The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [70]
He missed teaching at the military academy, missed the brightest minds, those so privileged to attend, some of those, like the artillery captain, officers under his command. He had tried to convince himself that he had made the army much more professional, more efficient, more skilled, but the illusion had been shattered too many times by what he had seen in China. The brutality and savagery of his own men had been horrific and unstoppable, even the officers participating in the worst acts of inhumanity imaginable. He thought of Cho, all the man’s talk about victories. How can you claim to have achieved such honorable victory when you destroy a nation in the process? What have you won? You exterminate an entire race of people, just because you can … and so you congratulate yourself on your glorious conquest. None of that was in the lessons I learned, the lessons I taught my cadets. And yet men like Cho don’t give it a second thought.
He sipped the tea, the taste suddenly unpleasant. Behind him his servant seemed to read him, was close now, a hand holding a small tray. He set the cup down, never looked at the girl, caught a smell of her, some fragrance. He pushed that from his mind, heard her shuffle away, thought of Cho again. There had been talk all through his headquarters of the parties, that despite Ushijima’s orders, Cho had made it a practice to abuse many of the women who worked in the offices. The noise had been kept far away from Ushijima’s quarters, and he felt paralyzed to press the matter, would not wander down through the labyrinth of caves seeking out the dirty secrets of his officers. He knew that Cho had a loyal following, and those men would accept Ushijima’s authority as long as it did not interfere too much in Cho’s own world. A knife in the back, he thought, or a pistol shot to the temple. It would happen in my room, in the still of the night, one of the guards perhaps, tempted by glorious promises, a special place in the Yasukuni Shrine. The killer would most likely take his own life right beside me. He felt disgust, Cho’s bleating cheers a sickening reminder of the worst of the army. They sent that jackal here to get him away from … someone else, someone with more political influence than I have. It is the system. All that talk of Bushido, all the glorious history of the samurai. What we are is men, mortal and flawed, and we serve our emperor because it is what we are taught, and there can be no other way.
The sun was sinking low, the bright colors fading. He stared out toward the city of Naha, could not quite see the airfield there, the primary field on the island not yet captured by the Americans. More stupidity, he thought. It is just like this on every place we have added to the vast reaches of our empire. Let us create airfields, countless airfields. No matter that our air force refuses to use them, or perhaps our strength is so depleted that we have more airfields than usable fighters. Ah, but we must take pride in them. And the enemy admires them as well. So, we shall make the Americans happy by offering them such wonderful temptation, so many fine airfields on every island, every outpost, our smiling invitation for the Americans to come, to see our airfields, and should they wish, to take them for themselves. And we shall be powerless to stop them.
He heard the roar of a plane, high above, out of his view, knew the sound. One of their carrier planes, he thought,