Curiosity.”

  “I told them that we Japanese must not let feelings of defeat and dishonor turn us against each other. I told them that bad luck and pain are the masters and we must be amenable to their pleasure. We must welcome the new world opening before us and work to make it a better world and not devour ourselves, as almost happened back there.”

  “You sound more liberated than defeated.”

  “We are liberated. That is what I tried to make those people understand. Peace will lift from us the shackles of military oppression. The Japanese have in their hearts long detested servitude to the military which has so abused their faith.”

  “You’re very eloquent. You’re no ordinary woman, are you, Keiko? We saw that back there, too.”

  “My social class should have no effect on how you see me.” A brief, self-conscious smile flickered across her face that Ballard found very easy on the eyes. “You see,” she said, “there are some things about your country of which I do approve. Japan will return to being a democracy again one day soon.”

  “Japan is where you feel you belong, isn’t it?”

  An American fighter plane soared by some three thousand feet overhead, a speeding blur of sound against the stark blue of the sky. Her eyes followed the plane.

  “My heart is up there,” she said. She returned her gaze to his. “Why do you ask me these questions?”

  If Mischkie or Hanklin overheard their conversation above the sounds of the open jeep, they gave no indication, for which Ballard was profoundly grateful.

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing. I’m not sure.”

  Again the briefest of smiles.

  “You are an honest man, John Ballard. That is good. And what about you? Where do you belong? Is there someone waiting for you back in America?”

  Hesitation.

  He thought of the dreams. He thought about Carla and of how she died …

  “I have no one,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The vehicle appeared as nothing more than .a speck in the distance where the road cut into view at the valley’s far end.

  Corporal Ugaki became aware that it was not Japanese—but American military!—only after long minutes of tracking it carefully through his binoculars. He knew that if he did not report the sighting, and word of it reached Tanaka, then Tanaka might quite possibly do him severe harm, perhaps kill him.

  He handed the binoculars to Tanaka and pointed.

  “Sergeant, look there. Coming down the road, about one half kilometer.”

  Tanaka irritably swiped at a bug buzzing around his meaty, perspiring face and rested his elbows for support on a boulder, taking his time to focus and center the binoculars. He snorted like the bull he always reminded Ugaki of.

  “The arrogance of those barbarians!”

  A hundred meters behind them, three open, armored vehicles, each with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on its back, were parked, well removed from view of the road. Eight men in soiled army uniforms lounged about idly in the shade. They had spent the afternoon here with nothing to do, not knowing where to go, the desperation quietly building with the ache of hunger in their bellies.

  Ugaki and Tanaka stood atop a pine-wooded hill that overlooked the road which passed through a village near where men, women and children worked sparse fields baking beneath the sun.

  “What shall we do, Sergeant?” Ugaki inquired.

  “What do you think we shall do? We attack!” Sergeant Tanaka whirled, stalking back toward the vehicles. “Action at last, men!”

  Rikihei Ugaki was born and raised in a nearby village. He had often wished, patrolling these mountainsides as a member of Sergeant Tanaka’s platoon, that he was still a youngster, not yet grown into a world where young men were sent to die for their Emperor.

  They had demobilized ten days earlier. The others in the platoon had returned home. Ugaki had no home to return to. Every member of his family had perished in the American bombing raids on Tokyo, and it was the same with the other men who stayed on.

  They had managed to hold onto these vehicles and survive by living on the charity of the people. They had thus far victimized no one, but the inactivity, the rootlessness, the sleeping on the hard ground with an empty stomach, had begun to eat away at nerves and values. Sergeant Tanaka particularly had grown more irritable by the day.

  Ugaki knew this could not go on. They were lost souls. He wished he had not seen the American vehicle approaching. He could not tell how the others felt.

  They were rousing themselves. They had deserted without turning in their weapons. Each man toted a rifle and wore extra ammunition belts.

  Ugaki caught up with Tanaka and said, in front of the others, “But, Sergeant, there are civilians down in those fields, women and children.”

  “We are Japanese, we are soldiers,” Tanaka snarled. He waved an arm in the direction of the Americans. “There is the object of our humiliation and defeat. We outnumber them, we have more vehicles. We will surround them and they shall know our vengeance. It is unfortunate about the civilians. The fortunes of war.”

  Ugaki saw the men responding to the heat of Tanaka’s words, muttering assent amongst themselves.

  “But the war is over,” he told them. “We are no longer soldiers. It would be murder!”

  Tanaka’s right arm lashed out and delivered Ugaki a backhanded slap.

  Ugaki stumbled off his feet under the power of the blow.

  “You will obey my orders.” Tanaka’s hand rested on the butt of a pistol holstered at his waist. He looked from face to face of those before him. “Is there anyone else who does not want to make quick work of those barbarians?”

  No one said anything. They avoided Ugaki’s eyes.

  “Good.” Tanaka looked at one of the men, a team leader before demobilization. “You will take these three and come in on the Americans from this side along the road. Follow that foot path down there as best you can.”

  He looked at another. “You will take these men. Follow my vehicle. When we reach the road, cut across and follow the river on the other side. I will meet them head-on. We will catch them in three lines of fire. Quickly now, before we lose our chance. Banzai!”

  The cry was answered in kind. The men ran to board their vehicles.

  Ugaki rose and brushed himself off. He retrieved his rifle. Tanaka stared at him from where he stood at the rear of the lead vehicle. His hand had not left the butt of his p
istol.

  “Corporal, you will join in avenging your fallen comrades and the good name of Japan.”

  Ugaki had spent the last two years living with these men, obeying Tanaka’s orders.

  He boarded Tanaka’s vehicle, seating himself behind the steering wheel, switching on the ignition key.

  Tanaka made a motion with his arm and they moved out.

  Ballard looked up from the map.

  “This road you’ve got us on only goes as far as Cape Nojimba,” he told Keiko. “That’s the end of the line. The peninsula ends at Cape Nojimba. It’s been a fun ride but I’m afraid the polite conversation is over. Where are you taking us?”

  They were entering a small village of thatched-roof farmhouses clustered next to a running stream. The wooded slopes on either side of the valley along this stretch were stair-stepped with narrow terraced fields. In one such field on their right, a dozen men, women, and teenagers worked with primitive tools.

  Set slightly apart from them, a group of young children, some of them no more than toddlers, played in the sunshine.

  There had been no sign of any concentrated Japanese military presence since leaving Yokohama. The police had been visible only in the larger towns. The scores of refugees and demobilized soldiers had thinned away below Chiba until, this far south, the jeep pretty much had the road to itself.

  “Intelligence reports claim there’s a large air base outside Tateyama,” Mischkie said over his shoulder as he drove.

  “That is not where I am taking you,” Keiko said. “You were correct, Sergeant Ballard, when you suggested that I was delaying telling you what I knew because I continued to be uncertain of my feelings and did not wish to commit myself, in the event I changed my mind.”

  “That wasn’t too hard to figure out. Have you changed your mind?”

  “I have not. I cannot. Everything you said at the hotel about them not giving up was true. They are not sane. I must realize this. They will try again and again to kill General MacArthur until they succeed, unless you stop them.”

  “Who are we talking about?”

  “I speak of my uncle.”

  “What’s his name and where do we find him?”