The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [210]
The lunch had not settled well in his stomach, and the long walk to his home had passed with more than one quick jaunt into the brush. All along the road, there had been many people, all on foot, going about their business with a kind of sad urgency, not quite the raucous enthusiasm for the fight that Field Marshal Hata had seemed to believe bathed every corner of the island. But in the fields Hamishita had been surprised to see assemblies, civilians gathered into formations, just as Hata had described. Not far from his clinic he had passed by a schoolyard, stopped, curious, watching a group of women, a hundred or more, young and old, standing in rows, attentive to the instructions from a soldier. Most carried bamboo poles, sharpened into spears; others held farm implements. But they obeyed the drills with increasing precision, while to one side another soldier called out the chants, the cheers, infusing them with the same astounding spirit Hamishita had heard from the old commander. He had seen children as well, a long column marching down the road past him, grim-faced boys mostly, holding broomsticks and tree limbs up on their shoulders, mimicking the march of riflemen. As he drew closer to his clinic, he had seen familiar faces, a group of old men, listening to a raucous lecture from another soldier, an officer Hamishita had treated in his clinic. The sounds of the mobilization seemed to grow in every crossroads, through every field, the great mission assigned to Field Marshal Hata taking place in every corner of the island, all across the city. Hamishita watched it all, slowed his journey home to absorb what Hata had driven into him, the pure and simple inevitability of what would happen when the Americans came.
He was close to the clinic, his attention suddenly drawn by low thunder. He turned, knew it was another bombing raid, the sounds rising up from south of the city. There are many factories there, he thought. The Americans have no lack of targets. The question rose in his mind now, as it had for many weeks. The Americans bring their bombers with perfect regularity, and yet I have never seen a response from the Imperial Air Force. The anti-aircraft fire is there, always, and sometimes, as today, the gunners are fortunate. He thought of a book he had read, translated from German, a gift from a friend who had traveled to Europe at the start of the war there. He had been fascinated by the exploits of the man they called the Red Baron, had read many stories of the other great aces who flew in the first Great War. We have men like that, surely. The government tells us of great victories in the air, of so many enemy planes shot out of the sky. Finally I saw it for myself, those bombers. And that was truly glorious, watching those huge machines break into pieces, fire and smoke. And parachutes. But we fire so much ammunition from the ground, and so much is wasted, so little success. Where are the Zeroes? It has been so long since they flew past here, great flocks roaring overhead, flying out to meet the enemy in some other place. Am I not supposed to think about this? Am I not supposed to wonder if the war has come to Japan because we have no way to prevent that? There was so much cheering about our