broadcasters.
At first, Baron Matsui, who came as close to being a British aristocrat as a Japanese could, got along famously with Milmay. They drank and dined together in out-of-the-way corners of the capital, but gradually certain flaws in Milmay’s character became apparent to the baron, who began to distance himself from the British officer in mufti. Now Matsui kept a close watch on Milmay, but had yet to find little to complain of in the man’s performance of his duties.
If anything, Milmay was leaning too heavily toward the cause of ultranationalistic Japan: the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. His anti-British and anti-American bias was becoming too blatant, too rabid, and the broadcasters themselves—who were given some discretion over the words they spoke over the airwaves—were trying to tone down Milmay’s excesses. Matsui, too, recognized that a certain degree of subtlety in these propaganda programs would be more effective than strident, Hitlerian bashing of the Allied broadcasts.
“You don’t like me, do you, Helma?” Milmay began.
“I don’t really know you, I’m afraid.”
“You could get to know me if you wanted to,” the British officer said in his precisely enunciated English. “It would be difficult for a couple like ourselves to move about freely in Tokyo these days, but we could meet at your place or in my room, you know.”
“I’ll bear that in mind, Captain. What did you want to see me about?”
“I have a script here for your next broadcast. I want you to read it over and then discuss it with me.”
“I hope it’s not like the one you gave me last week.”
“Just look it over, Helma. Then we’ll talk.”
“Very well, Captain.”
“And I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘Captain.’ You will notice I’m not wearing a uniform.”
“I would hardly expect you to do so—not in war-time Tokyo.”
“Is that what you don’t like about me—the fact that as a British officer I am now in the employ of the Japanese?”
Helma said nothing, but looked steadily at Milmay. What I really don’t like about him, she thought, is that his pale eyes are too close together. Although he was tall and slim and his other features were patrician, the positioning of his eyes made him look crafty. Besides, his voice was pitched too high and dripped with upper-class British condescension.
“After all,” he pressed on, “every week you yourself urge the British and the Americans throughout the Pacific theater to surrender. That’s all I did, isn’t it?” Milmay tried—largely in vain—to inject a degree of warmth into his voice. “So let’s do try to be more chummy, what? I’d like that, really I would.”
Helma’s reply was as frosty as the snowflakes beginning to fall outside Milmay’s window. “If that is all, sir, I’ll excuse myself.”
Chapter 10
Washington, D. C.
July 1943
Japanese forces evacuated Guadalcanal in January, and in June the Allies landed on New Guinea.
Bill Macneil received orders to report for active duty early in July. Using a voucher authorizing travel to Washington, D.C., he crossed the country by train. In the capital he found a place to stay for the night, then telephoned a college friend whose home was in Washington.
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