Days of Infamy

V

THE OSHIMA MARU ’S planking throbbed under Jiro Takahashi’s feet. Diesel growling at the sampan’s stern, it scooted out into the Pacific. Takahashi was happy. “Now we get to go work again,” he said. Staying at home without working had been harder on him than all the backbreaking labor he went through here on the ocean.

His sons seemed less delighted. “Merry Christmas,” Hiroshi said, in sarcastic English. Jiro had always bought the boys presents at Christmastime. Why not? Everybody else did. But for the presents, though, the day meant nothing to him. What difference did a haole holiday make?

In Japanese hardly less sardonic, Kenzo added, “You know why they’ve let us go out again, don’t you, Father?”

“I don’t care why,” Jiro said. “Isn’t it good to breathe clean air?” The tank farms at Pearl Harbor had mostly burned themselves out by now, but acrid, eye-stinging haze still filled the air in Honolulu. No sooner had Jiro praised the air away from the city than he lit a cigarette. “Have to be careful with these,” he remarked. “They’re starting to run low.”

“They’re starting to run low on everything,” Kenzo said. “That’s why they’ve let the sampans out. They really need the fish we bring back.”

“As long as there’s diesel fuel, we’ll do all right,” Jiro said. “Lots of things can happen to a fisherman, but he probably won’t starve.”

“How long will there be diesel fuel?” Hiroshi asked. “It comes from the mainland just like everything else. It came from the mainland, I mean. Nothing’s going in or out, not any more.”

“If Japan wins, she can send us diesel fuel,” Jiro said.

To his annoyance, Hiroshi and Kenzo both laughed at him. “Don’t you remember, Father?” his older son said. “One of the big reasons Japan got into a fight with the United States was that we wouldn’t sell them oil any more. They won’t have any to spare for Hawaii.” Kenzo nodded in agreement with his brother.

Jiro glared at his sons. He had forgotten about the oil embargo. Not only were they rude for laughing, they were right, which made it three times as bad. And, to Hiroshi and Kenzo, the United States was we and Japan was they. Jiro had already bumped into that, but he liked it no better now.

Hiroshi rubbed his nose in the point: “Everything except pineapple and sugar comes from the mainland, just about. If we need blue jeans or shoes or canned milk or canned corn or flour for bread or-or-anything, they have to ship it in.”

“Remember when they had the dock strike on the West Coast five years ago?” Kenzo added. “We were down to two weeks’ worth of food by the time it ended-and that was when things were coming in from the East Coast, and from Australia and Japan, too. Where will we get supplies now? We’ll start going hungry a lot faster.”

“All right. All right.” Jiro wanted to cuff both of them. He couldn’t. They were grown men, and both bigger than he was. And they were so very, very different from him. He wondered what he’d done wrong. If he’d been a better father, wouldn’t he have had sons who were more Japanese?

He busied himself on the sampan, not that there was much to do. The engine chugged away. It was noisy, but it was reliable. He almost wished it would have broken down. That would have given him the excuse to haul out the tool kit and tinker with it. Then he could have ignored his milkshake-guzzling, hamburger-munching boys. As things were, he just stared back toward the receding bulk of Oahu.

Hiroshi said something in English. Kenzo laughed. Neither of them bothered to translate for Jiro. They must be talking about me, he thought resentfully. They thought they knew everything and their old man didn’t know anything. Well, by the look of things, they’d backed the wrong horse in the war. Every day the rumble of artillery came closer to Honolulu. The Japanese advanced. The Americans retreated. They couldn’t retreat much farther, or they’d go into the Pacific.

He felt the way the Oshima Maru bumped over the waves. He watched terns and boobies and frigate birds. He remembered gulls raucous over the Inner Sea when he was young. They could guide a fisherman to schools of smelt or mackerel. But gulls, except for rare vagrants, didn’t come to Hawaii. A man had to use what other birds gave him.

There were boobies, plunging into the sea. Japanese dive bombers must have looked like that when they swooped down on the American ships at Pearl Harbor. They hadn’t gone into the sea, though; they’d pulled up and flown away to strike again and again. “Banzai! ” Jiro said softly. “Banzai! ” He didn’t think his sons heard him. That was just as well.

He steered toward the boobies. One of them came to the surface with a foot-long fish writhing in its beak. Jiro nodded. He waved to Hiroshi and Kenzo. They’d already started dumping nehus into the water and getting the lines ready. They did know what needed doing.

Thrilled to be free, unaware of the fate awaiting so many of them, the minnows swam off in all directions, silver flecks under the blue of the sea. And bigger flashes of silver rose to meet them. Some of those fish would get themselves a meal. Some would bite down on silver hooks, not silver scales. Instead of getting meals, they would become meals themselves.

Across miles of ocean, booms came from the north. “Are those the coast-defense guns again?” Kenzo asked.

That would have been Jiro’s guess, too. But Hiroshi shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think those are some of the ships in Pearl Harbor, shooting at the Japanese as they come farther south.”

“You notice they couldn’t get out of Pearl Harbor,” Jiro said. Both his sons sent him stony looks. He ignored them. He knew it was true, and so did they, however little they liked it. The very day the war started, Japanese bombers in the third wave had sunk two light cruisers in the channel leading from the harbor to the Pacific. That had corked the bottle and made sure the rest of the ships stayed put. Since then, Japanese planes had pounded them again and again.

Some of the ships still had working guns. Every so often, they opened fire. They were heavier artillery than any based on land except the coast-defense batteries. Jiro suspected Japanese planes would return before long. After that, very likely, fewer Navy guns would fire on his country’s soldiers.

My country’s soldiers, Jiro thought again, and nodded to himself. Yes, Japan was his country. It always would be. And if Hiroshi and Kenzo didn’t like that or couldn’t understand it, too bad.

The fish didn’t seem to care about the distant artillery. When the Takahashis pulled in the lines, they had plenty of aku and ahi on them, as well as a few mahimahi that had come to join the feast. The frenzy of gutting them and getting them into storage came next.

Then it was more minnows over the side, and fish guts, too, and the lines went back into the Pacific with them. The guts, Jiro knew, would draw sharks, but sharks were also good to eat, even if a lot of haoles were too dumb to believe it. He didn’t think he would have any trouble selling them, not today.

He and his sons brought in fish till the sun sank low in the west. Then Jiro started up the diesel again and took the Oshima Maru back to Kewalo Basin. “Now we see how we do,” he said as they tied up there.

“We see how scared people are, you mean,” Hiroshi said. Jiro only shrugged his aching shoulders. In the end, it all boiled down to the same thing.

Along with the Japanese and Chinese buyers in the marketplace, there were also tall American soldiers with bayonets on their rifles. Fear stabbed at Jiro when he saw them. Were they there to enforce price controls or, worse, to confiscate the fish the Takahashis had worked so hard to catch? If they were, Jiro was damned if he intended to go out again the next morning. He’d built his life on the cornerstone of hard work, but hard work with the expectation of fair pay for it. If he didn’t get his reward, what point to putting to sea?

But the soldiers only kept order. They needed to keep order, too, because the buyers sprang at Jiro, Hiroshi, and Kenzo like starving wolves. They frantically bid against one another. By the time they were through, Jiro had three times as much money in his pocket as he’d imagined in his fondest dreams.

He had so much money, he was tempted not to take home some especially fine ahi for Reiko. But the thought of what his wife would say if he didn’t was plenty to conquer even greed. “We’ll be rich!” he said to his sons. “Rich, I tell you!” He could think about the money he had made, if not the bit of extra cash that would have been in his pocket if he’d sold the rest of the tuna.

Then Hiroshi spoiled even that, saying, “No, we won’t. The buyers will just jack up the price they charge. Everybody’s jacking up the prices he charges. Look at that.” He pointed to the window of a haole grocery store they were walking past. He and Kenzo both read English fluently, which Jiro didn’t. “Flour is half again what it was when the war started. Rice the same. Onions are double. And look at oranges-a dollar thirty-five a dozen! That’s two and a half times what they were before, easy.”

Some of Jiro’s glee evaporated. Then it returned, or a portion of it did. “Yes, the prices are up, but what I got paid is up even more.”

“How much did you shell out for diesel fuel?” Kenzo asked.

Jiro scowled. “Old man Okano is a highway robber,” he said. But this time his glee didn’t come back. He knew he couldn’t have got a better price from anybody else, Japanese, Chinese, or haole. Diesel fuel was heading straight through the roof. The Army needed a lot of it, and, as his sons had said, no more was coming in from the mainland. And gasoline was going up even faster than diesel fuel. Which meant…

“All right, we won’t get rich,” Jiro said. He was less upset than he might have been. He wouldn’t have known what to do as a rich man anyhow.

Kenzo asked, “What happens when there is no more fuel? Can we take the engine off the sampan and rig a mast? Hiroshi and I don’t know anything about handling a sail.”

“I’ve done it, back when I was young,” Jiro said. “I think I can still manage. I’d want somebody who really knows what he’s doing to see to the rigging, I expect.” He stuck a hand in his pocket. Something like that wouldn’t come cheap. His imagined wealth seemed to be dripping away even faster than he’d got it.

THE DAY AFTER Christmas, Joe Crosetti reported to the San Francisco Naval Aviation Selection Board. A big blond Swede named Lundquist chaired the board. He looked at Joe’s papers and smiled. “Are you any relation to Frankie Crosetti, young man?” he asked.

Joe smiled, too, in a resigned way. If he had a dime for every time somebody’d asked him if he was related to the Yankees’ shortstop, he might have been making more dough than Frankie was. “No, sir, not that I know of,” he answered. “Oh, there may be some kind of connection between his family and mine back in the old country, but it’s nothing anybody can prove.”

“Okay. Doesn’t matter one way or the other,” Lundquist said. “I wondered, that’s all. How old are you, son?”

“I’m nineteen, Mr. Lundquist.” Crosetti knew he looked younger. He was five-seven and on the skinny side, with a narrow, swarthy face and a thick shock of curly black hair. He did have a five o’clock shadow that came out at three, but it was five after nine in the morning now; he’d got to the board as soon as it opened, and he’d shaved just a couple of hours before.

“You graduated from high school…?”

“A year and a half ago, sir. My diploma’s in with my papers.”

“All right. And what are you doing now?”

“I’m a mechanic at Scalzi’s garage, sir,” Joe answered. “My old man’s a fisherman. Sometimes on weekends I go out with him. I used to do it every summer and Christmas vacation till I got this job.”

“So you know your way around the water, do you?”

“A little bit, maybe. I’m an okay sailor, but I’m not a sailor, you know what I mean?”

Lundquist and the rest of the men on the board looked at one another. Joe tried to figure out what that meant, but he couldn’t. The chairman said, “When you were in high school, did you play any sports?”

“Yes, sir,” Joe answered. “I played second base on the baseball team, and I was a backup guard on the basketball team.”

“No football?”

Joe shook his head. “I like playing touch in the park, but I’m not a great big guy.” That was an understatement. “I didn’t have a prayer of making the team. How come you want to know?”

“Teamwork,” Lundquist told him. “Basketball is good, football’s even better. Baseball shows coordination, but less of the other.”

One of the other men spoke up: “Second and short need it more than other positions. They have to work together if they’re going to turn double plays.” His wiry build suggested he might have been a middle infielder in his day. Whether or not, he was dead right, and Joe nodded. He and Danny Fitzpatrick, his shortstop, had taken endless ground balls and practiced 6-4-3 and 4-6-3 double plays till each knew in his sleep what the other was going to do.

Lundquist scribbled a note. He asked, “Have you got any flying experience?”

“No, sir,” Joe admitted, wondering how much trouble the admission would get him in. Again, he couldn’t tell what Lundquist was thinking. The man had one of the deadest pans Joe had ever seen; he wouldn’t have wanted to play poker against him.

“But you do drive a car as well as work on them?” Lundquist persisted.

“Oh, yes, sir,” Joe said. “I’ve had my license since I was sixteen.”

“Any accidents?”

“No, sir.”

“Tickets?”

“Just one.” Joe thought about lying, but they could check. The ticket might not wash him out. If they nailed him in a lie, he figured that was all she wrote.

The selection-board chairman shuffled through his folder. “I see you have your letters of recommendation in place.” He looked over each of them in turn. “Your boss and your two high-school coaches. They know you pretty well?”

“If they don’t, nobody does.” Joe wondered if he should have tried to get letters from important people-judges or politicians, maybe. The only trouble was, he didn’t know anybody like that. I’m an ordinary Joe, he thought, and grinned a little.

“One more question,” Lundquist said. “Why do you want to do this?”

“Why? Sir, the day after the Japs jumped on Pearl Harbor, my old man tried to join the Army. He wanted to hit back, and so do I. They wouldn’t take him-he’s forty-five, and he’s got a bad back and a bad shoulder. But I was so proud of him, I can’t even tell you. And what he did got me thinking. If we are going to hit back at the Japs, who’ll get in the first licks? Pilots flying off carriers, looks like to me. So that’s what I want to do.”

The man who looked as if he’d played second or short remarked, “Kid’s got a head on his shoulders.” That made Joe feel about ten feet tall. He tried not to be dumber than he could help, but he was no big brain. If they wanted guys with high foreheads and thick glasses to fly their fighters, he was out of luck.

“Why don’t you step outside?” Lundquist told him. “We need to talk about you behind your back for a little while.” Joe did a double take when he heard that. Lundquist was a cool customer, but maybe he was okay underneath.

Joe could hear them muttering about him in there. If he put his ear to the door, he might make out what they were saying. He didn’t do it. It was something else where getting caught would land him in hot water. Not doing it turned out to be smart. Ten seconds later, two guys in sailor suits turned the corner and came past him. They paid him no more attention than if he were part of the linoleum. But if he’d been leaning up against the door, that would have been a different story.

He wanted a cigarette, but didn’t pull the pack of Luckys out of his pocket. He didn’t want to have a butt in his mouth when they called him back in, and it’d be just his luck to get halfway down the smoke when the door opened.

Again, that turned out to be the right move, because a couple of minutes later the door did open. “Come on in, son,” Lundquist said. “Have a seat.” As usual, his face gave no clue to what he was thinking. He might have been about to give Joe what he wanted, or to arrest him and send him to Alcatraz.

Silence stretched. Joe craved that cigarette more than ever. It would have calmed his nerves, slowed his pounding heart. Finally he couldn’t stand it any more, and said, “Well?”

“Well, we’re going to make you an appointment with the psychological officers,” Lundquist said. “If they don’t say you’ve got an unfortunate tendency to raise hedgehogs in your hat, we’ll see if the Navy can make a flyboy out of you.”

“Thank you, sir!” The words seemed cold and useless to Joe. What he really wanted to do was turn handsprings.

“No promises, mind you, but you don’t look too bad,” Lundquist said.

The man who looked like a middle infielder added, “You had all your paperwork in order the first time you came in. That’s a good sign right there-you’d be amazed how many people have to try three times before they bring us everything we need. No promises, no, but my guess is you’ve got what it takes.”

“See the petty officer at the door,” Lundquist said. “Make yourself a psych appointment for right after the first of the year. Good luck to you.”

Joe thanked him again and left the conference room. His feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. He might have been flying even without a fighter under him. The petty officer, who had an impressive array of long-service hashmarks on his sleeve, set up the appointment for testing. That Joe had passed the selection board didn’t impress him. By all appearances, nothing impressed him.

Out in the street, Joe half expected people to stare at him and point and say, There’s the kid who’s going to shoot Tojo’s medals off his chest. They didn’t, of course. To them, what he’d accomplished didn’t show. The gray-haired man at the street corner who wore a helmet and an armband with CD-Civil Defense-on it was visibly part of the war. Joe wasn’t.

On the same corner, a kid in short pants was peddling the Examiner. “More Jap landings in the Philippines!” he bawled, over and over. “Read all about it!” Joe gave him a nickel and took a paper.

He read the Examiner as he walked back to the garage where he worked. Lots of people had their noses in newspapers, far more than had read as they walked before the war started. Every so often, they’d bump into each other, mutter excuse-mes, and keep on reading as they walked.

Not much of the news was good. The Navy was laying mines outside harbors on the East Coast to try to keep German subs away. Congressmen were fuming that blackout regulations weren’t strict enough and were being ignored. The Nazis and Reds were both claiming victories in Russia.

Rooting for the Russians felt funny. Joe’s old man had admired Mussolini before he got too chummy with Hitler, and couldn’t stand Stalin. But the USA and the Soviet Union were on the same side now, like it or not.

“How’d it go, Joe?” his boss asked when he walked in.

“Pretty good, Mr. Scalzi, I think,” Joe answered. Dominic Scalzi’s family and the Crosettis both came from the same village south of Naples. That wasn’t the only reason Joe had a job there, but it sure didn’t hurt. He went on, “Thanks again for your letter. I had all my ducks in a row, and they really liked that.”

“Good, kid. That’s good.” Scalzi lit a Camel. Joe couldn’t see how he smoked them; they were strong enough to grow hair on your chest. The garage owner was a short, round man with a graying mustache. He blew a smoke ring, then sighed out the rest of the drag in a blue-gray cloud. “I shoulda told ’em you were a lousy good-for-nothing. Then they wouldn’t take you, and you could go on workin’ for me a little longer.”

“Probably not much,” Joe said. “If I don’t end up a Navy flier, the draft’ll get me pretty soon.”

“I said a little longer.” Dominic Scalzi was a precise man, a good thing for a mechanic to be. He jerked a thumb at the little washroom off to one side of the work area. “Go on and change into your coveralls. Long as you’re here, I’m gonna get some work outa you. See if you can clean the gunk outa Mr. Jablonski’s carburetor, will you? He’s been pissing and moaning about it for weeks.”

“I’ll try,” Joe said. “You want to know what I think, I think the carb on a ’38 Plymouth is a piece of crap.”

“I don’t give a damn what you think. I just want you to clean out the son of a bitch.” Scalzi’s uniform was an almost Navy blue, but all it had on it was Dom machine-embroidered over the left breast pocket. Joe’s was just like it except for the name.

He grabbed a hasty cigarette of his own while he changed out of his jacket and slacks and into the scratchy denim coveralls. Before he came out, he flushed the butt down the toilet. He figured on soaking the carburetor in gasoline before he got to work on it. Gasoline and cigarettes didn’t mix.

Once he’d soaked everything with the gasoline, he went after the valves and springs and made sure no deposits could interfere with their functioning. Then he reassembled the carb. His hands knew what to do, almost without conscious thought on his part. He had the carburetor back on the engine before he really noticed what he was up to.

The key was in the ignition. He started up the Plymouth, listened, and nodded to himself. The car sounded a hell of a lot better than it had when old man Jablonski brought it in. He waved to his boss. Scalzi came over, wiping his greasy hands on a rag. He listened, too, and gave Joe a thumbs-up. Joe grinned. It was turning into a pretty damn good day.

CORPORAL TAKEO SHIMIZU liked the way things were going nowadays much better than he had a week earlier. The attack over the western mountains had made the Americans fall back for their very lives. They still hadn’t pieced together a line to match the one they’d held in front of Schofield Barracks and Wahiawa. With a little luck, they wouldn’t be able to.

They hadn’t quit, though. A Yankee machine gun up ahead spat death across a pineapple field. Shimizu crouched in a foxhole. Sooner or later, a grenade or mortar bomb would take care of the machine-gun crew. Then he’d advance again. Or, if one of his officers gave the order, he’d advance sooner than that. And if the machine gun blew out his brains or chopped his legs out from under him… in that case, like it or not, one of the chowderheads in his squad would get a star on each of his red-and-gold collar tabs.

Meanwhile… Meanwhile, Shimizu lit a cigarette from a pack he’d taken off a dead American. The tobacco was amazingly smooth and mild. Any way you look at it, the Americans live better than we do, he thought. He made twenty yen-about four dollars and sixty cents-a month. He wondered what an American corporal got paid. More than that, or he missed his guess.

Cautiously, he stuck his head up for a look around. He saw where the machine gun was: in a sandbagged position behind a creek. Whoever’d sited it had known what he was doing. If there were no mortars handy, he didn’t see how anyone could knock it out. The gunners would shoot a man with grenades before he got close enough to fling them.

He ducked down in a hurry. He wasn’t going to order anybody forward to throw his life away. Lieutenant Yonehara had done that, and what had it got him? Nothing but a grieving family back home.

Of course, Colonel Fujikawa or some other officer could order the men to advance, and they would have to go. What would happen to them afterwards? That was in the hands of karma. So Shimizu told himself, anyway.

“This way! Forward! It’s clear over here!” The shout came in Japanese, from ahead and to the right. It wasn’t just Japanese, either. It was Hiroshima dialect-from Shimizu’s own part of the country-and old-fashioned Hiroshima dialect at that. It sounded like somebody who’d never been off a farm in the back of beyond till the Army grabbed him. Shimizu would have thought only old grannies talked like that nowadays.

But if there was a way forward… He sprang out of his hole, shouting, “Come on, men! Let’s drive the Yankees back again!”

He wasn’t the only one who’d emerged. Quite a few soldiers had heard that shout. They all jumped up and started running ahead and to the right. And the American machine gun and nearby riflemen remorselessly chopped them down. Shimizu had learned better than to stay on his feet very long under fire like that. He threw himself flat and, still on his belly, started scraping himself a new hole in the ground.

Amid the screams of the wounded, somebody yelled, “Zakennayo! ”-a pungent, all-purpose obscenity-and then went on, “Must be one of those Hawaii Japanese!”

Shimizu dug harder. He muttered, “Zakennayo! ” too. They’d told him before he set out that there were more people of Japanese blood in Hawaii than any other group. From what he’d seen, that was likely true. Most of them had roots around Hiroshima, too. That was why the Fifth Division, which drew its manpower from that region, was on Oahu now. And they’d told him the Hawaii Japanese would be delighted to see these islands come under the Rising Sun.

That… wasn’t so obvious. Some of the older men and women seemed glad enough to see the Japanese. A lot of the younger ones, the ones born here, seemed anything but. This fellow had just got several soldiers shot. If we get our hands on him… Shimizu thought longingly.

He cursed again as he threw dirt in front of himself. The Americans and the damned Hawaii Japanese had suckered him. He squeezed the entrenching tool till his knuckles whitened. Of course the bastard sounded as if he came from the dark side of the moon. Most of the Japanese here had old-fashioned accents. They or their ancestors had been peasants to begin with, and the language here hadn’t changed with time as it had in Japan.

He’d just got the foxhole half as good as the one he’d left behind when mortar bombs did start whistling down around the American machine gun. Those bursts sounded sweet to him-but not sweet enough to make him stick his head up out of that foxhole. If he did, the Yankees were liable to blow it off for him.

“You got ’em. It’s safe. Come on!” The alluring Japanese voice came from ahead of him. This time, he sat tight. What could they do to that fellow if they caught him? He’d be even more fun to play with than an ordinary captive.

Soldiers were yelling, “Down! Stay down! It’s a trick!” But Shimizu heard feet running through the field. He also heard the machine gun stutter to life. Curses and screams followed. So did the thuds of bodies crashing to the ground. Shimizu added his own curses to the din. Now he was swearing at his own men at least as hard as at the Americans. If that voice had fooled them once-well, they weren’t expecting it. But if it fooled them twice…

“Stay down, baka yaro! ” he yelled. Dumb assholes they were, almost dumb enough to deserve getting shot.

More mortar bombs fell around the machine-gun nest. “You can’t hit a damn thing!” that lying Japanese voice jeered. Maybe, on the principle that everything it said was full of crap, the mortars really had put the American machine gun out of action. Maybe-but Corporal Shimizu didn’t stick his head up to find out.

He didn’t hear any signs that the men around him were trying to advance, either. He breathed a sigh of relief. Some of them could learn after all. The ones who couldn’t had paid the price for their stupidity.

After a while, the machine gun started up again, this time sending a stream of bullets over to the left. When another machine gun there answered the fire, Shimizu did look out from his hole. A tank rumbled through the pineapple field, straight toward the American machine gun. Its bow gunner shot back at the Yankees. Enemy bullets clanged off its armor, now and then striking sparks but doing no harm.

The snorting mechanical monster stopped. The cannon in the turret bellowed. The shell burst just in front of the sandbags shielding the American gun. The enemy soldiers were brave. They kept right on shooting at the tank. It did them no good. The cannon spoke again. Sandbags flew. The machine gun kept firing even after that, but not for long. The tank’s bow and turret-mounted machine guns had a clear shot at the Americans now.

Corporal Shimizu sprang from his new foxhole. “Come on!” he shouted. “Move fast! Maybe we can catch that Hawaii Japanese and give him what he deserves!” If anything would get the men out of their holes and advancing, that ought to do the trick.

And it did. They splashed through the creek and past the shattered machine-gun nest. Not many riflemen had backed up the machine gunners. The Japanese soldiers gained several hundred meters before enemy fire forced them to hit the dirt and dig in again. Shimizu was proud of the dash they showed. But the man who’d tricked them got away. He didn’t know how lucky he was-or maybe he did.

LIKE MOST NINETEEN-year-olds in Honolulu, Kenzo Takahashi had Japanese friends and haole friends and Chinese friends and Filipino friends and friends who were a little bit of everything. Everybody was packed together with everybody else in school. A good many kids had parents who wished their friends came only from their own group. But that wasn’t how things worked in Hawaii-which was why so many kids were a little bit of everything.

With his friends who weren’t Japanese (and even, a lot of the time, with the ones who were), Kenzo was just Ken. That suited him fine; Ken was a good American name, and he was at least as American as he was Japanese. When he ate with his parents, he used hashi to shovel in rice and raw fish. When he wasn’t with his parents, he was likely to order fried chicken or spaghetti and meatballs. He liked them better. So did Hiroshi.

Since the attack on Pearl Harbor, though… All of a sudden, his haole friends didn’t want to know him any more. It wasn’t just that he was spending most of his time out on the Oshima Maru, either. He was-he’d never worked so hard in his life-but that wasn’t the point.

Going home from Kewalo Basin, he’d sometimes see people with whom he’d sat for four years in math and English and history and science classes. He’d see them… and, if they were white, they’d pretend they didn’t see him. Sometimes they would even turn their backs so he couldn’t possibly miss the point. That cut like a knife.

And he knew those haoles and their folks were lining up to buy the fish he and his father and brother brought in. They didn’t mind doing that at all. Oh, no, especially not when the fish the sampans brought in was the only fresh food coming into Honolulu these days.

What really hurt was when Elsie Sundberg acted as if she’d never set eyes on him in her life. Thanks to the wonders of alphabetical seating, he’d had the desk right behind hers in just about all the classes they took together. The alphabet could have played plenty of worse tricks on him: Elsie was blond, blue-eyed, and curvy, a cheerleader for the football team. She got better grades in English and history; he was stronger in science and math. They’d spent a lot of time coaching each other. They’d gone to a few movies together, held hands. He’d kissed her once. He’d thought about asking her to the prom, but by the time he got up the nerve to do it the star halfback beat him to the punch. She’d sounded genuinely sorry when she told him no.

And now… now he was nothing but a lousy Jap to her. It made him want to cry, or else to go out and kick something or somebody.

“It’s not right, goddammit,” he raged to Hiroshi later that evening. “I’m as much an American as she is.” The one advantage of having parents who’d never learned English was that he and his brother could use it without fear of eavesdropping.

His brother made a small production of lighting a cigarette. Only after a long, meditative drag did he answer, “It’s tough, all right. Some of that same shit’s happened to me, too.”

“Tough? Is that all you can say? What’s the good of trying to be an American if the stinking haoles won’t let you?” He pointed to the pack of Chesterfields. “Let me have one of those.”

Hiroshi did, and leaned close to give him a light. After they were both smoking, Hiroshi said, “Well, what other choice have you got? Do you want to stand up and cheer for Hirohito the way Dad does?”

“Jesus Christ, no!” Kenzo exclaimed. “That’s just embarrassing.”

“It’s worse than embarrassing these days.” Hiroshi dropped his voice even though his and Kenzo’s folks couldn’t understand. “It’s damn near treason.”

“Yeah. I know,” Kenzo said heavily. “But you can’t tell him anything. He won’t listen.” He sucked in smoke, then blew it out in a ragged cloud. What with the blackout and the radio being off the air almost all the time, the night was almost eerily quiet. That made it easy for him to hear the thunder in the middle distance-except it wasn’t thunder. The boom of the guns got louder and louder, closer and closer, as the days went by. “What do we do if… our side doesn’t win?”

“I don’t know.” His brother smoked his cigarette till the butt got too small to hold between his lips. Some people were even using toothpicks or alligator clips to hold tiny butts and squeeze an extra drag or two out of them. Tobacco wouldn’t last forever. Nothing in Honolulu would last forever. If Hawaii fell, nothing would last very long. Hiroshi stubbed out the remains of the Chesterfield and stared down at the ashtray. “What can we do? Try and keep our noses clean. Try and keep Dad from busting his buttons ’cause he’s so proud.”

“It’s a good thing the sampan’s going out again,” Kenzo said. “If Dad’s on the ocean, he can’t be on the streets. Somebody’d knock his block off for him.”

“Or maybe not, depending on where he is,” Hiroshi said. “As long as he stays Ewa side of Nuuanu Avenue, he won’t do too bad.”

Kenzo only grunted. That was a half truth. Older Japanese like his father often pulled for their native country. Most of the younger ones were as American as Hiroshi and himself. And none of the Chinese and Koreans and Filipinos who helped crowd Honolulu’s Asian district had any use for Japan. That had sometimes led to fights even before Pearl Harbor. Now…

Off in the distance, the thunder that wasn’t thunder rumbled again. Kenzo grunted again. “What do we do if… if the Japanese Army marches into Honolulu?” There. He’d said it.

“What can we do?” his brother said. Kenzo shrugged. He had no answer. He’d hoped Hiroshi would.

SABURO SHINDO LOOKED down on Honolulu from his Zero. Even from his height, he could see olive-drab trucks rolling through the city. The time had come-as far as he was concerned, the time was long since past-to give the Americans a lesson. He wondered why his superiors had held off for so long. He’d heard a lot of Japanese lived in Honolulu. Maybe the powers that be hadn’t wanted to hurt them, or hoped they could somehow get the Americans to give up. It hadn’t happened. As far as Lieutenant Shindo was concerned, the best way to make somebody give up was to kick him in the teeth till he did.

Honolulu was about to get kicked in the teeth.

The place was defended. Puffs of black smoke from antiaircraft guns were already pocking the sky around the fighters Shindo led, and around the bombers flying above them. Antiaircraft guns were a nuisance. But they were only a nuisance. The Americans had next to no combat aircraft left. That was what really mattered.

Waggling his wings to the rest of the Zeros, Shindo dropped his fighter’s nose and dove on the city below. The other planes followed. Those olive-drab trucks-and the cars, and the buildings past which they drove-swelled from ant size to toy size to the real thing. Now the antiaircraft fire was above his planes. He laughed. The Yankees couldn’t depress their guns fast enough to stay with him.

As if trying to make up for that, small-arms fire reached for the Zeros. All the machine guns and rifles and pistols on the ground seemed to go off at once. Muzzle flashes and tracers sparked below Shindo. As usual, he ignored them. Odds were, all that stuff would miss him. Nobody could lead a speeding plane enough; people with small arms shot behind aircraft they aimed at. And if, by bad luck, this once they didn’t… Ground fire had already winged Shindo’s plane once. It could have been worse. But he couldn’t do anything about it one way or the other.

Come to that, he’d had to learn to shoot at ground targets. He was pretty good at it now. He didn’t know whether that truck convoy heading west through the center of town was carrying men or supplies or ammunition. He didn’t care. He shot it up any which way.

Flames exploded from some of the trucks. Gasoline, he thought. The less the Americans had, the less good they could get out of their cars and trucks and tanks. He pulled up and went around for another pass. A bullet banged through the Zero’s fuselage, about a meter behind where he sat. Sure as sure, put enough rounds in the air and some would hit. The plane kept flying. This one hadn’t hit anything important.

The truck convoy burned merrily. Soldiers scrambled out of some of the vehicles. Some of them fired into the sky. Others ran for cover. He shot up not only the convoy but as many cars on the street as he could. Now he wasn’t just aiming to impede military traffic, though he wanted to do that. His orders were to make Honolulu howl. The louder the city howled, the likelier the American commanders were to raise the white flag.

As Lieutenant Shindo pulled up, acceleration and a contemptuous grin thrust his lips back from his teeth. Japanese officers wouldn’t give a damn about how loud civilians howled. They’d fight to the last man, whatever the odds. But the Americans were soft, decadent, effeminate. They let extraneous factors like civilians affect even important things like war. Well, they would pay for it.

Shindo automatically checked six. A pilot who didn’t do that all the time would regret it. Even though he didn’t think the Americans could put any more fighters in the air, habit was unbreakable.

One of his Zeros went down. It sent a fireball and a column of black smoke up into the sky. The building it had hit was starting to burn, too. Even in death, the pilot did damage. Shindo nodded, saluting his courage. The dead man’s spirit would go to the Yasukuni-jinja-the Shrine for Establishing Peace in the Empire-at Kudan Hill in Tokyo.

The Nakajimas and Aichis that flew with the fighters were bombing the city now. What civilian terror could do, it would do. Shindo hoped it would make the Americans give up. He was an economical warrior. He didn’t believe in expending more on objectives than he had to.

Shindo spoke to his fellow fighter pilots on the all-planes circuit: “Mission accomplished. Now we return to the carriers.” They mostly weren’t landing on carrier decks any more; still, security persisted.

Oahu was so small, it made the war seem a miniature painting. Even Haleiwa airstrip, on the north coast of the island, was less than ten minutes’ flying time from Honolulu. The front wasn’t that far north of the local capital and Pearl Harbor. The gap between the Waianae Range and the Koolau Range widened from north to south, which meant the Americans had to hold a longer line and stretch themselves thinner as they fell back. Japanese soldiers might have been the best in the world at taking advantage of weak spots in the enemy’s defenses. Other armies had more in the way of heavy equipment, yes. If Japanese pilots hadn’t had complete control of the air and smashed up a lot of American heavy equipment before it got into action, this would have been a much tougher fight. But nobody could match the Japanese at infiltrating.

Shells burst on and near the roads north of the front. Sensibly, the Americans were trying to deny the Japanese the use of them. The Yankees had fought reasonably well and with considerable courage since the first crippling blows they’d suffered. But those were plenty to bury them in a deep, deep hole.

Here came Haleiwa. It had the advantage of being out of range of most American artillery. The Japanese still couldn’t use Wheeler Field. Even U.S. mortars could reach the runways south of Schofield Barracks. But the more planes and fuel and equipment the Navy ferried off the carriers and onto dry land, the sooner some of the precious big ships could be released for other duty.

Down came the Zero for a smooth landing. Not for the first time, Shindo thought how easy landing at an ordinary airstrip was compared to a carrier landing. He got out of the fighter and jumped down. Groundcrew men in khaki coveralls dragged his Zero into a revetment. One after another, the fighters that had followed him to Honolulu came in. He counted them, nodding as the last plane’s landing gear kicked up dust. He’d lost one, but no more.

He went to the command tent. Commanders Genda and Fuchida sat in front of a card table probably purloined from a Haleiwa house. The map they were examining also had to be local, for it was printed in English. It was larger and more detailed than any Japanese-language map of Oahu that Shindo had seen. He pointed. “Where did you get it?”

Minoru Genda looked up, a smile half mischievous, half bemused on his face. “From a service station,” he answered. “They give them away.”

“Bako yaro,” Shindo said, thinking anyone had to be a stupid jerk to give away something that strategically valuable.

“How did it go?” Genda asked.

“Routine, for the most part,” Shindo answered. A stolid man, he’d described the opening day’s raids on Pearl Harbor much the same way. He went on, “We lost one fighter; I saw it go down. I don’t know if the antiaircraft got any of the bombers. And how do things look on your fancy new map?”

“They’re sending more and more sailors up from Pearl Harbor to fight in their line as infantry-trying to get some use out of them,” Mitsuo Fuchida said. “You can give a man a rifle, but that doesn’t turn him into a soldier.”

“Hai. Honto.” Shindo bent closer to the map. English meant nothing to him, but he knew the topography of Oahu-and his superiors had already started marking up the map in Japanese. “What’s our next move? Another raid on Honolulu, or does some part of the front need special softening up…?”

OSCAR VAN DER KIRK’s parents had raised him to be polite no matter what. He paid no attention to a lot of what they’d taught him, especially the stuff they’d tried to drive home with a sledgehammer. But being-and staying-polite was part of what they were, and they’d made it part of what he was. Most of the time, it didn’t matter. If anything, it was an asset more often than not.

It handicapped him with Susie Higgins.

He rapidly figured out why she’d got divorced. He’d had trouble living with her for even a few days, and he was a hell of a lot more easygoing than most guys. What did puzzle him was how she’d got married in the first place. Oh, she was cute, and she was fun in the sack, but lots of girls were cute and fun in the sack. Who knew that better than a Waikiki beach bum?

She was also all smiles and happiness-as long as you did exactly what she wanted. When you didn’t, you soon discovered she was hard and rough as a steel file underneath. Hadn’t the guy she’d briefly been hitched to figured that out before she marched him down the aisle and got him to say I do?

Evidently not, poor bastard.

She quickly lost interest in surf-riding, even though she could have been good at it. “Why do you want to go out there every single day?” she demanded. “Don’t you get bored?”

He stared at her as if she’d suggested getting bored with sex. “Good Lord, no,” he said. “Besides, some of the people stuck in the hotels still want lessons. How else am I going to make any money?”

Susie sent him a suspicious stare. “You just want to meet some gal who’ll give you a throw,” she whined.

“I’ve got a gal,” he said. “Don’t I?”

“You damn well won’t if you don’t pay more attention to me,” Susie said.

“You come with me,” Oscar suggested-reasonably, he thought.

“You come shopping with me,” Susie said.

That wasn’t reasonable, not to him. “The Japs have blown up half the stores, and how are you going to get anything you buy back to the mainland?” Oahu would fall. He could see it, even if Susie couldn’t.

She started to cry, which left him flummoxed-he’d never had to worry about that with stray kittens. “God damn you,” she choked out. “You don’t care about anything, do you? You didn’t even care that yesterday was New Year’s.”

“Was it?” Oscar knew when Christmas had been. To celebrate, he’d bought some tuna from a Jap fisherman so he and Susie could have a Christmas dinner that didn’t come out of a can. He wasn’t much of a cook, but he could manage tuna steaks. Till Susie came to Hawaii, she’d never set eyes on fresh tuna. Remembering when the tuna dinner had been, Oscar had to count on his fingers to work out that yesterday really had been January first. A little sheepishly, he said, “Well, happy 1942.”

“Yeah, sure,” Susie said bitterly. “I wish to God I’d never come here. The Japs are gonna…” She didn’t say what the Japs were going to do. Instead, she dissolved into fresh tears. Maybe she could see the writing on the wall. She wasn’t dumb, just spoiled as three-day-old potato salad.

Oscar realized he was supposed to do something, even if he wasn’t quite sure what. He tried stroking her hair, which was what they did in the movies when a girl started crying. Susie turned and snapped. She didn’t actually bite, but only because he jerked his hand away in a hell of a hurry.

“What do you care? Why do you give a damn?” she demanded. “As long as you can ride your stinking surfboard, so what if the Japs are in charge of things?”

He gave her a dirty look, but no more than a dirty look. He was too easygoing to relish screaming rows, let alone to smack her in the jaw. He wondered if something like that would knock some sense into her stubborn little head, but all he did was wonder.

Tears came harder than ever. “What are we going to do?” she wailed.

What do you mean we, Kemo Sabe? thought Oscar, who’d followed The Lone Ranger on the radio till he ended up in Hawaii-the local stations didn’t carry it. But that wasn’t fair. Nobody’d held a gun on him when he invited Susie here after the bomb blew her room to hell and gone. Oh, he’d had ulterior motives, but still…

“I’ll take care of you the best I can,” he said.

Scorn blazed from her blue, blue eyes. “You can’t even take care of yourself, Oscar.”

“Oh, yeah? What do you call this?” His wave encompassed the apartment.

“What do I call it?” Susie spoke with deadly precision. “Not much, that’s what I call it. This isn’t life. This is just… drifting. Existing.”

She was right, of course. Oscar knew that. It was part of what had attracted him to Hawaii in the first place. “Happens I like it,” he said mildly. And even the most easygoing temper can fray. His voice rose: “If you don’t, sweetheart, you can just darn well hit the highway.” He pointed to the door.

He more than half hoped Susie would storm out through it. She didn’t. She went pale under her sunburn. “Where would I go? What would I do?”

Go down to Hotel Street. Stand on a corner. Show a lot of leg. I don’t care if the Japs are bombing downtown Honolulu right this minute-somebody’ll pick you up in jig time. But Oscar swallowed that instead of saying it. Susie might have round heels-she hadn’t wasted any time falling into bed with him-but she wasn’t a pro.

What Oscar did say was, “Well, if you want to keep on staying here, try acting like it, okay?”

“Okay,” she said in an unwontedly small voice. Off in the distance-not so very far in the distance-artillery rumbled. Susie involuntarily turned toward the sound. Then, with what looked like a distinct effort of will, she looked back to Oscar. “What do we do if… the Japs win?”

No, she wasn’t so dumb. She could see what was in front of her nose, anyhow. “I don’t know, babe,” Oscar answered. “The best we can, I guess.”

“They’re going to, aren’t they?”

“Sure looks like it to me.” He didn’t fancy it any more than she did. He didn’t see much point in lying to her, though.

“I wish I’d never come here!” She’d said that before.

“Yeah, well…” Oscar shrugged. “A little too late to worry about it now, don’t you think?” He thought it was a lot too late himself. He didn’t tell her so. It would only have upset her more, and what could either one of them do about it? Not a damn thing, not that he could see.

JIM PETERSON HAD been eager to get into the fighting. He’d been so eager, he’d volunteered to go from Navy officer to doughboy in one fell swoop. Now he’d seen some of the war up close, and he had only one conclusion-he’d been out of his goddamn mind.

He crouched somewhere in the cane fields north of Pearl City. A Jap machine gun was hammering away much too close. Bullets snarled past him. He’d acquired an entrenching tool from a skinny blond corporal who wouldn’t need it any more. He dug like a man possessed. In an air fight, you had the advantage if you got the edge in altitude. Here on the ground, the deeper your hole, the better off you were.

By the time I’m done, this one will be deep enough to bury me in, he thought. Then he swore under his breath. That wasn’t how he’d wanted to put it. No matter what he’d wanted, though, it was liable to be true.

Half the men holding this part of the line were sailors. They had plenty of spunk. As he’d been, they were eager for a crack at the enemy. But they didn’t know the first thing about taking cover or supporting one another or… anything about being an infantryman. Peterson didn’t know much: only what he’d learned falling back from Kolekole Pass. But what he’d learned since the Japs sent their men into the Army’s rear made him a seasoned veteran next to most of these guys.

He’d trained and trained and trained to fly a Wildcat. He knew how hard, how complex, that was. He’d never dreamt there was anything particularly hard about being an infantryman. He knew better now. Quite a few of these gobs would turn into pretty fair foot soldiers if they lived long enough. A hell of a lot of them would get killed before they learned what they needed to know.

A wet, slapping noise meant a bullet had struck home somewhere close by. The howl the wounded man let out meant it hadn’t killed him right away. “Hang in there, Andy!” an American yelled. “I’ll bring you in!” He came crashing forward through the growing sugarcane. All he thought about was saving his buddy. Saving himself never crossed his mind-either that or, more likely, he had not the foggiest idea how to do it.

“Get down!” Peterson shouted. “Get down, you stupid fool!” Maybe he said something stronger than fool; he didn’t remember afterwards. Whatever he said, it didn’t do a damn bit of good. The Japanese machine gunner was no doubt a louse, a stinker, a rotten, dirty son of a bitch. But he was no fool. If the American was generous enough to give him a perfect target, he’d take it. He squeezed off a quick, tidy burst-three or four rounds. The American who’d intended to rescue Andy crashed down before he got real close to him.

He wasn’t dead, either. He started moaning for his mother. And another brave, stupid fellow hurried up to try to rescue both wounded men. He had no more idea how to go about it than the first would-be hero had, and he got shot, too.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Peterson muttered under his breath. They were liable to get bled white, greenhorns going forward and getting nailed till they ran out of greenhorns or the Japs ran out of ammo. The Japs hadn’t shown any signs of running short.

If you want something done right, do it yourself, went through Peterson’s mind. He did some more muttering, this time of the sulfurous sort. All three of those wounded men were screaming and moaning. He couldn’t just leave them out there. They’d attract more suckers for that Jap to murder. Either that, or he’d start shooting them up for the fun of it. Peterson had seen a few samples of what the Japs called fun, and heard about more. He wouldn’t have wished them on a mad dog.

Before he could ask himself what the hell he was doing, he scrambled out of his foxhole and crawled toward the wounded men. His belly scraped along the ground like a lizard’s. He’d learned a thing or two, if not three. He wished he didn’t have his rifle slung on his back. But one of the things he’d learned was that he couldn’t afford to be taken alive. If the Japs wanted him, they’d have to pay for him-and he intended to save the last bullet for himself.

He almost bumped noses with a mongoose. Which of them was more surprised and appalled would have been hard to say. The mongoose scurried away. It reminded him of a weasel: all slithery grace. Heart thumping, he crawled on.

The thrashing in the cane up ahead wasn’t coming from any mongoose. “Hey, up there!” Peterson hissed. “Who’s hit worst?”

One of the men just kept calling for his mother. Another one, though, said, “Take Steve. He got a slug in the chest.” That took balls: lying there shot and saying somebody else was worse off than you.

Steve turned out to be the one who wanted his mother. Andy had a wounded leg, the third guy a shattered right arm. “You can crawl,” Peterson told him. “Follow me back.”

“I don’t want to leave Andy,” the sailor said through clenched teeth-he wore a U.S. Navy armband on the left sleeve of a khaki shirt. He couldn’t do much with one good arm, but Peterson didn’t waste time arguing with him. He figured Steve would buy his plot if he wasted time.

Going back was ten times as bad as coming forward had been. He had to drag the wounded man behind him. After a while, Steve stopped moaning. Peterson wished he would start again. He didn’t want to think he might be dragging a corpse. And, just to make matters worse, the Japanese machine gunner started spraying bullets around again. They made little clip-clip-clip noises as they cut through the cane. Peterson knew what kind of noises one of them would make if it cut through him. He knew what kind of noises he would make then, too.

A jumpy American almost shot him when he got back into the lines. He managed to persuade the kid that he wasn’t Hirohito’s brother-in-law. Steve was still breathing; Peterson managed some weary pride at that. Stretcher-bearers took the injured man away.

“You did good, soldier,” a sergeant said to Peterson, and then, his voice rising in surprise, “Hey! Where the hell you going?”

“Two more wounded out there,” Peterson answered. “If I bring one, the other can make it back on his own. He’s standing guard on his buddy.”

“You bring him back and I’ll make you a corporal on the spot,” the sergeant promised.

For a Navy lieutenant to be thrilled at the prospect of getting two stripes on his sleeve was one of the more surreal things that had happened since the Japs hit Pearl Harbor. But Peterson was. He crawled back into the cane, hoping he would find Andy and the man whose name he didn’t know.

They were still making noise, so it wasn’t too hard. But he must have got overenthusiastic moving toward them, because the Jap machine gunner sent a long burst slicing after him. He flattened out like a toad after a truck ran over it.

Working a Springfield one-handed was a bastard, especially if that one hand was your left. But Andy’s buddy had found a way. He’d propped the muzzle end of the rifle on a rock and aimed it in the direction of the Japanese. “Look at young Tom Edison,” Peterson said. The man with the wounded arm managed a grin.

Instead of dragging Andy, Peterson got him up on his back. Andy was healthy enough to let out a yelp when he did. The Jap with the machine gun started shooting again.

A bullet hit. Peterson heard it. He didn’t feel it, though. Andy didn’t jerk. Awkwardly, Peterson looked behind him. The man with the wounded arm had been coming after him and Andy. Now the fellow sprawled bonelessly, his brains splashed over the dirt.

“Aw, shit,” Peterson said softly. He brought Andy in. That sergeant saw him do it, and gave him the two stripes and a threaded needle. Two out of three wasn’t bad. So he told himself, again and again. But remembering the guy who’d stopped a machine-gun round with his ear sucked all the pride out of the promotion. That could have been me, dinned in Peterson’s head. Sweet Jesus, that could have been me.

COMMANDER MITSUO FUCHIDA looked down on Honolulu from his Nakajima B5N1. “Now, remember,” Fuchida told his bombardier, “we don’t want to hit too far inland this time, and we don’t want to hit too far west. That’s the Japanese part of town.”

“Yes, sir.” The bombardier sounded more resigned than anything else. Fuchida tried to remember how many times he’d told the man the same thing. More than he should have? Probably.

The Americans kept throwing up antiaircraft fire. They showed more spirit than Fuchida had expected. He’d thought they would surrender once they realized Japan had got the upper hand. But they were still putting up the best fight they could. It wouldn’t be enough. Fuchida could see that. He suspected the enemy could, too. That didn’t keep the Americans from making the fight.

A shell burst near the Nakajima. The plane staggered in the air. Fuchida didn’t hear any shrapnel bang the fuselage or wing. “There’s the Aloha Tower,” he told the bombardier. “Do you see it?”

“Yes, sir,” the man replied. “Shall we go after the docks again?”

“Yes. Plenty of warehouses there. The sooner the Americans get hungry, the sooner they do what we want.”

Down went the stick of bombs. The B5N1 bounced in the air, not so rudely as it had from the near miss by the shell. Fuchida watched the bombs tumble toward their target. The bursts sent up clouds of smoke and dust. “Ha!” the bombardier said. “I think one of those hit the tower itself.”

“Nicely done.” Fuchida wanted to keep his crewman happy. He didn’t care about the Aloha Tower one way or the other. It mounted no guns; as far as he knew, it stored no food. Still… “If you did hit it, that will be a blow to the Americans’ pride.”

“Hai,” the bombardier said. “Pride is about all they have left, neh?”

“They still have soldiers and guns,” Fuchida pointed out.

The bombardier laughed. “Fat lot of good those have done them.”

In a strictly military sense, he was right. But the Japanese were monitoring radio stories from the mainland about the “Heroes of Hawaii.” The Americans here might be doomed to failure. They still made good propaganda, and helped distract the people of the USA from the advances General Homma’s army was making in the Philippines and the rapid push down the Malayan peninsula toward Singapore against the British.

Things are going our way, Fuchida thought. We have to keep moving fast. If we let up, if we let our enemies catch their balance, we could be in trouble. But so far, everything is fine.

Other bombers were pounding the docks and the area just inland from them. Unopposed bombers could do dreadful things to cities. The Germans had shown as much over Rotterdam and Belgrade. Now Japan, having swept away American air power in Hawaii and the Philippines, was teaching the same lesson to Honolulu and Manila.

Fuchida wondered if the rumors he’d heard could be true. Had the Americans in the Philippines really let their planes get caught on the ground? The Japanese hadn’t hit them from Formosa till a day after fighting opened here in Hawaii. People said General MacArthur was supposed to be a good commander. If he’d been caught with his pants down like that, though… A Japanese officer would have slit his belly to atone for the disgrace. The Americans seemed to lack the idea of seeking an honorable death.

They lacked all sorts of notions of honor. And yet no one could fault the courage with which they’d fought here in Hawaii. The contrast left Fuchida puzzled. How could courage come into being without honor?

The other thing that puzzled him was how so much courage sprang from so much wealth. The homes, the swarms of motorcars, the vast numbers of telephones and radios… All of it made a Japanese stare in astonished disbelief. The meat and vegetables in the shops had been a surprise, too, but they were starting to run low. Put everything together and it was amazing the Yankees weren’t too soft to fight. Somehow, though, they weren’t.

Fuchida swung the B5N1 back to the north for the short hop back to Haleiwa. All hops here were short, which saved fuel. Not all of what the bomber was burning had come off the Akagi. Quite a bit was taken from captured filling stations. The Americans, with all the petroleum in the world at their fingertips, hadn’t thought to destroy much of what was in that stock to keep the Japanese from using it.

More antiaircraft shells burst around the bomber as Fuchida flew over the front. The Americans were falling back into the high ground that covered Honolulu from the north. They might be hard to root out of there. Fuchida shrugged in the privacy of the cockpit. The Army had done a good job so far-better than he’d expected. It should be up to this, too.

“Wish we had some more bombs on board, sir, so we could drop some on these fellows’ heads,” the bombardier said.

“We have people paying attention to them, I promise,” Fuchida said dryly.

“I know that, sir,” the bombardier answered. “But I want to do it myself.”

“Every man in his place,” Fuchida said. But the bombardier showed fine martial spirit. Of course the Japanese had it. They were a warrior race, schooled in the ways of bushido. It was the Americans who should have been without it. But they made warriors, too. Fuchida shrugged again. However strange that was, it was the truth.

He landed at that first captured airstrip by Haleiwa. Elsewhere in the north, combat engineers were making new runways with captured earth-moving equipment. Ordinary American builders had more bulldozers and other heavy machinery than Japanese military engineers-another example of American prodigality, or maybe just of American wealth.

“How did it go, sir?” a groundcrew man asked as Fuchida climbed out of the bomber.

“According to plan,” he answered, and laughed-he sounded like Lieutenant Shindo. But it was true. “Just according to plan.”

“LOUSY JAP!” KENZO TAKAHASHI heard that shout every time he stuck his nose outside. “Lousy stinking Jap!”

It had been bad before. It was worse now that the Japanese were bombing Honolulu. That brought the war home to people for whom, even after Pearl Harbor, it hadn’t seemed quite real. Hard to deny reality when you were out on the street because your house, and maybe your wife or your son, too, had been blown to smithereens.

The only good thing about being out on the street in Honolulu in January was that you wouldn’t freeze, the way you might somewhere on the mainland. If you had a sweater, that was plenty. Even if you didn’t, you’d get by. But if you were on the street and you saw a young man with golden-brown skin, high cheekbones, slanted eyes, and coarse black hair, you weren’t going to wish him the top of the morning and ask him how he was.

“I’m not a Jap. I’m an American!” Kenzo had tried protesting the first few times people showered abuse on him. It had got him exactly nowhere, accomplished exactly nothing. It just made people yell at him even more. It had also almost got him into a couple of fistfights.

One of those would have happened if a cop hadn’t broken it up. The policeman, a haole, hadn’t wanted his thanks. “I ain’t got much use for you, neither, kid,” he said, “but there’s too much real shit going on to waste time with pissant stuff. Get the hell out of here.” Kenzo got.

He told Hiroshi about it. He didn’t tell his father. He knew what his old man would have said: that it proved he ought to be saluting the Rising Sun and not the Stars and Stripes. He couldn’t stomach that.

“I am an American, dammit,” he raged, “even if the haoles can’t see it.”

“Yeah, I know. Me, too,” Hiroshi said. “But you know what? It’s not just the haoles yelling at us these days. It’s everybody-Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos.” His grin was haggard.

Kenzo only grunted. Part of that fell under what can you expect? Japan was at war with China, ruled Korea, and now had invaded the Philippines. But it still stung. Just as haoles in Hawaii looked down their noses at everybody else (with the partial exception of the Hawaiians themselves, and they weren’t competition), the Japanese here thought themselves better than Koreans and Filipinos, and probably Chinese, too.

“You know how bad it is?” Hiroshi said. Kenzo shook his head. His brother said, “Even the Puerto Ricans are yelling, ‘Goddamn Jap!’ these days.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Kenzo said, unconsciously echoing his father. There weren’t many Puerto Ricans in Hawaii. The ones who were there were seen as thieves and crooks and grifters by everybody else. The story was that the governor of Puerto Rico lo these many years ago, asked for a shipload of laborers, had provided it by emptying the local jails and whorehouses. Kenzo didn’t know if the story was true, but everybody told it.

Getting out on the Pacific in the Oshima Maru was something of a relief. Kenzo had never imagined he would think something like that. But his father, however loopy the old man’s ideas were, didn’t hate him. The other advantage of going to sea was not being there when the bombs went off. That didn’t help so much, though, because Kenzo still worried about his mother.

As they pulled out of Kewalo Basin, Hiroshi said, “Father, why not bring Mother on the sampan? That way, we’d all be safe together.”

“I said this,” Father answered. “She told me she didn’t want to come. What am I supposed to do, drag her?”

Hiroshi didn’t say anything to that. Kenzo wouldn’t have known what to say to it, either. They just stood there listening to the engine. The sampan had enough fuel to get to Kauai or Maui, but so what? What difference did that make? Even if they got Mother aboard, they’d be nothing but refugees. And, for all Kenzo knew, the Japanese Army was already on the other islands. Even if it wasn’t, it probably would be soon. The U.S. Army hadn’t garrisoned them. They couldn’t put up any kind of a fight.

Oahu, now, Oahu had put up a hell of a battle. And a whole lot of good it’s done anybody, too, Kenzo thought bitterly. The fighting here couldn’t go on much longer, either. The diesel throbbed under his feet. For how long would his father be able to keep it fueled? How much longer would the food last? What would people do when it started running out?

Starve, was what occurred to Kenzo. That might be a reason to get off Oahu: the other islands had fewer people, and might have bigger reserves. Or they might not-with fewer people, maybe they’d got less in the way of supplies to begin with. That was probably how things went, all right. They seemed to be going the worst way they could.