Days of Infamy doi-1
Page 24
“I guess not.” Arnie still sounded dubious, but he nodded. “Lead the way, Lieutenant.”
Rank hath its privileges, Fletch thought. This was one he could have done without. But he had no choice now that he’d decided not to disappear. He trudged along the road toward the man who was shouting about stacking arms. Here in the western suburbs of Honolulu, buildings weren’t jammed together the way they were in the city proper. There was more greenery than there were houses and shops. But war had laid its hand here. Shell and bomb craters scarred the ground. Flame had gutted one of the houses Fletch and Arnie walked past. And the sickly-sweet battlefield reek of dead meat was in the air.
Springfields made neat pyramids on the grass, stocks down, barrels pointing up. The soldiers who’d already stacked their weapons were anything but neat. They looked like Fletch and Arnie: dirty, weary, tattered, dejected. They looked fearful, too. “What the hell are the Japs gonna do to us?” was a question Fletch heard again and again. The answer to that one would win the sixty-four dollars, all right. It might win something even better: life.
A few minutes later, somebody pointed west and said, “Here they come.” Several soldiers, Arnie among them, crossed themselves.
The Japs advanced cautiously, rifles at the ready. Fletch had seen them before, but they’d only been targets to him. Now, suddenly, they were men. Most of them were shorter and skinnier than their American opposite numbers-most, but not all. They weren’t the buck-toothed, bespectacled caricatures he’d more or less subconsciously expected. They looked like the Japanese men who lived in Hawaii.
What a surprise, Fletch thought sarcastically. And yet, in a lot of ways, it was a surprise.
“Attention!” shouted the American with the authoritative voice. “Form ranks!”
Some soldiers heeded him. More didn’t, but just stood around, waiting to see what happened next. Fletch was one of those. He’d had all the shouting he could stand. A Japanese soldier with a scraggly mustache came up to him. He made himself hold still and nod to the victor.
“Tabako? ” the Jap asked, holding out his hand. Fletch frowned. “Tabako? ” the soldier repeated, more insistently this time.
A light dawned. Fletch pulled out a mostly empty pack of cigarettes and handed it to the Jap. The fellow grinned and stuck one in his mouth. Then he looked crestfallen. He mimed striking a match. Fletch fumbled in his pockets. Did he have any matches? He did, and gave them to the soldier. The man lit the cigarette. He seemed happy as a hog in front of a bucket of strawberries.
After a long, almost ecstatic drag, though, he pointed to Fletch’s wristwatch. Fletch hesitated. He didn’t want to give that up. But he didn’t want to get shot or bayoneted, either.
Before he had to make up his mind, a noncom strode over. He said something to the soldier, who answered hesitantly. Wham! The noncom hauled off and hit the other Jap a lick that sent his cigarette flying and snapped his head back. Wham! This time, it was a backhand across the face. The soldier staggered, but did his best to stay at attention. The noncom screamed what was obviously abuse at him. The Jap soldier stood there, wooden as a cigar-store Indian. A tiny trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. His cheeks looked to be on fire. The noncom belted him one more time, then barked something contemptuous. Face still impassive, the soldier bowed and got the hell out of there.
Jesus H. Christ! Fletch thought. This is what they do to their own guys. No wonder they’re hell on wheels to the poor suckers they catch.
The noncom looked him over. He made himself stand there. If he showed any kind of fear, he thought he was a dead man. If this monkey started beating on him, though… Well, in that case he would be a dead man, because he intended to jump the Jap. He also intended to take the noncom down to hell with him.
Instead of hitting him, the fellow pointed to his wristwatch, the same as the ordinary soldier had done. Despite what Fletch had seen the noncom do, he hesitated again. Plundering prisoners was supposed to be against the rules. Maybe it was-if you were a private, and a corporal or sergeant or whatever this bastard was caught you at it. For him, though… To the victors go the spoils.
A curt word or two of Japanese had to mean, Make it snappy, Charlie! The noncom reached out and undid the watchband himself. Fletch didn’t knock his hands away, however much he wanted to. The Jap put the watch on his own wrist. When he fastened it, he closed the band a couple of holes farther along than Fletch did. Off he went, peacock-proud.
Other Japanese soldiers were relieving American prisoners of their minor valuables. Seeing his countrymen robbed made Fletch feel a little better. Maybe misery really did love company. And it could have been worse. It wasn’t a massacre. That noncom had done worse to the poor greedy private than the Japs were doing to the Americans.
You know you’ve hit bottom when you’re glad ’cause they’ve only stolen your watch, Fletch thought. He was glad, too. Maybe it would be all right, or at least not too bad.
WHEN THE ORDER to cease fire and lay down his arms reached Jim Peterson, he was in a house in Pearl City with his back to the sea. He couldn’t have stayed there too much longer. Either he’d get killed or he’d be squeezed off into the west-into irrelevance-while the Japs reached the oil-befouled waters of Pearl Harbor.
He was damned if he felt like giving up. He had a good position and plenty of clips for his Springfield. Had he signed up as a ground-pounder only to surrender to the enemy? What would you have done if you’d stayed aboard the Enterprise? he jeered at himself. You’d have been shot out of the sky or gone down with her.
As a matter of fact, he had got shot out of the sky. But he’d had golfers for company, not sharks. The Pacific was a wide and lonely place.
He wondered if he ought to put his lieutenant’s bars back on. He might get better treatment if he did. After a moment’s thought, he shook his head. He’d signed up to be an infantryman, and he’d go into captivity as one. He knew that was pride talking-perverse pride, probably. He shrugged. He didn’t give a damn. Perverse or not, it was his.
“Come out and assemble!” some loudmouth was yelling. “Come out! If the Japs take you later, they’ll say you tried to go on fighting after the surrender. You don’t want that to happen. Believe me, you don’t.”
Loudmouth or not, he was much too likely to be right. Regretfully, Peterson slung his rifle and came out of the house. Other similarly draggled men were doing the same thing elsewhere along the block. They’d been in close contact with the Japs. Japanese soldiers were coming out, too, to look them over.
The Japs were about as grubby as the Americans. Their beards weren’t so thick, but plenty of them needed shaves, too. Even though neither side showed much in the way of spit and polish, you could sure as hell tell who’d won and who’d lost. The Americans walked with their shoulders slumped and their heads down. They mooched along as if they’d just watched a tank run over their cat. That was about how Peterson felt, too.
By contrast, the Japs might have just conquered the world. They’d sure as hell just conquered one of the nicest corners of it. And boy, were they proud of themselves! They swaggered. They strutted. They grinned. Some of them seemed almost drunk with happiness-or was it relief?
Japanese officers were easy to spot. They were the ones who wore swords. Peterson had seen they really thought they could fight with them, too. At close quarters, he would have preferred a bayonet-it gave more reach. He hadn’t seen any hand-to-hand combat, though. People shot each other before they got that close. Bayonets were handy things to have, but they didn’t get blood on them very often.
“Over here!” the loudmouth bawled. “Stack arms!”
One of the Jap officers had a local Oriental with him. The local gave him a running translation. He nodded in reply.
Collaborators already, Peterson thought. Happy day! The officer said something in Japanese. The local Japanese man translated: “Even though you have surrendered and are dishonored, you must try to remember that you are men.”
His rifle joined others stacked in neat pyramids. Japanese soldiers watched the Americans giving up their weapons. Peterson looked down at his hands when the Springfield was gone for good. He felt naked without the rifle. Whatever the Japs wanted to do to him, they could.
Dishonored? Maybe that officer hadn’t been so far wrong. If losing to these bastards wasn’t a humiliation, what was? As far as he was concerned, the USA should have been able to lick Japan with one hand tied behind its back. Maybe it had tied both hands back there, because it had sure as hell lost.
And what would happen next? How the devil was the United States supposed to fight a war in the Pacific from the West Coast? What would happen to Australia and New Zealand? How could America get soldiers and supplies down there without going through Hawaii? It wouldn’t be easy-if it was possible at all.
“Hey, you lousy little monkey, keep your goddamn hands off me!” a soldier with a thick Southern drawl said angrily. He shoved away a Jap who’d been about to lift something from him.
Peterson didn’t think the Japanese soldiers spoke any English. That didn’t matter. The tone and the shove were all they needed. Half a dozen of them jumped the American. All the others close by raised their rifles, warning the rest of the newly surrendered Americans not to butt in.
They stomped the Southerner. It was angry at first, and got angrier when he managed to land a blow or two of his own. That didn’t last long, not against six. After he stopped fighting back, it turned cold-blooded and methodical. To Peterson’s mind, that was worse. They knew exactly what they intended to do, and they did it. By the time they finished, it wasn’t a human being on the ground any more: only dead meat in khaki wrappings. They had blood on their boots and puttees.
To Peterson’s surprise, they didn’t have smiles on their faces. They hadn’t particularly enjoyed what they’d done-which didn’t mean they hadn’t done it. It was just… part of a day’s work. That was pretty scary, too.
The Japanese officer watched the whole thing without making a move to interfere and without batting an eye. He spoke in his own language. The local Jap, by contrast, was green and gulping. The officer had to nudge him before he remembered to translate: “Let this be a lesson to you. You are prisoners, nothing more. When a Japanese soldier comes up to you, you are to bow and you are to obey. Do you understand?” Appalled silence answered him. He spoke again, sharply. He didn’t have to nudge the local this time: “Do you understand? ”
“Yes, sir!” It was a ragged chorus, but it plainly said what the Jap wanted to hear. Peterson joined in. He understood, all right. He understood this was nastier trouble than he’d imagined in his worst nightmares.
You should have run away, he jeered at himself. But where could he have run? Oahu had nowhere to hide, except maybe among the civilians in Honolulu. He hadn’t been able to stomach the notion… and now it was too late.
A Japanese soldier came up to him and waited expectantly. You are to bow and you are to obey. Tasting the gall of the defeated, Peterson bowed. It’s only politeness, he told himself. It’s what they do, too. It would have been only politeness had the Jap returned the bow. He didn’t. He accepted it as nothing less than his due. He deserved it for being on the winning side, and he didn’t have to give it back.
He reached into Peterson’s pockets. Peterson stood there, stiff as a statue. You lost. This is what happens when you lose. The Jap found his Navy rank badges. He kept them. All he cared about was that they were silver. I really am nothing but a corporal now. Then the Jap found his billfold. He had fourteen dollars, just about what he’d had when he took off from the Enterprise ’s flight deck. It wasn’t a whole lot of money, and he sure hadn’t had any place to spend it since he’d parachuted down onto that golf course.
By the way the Jap clutched the greenbacks in his fist and hopped up and down and jabbered in his own language, he might have broken into Fort Knox. People talked about inscrutable Orientals, but this guy wasn’t inscrutable. He was damn near out of his mind with glee.
He was so overjoyed, he even gave the wallet back to Peterson once he’d pocketed the money. “Thanks a lot,” Peterson said, sarcastic before he remembered sarcasm might be deadly dangerous. Then he had a rush of brains to the head. He bowed again.
This time, the Jap bowed back. You’re nothing but a lousy prisoner, but I can be polite about robbing you. That was what it boiled down to. It couldn’t mean anything else. You son of a bitch, Peterson thought. You rotten, stinking son of a bitch.
The other Japs were plundering the rest of the Americans. The prisoners took it quietly. Flies landed on the ruined face of the soldier who’d resented it. The Japanese officer barked a command. The interpreter said, “This way,” and pointed. The Americans trudged off into the new world of captivity.
SUSIE HIGGINS LAY on the narrow bed and sobbed. “I wish to God I’d never come here!” she wailed.
Even though Oscar van der Kirk had come to Hawaii years before Susie had, that same thought had occurred to him. He said, “A little too late to worry about it now.”
She glared at him. Even with her makeup smeared and tear streaks down her face, she looked good. Not a hell of a lot of women could say that. “What are we going to do? The Japs are taking over the island.”
“Yeah, I noticed that,” Oscar said. “I don’t know what we can do except keep our heads down, try to stay out of trouble, and hope there’ll be enough to eat. Have you seen the prices? Food’s going up like a Fourth of July skyrocket.”
“We lost! ” Susie exclaimed. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“You knew it was going to, same as I did,” Oscar answered. “You said so.”
This time, Susie glared at him in a different way. She didn’t like getting reminded of what she’d already said. “They’re Japs,” she said. “They’re not Americans. They’re not even white men. They shouldn’t be able to do this.”
Oscar shrugged. “The guy who owns this building is a Jap. A lot of the people who’ve made it big for themselves here are Japs-and that’s in spite of everything the haoles do to hold ’em down. When I first moved here, I thought the same way you do. The longer I’ve stayed, the more I don’t. The Japs can do anything we can do, and I don’t give a damn if they’re green.”
“Are you going to teach them to surf-ride?” she spat.
He grunted. That question had occurred to him, too, and he wished it hadn’t. “I guess so. If they want to learn. If they want to pay me,” he said slowly. “Their money’d spend just like anybody else’s. Lord knows we’re going to need it.”
“I wouldn’t have anything to do with them,” Susie said.
“Yeah, well, surf-riding lessons aren’t what they’d want from you,” Oscar said.
Susie’s hand reached out for something to throw. Fortunately, nothing was in reach of where she lay. “And if I gave ’em that, how would it be any different than you giving ’em lessons?”
“It would, that’s all.” Oscar had to stop and figure out how. He did his best: “Giving lessons is what I do for a living. It’d be like a cabby giving a Jap a ride. The other-if you did that, you’d be doing it ’cause you wanted to, not because it was your job.” If he said it was, she’d get up to find something to throw at him. He’d deserve it, too.
Instead of getting up, she changed the subject. She hardly ever came out and admitted she was wrong. This sort of thing was her nearest approach. She asked, “Are you going to watch the victory parade tomorrow?”
“Heck, I don’t know. I was thinking about it,” he answered. “Why not? It’s something to do. I’m not going to cheer or anything.”
“Jesus, I hope not,” she said. “I bet everybody who’s there’ll be a Jap, though.”
>
Oscar grunted again. He hadn’t thought of that. “I bet you’re right. Okay, I’ll stay away. Wouldn’t that be just what I need, showing up on some lousy Jap propaganda newsreel? If it got back to my folks, they’d never live it down.”
“That’s more like it,” she said. “What’ll we do instead?”
“We can go out on the ocean, or else we can stay here. Your call,” he said.
She shrugged. “Worry about it in the morning.” She got up from the bed and looked at herself in the little mirror over the sink. “Lord! I’m a fright! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Then we’d fight over something else, he thought. Aloud, he said, “You always look good to me, babe.” That was true enough. He knew exactly what hold Susie had on him. Knowing it didn’t make it any less real.
In the morning, he wanted to go out to the Pacific. Susie said, “Go ahead. I just don’t feel like it.” She looked at him in a way that would have been sidelong except, in a fashion he couldn’t quite define, it wasn’t. “I don’t much feel like anything else today, either,” she added, just in case he hadn’t got the point.
But he had. He was no dummy, not where people were concerned. “See you later,” he said, and hurried out the door. He trotted down toward Waikiki Beach like a man going toward his beloved. He got his surfboard from the Outrigger Club and was heading across the soft sand of the beach to the sea when somebody behind him let out a yell.
He stopped. There was Charlie Kaapu, also with his surfboard under his arm. “You can’t stand the Japs, either, hey?” Charlie said.
“That’s… part of it,” Oscar answered. “Come on-let’s go.”
They entered the water side by side. Setting his skill against the surf, Oscar didn’t have to think about the Japs or anything else. If he had done any thinking, he surely would have taken a tumble. If you were anything but a creature of reflex and reaction on the waves, you were in trouble.