Conditions aboard were miserable. The vessel rolled ominously as it pursued a course well away from the calm straits to the west, where the naval force evacuating the last of the soldiers stationed on Guadalcanal was steaming through flat ocean.
The Yugumo-class destroyer, with a long waterline and sleek engineering, was capable of over thirty-five knots wide open. But tonight it was crawling along at less than a third of that speed, and the power plants throbbed steadily belowdecks as the weather slowed its progress to a crawl.
The sudden squall had hit unexpectedly, and the exhausted and emaciated soldiers being transported home were hard-pressed to keep their rations of rice down. Even the seasoned faces of the sailors were strained at the pounding they were receiving. One of the seamen moved along the cots, dispensing water to the soldiers, offering what limited comfort he could. Their uniforms were little more than rags now, their bodies in the final throes of starvation.
On the bridge, Captain Hashimoto watched as the helmsman tried to meet the chaotic swells to soften the worst of them. There seemed to be no rhythm or direction to the confused seas, and the ship was battling to stay on course. He’d briefly considered deviating to flatter water but had chosen to keep forging north toward Japan. His schedule allowed no time for detours whatever the reason.
The destroyer had been conscripted on a top secret mission under cover of darkness, capitalizing on the confusion caused by the Japanese’s final evacuation of the island. The officer they had taken aboard had been deemed too important to the war effort to be risked in the main evacuation, so he and his elite staff had been spirited away aboard the Konami, which had veered east while the rest of the force proceeded on a more westerly tack, running the customary gauntlet from Guadalcanal to Bougainville Island.
Hashimoto didn’t know what was so special about the army officer who required the dispatch of a destroyer for his transport. He didn’t care. He was accustomed to following orders, often seemingly in conflict with common sense. His role as a Japanese destroyer commander wasn’t to second-guess the high command—if the powers in Tokyo wanted him to take his crew to hell and back, his only question would be how soon they wanted him to leave.
A monster of a wave appeared from out of nowhere on the port side and slammed into the ship with such force that the entire vessel shuddered, jarring Hashimoto from his position. He grabbed the console for support, and the helmsman glanced at him with a worried look. Hashimoto’s scowl matched the storm’s ferocity as he debated giving the order he hated. He sighed and grunted as another mammoth roller approached.
“Back off to ten knots,” he grumbled, the lines in his face deepening with the words.
“Aye, aye, sir,” the helmsman acknowledged.
Both men watched as the next cliff of water rose out of the night and blasted over the bow, for a moment submerging it before passing over the ship’s length. The vessel keeled dangerously to starboard but then righted itself as it continued its assault on the angry seas.
Captain Hashimoto was no stranger to rough weather, having guided his vessel through some of the worst the oceans could throw at the ship since her christening a year earlier. He’d been through two typhoons, survived every type of adversity, and come out alive. But tonight’s freak storm was pushing the limits of the ship’s handling and he knew it.
When morning came, he’d be faced with an even greater danger—the possibility of being hit by a carrier-launched Allied plane equipped with a torpedo. Night was his cloak, and usually his friend—with light came vulnerability and the ever-present threat of breaking the streak of good fortune that had marked his short wartime career.
Hashimoto understood that at some point his number would be up, but not tonight—and not from a little wind and a few waves. Could it be that the war was lost now that their occupation of Guadalcanal was over? If so, he would do his duty to the end and die a courageous death that would do justice to his rank and family name—that was a given—and he would follow the course of so many of his fellow combatants in the best samurai tradition.
The army officer they’d rescued from the island entered the bridge from below. His face was sallow and drawn but his bearing ramrod stiff. He nodded to Hashimoto with a curt economy of motion and eyed the frothing sea through the windshield.
“We’ve slowed?” he asked, his sandpaper voice hushed.
“Yes. Better to proceed with caution in this weather than race to the bottom.”
The man grunted as though disagreeing and studied the glowing instruments. “Anything on radar?”
Hashimoto shook his head and then braced himself for another jolt as a big wave reared out of the darkness and broke against the bow with startling ferocity. He stole a glance at the army officer’s face and saw nothing but determination and fatigue—and something else, in the depth of his eyes. Something dark that caused Hashimoto a flutter of anxiety, an unfamiliar sensation for the battle-hardened veteran. The man’s eyes looked like one of the classical illustrations of an oni, a demon, from his childhood. The thought sprang to mind unbidden and he shrugged it off. He was no longer seven years old and had seen real-world devils since the war had started; he had no need for belief in the mythical past.
He was turning to ask the officer what he could do for him when the
ship shuddered like it had run aground, and then everyone on the bridge was yelling as alarms sounded.
“What’s going on?” the officer demanded.
“I don’t know.” The captain didn’t want to speak his darkest fear out loud.
“Did we hit something?”
Hashimoto hesitated. “There’s nothing to hit. We’re in nine thousand feet of water.” He paused as a junior officer approached with a pallid face and gave a grim report. Hashimoto nodded and issued a terse instruction, then turned back to the army man. “I’m afraid we must prepare for an unpleasant possibility. I need to ask you to go below and follow the emergency instructions that are issued.”
“What?”
Hashimoto sighed. “It appears that a repaired area of the hull has split open. We’re going to do everything we can, but it’s uncertain whether the pumps can keep up. If not, we may have to abandon ship.”
The officer’s face went deathly white. “In this?” He stared through the glass at the storm.
“We’ll know soon enough. Hopefully, we can control the damage.” He looked away. “Please. Leave me to my duty.”
The army officer nodded grimly. He turned and moved to the stairs and barely kept his feet when another big wave crashed into the port bow, causing the ship to list alarmingly.
Hashimoto went through the motions, directing his crew to take all possible measures as the helmsman struggled to keep the ship right, but in the end the fury of the sea proved too much. As the dark waves continued their assault and the last of the bridge lights flickered off, the vessel’s heavy steel hull now an anchor as it sank, his thoughts drifted to his wife, Yuki, and his one-year-old son—the son with whom he’d only spent a few short hours while on leave and who he’d never see grow into a man.