“Someday, we’ll have to,” Steve said. “I don’t think we should cave in to them, especially not after Pearl Harbor and all the other crap they’ve done to us, but yeah, sooner or later there’ll have to be some talks unless this is really going to be a second Hundred Years War.”
“They’ve kicked our asses up and down the street,” Dane said. “What should we give up in order to stop the killing and get our people back?”
His nephew jabbed the opener into the can of Budweiser and took a swallow. “I don’t know. Do we need the Philippines? Hell, we were going to turn them loose anyhow. Does it really matter who gets them next?”
“But we promised them independence, not brutality and slavery.”
“But, Tim, how many Americans will have to die to get those islands returned, just so we can give them away? Certainly we want to keep Hawaii and get Midway, Wake, and Guam back, and they sure as hell are going to have to pay for Pearl Harbor and all the atrocities, but I guess I can’t totally rule out negotiating with the little yellow bastards. Just count your fingers when you shake their hands and cover your ass when you bow.”
Steve belched before continuing. It was his fourth beer and he was starting to feel it. There hadn’t been all that much opportunity for serious drinking lately. “First of all, we’ve got to start winning some battles so we can bring them to the table. When the hell is that going to start?”
Dane opened his own beer. “How the hell would I know? I’m a lieutenant commander, the equivalent of a major to you army types, and there’s a million of us wandering around thinking we know what’s going on, and none of us do.”
It was midafternoon when they heard Sergeant Stecher’s voice calling for them from up on the hill. They stood as Stecher ran down to them, upset and out of breath.
“Commander, you just got a call from a Captain Merchant.”
Dane shook his head. He didn’t want the war to intrude. Besides, what would happen if he ignored it for a few more minutes?
“And you didn’t salute me, Sergeant,” he said with a smile.
Stecher blinked in surprise and then laughed. “I wasn’t aware I had to salute an officer in a baggy bathing suit.”
“True enough. So what’s so important?”
“Damn Japs just invaded Alaska.”
Ruby Oliver’s small, shabby restaurant in the gray and undistinguished city of Anchorage specialized in large servings of mediocre food fried in bacon grease, or whatever she could get that was close to it. Anchorage itself was on the flat, low ground at the end of Cook Inlet. It was as far inland as decent-sized ships could go. On a clear day, the mountains to the east glowered down on the small city.
Seating a mere twenty people, the restaurant was in a small one-story frame building with a good view of the channel that led from the Cook Inlet to Anchorage itself. Of course it was named Ruby’s and it provided enough income for her to be comfortable. What people were calling the Great Depression had pretty well left Alaska alone since nobody’d had that much money in the first place. Can’t lose what you never had, went the joke.
Ruby was forty, divorced, had badly dyed red hair, and was at least twenty pounds overweight, the result of a tendency to eat the leftover food, a practice she referred to as profit sharing. Even though the Depression had largely missed Alaska, she’d been hungry enough in past years to know that you didn’t let food go to waste.
The restaurant rarely served beef as it was too expensive to import, but fish and venison were regular staples brought in by local fishermen and hunters. Fruits were almost unknown and a few vegetables were homegrown during the very short growing season. That or she’d occasionally buy foodstuffs, if they weren’t too expensive, from ships plying their trade from the south. Oranges, she’d discovered, were as rare as hen’s teeth and out of her price range.
She had a clientele that wasn’t too particular about what they ate, especially if it was cooked in that bacon grease. They liked Ruby, who was gregarious and friendly. A few of the boys had tried to get her drunk enough to get into her pants, but she’d outlasted all of them, sometimes to her regret. Her ex-husband, now living somewhere in Oregon, had been a complete jerk who’d slapped her around when drunk, but, when sober and aroused, was a helluva lover. Sometimes she missed that part of her life, but not enough to go back to him.
Ruby was beginning to have money worries. When war with Japan had first commenced, there was hope that the military would find Anchorage, one of Alaska’s major ports and a bustling town of two thousand, indispensable. Elmendorf Army Air Force Base had been built and Fort Richardson reinforced, and she’d dreamed of all the new customers frequenting her restaurant. But then came Midway and the Air Force had shuttled its planes out, and Fort Richardson’s garrison was reduced to only a couple of hundred men.
This morning, she had a slight hangover thanks to several drinks taken alone in the back of the restaurant, and was serving coffee to her one customer when she thought she heard thunder. She looked out the window and saw a nice bright summer morning and no reason for thunder, but hell, this was Alaska, wasn’t it? In five minutes they could be hit with a blizzard, even though it was summer. Some people said Alaska’s weather was God’s idea of a joke.
She was about to comment to her customer, when the lawyer’s office across the street disintegrated and shock waves blew through her window and hurled her across a table and into the wall. Her customer landed on top of her and she realized to her horror that he had borne the brunt of the explosion and was a bloody, dead mess. Large wood splinters and shards of glass protruded from his back and head like an obscene porcupine.
She screamed and clawed to get out from under him, finally succeeding as more explosions rocked the area and their concussions knocked her around. The front door wouldn’t open so she ran out the back. Anchorage was in flames. Many of the buildings were wood frame like hers, and they were burning furiously.
“Look down the channel!” someone yelled, and she did. She could see the gray shapes of large ships approaching. Smaller boats were alongside them, and these were heading directly for Anchorage and Ruby Oliver. She’d seen enough pictures and newsreels to know that the smaller boats were landing craft and that the larger ones were doubtless Japanese transports and warships. A dozen or so Japanese planes flew overhead and inland, seeking targets. It was common knowledge that the Japs had already landed farther out on the Aleutians on Kiska and Attu, and now they were headed directly for her.
Ruby ran back into the restaurant, now also afire, grabbed her shotgun and a box of shells and began to run down the road toward Fort Richardson. As she did, a column of trucks roared by her, forcing her off the road. They were coming from the fort and were filled with grim-faced soldiers carrying their Springfield rifles and wearing the tin-pot helmets that were leftovers from the last war. She was surprised they’d responded so quickly, but realized that spotters farther up the channel must have radioed the information to the fort. She wondered why the hell the military hadn’t warned the city. At least some civilians could have fled before the shelling began and maybe saved some lives. Several bodies were visible, and other civilians were running away from the burning town.
As some of the trucks approached the town, Ruby found an undamaged two-story house with the door open. She entered and went upstairs so she could see. She soon wished she hadn’t. As the column entered Anchorage and approached the waterfront, shells from the Japanese ships exploded in and around the American soldiers who were trying to deploy. She watched in horror as some soldiers simply disintegrated from the explosions while others were sent hurling into the sky.
The Japanese landing craft disgorged scores of men. They raced down the street toward the stunned and confused remaining American soldiers. The fight was at short range and she cheered when some Japanese fell, but many more Americans lay still, and the remnants of the column were soon standing with their hands up. The battle for Anchorage had been lost in a matter of minutes.
The Japanese rounded up the survivors. Ruby estimated there were thirty all told, and a number of them were wounded. One, an officer, tried talking to a Japanese counterpart. The Japanese officer shouted something, and the American was rifle-butted to the ground and stabbed with bayonets by several soldiers while the Japanese officer looked on. The soldiers stopped stabbing him and he lay still in an enormous pool of blood. She thought she could hear the other prisoners moaning.
More landing craft unloaded several hundred Japanese; most of whom headed down the road to what was likely a now abandoned Fort Richardson. A number, however, surrounded the prisoners, shouting and pointing bayonets at them. Ruby had heard that the Japs treated their prisoners brutally and fearfully wondered just what they’d do. She knew most of them, if only by sight. Some had even eaten at her place.
An officer barked a command and a roar of laughter came from the Japanese surrounding the Americans. The
