Joe Steele met with his unofficial aides (the Pain Trust, people sometimes called them, though not where the GBI could hear) before the Cabinet meeting. He was not a happy man. “We got caught with our pants down around our ankles in Hawaii,” he growled. “I will want the admiral and the general who were in charge there recalled for interrogation. They should have had more on the ball.”
“I’ll take care of that, boss,” Lazar Kagan said. Charlie wondered whether anyone else would see those officers after Joe Steele’s interrogators got through with them. He wouldn’t have wanted to be in their shoes.
“Well, we’re in the war at last,” the President said. “We didn’t start it, but we’ll finish it. By the time we get through with the Japs, there won’t be one brick left on top of another on those islands.”
The Cabinet meeting was the same thing on a larger scale. Charlie sat off to one side, listening. When he heard a phrase he liked, he noted it to toss into the draft he’d give the President. Kagan talked to the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy in a low voice. Neither man looked thrilled at what Joe Steele’s aide told them, but they both nodded.
Charlie was up late, finishing the draft for the speech Joe Steele would give when he asked a joint session of Congress for the formal declaration of war against Japan. Millions of people across the country would hear that speech when the President gave it. They might not love Joe Steele-he was one of the least lovable men Charlie had ever known. But when foreign enemies attacked the country he led, who wouldn’t rally behind him?
With Senators crowding in along with Representatives, the House chamber was packed for the joint session. Charlie counted himself lucky to get a seat in the visitors’ gallery. You didn’t watch and listen to history being made every day.
The ferocious roar with which the members of both houses greeted Joe Steele and the way they sprang to their feet to applaud him even before the Speaker of the House could introduce him told Charlie there’d be no trouble over the declaration of war. He hadn’t expected any, but finding out you were right always felt good.
“Members of the Congress of the United States, people of America, yesterday the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines without warning in time of peace,” the President said. “This act of vicious treachery will never be forgotten. Because of it, I ask the Congress to declare that a state of war exists between the United States and the Empire of Japan.”
More roars. More cheers. Joe Steele went on, “A grave danger hangs over our country. The perfidious Japanese military attack continues. There can be no doubt that this short-lived military gain for the Empire of Japan is only an episode. The war with Japan cannot be considered an ordinary war. It is not only a war between two armies and navies, it is also a great war of the entire American people against the Imperial Japanese forces.
“In this war of freedom, we shall not stand alone. Our forces are numerous. The arrogant enemy will soon learn this to his cost. Side by side with the U.S. Army and Navy, thousands of workers, community farmers, and scientists are rising to fight the enemy aggressors. The masses of our people will rise up in their millions.
“To repulse the enemy who used a sneak attack against our country, a National Committee for Defense has been formed, in whose hands the entire power of the state has been vested. The Committee calls upon all people to rally around the party of Jefferson and Jackson and Wilson and around the U.S. government so as self-denyingly to support the U.S. Army and Navy, demolish the enemy, and gain victory. Forward!”
Forward they went. Two Representatives and one Senator voted against the declaration of war. Nothing, it seemed, was ever unanimous, but that came close enough.
When Charlie got back to the White House, Stas Mikoian greeted him with a long face. “The Japs just smashed our planes on the ground at Clark Field, outside of Manila,” Mikoian said.
“Wait,” Charlie said. “They did that today?” Mikoian nodded. “A day after the fighting started? On the ground? Flat-footed?” Mikoian nodded again. Charlie found one more question: “How, for Chrissake?”
“That, I don’t know,” the Armenian answered. “The boss doesn’t, either-he just found out, too. But he’ll want to know. He’ll have some interesting questions for General MacArthur, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Charlie said. Douglas MacArthur was five thousand miles from the American West Coast. The big naval base between the West Coast and the Philippines had just been blown to hell and gone. All things considered, though, Charlie figured MacArthur was much safer fighting the Japs where he was than he would be if he had to come home and answer those questions from Joe Steele.
* * *
Three days after the United States declared war on Japan, Germany did-and overdid-an ally’s duty and declared war on the United States. Charlie thought Hitler did Joe Steele a favor. The President hadn’t declared war on the Nazis, even though the U.S. Navy and German U-boats had been skirmishing for months. Now the Führer had done it for him.
Three days after that, Admiral Kimmel and General Short arrived in Washington. Husband Kimmel looked handsome in his gold-striped sleeves. Charlie remembered Walter Short from the days when he’d sat on a military tribunal. Now he and Kimmel found themselves on the wrong end of one of those proceedings.
The questions the officers who served as judges asked the admiral and the general were the obvious ones. Why hadn’t somebody spotted the Japanese fleet before the carriers started launching planes? Why were so many American planes lined up on the runways almost wingtip to wingtip? Why didn’t more of them get airborne once the authorities realized the war was on?
Admiral Kimmel said, “We searched the areas where we thought the enemy was most likely to appear. Our patrols to the west and to the southwest of Pearl Harbor were thorough and diligent.”
“But you had no airplanes searching to the north, the direction from which the Japs really came?” a judge asked.
“No, sir,” Kimmel answered somberly. “We did not look for an approach from the North Pacific. We thought the weather and the waves at that time of the year made it too dangerous for the Japanese to attempt.”
“You were mistaken, weren’t you?”
“So it would seem, yes, sir.” Husband Kimmel sounded more somber yet.
“I ordered the aircraft grouped in a compact mass to better protect them against sabotage,” General Short said when they asked him about that. “Something like one civilian in three on Oahu is a Jap. Too many of them are loyal to the place they came from, not the place where they live now.”
“Was there any sabotage by Hawaiian Japanese during the enemy attack?” a judge inquired.
“Not that I am aware of,” Walter Short answered unwillingly.
“Was there any sabotage by Hawaiian Japanese before the enemy attack?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“Has there been any sabotage by Hawaiian Japanese since the enemy attack?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
Charlie wondered why he attended the tribunal. He knew what would happen before it did. Kimmel and Short might not, but that was their hard luck. Anyone who’d been around the White House and seen what kind of mood Joe Steele was in didn’t need a crystal ball to see what was coming.
And Charlie had been to tribunals before. The United States was a secular country. It didn’t have anything like the old Spanish auto-da-fé. These tribunals, with the verdicts scripted in advance, were about as close as it came.
Substandard performance. Dereliction of duty. Neglect of duty. During the last war, during any war, those were charges that would blight any officer’s career, even if they were made but not proved. The judges needed only a few minutes to find both men guilty and to deliver the sentence: death by firing squad.