“Can you hear me, Commander?”
James nodded.
“We have this fever under control; you’ll pull through okay.” He caught an exchange of glances between the doctor and the corpsman. Even in the haze, he knew that look. How many times over Davy’s bedside had he seen those glances, Davy learning to read it as well, the reassurances, even as the leukemia destroyed him?
“Straight,” James whispered.
“What?”
“Straight answer, no bull, straight answer,” was all he could say.
The doctor nodded. “You’re one hell of a sick man, Commander. You swallowed half that damn river and have pneumonia, but I think you’ll pull through.”
“Know that. My hand?”
The doctor hesitated for a second. “Gangrene was setting in with all that filth. It was take the hand, sir, or you’d die. It was pretty well shattered anyhow. I’m sorry, sir.”
James nodded, not saying anything, drifting.
“You’re going home, Commander. I’m giving it to you straight like you want. Retirement, sir, but a Purple Heart; they’ll promote you. Where you from?”
“Hawaii.”
The doctor patted him lightly on the shoulder. “You’ve got your life ahead of you, sir.”
“Next one’s prepped.”
The doctor looked up, nodded. “Coming.”
“Goddamn slants, those Japs,” the doctor said.
James looked up at him, not saying anything. My wife is half-Japanese, he wanted to reply, but then remembered the red “meatballs,” as the men had taken to calling the rising sun painted on the wings of their planes.
“Bastards,” was all he could whisper as the morphine caused him to drift off. The doctor turned to his next patient, a chief petty officer, an eye gone, the infected wound--nearly all of them infected due to the river water--still under a rough bandage, the man sitting up, waiting stoically for what was to come.
American Embassy, Tokyo: Christmas Eve 1937
“Please admit him,” Ambassador Joseph Grew said to the staffer at the door to his office.
Grew debated for a moment whether he should remain behind his desk but elected to stand. He knew the intent of the message that was about to be delivered; a slight gesture of standing rather than remaining seated was in order.
If ever there was a man who looked to be the stereotype of a senior American diplomat, it was Joseph Grew. Born of a patrician Boston family, tall, gray-haired, sharp-angled distinguished features, he had been a schoolmate of the president at both Groton and Harvard, though his rise to his current posting as Ambassador to Japan had nothing to do with his lifelong friendship with the president.
After graduating from Harvard he had traveled the Far East, a grand tour for a member of the elite pre-World War I social set before settling and then authoring the obligatory book, Sport and Travel in the Far East, which had been moderately successful and was a favorite of yet another traveler and hunter, Teddy Roosevelt, who had sent him a fan letter. Joining the diplomatic service, he had served in Denmark, Switzerland, and Turkey until finally achieving a long-sought- after posting, as Ambassador to the Court of the Emperor of Japan, assigned by another presidential friend, Herbert Hoover. It was an assignment he felt was the capstone of his career. He and his wife loved the country, admired the people, their industrious nature, which in some ways was so American, and the beauty of the country. Having first traveled there nearly thirty years earlier, he was awed by the Westernizing transformation that had taken place in little more than a generation . . .railroads, factories, shipyards, even an increasing number of privately owned automobiles of Japanese make. Close friendships had been formed on that first trip and more now across his last five years of service. He was well liked by those both Oriental and Occidental, who interacted with him. Invitations to his parties and receptions, official and unofficial, were highly sought after. One night his parties might feature the performance of a famed No play, the next one, a showing of the latest Hollywood musical in the embassy’s highly prized and envied theater room, which even had a modem 35-millimeter projector.
Above all else, he had a deep empathy for the Japanese, a genuine attachment that was obvious, and a profound desire to smooth over troubled times and eventually cement a lasting friendship.
In spite of the aggression of the Japanese army, acting on its own authority to seize Manchuria in 1931, he at first tried to rationalize it as a rogue group of the military exceeding authority, and what had happened was now an accomplished fact that it was futile to attempt to change.
Though he would never voice it publicly, he felt analogies could be drawn to Andrew Jackson as a rogue military leader, all but stealing Florida, and later, in a base, cruel act, taking the land of the Indians in the Old South. Beyond that there were so many other such actions during the Mexican War. Beyond those issues, he did see a Japanese presence in Manchuria as preferable to that of Stalin and his henchmen. The Japan he had returned to in 1932 was bursting at the seams, but at a hard price, for the island was a net importer of nearly every essential item required for industrialization, and for just simple survival as well. Like England it could no longer feed itself without massive imports. Manchuria, it was claimed as justification, was a depopulated land cruelly ruled by a tin-pot Chinese warlord. Japanese officials, many of whom had traveled in America, tried to draw the analogy to the American West of sixty years past. Manchuria would be a place for settlers to pour into, for resources to be exploited, the land to be civilized and made prosperous.
Grew hoped this would be the limits of the desires of the Japanese military, and for five years those he worked with claimed that Manchuria was indeed the end of their “need for growth.”
That was now unraveling. First the absurd but dangerous attempted army coup of the previous year, which did have the effect of shaking up the government, bringing in officials who were increasingly “hard line” about the “destined role” of Japan, including the current foreign minister, Koki Hirota, who for a brief period after the army coup had been prime minister with the army’s approval.
In the year after the coup, the army had begun shifting an increasing number of troops to Manchuria, Manchukuo as they now called it, claiming a need for security both against Chinese banditry and Soviet threats.
The tension had finally exploded early in July in Peking at the ancient, famed Marco Polo Bridge, so named because the Italian traveler had described its splendors in his writings. A Japanese garrison was camped at one end of the bridge, Chinese Nationalist troops at the other. The garrison was not unlike the small outposts of the U.S. Marines, British troops and Royal Marines, other European forces stationed in key locations around China, supposedly there to react, if needed to protect the property and lives of their own nationals while the civil war between the Communists and Nationalists raged.
In all cases it was, of course, a cover, a showing of the flag and its always potential trigger points.
Apparently the trigger was all a mistake. A Japanese soldier turned up missing at roll call one morning and then during the night a shot was fired across the river. No one was sure who fired it: many felt it was some fool tossing fireworks. Regardless, it escalated. The commanders of the two sides met the following day, the “lost” Japanese soldier was found drunk on the wrong side of the river, salutes were exchanged between the two commanders; but then, within hours, rumors exploded of provocations, insults shouted, discipline broke, and a full-scale battle exploded.
Such actions, real, planned, or conspired in by some officers in the field, trigger wars. No one would ever know who fired the first shot at Lexington Green; most likely it was a mistake, but nevertheless it had sundered an empire and created a new nation.
And regardless of its original intent at the Marco Polo Bridge, the Japanese army reacted with such stunning speed that it was possible to believe the provocation had been deliberate, though Grew had reliable reports that the first incident was indeed an
accident that higher-ups decided to exploit the following day. Accident or not, it now threatened to destabilize the entire Pacific region.
The war triggered by the stupid misunderstanding at the Marco Polo Bridge had, within days, escalated into a campaign that was stunning in speed and scope. Peking fell within the month, and from that vantage point, Japanese armored columns poured down into the central plains. Seaborne assaults seized Shanghai and were now pushing inland, Nanking having just fallen. Reports of the brutalities committed were now leaking out of both cities. One of those reports sat on his desk; it had left him sickened.
His own position in all this had been made more difficult by his president, though of course he would never admit this in public.
In a speech on October 5, in Chicago, the president had bitterly denounced the rise of aggressive acts around the world and had all but directly linked Japan to Germany and the other Fascist states and then spoken of a “quarantine” of such nations. It was tantamount to a threat of an economic blockade.
All of this was made even more complex by the Japanese- German Anti-Comintern Pact signed the month before. On the surface it was supposedly an agreement to contain Soviet aggression, but nevertheless, to the world it appeared a linkage between Japan in the East and the ever more aggressive Hitler in the West.
But that was not the reason for the visitor who was now being announced at the doorway to Ambassador Grew’s office. Bad enough as the initial crisis was, what happened on December 12 on the Yangtze River had been infinitely worse as far as America was concerned. The two nations were tottering on the brink of war.
“Mr. Ambassador.” He looked up, his thoughts interrupted, and he braced his shoulders back, checking to make sure his suit coat was buttoned. His aide standing in the open doorway stepped politely aside. “Foreign Minister Koki Hirota.”
The Japanese foreign minister came through the doorway, dressed in the formal morning coat that the Japanese felt was the proper uniform for an official meeting between government representatives. There was nothing truly distinctive about Hirota; of medium height for his race, on the surface he could be mistaken for some middle-level businessman or official, but his gaze was icy, hard, and he was noted for sharp anti-Western commentary when aroused.
He was followed by a young interpreter, and at the sight of him Grew gave a subtle nod to his aide to remain and act as interpreter as well. Though his command of Japanese was fairly good and though he knew Hirota spoke English, at such a delicate moment, it was best to have experts on hand to ensure that not even the slightest inference or subtlety of language be mistaken or misinterpreted.
There was no handshake between the two, though Hirota did bow formally, and Grew nodded a reply and then gestured to the heavy leather sofa that was against the far wall of the office. Hirota and his interpreter sat down stiffly; Grew and his aide sat down on a second sofa that faced the first one, an ornate Oriental carpet and delicate teakwood table separating them, tea having already been set, but there was no offer of pouring or small talk first.
There was an awkward moment of silence, Grew deciding not to allow the slightest opening. The incident to be discussed had been unprovoked, triggered by Japan, and historically such an incident usually started a war.
Though he pretty well knew the content of the message that Hirota was about to deliver, nevertheless, there could always be a surprise, a very brutal surprise. Hirota shifted uncomfortably and nodded to his interpreter, who opened an attaché case and drew out an envelope of heavy silken paper, affixed with a red seal, and handed it to Hirota, who stood up, walked the few feet to Grew, and bowing low, presented the envelope.
Grew stood to accept it.
“To your President Roosevelt,” Hirota said, through his interpreter, “but please open and read it now.”
Hirota retreated back to his sofa and sat down, Grew doing the same; and without waiting for his aide to fetch a letter opener, he broke the seal and opened the envelope.
Inside were two letters, neatly folded, one in Japanese, the other in English. He drew out the letter in English, scanned it quickly, and could not conceal a sigh of relief, and then slowly, carefully, read it again, the only sound in the room the ticking of an ornate porcelain clock on the fireplace mantel and the crackling of the pine logs that were crumbling into glowing ashes.
It went far beyond what he had expected, far beyond it. Finished with reading the letter he carefully folded it along its original creases and placed it back in the envelope.
“I am certain a written reply will be speedily arranged after I consult with my government,” Grew said, noncommittally.
The two diplomats were silent for a moment, looking at each other. Only weeks before Hirota had made a bitter speech in response to Roosevelt’s accusations, declaring that what happened between China and Japan was not the affair of America and, if anything, the president’s words would only create more bloodshed by encouraging the Chinese to continue to fight a war they could not win.
Total victory in China against the Nationalists and, after them, the Communists was all but a foregone conclusion. Japan would not retreat, and ultimately Japan’s presence in China would restore order and end the generation-long chaos that had cost the lives of millions.
Sarcastic comments were in the press as well, obviously engineered from Hirota’s office, that America showed no interest regarding the Italians in Ethiopia, the current war in Spain; therefore why this browbeating over a China racked by bloody civil war? If anything, Japan brought with its actions the promise of peace and stability to the region.
Grew did find it ironic that the death and suffering of millions in China, had, in these last few days, taken a backseat to the death of four American sailors on the Yangtze River, which was now the topic of this confrontation.
“I must speak frankly,” Hirota finally said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
Grew nodded, saying nothing.
“I must express my personal shame and deepest regret over this entire incident. I can assure you, Mr. Ambassador, that if any of us in the government had even been remotely aware of this action being planned, we would have used all means possible to stop it. All of Japan is shamed by what has happened.” He paused, Grew looking sidelong at his aide to ensure that the translation by Hirota’s interpreter had been accurate. There was a nod of agreement.
Grew cleared his throat. “Sir, nevertheless I must express my government’s grievous shock and anger at this wanton action of aggression.”
Hirota lowered his head, and Grew pressed on. “Our naval gunboat Panay, an official representative of the United States of America, was on the Yangtze River in order to protect American property and, if need be, evacuate American nationals caught in the middle of the war that your nation now wages in China. Our presence there was with the full knowledge and permission of the Nationalist government.
“Our ship was clearly marked with American flags. We were openly on that river for humanitarian reasons and in no way whatsoever attempted to hide our presence. Its presence was known by all, including your forces in the days prior to this wanton and unprovoked attack by your naval air force.”
Hirota said nothing, merely nodding with lowered head. “Four dead, over forty wounded in the attack. One of our men was wounded while holding the American flag aloft, trying to wave your planes off, and yet still they attacked.”
That incident had at least been reported in the popular press, and the imagery of it was riveting. American newspapers were running drawings of the sailor, holding the flag up, staggering from his wounds, and whether the report was true or not, it had aroused bitter public opinion against Japan. And yet, there was, stunningly, no depth to that bitterness.
Grew was amazed by the poll. If the Japanese ever learned of it, in spite of their abject apologies now, they would read it as nothing short of craven cowardice and it would embolden them to further acts of aggression.
Hirota raised his head to speak, but G
rew pressed on, knowing he had to at least put up a strong front, regardless of what some damn poll said.
“The excuse offered by your military that it was all a mistake is ludicrous and shameful. If for no other reason than the fact that Japan prides itself with the repeated claim that it has the best pilots in the world. How can one of the best pilots in the world not see what he is shooting at? How can he not see it was Americans he was shooting at? And furthermore, it was not just your pilots who attacked us. Your army’s artillery shelled the wreckage, with survivors still in the water, wounding yet more of our citizens. If it had not been for the timely arrival of a British gunboat, which had also suffered attack, I think it is clear that every American aboard the Panay would have been slaughtered. The actions of your army and navy are shameful beyond belief.”
Grew knew he was letting emotion get the better of him. He fell silent, fearful that he might say more.
“I am having a very difficult time,” Hirota said slowly in English, “Things happen unexpectedly.”
Grew said nothing now. The letter he had just been handed by Hirota actually surprised him by its almost abject tone. The government took full responsibility, stated that those involved in the incident would be punished, and surprisingly was offering an indemnity of well over a million dollars to be paid to the families who had suffered losses.
More amazingly, the marines stationed outside the embassy all day long had been coming back inside, carrying bundles of letters from Japanese citizens and even school groups, expressing their shame over the incident and asking for forgiveness. It was a strange, and yet touching outpouring.
To an American, the offering of money as some sort of compensation for men so cold-bloodedly murdered was an insult; but to this culture it was a humble way of offering atonement, not unlike the “blood gold” of old Norse tradition, where a family prevented a feud by admitting the wrongdoing of a killing and providing a lifelong income to the bereaved as settlement. “So now what do we do?” Grew asked.
Pearl Harbour and Days of Infamy Page 11