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By Root 1395 0

into hiding, the hillside growing quiet again, no movement but the drifting smoke. He raised his eyes to the sea again, still marveled at the amazing variety of ships, and their number. No country on this earth has a navy this large, he thought. The British perhaps. But the Americans have outshone even them, and now they send those ships to me, anchor them around my island as though I should cower in fear, as though I should be intimidated by how superior they are, and how hopeless our fight will be. No, I will never be intimidated. Arrogance does not defeat an enemy, and certainly, by this grand show, they display their arrogance. He scanned the ships, spread out far to the horizon, the smaller patrol boats, torpedo launchers, supply and troop carriers, and farther away, the warships, destroyers and cruisers and the enormous battleships. It was those that intrigued him most of all, hulking giants whose fire engulfed each ship in enormous clouds of smoke, their heaviest guns launching artillery shells that rolled through the air like railroad cars. The impact of those shells had thundered beneath his feet, as though the whole island quivered from the mighty blasts. Many of those heavier shells came closest, and he knew why, thought, they are trying to find me, my staff, my headquarters. They know we are up away from the beaches, and they must believe that this great castle above me is a symbol that we will grasp in our hands until they force us to let it go. Perhaps we will. But they can fire every shell in their arsenal and they will not harm us, no matter what they do to our symbols.

He focused on the smaller ships, closer to shore, could see motion, newly arrived transports, moving in behind and beside the destroyers that would protect them. He had asked the question already. How many are there, how many ships can they bring to this one place? He had tried to count them himself, but his field of vision was limited to the southern coasts. Someone on my staff will have done that by now, and I will see the number on paper, but then, tomorrow there will be more, as there have been every day for a week. He shook his head, a wave of despair. There are some in Tokyo who still believe the Americans will strike us at Formosa, that all of this is merely a feint. Those people hold so tightly to their own arrogance, and perhaps they have more arrogance than our enemies. They read my reports and dismiss my staff for exaggerating, insist that we are in a panic because of a few ships. Who among them will come here and see this? Who will stand on this ledge and watch what I have watched? How many of them still believe that all we must do is stand up and wave our swords and cry out the name of our ancestors and the Americans will melt away into the sea?

They were foolish questions, answered months before, when he had been assigned to command the enormous garrison on Okinawa. In the beginning he had more than a hundred thousand troops on the island, good troops, veterans, skilled commanders. But the Imperial High Command was not confident that the enemy would come to Okinawa, Japanese intelligence reporting often that there was debate in the American headquarters, that Formosa could be the target instead. And so the order came, the order he fought bitterly against, to remove the Ninth Division, twenty-five thousand of his finest soldiers, and transfer them to Formosa. And now, he thought, when it is so clear what the Americans have planned, will I receive those good men back here? Of course not. It is too late. It would be suicide to send those transports through the American fleet. He rolled those words over in his mind. Yes, that is after all what I am being asked to do, what every soldier in my command is being asked to do. We will be sacrificed in the desperate hope that we will draw the Americans down with us, that by giving up our lives for our emperor, we might also kill so many Americans that they will give up this war.

That … is arrogance.

The first puff of smoke came again, a small gunship close to the beach to the north,