From the Fatherland, with Love, page 27
It was decided to appeal formally to the UN Security Council; but when the Foreign Ministry contacted the office of the UN delegation, they were informed that the KEF’s status as a rebel army appeared to be an obstacle. Both the Korean Central News Agency and the North Korean embassy in Beijing had repeatedly announced that the invasion was the work of a rebel faction of the People’s Army. The DPRK had no objection to Japan disposing of the rebels, and was even willing to dispatch a sufficient military force to deal with them. According to the UN delegation in Japan, it would therefore be difficult for the Security Council to justify imposing sanctions against North Korea.
After the mayor’s statement, the KEF announced that they would be issuing a new currency, and would also be arresting certain people for political and other serious crimes. The new currency would apparently be linked to the yen, but it would be electronic rather than paper money. “Is that possible?” Shigemitsu asked Atoda, Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy. Atoda replied that as long as suitable capital, whether in dollars or yen, was accepted by stipulated banks as funds, it wasn’t difficult to have an independent settlement currency. The KEF was at pains to indicate they had no intention of depriving Fukuoka City or its people of their assets. If they needed, say, food or clothing, then they would pay for it. “I wonder if they have dollars or yen,” put in Moriyama Kazue of the Financial Services Agency. Tsunemura of the Foreign Ministry explained that the North Korean army had accumulated a lot of dollars via trading firms and the like, and Motoki of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau reminded them that North Korea wasn’t “a nation that possesses an army, but an army that possesses a nation.” With regard to the arrests for political and other crimes, the KEF said they would refrain from announcing any names for the present to avoid the possibility of the culprits fleeing.
When the KEF commander announced next that a further hundred and twenty thousand troops of the rebel army would arrive in Hakata Port eight days later, not a sound was heard in the crisis-management room. Such troops would be massing on the east coast of North Korea, but it wasn’t known which ports they would be leaving from or on which day. A reporter asked whether rebel troops would be permitted to leave port. The commander answered that not only would they leave, but should any of the boats in which they were traveling be attacked, by whatever country, there would be reprisals. The implication was that either Japanese nationals arrested for political or other crimes would be executed, or terrorist attacks would be carried out by the Special Operations Forces already embedded in various cities around Japan. After that, the commander responded to all questions from reporters by repeating that they had come to Fukuoka not as invaders, but as new partners.
The more Yamagiwa heard the words “coexistence” and “mutual prosperity,” the more meaningless they sounded, and eventually he found them so abhorrent they literally made him shiver. “Next he’s going to tell us that a million refugees are on their way too!” someone said, trying unsuccessfully to lighten the atmosphere. A sense of resignation descended over the table. It felt suffocating, as if the air had grown twice as heavy. Kido and Shigemitsu had their heads in their hands. Yamagiwa hadn’t forgiven them for making him a scapegoat, but he couldn’t help sympathizing with them somewhat. Neither had so much as touched the plates of rice balls and sandwiches. Working through the night at their age was exhausting, and made worse by the knowledge that whatever decisions they took would have a direct effect on people’s lives. And their initial response to the events in Fukuoka had been wrong—mainly because they hadn’t decided on their priorities. Ultimately, the two of them were probably just incompetent clowns—but even clowns got burned out. Kido turned his bloodshot eyes to Shimada, Minister of State for Defense, and asked what the options were for attack. Shigemitsu abruptly stopped cleaning his glasses, and everyone at the table tensed up.
“Do you mean our options for attacking the ships carrying reinforcements?” asked Shimada. Kido shook his head. “No, the camp in Fukuoka.” Shimada called over an SDF official in his early forties who had been sitting on a chair by the wall, and introduced him as Horiuchi. Horiuchi was a colonel in the Intelligence HQ of the Joint Staff Council, and a specialist in the war against terror. He was lean, wore rimless glasses, and had a rather gloomy face. After an underling brought him a diagram of the area under KEF control, he spread it out on the table. The area was bordered to the east and west by rivers, to the north was the Hakata Bay coastline, and to the south Chuo Ward, which was residential. “It’s a fairly large area,” said Horiuchi, indicating the zone marked in red with a telescopic pointer. “Ideally we’d have a cloudy night. First we send in a commando unit from the sea. While they’re freeing the hostages in the hotel, we create a line of defense on this road between the hotel and the camp, cutting the terrorists off. At the same time as the infiltration by sea, we land a second commando unit from the Hii River just here, to the west of the Kyushu Medical Center. This unit would stake out a line of defense along here, to prevent the terrorists from entering the hospital, and to attack and neutralize the five checkpoints and nine sentry posts, thus surrounding their camp. From the south we spring a surprise attack with helicopters to coincide with the raid on the hotel. This is pretty much our only option.”
Umezu and Doihara looked at each other with some enthusiasm. “Not bad! We might be onto something here.” The colonel’s somewhat downbeat air and cool delivery had apparently made the use of armed force sound like a realistic possibility, and it was as though a faint ray of light had broken through. The PM asked a female staff member to bring him a damp hand towel, and, loosening his tie, he slowly wiped his face and neck. He appeared to be trying to strengthen his resolve to become the first prime minister ever to issue the order for the SDF to attack. Looking over at him, Shigemitsu took a couple of gulps of his now lukewarm coffee. Someone pointed out that the SDF must have gained some experience overseas, which should help.
But Horiuchi himself just sat lightly tapping the diagram with the tip of the pointer and working his lips. The Defense Minister and the chiefs of staff of the Ground, Maritime, and Air SDF sat with their arms folded, fidgeting restlessly and shaking their heads. Eventually Horiuchi spoke up, explaining apologetically that he hadn’t quite finished. Kido leaned forward, and Shigemitsu frowned and ran his fingers irritably through his hair. Horiuchi let out a deep breath and continued, “The problem is that we lack information, so this plan entails a number of risks. First of all, it’s possible that some of their people have been deployed to locations other than the camp, the hotel main entrance, checkpoints, and sentry posts. For example, the hotel’s two west side entrances, an underground parking lot accessible from the north, and the shopping mall to the south of the Dome. If this is the case, there’s a risk of our men being surrounded. Likewise, it’s possible that the checkpoints and sentry posts shown on TV are meant to distract attention from, say, camouflaged monitoring devices, snipers, or patrols in the area. According to what little information we do have, practically all of the terrorists are from the Special Operations Forces, which means that they’ll be well up on such tactics. If they are using things like that then we’ll be in trouble from the start.
“It’s also possible that the terrorists have a surveillance team equipped with night-vision goggles on the hotel’s helipad. They may have set antipersonnel mines at strategic points, and they may even have biological or chemical weapons at their disposal. In any of these cases, we will fail and can expect major losses. If we decide to go ahead with this operation, it will be bigger than anything we’ve ever undertaken before, and the collaboration of our counter-terrorism forces will be vital. By this I mean a police Special Assault Team, a Special Security Team from the Coast Guard, the MSDF’s Special Guard Team, and the LSDF’s Ranger Corps. The unit landing from the seaboard will consist of one squad to free the hostages in the hotel, one to create the line of defense cutting off the camp, and one to attack the terrorists in the hotel—for which we’ll need a minimum of a hundred and twenty men with diving skills, ideally two hundred.
“At present, though, we can only guarantee the immediate dispatch of eighty men from the Special Security Team and Special Guard Team combined. For the helicopter attack, we can send the Ranger Corps from the bases at Metabaru in Saga and Takayubaru in Kumamoto, but unlike the American ones, our CH-47 Chinook and UH-60 Black Hawk transport helicopters are not sufficiently armored. Even bullets from the RPK light machine guns and PKM machine guns at the checkpoints can penetrate them, and an RPG is guaranteed to bring them down. In other words, we could lose the helicopters before even landing the Ranger Corps. As I said before, if the operation fails in the first phase, our men will be surrounded and wiped out.
“But even if the first phase is successful, it will be extremely difficult to prevent the terrorists from breaking through our defenses to the residential quarters of Chuo Ward or to the Medical Center. If we evacuate Chuo Ward in advance they’ll get wind of the plan, and in any case it will be nigh on impossible to prevent major casualties among civilians or hospital patients and doctors. And there’s one more factor that needs to be considered. Less than three kilometers from their camp, on the Higashihama Pier right next to the Fukuoka prefectural government office, there is a storage facility for liquefied natural gas. If these storage tanks get hit by, say, an anti-tank rocket, start to leak, and are then detonated with another rocket or even a hand grenade, the result could be catastrophic. We’ve done a simulation showing how the blast could travel throughout the city’s gas pipes, sending the whole of Fukuoka up in flames.”
By this stage, his listeners’ reservations had turned to open disappointment. The prevailing mood seemed to be that if the plan had that many holes in it, he should have said so in the first place instead of getting their hopes up. Sensing this, Horiuchi added rather loudly, “In modern warfare, including the war on terror, what matters most is information. For example, we don’t know which floors of the hotel the hostages are being held on. However well trained the anti-terrorist units are, in these circumstances—” He stopped abruptly as Kido held up his hand. “What would be the expected casualties?” the PM asked. Horiuchi glanced over at Shimada questioningly. Shimada jerked his chin at Kido and Shigemitsu as if to say he should give it to them straight.
“If, by some miracle, the operation was successful, the casualties would be in the region of five hundred; if it failed, there could be several tens of thousands, and a lot more if they have biological or chemical weapons, depending on the wind direction, temperature, and population density.” Kido asked what the likelihood of success was. “Two per cent,” Horiuchi said bluntly, almost defiantly. Umezu cleared his throat and muttered, “Holy shit!” Doihara kneaded his temples with both hands, while Minami stared at the ceiling with folded arms. All three women ministers smiled wryly and sighed. Horiuchi began to say that perhaps they’d forgotten about the possibility of terrorist cells having been set up in other cities in Japan, but Shimada interrupted and told him they’d heard enough. The diagram was cleared away and Horiuchi went back to his chair by the wall.
“What about the US forces based here?” asked Shigemitsu, but Kido shook his head. Umezu, applying eye drops, said, “The Americans can’t even tell the difference between the Korean and Japanese languages, let alone between North Korean terrorists and Japanese citizens.” It was a typically anti-American comment from him, thought Yamagiwa, but also probably true. For a hostage situation what was needed was the anti-terrorist strategies of the police and special forces. The US military here didn’t have any unit with special training in anti-terrorism, and it would take too long to get one dispatched from the US—if they ever agreed to send one. Also, he couldn’t believe that simply because the Americans were in the forefront of the war against terror, they’d be able to come up with anything better than the strategy outlined by Horiuchi.
In the oppressive silence that prevailed, Nagano began coughing furiously, as though the sandwich he’d been eating had stuck in his throat. Umezu stood up and patted him on the back. Exhaustion showed in everyone at the round table. Kido had been sitting with his eyes closed; now he wondered aloud if they could get the terrorists to the negotiating table. “But that would be tantamount to recognizing them as a legitimate partner for negotiations!” said Shigemitsu. Kido muttered, “I guess so,” and sank back into silence.
The KEF commander reappeared on the TV screen. Yamagiwa noticed for the first time that his right ear was flattened and covered in what seemed to be scar tissue. The skin looked as if it had melted, and the earhole was just a crack. It looked too unnatural for a scar from an accident or combat wound. Yamagiwa wondered if it was a burn—he remembered seeing a torture scene in a movie where someone’s ear had been seared with a blowtorch.
“How about sending in an undercover SAT team to capture some of the terrorists when they start making those arrests?” suggested Oikawa. “It’d be dangerous, but if we can catch even one, we’d be able to get information out of them.” A number of ministers voiced approval—none of them from Defense—and an enervated Kido weakly agreed to add that to the agenda. Though staff members were still issuing instructions, the ministers and bureau chiefs had lapsed into silence. They were already showing signs of giving up, thought Yamagiwa. And Kido and Shigemitsu had already deceived the nation by carrying out the blockade of Fukushima under emergency laws designed to protect all citizens.
The image of the KEF commander’s ear had arisen again in Yamagiwa’s mind, when he heard someone at his side say, “Yamagiwa-sensei, you must be tired too.” It was Masuyama Yukiko, from the Home Affairs Ministry. “No, I’m all right,” he said, realizing that she hadn’t yet arrived when Kido fired him. Still, it was odd. She must have heard about his dismissal by now, and no bureaucrat ever went out of their way to be nice to someone who’d been dismissed, not from meanness but rather to avoid rubbing salt into the wound. Perhaps Kido and Shigemitsu had changed their minds? A faint hope began to well up in him. If there was any possibility at all of that, then perhaps he should be considering his next move.
In any case, he hadn’t yet handed in his resignation, and the situation had completely changed since last night. Even Sadakata hadn’t really been held to account for sending in a substitute. Presumably this meeting would continue without a break until they had decided on a basic course of action, making do with the occasional nap until then. What if he were actively to support Kido and Shigemitsu, he wondered, but then immediately told himself it was pointless, just wishful thinking. Once notice of a dismissal had been given, even verbally, it was never revoked. But why hadn’t he been sent home? Either way, he would probably be well advised to consider which direction the discussion at the round table might take from here on.
He knew intuitively that they would indeed consider the option of accepting Fukuoka’s independence. There had been little public backlash over the blockade. What would independence entail? It didn’t necessarily mean that the movement of people or goods would cease. Anybody with relatives in Kyushu would probably be allowed to move relatively freely between there and the mainland. And it wasn’t as if the local people were being killed in terrorist attacks, or even caught up in any fighting. Approving the independence of Fukuoka had to be an option. If that was the direction the discussion took, then it might be advisable to make his opinion clear from the start.
Someone like Moriyama Kazue, commissioner of the Financial Services Agency and originally from northern Japan, would probably argue that if Kyushu had its own currency then Fukuoka might actually profit commercially. The Defense Agency had warned that any attack on the KEF might cost tens of thousands of lives. And how many more would it be once the rebel reinforcements arrived? Japan had never been invaded in all its history, and it was inconceivable that people in Fukuoka would engage the North Koreans in guerrilla warfare or carry out suicide bombings and what have you. It would be better to negotiate to preserve the human rights, lives, and assets of local residents. Umezu and Doihara were bound to protest that approving Fukuoka’s independence was an outrage. Shigemitsu and his ilk would no doubt say that politics should aim for the greatest benefit of the greatest number of people, and that sometimes it was necessary to sacrifice the minority for the majority’s sake. Attacking the handful of terrorists in Fukuoka Dome would have settled things with a minimum of collateral damage, but it was too late now.
Now that the situation had become so serious, they should be thinking about how to minimize casualties—at least, that was bound to be the dominant opinion. It wasn’t as if the KEF would meekly agree to disarm. They couldn’t go back to North Korea, they had nowhere else to go, and surely they knew better than anyone that their safety depended on their military strength. Yamagiwa was convinced that most of those present would consider the maintenance of peace to be paramount.
Way back in the early 1970s, one prime minister had responded to a hijacker’s demands by issuing a statement that the lives of hostages were more important than anything on earth. The West furiously criticized him for giving in to terrorism, but Japan had defended its own value system and dug its heels in for a peaceful resolution. The independence of Fukuoka would render both nuclear weapons and a military build-up meaningless, which meant that the moderate factions and the opposition could well support that option. Apart from anything, the government had not yet declared the KEF to be an enemy force. Once they did so, they would presumably be obliged to fight them by whatever means available; not fighting would amount to accepting that they weren’t adversaries.
