The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [178]
He swallowed the last of the tea, thought, they are an amazingly inferior people. They observed all the work we did, did much of it themselves, giving up their tombs so we could anchor machine guns among their ancestors. They chopped and shoveled to build Yahara’s caves, they saw our guns, they saw our soldiers, and when the Americans came they suffered the bombardments worse than we did. And yet, through all of that, so many of them have kept to their soil, their meager homes, their primitive protection, as though they believed all of this noise would just … pass them by. When we left Shuri, we warned them what would happen there, and yet so many of them chose to remain. We told them we were occupying these heights, and yet, right here, in these villages close to this hill, they still keep to their huts. Are their lives so miserable, so limited that their only source of hope comes from staying in their homes? Hope is not a part of anything we do now, and the Okinawans should know that. If they do not, it is not my fault. If they insist on remaining in the line of fire, that is a choice I cannot help. If my men find them to be of use, either in fighting the Americans or in other ways, then my men shall have what they need. He knew that his soldiers carried a new desperation, that the urgent retreat from the Shuri Line had crushed their morale. He had stopped paying attention to any protests from Okinawan officials, who begged him to give protection to their people. There are only so many caves, he thought, and only so many places where my men can fight the enemy. That will take priority over any civilian’s safety. Yes, civilians have been massacred, some in their own homes, some huddling beside the urns that hold their ancestors. But there is no time for pity. I have nothing to give them, and Tokyo has nothing to give me. There is no more mercy, for any of them, for any of us. It is, after all … war.
For the past two days, as the Americans understood that Ushijima’s diminishing army was now anchored in a much more compact area, the intensity of the American bombardment had increased dramatically. Worse for the Japanese, the Americans were using a new weapon, napalm, dropped from aircraft on those places where the Americans suspected anyone could be hiding. Often they were accurate, the gelatinous fire engulfing the occupants of a cave, usually with no survivors. The blessing, of course, was a quick death, and Ushijima had convinced himself that it was the best way, that his soldiers accepted that as he did. The Yasukuni Shrine will welcome us all, he thought. There need not be suffering in this life for men who have done their duty.
Outside, the American loudspeakers could be heard, broadcasting messages in perfect Japanese, that his soldiers surrender themselves, that no one would be tortured. The civilians were receiving those messages as well, a rain of paper leaflets in every populated area, urging them to come over to the American positions, where food and safety awaited. Ushijima doubted that many of the Okinawans would believe the promises, the people too ignorant and too easily swayed by the Japanese propaganda that had been fed to them even before his army had arrived. Reports had also reached him of mass suicides, civilians and soldiers both, assembling in groups within the caves, grenades most efficient when detonated amid a tightly packed gathering. For his soldiers it was the proper way to die, to pass on to the afterlife without the humiliation of capture. For the civilians … Ushijima pondered that for a moment. I have no