Chapter 6
The Invasion of Manchuria set the tone for the 1930s. The era of the Taisho Democracy was truly dead and buried and the tide of ultra-nationalist militarism would only rise higher and higher. Had I not seen it building in the twenties? I had known that it was coming but it seemed as if a switch had just been flipped with the invasion of Manchuria. Could I have missed the build-up of societal pressure to this?
I couldn't help but notice my ignorance of Japanese history outside of the military side of that history, and even that was mostly limited to the period of the second world war, but it made sense. The underlying issues behind the riots and strikes I had witnessed back in 1918 must never have truly been resolved after they were suppressed, and even with the boom era of the twenties, the Great Depression had taken that all away, leaving the door wide open, much like in Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazis. Of course, these were just my somewhat educated guesses. Trying to diagnose the complex societal issues that affected Japan from an anchorage or fleet training maneuver was not an endeavor that could be expected to bear fruit. My crew and those who worked in the various ports around Japan that I visited were truly my only window into the workings of Japanese society.
A few months after the start of the Manchurian invasion I was made flagship of the Combined Fleet, and while I did not expect to hold this position for long as there were newer and more powerful battleships, it was interesting to have a fleet command group onboard. It was an interesting insight, as even though I was dealing with my feelings about Japan's slide into the second world war, I couldn't help but listen and watch them. Living through history was living through history, the good and the bad, the interesting and the boring.
The first sister to see my new outfit would be Kirishima, as we both would depart Sasebo as part of a fleet making for Shanghai, in response to the incident that was going on there.
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"…and it just changed one day?"
Kirishima asked after I had finished explaining what had happened during my rebuild, her gaze was still examining my outfit even now.
"Yes, I don't know how to explain how it happened but it just…well did. Did anything change for you during your rebuild?"
From my vantage, I hadn't noticed any differences in her outfit, but it wouldn't be far-fetched for me to miss some small detail.
She got a thoughtful scrunched eyebrow expression and looked down at herself. I realized it was possible that she may have never thought to look.
"No…there does not seem to be anything that has changed…"
She said as she looked back up at me.
"Do you see anything different?"
"No, you look the same as you always have."
She really did look the same as she always had. After a few moments, a smile spread on Kirishima's face.
"Hiei is going to be delighted when she sees you."
"That's not much of a prediction 'Shima. She is going to love how I appear now. We all match."
"I don't think she much cared that we were mismatched before."
Kirishima pointed out. She was right of course.
"You are very right, though it is far more obvious now that I am the elder sister."
I said with faux smugness. Being around one of my sisters really was a salve on my soul and my mood which had been…bleak, had been improved a fair bit.
"Indeed, none will be able to deny it now."
We both broke down in chuckles for a few moments. After those few moments of light-heartedness, I was brought back to reality as several aircraft passed overhead. They were white biplanes with red meatballs on their wings' undersides. Under their centerlines, each carried two bombs.
They had passed by before I could get a look at their identification markings but there were two carriers apart of this fleet. Kaga and Hōshō. Hōshō I knew well enough, we had crossed paths enough times over the years to consider each other friends.
Kaga on the other hand…well…I had only interacted with her a bare few times and I wasn't quite sure what to think of her demeanor. Perhaps as sullen aloofness…that might be the best way to describe it. It could be that or perhaps she just had no social skills so just didn't speak very often.
Of course, I had rarely interacted with her so she could be very different from those she is around a lot. She might be the life of the party…not that I really thought that was it.
"Those planes will be bound for Shanghai…with those large bombs they are carrying."
"The Army needs the Navy's support. The Chinese provocateurs outnumber them."
"There has been a lot of provocation in China as of late…"
I said as I looked at the airplanes. If Kirishima could have seen my face, she would have seen the deep frown that my lips bore, though she may have picked up on the flat tone of my voice.
"Yes…well…these are the times we live in. They won't last, but Japan must not back down from them, lest we founder."
Kirishima responded as she too watched the planes disappear into the distance.
"Yes but China is vast and deep…"
"Don't be so pessimistic sister, things will go well for the Empire, you don't need to worry."
"Yes of course…you're right…"
I said with a sigh. Perhaps it was best she didn't pick up on the meanings behind my words, or perhaps she had and hadn't let on. She was the most astute of my sisters, but if she didn't say anything I wouldn't either.
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While the Shanghai incident officially ended with a cease-fire and a withdrawal of forces on both sides, it had been a clear Japanese military victory and had in effect been a small-scale test for the coming second Sino-Japanese war, just as the invasion of Manchuria had.
1932 would continue to be a turbulent year in East Asia as on May 18th, the Japanese Prime Minister, Inukai Tsuyoshi, was assassinated by a group of young naval officers as a part of an attempted coup d'état.
The reaction was not what I had expected. In all honesty, I had expected there to be outrage that anyone would try to murder the Prime Minister, who was ostensibly the Emperor's representative from my understanding.
Perhaps that small bit of me that was still American from my past life. The assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, no one even remembers Garfield or McKinley were presidents, had been national tragedies. The assassination of Inukai Tsuyoshi…was…to put it simply, the exact opposite.
The eleven assassins were almost…folk heroes. I simply could not understand how anyone could think they were justified in their actions. How could tens of thousands of people write the court begging for them to get a lenient sentence?
I simply couldn't understand. It was so far outside my frame of reference that I was completely perplexed. I couldn't even try to imagine the mindset required to think in such a way. I had known that Japan had gone hard into ultra-nationalism and militarism in the thirties and that the army and navy had such a tense rivalry that they would occasionally murder each other, but this. I could not understand this.
In my past life, I had never done a deep dive into the political history of Japan. All I had was essentially the 'too long, didn't read' version. It had just never been something that I had looked into. Military history has always been far more interesting to me.
At least I wasn't alone in my reaction. A fair number of the older ships were also shocked by this turn of events. This event proved to be just one more step along the path to the death ride the Japanese Empire was determined to be on.
On a non-political front, 1932 would also see my anti-air battery receive a major upgrade. First were four duel 12.7 cm/40 Type 89 anti-aircraft guns. These were the ubiquitous anti-aircraft gun of the imperial Japanese navy and every ship that could mount them would mount them. An odd second was the two twin-mount Type 91 40mm guns. These were imported Vickers 2-pdr autocannons and were pretty much the exact opposite of the 40mm Bofors gun that would be commonplace in a decade or so with the United States Navy. The 2-pdr looked to me as if Vickers had just taken the Vickers machine gun and had just upsized it to be a 40mm anti-aircraft gun. That is probably exactly what they had done.
It did its job poorly and I didn't need to think hard to see why it would be replaced as soon as possible by the also ubiquitous Type 96 25 mm gun. Not that those were much better at their job either.
With the turn of the calendar from 1932 to 1933, the League of Nations Lytton Commission would issue its report on the Japanese Invasion of Manchuria. In response to the League's determination that Japan should withdraw from Manchuria, Japan would in turn leave the League of Nations.
The rest of 1933 and 1934 would be spent on various training maneuvers with the combined fleet, most of what I had been doing ever since I had arrived in Japan twenty years prior. Twenty years since I first sighted Japan. Twenty years since I had left England. I couldn't help but wonder how things had changed back in Barrow-In-Furness. Were the tugs still doing their thing? Probably, tugboats had very long-life spans, so unless they suffered some accident that caused them to be written off, they would still be there, moving things around and they could keep on doing so for decades to come. I wonder if they remembered me. I hoped I had left a memorable enough impression on them. Having someone remember me would be nice…
In November 1934 I returned to Sasebo to once again be a reserve ship. The Sasebo tugboats certainly knew me, considering how much time I spent in the reserve, though perhaps not as well as the Yokosuka tugs. A few months later in January of 1935, the German Naval Attaché, Captain Paul Wenneker was given a tour of the cruisers Tama, the submarine I-2, and me.
It was clear to me that he was not impressed by what he saw when he came onboard my hull. I took offense to that in spite of everything. As if the German Kriegsmarine was anything to write home about. The Kriegsmarine surface fleet was made irrelevant after the first few years of the war, the battleships and cruisers either sunk or forced to stay in port. The U-Boats had been more effective but even when they were at their most effective, the Germans had nowhere near enough of them.
Which was good, there had been a risk at the start of the war that the Germans might starve out the British with their attacks on merchant ships. The far superior Italian navy had been bottled up in the Mediterranean with nowhere near enough oil, which had also been for the best.
So, I had no idea on what grounds this German had to be unimpressed with me. I was more than a match for anything the Germans had. The Vickers and later the Yokosuka Yard had given their best in building and rebuilding me. To me, no expense had been spared and my sisters and I were the best of the pre-World War One ships still afloat, certainly better than anything the Germans would ever put to sea.
The German captain was gone as soon as he came and things returned to the normal day-to-day of the reserve until June, when I moved to Yokosuka for my second rebuild.
This rebuild would be just as comprehensive as the first and I mentally prepared myself for the discomfort it would bring. Without the Washington and London naval treaties to bind them anymore, the Navy was fully intent to rebuild my sisters and I into fast battleships so that we would be able to keep up with the fleet carriers. This meant new boilers and new turbines. My ten boilers were a mix of coil-oil fired and pure oil and they were replaced by eight new Kampon boilers and my old turbines, which had been pushing me along since 1913 were finally replaced by new Parsons geared turbines. This modernization of my engineering plant would see my speed increase to 30 knots, even greater than when I had been a battlecruiser.
My armaments would also undergo modernizing. The last of the underwater torpedo tubes would be removed and I wasn't in any way unhappy to see them gone as they were utterly useless weapons emplacements. Another useless weapon emplacement was removed when the Vickers 40mm guns were replaced by ten twin 25mm Type 96s. It said a lot about how bad the Vickers guns were that the Type 96s were an improvement.
My main mast would see its final transformation into a full pagoda and atop it was placed a 10-meter rangefinder. It was a very impressive optic and when combined with how the main battery's max elevation was increased from thirty-three to forty-five degrees, the effectiveness of my main 14-inch guns was greatly improved.
My armor profile was also improved overall, increasing the protection to my most vital of places, an example being how my belt was now a consistent thickness. With my more powerful engineering plant, my stern was lengthened by twenty-five feet to increase the fitness ratio of my hull so that my hull form could be kept efficient. It really spoke to the power of my new engineering plant that even with all the weight that had been added, giving me my greatest displacement to date, I was still faster than I had been straight out the Vickers Yard. I now had speed and armor…not that either of those would stop a pair of torpedoes that I was fated to meet.
The unknown force which seemed to control my life struck again near the midpoint of this reconstruction, same as the last time, my appearance changed again. My outfit remained the same from what I could tell but my hair of all things is what changed. It now fell further down, reaching the bottom of my lower back. With the new length of my hair I had gained two buns, with one on either side of my head, connected to two long loops of hair that came down over my hairband on either side of my face. It did not seem to me to be the most practical of hairstyles and I doubted I would be able to replicate it if I had to but it was what the universe had decided to bestow upon me.
During my time at the Yokosuka Naval Yard, I met the newly built cruiser Suzuya who was going through her fitting out. While she was not the first ship I had met during my time in Japan that did not speak any English, my interactions with her made it clear to me that spoken English was on its way out. The period of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty was long gone at this point and its influences faded more and more each year. Thankfully, even with my slow progress, the previous twenty-two years had been enough time for me to gain a more or less conversational vocabulary, even though it still did not come naturally to me. I still had to translate English to Japanese and vice versa in my head. It was clear to me that I would never be a natural speaker and I doubted that I was going to make some massive improvement to total fluency in the next decade.
I could tell Suzuya was rather amused that my Japanese was not as polished and natural as hers was, her being a born speaker of it after all, but she was still respectful and didn't rub my inadequacy in my face. I was an elder of the fleet at this point and that meant something. With how English usage was only going to decrease as things went on, I really would need to try to polish my Japanese up some more. With the rising ultra-nationalism, being the symbol of the British and the West within the fleet would probably see me become an outsider, even with my elder status.
Perhaps that was unavoidable no matter what I did…but perhaps I didn't want to be one of the team once the second world war kicked off…
1936 would see another major political incident for Japan when in February there was another attempted coup d'état, this time by the army. The conspirators had far more men with them in their attempt to overthrow the government, but they were just as successful as the last group who had tried to overthrow the government and their coup attempt was quickly brought to an end just two days after its start.
While their goals hadn't been achieved, the attempted coup had only served to increase the influence of the military over the civilian government. Failure and success had essentially the same results in the long term and I couldn't help but ponder again how things had gotten so bad so quickly. I once again cursed my lack of knowledge of Japanese political history. Perhaps if I had known more I could have seen the bigger picture that I wasn't able to see because of the quirks of my new life.
At the end of 1936, on the 25th of December, a large milestone came and went. Twenty-five years since I had awoken in my new life on that cold Christmas Eve in the Vickers Shipyard at Barrow-In-Furness. A quarter of a century had come and gone by. My life as Kongō had now become equal in length to my previous life. That fact made me feel…strange. With every passing year that past life seemed more distant and more like a movie I could remember particularly well. It felt less and less like I had actually lived it, which was more than a little disturbing to think about.
The night of the 25th of December was one spent in quiet self-reflection and when the sun finally rose upon snow-covered Yokosuka, I was more secure in my new life and my sense of self. I was who I was and now I am who I am.
With the coming of 1937, my second reconstruction was completed, and I began to count down the last few months of peace that the world would see before the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the start of the Second World War. The greatest tragedy in the history of mankind was onrushing like a runaway train.
On July 7th the first shots were fired at the Marco Polo Bridge…the shooting that started there would not cease for another eight years. Eight long years that would drown the world in an abyss of fire and death.
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AN: New chapter and only a day later than I planned. I hope you all enjoy this as much as you have enjoy the previous chapters. We are closing in on the end of the first part of this story so I hope you all stick around for that. Once again, thank you for reading this and I hope you enjoy. 
