New England 11 - Rising Sun, page 16
Isabella had been so absorbed in studying the landscape she had tuned out everything else. Now she heard it, a deep, thrumming pulse that as it approached began to resonate inside her chest. Beneath the thrumming she imagined she detected a whistling undertone.
Birds scattered into the trees.
She guessed every living thing was cocking an ear to the sky; fearful, or just curious about the unfamiliar sound.
“There!”
Isabella followed the direction the man was pointing.
She blinked, for several seconds not sure what she was seeing.
It was said that the Royal Navy had employed tiny, experimental helicopters in the fighting in the Gulf of Spain, one- or two-man, fragile machines not capable of carrying guns or bombs…
But the two monsters approaching from the south, holding a course likely to bring them within a few hundred yards of where she was standing, froze Isabella to the spot.
There were too…big.
The spinning orbs of their rotors – she thought ‘rotors’ was the right term – were fifty or sixty feet across. Wearing camouflage paint that might have hidden them against the desert foothills of the southern Sierra Madre, they were shaped like lumpy, irregular tubes, impossibly large and unwieldy with overlapping rotors mounted at each end of their peculiar fuselages, moving fast, perhaps at eighty- or ninety-miles-an-hour.
“Helicopters….”
Chapter 22
Imperial Banqueting Hall
Edo Castle, Tokyo
Prince Matsukata Masayoshi, the Imperial Chamberlain preceded the Emperor into the hall. Palace guards stood, backs to the walls, each resplendent and threatening in their traditional samurai-like costumes, katanas sheathed, with their eyes narrowed scanning for threats.
Present were the heads of the Imperial Army and Navy, their deputies and an entourage of staffers, behind them, a group of senior civil servants, the secretaries of all the key ministries and about a dozen advisers, messengers and couriers attending the main players. All were men; all bowed deeply at the waist and held that pose as their Heavenly Sovereign, designate, walked into the ancient hall.
“You may rise!” Prince Matsukata rasped after barely a moment, much to the relief and the surprise of the majority.
Many of the attendees at the conference had been confused to find a single, large, approximately oval table in the middle of the space, and no separate throne dais, or throne, just one slightly more innate seat arranged among the twenty-or-so around the big table.
Now, as they stood up, they were greeted by the sight of their new Emperor dressed in a simple Naval tunic with his nephew, Prince Yonai at his shoulder and, dressed in positively ‘western’ style, Princess Akiko, demurely on Tenno Hiroaki’s left arm.
Jaws gaped briefly, mouths snapped shut and then…threatened to go slack again when several other men, in uniform, emerged from the shadows at the Emperor’s back.
The small Imperial party advanced into the hall and halted.
Fushima Hiroaki hoped he did not look as enfeebled and frankly, fearful, as he felt as he looked around the circling faces.
“The English have a saying, my friends,” he declared, his voice projecting hoarsely to every corner of the great hall in the sepulchral, somewhat shocked silence. “The King is dead; long live the King. So, it is with us, the living must pick up the swords laid down by the ancestors. In normal times we can afford to dwell on our ancient rituals but these are not normal times. We are at war, a war in which our enemies have desecrated our sacred Home Islands, and in which our warriors are even as we speak, valiantly carrying the fight to the enemy. Thus, we must find new resolve in our souls to do what must be done.” He paused, collecting his thoughts and his breath. “I summoned you to this place because for too long Imperial privileges have been abdicated, delegated to others. My imperium has become an empire of ‘little’ emperors, each in their own way usurping My privileges and My authority. It is our tradition that My subjects re-pledge their fealty to My person upon my enthronement.”
Hiroaki began to sweep his gaze around the circle of hard, inscrutable faces. Imperial General Headquarters planned to obfuscate the rituals and deny him enthronement for as long as possible and many of the men in the hall had conspired, against him, to that end.
“Please do not take me for a fool, gentlemen,” Hiroaki said abruptly. “I hereby conditionally pardon all those in this place who have conspired to delay my rightful enthronement; in recompense, I demand all persons present to bend the knee and renew their oath of loyalty to My person.”
Field Marshal Hideki Sugiyama, the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Army, and Admiral of the Fleet Nomaguchi Kenji, remained poker-faced, hesitating before, after exchanging looks, nodded one to the other and stiffly, went down on one knee. In the hall, everybody followed their example except the Imperial Chamberlain, and Princess Akiko.
“I shall read the oath of loyalty,” Prince Matsukata declaimed, “which all persons will repeat after me!”
This took a little over a minute.
No man declined to swear loyalty unto death.
“Please stand and take your places at the table!” The Imperial Chamberlain demanded.
There were microphones around the great table, and in the dimmer corners of the hall, small cabinets where papers were stacked and shadows where more chairs had been placed for supernumeraries and aide-de-camps. Hiroaki and Akiko moved to stand behind the slightly larger, taller, more ornate chair centrally placed on the southern, long side of the gleaming, mahogany table.
A new quietness fell.
Hiroaki gathered himself: “Let it be known that the Lady Akiko will be crowned empress upon my enthronement, linking the Fushimi-no-miya shinnōke with the Higashikuni, re-unifying two of the three imperial blood lines. By your oath today; you have sworn to protect her as you would me.”
On cue, Akiko stepped back, bowed her head to Hiroaki, turned and walked out of the hall. Simultaneously, Prince Yonai drew back his uncle’s chair so that he could take his place.
Then, in a shocking departure from centuries of protocol, as he settled, Hiroaki commanded: “All persons will be seated!”
Many men hesitated in an agony of indecision.
The Emperor waited patiently.
It had been no miracle that this, the largest and after the Audience Hall, the most ornately appointed room on the lower floors of Edo Castle should have survived the catastrophe of the British attack untouched. It was windowless, safe within the thick walls at the base of the great pagoda and once a safe pathway had been cleared and the damaged, perilously overhanging roof above the courtyard outside torn down, it and other relatively unscathed apartments, including the state reception rooms had swiftly been put back into use in a positive tsunami of activity. In fact, it was many years since the Palace, either its inner compound or the large surrounding estate within the ancient moat, had been a centre of such purposeful endeavour. Of course, it was a nightmare for the men of the Imperial Guard, not least to have so many Army and Navy personnel coming and going – albeit permitted entry to the inner castle compound only through the Sakurada Gate, which itself was only accessible via a long, exposed causeway passable by automobiles and small delivery lorries.
“It is my fate to usher in a new dynastic era,” Hiroaki announced, his voice amplified – thankfully not echoing – around the hall.
His nephew had assured him that the hangings on the walls, the intricate carpentry of the historic carvings and the particular configuration of the ceiling, layered hardwoods, would obviate the vexation of what he called ‘reverb’ but Hiroaki was of a generation unschooled in such matters. When he was Yonai’s age a standard speaking horn had seemed perfectly adequate!
“While respecting our traditions; I will make no apology for embracing directness and as in this setting, a diminution of the normal, and in our circumstances, time-wasting protocols normally enacted in my presence. For my part I consider myself to be among my subjects, and in this company, among friends and I shall speak frankly.”
Hiroaki let this sink in.
He knew that this was a lot harder for many of the men in the hall than it was for him, even men who would gladly see him dead, like Sugiyama and Kenji and most of their intimate acolytes.
“This is the inaugural meeting of the Council for Imperial Defence, which I will chair, henceforth at intervals of between seven and ten days, or more frequently if circumstances demand. The role of the Council is to review the conduct of the war, the necessary measures required for the defence of the Home Islands, and to develop and promulgate strategic policy.”
This was greeted with stony hostility.
“With the assent of Imperial General Headquarters,” he went on, striving to keep the irony out of his voice, “Rear Admiral Yamamoto, Major General Kiribayashi, and Commander Tomomichi, of the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Army and the Naval Air Service, have been temporarily attached to my Personal Staff, in the capacity of Liaison Officers. In due course I confidently anticipate these officers will be assigned to active duty posts commensurate to their experience and professional qualifications.”
This was greeted by an even stonier, positively poisonous silence.
“Thus far, flawed intelligence and over-optimistic operational planning have blighted our war effort.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from Nomaguchi Kenji.
Which Hiroaki ignored.
“Officers who put their personal honour and dignity before the good of the Empire are no use to Me,” Hiroaki said, with a serenity he would have been a fool to think was justified. “A few weeks ago, several of the men in this room conspired to assassinate me. A few weeks ago, men in this room were so preoccupied pursuing their own pet theories of war and their own internecine battles within their services, that their negligence enabled the British to level one-fifth of Greater Tokyo, destroy the Kaga at Yokusuka and to defile this Palace!”
The Emperor took minor satisfaction in the fact that at least one or two of the duplicitous bastards had the grace to look a little sheepish, not that there was any comfort in that.
“So, I will not be lectured by men who failed Me, my ancestors and the Empire by their shameless dereliction of duty. Be thankful that I have, for now, stayed my hand and that unlike so many of your victims in the March putsch, I grant you conditional amnesty. Had the war situation not been so dire; be under no illusion that your shortcomings would have been rewarded by dismissal, and disloyalty to the throne deemed shameful, dishonourable to your families. In future, the price of our war with the British will not just be paid by the Empire’s fighting men, or by a likely impoverished population in our homelands; but by the men who sit behind their desks and act as if they are simply moving pieces on a chess board in some game of promotional snakes and ladders!”
Hiroaki fought the cloying weariness.
“I ordered that all the men involved in the rape of my family estates and the despicable murder of my sister, Ichika, and every man present when my son, Prince Naruhito was murdered on board his ship, the Kasuga, should be arrested and publicly beheaded. Further, that their families forfeit all their land and chattels, and their sons serving in the armed forces be demoted to the lowest non-commissioned rank.” He looked at Hideki Sugiyama and Nomaguchi Kenji. “Has this been done yet?”
Kenji flinched.
“Your Majesty…”
“Have you obeyed my Imperial Decree or not, Admiral?”
Most of the men involved had been naval personnel but they had been egged on, and supported by army men.
“There are issues, Your Majesty,” Kenji growled.
“What about you, Field Marshal?” Hiroaki demanded, turning grimly to Hideki Sugiyama.
“It has been done,” the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Army grunted, with the displeasure of a man spitting out broken teeth. “The names of the men executed have been supplied to the Lord Chamberlain, Your Majesty,” Sugiyama confirmed through ever-more clenched, grinding jaws.
Nomaguchi Kenji was red in the face, trembling with rage. At his side, the grizzled, impassive Vice Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Shimada Nagano, sat like a pillar of granite.
Hiroaki met Kenji’s murderous glare.
“I am to assume that you have disobeyed my orders then, Admiral Kenji?” He asked, feeling a little light-headed.
The other man gave every impression of being about to explode out of his chair and hurl himself across the table in a paroxysm of rage.
Idly, Hiroaki wondered if he would be alone?
“Your orders are…impossible!”
Shouting at one’s Heavenly Sovereign would certainly have been a death sentence in centuries past.
“Better impossible than stupid, Admiral,” Hiroaki said softly.
This was too much for Kenji, he was on his feet, reaching for his katana. He would have unsheathed it had not his deputy, Shimada Nagano taken a firm hold of his sword arm in the moments before several Palace Guards literally fell on the elderly, thrashing admiral as the men seated around him – Nagano apart - scattered in every direction.
More guards, aided by Yamamoto, Kiribayashi, and Onomoto Tomomichi instantly formed a wall of bodies around Hiroaki, bodily hauling him and his chair away from the table and surrounding him with a protective circle of flashing katanas.
But there was no vainglorious assault on the Emperor.
The drama flared up and was over in seconds.
The zealots had been as appalled and horrified by the head of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s outburst and transparent attempt to draw his sword, as everybody else.
“Wait!” Hiroaki called as the guards dragged a now broken Kenji away. “Bring him here.”
Nomaguchi Kenji, a man famous for his whiplash temper and mercilessness with subordinates whom he perceived to have let him down, or failed in any way, was ashen, shaken as if taken by a fever. His anger had got the better of him once too often, and he knew he had now lost everything.
“A man who has no respect for his Emperor has no place in his service, Admiral. You are dismissed the service without honour and consideration. Further sanction will be delayed seven days while you contemplate your situation. That is all. Take him away now.”
Kenji would be stripped of his rank, his decorations, his pension, and his official residence. ‘Further sanctions’ implied that there would be a court martial, and public humiliation without end. Hopefully, he would do away with himself and save everybody the trouble.
Field Marshal Hideki Sugiyama was watching Hiroaki with hooded, inscrutable eyes but was that a hint of a smile twitching at the corners of his lips?
The Emperor turned to Shimada Nagano.
The other man came to attention and bowed his head.
“I will have the traitors in custody by this time tomorrow, Your Majesty,” he said dully. “Is it your wish to witness their executions?”
That was cold, Hiroaki decided.
“No. Just make sure that the bodies are taken out to sea and thrown to the sharks.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Your predecessor habitually withheld important intelligence regarding forthcoming naval operations from me, Admiral Nagano,” Hiroaki went on, coolly.
“This will not happen again, Your Majesty,” the other man replied, deadpan as before.
Everybody was still standing up.
“We have unfinished business, gentlemen,” Hiroaki remarked dryly. “Re-take you seats, if you please.” Soon he fixed Hideki Sugiyama in his sights. “The air component of the Imperial Navy is represented in my advisory circle by Commander Tomomichi, I would be obliged if you would urgently recommend an Army aviator of comparable stature and reputation to join him, Field Marshal?”
The other man nodded.
“I recommend Yasuda, that is Lieutenant Colonel Takeo Yasuda, the Operations Officer of 2nd Air Fleet. He is currently in the Philippines but can be back in Tokyo within forty-eight hours, Your Majesty.”
“Very well, please make it happen.” Hiroaki sat forward, hoping to affect energy and a sense of confident purpose. “Let us get down to business. It is my understanding that the invasion of Java is under way as we speak?”
This drew terse nods from both Sugiyama and Nagano.
“I wish to receive a full briefing on this after we have concluded our business here today. At this time, I grant you permission to carry on with this operation. As to whether we reinforce this action, or proceed with its pre-planned later phases, that will be decided once we establish its success, and relevance or otherwise, in the light of other strategic considerations.”
There was a deal of wide-eyed astonishment, thankfully of the mute, silent kind which Hiroaki ignored on the principle that it was best to strike when the iron was still red hot. If only because nobody wanted to try to take a ‘hot iron’ out of its wielder’s hand until it had cooled down somewhat.
“As for Operation CI,” he put to Shimada Nagano, “I believe that this is still in the preparatory stages?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Good. I have no intention of antagonising the Russians by attacking the western Catherine Islands. Please cancel Operation CI with immediate effect.”
Nagano acknowledged this without comment.
“Tell me about the plans for an invasion of the Solomon Islands?” Hiroaki prompted.
If the other man was surprised by the question, he gave no hint of it.
“The Naval Staff has been working on a plan to draw the British away from the Sandwich islands to facilitate a second attempt to establish bases on Midway and Wake Islands and to invade Oahu,” Nagano explained. “A kind of two-prong Kantai Kessen,” decisive strike, “to drive the Royal Navy out of the Central Pacific…”
“Do we have the resources to mount two major naval operations, that is, one in the region presumably of the Solomon Sea or the northern Coral Sea, and to attack the Sandwich islands in such force as to guarantee victory?” Before Nagano could reply he added: “given that we have, I believe, committed one in every four available ships to the Java Sea campaign and its corollary, a future raid in strength on the northern coast of Australia?”
Birds scattered into the trees.
She guessed every living thing was cocking an ear to the sky; fearful, or just curious about the unfamiliar sound.
“There!”
Isabella followed the direction the man was pointing.
She blinked, for several seconds not sure what she was seeing.
It was said that the Royal Navy had employed tiny, experimental helicopters in the fighting in the Gulf of Spain, one- or two-man, fragile machines not capable of carrying guns or bombs…
But the two monsters approaching from the south, holding a course likely to bring them within a few hundred yards of where she was standing, froze Isabella to the spot.
There were too…big.
The spinning orbs of their rotors – she thought ‘rotors’ was the right term – were fifty or sixty feet across. Wearing camouflage paint that might have hidden them against the desert foothills of the southern Sierra Madre, they were shaped like lumpy, irregular tubes, impossibly large and unwieldy with overlapping rotors mounted at each end of their peculiar fuselages, moving fast, perhaps at eighty- or ninety-miles-an-hour.
“Helicopters….”
Chapter 22
Imperial Banqueting Hall
Edo Castle, Tokyo
Prince Matsukata Masayoshi, the Imperial Chamberlain preceded the Emperor into the hall. Palace guards stood, backs to the walls, each resplendent and threatening in their traditional samurai-like costumes, katanas sheathed, with their eyes narrowed scanning for threats.
Present were the heads of the Imperial Army and Navy, their deputies and an entourage of staffers, behind them, a group of senior civil servants, the secretaries of all the key ministries and about a dozen advisers, messengers and couriers attending the main players. All were men; all bowed deeply at the waist and held that pose as their Heavenly Sovereign, designate, walked into the ancient hall.
“You may rise!” Prince Matsukata rasped after barely a moment, much to the relief and the surprise of the majority.
Many of the attendees at the conference had been confused to find a single, large, approximately oval table in the middle of the space, and no separate throne dais, or throne, just one slightly more innate seat arranged among the twenty-or-so around the big table.
Now, as they stood up, they were greeted by the sight of their new Emperor dressed in a simple Naval tunic with his nephew, Prince Yonai at his shoulder and, dressed in positively ‘western’ style, Princess Akiko, demurely on Tenno Hiroaki’s left arm.
Jaws gaped briefly, mouths snapped shut and then…threatened to go slack again when several other men, in uniform, emerged from the shadows at the Emperor’s back.
The small Imperial party advanced into the hall and halted.
Fushima Hiroaki hoped he did not look as enfeebled and frankly, fearful, as he felt as he looked around the circling faces.
“The English have a saying, my friends,” he declared, his voice projecting hoarsely to every corner of the great hall in the sepulchral, somewhat shocked silence. “The King is dead; long live the King. So, it is with us, the living must pick up the swords laid down by the ancestors. In normal times we can afford to dwell on our ancient rituals but these are not normal times. We are at war, a war in which our enemies have desecrated our sacred Home Islands, and in which our warriors are even as we speak, valiantly carrying the fight to the enemy. Thus, we must find new resolve in our souls to do what must be done.” He paused, collecting his thoughts and his breath. “I summoned you to this place because for too long Imperial privileges have been abdicated, delegated to others. My imperium has become an empire of ‘little’ emperors, each in their own way usurping My privileges and My authority. It is our tradition that My subjects re-pledge their fealty to My person upon my enthronement.”
Hiroaki began to sweep his gaze around the circle of hard, inscrutable faces. Imperial General Headquarters planned to obfuscate the rituals and deny him enthronement for as long as possible and many of the men in the hall had conspired, against him, to that end.
“Please do not take me for a fool, gentlemen,” Hiroaki said abruptly. “I hereby conditionally pardon all those in this place who have conspired to delay my rightful enthronement; in recompense, I demand all persons present to bend the knee and renew their oath of loyalty to My person.”
Field Marshal Hideki Sugiyama, the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Army, and Admiral of the Fleet Nomaguchi Kenji, remained poker-faced, hesitating before, after exchanging looks, nodded one to the other and stiffly, went down on one knee. In the hall, everybody followed their example except the Imperial Chamberlain, and Princess Akiko.
“I shall read the oath of loyalty,” Prince Matsukata declaimed, “which all persons will repeat after me!”
This took a little over a minute.
No man declined to swear loyalty unto death.
“Please stand and take your places at the table!” The Imperial Chamberlain demanded.
There were microphones around the great table, and in the dimmer corners of the hall, small cabinets where papers were stacked and shadows where more chairs had been placed for supernumeraries and aide-de-camps. Hiroaki and Akiko moved to stand behind the slightly larger, taller, more ornate chair centrally placed on the southern, long side of the gleaming, mahogany table.
A new quietness fell.
Hiroaki gathered himself: “Let it be known that the Lady Akiko will be crowned empress upon my enthronement, linking the Fushimi-no-miya shinnōke with the Higashikuni, re-unifying two of the three imperial blood lines. By your oath today; you have sworn to protect her as you would me.”
On cue, Akiko stepped back, bowed her head to Hiroaki, turned and walked out of the hall. Simultaneously, Prince Yonai drew back his uncle’s chair so that he could take his place.
Then, in a shocking departure from centuries of protocol, as he settled, Hiroaki commanded: “All persons will be seated!”
Many men hesitated in an agony of indecision.
The Emperor waited patiently.
It had been no miracle that this, the largest and after the Audience Hall, the most ornately appointed room on the lower floors of Edo Castle should have survived the catastrophe of the British attack untouched. It was windowless, safe within the thick walls at the base of the great pagoda and once a safe pathway had been cleared and the damaged, perilously overhanging roof above the courtyard outside torn down, it and other relatively unscathed apartments, including the state reception rooms had swiftly been put back into use in a positive tsunami of activity. In fact, it was many years since the Palace, either its inner compound or the large surrounding estate within the ancient moat, had been a centre of such purposeful endeavour. Of course, it was a nightmare for the men of the Imperial Guard, not least to have so many Army and Navy personnel coming and going – albeit permitted entry to the inner castle compound only through the Sakurada Gate, which itself was only accessible via a long, exposed causeway passable by automobiles and small delivery lorries.
“It is my fate to usher in a new dynastic era,” Hiroaki announced, his voice amplified – thankfully not echoing – around the hall.
His nephew had assured him that the hangings on the walls, the intricate carpentry of the historic carvings and the particular configuration of the ceiling, layered hardwoods, would obviate the vexation of what he called ‘reverb’ but Hiroaki was of a generation unschooled in such matters. When he was Yonai’s age a standard speaking horn had seemed perfectly adequate!
“While respecting our traditions; I will make no apology for embracing directness and as in this setting, a diminution of the normal, and in our circumstances, time-wasting protocols normally enacted in my presence. For my part I consider myself to be among my subjects, and in this company, among friends and I shall speak frankly.”
Hiroaki let this sink in.
He knew that this was a lot harder for many of the men in the hall than it was for him, even men who would gladly see him dead, like Sugiyama and Kenji and most of their intimate acolytes.
“This is the inaugural meeting of the Council for Imperial Defence, which I will chair, henceforth at intervals of between seven and ten days, or more frequently if circumstances demand. The role of the Council is to review the conduct of the war, the necessary measures required for the defence of the Home Islands, and to develop and promulgate strategic policy.”
This was greeted with stony hostility.
“With the assent of Imperial General Headquarters,” he went on, striving to keep the irony out of his voice, “Rear Admiral Yamamoto, Major General Kiribayashi, and Commander Tomomichi, of the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Army and the Naval Air Service, have been temporarily attached to my Personal Staff, in the capacity of Liaison Officers. In due course I confidently anticipate these officers will be assigned to active duty posts commensurate to their experience and professional qualifications.”
This was greeted by an even stonier, positively poisonous silence.
“Thus far, flawed intelligence and over-optimistic operational planning have blighted our war effort.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from Nomaguchi Kenji.
Which Hiroaki ignored.
“Officers who put their personal honour and dignity before the good of the Empire are no use to Me,” Hiroaki said, with a serenity he would have been a fool to think was justified. “A few weeks ago, several of the men in this room conspired to assassinate me. A few weeks ago, men in this room were so preoccupied pursuing their own pet theories of war and their own internecine battles within their services, that their negligence enabled the British to level one-fifth of Greater Tokyo, destroy the Kaga at Yokusuka and to defile this Palace!”
The Emperor took minor satisfaction in the fact that at least one or two of the duplicitous bastards had the grace to look a little sheepish, not that there was any comfort in that.
“So, I will not be lectured by men who failed Me, my ancestors and the Empire by their shameless dereliction of duty. Be thankful that I have, for now, stayed my hand and that unlike so many of your victims in the March putsch, I grant you conditional amnesty. Had the war situation not been so dire; be under no illusion that your shortcomings would have been rewarded by dismissal, and disloyalty to the throne deemed shameful, dishonourable to your families. In future, the price of our war with the British will not just be paid by the Empire’s fighting men, or by a likely impoverished population in our homelands; but by the men who sit behind their desks and act as if they are simply moving pieces on a chess board in some game of promotional snakes and ladders!”
Hiroaki fought the cloying weariness.
“I ordered that all the men involved in the rape of my family estates and the despicable murder of my sister, Ichika, and every man present when my son, Prince Naruhito was murdered on board his ship, the Kasuga, should be arrested and publicly beheaded. Further, that their families forfeit all their land and chattels, and their sons serving in the armed forces be demoted to the lowest non-commissioned rank.” He looked at Hideki Sugiyama and Nomaguchi Kenji. “Has this been done yet?”
Kenji flinched.
“Your Majesty…”
“Have you obeyed my Imperial Decree or not, Admiral?”
Most of the men involved had been naval personnel but they had been egged on, and supported by army men.
“There are issues, Your Majesty,” Kenji growled.
“What about you, Field Marshal?” Hiroaki demanded, turning grimly to Hideki Sugiyama.
“It has been done,” the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Army grunted, with the displeasure of a man spitting out broken teeth. “The names of the men executed have been supplied to the Lord Chamberlain, Your Majesty,” Sugiyama confirmed through ever-more clenched, grinding jaws.
Nomaguchi Kenji was red in the face, trembling with rage. At his side, the grizzled, impassive Vice Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Shimada Nagano, sat like a pillar of granite.
Hiroaki met Kenji’s murderous glare.
“I am to assume that you have disobeyed my orders then, Admiral Kenji?” He asked, feeling a little light-headed.
The other man gave every impression of being about to explode out of his chair and hurl himself across the table in a paroxysm of rage.
Idly, Hiroaki wondered if he would be alone?
“Your orders are…impossible!”
Shouting at one’s Heavenly Sovereign would certainly have been a death sentence in centuries past.
“Better impossible than stupid, Admiral,” Hiroaki said softly.
This was too much for Kenji, he was on his feet, reaching for his katana. He would have unsheathed it had not his deputy, Shimada Nagano taken a firm hold of his sword arm in the moments before several Palace Guards literally fell on the elderly, thrashing admiral as the men seated around him – Nagano apart - scattered in every direction.
More guards, aided by Yamamoto, Kiribayashi, and Onomoto Tomomichi instantly formed a wall of bodies around Hiroaki, bodily hauling him and his chair away from the table and surrounding him with a protective circle of flashing katanas.
But there was no vainglorious assault on the Emperor.
The drama flared up and was over in seconds.
The zealots had been as appalled and horrified by the head of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s outburst and transparent attempt to draw his sword, as everybody else.
“Wait!” Hiroaki called as the guards dragged a now broken Kenji away. “Bring him here.”
Nomaguchi Kenji, a man famous for his whiplash temper and mercilessness with subordinates whom he perceived to have let him down, or failed in any way, was ashen, shaken as if taken by a fever. His anger had got the better of him once too often, and he knew he had now lost everything.
“A man who has no respect for his Emperor has no place in his service, Admiral. You are dismissed the service without honour and consideration. Further sanction will be delayed seven days while you contemplate your situation. That is all. Take him away now.”
Kenji would be stripped of his rank, his decorations, his pension, and his official residence. ‘Further sanctions’ implied that there would be a court martial, and public humiliation without end. Hopefully, he would do away with himself and save everybody the trouble.
Field Marshal Hideki Sugiyama was watching Hiroaki with hooded, inscrutable eyes but was that a hint of a smile twitching at the corners of his lips?
The Emperor turned to Shimada Nagano.
The other man came to attention and bowed his head.
“I will have the traitors in custody by this time tomorrow, Your Majesty,” he said dully. “Is it your wish to witness their executions?”
That was cold, Hiroaki decided.
“No. Just make sure that the bodies are taken out to sea and thrown to the sharks.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Your predecessor habitually withheld important intelligence regarding forthcoming naval operations from me, Admiral Nagano,” Hiroaki went on, coolly.
“This will not happen again, Your Majesty,” the other man replied, deadpan as before.
Everybody was still standing up.
“We have unfinished business, gentlemen,” Hiroaki remarked dryly. “Re-take you seats, if you please.” Soon he fixed Hideki Sugiyama in his sights. “The air component of the Imperial Navy is represented in my advisory circle by Commander Tomomichi, I would be obliged if you would urgently recommend an Army aviator of comparable stature and reputation to join him, Field Marshal?”
The other man nodded.
“I recommend Yasuda, that is Lieutenant Colonel Takeo Yasuda, the Operations Officer of 2nd Air Fleet. He is currently in the Philippines but can be back in Tokyo within forty-eight hours, Your Majesty.”
“Very well, please make it happen.” Hiroaki sat forward, hoping to affect energy and a sense of confident purpose. “Let us get down to business. It is my understanding that the invasion of Java is under way as we speak?”
This drew terse nods from both Sugiyama and Nagano.
“I wish to receive a full briefing on this after we have concluded our business here today. At this time, I grant you permission to carry on with this operation. As to whether we reinforce this action, or proceed with its pre-planned later phases, that will be decided once we establish its success, and relevance or otherwise, in the light of other strategic considerations.”
There was a deal of wide-eyed astonishment, thankfully of the mute, silent kind which Hiroaki ignored on the principle that it was best to strike when the iron was still red hot. If only because nobody wanted to try to take a ‘hot iron’ out of its wielder’s hand until it had cooled down somewhat.
“As for Operation CI,” he put to Shimada Nagano, “I believe that this is still in the preparatory stages?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Good. I have no intention of antagonising the Russians by attacking the western Catherine Islands. Please cancel Operation CI with immediate effect.”
Nagano acknowledged this without comment.
“Tell me about the plans for an invasion of the Solomon Islands?” Hiroaki prompted.
If the other man was surprised by the question, he gave no hint of it.
“The Naval Staff has been working on a plan to draw the British away from the Sandwich islands to facilitate a second attempt to establish bases on Midway and Wake Islands and to invade Oahu,” Nagano explained. “A kind of two-prong Kantai Kessen,” decisive strike, “to drive the Royal Navy out of the Central Pacific…”
“Do we have the resources to mount two major naval operations, that is, one in the region presumably of the Solomon Sea or the northern Coral Sea, and to attack the Sandwich islands in such force as to guarantee victory?” Before Nagano could reply he added: “given that we have, I believe, committed one in every four available ships to the Java Sea campaign and its corollary, a future raid in strength on the northern coast of Australia?”
