States via Honolulu than in exploring the countryside. Spending time in Hilo was much more pleasant to the occupying Japanese than patrolling through jungles and up volcanoes in search of rumored and elusive bands of Americans. As a result of this neglect, Jake’s patrols had found another dozen American sailors and a pair of stray marines in the near jungles of Hawaii.
Counting the civilian volunteers who did not travel with him, his army had grown to almost a hundred men. Unfortunately, more than half had no weapons, and many of the weapons they did have were civilian shotguns and rifles. They would not be taking on Imperial Japan’s finest anytime soon.
“Good message from home, Colonel Jake?” Sergeant Hawkins asked as he plopped on the ground by Jake.
“Y’know, when we get back to the States, Sergeant Hawk, you’re going to have to quit calling me Colonel Jake.”
Hawkins grinned. An easy form of camaraderie had grown among the handful of men who formed the nucleus of Jake’s force, and he and Hawkins were now close friends. “You get us back to the States, and I’ll call you anything you want. So what’s the message, sir?”
“It’s interesting. They’re going to send us some more men, but they specified that some would not be combat types. We now report directly to Nimitz in San Diego, and he’s very interested in our keeping our cover and not being found by the Japs.”
“I like the man already,” said Hawkins. “I just can’t believe we’re working for the navy.”
“Don’t worry, Hawk; we’re still in the army. Let’s just say we’re coordinating real closely with the sailors. One of the things they told us to watch out for was stretches of level and solid ground. What does that mean to you?”
Hawkins thought for a second and laughed. “Planes. The sons of bitches want us to look for places to land planes. Damn, this could begin to get real interesting.”
“Is this going to be the end of our litany of defeats?” asked Roosevelt.
“There are no guarantees, sir,” said General Marshall. “But it is the right thing to do. The longer our forces in the Philippines hang on, the weaker they get and the more casualties they take.”
“Japanese prison camps are brutal, aren’t they? Our boys will be terribly mistreated if they surrender.”
“Yes, they will, Mr. President,” Marshall said glumly. Beside him, Admiral King kept silent. The bulk of the men on Bataan and Corregidor were army, not navy, and it was the navy that was unable to relieve them.
Roosevelt was visibly upset by the news that General Jonathan Wainwright, now commanding the Philippines, wished to offer to surrender his command to the Japanese. Wainwright saw the obvious- that there would be no reinforcements or relief, only prolonged agony. He had said that he felt he could hold out for several weeks more, even a couple of months, but for what purpose? The longer the siege went on, the more weakened the men would become. Thus, when the inevitable occurred and the Americans in the Philippines did surrender, they would have even less ability to withstand the privations of Japanese camps.
The time to surrender and save lives was now. The president knew he would be castigated for it, and accepted that as a fact of political life. “Is there no good news anywhere?” he asked.
King answered. “Intelligence says the Japs are gathering for a thrust into the Coral Sea as a prelude to taking Port Moresby. Warned as we are, we hope to ambush them.”
Roosevelt nodded. Again he felt exhausted. His strength seemed to ebb so much earlier each day. “See that you do.”
The sun-drenched beach south of San Diego was far from a solitary place. Even so, both Jamie Priest and Sue Dunnigan were in their own private worlds and able to ignore the several dozen people who were in view. Even the sounds of a foursome of drunken sailors and their dates failed to penetrate their shells. If it had been the weekend, the place would have been packed with humanity. But this was a work evening; the many thousands of military personnel were at their bases, and the tens of thousands of civilians in the area were working overtime producing bombers and the other materials of war that were just beginning to pour out of American factories.
Sue pried the top from a bottle of beer with an opener and handed the bottle to Jamie. “Was it that bad?”
He had been quiet since he’d picked her up and driven the short distance to the beach. The area was so lovely, so calm, that it was almost possible to forget there was a war on.
“I had to dredge up some memories I’d been trying to forget,” he replied.
She tucked her legs under her knees and took a bottle for herself from the cooler. Going to the beach had been her idea; the inquest had been the navy’s. Jamie looked so drawn and forlorn that she wanted to hold him to her and rock him like a baby. He was so thin and frail in his swimming trunks, she found it difficult to think of him as an officer, and a hero who’d survived both the Japanese and the ocean. At least the burns from the sun had gone and the cut on his back was a barely noticeable scar. He was pale, and the early evening in the sun would do them both some good.
When it came to thinness, she wryly thought that she matched him, bony limb for bony limb. Sue considered herself slender to the point of skinny and bemoaned what to her was an almost total lack of a bosom. At least she didn’t look foolish in her two-piece bathing suit like so many plump women did. She saw that the waist of her suit had ridden low and her navel was almost exposed. She pulled it up while thinking that, if she had better hips, it wouldn’t slide down so much.
This was the first time she and Jamie had done anything social. Their relationship had been very cordial but based entirely on work. Even the times they’d had lunch together had been because of the pressures of work, not because they wished to enjoy each other’s company. She hadn’t planned on suggesting anything like this evening at the beach, but he had looked so distraught after the inquest that she thought it was a good idea.
The Navy Department had finally commenced an investigation into the loss of the Pennsylvania. The sinking of a single ship, even a battleship, had largely been lost in the immensity of the disasters that had befallen the U.S. Navy since December 7. It seemed unlikely anyone even cared anymore.
Finally, however, four elderly and unimportant admirals had made the journey from Washington to interview Jamie Priest, the only known survivor of the sinking. In Jamie’s words, the admirals had been more than a little pissed that they had to travel to California instead of Jamie coming to them, but Admiral Nimitz had made it clear that he wanted Jamie to remain in San Diego. Thus, the four admirals trekked across the nation on a series of trains and buses, suffering through the inconsistencies and delays of a transportation system still paralyzed by the impact of war. They took the opportunity to loose their anger when they interrogated Jamie.
Now he shook his head in frustration. “I didn’t have the answers they wanted. They couldn’t get it through their heads that I was just a lonely and lowly officer who wasn’t assigned to anything in particular, who didn’t know squat about the battle, and who spent the entire time scared to death. They wanted to know what was happening on the bridge and got angry when I told them I never got on the bridge. I thought one of them would have a fit when I said I wasn’t certain where the bridge was. They didn’t even care how those guys died in the water, although I got the hint they thought I could have done something better to save them. The bastards.”
He finished his beer and took another one from Sue, who let him know she liked being called Suzy by her friends and he now qualified. “I guess they felt they wasted a trip, and they’re right. I don’t know what they wanted, but they should have known they wouldn’t get it from me. They’ll just have to wait until the war’s over and they talk to the other survivors.”
If there are any, Suzy thought. She’d caught snatches of conversation between senior officers that told her otherwise.
She decided to redirect his thoughts and pointed out the glories of the sun reflecting off the waves. It didn’t work.
“Japan’s out there,” Jamie said.
“So’s Hawaii,” she answered softly.
Jamie bit his lip. “God, I’m sorry. I haven’t given a thought about you losing your father. I must sound like a spoiled child.”
“Just a little,” she teased. She was gratified that he did seem genuinely contrite. A lot of guys wouldn’t have cared.
“Tell me about your dad,” Jamie said.
She leaned back on her elbows and drank in the sun. She took off her glasses, and the world beyond a
