Days of Infamy

XI

DOOLITTLE RAIDS HAWAII! THE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES SCREAMED. TAKES JAPS BY SURPRISE! Only when you got to the fourth paragraph of the story did you discover that six of his sixteen B-25s had been shot down. The rest of what was in the paper was a paean to the heroism of the crews that had been rescued after they ditched in the Pacific-and, in slightly smaller measure, to the heroism of the destroyer crews that had done the rescuing.

Joe Crosetti understood that. Like every cadet at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, he wished he’d been along with Jimmy Doolittle and his intrepid flyboys. He was sick-jealous of the fliers, as a matter of fact. How horribly unfair that they’d got to go and he hadn’t! Just because they’d been flying for years while he was only now beginning to get up in the air…

That they’d lost more than one plane in three and about one man in two (for several crewmen had been shot even on B-25s that kept flying to the ditching point) fazed him not at all. It hadn’t fazed them either. They were all volunteers. The papers made that very plain. He couldn’t imagine anybody in the country who wouldn’t have stepped up to the plate there.

He burbled about the attack standing on the runway next to the Boeing Stearman he’d soon be taking up. Like all Navy trainers, the tough little biplane was painted bright yellow so nobody could mistake it for anything but what it was. People not training in Stearmans called them Yellow Perils, not altogether in jest. They were dangerous to their pilots and dangerous to those around them.

“If you will bring yourself back from the Hawaiian Islands to the business at hand, Mr. Crosetti…” said the instructor, a lieutenant from Pittsburgh named Ralph Goodwin.

“Uh, yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Joe wasn’t the least bit sorry. “Can you imagine the look on the Japs’ faces when we buzzed ’em?”

Goodwin had cool blue eyes and a manner that spoke of money. “Can you imagine the look on your face when I give you a downcheck for wasting your time-and mine?”

“No, sir,” Joe said quickly.

“All right, then. Why don’t you hop on in? We’ll run through the checks.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Joe scrambled up into the Stearman’s rear seat. It went up and down like a barber chair, to adjust to trainees of different heights. The man who’d taken the plane out last must have been big, because Joe had to raise it three or four inches. He clipped the parachute pack to the flying harness.

Lieutenant Goodwin, meanwhile, had taken his place in the front seat. “You squared away there?” he asked.

“Uh, just about, sir.” Crosetti reached up and adjusted the mirror attached to the upper wing. He might have been fooling with the rear-view mirror on a car somebody else had been driving. When he got it fixed the way he wanted it, he said, “All ready now.”

“Okay. Let’s run through the checklist, then,” Goodwin said.

“Right.” Joe hoped he hid his lack of enthusiasm.

By the way the instructor snorted, he didn’t hide it well enough. “You do this every time you plop your fanny down in an airplane, Mister-every single time. The one time you forget, the one thing you forget, will always be the one you wish you hadn’t. A Stearman’s a very forgiving plane-you can do a lot of things that’d send you home in a box if you tried ’em in a hotter machine. But no airplane ever made will forgive out-and-out stupidity. And even if you don’t feel like running through the checks, I do-’cause it’s my neck, too.”

Ears burning, Joe mumbled, “Yes, sir.”

“Okay.” Goodwin sounded amused, not angry. “Seems about two cadets out of three are like that. They get the hang of it, though. Let’s go through the list.”

Through it they went, everything from the attachment of Joe’s safety belt to pedals and stick to throttle and magneto with the motor running. Everything checked out the way it was supposed to. “All green, sir,” Joe said above the roar of the seven-cylinder radial.

“Looks that way to me, too,” Goodwin agreed. “Take her over to Runway Three-West and let the tower know you’ll be going into the air.”

“Three-West. Aye aye, sir.” Slowly and carefully, Joe taxied to the end of the required runway. A plane was meant to fly, not to waddle along on the ground; taxiing was nothing like driving a car, the way he’d thought it would be. He exchanged formalities with the control tower. He also looked down the runway to make sure nobody else was landing on it or taxiing across it. That was like automobile traffic: charging out from a stop sign without looking was liable to get you creamed. “Seems all clear, sir,” he said to Goodwin. He wasn’t far enough along to take off without the instructor’s permission.

“So it does. Get us airborne, Mr. Crosetti.”

Joe advanced the throttle. The engine’s roar got louder and deeper. The Stearman shot down the runway. Actually, the little biplane was one of the most sedate airplanes ever manufactured, but it didn’t seem that way to him. Even though he was still on the ground, he kept one eye glued to the airspeed indicator. When it showed he was going fast enough, he pulled back on the stick. The Yellow Peril lurched into the air.

“Smoothly, Mr. Crosetti, smoothly,” Goodwin said. “You’re not bulldogging a steer.”

“Yes, sir.” Joe thought he’d made a great takeoff. He was flying, wasn’t he?

“It’s like learning to drive a car,” Goodwin told him. “After you get enough hours, you won’t need to tell your hands and feet what to do. They’ll know by themselves, and they’ll do everything together. It’ll seem like second nature-if you don’t kill yourself before then, of course.”

That comparison made sense to Joe. It also told him he wasn’t as far along as he’d thought. He remembered how ragged he’d been the first few times he got behind the wheel. A few less than perfect turns here-and the instructor’s sardonic comments accompanying each one-went a long way toward cutting him down to size.

But he was flying! Even if he wasn’t such hot stuff yet, he was up in the air and learning what he needed to learn so he could go out and shoot down Japs one of these days. There was the Naval Air Station, and the woods and swamps behind it, and the blue bay in front, and the even bluer Gulf of Mexico out beyond the bay. Birds got a view like this all the time. The Stearman could outperform any bird ever hatched. (Even had it carried machine guns, it would have been helpless against anything this side of a Sopwith Camel, but Joe didn’t dwell on that.)

Much sooner than he wanted to, he was coming in for a landing. “Gently,” Goodwin urged. “Smoothly. You’re juggling eggs. Cadets make ninety percent of their mistakes in the last twenty feet. If you only knew where the hell the ground is, you’d be Charles Lindbergh.”

“I don’t want to be Charles Lindbergh,” Joe snapped. Lindbergh had done everything he could to keep the USA out of the war till the Japs jumped Hawaii. He’d been the Nazis’ teacher’s pet. And he’d been mighty quiet since December 7.

“Okay, you’d be Jimmy Doolittle,” Lieutenant Goodwin said equably.

“That’s more like it.”

Jimmy Doolittle Joe wasn’t, or not yet, anyhow. The Stearman bounced hard when he put it down. His teeth clicked together. The instructor said something Joe hoped didn’t go out to the control tower. He brought the recalcitrant beast to a stop and killed the engine.

“Well, sir?” he asked unhappily into the sudden silence that seemed so loud.

But Goodwin had recovered his sangfroid in a hurry. “Well, Mr. Crosetti, you’re learning, that’s all,” he said. “I’ve seen men at your stage of training do better, but I’ve seen plenty do worse. You’ve got plenty of work ahead of you, but you can get where you want to go.”

Joe knew where he wanted to go: where Jimmy Doolittle had gone before him. Doolittle had raided. Joe wanted to take Hawaii back all by his lonesome. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He knew that. But it was what he wanted.

COLONEL MITSUO FUJIKAWA had been promoted for bravery after the conquest of Hawaii. But, even though Corporal Takeo Shimizu’s regimental commander now wore three stars on his collar tabs instead of two, he looked anything but happy. Like the rest of the men in the regiment, Shimizu stood at stiff attention on the grass of a park doing duty for a parade ground. His face held no expression. He stared straight ahead. He might have been carved from wood.

It wasn’t going to help him. He could feel that in his bones. Nothing would help the soldiers, not after what had happened a few days before.

Colonel Fujikawa prowled back and forth. Once upon a time, Shimizu had seen a picture of a daimyo hunting a tiger with a spear in Korea three and a half centuries earlier. The great noble wore fancy armor and a tall headgear with a floppy tip. Shimizu remembered that, but what he really remembered was the ferocity that blazed from the tiger. He’d never seen anything like it since-not till now.

Even when Fujikawa stopped pacing, he still looked ready to roar and to spring. Instead of roaring, though, he spoke softly, and somehow made that more wounding than the loudest shouts could have been.

“You are in disgrace,” he hissed. “Disgrace! Do you hear me? Do you hear me? ”

“Hai! We hear you, Colonel!” The men spoke as if they were part of a perfectly trained chorus. In an abstract way, Shimizu was proud of them-but only in an abstract way, because no matter how perfect they were, that wouldn’t do them any good, either.

“Disgrace!” Colonel Fujikawa said once more. “You are disgraced, I am disgraced, the whole Japanese Army in Hawaii is disgraced, and the Japanese Navy in and around Hawaii is disgraced, too. And do you know why?”

Everyone knew why, of course. Shimizu knew why all too well. This time, though, no one said a word. It was as if, if no one admitted what had happened, somehow it wouldn’t have happened after all.

But Colonel Fujikawa was intent on plumbing the depths of their iniquity. “The Americans-the Americans! — made us lose face. They bombed Oahu. They torpedoed one of our carriers. And most of their bombers escaped. It is an embarrassment. It is a humiliation. It is a disgrace, truly a disgrace.”

As one man, the soldiers of the regiment hung their heads in shame. Shimizu lowered his at the same time as everybody else. Even as he did, though, he wondered why this was his fault. What could an infantry noncom do about bombers overhead except jump for cover and hope he didn’t get killed? Nothing he could see.

The regimental commander went on, “The captain of the picket boat that spotted the American carriers was fished out of the water after the enemy sank it. He has committed suicide to atone for his failure to see that they had long-range bombers aboard. The commander of the antiaircraft defenses on this island has also committed suicide, to atone for his failure to shoot down even a single enemy airplane.”

Now real fear ran through the regiment. Honorable seppuku was always a way out after failure. Saying good-bye to everything was not only honorable, it was also easier than living on as an object of scorn to everyone around you. But how far would that particular form of atonement reach?

Colonel Fujikawa said, “Common soldiers, form two ranks facing each other. Move, you worthless wretches!”

They moved. Now they knew what was coming. It would be bad, but it could have been worse. After a while, Fujikawa would decide it was over.

“Sergeants and corporals, face one another,” Fujikawa added.

Shimizu didn’t let the dismay he felt show on his face. He’d been through this mill before, too. Who hadn’t? Officers hadn’t, that was who. Unlike enlisted men, officers were presumed to be gentlemen. Here, now, they stayed at their stiff brace.

When Shimizu turned to face Corporal Kiyoshi Aiso, who led another squad in his platoon, Aiso’s face was as expressionless as his. The other noncom was a long-service soldier; he had to be close to forty. But his weathered skin and the broad shoulders that bulged under his tunic said he’d grown strong with the years, not soft.

Now, at last, Fujikawa shouted: “Each man, slap the face of the man in front of you! Take turns!”

Corporal Aiso was senior, which meant he got to go first. Shimizu braced himself. Aiso let him have it, right across the cheek. In spite of being braced, Shimizu staggered. His head rang. He shook it, trying to clear his wits. Aiso hadn’t held back, not even a little bit.

Then the other corporal stood at attention and waited. Shimizu slapped him hard. Aiso’s head flew to one side. He shook his head, too. Shimizu came to attention in turn. “The same cheek or the other one?” Aiso asked politely.

“Whichever you please. It doesn’t matter one way or the other,” Shimizu answered.

Aiso hit him lefthanded, which meant his head snapped to the right this time. The older soldier was just as strong with his off hand as with his good one. Shimizu asked whether he had a preference. Aiso just shrugged. Shimizu, a thoroughly right-handed man, struck his left cheek again.

Usually, the noncoms would have kept the common soldiers at it, making sure they didn’t slow down and making sure they didn’t pull their blows. The noncoms were also caught in the web of humiliation today. The regimental officers stalked through the ranks. “Harder!” they shouted. “Keep at it! Who told you you could slack off? What kind of soldier do you think you are?”

Unless Shimizu concentrated, he saw two of Corporal Aiso. He hoped he was just as blurry to the older man. His whole face felt on fire. He tasted blood in his mouth, and he wasn’t sure whether that was blood or snot dribbling from his nose. Probably both. Aiso wasn’t trying to box his ears, any more than he was trying to box those of the other corporal. That didn’t mean they didn’t get walloped now and again. Even Shimizu’s palm started to sting from giving too many blows.

He couldn’t have told how long it went on. Privates started falling over. Cursing officers kicked them. Nobody was trying to get away with faking, not this time. Only when a polished boot in the belly or the spine failed to prod them to their feet were they suffered to stay on the ground.

At last, contemptuously, Colonel Fujikawa yelled, “Enough!”

Corporal Aiso had his arm drawn back for another blow. Shimizu hardly cared whether it landed or not. After so many, what difference did one more make? But Aiso stayed his hand. Shimizu swayed. Stubbornly, he kept on his feet. He didn’t care to crumple where his squad could see him do it. Since most of them were still upright, he would have lost face by falling.

He felt as if he’d lost his face anyway. At the same time, he wished he could lose it. Then he wouldn’t have to feel it any more.

“Go clean yourselves up,” Colonel Fujikawa commanded. “You are disgusting. The way you look is a disgrace to the Japanese Army, too.”

And whose fault is that? Shimizu wondered blearily. But he would never have said such a thing, not even if the Yankees were disemboweling him with a dull, rusty bayonet. Discipline ran deep. After bowing to Corporal Aiso-who returned the courtesy-Shimizu gave his attention, or as much of it as he had to give, back to his squad.

All of them were on their feet now. He didn’t know who had fallen and then got up again. He didn’t intend to ask, either. That would make whoever might have gone down lose face. The whole regiment had lost face. The whole Hawaii garrison had lost face. What point to singling out one or two common soldiers after that?

Heads up, backs straight, they marched off to the barracks. Once there, they lined up at the sinks to wash their bloody faces, rinse out their bloody mouths, and soak their tunics in cold water to get the bloodstains out of them.

“I thought my head was going to fall off.” Shiro Wakuzawa spoke with more pride than anything else.

“We all did,” Shimizu said. The men he led nodded, one by one. His rank usually exempted him from such spasms of brutality. Not this time, though. He was as bruised and battered as any of them. No one could say he hadn’t been through it. No one could say he hadn’t come through it, either. For now, he was one of them.

Senior Private Furusawa said, “If the Americans come again, we’ll be ready for them.”

“Of course we will. Who’d want to go through this more than once?” Even after the abuse Wakuzawa had taken, he could still joke.

“How could the Americans come again?” somebody else said. Shimizu was splashing his face with cold water-which hurt and felt good at the same time-and couldn’t tell who it was. The soldier went on, “They can’t try another raid like that. Furusawa’s right. We’d smash them flat.”

Shimizu pulled away from the faucet blowing like a whale. He shook his head, which made drops of water fly everywhere-and which also reminded him how sore he was. “If the Americans come again, they won’t just raid,” he said. “They’ll run in a pack like wild dogs, and they’ll try to take Hawaii away from us.”

Some of the soldiers in his squad nodded again. Others, men who hurt too much for that, softly said, “Hai.”

WRITING THE REPORT on how the Americans had caught the Japanese garrison on Oahu flat-footed fell to commander Mitsuo Fuchida. He felt more as if the duty had fallen on him. Before sitting down in front of a blank sheet of paper, he went to pick Minoru Genda’s brain. Genda was one of the few men on the island with whom he could speak frankly.

“It’s not very complicated,” Genda said. “They did something we didn’t expect, that’s all. You can’t get ready for what you don’t anticipate.”

“Easy enough to say,” Fuchida answered. “What do I do for the other forty-nine and three-quarters pages of the report, though?”

As it usually did, Genda’s smile made him look very young. “You can tell General Yamashita and Captain Hasegawa that we won’t get fooled again.”

Fuchida bowed in his seat, there in Genda’s office. “Domo arigato,” he said, spicing the thanks with all the sarcasm he could. “We’d better not. If we do, we’ll all have to open our bellies.” He wasn’t joking, or not very much. The garrison had put itself through a painful orgy of self-reproach. If it was humiliated again… much more blood would flow than had this time.

“They are going to come sniffing around these islands. They haven’t given up, the way we hoped they would,” Genda said. “Carrier raids, submarines, maybe even flying boats, too.”

“We need better ways to detect them,” Fuchida said.

“The picket boats did their job, neh? ” Genda said. “The skipper of that one was too hard on himself, I think. Why blame him for not looking out for B-25s when nobody else did, either?”

“Picket boats can only do so much,” Fuchida insisted. “Things can sneak past them, or their skippers can make mistakes. Yes, I know we all made the mistake, but we should have known what the Yankees were up to before they got here.”

“How?” Genda asked reasonably.

“I don’t know,” Fuchida said. “Or maybe I do. Have the engineers ever figured out what that installation up at Opana was supposed to do before the Americans wrecked it?”

“Whatever it was supposed to do, it didn’t do it,” Genda pointed out. “We caught them napping. They had no idea we were there till the bombs started falling. You were the one who signaled Tora! Tora! Tora! to show we’d taken them by surprise.”

“No, it was Mizuki, my radioman,” Fuchida said.

“And here I thought you were a Navy man, not a damn lawyer,” Genda said.

“I am a Navy man,” Fuchida said. “As a Navy man, I want to know about that installation.”

“I don’t have a whole lot to tell you. I don’t think the engineers have a whole lot to tell you, either,” Genda said.

Commander Fuchida started to get angry. “They damn well ought to by now, Genda-san. They’ve had months to unravel it. Have they found documents talking about what it does?”

Genda only shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“They should have!” Fuchida exclaimed. “If they haven’t, the Americans must have destroyed them. And why would the Americans destroy them? Because they must show the Opana installation was important. What other possible reason could they have?”

“You’d better be careful,” Genda said. “Next thing you know, you’ll hear little men who aren’t there talking behind your back.”

“So you think I’m crazy, do you?” Fuchida growled. “I’ll tell you what I want to hear. I want to hear the Americans who worked at that thing, whatever it was. They’ll know, and we can squeeze it out of them. Some of them-a lot of them, probably-will just be enlisted men. They won’t much care what they blab.”

“Go ahead, then. Find them. Interrogate them. You’re not going to be happy till you do,” Genda said. “Get it out of your system. You’ll feel better then.” He might have been recommending a laxative.

“I will,” Fuchida said. “And you’ll see-something important will come from this.”

With another shrug, Genda said, “It could be. I’m not convinced, but it could be. I hope you’re right.”

“I intend to find out,” Mitsuo Fuchida said.

JIM PETERSON WAS in a funk. So were a lot of the POWs up at Opana. They’d got less of a look at the American bombers that had raided Oahu than just about anybody else on the island. Peterson knew why. Opana was nowhere. It wasn’t even worth flying over.

Nothing he could do about it. Nothing anybody could do about it. All the prisoners could do was sit behind barbed wire, look out at the green countryside all around them and the blue Pacific to the north, and slowly starve to death.

He almost wished the Japs would stop feeding them altogether. Then it would be over. The way things were, he felt himself losing ground a quarter of an inch at a time. Everything he did, everything he thought about, centered on the miserable breakfast and lousy supper he’d got.

“You know,” he said to Prez McKinley one afternoon a few days after the raid, “I don’t hardly think about women at all any more.”

The sergeant let out a grunt. Peterson thought it was surprise. “Me, neither,” McKinley said. “I like pussy as well as the next guy-bet your ass I do. But I don’t think I could get it up with a crane right now.”

“Same here,” Peterson said. “Pussy’s the best thing in the world when your belly’s full. When it’s not… you forget about women.” He fooled with his belt. Day by day, his waistline shrank. He closed the belt several holes tighter than he had when he got here. Pretty soon, even the last hole would be too loose, and he’d have to trade the belt for whatever he could get and use rope to hold up his pants. And after a while, I’ll have enough rope to hang myself with, too, he thought. Surprisingly few men here had killed themselves. Maybe they wouldn’t give the Japs the satisfaction.

McKinley looked northeast, the direction from which the B-25s had come, the direction in which the mainland lay. “I wonder if they’re really gonna try and take Hawaii away from the Japs again.”

“Don’t wonder if. Wonder when,” Peterson said. “They haven’t forgotten about us. That’s one thing those bombers showed.”

“Wonder if they can do it, too,” McKinley said.

It was Peterson’s turn to grunt. The Japs shouldn’t have surprised the defenders here. They had, but they shouldn’t have. He couldn’t imagine an American armada catching the new occupiers asleep at the switch. How much damage could the Japs do before a landing party hit the beach? Even if Americans did land, the Japanese would fight like rabid weasels to hold on to what they’d taken.

At lineup the next morning, the Japanese didn’t release the POWs to breakfast once they had the count straight, the way they usually did. Standing there at attention in his row, Peterson eyed the guards with suspicion. What the devil were they up to now?

A nervous-looking Oriental in Western clothes-plainly a Jap from Hawaii-came into the camp along with more guards and the commandant. The Japanese officer spoke in his own language. The local turned it into English: “The following prisoners will make themselves known immediately…” The commandant handed him a piece of paper. He read off half a dozen names.

Looking confused, a lieutenant and several privates stepped out of ranks. Peterson wondered what the hell they’d done, and whether the Japs were about to make a horrible example of them. He’d already seen enough examples to last him the rest of his life, and several lifetimes yet to come.

But, to his surprise and relief, nothing dreadful happened. Guards came up to the men and hustled them away, but that was all. They didn’t beat them or kick them or anything of the sort. They weren’t gentle, but Peterson had a hard time imagining gentle Japs. They were businesslike, which in itself was out of the ordinary.

After the handful of prisoners were taken away, things went back to normal. The rest of the swarm of POWs queued up for breakfast. They had something new to buzz about. Somebody not far from Peterson said, “Those guys hadn’t even hardly left home before.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” somebody else asked.

“They were stationed at some kind of installation right around here, and this is where they ended up, too,” the first man said. “Small world, ain’t it?”

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Peterson said as a light went on inside his head.

“What’s up?” Sergeant McKinley asked. What he’d heard didn’t mean thing one to him.

In a low voice, Peterson said, “Ever hear of radar, Prez?”

“I dunno. Maybe.” McKinley screwed up his face in concentration. “Some kind of fancy range-finding gear, right?”

“Yeah.” That was as much as McKinley, a born ground-pounder, needed to know. As somebody who’d got paid from flying off a carrier deck, Jim Peterson knew a good deal more. Among the things he knew was… “They had a radar station up here at Opana.”

“Yeah?” McKinley thought about that for a little while. “You think the Japs are gonna squeeze those guys about it?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” said Peterson, who would have bet the mortgage on it. “They don’t know much about that stuff.” As far as he’d heard, the Japanese hadn’t known anything about radar. It looked as if they’d figured out there was stuff they didn’t know.

“Well, shit,” McKinley said. “I thought those suckers were lucky on account of the guards didn’t work ’em over right then and there. Shows what I know. They’re gonna get the third degree from professionals, aren’t they?”

“Can’t tell you for sure,” Peterson said grimly, “but that’s how it looks to me, too.” He looked around. “You probably don’t want to talk about it a whole hell of a lot. You don’t want to say that name, either. Otherwise, the Japs may decide to find out how much you know about it.”

“Well, shit,” McKinley said again, in a different tone of voice. He looked around, as if expecting a guard to be listening over his shoulder. Peterson would have worried even more about other POWs. Knowing who could be trusted wasn’t always easy. McKinley nodded, at least half to himself. “Gotcha.”

“Attaboy, Prez.”

The chow line crawled forward. As usual, there wasn’t enough to eat and it was lousy. Also as usual, everybody emptied-indeed, polished-his mess kit. The only thing worse than not enough food was no food at all. Camp rations came altogether too close to that, but they weren’t quite there.

Fighters on patrol buzzed overhead. The Japs were bound to be taking that much more seriously since the American raid. Peterson glanced up at the warplanes, then all at once eyed them seriously. “Goddamn!” he exclaimed.

“Now what?” Prez McKinley asked.

Peterson pointed to the fighters. “Those aren’t Zeros.” He spoke with complete authority. He’d earned the right, by God, not just through study but because a Zero had knocked his Wildcat out of the sky. “They’ve got to be planes from the Japanese Army instead.”

“Yeah? And so?” Prez didn’t see the point. He was shrewd, no doubt about that, but he really did have a noncom’s narrow view of the world. He was also an infantryman. What happened in the air and on the water didn’t mean so much to him.

Peterson spelled things out: “No way in hell those could’ve flown here all by themselves. Stinking slanty-eyed bastards had to ship ’em in. This place is like a great big old aircraft carrier right out in the middle of the Pacific, and the Japs are sure as hell making the most of it.”

“They’ll ship in planes. They’ll ship in gas and ammo for ’em. They’ll ship in enough chow for their own guys.” McKinley pointed to one of the guards. Sure enough, the man hadn’t missed any meals. “What does everybody else get? Hind tit, that’s what.”

“Yeah.” Peterson wondered how much more weight he could drop and still keep going. He didn’t know, but he had little doubt he’d find out.

BY NOW, OSCAR van der Kirk got more envious comments than astonished ones when he assembled his sailboard on Waikiki Beach. He wasn’t the only one who’d made the conversion any more; several others, Charlie Kaapu among them, had imitated him. He didn’t mind. There seemed to be enough fish to go around. Some of the others were using the boards more for sport than for fishing. He’d seen people do some pretty spectacular things. The more he watched them, the more he felt like doing spectacular things himself. He’d already tried one the first day he came in, but they were outdoing him now.

Beside Oscar, Charlie planted his newly converted sailboard’s mast in its socket. “You were one sly haole to come up with this scheme,” Charlie said admiringly. “I didn’t think it would work when you started talking about it, but I was wrong.”

Oscar shrugged. “What’s being a haole got to do with it? Hawaiians were the ones who started this whole surf-riding business in the first place.”

“That was a long time ago,” Charlie said, which seemed to make sense to him even if it didn’t make a whole lot to Oscar. He added, “We were okay as long as we were just in the game against us, you know what I mean? But then haoles came along, and you knew how to do all this stuff we couldn’t, and so we pretty much stopped trying to figure out new stuff on our own.”

Was that why Hawaiians and hapa — Hawaiians were the way they were? Oscar had no idea. A lot of them just seemed to drift without trying to make much of their lives, though.

Since Oscar had spent most of the time since coming to Hawaii drifting through life, he couldn’t very well blame them. He made sure his mast was firmly seated, then said, “Let’s go on out.”

Fishermen stepped aside to let them go into the surf. Oscar wondered if there was any beach on Oahu that didn’t have its complement of fishermen these days. Unless he missed his guess, there wasn’t. Fishing wasn’t just a sport any more. It was a vital part of feeding the island, just like the gardens that had sprung up everywhere. If you didn’t have access to fish or to garden vegetables, what did you get? Rice, and not very much of it.

Into the water he slid. As usual, the Pacific was not too hot, not too cold. “Just right,” he murmured. Not for the first time, he thought of Goldilocks and the three bears.

He and Charlie paddled out to sea, guiding their surfboards over the waves till they could stand up and unfurl their sails instead. “This is really something, you smart son of a bitch,” Charlie called. “You could make sailboards for everybody in the world, make yourself a million dollars.”

He might even have been right-had Oscar had the idea at another time. As things were… “There’s this little thing called the war.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember that.” By the way Charlie said it, he hadn’t remembered till Oscar reminded him. Oscar laughed, wishing that could be true. He would never be able to forget those horrible moments off Waimea, stuck in the crossfire between the Japanese invasion force and the American defenders on the shore. He’d never forget pissing himself in terror, either.

Not even Charlie Kaapu knew about that. A sudden thought occurred to Oscar. He glanced over at his friend. Could Charlie have done the same thing? Maybe wondering about it was just misery loving company-but if Charlie hadn’t been scared to death out there, too, he wasn’t human.

I’ll never know for sure, Oscar thought. I can’t ask him. And if he did, he can’t ask me, either. Just one of those things.

Charlie took to sailboarding as if it were his idea and not Oscar’s. That was no great surprise; any surf-rider could adapt to the addition of the sail pretty fast. But Charlie also seemed to enjoy skimming along over the waves under wind power as if he’d thought of it. Of course, Charlie enjoyed everything he did. If he didn’t enjoy it, he didn’t do it.

“You ever see that blond wahine any more after she move out?” he asked.

“Susie? Nope, not lately.” Oscar shook his head and shrugged. “She was fun in bed, but she was kind of rugged any other way.”

“Yeah, well, dames are like that sometimes.” Charlie took everything in stride. “Enjoy ’em while you can, then kiss ’em good-bye.” He’d kissed a lot of women good-bye. So had Oscar, but Charlie never let it bother him. “No huhu,” he said now. It might have been his motto.

Oscar looked back over his shoulder. Oahu receded behind him-much faster than it would have before he’d had his surfboard altered. “We ought to split up,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t love you”-Charlie boomed laughter and blew him a kiss-“but we both ought to bring in as many fish as we can.”

“Oh, yeah.” Charlie didn’t argue about that. Hunger was something even he took seriously. “See you later, alligator.” He slanted off toward the west, as slick as Vaseline on the sailboard.

Am I that good? Oscar wondered. He shrugged again. He probably wasn’t quite that stylish, but he got the job done even so. He swung a little toward the east, to put as much room between himself and Charlie Kaapu as he could.

He had a pretty good day fishing-not a great day, but a pretty good one. He got plenty of fish for himself, some for Eizo Doi, and some to sell. The Japs hadn’t got around to regulating sailboarders the way they did with the men who fished from sampans. He could take what he didn’t give to the handyman and sell it in one of the unofficial markets. A little cash was always nice. Food that wasn’t fish or rigidly rationed rice was even nicer.

Doi bowed to him when he brought fish to the handyman’s cramped little shop. “You good fella, you keep make pay,” the Japanese man said in what was intended for English.

“Sure I do,” Oscar said. “I always pay my bills.” That was pretty much true, too. Sometimes he took a little longer than he might have-he’d had plenty of spells of living hand-to-mouth even before the war-but he never forgot. When he had money (or, here, fish), he got out of hock.

“Good, good,” Doi told him. “Some fella, even some Japanese fella-not all Japanese fella, but some Japanese fella-get sails, forget make pay.” His face twisted as if he were smelling his fish a week from now.

After leaving Doi’s, Oscar headed for one of the open-air outfits that had been replacing grocery stores and supermarkets since the war started. Most of them were in the Oriental part of town west of Nuuanu Avenue. Haoles came here to buy and sometimes, like Oscar, to sell, but few markets sprang up in their neighborhoods. It was as if they were saying such things were good enough for Japs and Chinamen, but not for them. Or maybe the Asians just took to huckstering more naturally than whites did.

Fish always went fast. Oscar got some cash and some fruit. Dietitians would probably tell him he wasn’t eating a balanced diet, but he didn’t care. He would have murdered for a big greasy hamburger and French fries, but nobody except a few millionaires could get beef any more.

Greenbacks in his pocket, fruit in a cloth bag, he started back toward Waikiki. No buses ran; they had no fuel. Some enterprising Orientals propelled pedicabs and pulled rickshaws, but Oscar couldn’t stomach riding in something like that. Using a man like a draft horse-even paying a man to use himself as a draft horse-stuck in his craw. It didn’t stop a lot of prosperous haoles. It didn’t stop a lot of Japanese officers, either. Of course, from what Oscar had seen, the SPCA would have landed on them like an avalanche if they’d treated draft animals the way they treated their own troops. And that said nothing about what happened to the American POWs.

“Oscar! Hey, Oscar!” Across the street, Susie Higgins waved to him. She was wearing an electric-blue silk sun dress she sure hadn’t had when she was living in his apartment.

“Speak of the devil,” he said, and then, louder, “Hi, Susie.” He didn’t know what to do or say after that. Most of the time, he didn’t need to worry about running into ex-girlfriends after a fling had had its day. They got on an ocean liner or a Pan Am Clipper flying boat, and that was that. Susie would have done the same thing but for the small detail of the Japanese invasion. He trotted over to the other side of the street. Dodging a horse-drawn wagon full of greens was a hell of a lot easier than jaywalking when a truck would just as soon knock you flat as let you cross. “How are you?” he asked, adding, “You look good.”

She’d always looked good. She looked better now. She’d acquired a proper Hawaiian suntan, which the bright blue silk only played up. She cocked her head to one side and gave him a saucy smile. “So do you-good enough to eat, in fact.”

“Promises, promises,” he said. Susie laughed out loud. Oscar knew he had to play it light. If he didn’t, he might want to haul off and belt her, and people would talk. “How are you doing these days?” he asked, and then, “What are you doing these days?”

“I’m taking dictation-and the accent isn’t on the first syllable, either, you nasty man.” She wrinkled her nose and winked at him. “Happens I’m an A-number-one secretary. Even if all my references are back on the mainland, I showed Mr. Underhill what I could do.”

“I’ll bet you did,” Oscar said, again lightly. She made as if to hit him. He made as if to duck. They both laughed this time. Oscar wouldn’t have been surprised if she was a first-class secretary. She’d be good at anything she set her mind to. She sure as hell screwed as if they were going to outlaw it day after tomorrow.

“What are you up to?” she asked.

“Some surfboarding lessons. Some sailboarding lessons. You know about sailboards?” He waited till she nodded, then struck a pose and went on with what he hoped was pardonable pride: “I invented ’em. And I do some fishing, and I trade the fish for other stuff.”

“You thought of sailboards?” Susie said. Now Oscar nodded. She grinned at him. “That’s swell. I’ve seen some guys using them. Maybe I’ve even seen you out there on the water-who knows?”

“Like you’d care.” Oscar did his best to sound as if he was still teasing. It wasn’t so easy now.

“I might,” Susie said. “How do you know unless you try to find out?”

“And get slapped down for my trouble? Fat chance.”

“Hey, we had fun.” Susie might have been challenging him to deny it, and he couldn’t. She continued, “Maybe we could have some more.”

“We’d just start fighting again.” Now Oscar dared her to tell him he was wrong.

“Maybe we wouldn’t,” she said-if that meant she thought he was wrong, it didn’t mean she thought he was very wrong.

He’d thought he would gloat, but he didn’t. All he said was, “What’s wrong with the fellow you’re taking dictation from?”

Even as he said it, he wondered if it would make her mad. It didn’t. She answered matter-of-factly: “Underhill? He’s got a Chinese wife he’s crazy about and three little kids. It happens.” Her shrug held all sorts of knowledge.

They had had fun-in bed. Anything else? As he’d said to Charlie, anything else had been trouble. So did the one make up for the other? Maybe it did. She hadn’t stolen from him, anyway, and she’d had plenty of chances. He thought it over. “Heck, come along if you want to,” he said, knowing he’d probably regret it but not right away.

“You still have that apartment in Waikiki?” Susie asked. When he nodded, she said, “Why don’t you come to my place instead? It’s a lot closer.”

“Okay.” Oscar was nothing if not agreeable.

He was so agreeable, Susie made another face at him. “Listen, buster,” she said, “do you know how many guys would give their left one for an invite like that? Do you?” She sounded half joking, half belligerent.

“Probably a bunch,” Oscar answered. “If they start beating down the door, can I go out the window?”

“You’re a terrible man.” Susie Higgins scowled. “Come on, before I change my mind like you deserve.”

Her apartment was roomier than his, and likely more expensive, too. He wondered in what coin she was paying for it, but then shook his head. Whatever she was, she wasn’t a pro. And she was getting by, where plenty of people who’d been here a lot longer were having all sorts of trouble.

As soon as she closed the door behind her, she pulled the sun dress off over her head. “We had fun, didn’t we?” she repeated.

Oscar caught her to him. “Sure,” he said… agreeably.

CAPTAIN KIICHI HASEGAWA glowered at Commander Minoru Genda. “The Army is being very difficult,” complained the senior naval officer in Hawaii.

“Yes, sir,” Genda said-usually a safe answer when a superior was fuming.

“Here in my own quarters on Akagi, I can tell you what I really think of those people,” Hasegawa said. “You won’t run off at the mouth.”

“No, sir,” Genda said. That was also safe when it turned out to be agreement.

Hasegawa reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. He rummaged a little more and came up with two glasses. He poured a knock for himself and another for Genda, sliding the second across the desk. “Kampai! ” he said.

Genda echoed the toast. The whiskey glided smoothly down his throat and started a small fire in his belly. “What can you do, sir?” he asked.

“I can’t do a damned thing,” Hasegawa answered. “General Yamashita outranks me. He’s stubborn as an ox, and not much smarter.”

“Sir”-now Genda spoke with considerable urgency-“the Army and the Navy have to get along here. We need both services to defend the island, and each needs to know what it must do and what the other will do.”

“Yes, yes.” Hasegawa said it, but he didn’t mean it.

Sensing as much, Genda spoke more urgently still: “The Americans divided responsibility here, too. They didn’t do a very good job of it. That’s one reason these islands are ours now. Do you want to imitate them?”

With that, he did get Captain Hasegawa’s attention. Hasegawa took a meditative sip from his drink and then said, “At least the Americans had the sense to make a Navy man the senior officer in the islands.”

So that’s what’s eating you, Genda thought. Aloud, he said, “Nobody here can do anything about that, sir. The only people who can change the command setup are in Tokyo.”

“Don’t I know it!” Hasegawa said bitterly. “They don’t want to listen to me. They especially don’t want to listen to me after the Yankee bombers raided us. All they want to do is bring in more soldiers and more Army airplanes. As if we didn’t have to drag the Army to Hawaii kicking and screaming!” He gulped down the whiskey and poured himself another healthy dose.

Trying to put the best face he could on it, Genda said, “Now the Army understands how important it was to seize these islands.”

“Maybe,” Hasegawa said. “Then again, maybe not, too. The Army just has to say, ‘Take this and that from Japan to Honolulu.’ The Army just has to say it. The Navy has to do it. And once the men and the airplanes get here, does the Army worry about the food and fuel we have to haul in to keep everything the way it’s supposed to be? Not likely! The Army seemed to think we can bring in everything easy as you please.”

“I’ve been keeping track of the food situation, sir,” Genda said. “It’s not quite as bad as it was right after the surrender.”

“Yes, I know that,” Hasegawa agreed. “Things can hardly help growing here. That will take care of itself once we clear the land that was planted with sugarcane and pineapple and turn it over to rice and other real crops, crops people can eat. But you can’t plant gasoline bushes, dammit.”

Genda had been keeping track of that, too. Genda kept track of everything he could; it was part of his nature. When he said, “We have… enough,” he put things in the best light he could.

“We have enough to go from one routine day to the next, yes,” Hasegawa said. “Do we have enough if we really have to fight? I don’t have much good to say about the Yankees. We licked them just the way we should have. But they will never lose because they run short of things. Can we say the same?”

Genda wished Japan could. He knew she couldn’t. That was what this war was about: getting the Japanese Empire the oil and the rubber and the tin-the things — it needed to stay a great power. He said, “Once we win, we will be able to say that. It will be true then.”

“Then, yes. Now?” Hasegawa rolled his eyes. “The Prime Minister can afford to worry about then. I have to worry about now. I know I am only an ignorant sea captain, but the way it looks to me is, if now isn’t the way we want it, then won’t be, either.”

It looked the same way to Genda. He said so, adding, “If we didn’t have to keep bringing in more soldiers and more Army airplanes, we could bring in more supplies for what’s already here instead. That would serve us better in the long run.”

“We should be able to do both, neh? ” Hasegawa said.

“Yes, we should.” Genda let it go at that. He knew-as Hasegawa undoubtedly did, too-the Japanese didn’t have enough shipping capacity to let them bring in reinforcements and fully supply them, too. “If we could make sure American submarines didn’t trouble us…”

Hasegawa looked as unhappy as Genda felt. The first time a U.S. sub sank a Japanese freighter, it had been news, a chance to complain about America’s inhumanity. It had happened several times since then, and Japan hadn’t said a word. Acknowledging each sinking would have been the same as admitting the shoe was starting to pinch. American bombers from the mainland couldn’t bother Hawaii. American submarines setting out from the West Coast had no trouble at all.

“The Army has complained that we don’t stop all submarines before they make trouble for us,” Hasegawa said.

“Let the Army try it! Good luck to them!” Genda burst out. “We do what we can. We use convoys. We zigzag. We escort with destroyers. We use all the tricks we learned in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean in the last war.”

“Yes, I know,” Hasegawa said unhappily. “They aren’t always enough.”

“That’s because we’re finding out what kind of tricks the Americans learned then-and since,” Genda added.

Captain Hasegawa sent him a sour stare. “Commander, this operation is more your brainchild than anyone else’s-and that includes Admiral Yamamoto. We did everything we had to do to take these islands. Frankly, we did more than I thought we could do. Why can’t you be contented now?”

“Two reasons, sir,” Genda answered. “The first is, I hoped losing Hawaii would knock all the spirit out of the Americans and knock them clean out of the war before it really got started. We can see that hasn’t happened. They’re still fighting. They haven’t figured out what they want to do and how they want to do it yet, and we have to hope they will take a long time before they do. That leads me to the second worry. Taking these islands was one sort of problem. Holding them is a very different one.”

“Oh, yes,” Hasegawa said in a voice like iron. “Oh, yes. Holding Hawaii is the reason we have to put up with these Army bumpkins.”

Genda managed a thin smile. “They would say, Taking Hawaii is the reason we have to put up with these Navy snobs.”

“I don’t give a shit what the Army says.” Hasegawa sounded more like a bumpkin than a snob. “I want to be replaced. I’ve already told Tokyo as much. They need to send a Navy man out here who has the rank to deal with Yamashita. Until they do that, I have no faith that these islands can be held, because the Army will make a hash of it.”

Genda couldn’t say what he was thinking, not to a superior officer. He would have spoken his mind with Mitsuo Fuchida, and was pretty sure Fuchida would have done the same with him. But not with Captain Hasegawa, especially since Genda thought the senior Navy man in Hawaii had made a frightful mistake. Genda was sure Hasegawa would be relieved of his post here. He’d just done his best to make himself impossible. But Genda didn’t think the Navy would send out an admiral to counterbalance the Army commandant. That would have to go through the Cabinet, and Hideki Tojo, the Prime Minister, was a general himself.

When Genda didn’t say anything, Hasegawa had to know what was in his mind. The Akagi ’s skipper didn’t push him on it. He just said, “That will be all, Commander.”

“Yes, sir.” Genda rose, saluted, and left the captain’s cabin. Like any ship’s compartment, the cabin had a heavy steel waterproof door. Genda closed it as gently as he could. It thudded into place even so. The sound of metal meeting metal seemed much more final than he would have wanted.

WHENEVER MAJOR HIRABAYASHI summoned the people of Wahiawa at an unusual time, Jane Armitage started worrying. After watching Mr. Murphy get it in the neck-literally-she feared the Jap in charge of this part of the island would offer up another object lesson. One of those had been a thousand too many.

Yosh Nakayama stood up on a table to translate for Hirabayashi. The gardener’s face was impassive as he turned the major’s excited Japanese into far more stolid-seeming English. “The Japanese Empire announces that the island of Corregidor has surrendered to imperial forces under General Homma. The Empire also announces the fall of Port Moresby in New Guinea.” He had to go back and forth with Hirabayashi several times before he got that one straight.

Jane knew where New Guinea was, but couldn’t have said where on the island Port Moresby lay to save herself from Hirabayashi’s sword. She knew New Guinea wasn’t far from Australia. If the Japs were taking towns there, were they looking to go after the Land Down Under next?

Could anybody stop them? Up until the day she threw Fletch out, he’d insisted that the USA could kick Japan around the block. She’d thought he knew what he was talking about. On the evidence so far, he’d been as misguided a soldier as he had been a husband.

“Banzai! for the Japanese Empire!” Nakayama said.

“Banzai! ” the people of Wahiawa said. Jane hated herself for joining the cheer. You couldn’t get out of it, though. Bad things happened to people who tried. It wasn’t even safe to mouth the word without saying it out loud. Somebody would be watching you. Somebody would be listening to you. You couldn’t show your thoughts anywhere, not if they weren’t the sort of thoughts the Japs wanted you to have.

She looked around the crowd. More than a few people in Wahiawa had cheered when the American bombers flew over the town on their way to plaster the Japanese planes at Wheeler Field. There were missing faces these days. What had happened to the men and women who’d disappeared? The people who knew weren’t talking. Not knowing only made their fate more frightening to everyone else.

And who had betrayed them? Obviously, you were a fool to trust any of the local Japanese. That didn’t mean none of them was trustworthy. Some of the younger ones really were patriotic Americans. But others pretended, and were good at pretending. Finding out who belonged to which group could cost you your neck. Much less dangerous to think of all of them as menaces.

Much as Jane wished it did, that didn’t mean all whites were reliable. Some of them didn’t even bother to hide their collaboration. They, at least, were honestly disgusting. The snakes hiding in the grass were the ones that killed when they bit, though.

As for Chinese and Filipinos, they barely entered into Jane’s calculations. She’d had little to do with them before the war started, and she still had little to do with them. To her, they were more nearly part of the landscape than people in their own right.

Major Hirabayashi spoke in Japanese once more. “You can go now,” Yosh Nakayama said laconically. The local commandant had probably said something like, You are dismissed. That was how people who ran things talked. The only thing Nakayama had ever run was his nursery. He didn’t talk fancy.

Jane despised him less than she had when he first became Hirabayashi’s right-hand man. He did what he could for Wahiawa. He passed on the Jap’s orders without glorying in them and without seeming to imagine they came from him. She would have thought more of him if he’d chosen to have nothing to do with the major, but he could have been worse.

She wanted to go back to her apartment, put her feet up, and do nothing for a while. What she wanted to do and what she had to do were two different things. It was back to the potato plot to weed and to pick bugs off the plants and to smash them once she had picked them off.

Every time she looked at her hands, she wanted to cry. Those calluses, those short, ragged, black-rimmed nails… Things would have been even worse if everybody else’s hands weren’t about the same. As Jane worked, she watched tendons jut and muscles surge under her skin. She’d lost weight; she didn’t think she had an ounce of fat anywhere on her body. But she was stronger than she’d ever been in her life.

Of course, she was also working harder than she ever had in her life. Teaching third grade was nothing next to keeping a garden plot going. Somewhere not far down her family tree were farmers. That was true of almost everyone. Now she understood why they’d gone to town and found other lines of work. What she didn’t understand was why anybody who didn’t have to grow crops did. You had to be starving or nuts to break your back like this every day… didn’t you?

On her way to the plot, two Japanese soldiers came up the sidewalk toward her. She stepped aside and bowed as they tramped past. They walked by as if she didn’t exist. That was better than when they leered. When they leered, she had all she could do not to run away. There hadn’t been a lot of rapes in Wahiawa, but there had been some. One of the women had had the courage to protest to Major Hirabayashi afterwards. It hadn’t done her any good. Nobody was going to punish the Japs for anything they did to locals.

Once Jane was weeding with her head down, she felt a little safer. Not only was she less visible, but other locals were around her. They would squawk if Japanese soldiers tried to drag her away. How much those squawks would help… She tried not to think about that.

In fact, she tried not to think about anything. If she didn’t think, she could get through a minute at a time, an hour at a time, a day at a time. Whatever happened, it would simply be… gone. And with most of what happened these days, it was better that way.

AS USUAL, JIRO TAKAHASHI was by himself when he took fish up to the Japanese consulate. He wished Hiroshi or Kenzo would come with him, but he didn’t try to talk them into it. He’d given up on trying to talk them into anything that had anything to do with politics or with the war. Their ideas were as fixed as his. (That wasn’t precisely how he looked at it, of course. To him, they were a pair of stubborn young fools.)

He bowed to the guards outside the building. They returned the courtesy. “It’s the Fisherman!” one of them said. “What have you got today, Fisherman? Anything especially good?” He licked his lips.

Laughing, Jiro shook his head. “Just some ahi. It was a pretty slow run, out there on the ocean.”

“Ahi is good,” the guard said. “Not that we ever get more than a mouthful-and not even that very often. Eh, boys?” The other Japanese soldiers mournfully nodded agreement.

“Ah, too bad.” Jiro sounded sympathetic, but he wasn’t much surprised. No doubt Consul Kita and Chancellor Morimura kept what they wanted from the presents he brought. Only when they were satisfied would any go to the people who made them safer and more comfortable. That wasn’t very nice, but it was the way the world worked. It always had been, and it probably always would be.

“Well, it’s not your fault,” the guard said, and bowed again. “Go on in.” He stepped aside. One of the other soldiers opened the door for Takahashi.

Inside the consulate, a secretary smiled to see him. “Good day, Takahashi- san,” the man said. “Would you like to say hello to the consul?”

“Yes, please, if he’s not too busy,” Jiro answered. “If he is, I can leave the fish with the chancellor.” He wouldn’t entrust them to an underling like this fellow. With food in Hawaii so tight these days, that was asking to have some of his gift disappear before the people for whom it was intended ever saw it.

“Well, he’s talking with a reporter from the Nippon jiji,” the secretary answered. “Let me ask him what he wants to do. Please excuse me for a moment.” He got up and went into a back room. When he returned, he was smiling. “Kita-san says please join him. Come with me.”

“Ah, Takahashi-san,” the Japanese consul said when the fisherman walked into his office. He turned to the reporter, who wore a Western-style sport jacket with a gaudy print. “Mori-san, you ought to be talking to this fellow, not to me. He’d have some interesting stories to tell you. I can guarantee that.”

“Would he?” The reporter turned in his chair and looked Takahashi over. “Hello, there, I’m Ichiro Mori. I write for the Nippon jiji.”

“Oh, yes. Very pleased to meet you, Mori-san.” Jiro dipped his head. “I’ve seen your name in the paper many times.”

“You flatter me.” Mori had an easygoing voice and a ready grin. He was the sort of man you couldn’t help liking at first sight. “So you’re a Takahashi, eh? What’s your first name?”

“Jiro,” Takahashi answered, and the other man-who was a few years younger than he-wrote it down.

“How long have you been in Hawaii, Takahashi-san?” Mori asked.

“More than thirty years now.”

“Ah, so desu! That’s a long time. Where were you born? Somewhere not far from Hiroshima, by the way you talk.”

“Hai.” Jiro nodded. “Yamaguchi prefecture. I call my sampan the Oshima Maru, after the county I come from. I learned to be a fisherman there; my father took a boat out onto the Inland Sea.”

“Have you been fishing ever since you got here, then?”

“Oh, no. I worked in the sugar fields. That’s what they brought us over to do. I had to save my money for a long time before I could buy a boat and get away.” Jiro laughed reminiscently. “They weren’t very happy about it-they didn’t want cane pickers leaving. But I’d met my contract, so they couldn’t keep me.”

“You settled down here? You have family?”

“I’m a widower,” Jiro said, and no more about that. After a brief pause, he added, “I have two sons.”

“Do they speak Japanese, I hope?” the reporter asked. “Some of the people born here can’t say a word in what should be their own language.”

“Not my boys.” Pride rang in Takahashi’s voice. “I made sure they learned it.”

“Good. That’s very good.” Mori scribbled notes. “And you’re happy the way things have turned out here? Are your sons happy, too?”

Jiro glanced over to Nagao Kita. The consul was from Japan. Would he want to hear that Hiroshi and Kenzo thought of themselves as Americans? Not likely! Jiro didn’t want to hear it himself. He spoke of his own views first: “Would I bring fish here if I weren’t happy?” That let him think about what he would say next: “My sons work too hard to worry much about politics.”

“Hard work is always good,” Mori agreed. “What did you think when the Rising Sun came to Hawaii?”

“I was proud,” Jiro answered. His boys hadn’t been proud. He didn’t think the gulf between them would ever close. He added, “I waved a flag in the victory parade. The soldiers made a brave show.”

“So you were there for the parade? What did you think of all the Yankee prisoners? Weren’t you happy to see that their day in the sun was over?”

What did I think? Jiro wondered. Mostly, he’d been amazed. He’d never imagined filthy, ragged, beaten American POWs shambling through Honolulu. “The Japanese soldiers who were guarding them certainly were a lot sharper,” he said. “I told you, I was proud of all they had done. They were heroes for the Emperor.”

“ ‘Heroes for the Emperor,’ ” Ichiro Mori echoed, beaming. He turned to Consul Kita. “That’s a good phrase, isn’t it?”

“Hai, very good,” Kita agreed. “Takahashi-san has a way with words.”

“Oh, no, not really.” The fisherman’s modesty was altogether unfeigned.

“Can you stay for a little while, please?” Mori asked him. “I’d like to call a photographer over here and get your picture.”

“A photographer? My picture? For the newspaper?” Jiro said, and the reporter nodded. In a daze, Takahashi nodded back. He’d never imagined such a thing. He’d never thought of himself as important enough to land in a newspaper. He read the Nippon jiji. Reading about himself in it… He felt himself swelling up with pride. This would show his boys!

The photographer got there in about twenty minutes. He was a wisecracking fellow named Yukiro Yamaguchi. He took photos of Jiro by himself, with the fish he’d brought, with Consul Kita, and with the consul and the fish. By the time he got done popping flashbulbs, green and purple spots danced in front of Jiro’s eyes.

Blinking to try to clear his sight, he bowed to Yamaguchi. “Thank you very much.”

“No huhu, buddy,” the photographer answered, casually dropping a Hawaiian word into his Japanese. “No huhu at all.”

KENZO TAKAHASHI HAD never paid a whole lot of attention to Honolulu’s Japanese papers. Like most people his age, he preferred the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser to Nippon jiji and Hawaii hochi. All papers had shrunk since the war, the English-language ones much more than their Japanese counterparts. Not surprisingly, the occupiers gave what woodpulp there was to papers that would back their line a hundred percent.

But when Kenzo saw his father staring out at him from the front page of the Nippon jiji, he spent a dime to get a copy-the paper had gone up since the fighting started, too. Sure as hell, there was Dad, holding an ahi and clasping the Japanese consul’s hand. Kenzo didn’t tell the newsboy he was related to the man in the paper. The kid, a few years younger than he was, might have hated him. Or he might have congratulated him, and that would have been worse.

What the devil had Dad said? Kenzo had no trouble reading the Japanese as he walked along. He hadn’t much wanted to learn it-he would rather have had fun after American school let out-but he’d conscientiously gone and done it, as Hiroshi had before him. And he’d lived in a neighborhood where there were so many Japanese signs and posters and ads that he couldn’t very well forget it once he had learned.

Now he wished he had. There was his father praising the Emperor, praising the courage of the Japanese soldiers who’d conquered Hawaii, saying he’d been proud of the victory parade, and telling the world the American soldiers they’d paraded with them were a bunch of decrepit wrecks. He also had good things to say about the way Japan was running Hawaii and about the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

“Oh, Dad,” Kenzo said, wishing he’d never seen the picture, never bought the paper. “Oh, Dad.”

Maybe it wasn’t treason. Maybe. But if it wasn’t, it sure came close. Kenzo wondered how many words the reporter had put in his old man’s mouth. Would his father recognize the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere if it trotted over and bit him in the leg? Maybe he would, at that. He’d talked about it once.

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere damn well had bitten all of Hawaii in the leg, and wouldn’t let go. And here was Dad, a smiling propaganda tool for the occupiers. He couldn’t have known what he was doing. He must have said the first things that popped into his head when the reporter-Mori, that was the lousy snake’s name-asked him questions. But how it had happened didn’t much matter now. That it had happened did.

Kenzo started to crumple up the Nippon jiji and throw it in the trash. He started to, but he didn’t. Instead, he carefully folded the paper and put it in the back pocket of his dungarees. One of the things that no longer came into Honolulu harbor was toilet tissue. He could put that miserable story to good use. Not the picture-he’d tear that out first. But the story? Hell, yes. And the soft pulp paper would be an improvement on the scratchy, coated stuff they put in the outhouses by the botanical garden.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Kenzo muttered, deliberately ignoring how much he sounded like his father when he said it. To think he’d been reduced to worrying about how he could comfortably wipe his ass! Before December 7, he would have taken the answer for granted. Before December 7, he’d taken all kinds of answers for granted. What did that prove? It proved he’d been pretty goddamn dumb, that was what.

Here came a squad of Japanese soldiers. Kenzo got out of their way and bowed. By now, he did that automatically. But he couldn’t help noticing that one of them was reading a copy of the Nippon jiji. How could he, when the soldier held it open to read an inside page so Dad’s picture was right there looking out at him?

What did the soldiers think when they read a piece like the one Ichiro Mori had written? Did it make them think all the people who lived on Hawaii were glad they’d come? Or did they just go, Oh, more crap? Had they seen so much of this garbage that they recognized it for what it was? Kenzo didn’t know.

He hoped all the people who saw the story wiped their asses with it. Then they would forget about it. If the USA got Hawaii back, people who said stuff like this would be remembered. Dumb as Dad was, Kenzo didn’t want that.