1945

Sakei did not respond. Hirohito's assessment was correct. The Americans had landed the day before in overwhelming force and were inching their way inland despite brutal losses. The coastal defenses had been breached in many places and would soon be overrun. It was grimly apparent that, in only a few days, far too many Americans would have landed to be dislodged without an enormous effort. He wondered if Japan was capable of that effort. He shook the defeatist thought from his mind.

"Your Majesty, the Americans are paying dearly for the privilege of desecrating our land. As to driving them off, the landings started only yesterday. It will take time to accumulate our army and attack."

"I don't doubt that. I just wonder what good it will do."

So did Sakei, and the thought astounded him. Americans were on Japanese soil, and Japanese soldiers were starting to run. It struck him that his world could be ending.

"Majesty, in the speech you never made to the country- the one in which you counseled surrender?- you used a phrase to the effect that we would have to endure the unendurable. Well, it is General Anami's intent to force the Americans to endure what is not endurable so that they depart our lands and leave us in peace."

"At least the bombings have ceased."

Sakei agreed. Even though the tent compound that housed the emperor was in a clearly marked hospital area, there was always the threat of attack from the air. Sakei had taken great pains to ensure that his now much smaller number of guards dressed like hospital orderlies and that nothing threatening or unusual was apparent from the air. Even so, there was the constant fear of an American pilot making a mistake, an accidental bombing, or some hotheaded Yank just wanting to kill Japs and not caring if it was a hospital in his sights.

Therefore, everyone was thankful that the landings had drawn virtually all the American planes southward to protect their ships and men. Even the giant bombers seemed to have vanished. Both men wondered just how long the relative calm would continue. Should the American planes return, it would mean that the landings had been so successful that the Americans on the ground no longer needed such constant protection. Sakei tried to visualize the titanic battles taking place just a little more than 150 miles away.

Sakei bowed and left his unrepentant emperor. If the planes returned, it might mean that he would again have to move the emperor to yet another safe place. He did not relish that thought at all. He'd been lucky so far, but how much longer could that luck last?

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|CHAPTER 31

Dark smoke half-obscured the harsh hills of Kyushu from the men who again lined the rails of the Luce. Clouds from fires and recent explosions billowed skyward, and the men on the crowded transport could see individual explosions where shells impacted on targets farther inland. Rumblings of man-made thunder, occasionally punctuated by sharper, cracking sounds, buffeted them constantly. It was as if Kyushu were alive and angry.

It had been a sleepless night for the men on the Luce. The incipient panic had halted and the men had calmed down. Most then spent the rest of their time mentally trying to prepare for the ordeal ahead. Sardonically, most had decided they would rather face Japanese guns than trust the dubious safety of the Luce as the nightlong battle between the kamikazes and the navy had turned more ships into flaming ruins.

When the LCIs hadn't arrived for them by midmorning, the men began to chafe and wonder, even hope that their landing had been canceled. The delays were agonizing.

To a man, they hoped that the daylight hours would be free from more kamikaze attacks, but the white lines in the skies told them otherwise. Above the low clouds, contrails twisted and crossed each other as American planes continued to seek out their suicidal enemy.

Then, suddenly, the guns on a nearby ship would open up at a diving plane. Soldiers would gape and pray as streams of shells sought out the dark blot in the sky that was the Jap plane. A kamikaze who'd made it that far was a survivor who had somehow penetrated the fighter defenses only to face being blown out of the sky by shipborne guns. When a suicide plane was hit, it either exploded into pieces or had a wing ripped off, which caused the plane to cartwheel out of control and into the ocean. When that occurred, the men cheered.

Sometimes, however, an enemy plane got through, and as they waited, another transport took a hit. They watched in horror as flames billowed from the ship. The stricken ship quickly launched lifeboats, and hundreds of soldiers tried to escape the inferno by jumping into the sea. It looked like an anthill that had been disturbed, only those were people, not ants. The Luce did not change course. Picking up survivors was the job of the destroyers and their smaller cousins, the destroyer escorts.