Pacific Sniper

Chapter Nine

Once they had finished their crash course in sniper tactics, Deke and the rest of the squad did what they could to make themselves comfortable while Lieutenant Steele headed toward HQ to see what his latest orders were. They sprawled out on the sand, dug out rations, and smoked cigarettes. There was no hope of making hot coffee, so they had to settle for more of the rusty, oil-infused water in their canteens. It was a poor substitute for decent drinking water, let alone coffee.

“The best thing you can say about this water is that it’s wet,” Philly commented.

“Just don’t smoke around it,” Deke added. “This so-called water might burst into flame.”

The grub could have been better, too, but with the sea breeze and the sun settling toward the blue horizon, it was more than pleasant on the beach. Back in the jungle, away from the sea breeze, it would be steamy, not to mention crawling with Japs. A distant line of dark clouds threatened rain, but that was the tropics for you. Rain clouds tended to spring up out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly.

“I could get used to this. This sure as hell beats being in the jungle,” Philly said. “I can stay out here and work on my tan.”

“Somehow, I think we’re gonna get sent to where the Japs are at, which ain’t here,” Deke said.

Private Shimizu sat apart from the others, gazing out to sea. He took off his glasses and polished them on a scrap of soft cloth that he had taken from a pocket of his spotless uniform. As a late arrival to the island, he hadn’t seen any action yet — a shortcoming of which he seemed to be painfully aware.

“What’s eating him?” Deke wondered.

“He’s probably waiting for the Jap navy to show up so he can signal them,” Philly whispered to Deke. “I don’t trust any of those damn Nips.”

Deke shrugged. He was working his way through a cold can of pork and beans. It wasn’t exactly appetizing, but he had gone hungry so many nights as a boy that he wasn’t about to complain. “I don’t like it any better than you do,” he agreed. Like the others in the squad, he remained suspicious of Private Shimizu. As far as he was concerned, a Jap was a Jap. “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then I’d say it’s a duck.”

Philly looked up and called out to the interpreter. “So, you’re a Jap?”

The interpreter looked up in surprise when Philly spoke to him. “No more than you. I was born in the United States,” he said, annunciating each word perfectly.

“Yeah? Whereabouts?” Philly asked, using the too-loud voice Americans favored when trying to communicate with foreigners.

“You do not need to shout. I speak English, you know.”

Philly looked at Deke and spoke as if the interpreter couldn’t hear him. “Did you hear how good he talks? He’s hardly got any accent. Sounds like a schoolteacher too.”

“He sounds better than you do, Philly, that’s for damn sure. You talk so fast that all your words run together. You city people are always in a hurry to say a whole lot of nothin’.”

“Aw, stuff it, Deke. What would you know? You sound like a dumb hayseed to me.”

“What would you know about it, Philly Boy?”

“I know all I need to know, believe me, you dumb hayseed. Don’t even get me started.”

“I believe you already have started.”

“All right, you asked for it. You know how to find a virgin down there in the mountains, right? You just look for any girl over fourteen who can outrun her brothers.”

“Better never let my sister hear that. I reckon she’d kick your ass.”

“You’ve got a sister? Huh. Is she anyplace nearby that I have to worry about?”

“In case you ain’t noticed, we’re on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so, no, she ain’t over there in that coconut grove. But she is a police officer in Washington, DC.”

Philly was taken aback. “A female cop? I’ve never heard of that. With the war on, I guess even the police are desperate.”

Deke had turned his attention back to the interpreter. He spoke quietly to Philly: “We’ll have to watch our backs with him, and not just because he’s a Jap. He’s as green as a June tomato.” A couple of days on Guam and a night spent fighting off marauders had made them all feel like real battlefield veterans. “Hell, he doesn’t even have a rifle, does he? The poor son of a bitch. I’m not gonna watch out for him.”

“You got that right,” Philly said. He looked at Deke’s rations, which had come with two cigarettes. The military seemed to do all it could to encourage soldiers to smoke. “You want those cigarettes?”

“Nope,” Deke said. “I don’t smoke.”

“I didn’t think so, considering I haven’t seen you light up yet,” Philly said, accepting the cigarettes and tucking them gently into a pocket. He looked over at the translator. “Hey, Japbait. How do you say, ‘How many cigarettes do you want to trade for that samurai sword?’”

The soldier frowned at Philly, but he didn’t answer.

“Leave him be,” Deke said quietly. He didn’t trust the interpreter, but that didn’t mean they had to pick on him. “He’s supposed to be on our side, even if he is a Jap.”

Philly started to say more, but one look from Deke’s cold eyes made him change his mind. He had to admit that this scarred farm boy seemed like a hardcase. He hadn’t worked up the nerve yet to ask for details about where Deke had gotten those scars, but he was sure it hadn’t been any kind of accident. Whatever had done that to Deke had been deliberate, savage, tearing him up good. “If you say so.”

“You never know when him being able to speak Japanese might save our bacon,” Deke pointed out. He turned toward the interpreter. “You never did answer Philly’s question, though. Where you from?”

“Washington State. That’s where I grew up, anyway. My parents had a farm there until the war.”

Deke sensed that there was more to that story. “What happened?”

“We were forced by the government to leave our farm and move into a camp,” the interpreter said.

“Maybe you can go back after the war.”

The interpreter shook his head. “My parents had to sell everything we owned for almost nothing. We lost our farm, our house, anything that could not fit into a single suitcase, which was all that we were allowed to bring.” His voice sounded sad rather than bitter. “For me, there is nothing to go back to, except my family, of course.”

“Sounds tough.”

“What would you know about it?”

“You might be surprised.”

Deke could have told him how his father had died and they’d lost the family farm to the bank. He could still remember that awful day when the sheriff had arrived with the banker in his fancy clothes and shiny shoes. It didn’t seem possible, but that had been even worse than the day they had gotten the news about his father.

Thanks to a single piece of thin paper, the land that generations of the Cole family had sweated over and broken their backs for was gone. They had lived on that land since before the Civil War. Way back, the Coles had fought the Indians for that land.

Instead of having the run of the woods and fields where he had roamed and hunted, he’d been forced to live in a single room in a boardinghouse with his sister and ailing mother, working in a sawmill six days a week, twelve hours a day. Even at that, they’d barely gotten by. His mother grew sicker, but there was no cure for a broken heart. The war had been a relief, an escape for both him and Sadie.

Deke wasn’t about to share any of that with the Nisei interpreter. The memories were too painful. However, he decided that, just maybe, he would look out for the interpreter, after all. The two of them had more in common than Deke might have expected.

Lieutenant Steele soon reappeared. The bandage over his bad eye appeared to have been changed. It was only a matter of time before the bright-white gauze would be filthy again. “All right, fellas. On your feet.”

Groaning, the men began to gather their gear.

“You didn’t think you could sit here on the beach all day, did you? We’re being sent to the forward beach line again, probably to deal with more of the same that we encountered last night. In the morning, we’ll scout ahead and try to determine where the Japs are hiding.”

Philly sighed, then started to get up. “Just when I was starting to get comfortable.”

“Life’s a beach, ain’t it?” Deke said.