Hunter Sniper

In his headquarters aboard USS Nashville, General Douglas MacArthur studied the maps that had been secured to the steel bulkhead. One of the maps displayed the entire Pacific theater of operations, its surface showing a great deal of blue water dotted with chains of islands that, until a few short years ago, had been unknown to the average American, such as the Marianas, the Marshall Islands, and the Gilbert Islands.

Some of the names had become not only familiar but synonymous with terrible battles: Guadalcanal, Guam, Saipan. Thousands of young American lives had been lost in those places, fighting the Japanese Empire.

Other islands were so small that it required a fair amount of squinting to make out their names on the map, considering that the smallest were little more than a grove of trees on an elevated pile of sand that managed to keep above the tide line — if just barely.

The general knew all too well that just because an island was small on the map did not mean that it was insignificant. Peleliu was one such example. Measuring just five square miles, about one-fourth the size of Manhattan, the fight for Peleliu had cost the lives of more than thirteen hundred marines.

Some had called the American campaign “island hopping,” and that was an accurate description.

After all, Japan itself was an island nation that had built its empire largely of other Pacific islands, along with several swaths of the Asian continent that held the precious natural resources that Japan needed to feed its industries and its war machine — raw materials such as rubber, metals, and all-important oil to fuel its ships and planes.

The map showed how many more islands there were to go as US forces pressed ever closer to the Japanese home islands, especially Iwo Jima, the smaller Ryukyu islands, and Okinawa. Adding those islands to the list of American conquests promised to cost so many more lives on both sides that the very thought of the battles to come was daunting.

MacArthur was a commanding general, but he wasn’t a monster. He both understood and dreaded the price that would be paid. He often thought of General Ulysses S. Grant, whom some had seen as a butcher for his willingness to grind down his own army in search of victory. That reputation had always cast a shadow on Grant.

Could he do what Grant had done? In the end, MacArthur knew that he might not have much choice.

There had been rumors at the highest levels that the United States was developing a superweapon of such destructive power that it would strike fear into the Japanese Emperor’s heart. Even a general as high ranking as MacArthur didn’t know the details, but he didn’t have a lot of faith that anything less than the equivalent of Zeus’s thunderbolt would bring the Japanese to their knees.

Pacing his office, he paused long enough to put his hands on his hips and glare at the territories on the maps still held by the Japanese, as if willing the enemy to surrender.

* * *

MacArthur’s chief of staff came in. Born in Maryland, Dick Sutherland had been raised in West Virginia and had come to the army by way of Yale. Thirteen years younger than MacArthur, he had helped chase Pancho Villa in Mexico and fought the Germans on the Western Front during the Great War. Smart and capable, he was a tough taskmaster who oversaw the headquarters staff with an iron fist and an unrelenting attention to detail. It might be said that he was the general’s hatchet man and lobbyist, which hadn’t won him any friends in Washington.

The two men had experienced their ups and downs. They had even come close to falling out over MacArthur’s disapproval of Sutherland’s mistress — the wife of an Australian army officer — until Sutherland had come to his senses. Sutherland remained fiercely loyal to MacArthur — if a Japanese assassin had burst in, he wouldn’t have thought twice about taking a bullet for his boss.

He saw MacArthur looking at the maps yet again.

“Kind of makes you wonder why they don’t surrender, doesn’t it?” Sutherland asked.

“No,” MacArthur said. “You know damn well that we wouldn’t surrender either. We have to keep hitting them until they can’t hit back anymore.”

“From your lips to God’s ears.”

Sutherland left some papers on MacArthur’s desk and went back out, leaving the general to his ruminations.

The map that held the most interest for the general showed operations on the island of Leyte, where thousands of his troops had recently landed.

“Sir?” Another staff officer who was far junior to Sutherland poked his head cautiously through the door. They all knew that the general didn’t like to be interrupted, but from time to time, one of them appeared to update the maps.

“Go on,” MacArthur said.

As swiftly as possible, the man made a few marks on the map and retreated with a palpable air of relief from the general’s inner sanctum. Tall and imposing, MacArthur’s regal appearance tended to have that effect on his staff. He was not one to engage his staff in hale and hearty conversation.