“True enough.” Yamamoto nodded again, following Genda’s train of thought. “But we’ve shown the world that that doesn’t matter.” He set both hands on the cheap pine desk. As a young officer, he’d lost the first two fingers of his left hand at the Battle of Tsushima, in the Russo-Japanese War. He’d lost two fingers-but the Russians lost most of the fleet that sailed halfway around the world to meet the Japanese. And they lost the war.
Genda had had his first birthday in 1905. Like any of his countrymen, though, he knew what the Russo-Japanese War meant. It was the first modern war in which people of color beat whites. And now the Japanese were beating the Americans and the British and the Australians, too.
Yamamoto said, “I hope I don’t have to come back too soon. American radio broadcasts make it very plain the United States is not abandoning Hawaii. I hoped the USA would-I hoped our victories would make them see they could not win, and so make peace. But that hasn’t happened. Karma, neh? They have more people and more resources and more factories-many more-than we do. My guess is that they will try to bring all of them into play. That will take some time.”
“We will be building, too,” Genda said stoutly.
“Hai,” Yamamoto said once more. But that was only acknowledgment, not agreement, for he went on, “They can build faster than we can. I hope what we have done here in the Eastern Pacific has bought us the time to take and use the resources we need to stay a great power in the modern world. I hope so… but time will tell.”