The box from japan, p.82
The Box from Japan, page 82
“And now commences the race for Australia, in the backyard of Japan. Australia, mighty, mighty close at hand for those Japanese ships—and far away for England, whether via the Horn or via the Cape of Good Hope. Yasuri figured he’d win by days. And he would have. He had mapped out, Kogo says, a most cunning battle position of his smaller and apparently weaker dreadnoughts only off Sydney, out of range of the big coast guns, and calculated to lure Australia’s little navy, the mammoth Rodney and Nelson, greatest sea-dogs of all times, forth to battle. The position, Kogo says, was so laid out, that, had the Jap ships been in that position in their original unelectrolyzed form, the Rodney and the Nelson could have blown to pieces not less than 4 of them, shooting from three positions, for, as I am given to understand, the Rodney and the Nelson carry nine 16-inch guns mounted in three triple turrets forward so that they can shoot bow on. The position Yasuri mapped out was, however, but a lure. Two key ships in the Jap position could have pierced the Australian sister ships. Two could have closed in on opposite sides. The Rodney and the Nelson could, and would have been, sent to the bottom of the Tasman Sea.
“And then was to come the most curious thing of all. No direct sea attack on Sydney, her harbor now strewn with deadly mines. But a flanking operation in her rear. Yes, via land. Defenseless as she was now more or less, a few of the faster Jap cruisers and destroyers having come up in the meantime, as well as the super-speed transports, Kobe and Osako, Yasuri had specified a simultaneous landing movement, from under 7½ inch shell-fire protection, by the 7,000-ton armored cruisers Kinugasa and Onihimbi, to the north, and Yamorka and Ito, to the south, consisting of two full Japanese army divisions, each division of which would be composed of four brigades of infantry, a regiment of cavalry, a regiment of artillery, a battalion of engineers, and a battalion of their army service corps. The total strength of the total movement would have been 44,000 men. And poor Australia, always believing in her splendid isolation, had cut her army, back in 1932, to a volunteer force of 35,000 constructed on a skeleton system capable of expansion to 180,000—and had never altered it. And expansion such as that takes weeks. Yasuri’s soldiers, at least according to Yasuri’s calculations, would be circling Sydney, investing it, before the rest of Australia rubbed its eyes.
“Sydney would, then, have been taken complete, lock stock and barrel, from a rear position where her big guns pointing seaward weren’t worth a nickel. The last thing ever dreamed of by her. And Japanese ships would be re-fueling in her oil-yards.”
“Unless,” put in Halsey mildly, “Sydney blew up her oil-yards to prevent just that?”
“Yes, in which case Japanese tankers, who had filled up at Saigon, were coming along. That in Shogo, was known as the ‘cut-and-follow.’ She—”
“But what of Uncle Sammy, Artemus, in the meantime? I—I like Shogo. It contains basketball, football, handball, and baseball combined.”
“Yes. And poker and applied psychology. Don’t forget that! Well, what of Uncle Sam in the meantime.
“Uncle Sam would have been like a jury receiving one of the famous mixed-defenses put forth by a certain shrewd old Chicago lawyer named Clarence Darrow, who operated in the courts of law back in your babyhood days. Darrow would defend a client on the basis of insanity, unwritten law, glandular disturbance, technical legality, and a score of other things. He would so confuse a jury that they would bring in a verdict of innocent, for many of his clients. That confused position would be Uncle Sam’s, in this crisis. Was Japan amicable toward the United States? Not a single threat or gesture against the Philippine Islands had been offered. In fact, the Japanese Minister in the Philippines had invited the American Governor-General to tea, to assure him that Japan felt most friendly to America, but that Japan’s honor had been bitterly assailed by England, and more than once. Cabinet meetings would have been going on. Would have had to keep going on—in any event—until America could get her own fleet assembled in the Pacific. Her own Atlantic fleet, consisting of submarines and cruisers, dreadnoughts, tugs and mine sweepers, would be now crawling around South America, not yet even to the tip of that vast continent. In the meantime, Japanese submarines and destroyers, even dirigibles, are reported in the Pacific Ocean on the direct line connecting the United States and the islands of Nippon. Two Japanese dreadnoughts, the Samotori and the Chichibu, accompanied seemingly by more auxiliary ships than they should be, as well as the super-plane carrier Ohbayashi, are hovering in the Aleutians, manifesting a putative threat to Alaska. If Alaska should be taken, an air base is created for raining death and hell on Seattle and Tacoma, and Frisco. What is this? Is it merely a gesture for America to stay neutral? If she does, though, and Japan should capture Australia—the Philippine Islands are sure to be eventually seized to complete the island chain that is to dominate the Pacific. But this is nonsense. Japan may take Australia—but she can never hold it. Senator Williams is talking in the Senate; Some of the senators have earmuffs on, and, after sessions with their various ladyes faire the evening previous, are sleeping soundly. Others, however, are listening intently. Williams is roaring ‘Let England fight this out! This is England’s war. Too long has she had the world mastery in fleet strength. Let her and Japan, too, reduce themselves a bit! And Uncle Sam can but profit from the reduction. Singapore, b’God, is wrecked, demolished. Uncle hasn’t the base over there that he once had.’ Then Williams, the stormy albatross, would have up and told Congress plenty more. Things it wouldn’t have liked to hear. But things which, Halse, the wily Yasuri knew. Our attenuated forces, Williams would have said, might have beaten off all possible enemies in the first three decades of the century—but now they couldn’t beat one off, let alone carry a fight 7000 miles across the Pacific. Scattered over the 2000 miles of land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were these forces, skeleton regiments of infantry, artillery reputedly modern simply because the guns were mounted on trucks and hauled by tractors or railroad locomotives. Here a cavalry post with a fine record for Indian fighting, but with Indians now tuning in their radios on the Metropolitan Opera at New York; there a fort designed for coast defense, armed with such ancient devices as the mortar, cousin to the pederero; with about a thousand planes, yes, some slow, some medium, some fast, some new, some old—but the entire outfit utterly incapable of moving as a single unit because the slower machines must always fall behind.
“Let America now take warning, Williams would thunder. Tighten up her defenses, and not start thinking of offensives—to help Britain, who had cunningly negotiated a Nicaraguan canal, b’God, to make a base on American soil! If, so he would have said, America’s allegedly modern navy with which now possibly she intended to perform operations against Japan was carefully analyzed as to ships capable, and ships inadequate, it had today in 1937 but 38 percent effective strength, since 62 percent of all its floating craft were over age. While Japan, who had kept up her building, had a vastly greater proportion of relative effective strength, so much so that, comparing her proportion to Uncle Sam’s proportion, Japan’s was actually the stronger navy. The time to have adjusted this tragic difference, the giant senator would have roared, was back in 1932, when Japan, out of her entire navy, had but 11 percent of her ships, and America then only 55 percent of hers, over age. Now, however, during these 5 years, Japan had kept tightening up, America slackening down, drunk with her new prosperity after the panic of 1932 and ’33. By this time some of the senators, having recuperated from the night before, would be waking up refreshed, and taking off their earmuffs, in time to hear Williams give them some concrete facts—scornfully tell them that three of America’s dreadnoughts, the Florida, the Utah, and the Arkansas which had become obsolete even in 1932 were still part of the fleet, being merely superficially modernized only. And that the New York and the Texas, which had become obsolete in 1935, were also still part of it—and not modernized at all, b’God. Now was the time for America to take warning, Senator Williams would say, and start building—and not sending a lot of ancient hulks half around the world—for what? For what? For what?
“If Williams didn’t win his points, plenty others would have jumped to their feet and backed him up. This was England’s war! If she couldn’t win things hands down on the very ground, Unde Sam—7000 miles distant—had better stay out.
“Talk, talk, talk. Words, words, words. Yasuri knew! The vital moment when America might have thwarted this debacle would have been lost. Lost chiefly because of the Nicaraguan Ditch bombing, and the fact that America had to talk until her own fleet, such as it was, came together; but lost, in a further sense, because of the fact that it takes three times the floating naval strength to wage war against a fleet 7000 miles distant, than in your own waters. True, Japan was now, you say, Halse, far from her own isles. But Uncle had a vicious line to cross, should he cross, with transports, tankers and God knows what, those 102 Japanese submarines and aircraft left to cut off any possible crossing.
“And so—but Halse, I see I bore you. Yasuri’s plan dealt with the different contingency of Britain’s fleets coming around into the Indian archipelago fused into one—or taken, by Japan, in two units. Whatever contingency had eventuated, the fight there in Australian waters—or the two fights—would have been the fight of the century. A ratio utterly different, in each case, than the one presumed to exist—and Britain’s battleships making the most hideous strategical as well as tactical mistakes in combat, not knowing or even dreaming what mysterious new factors had entered this game where all their hits became misses. For that, Halse, was the plan in essence—every other factor was subordinated to that fact: that, since the spiral electrification of the most of the Japanese navy in the South China Sea—the heavy part of that navy, at any rate, not a man would have occasion to be coming back to shore to spread the secret which, had it only been known, might have changed the whole mode of Britain’s defense and attack.”
CHAPTER LXIII
How Kogo Came to America
There was silence for a minute between the two men. Halsey spoke.
“Go on with the story, Artemus,” he urged. “I’m waiting on every word. But do you mind if I dress—while you’re continuing it? I’ve grave duties ahead of me this morn’—I have to go apartment hunting!”
“No—go right ahead. I’m only waiting myself on that ring on your ’phone.” Baxter paused. “Well,” he began again, as Halsey commenced to shed his pajamas and envelop himself rapidly with his first layer of integuments, “I may as well tell you here and now, Halse, that a pact—an agreement—secret treaty—call it what you will—was signed in the Tokyo palace that second day of chin-chin, June 5, 1937, between these two war lords, one a great war lord, mad as a hatter, and the other a tiny war lord, with equal powers in his own little sphere, and not at mad—merely scheming and cunning as he signed it. Better should I say, Halse, that two such pacts were signed, each identical of course with the other, each carrying the signatures of both parties to it, and one of which pacts naturally remained with the Emperor and became eventually locked in Prince Ido’s private drawer in the Japanese War Office vaults, together with Emperor’s Own Attack Plan No. 231, the report of Engineer Count Takejiro Kataoka entitled The Self-Disruptive Tendency of the Internal Automatic Mechanicsm of the Lundbergh Lock Gate under the Influence of Detonative Discharges in its Vicinity, the Singapore Aerial Attack Plan 4, devised by some captain of aviation named Kormoru to which was appended reports by one Nuro Himyata, Chemical Engineer, labeled Suzoka, a Powerful Source of Infra-e rays, and a Means for Combating Smokescreens or Zenzil Vapor Screens in Naval and Land Engagements, Together with Design of a Fluorescing Screen to Receive and Magnify Same, and by one Professor Enja Fujino of the Japanese Chemical War Division labeled Fujinosite, a Lethal Gas 183-percent More Deadly Than the American Lewisite, and the combination report of one, Ashi Kadoshi, C. E., and Kadi Yasomura, C. E., on Slide Possibilities at the Nicaraguan Canal at and near Ococuina and San Chirripo, and last but far from least a secret thesis by one Sadi Nititchi, Doctor of Electrical Engineering by Bestowment from His Imperial Majesty, entitled Mathematics and Practical Mechanics of Raising All Forms of Tempered Steel to 2.2 Times its Tensile and Compression Strength by Application of ‘Spirally Alternated’ Electrical Current Following the Nititchi Law, and a report of one—well, I see, Halse, you don’t want to follow all the papers in a certain thick, sealed cloth envelope, labeled Emperor’s Own Attack Plan No. 231. So be it! Let us consider then only the pact—and its documental twin brother which went to the good Senor Almedo! Both, my good child, were neatly typed in English on good white paper by Skull Face himself—Yasuri—but with a special typewriter ribbon, never inked at the factory, a ribbon soaked in Yasuri’s own blood; both were signed by himself in his own blood as well, with his English name and title, Shinji Yasuri, Emperor of Nippon, followed by the Japanese characters corresponding thereto. And the pacts, by gosh, by permission of his Imperial Majesty, were signed by Almedo in the same lustrous emporial haemoglobinous ink—for, obviously, in the fact of what we practically know from Dr. Huberston’s psychiatrical findings, Skull Face, in case Almedo was careless or recreant, wanted to be in a position, at the first sign of any possible unpleasant rumble from far across the Pacific, to fold his lean claws across his thin stomach and by doing a little mental willing make such damning writing ‘cease in full entirety to be,’ then, hence, and forevermore!
“But don’t think, Halse, that Almedo was to be allowed, exactly, to get out of Japan with any dangerous secret agreements. There was a minor clique in Japanese court circles, employing its own secret agents, and it delegated to itself the stern duty of seeing that the erratic self-willed Emperor made no bonehead plays that might embarrass Japan in any way. Almedo, it appears, was set upon, that evening of the second day of chin-chin, when he left the Imperial Palace, by armed thugs, and robbed of everything on his body, jewelry, money, papers. I am in a position, however, to tell you that no pact was found upon him. He quite naturally complained to the Tokyo Chief of Police concerning the robbery—and lo—his jewelry, money and papers were all mysteriously gotten back for him—from, ostensibly, the underworld.”
“Well—well why on earth didn’t they get the pact?” asked Halsey, now buttoning up his shirt.
“For the simple reason,” replied Baxter, “that before he even emerged from the visitor’s exit of the Palace that evening, to enter the car the Emperor had graciously summoned for him, and which car was subsequently run to the curbing by thugs within a block, Almedo met Armand Solarzano, the Nicaraguan flyer, who was waiting in Japan to make what would then have been one of the greatest trans-Pacific hops on record—Tokyo to San Juan del Sura, Nicaragua. The now somewhat famous Solarzano, it seems, had been summoned to the Palace himself, by his Imperial Majesty, to discuss trans-oceanic flying. They, Almedo and Solarzano, met, one going out, and one waiting to be summoned to enter the inner palace, in the Great Hall of the Daujoshai Festival, lighted by hundreds of torches held in silver holders, and connecting the inner palace with the outer entrance. Quickly Almedo, as Solarzano rose in surprise to greet him, took the young man to one side. Gave him hurried words of instruction. Told him he had just obtained a paper vital to the prosperity of Nicaragua—a paper which could be used to force from Japan many things that would materially aid that little country—but that he knew he could never get out of Japan with it. Solarzano had been—and was even then only on leave of absence—one of Almedo’s trusted army aviators. To him, in the shadows of those smoky torches, Almedo hastily passed the cloth envelope in which was his copy of the pact. Told Solarzano that he must rush it out of Japan—he must hop unexpectedly that night, instead of waiting for several nights later.
“The loyal Solarzano did hop that night—records show that—and well ahead of the time when weather conditions would have been reported right for this then dangerous venture. And because your recollections of those days are hazy in the extreme, I will say that Solarzano encountered one of the worst storms in the Pacific. Plane and all went down into the ocean. Neither Solarzano nor the paper ever reached Nicaragua.”
Baxter paused a second.
“Part of the story I am giving you this morning, Halse,” he went on at last, “has been made available thanks to the existence of the present Japanese consul to Chicago, Mr. Tetsusabura Ei-Shu. Mr. Ei-Shu was Japanese consul to Mexico City some years back, and he was, moreover, a certain emissary sent down from there to Nicaragua in late August of 1937, by Prince Ido, to convey not only Prince Ido’s cordial sentiments to one Mr. Almedo, but also a little gift, and to request a slight favor. We brought Mr. Ei-Shu to the Federal Bureau tonight. A curious old sheik he was, with a short gray stringy beardlet and impassive eyes; carries a malacca cane, and wears gray spats, by golly, and a boutonniere of buttercups, even at 4 in the morning! Well, when Inspector Hagman showed him what we had—and assured him, however, that it was to be suppressed—but told him that such suppression was possible only if Ei-Sha kicked in with all the further information possible, the Jap consul came across in good mien.
“He said—well you, Halse, probably wouldn’t have heard that Almedo received some substantial mysterious backing in the Mexican primaries in 1938. In fact, it is the vague nature of that backing—the obscure evidences of fraud in those primaries—which have thus far made Uncle Sam and Great Britain a bit reticent to flat-footedly acknowledge him. Well, it seems that Almedo, when he came up to Mexico City in 1938 and saw that he had a good chance to run for the presidency, paid a visit to Mr. Ei-Shu, the Japanese consul there then, and held consultation with him. They had, as I think I said, met before. For Mr. Ei-Shu, at the behest of his friend Prince Ido, had gone down to Nicaragua in late August, the year before, after certain startling world-events had caused the Emperor’s whole plan No. 231 to get knocked into a cocked hat. He had conveyed to Senor Almedo a $25,000 gift from Prince Ido’s own private purse, many sentiments of good will, and a simple request to the effect that Prince Ido would be greatly honored if Senor Almedo would now return his copy of a quite useless pact which the Emperor had canceled by cable the week before. Senor Almedo, having gratefully accepted the little gift, regretfully told how he had had a hunch that evening in Tokyo to pass it to Aviator Solarzano, and how it and the loyal Solarzano had gone to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. And that he could not very well return it, therefore, much as he would like to have done so.
