Days of Infamy

XIII

JANE ARMITAGE WAS beginning to think Oahu would make it. There had been times when she wondered if everybody on the island would starve to death. She’d lost at least twenty pounds herself, and she hadn’t carried any extra weight to begin with. Everybody she knew had lost at least that much-except Major Hirabayashi and the rest of the Jap soldiers in and around Wahiawa. They hadn’t changed a bit. That didn’t surprise her, but it did infuriate her.

She knew better than to let the occupiers see what she thought. Almost everybody in Wahiawa knew better than that. Not being noticed was the best thing you could hope for these days.

A lot of what had been pineapple fields before the invasion were rice paddies now. The Japs seemed convinced the islands could grow enough rice to feed themselves. They talked about two crops a year. Yosh Nakayama didn’t sound too dubious. Jane put more faith in that. What the Big Five had to say… What the Big Five had to say, for the first time since before Hawaii belonged to the United States, didn’t matter one damn bit. And if the families who’d run the islands for so long had any brains, they didn’t want the Japs noticing them, either.

As for Jane, she had a new crop of turnips and a new crop of potatoes coming in. Eating what she’d raised with her own hands, with her own sweat, gave her pride of a sort she’d never known before. If only there’d been more.

She’d also discovered that zebra doves were as tasty as they looked. Mynahs, on the other hand, were nothing to write home about. She wouldn’t have eaten them by choice. Roast mynah beat the hell out of going hungry, though. Nobody was fussy any more.

One of the kids who’d been in her class before the war started came by on a scooter. The school had stayed closed since the Japanese occupied Wahiawa, and especially since Mr. Murphy’s untimely demise. Mitsuru Kojima was skinnier than he had been, too, but it didn’t seem to matter so much on a little kid-and he hadn’t been fat to begin with.

“Hello, Mitch,” Jane said. That was what she’d always called him. Most of the Japanese kids in her class had had American names that they used alongside the ones their folks had given them.

He stared at her out of black button eyes. When he said, “My name’s Mitsuru,” he sounded more arrogant than an eight-year-old kid had any business doing. He added something in Japanese. Jane didn’t know exactly what it meant, but she’d heard soldiers say it. One thing she had no doubt of: it wasn’t a compliment.

Away Mitch-Mitsuru — Kojima went. He was just a little kid, but he’d put her in her place. He’d put everything that had been going on in Hawaii before December 7 in its place. He didn’t even know it. All he knew was that he wanted to use his Japanese name, not his American one, and that he was entitled to say rude things to a white woman, even if she had been his teacher.

That was plenty, wasn’t it?

Jane used the hoe to get rid of a few weeds. No matter how many she murdered, new ones kept popping up. She wasn’t much of a farmer, and never would be, but she’d already discovered how hard it was to keep crops alive and stay ahead of pests.

She looked down at her blue jeans. The fabric over the knees was getting very, very thin. It would split pretty soon. None of her other pairs was in any better shape. Some already had patches on the knees or at the seat. Had these been normal times, she would have needed to buy more. She did need to buy more, but there were none to buy. Make do or do without was the rule these days.

She suspected she would end up using one pair for fabric to keep the others going as long as she could. Then another pair would have to be cannibalized, then another, until finally she’d have one pair left, made of bits and pieces from all the rest.

And what would happen when that pair bit the dust? Jane used a savage slash to decapitate another weed. She might almost have been Major Hirabayashi, cutting off Mr. Murphy’s… Stop that, she told herself fiercely. Just stop it, right this minute. But the thought wouldn’t go away. Neither would the memory of the meaty thunk the sword had made biting into-biting through-the principal’s neck.

Somehow, that memory joined with the way Mitch Kojima didn’t want to be Mitch any more to drive home to her that the Japanese were liable to hold Hawaii for a long time. What would people do as things from the States wore out and broke down? Could Japan supply replacements? On the evidence so far, Japan didn’t give a damn about supplying anything beyond a minimum amount of food-and the Japs grudged even that.

Sudden tears stung Jane’s eyes. She stood there in the middle of her plot, clutching the hoe handle till her knuckles whitened. She didn’t usually let things get to her. She went on from day to day, doing what she had to do to get by in this horribly changed world. Doing that kept her too busy and too tired to worry about anything more.

But she didn’t want to be out here tending turnips and digging weeds and killing bugs when she was thirty-five, or forty-five, or sixty-five, and she was damned if she could see what to do about it. Damned was the word, all right. If this wasn’t hell, it would do till she made the acquaintance of the genuine article.

Two Japanese soldiers strode by. Jane bowed and lowered her eyes to the ground. She didn’t want them noticing she was upset. She didn’t want them noticing her at all. Every once in a while, they would drag somebody into the bushes and do whatever they wanted with her-to her. Several women in Wahiawa went around with dead eyes and started to shiver whenever they saw a Jap.

If they came for her… If they came for her, she had to run. She would have liked nothing better than splitting their skulls with the hoe. But bayonets sparkled on their rifles. If she hurt them, they wouldn’t just rape her and they wouldn’t just shoot her dead. They’d kill her slowly, and they’d laugh while they did it. They might kill some other people, too, so nobody got any ideas above her station.

They kept walking. She breathed again. She always felt as if she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs when the Japs were close by. A man worked in the next plot. He also bowed to the soldiers, but he didn’t seem on the edge of panic. As long as he followed the rules they set, he was-probably-safe. No female between ten and sixty could say even that much.

The woman beyond him tensed, the same as Jane had. Having felt the tension in her own bones, Jane recognized it when she saw it. Again, the soldiers went right on past the woman as if she didn’t exist. As soon as she saw their backs, life returned to the way she stood.

Jane looked to the northeast. She wished a hundred, a thousand, American bombers were roaring toward her. At supper a few days before, somebody had whispered that the British had attacked a German town with a thousand bombers. Maybe somebody had access to a secret radio. Maybe the rumor was just wishful thinking.

Either way, the sky over Wahiawa stayed clear: bare of clouds, bare of bombers, bare of hope. Jane muttered something she’d learned from Fletch, something she never would have said even when she was all alone while she was married to him. Well, circumstances altered cases, by God. These days, she despised him much more for being part of the Army that hadn’t defended Oahu than she ever had for not being much of a husband.

A fly lit on her arm. She smashed it, wiped her hand on her dungarees, and went back to weeding.

LIEUTENANT SABURO SHINDO was not a happy man. Yes, bulldozers had repaired the airstrip at Haleiwa with commendable speed. Yes, more antiaircraft guns poked their camouflaged snouts into the sky around it now. As far as Shindo was concerned, the B-25s never should have got to Oahu in the first place.

He drove down to Honolulu to make his feelings known. Parts of the Kamehameha Highway were in excellent shape, set to rights not by bulldozers but by gangs of POWs. Shindo thoroughly approved of that. Since they’d surrendered, how were they better than any other draft animals? Why shouldn’t Japan use them-or use them up-as necessary?

Commander Genda and Commander Fuchida waited for him in Genda’s office. He saluted both of them, then came straight to the point, as was his way: “We should have done a much better job against the Americans. The warning we got was inaccurate, and lulled us into a false sense of security. We would have been better off with no warning at all.”

Had his superiors tried to deny that, he would have been very angry. He would have tried not to show it; a man without self-control would never progress in the Japanese Navy-or anywhere in Japan, come to that. But the feeling would have been there. He probably would have taken it out on his subordinates, as mothers-in-law got their own back for what they’d had to put up with when they were daughters-in-law.

But Mitsuo Fuchida only gave him a wry smile and said, “Hai. Honto. ”

“I think we can expect more trouble from the Americans, too, now that we’ve poked them in the snout as they poked us,” Minoru Genda added.

“I believe that. Bombing the mainland was well done.” Shindo didn’t have to disguise his envy as he eyed Fuchida. The commander had all the luck! Not only first over Pearl Harbor but first over San Francisco! Either one of those could make a man’s career. Both? To have both seemed downright unfair.

Fuchida was modest, too. “It was Genda’s idea,” he said.

That didn’t matter so much to Shindo. A lot of the Pearl Harbor plan had also been Genda’s. So what? Fuchida was the one who’d made it real.

With an effort, Shindo brought his thoughts back to the purpose for which he’d come down to Honolulu. “We need more air cover here,” he said. “I don’t just mean land-based. I mean carriers. Akagi by herself isn’t enough. That’s all the more true if you really do expect the Americans to pay us another call. I don’t want them to surprise us again. I want to be the one who goes hunting and finds them first.”

“That may not be as easy as you hope, Lieutenant,” Genda said. “They have something they call radar. We have the name from prisoners we have taken.” He went on to explain what the word meant.

The more Shindo listened, the less happy he got. “That’s terrible!” he exclaimed. “They can see us coming and guide their planes straight to us?”

“It seems so, when everything goes right,” Genda answered.

“They detected us coming in when we attacked Pearl Harbor,” Fuchida added.

“Zakennayo! ” Shindo said. “They are idiots, then. Why didn’t they scramble their planes? They could have hurt us badly.”

“For one thing, they were expecting a flight of B-17s along almost the same course. The bombers came in just a little later, and we shot them up on the ground,” Genda answered. He was the man with the facts at his fingertips. He went on, “And, for another, they didn’t really believe we would attack them.”

“In future operations, neither of these factors will hold true.” Commander Fuchida’s voice was dry.

“I should say not.” No matter how phlegmatic Shindo was, he had to fight to keep dismay from his voice. He gathered himself and did his best to think about tactical implications. After a moment, he nodded. “This only makes it more urgent that we reinforce the Akagi. If they have a technical edge, we’ll need the advantage in numbers all the more.”

“Our engineers in Japan were already working on radar,” Genda said. “We’ve flown some of the prisoners to Tokyo so they can give our people more information as that becomes necessary. The principles seem clear. We should be able to deploy sets of our own before long-in fact, we have some trial installations in place now.”

“Will we have working models before the Americans try hitting us again?” Shindo asked. Genda and Fuchida looked at each other. Their elaborately casual shrugs said it was unlikely. Shindo hadn’t expected anything else. He went on, “I’m just a flying officer. Nobody pays any particular attention to me, here or back in Tokyo. But the two of you, you have the ears of important people.” Nobody was more important than Admiral Yamamoto, for instance. “You can persuade them we really need more carriers here.”

The two commanders looked at each other again. They gave Shindo another matched set of slightly overacted shrugs. Once more, he had to fight not to show the anger he felt. Minoru Genda said, “Please believe me, Shindo-san — you aren’t the only one who has seen this problem coming. The carriers had other things to do. But now that Admiral Nagumo’s force has returned to home waters from its sortie into the Indian Ocean…”

“Ah, so desu! ” Shindo breathed. The Japanese strike force had sunk a British carrier and smashed up ports and shipping along the east coast of India and in Ceylon. That would help Japan tighten its grip on Burma and perhaps clear the way for an invasion of India. Shindo gave back a shrug of his own. The western fringe of the Japanese Empire wasn’t his special worry. The eastern edge was. “How many carriers will we get?” he asked eagerly.

“Two,” Genda answered.

Shindo had hoped for three, but feared the answer would be only one. “Not bad,” he said.

“Tell him the rest,” Fuchida put in.

Genda did: “They’re Shokaku and Zuikaku.”

Those were the biggest, best, and newest carriers the Imperial Navy boasted. Shindo wanted to jump up and down and whoop, but showing delight would have been as uncalled-for, as American, as showing anger. “Well,” he said, “That is good news.”

“Hai,” Fuchida said. “If the Yankees want to make a big fight of it, let them. We’ll deal with whatever carriers they send the same way as we dealt with the ones we caught off Hawaii when the Pacific War started.”

“Oh, yes. Oh, my, yes. I can’t wait to start flying off a carrier deck again,” Shindo said. “After you’ve got used to doing them at sea, takeoffs and landings from an ordinary airstrip just aren’t the same.” He made as if to yawn. Fuchida, also a carrier pilot of great experience, laughed out loud at that. Shindo went on, “And, as we said, the Americans won’t take us by surprise again.”

“We will make very sure of that,” Commander Genda said. “Along with the picket boats, now we’ll have the new H8Ks flying long-range patrols to the north and east.”

“They’re really remarkable machines.” Having flown in one, Fuchida could hardly contain his enthusiasm. “Wonderful endurance, good protection, lots of guns, and they aren’t even all that slow. Lieutenant Muto said he wasn’t afraid of taking on American fighters, not even a little bit.”

“No, eh?” Shindo let it go at that. Pilots were supposed to be happy about the planes they flew. All the same, he thought this Muto, whom he didn’t know, not just an optimist but a fool. No matter how fast a flying boat was, it couldn’t outrun or outmaneuver a fighter. The fighter could pick an attack angle where most of the victim’s guns didn’t bear, and then… Shindo’s thumb twitched, as if on the firing button. American warplanes didn’t measure up to Zeros, but they were plenty to deal with the likes of an H8K. He hoped Muto didn’t discover the truth of that the hard way.

Still… Shokaku and Zuikaku coming to join the Akagi! He went back to Haleiwa a happy man.

OSCAR VAN DER KIRK met Charlie Kaapu on the beach at Waikiki. They both had their sailboards and everything else they needed for a fishing run. Oscar was proud of himself for his invention. Not for the first time, he thought he might have made a mint off it in ordinary days. The trouble with that was, in ordinary days he wouldn’t have thought of it. Amazing how hunger concentrated the mind.

And he’d found a real niche no one else was exploiting. The fishing was pretty good out in that area beyond the beach but closer than sampans usually came. He hoped it would stay that way now that more and more people were putting sails on their surfboards.

He didn’t begrudge Charlie his sailboard. The two of them had been through too much together for that. The hapa — Hawaiian grinned at him, saying, “Here comes the smart haole.”

“Where?” Oscar looked back over his own shoulder. Charlie thought that was funnier than Oscar did himself. He made a hell of a good audience. The two of them walked down to the Pacific. As usual now, the men fishing at the edge of the surf made way for them.

As they paddled out past the breakers, Charlie said, “You really that smart?”

“What do you mean?” Oscar asked, though he had a good idea.

Sure enough, his buddy said, “You so smart, why you take up with that blond wahine from the mainland again?”

That had several possible answers, from the crudely anatomical to None of your business. Oscar chose a mild middle ground: “Susie’s not so bad. A lot of people would’ve flipped, getting stuck in all this. Heck, a lot of people did flip. Susie’s come through pretty well.”

“Yeah, but you fought like cats and dogs last time she was at your place,” Charlie said, which was true. “Why bang heads with a broad when it’s so easy to find one that doesn’t want to yell and throw stuff? Waste time.”

“We’re getting along pretty good now.” Oscar wasn’t about to claim any more than that. More would have let Charlie give him the horse laugh if things blew up in his face day after tomorrow.

They put up their sails and let the offshore breeze waft them out into the Pacific. Lousy name for this ocean, Oscar thought, remembering that the word meant peaceful. The brief taste of oceanic war he’d got up by Waimea was plenty to sour him on it forever.

After a while, the two of them separated. Charlie swung east, toward Diamond Head, while Oscar went west, toward Pearl Harbor. He thought the fishing outside the Navy base was better than it was farther east. That stretch of ocean had been restricted before the war; sampans hadn’t gone through it as they had everywhere else near Honolulu.

The Japs weren’t enforcing the restricted zone. Maybe nobody’d told them about it. If they did decide to crack down, Oscar had every intention of staying away from then on out. Falling foul of U.S. authorities would have meant a fine and maybe a little time in the cooler. If a Jap patrol caught somebody where he wasn’t supposed to be… They’d shoot first and wouldn’t bother asking questions.

But as long as there was no rule against being here, Oscar intended to make the most of it. He was well out to sea as he scattered grains of rice and dropped his line in the water. He wanted a good catch, enough to keep him and Susie eating for a while, enough to let him trade some so they wouldn’t have to eat nothing but fish till they wondered if they’d grow fins. Whether what he wanted was anything like what he’d get was another question. He’d find out pretty soon.

It was going to be a good day. He had ahi and aku and even a small mahimahi on the line as he drew it back onto the sailboard. He gutted the fish as fast as he could. Some of the offal would make more bait. The rest he kicked back into the Pacific. He’d put some distance between this spot and his next one. He hadn’t had any trouble from big sharks yet, and he didn’t want to start now.

Something splashed behind him. He turned, careful not to upset the sailboard. His jaw dropped. His eyes bugged out of his head. That was no shark, no pod of dolphins, no breaching whale. That was a goddamn submarine, its deck almost awash, its conning tower painted an oceanic blue.

I’ve had it, was the first thought that went through his head. He almost jumped into the water and tried to swim for it. Only the sure knowledge that that was hopeless kept him where he was. If they were Japs, maybe they were just intrigued with his contraption. Maybe they wouldn’t do him in for the fun of it.

A grubby sailor stuck his head and shoulders out of the top of the conning tower. In purest Brooklynese, he asked, “Hey, Mac, you speak English?”

Better than you do, buddy. Somehow, Oscar didn’t burst into hysterical laughter. That proved he owned more strength of character than he’d suspected. He made himself nod. “Yes,” he said, adding, “I grew up in California.”

“Oh, yeah? Says you.” The sailor sounded deeply skeptical. Oscar knew why: he was almost naked and very, very brown. Plenty of tourists figured him for at least hapa — Hawaiian, too; they were too dumb to know a blond Hawaiian was a lot less likely than a swarthy Swede. This guy was evidently somewhere on the same level of dumbness. “Don’t go away,” he said, and disappeared.

A minute later, another man took his place. This fellow looked just as unkempt, but wore an officer’s cap with a large grease spot on it. “I’m Woodrow Kelley,” he said. “They call me Woody. This is the Amberjack, and they were rash enough to put me in charge of her. Who are you, pal? Vinnie says you say you’re from California.” He didn’t sound as if he believed it, either.

“My name is Oscar van der Kirk, and yeah, I’m from California. I graduated from Stanford, matter of fact.”

“What are you doing here, then?” Kelley asked.

“I like it here,” Oscar answered simply. “I liked it a hell of a lot better before the Japs came, but I still like it.” He pointed at the sub-the Amberjack, Kelley had called it. “What are you doing here?”

“Who, me? I’m not here at all. You’re talking to a waddayacallit-a figment of your imagination.” The submarine’s skipper had a wryly engaging grin. “If I were here, I’d just be looking around, seeing what I can find out. What the hell’s that thing you’re riding on, for instance?”

“I call it a sailboard,” Oscar said. “It lets me fish farther from shore than a regular surfboard would.”

“Your idea?” Woodrow Kelley asked. Oscar nodded. Kelley eyed the hybrid craft. “Pretty neat, I’d say. How far could you go on it?”

“Beats me,” Oscar answered. “I never tried anything really fancy. All I wanted to do was get out where the fishing was better than it is by the beach.”

“Could you sail to another island?” Kelley persisted.

“I suppose so, if the wind didn’t let me down,” Oscar said. Molokai was only about forty miles away, Lanai not much farther, and Maui a short hop from either one. Even so, he went on, “I’d sure rather do it in a real boat, though. Not much margin for error in this thing. How come?”

“Just thinking out loud,” the sub’s skipper said. Oscar knew bullshit when he heard it, but he was in no position to call the other man. Kelley went on, “How are things in Honolulu?”

“You don’t have spies to tell you stuff like that?” Oscar asked.

“How do things look to you?” Kelley said, another answer that wasn’t an answer. That was probably fair enough. A Navy officer wouldn’t talk about spies with a guy on a sailboard.

Oscar thought. “People are hungry, but they aren’t quite starving. You try and keep your head down so the Japs don’t notice you.”

“Okay.” Kelly nodded. “How about the local Japs? — the ones who were living here before the invasion, I mean.”

“Some of ’em-usually older ones, I’d say-like it with Japan in charge. The ones my age and younger are mostly as American as anybody else. But an awful lot of them just want to go on about their business, same as most folks. As long as they get left alone, they’re happy.”

“Uh-huh.” Woody Kelley nodded again, this time as if telling himself not to forget that. “How much of the rest of the island have you seen?”

“Not much, not since the war started. There’s no gas for ordinary people’s cars.” Oscar pointed up toward the conning tower. “Hey! Can you do something for me?”

“I dunno. Try me.”

“Let my folks know I’m okay, please. Bill and Enid van der Kirk, in Visalia, California. And my brother Roger.” Oscar paused. In for a penny, in for a pound, he decided. “And a gal named Susie Higgins has family in Pittsburgh. They ought to know she’s all right.”

“Visalia. Pittsburgh.” Kelley looked down. Oscar hoped that meant he was taking notes. When he looked up again, he said, “They’ll get the word. It may take a while. We’ll have to clean it up so they can’t tell how it came from Hawaii to the mainland.”

“Gotcha,” Oscar said. “Thanks, pal.”

“Any time,” Kelley said. “You want some real chow-canned stuff-to go along with your fish there?”

Spit flooded into Oscar’s mouth. Canned stuff was precious, not least because so much of it had already been eaten. But, regretfully, he shook his head. “I better not. Anybody sees me coming off the beach with it, he’s gonna know damn well I didn’t catch it on a hook.”

Woody Kelley chuckled. “Okay, van der Kirk. Makes sense. You’re nobody’s dummy, are you?”

Except for Charlie Kaapu, he was the first person who’d said anything like that in years. Most folks figured Oscar was a jerk for preferring surf-riding to making something of himself. In his occasional gloomy moments, he’d had the same thought himself. So when he said, “Thanks,” he really sounded as if he meant it.

“Sure thing,” Kelley said. “Listen. One more time… You’ve never seen me. You’ve never heard of the Amberjack, right?”

“Who? What?” Oscar said, and the officer-who couldn’t have been any older than he was-laughed again. He touched his index finger to the brim of his grimy cap in something halfway between a wave and a salute. Then he vanished into the conning tower. A hatch clanged shut behind him.

The submarine slipped below the surface. Oscar guffawed. He’d watched subs go underwater in the movies. One thing the movies didn’t tell you, though, was that the bubbling submergence sounded like the world’s biggest fart in a bathtub.

He gave his attention back to the fishing line. Whether American subs were prowling around Oahu or not, he still had to eat. Keeping a full belly was everybody’s number-one worry these days. When he got back to shore, he wondered if he’d hear that the Amberjack had surfaced and plastered a Japanese barracks or gun position. Nobody said a word about anything like that, though. He supposed the sub was just on a snooping run. Too bad, he thought.

“How did it go?” Susie asked when he got back to the apartment.

“Pretty well,” he answered, and displayed a mahimahi he hadn’t traded. It would be tasty tonight. He wanted to tell her he’d passed the word that she was safe. He wanted to, but he didn’t. If he couldn’t keep from running his own mouth, how could he expect her to manage it? Even if he couldn’t talk, he’d done a good deed. Some people said the best good deeds were the ones you didn’t talk about. Oscar wasn’t convinced. As far as he could see, this one was just the most frustrating.

JIRO TAKAHASHI LET his sons sail the Oshima Maru back toward Kewalo Basin. By now, Hiroshi and Kenzo handled the sampan’s rig nearly as well as he did. When they were working, they didn’t have time to grumble that he’d be taking fish to the Japanese consulate once they came ashore.

Actually, they’d almost given up nagging him about going to the consulate. He was, after all, a Japanese citizen. And he was at least as stubborn as his two blockheaded sons. They weren’t about to make him change his mind. The more they tried, the harder he dug in his heels.

By now, even they seemed to have figured that out. As Kenzo swung the sail about to change tacks on the way back to Honolulu, Hiroshi changed tacks on the argument. “Father-san, you really shouldn’t let the occupiers use you for propaganda,” he said.

“Propaganda?” To Jiro, it was nothing but a fancy word. “A reporter asked me questions. I answered them. So what?”

“If the United States comes back to Hawaii, people will remember things like that. They won’t like them,” Hiroshi said.

“If that’s all you’re worrying about…” Jiro snorted. “The United States isn’t coming back. These islands are Japanese now. They’re going to stay that way.”

“Are you sure?” Hiroshi asked. “What about the American bombers? What about that submarine?”

“What about them?” Jiro said. “We bombed San Francisco. Our submarines have shelled the mainland. It evens out. We won’t put soldiers over there, and I don’t think they can put soldiers over here.”

“We?” But Hiroshi let it go. They’d quarreled over that ever since the day the war started. Jiro’s we focused on his homeland and the Emperor, Hiroshi and Kenzo’s on the country where they were born.

Kewalo Basin was getting close. Kenzo made a short tack, then a longer one, and slid into the basin as smoothly as Jiro could have done it. The sampan glided up to a quay. Hiroshi hopped up onto the planking and made the boat fast.

The Takahashis weighed the bulk of the catch on the scales now supervised by Japanese soldiers. The soldiers paid them by weight, as usual. With all food so scarce on Oahu, the finest ahi was worth no more-officially-than trash fish Jiro would have thrown back into the sea before the war.

Officially. But Jiro and Hiroshi and Kenzo didn’t carry trash fish away from Kewalo Basin. Oh, no. What they carried away for “personal use” was the best of what they’d taken that day: ahi and mahimahi. They’d eat some, sell or trade some, and Jiro would take some to the Japanese consulate, as he’d got into the habit of doing.

“Waste of fish,” Kenzo said as Jiro headed up Nuuanu Avenue. “Waste of money, too.”

Jiro stopped and scowled at his younger son. “You mind your business,” he said angrily. “You mind it, you hear me? You go sniffing round after that haole girl, and then you go telling me what to do? Ichi-ban baka! ” He spat on the sidewalk in scorn.

He wondered whether Kenzo would come back at him as hotly as he sometimes did. If that happened, Hiroshi would pitch in on his brother’s side, and Jiro would have to start screaming at both of them. Back in Japan, he told himself, such a thing would never happen. Back in Japan, youngsters respected their elders. He conveniently forgot that one of the reasons he’d been eager to come to Hawaii was so he wouldn’t have to bang heads with his father any more.

But this argument collapsed instead of going on to the screaming stage. Kenzo wasn’t fair-skinned to begin with. All his time on the Oshima Maru had browned him further. Even so, he turned red. He muttered something unintelligible under his breath and turned away from Jiro.

Ha! Jiro thought. My shot went home like a torpedo hitting an American battleship. He went his way, while his sons went theirs. He wanted to do some more yelling at Kenzo for sniffing after a haole girl now, of all the idiotic times. Just as he wouldn’t listen to Kenzo, though, his son was unlikely to heed him.

Reiko and I should have arranged marriages for both of them. It would have happened like that in Japan. Here? Well, it might have. But the American nonsense about falling in love and living happily ever after had a grip on a lot of young Japanese in Hawaii. Who could guess whether Hiroshi and Kenzo would have gone along? No one would ever know now. That seemed plain enough.

Up the street Jiro went. The Rising Sun fluttered above and in front of the consulate. As usual, the soldiers standing guard outside both teased Jiro about the fish he’d brought and admired them. Before they went into the Army, they’d mostly been farmers or fishermen themselves-men of his own class. He laughed at their gibes, and sassed them back the same way. They understood one another.

After they got done with those friendly rituals, the soldiers passed him on to the men inside. That was a different business. Those people wore Western-style suits and had fancy educations-you could tell by the way they talked. Jiro spoke to them with careful politeness. He didn’t want to seem like some backwoods buffoon.

Consul Kita was in a meeting. A secretary took Jiro to meet Chancellor Morimura. With his long face, his large eyes, and especially with his missing finger joint, Morimura always put Jiro in mind of a samurai of old. His sharp suit somehow strengthened the impression instead of detracting from it.

As always, the young chancellor admired Jiro’s catch. His good manners seemed natural, effortlesss, not the product of care and a constant struggle against saying the wrong thing. He asked where Jiro had taken the Oshima Maru today and how the fishing had gone. And then he asked, “And did you notice anything out of the ordinary while you were at sea, Takahashi-san?”

“Out of the ordinary?” Jiro frowned. “I don’t think so, sir. Can you tell me what you’ve got in mind?”

“Well…” Morimura steepled his fingers. With that missing joint, one pair didn’t meet, so the steeple would have a leak when it rained. “There are reports that another American submarine has been sniffing around-rumors, really, more than reports. Did you see one today?”

“No, sir. I didn’t,” Jiro answered without hesitation. “I would have said so right away if I had.”

“All right. I thought you would.” Morimura pulled a map from one of the desk drawers. “And you were… here, more or less?” He used a pencil for a pointer to show just where the sampan had gone. Jiro was so impressed, he had to remind himself to nod. The consular official went on, “What time would that have been? Do you remember?”

“We got there late in the morning, and we fished till early afternoon. Then we sailed back to Kewalo Basin,” Jiro said. “We made a short trip to keep the fish fresh-not so easy now that ice is hard to get-and we didn’t want to spend a night on the sea. Why, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Negative information isn’t as good as positive, but it’s better than nothing,” Morimura replied. “Now at least I know one place where this submarine, if there was a submarine, wasn’t.”

“It didn’t shoot at the island here-I would have heard about that,” Jiro said. “From what you tell me, it didn’t torpedo any ships. Why would a submarine come at all, if it didn’t do any of those things?”

“To spy,” the young man from Japan told him. “Submarines and flying boats-those are what the Americans can use. And they do. They keep sneaking around. I don’t know if there really was a submarine this time, but there could have been.”

“I see.” Jiro wasn’t altogether comfortable with what he saw. Why would the United States spy on Hawaii if it wasn’t thinking about taking back the islands? And if it was, that meant his sons were right. Few fathers faced a more depressing prospect than that.

Some of what he thought must have shown on his face. Tadashi Morimura smiled at him. “Don’t worry, Takahashi-san. If the Americans try to stick their long snouts back here again, we’ll bloody those snouts for them and send them home.”

“Good!” The word was an exhalation of relief. Jiro hadn’t done badly under the Americans-he’d done better here than he would have in Japan. But not only did he remain loyal to the country that had given him birth, an American triumph and a Japanese defeat would be his sons’ triumph and his defeat. He didn’t care to think about that.

Morimura smiled again. “You are a true Japanese,” he said. “One of those times when you visit us, you must record your feelings about your mother country.”

“Whatever you say, sir,” replied Jiro, who wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that. Tadashi Morimura smiled once more.

WHENEVER THE JAP commandant strutted into the POW camp that had swallowed Kapiolani Park, trouble followed. Fletch Armitage had seen that was an unbreakable rule. The local Jap who scurried along in the commandant’s wake and did his translating for him reminded Fletch of nothing so much as a lapdog at the heel of some plump matron.

The prisoners assembled in neat rows. Fletch thought about how easy mobbing that arrogant Jap and tearing him to pieces would be. The POWs could do it. But the price! It wouldn’t be just the soldiers with submachine guns who extracted it, or even the guards with machine guns in the towers out beyond the barbed wire. That slaughter would be bad enough. Afterwards, though… If the Japs didn’t massacre everybody in the camp afterwards to avenge the miserable son of a bitch who ran it, Fletch would have been amazed.

The rest of the POWs must have thought the way he did. No one charged the commandant as he got up onto a table so he could look down on the sea of tall American prisoners. He barked something in Japanese. Of necessity, Fletch had started picking up a few words of the conquerors’ language. He couldn’t follow the commandant’s harangue, though.

“You prisoners have benefited too long from the mercy and leniency of the Empire of Japan,” the interpreter said. Even among the cowed throng of POWs, that produced a stir and a murmur. If this was mercy, Fletch didn’t want the Japs getting mad at him. He was filthy. He stank to high heaven. He didn’t know how much weight he’d lost, but guessed it was somewhere between thirty and forty pounds. His shirt hung on him like a tent. He could tie a fancy bow in the rope that held up his pants. The only reason he wished he had his belt back was so he might try to eat the leather.

“This mercy and leniency will end,” the interpreter went on. “Many of you-too many of you-do not do a lick of work. And yet you still expect to be fed. You want to live off the fat of the land, and-”

After that, the interpreter had to stop. The murmurs grew to raucous jeers. Fletch gleefully joined in. With so many men mouthing off, the Japs couldn’t shoot all of them. He hoped they couldn’t, anyway.

Those jeers were enough to make even the commandant pause. He spoke in a low voice to the local Jap, no doubt demanding to know what the obstreperous Americans were saying. He didn’t like what the translator told him. He shouted angrily and put a hand on the hilt of his samurai sword. Then he spoke again, this time with harsh purpose in his voice.

“You prisoners will be silent. You will be punished for this outrageous outburst. How dare you behave so, you who have forfeited all honor? This whole camp will go without food for three days because of your intolerable action,” the interpreter said. “At the end of that time, the commandant will return to see whether you have come to your senses.”

Out strode the commandant, the local Jap again in his wake. He was as good-or as bad-as his word. Three days with nothing to eat would have been no fun for men in good condition. For those already on the edge of starvation… They were the worst three days of Fletch’s life. He didn’t go quite without food: on the last day he caught a gecko about as long as his thumb, skewered it on a stick, roasted it over a tiny fire in his tent, and ate it scales, claws, guts, and all. It should have been disgusting. He remembered it as one of the most delicious things he’d ever tasted.

Several men quietly died during the enforced fast. Odds were they would have died soon anyhow. So Fletch told himself, watching two prisoners drag an emaciated corpse toward the burying ground. He half envied the dead man, who at least wasn’t suffering any more. And the poor, sorry son of a bitch didn’t look a whole hell of a lot skinnier than he was.

The commandant spoke again to the assembled POWs before the kitchens reopened. The warning was clear as a kick in the teeth: if the men gave him a hard time, maybe the kitchens wouldn’t reopen. By then, Fletch was almost beyond lessons. Standing at attention took not only all his strength but also all his concentration. He didn’t have much concentration left; he felt dizzy and light-headed.

Yammer, yammer, yammer. After the commandant spoke, the interpreter said, “Have you learned your lesson?”

Fuck you, you sadistic bastard! Fletch thought it, but he didn’t shout it. By that standard, he supposed he had learned his lesson. Instead, he chorused, “Hai! ” with the rest of the soldiers and managed to bow without falling on his face. It wasn’t easy.

More yammering in Japanese. “Perhaps now you will understand that, as men who have surrendered, you have no rights, only the privileges the Imperial Japanese Army graciously pleases to grant you.” The translator paused after saying that. If some hotheaded fool told him and the commandant where to head in, the whole camp would pay for it.

Nobody said a word. Only the wind’s soft sighing broke the silence that stretched and stretched. Fletch wasn’t the only one who’d learned the commandant’s lesson.

“As you were told before, when your rudeness began, you eat only by the grace of the Imperial Japanese Army,” the interpreter said. “Supplies are short all over these islands. The Army can no longer support idle mouths. If you do not work, you will not eat. It is as simple as that. Do you understand?”

“Hai! ” the prisoners chorused again. Yes, they’d learned the lessons the Japs wanted to teach them, all right.

“You will be assigned your duties,” the interpreter told them. “There is much damage to repair on Oahu, damage caused by your useless, vain, and senseless resistance. You will now have the chance to set it right. Work diligently at all times.”

So the commandant blamed the United States for the damage to Oahu, did he? Japan had nothing to do with it, eh? That’s a hot one, Fletch thought. No matter what he thought, his face showed none of it. The commandant’s idiotic opinions weren’t immediately relevant to him, the way anything that had to do with food was. The dumb Jap could think whatever he pleased.

Three or four more men keeled over waiting in the chow line once the commandant finally got done blathering. All but one came around when the men in line chafed their wrists and slapped their faces. That one, though, wouldn’t get up again till the Last Trump blew. He looked absurdly peaceful, lying there on the ground. Nothing bothered him any more. Fletch wished he could say the same.

When he did get fed, it was the same inadequate ration of rice and greens the cooks had been dishing out all along. It seemed like a six-course dinner at the Royal Hawaiian. Having anything in his stomach felt almost unnatural. And then, after he’d all but inhaled it, he realized he was just about as hungry as he had been before he got it.

It was better and more filling than a seared gecko. That he was reduced to such comparisons told him more plainly than anything else how degraded he’d become since the surrender. And what did he have to look forward to? Slave labor on starvation rations. He wondered how Clancy and Dave had done since they’d bailed out instead of giving up. One thing seemed obvious: it couldn’t have been a whole hell of a lot worse.

Of course, the Japs might have caught them and killed them, too. From where Fletch sat now, that didn’t look a whole hell of a lot worse, either.

KENZO TAKAHASHI SPLASHED Vitalis on his hands and then ran them through his freshly washed hair. The spicy smell of the hair tonic took him back to the days before the war. The bottle had cost him two nice aku. Once he’d rubbed in the lotion, he combed vigorously.

His brother clucked, watching him spruce up. “You sure this is a good idea, Ken?” Hiroshi asked dubiously.

“Not you, too, Hank!” Kenzo exclaimed. He looked down at himself. He wished he had something fancier than dungarees and a work shirt to wear. At least they were clean. Thanks to a Chinaman whose laundry had survived the fighting, he wouldn’t have the stink of stale fish fighting the Vitalis.

Hiroshi seemed embarrassed, but he was also stubborn. “Yeah, me, too. Taking out a haole girl right now isn’t the smartest thing you ever did.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Kenzo stuck the comb in his hip pocket and threw his hands in the air. “I’m not going to marry her. I’m not going to molest her, either.” He had the small satisfaction of watching his brother turn red as he went on, “All I’m going to do is take her to a movie, so what are you jumping up and down for?”

“You can say that to me. I don’t have any trouble with it,” Hiroshi persisted. “What if you have to say it in Japanese to a bunch of soldiers? You’re asking for trouble, is what you’re doing.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kenzo said. “I’ll tell ’em my dad’s in tight with the Japanese consul. They’ll leave me alone so fast, it’ll make your head swim.”

The scary thing was, he was probably right. Connections never hurt anybody. That had always been true, and it seemed all the more so now. Kenzo wished his father had nothing to do with Consul Kita and the rest of the Japanese at the consulate. The more often Dad went over there and talked with those people, the more self-important he seemed to get. He just wouldn’t see they were using him as a collaborator. The idea of using his trips over there against the occupiers struck Kenzo as delicious. Turnabout is fair play. Who’d said that? He couldn’t remember. His English teachers would have frowned. At least he remembered the phrase. That was what really mattered, wasn’t it?

Hiroshi said, “The haoles won’t like it, either.”

“Hey, butt out, okay?” Kenzo’s temper started fraying. “Let me worry about it. It’s my business, not yours.”

“You’re as pigheaded as Dad is.”

That probably-no, certainly-held more truth than Kenzo wished it did. He could either fight with Hiroshi or go get Elsie Sundberg. He chose the latter without hesitation, and without a backwards glance. Just getting out of the tent, getting out of the refugee camp, seemed wonderful. Sunday afternoon felt almost as good as it would have before the war.

Try as he would, though, he couldn’t pretend December 7 and its aftermath hadn’t happened. Too much reminded him of the changes Honolulu and all of Hawaii had seen. The ruins left from the fighting, oddly, often seemed the least of those changes. The gangs of scrawny POWs clearing rubble with picks and shovels under the guns of Japanese soldiers were much more alien to what Kenzo was used to than the rubble itself. Seeing all those hungry haoles made him feel guilty for being well fed.

Before Honolulu changed hands, it had had as much traffic as any other American city of about 200,000 people. Now moving cars and buses had disappeared from the streets, though many were parked at the curb, more often than not sitting on one or more flat tires. Gasoline and diesel fuel for civilian use had simply dried up. If the Japanese couldn’t spare fuel for fishing sampans-and they couldn’t-they couldn’t spare it for anything.

Shank’s mare, bicycles, a few horse-drawn carriages exhumed from God only knew where, rickshaws, and pedicabs did their best to take up the slack. Kenzo hated the idea of one man hauling another-by which he proved how American he was. Some of the haulers were haoles, which also would have been unimaginable before December 7. The smug look on a Japanese officer’s face as a big blond man pulled him along Vineyard Boulevard stuck in Kenzo’s memory forever.

The Stars and Stripes was gone. Hawaii’s flag still flew here and there, and looked much like that of the USA at a distance, but Old Glory was as extinct as moving motorcars. The Rising Sun had replaced it. Japan’s flag flew over post offices and other public buildings, and also over or in front of houses and businesses owned by people who wanted to get in good with the new occupiers. Not everyone who flew the Rising Sun was Japanese-not even close. Plenty of people of all bloods judged the Japanese Empire was here to stay.

Also gone, or nearly so, were the pigeons and the once even more numerous zebra doves. Kenzo knew what had happened to them. Lots of people were hungry these days, and zebra doves weren’t hard to catch. The foolish little birds did everything but carry EAT ME! signs. Mynahs, by contrast, persisted. They were less appetizing than pigeons and doves, and also had the brains to fly away when people started sneaking up on them.

Kenzo saw plenty of soldiers and sailors heading down toward the red-light district centered on Hotel Street. The uniforms and the faces had changed. The look of greedy expectation on those faces hadn’t.

When Kenzo got farther east, into the haole part of town, the absence of moving motorcars was the main thing that told him how times had changed. Lawns remained neatly mowed; trees were still neatly trimmed. A majority of the houses wrecked by bombs and shellfire had been pulled down by now, so their lots looked as if they were just vacant.

Elsie had always liked him fine. Before the war, her folks wouldn’t have been so happy if he’d shown up to take her out. They weren’t so stuffy about that kind of thing as some haoles, but they wouldn’t have been dancing in the streets, either. Now… When he knocked on the door now, Elsie’s mother opened the door and smiled and said, “Hello, Ken. Come in. Elsie will be ready in just a minute.” The smile seemed genuine. If it wasn’t, she could have gone on stage with it. She used his first name now, too, he noticed, which she hadn’t the first time he’d come over.

“Thank you, Mrs. Sundberg,” Kenzo answered, and did. So much room inside! He’d had that thought before. The apartment where he’d grown up couldn’t have had a quarter as much space. He refused to think about the tent where he was living now.

“Would you like some lemonade?” Mrs. Sundberg asked.

“Sure, if it’s not too much trouble,” he said. He didn’t suppose it would be. Factories had gone right on making sugar even after anybody with a brain in his head could see they weren’t going to be able to ship it to the mainland. And, while you could cook with lemons and use their juice, eating them as fruit took real determination.

The lemonade was perfect: sweet and tart and cold. Kenzo had taken only a couple of sips before Elsie walked into the front room. “Hi!” he said.

“Hi, Ken.” She smiled.

“You look nice,” Kenzo said. She was wearing a sun dress, but not one that was too revealing. Part of him was sorry. The rest, the sensible part, wasn’t: why borrow trouble with leering soldiers or, worse, with soldiers who wanted to do more than leer? He sniffed. “You smell nice, too.” She’d put on some kind of cologne. He could smell it in spite of the Vitalis he’d used on his own hair.

Elsie wrinkled her nose at him. “As long as I don’t smell like old fish, I’d smell nice to you.”

Since she was right, he grinned back at her. “Shall we go?” he said. Elsie nodded. He drained the glass of lemonade and set it down on a doily to make sure it didn’t leave a ring on the furniture. “Thanks very much,” he told Mrs. Sundberg.

“You’re welcome, Ken,” she answered. “I hope you have a nice time.” If her voice held the thinnest edge of worry, he could pretend he didn’t notice.

Little spatters of rain were coming down when he and Elsie stepped outside. They both ignored it, confident it would let up in a few minutes-and it did. Some adman had no doubt got a bonus for coining the phrase “liquid sunshine.” Advertising for tourists or not, though, it held a lot of truth. The sun hadn’t stopped shining while the rain fell, and it was warm and more refreshing than annoying.

Elsie looked up at the sky as the clouds drifted away. “If I’d just had a permanent, I’d be mad,” she said, and laughed. “I don’t think you can get a permanent here any more, so I don’t have to worry about that.”

“I hadn’t even thought about it,” Kenzo confessed.

“Men.” Elsie condemned half the human race. She laughed again while she did it.

“Hey!” Kenzo played at being more wounded than he really was. “Most of what I’ve been worrying about lately is fish. They don’t care about permanents. The rest is trying to keep Dad from… you know.” He didn’t want to say turning into a quisling, even if that was what it amounted to.

“Nothing you can do about that. You can’t live his life for him,” Elsie said. “I’m just glad you don’t think that way yourself.”

“Nope. I’m an American.” But Kenzo looked around to make sure nobody overheard him before he said it. He trusted Elsie-and he was sure she was on the same side as he was. Some stranger? A stranger, Japanese or advantage-seeking haole, was liable to report him to the occupiers. He didn’t like having to be careful that way, but he didn’t see that he had any choice, either.

“I should hope so.” Elsie spoke in a low voice, and she looked around, too. She made an unhappy face. “It’s like living in France or Russia or something and worrying about the Nazis listening all the time.”

“It’s just like that,” Kenzo said. His father’s homeland was on the same side as Adolf Hitler. If that wasn’t enough to give Dad a hint… But Hitler had got a much better press in the Japanese papers his father read than he did in the English-language press. What can you do? he thought.

The closest theater was showing a Gary Cooper Western. What can you do? Kenzo thought again. He gave the ticket-seller two quarters. The theater had long since run out of tickets. Kenzo and Elsie extended their hands. The fellow stamped PAID on the backs of them. They showed the stamps to the man who would have taken tickets if they’d had any. He stood aside and let them through.

Gone from the snack bar were the familiar odors of hot dogs and popcorn. All it sold were lemonade and salted macadamia nuts-another local specialty. Kenzo got some for Elsie and him. They cost more than admission had.

Japanese sailors had taken a lot of the best seats. Kenzo and Elsie sat down near the back of the theater. They wanted to draw as little notice as they could. When they started to eat their snacks, they discovered that macadamia nuts were a lot noisier to chew than popcorn. Crunching, they grinned at each other.

No coming attractions filled the screen when the house lights went down. Theaters on Oahu swapped films back and forth among themselves, but even they didn’t think their audiences would get too excited about it. Instead, the projectionist went straight into the newsreel.

That was a Japanese production. It seemed to have American models, but watching it was like looking in a mirror: everything was backwards. The Allies were the bad guys, the armed forces of the Axis the heroes. To blaring, triumphal music, Japanese soldiers advanced in China and Burma. Japanese bombers knocked the stuffing out of towns in Australia and Ceylon. They also pounded a British aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean. “Banzai! ” the sailors shouted as flames and smoke swallowed the carrier.

Somehow-by submarine? — the Jap newsreel makers had also got hold of some German footage. Men in coal-scuttle helmets dashed forward with artillery support on the Russian front. More German soldiers led bedraggled Englishmen into captivity in North Africa. And U-boats sent ship after ship to the bottom off the East Coast of the USA. Those sinking freighters drew more “Banzai! ”s from the Japanese sailors, who no doubt had a professional appreciation of their allies’ murderous competence.

By the time the newsreel got done, only a Pollyanna would have given a nickel for the Allies’ chances. “It’s all propaganda,” Kenzo whispered to Elsie. She nodded, but she was blinking rapidly, trying to hold back tears.

Then the Western came on. That was a merciful relief. You knew Gary Cooper would drive off the Indians, save the pretty girl, and live happily ever after. The movie had no subtitles, but the Japanese sailors didn’t need any help figuring out what was going on.

They made a noisy audience. Before the war, ushers would have thrown anybody that raucous right out of the theater. Obviously, nobody was going to try throwing the sailors out. Kenzo expected them to root for the Apaches or Comanches or whatever the Indians were supposed to be. But they didn’t-they were all for tall, fair, white-skinned Gary Cooper. “Shoot the savages!” they called. “Kill them all!” Cooper earned as many “Banzai! ”s as the German U-boat captains had.

Elsie couldn’t understand the sailors. She did frown when they made an especially loud racket, but that was all. After a while, Kenzo reached out and took her hand. She squeezed his, and squeezed it again whenever the Japanese sailors got uproarious.

“Let’s leave before the lights come up,” he said as the six-shooter epic drew to a close.

When they went out into the lobby, Kenzo wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. Half a dozen soldiers with the Japanese Army’s star on their caps were buying lemonade and macadamia nuts there. But he managed to get Elsie outside before their eyes lit on her.

Both of them blinked against the bright sunshine. “Thank you, Ken,” Elsie said. “It was nice to get out of the house for something besides trying to find enough to eat.”

“Can we do it again?” Kenzo asked, and he felt like jumping in the air when she nodded. He steered her away from the theater, away from trouble. As they started back toward her house, he asked, “Is it really so bad?”

She looked at him. “You’re a fisherman. You don’t know how lucky you are. Believe me, you don’t. Nobody we know who keeps chickens lets them go outside any more. They disappear.”

Kenzo suspected she didn’t know anybody who’d kept chickens before December 7. He admitted to himself that he might have been wrong, though. Some haole families couldn’t seem to forget they’d come off the farm in Iowa. He said, “It’s not an easy time for anybody.”

Elsie drew in a breath. She was going to scorch him. He could tell-something like, What do you know about it, with your dad licking Kita’s boots? But her anger died before it was born. All she said, quietly, was, “I forgot about your mother for a second. I’m sorry.”

Back at the theater, she’d been the one who kept squeezing his hand. Now he squeezed hers. “Thanks for remembering,” he said.

When they got back to her house, they stood on the front porch. She spoke the ritual words: “Thank you for a very nice time.”

He gave her a kiss. With the sun still in the sky, it was a decorous kiss. If her folks were watching-and they probably were-he didn’t want them saying she couldn’t go out with him any more. But a kiss it definitely was, and he wore a big, silly grin on his face all the way back to the tent in the botanical garden.

COMMANDER MINORU GENDA and Commander Mitsuo Fuchida met in front of Iolani Palace. They bowed politely to each other. Genda grinned wryly. “Here we are again,” he said.

“Hai.” Fuchida spoke with amused resignation: “Maybe we’ll have better luck this time.”

“Well, it couldn’t be much worse,” Genda said.

The Hawaiian and Japanese flags fluttered over the palace as the two Navy officers climbed the stairs. Japanese guards at the top of the stairs saluted and stepped aside to let Genda and Fuchida in. They climbed the koa-wood interior stairway and went into the library. Their Army counterparts, Lieutenant Colonels Minami and Murakami, were waiting for them behind that Victorian battleship of a desk. The Army men looked no more hopeful about the coming interview than Genda felt.

“We’ll try it again, that’s all,” Murakami said.

Izumi Shirakawa scurried into the library next. As usual, the local man looked nervous and unhappy about translating for the occupiers. Odds were he sympathized with the other side. If he did his job and otherwise kept his mouth shut, no one would have to ask him any questions about that. He was a good interpreter. Genda knew enough English to be sure of that.

A soldier stuck his head into the room. Saluting, he said, “The prince is here.”

“Send him up,” Genda replied. With another salute, the soldier disappeared.

As soon as Minoru Genda saw the man who called himself Prince Stanley Owana Laanui, his hopes began to rise. The swag belly, the double chin, the shrewd eyes with dark patches beneath them-all spoke of a man who thought of himself first and everyone and everything else later if at all. That was exactly the sort of man Japan needed right now.

Genda spoke to the interpreter: “Tell his Highness we are glad to see him and pleased to make his acquaintance.”

After Shirakawa turned his words into English, the Hawaiian princeling muttered, “Took you long enough to get around to me.” Shirakawa politely shaded his translation of that. Genda followed it even so.

And Stanley Owana Laanui wasn’t wrong, even if he also wasn’t particularly polite. It had taken the Japanese a while to get around to him. The reason was simple: he had a much more tenuous connection to the old Hawaiian royal family than did Abigail Kawananakoa and several other men and women. But they’d all declined to be involved in reviving the monarchy. He was the best candidate left.

“We are sure you are a man who thinks first of your country and only afterwards of yourself,” Lieutenant Colonel Murakami said. Genda was sure of exactly the opposite, but hypocrisy was an essential part of this game.

“Yes, of course,” the Hawaiian nobleman said, preening a little. In fact, he had more Anglo-Saxon blood than native Hawaiian. That was not necessarily an impediment; it was true of quite a few in the Hawaiian community. Some so-called Americans, prominent ones included, were also part Hawaiian. Intermarriage had run rampant here.

A bigger problem was Laanui’s personality. If he were rendered for oil, he could go a long way toward replacing what the Japanese had destroyed in the third wave of attacks on December 8. (People here spoke of it as December 7, but Genda and the strike force had stayed on Tokyo time throughout.) Genda glanced at the photographic portraits of distinguished nineteenth-century Hawaiians on the walls of the library. Judging by Stanley Laanui, interbreeding hadn’t been altogether for the best.

But, inadequate as he was, he was what the Empire of Japan had to work with at the moment. Genda said, “You must be sorry, your Highness, that the United States has occupied these islands for so long and robbed them of their independence.”

“Yes, that is very unfortunate,” agreed Laanui, who’d probably still been making messes in his drawers when the Americans put an end to the Hawaiian monarchy, and who no doubt hadn’t lost a minute of sleep over what had happened from that day to this.

“You can help us set a historic injustice to rights,” Lieutenant Colonel Murakami said. He was smoother and more polished than his Army colleague.

Lieutenant Colonel Minami proved as much by adding, “You can give the Americans a good boot in the ass.”

Izumi Shirakawa looked pained. “How am I supposed to translate that?” he asked plaintively.

“Just the way I said it,” Minami snapped. Sighing, the interpreter obeyed.

And a broad smile spread over Stanley Owana Laanui’s greasy face. “By God, that’s just what I want to do!” he said. Genda and Fuchida exchanged faintly disgusted glances. Until the Japanese came, the useless noble’s main goal in life had surely been to suck up to the Big Five in every way he could.

“You could give the islands a powerful symbol of their restored freedom,” Genda said. What he was thinking was, I hope I can get through this without being sick. It’s worse than the North Atlantic in January.

“That would be good. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere sounds like a real smart idea to me,” Laanui said.

Now Genda eyed him in some surprise. That the nobleman knew the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere existed proved he wasn’t as dumb as he looked. But if he spoke well of it… “Hawaii will have its proper role to play, I assure you,” Lieutenant Murakami said: a promise that promised nothing. Hawaii’s proper place would be whatever Japan said it was. Would Stanley Laanui see that?

If he did, he didn’t show it. He said, “The Americans have had their boot heels on us for too long. It’s time for a change.” If that meant, It’s high time to put a crown on my head — well, what was the point of this exercise if not putting a crown on his head?

Commander Fuchida said, “You do understand, your Highness, that the restored Kingdom of Hawaii would still find it advisable to cooperate closely with the Empire of Japan?” That meant, You do understand you’ll be a puppet? Genda wanted to applaud. He couldn’t have put it so delicately himself.

Stanley Owana Laanui nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said. He might have been talking about the weather. “After all, you came all this way just to liberate us.”

Was he an idiot after all, or only an extravagant hypocrite? Genda would have bet on the latter, but how much did it really matter? Either way, he was a tool, and Japan needed a tool right now. Genda said, “Well, your Highness, before long your subjects will start calling you ‘your Majesty.’ ”

“Yes.” It was a whisper, Laanui talking to himself, but Genda heard the harsh hunger in it. Idiot or hypocrite, this man would definitely do.

Lieutenant Colonel Murakami must have thought the same thing, for he said, “We will arrange your coronation at a time convenient to you and to the Japanese Empire. I hope this is agreeable?”

“Oh, yes,” Laanui repeated, and nodded once more. Then he seemed to take courage, adding, “It could have happened a while ago if only you’d decided to talk to me before you had anything to do with those other people.”

Those people with better claims, he meant, though he probably didn’t think of it in those terms. No, he was bound to be the hero in his own story-as who was not? Minoru Genda was sad for him. Even with a crown on his head, he was most unlikely to be a hero in anyone else’s.

That didn’t matter, though, not to anyone but Laanui. Japan would do what it needed to do with him-and would do what it needed to do to him. He might have done better to decline the honor, as other Hawaiian nobles had before him. He might have… except he could no more help rising to it than a trout could help rising to a fly. What did a trout know of hooks? Nothing. Nothing at all.

“I think we have an agreement here-your Majesty,” Genda said. He gave Stanley Owana Laanui a seated bow. Fuchida, Murakami, and Minami followed suit. Maybe the Hawaiian thought that was the ceremony they would have shown the Emperor. If so, he only proved himself an ignorant trout indeed. The Emperor was hedged round with degrees of ceremony no other mortal even approached.

Let Laanui think what he wanted, though. As long as he sat on the throne and did as he was told, he served his purpose admirably.