The Passion and the Glory

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘Well … just give me that time to think.’

  ‘While he screws you every night.’

  ‘He doesn,’t, every night. And he’s never as good as you. Please, Walt, don’t be upset by that.’

  ‘Suppose you get pregnant again?’

  She was in the other room, dressing Walter, who was still asleep. ‘I won’t, from him. He wears condoms, since Walter. He says one child is enough.’ She stood straight, the baby in her arms. ‘If I get pregnant again, it’ll be yours.’

  ‘I would like that, very much.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t. Not right now. Will you bring the case?’ He followed her into the garage, closed the car door on her; Walter was strapped into position on the seat beside her. She put her head out of the window for a kiss. ‘I have loved every minute,’ she said. ‘I would hate to think I’ll never have another couple of days like that.’

  ‘So I’ll call you when I get back.’

  ‘I’d like that. Any time between nine and one.’

  ‘And you’ll have an answer.’

  She kissed him a last time. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  The car drove out of the yard, and disappeared. Walt went back into the house. He had the oddest feeling that she had never been there at all, that even her scent, hanging on the breeze, was an illusion, his own sated desire the result of masturbation.

  But in the spare room he found a forgotten, soiled nappy. He washed it himself — it would only confuse the maid — and hung it out to dry. It was a touch of reality.

  *

  ‘We’re to join Rear Admiral Sherman’s Task Force off the Solomons,’ Commander Phillips told his officers as Sea Lion slipped out of Pearl into the Pacific. ‘And I can tell you that there is something big brewing down there. General MacArthur is ready to start moving again in New Guinea, and we are also getting set to make the assault on Bougainville. The brass are expecting the Japs to react, because of the proximity of the base at Rabaul. But when we take Bougainville, they reckon they can neutralise Rabaul with our bombers.’

  ‘It’d make more sense to neutralise Rabaul first,’ Bristow suggested.

  ‘Oh, they’re going to try. But that is one powerful position. Anyway, there should be enough pickings to satisfy even you guys.’

  ‘Any battleships in the task force, sir?’ Walt asked.

  Phillips knew why he was interested. He shook his head. ‘Nope, sorry. They’re going to be further north, with the task force assaulting the Gilbert and Ellice Islands at the same time. That force will include Florida.’

  ‘Two big assaults at the same time?’ Ensign Galt asked, wonderingly.

  ‘Sure,’ Phillips said. ‘We’ve got going now, boy. Those Japs are going to feel us, every minute of every day.’ He found a moment to be alone with Walt. ‘I guess you’ll link up with your dad again when we all steam into Tokyo Bay together. Did you have a good furlough?’

  ‘The best ever,’ Walt said.

  Phillips grinned. ‘That’s what I like to hear. It’s always best to go out on a high note.’

  But I’m not going out, Walt thought. I’m going back, to Pearl, and Linda. He didn’t want to think about whether or not the fact that he would be a wealthy man next year had made any difference, whether or not, indeed, she was planning on waiting until next year. He just wanted her, in his arms, for the rest of his life, no matter what the scandal involved. Oh, he was going back.

  Phillips saw the pensiveness in his face, and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘No Jap is going to get us, Walt,’ he said. ‘But we are going to get a lot of them. Rabaul, here we come.’

  *

  Joan stood on the verandah of Hashimoto’s house and watched the ships returning into the harbour beneath her. The previous evening two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and six destroyers, had left Rabaul to make a night attack on the American task force putting men ashore in Bougainville. Now they were back. But there were only eight ships instead of ten, and several of the others were clearly badly damaged.

  This was the pattern now. Where a year ago the Japanese Navy had usually had the better of the Americans, now they were nearly always beaten. Rear Admiral Omori was in despair when he came up to see Hashimoto.

  ‘They are able to fire accurately even in the darkness,’ he said. ‘It is uncanny. And it is bad for morale.’

  ‘You mean it is their new radar,’ Hashimoto growled.

  ‘Our ships are helpless,’ Omori said.

  Hashimoto said nothing, waited until Omori had left. Then he exploded. ‘If only Isoroku were still alive. He would know what to do. These men know nothing. They have no imagination. They repeat Yamamoto’s tactics without understanding them, without adapting them … ’ he glared at her. ‘And you are pleased by their defeat.’

  Joan bowed, but had the sense not to reply. Her brief period of happiness, of treacherous pleasure in her surroundings and even in herself, had ended in New Guinea. For a variety of reasons. The bestiality meted out there to the Dutch planters had been beyond the furthest limits of her imagination. In her efforts to reconcile her situation to her feelings, she had once tried to pretend that what had happened in Hong Kong had been no worse than what had happened in many other sacks in history, when the blood lust that is present in every man is deliberately fired and then turned loose. But in New Guinea Hashimoto and Osawa had acted in the coldest of blood, with an almost insensate anger. No wonder that woman, Stefanie van Gelderen, had preferred to starve in the bush than wait to be beaten to death.

  That had been six months ago, so the woman, and her American spy, were both probably dead by now. It had been six months characterised by a lull in the American advance, either in the Solomons or, according to Hashimoto, in New Guinea. Hashimoto had supposed, optimistically, that the Allies had over-extended themselves and thus shot their bolt, for a while.

  Now he was being proved wrong, and he was angry.

  He was also afraid.

  She felt that his destruction of the New Guinea plantations had also been inspired by fear. He had remained confident as long as Yamamoto was alive. But now he was afraid. And the fear was eating into his mind. Sometimes he could not even manage an erection. Although that did not prevent him demanding her body with an even more fervent desire than in their first days together. And when he beat her, nowadays, it was with an introspective savagery, as if on her he could expiate that fear, the knowledge that the Americans, her countrymen, were slowly tightening the noose around his neck.

  She had learned to be more careful during those six months. She had watched him destroy human beings. If she had always known that was his occupation in life, she had never seen him at work before. And the knowledge of the growing American strength, and the dwindling Japanese morale, had given her a more positive approach to survival. She wanted to live, now. She wanted to see Father and Walt come steaming into Simpson Harbour. She wanted to watch Hashimoto hang.

  He seemed able to read her thoughts. ‘You think Rabaul will fall,’ he said. ‘You think you will be rescued.’

  Joan remained bowing. She had learned to stay in this uncomfortable position for up to an hour at a time, like a true Japanese servant.

  ‘Well, that will not happen. Rabaul will never fall. And even if it did, you will not be here to see it. I have informed Tokyo that I wish to leave.’

  Joan straightened without meaning to.

  Hashimoto grinned at her. ‘Why am I here? I was sent here by Yamamoto. He is now dead. I have carried out the task he gave me. I can serve no more useful purpose here. I told them the Americans would attack Bougainville, and that they would attack Lae in New Guinea. I can do no more than that. We shall leave, and go where I am of more use.’

  Joan bowed again. She knew that the kempei-tai was almost a state within a state, and that if Hashimoto had decided to leave, there was no army or navy commander could order him to remain; only Yamamoto had ever done that.

  ‘We will go to Manila,�
�� Hashimoto said. ‘That is far away from the Americans. I will set up my new headquarters there. The Americans will never be able to retake the Philippines.’

  *

  She supposed he was right, in real terms. That meant within an acceptable time span. The Americans were now assaulting Bougainville, more than a year after they had secured Guadalcanal, only five hundred miles to the south: the Philippines were a further two thousand miles away — that meant the Christmas of 1947. She did not think she could remain alive until the Christmas of 1947. And they had not yet begun to assault Rabaul, which was second only to Truk as the greatest Japanese base in the Pacific. That would be another year, at the least. While their progress in New Guinea had also been hesitant.

  She felt utterly despairing, was so limp and unresponsive Hashimoto beat her that night. Next morning after he had bathed and gone to the office, she did her chores mechanically, then knelt — she was too sore to sit — by the door, looking down at the beach and the ships in the harbour, the bustling activity. Troops arrived every day. Nearly all told tales of being assailed by American submarines and losing one or perhaps two ships out of the convoy, of men drowning or being attacked by sharks and dying horribly … but still they came; it seemed that the Japanese empire possessed an inexhaustible supply of manpower.

  She was still kneeling when she heard the noise of aircraft. This was a familiar sound in Rabaul, where Japanese planes were constantly landing and taking off. But the timbre of these engines was different. Yet it was a sound she had heard before, if not quite so loud.

  Joan’s heart began to pound, and she stepped outside. As she did so, the air raid siren went, wailing its banshee-like tone up into the volcanoes. Below her, the ant heap that was Rabaul exploded into life. Planes taxied along the runway of the airstrip preparatory to taking off. Ships raised their anchors and began to put to sea. Soldiers and Papuan civilians scurried for their homes and barracks, half in disbelief — Rabaul had never been bombed before. But they would provide no shelter. And there were no cellars in Rabaul.

  The Papuan house servants rushed by her and down the hill, shouting at each other. Joan looked up at the sky, watched the dive bombers peeling out of the clouds. Down they hurtled, hardly specks against the brilliant blue of the sky, but growing larger until she could make out the five hundred pound bombs themselves, detached from the planes and continuing to drop downwards while the aircraft pulled out of their dives in roaring swoops which brought them close enough for her to distinguish their insignia. She waved at them, instinctively.

  The first onslaught was directed on the harbour and the airfield. Despite the losses in the last battle there were still six cruisers moored off the town. These opened up with every anti-aircraft battery they possessed, and Joan’s heart lurched as she saw one of the American planes explode in mid-air. But it had already released its bomb, and this and its fellows were turning the still waters of the bay into a spray-filled inferno, while equally as she watched flames spurted from the decks of one, and then another of the cruisers.

  Other bombs blew great craters in the runways of the newly built airfield, sending mud and sand and iron, and men, flying into the air. Here too the anti-aircraft guns were belching smoke and fire, and another of the US planes sagged and plummeted earthwards. But the destruction was immense.

  Yet quite a few of the Japanese planes got airborne, engines snarling as they turned to attack these invaders of their skies, only to be met by a second wave of US planes dropping from the clouds. These were fighter escorts, and the sky above Rabaul became a patchwork of screaming machines, vapour trails, and chattering guns and cannon. Joan shouted with joy as she saw a Zero falling, smoke belching from its engine, its pilot flying from the cockpit to float earthwards beneath his parachute.

  And then shouted again as she saw yet another wave of dive bombers appear. These too concentrated on the harbour, and more and more of the cruisers began to flame as they were struck. But there was a third wave of bombers dropping out of the sky, and these were aimed at the town itself.

  *

  Joan caught her breath as she saw houses explode beneath her. In the debris flying to left and right were the remains of men and women. Then a barracks was struck, and she watched green clad soldiers fleeing into the streets, clothes on fire, tumbling and falling over each other. The dog fights between the escorts and the defending Zeros were still continuing above her, and the noise was louder than ever, while the planes seemed almost close enough to touch. Yet she felt no fear. Those were her people up there. She did not suppose they intended to harm her.

  She watched Captain Osawa stumbling up the hill towards her. The captain had lost his cap, and his steel-rimmed spectacles were smudged with dirt and damp; the rubber truncheon from which he was never separated hung from his belt, and his uniform was also muddy where he had fallen or thrown himself down. ‘Into the forest,’ he shouted. ‘You must go into the forest.’

  ‘With you?’ she asked. ‘I would rather be blown to bits.’

  ‘It is orders from Admiral Kurita,’ he bawled, as he came closer. ‘You must go into the forest.’

  ‘I will stay here,’ she told him.

  He stood in front of her, panting, his hands dropping to his truncheon. ‘I will make you,’ he shouted. ‘I will … ’ he checked at the roar of the plane.

  Joan looked up, saw the bomb coming down, it seemed only feet above her head, making a wailing sound. Instinctively she hurled herself to her left, away from the doorway, where the ground dipped into a little gully beside the road. She got there at about the same time the bomb exploded, she thought, was picked up by the blast and hurled further down the hillside, through bushes and over stones until she came to rest against a tree, panting and bleeding. Her kimono had been blown away, but that seemed irrelevant, as she stared up the hill at what had been her house. Her home, in fact, for more than a year. It had simply disintegrated. Bruised and aching as she was, she yet climbed back up, on her hands and knees, gazed at the shattered wood, the scattered tatami mats, which were smouldering into flame as she watched. And she gazed too at a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, lacking glass, but with pieces of flesh still attached to them.

  She began to laugh and cry at the same time.

  Rabaul burned, in company with the cruisers. Remarkably, no ship had been sunk, but all were damaged, more or less seriously. In the wooden houses of the town the damage seemed more severe. The Papuans wailed their misery as they were driven to work at putting out the flames, repairing the airfield, by their Japanese masters. Other soldiers were at the grim work of collecting the dead for hasty burial, and yet others at the still more grim work of securing those crews of the ten American aircraft shot down, for instant execution by decapitation.

  Her exhilaration gone with the end of the attack. Joan sat on the earth outside the remains of her home until Hashimoto came to her. ‘You are bleeding,’ he said. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  He peered at her, suspiciously. ‘Then have you no shame, sitting there, naked and filthy?’

  ‘I have no shame,’ she said. ‘I have no bath house.’

  ‘I will take you to a bath house. Where is Osawa? I sent him to take you into the forest, where you would be safe.’

  ‘He came,’ she said. ‘He stayed.’

  ‘Then where is he?’

  She shrugged. ‘All about.’

  ‘You have taken leave of your senses,’ Hashimoto grumbled. He cast about in the wreckage of the house, found a piece of cloth, pulled her to her feet and wrapped her in it. ‘You will be inspected by a doctor,’ he said. ‘And then bathed.’

  He began to lead her down the hill, and she stumbled on the rubbled ground. ‘Why did you wish me to go into the forest?’ she asked.

  ‘So that you would be safe, stupid woman.’

  She checked, and he did also; they were much of the same size. ‘Did you care, that I should be safe?’

  ‘Of course I did. Do you
not suppose that I care about you? I am not as barbarous as your countrymen, who bomb without discrimination.’

  ‘I had hoped you would be dead,’ she said. ‘Killed in the bombing.’

  ‘Stupid woman,’ he said again. ‘You have lost your senses. Now come and be examined by a doctor.’

  *

  The American bombers struck again, six days later. This was an even more devastating attack. The Japanese reckoned that ninety-seven planes had taken part in the first raid. This time there were one hundred and eighty-five. Now ships were sunk, and the already devastated town was reduced to rubble. Bombs even struck the volcanoes and brought explosions of smoke and ash to join in the general holocaust. The Papuans thought the end of the world had come.

  On this occasion Joan did allow herself to be led into the forest; the noise was paralysing to the senses. Hashimoto joined her there. ‘This is not warfare,’ he shouted. ‘This is barbarism.’

  This is certainly the end of Rabaul as a naval base, Joan thought. Hashimoto knew that too, and complained bitterly that he had not yet been given clearance to leave. Even Joan was looking forward to that, now. Attempting to exist in the midst of destroyed houses and distraught people, with hardly any food and the atmosphere overladen with the sickly sweet stench of burning flesh — there was no time to bury the dead — was too close an approximation of hell: not even Hong Kong had been as bad as this, save for the behaviour of the soldiers.

  But two days after the second attack, on 13 November 1943, orders arrived permitting Rear Admiral Hashimoto Kurita and his staff to requisition an MTB and leave Rabaul for the Philippines. Apparently Tokyo had earlier indicated that he might leave, by plane, but Hashimoto, remembering what had happened to Yamamoto, had refused and held out for a ship. Now he was happy.

  Chapter 11

  New Guinea, Honolulu and the Philippine Sea — 1943-44

  The torpedo boat looked terribly small, just under sixty feet in length, fourteen feet wide, and displacing twenty five tons. She was armed with two twenty-one-inch torpedo tubes as well as a twenty-five millimetre anti-aircraft gun. The crew only numbered seven, commanded by a lieutenant, who bowed most respectfully when Hashimoto boarded, and whose eyes grew rounder and rounder when he discovered the four people the admiral intended to take with him included a yellow-haired woman.