The Phoenix Tree

‘We were behind the enemy’s lines for the whole of that month, just me and two other guys.’

‘I thought Merrill’s Marauders often worked behind Jap lines? Sorry, Japanese lines.’

Okada ignored the slip, wondering if it was deliberate. ‘They did, sir. But usually in platoon strength, at least. It was pretty goddam lonely, just with those two OSS guys.’

‘You may yet feel even more lonely.’ But Embury didn’t elaborate. Instead, he relit his pipe and went on: ‘You have been under observation for quite some time, corporal. Not by us, but by Army Intelligence and before them the FBI. It was not your own record that caused suspicion, but your father’s. As an anti-American Issei, he hasn’t been trusted.’

Okada well knew that many of the Japan-born, the Issei, were strongly pro-American; but his father had never been, not even in the comfortable days before Pearl Harbor. He could not, however, leave his father undefended; to that extent, at least, he himself was Japanese. ‘I don’t think he’d go in for sabotage or anything like that, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Well, he is still under surveillance. Knowing the respect you Japanese, even the Nisei, the American-born ones, have for your elders—’ Embury stopped for a moment to relight his pipe. The father of three bandit brats, he sighed inwardly for what the Orientals had achieved in family life. Then he went on: ‘We couldn’t be sure what influence he might have had on you. But your record with the Military Language School in Minnesota and then in the field with the Marauders and again with the Marines in the Pacific theatre – well, it showed you were prepared to prove you were at least one hundred per cent American.’

‘At least that, sir.’ Okada did not feel at ease, but he was not going to be humbly submissive to the Navy, USN or otherwise. He glanced at Lieutenant-Commander Irvine, RN, who surprised him by giving him a quiet smile. He wondered what the Englishman was doing here so far from any theatre where the British were operating, but he did his best to hide his curiosity. While these three men were going to play the game close to their chests, he’d do the same.

Embury stood up and lumbered across to a narrow window, the only one, in the side wall of the office. Okada had noticed when he had come in that the room looked more like an interrogation cell than an office; there were no filing cabinets, just bare walls and a table and four chairs. Neither Embury nor the other two officers had offered any explanation of the room.

‘This is a one-way window. We can see out, but those on the other side can only see a mirror. Take a look, corporal. Recognize anyone out there?’

Okada got up and moved to the window, curious and puzzled. All his life, being a Nisei, there had been times when he had felt off-balance; the supposed melting-pot that was America had thrown out Orientals like himself as non-absorbable. He was off-balance now, but not for racial reasons, and he felt cautious and, yes, a little afraid. He was being set up for something and he could only guess at what it might be. He fully expected to see his father sitting in the next room.

He looked through the window into a room as bare as the one in which he stood. One man, a Caucasian in Navy tans, sat at a table. The other, a Japanese in a checked shirt and grey flannel trousers, stood with his back against a wall, saying something to the Navy officer that was obviously defiant.

‘Do you recognize the Japanese?’ said Embury.

‘He looks familiar, sort of.’ Okada stared at the man in the next room; then he felt a stiffening of shock. ‘It’s Ken Minato!’

‘Exactly. How long is it since you’ve seen him?’

‘I don’t know – six or seven years, I guess.’ Okada looked in at the man who, when they were boys, had been his closest friend. But the friend was only dimly seen, as in a photograph that had been retouched and not for the better. A friendship soured does nothing for the objective view. ‘It was in Japan, when I last went home with my father. 1937. He was in the Japanese Navy then. What’s he doing here?’

‘We’ll come to that in a moment,’ said Embury, dropping back to his game plan. But he did come out from behind the smokescreen of his pipe, leaning his head almost comically to one side. ‘Corporal, we’d like to send you back to Japan with Lieutenant Minato.’

‘When?’ Okada retreated behind his own smokescreen; Americans were always joking about Oriental inscrutability.

‘Within the next three months.’

Okada forgot all about being inscrutable; he let out a cough of laughter. ‘Commander, what sort of crap am I being fed? Did you bring me all the way from Saipan for something crazy like this?’

Embury looked at Reilly, who said, ‘I told you he had a reputation for speaking his mind. It’s all in his file.’

‘No bad thing,’ said Embury, and Reilly looked pained: Annapolis had never taught such heresy. That, of course, was a major problem of a war; one had to draw on the amateurs.

‘Yes, corporal, we did bring you all this way for exactly that. We think the idea is worth exploring. All we have to do is convince you.’

‘Fat chance.’ Okada was openly rebellious now, American all the way. ‘I’d like to be sent back to my outfit, sir. As far away from here as possible.’

‘Sit down, corporal.’ Embury resumed his own seat and after a moment Okada dropped into his chair. He eyed all three men like a trapped animal and he had the feeling that they were looking at him as animal trainers might have done. Clyde Beatty and his Japanese performing wild dog … Embury puffed on his pipe, which had now begun to look like a stage prop. ‘Let me tell you about the man in the next room. You know some of it, but not all of it. He was born in Japan and brought here when he was a year old. He went back to Japan in 1929, the year of your first visit – he was men 13 years old. Unlike you, he stayed on – he liked the Japanese way of life. You didn’t, we understand.’

‘I hated it.’

‘Well, Minato stayed on. He went to Echijima, the Naval Academy, then was posted to Naval Intelligence. He became a junior protégé of Admiral Tajiri, who was a senior member of the Navy General Staff. Minato’s parents, his only relatives, were both killed in General Doolittle’s air raid on Tokyo in March 1942.’

‘My father would be upset to hear that. He was a close friend of Old Man Minato. Where did you take Ken prisoner?’

‘Right here in the United States, at the Military Language School where you went. He’s never been in action, except as a spy.’

Okada frowned. ‘I find that hard to believe …’

The three officers waited for him to explain himself. Reilly fidgetted, but Embury and Irvine showed Oriental patience.

At last Okada said, ‘Ken was a good guy, my best friend in junior high school. We fell out later, when I saw him on my second visit to Japan, that was in 1937, but it wasn’t really serious. He just sounded like a younger version of his father. And my father too, I guess,’ he added, and regretted at once that he had done so. He was still batting for his father, though the Old Man didn’t deserve it.

‘We understand the division between you and your father is very serious.’

‘That came later,’ said Okada abruptly. ‘What about Minato?’

‘He’s been here in this country since March 1938. He came back here under the name Suzuki and enrolled as a student at Gonzaga University at Spokane in Washington State. He said he was a Catholic convert and they accepted him as such.’

‘Why up there? Why didn’t he come back to California?’

‘We assume he didn’t want to be recognized by you or any of the other Japanese he had gone to school with. Anyhow, within three months he had disappeared. He took on another identity, several in fact, and he’s been here ever since. He’s told us that he sent back to Tokyo enough information for the Japanese General Staff to know exactly the lay-out of all our West Coast shipyards, from Seattle down to here, San Diego, their capacity and our state of preparedness. Like the rest of you Japanese he was picked up at the time of the relocation order in February 1942 and he spent twelve months in a camp in Arizona. Then he volunteered for the Language School and was accepted – his idea, he’s told us, was to get sent to the Pacific theatre as an interpreter. He’d pick up more information there and then at the first opportunity he’d sneak back through the Japanese lines. He made one mistake – he tried to tell his contacts here in the States what he intended doing and we intercepted the message. Or rather, Army Intelligence did. He’s now volunteered to be turned around, as we say – to be sent back to Japan and spy for us. But we don’t trust him, not entirely. In Intelligence we tend not to trust anyone. Though, of course, at me beginning of any game, that’s all we can go on – trust. Right, gentlemen?’

The two gentlemen nodded, though Okada noticed that the Englishman smiled slightly, as if he thought trust were some sort of mild joke.

‘You said you want me to go back to Japan. With Minato? Why would you trust me?’

‘Why, indeed?’ said Embury and relit his pipe once again. Okada was becoming irritated by the routine, then he wondered if it was some sort of punctuation to keep him off-balance. Neither Reilly nor Irvine seemed impatient with Embury’s stop-go approach. ‘We’ll have to learn more about you, corporal, about your mental attitude. If you don’t come up to scratch …’

Okada saw a small red light winking at him out of the future. ‘If I don’t come up to scratch, what happens to me? Am I going to be sent back to my outfit?’

Embury shook his head. ‘No, we probably wouldn’t let you go. We may have to keep you in protective custody for the rest of the war. In better conditions than those relocation camps you were sent to, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Okada sat up straighter. His athlete’s body felt bruised, but it was really only his mind that was so. But this was still preferable to standing on the cliffs of Saipan, where his mind had almost suffered a knock-out blow. ‘Go on, sir.’

‘You’re interested?’

‘I’m interested, but that doesn’t mean I’m volunteering for anything. If I’m going to be kept in protective custody for the rest of the war, you’ve got nothing to lose by telling me more. You’ll have to tell me, if you want me to cooperate.’

Embury looked at Irvine. ‘Do you have guys like this in the British services?’

‘Occasionally. We exile them to the colonies or we send them out on commando raids and they become dead heroes.’ Irvine smiled at Okada, like an angler who always landed something from troubled waters.

‘I’ve heard of the British sense of humour, sir.’

‘It helps us muddle through,’ said Irvine, using a phrase that had become a British battle cry. Then he stopped smiling. ‘I wish you would help us in this little venture, corporal. It could mean a great deal to both our countries, America and Britain.’

For some reason he couldn’t fathom at the moment, Okada was suddenly receptive. Perhaps it was the friendliness in Irvine’s manner; the Englishman, of course, had no authority to be as demanding as Embury or Reilly. But it was obvious that, for some reason or other, Irvine had a personal interest in the matter. He did not have the bored, indifferent look of a liaison officer.

Okada looked back at Embury. ‘Tell me more, sir.’