A sick, sour taste rose in my throat. Because what I saw were eyes.
Eyes behind sandbags.
Eyes behind machine guns.
Eyes all around us.
Other soldiers came out of their tents, yawning and stretching.
Waking to those eyes.
Sweet was leaning against a truck parked just inside the ring of machine guns. “Rise and shine to a new day, miserable grunts, and listen up. You will each receive a supply of field rations, but you will do no work. You will remain here. When you need to use the latrine, you will ask permission to be escorted to it.”
We were under guard?
“Please,” he said. “Somebody step out of line. Anyone. I would love to deal with that.”
We got our rations and milled around the tents.
I felt like I'd been stabbed with a broken bottle. What were they thinking? That we were going join up with the guys who bombed us? Were they insane?
It got worse.
Later that day, Chik got a note from his Wahiawa girlfriend, Helen. She said the FBI was going into Japanese homes all over the island, arresting men and taking them away. Lot of families are so afraid, she wrote.
It made my head spin.
No, no, no, this is all wrong.
I couldn't stand still. Pacing, pacing. Had they arrested Pop? Or even Herbie?
I had to know.
What was going on out there? All we got were rumors and notes slipped inside from families and friends.
That night I asked a guard for permission to call home.
“Can't let you do that,” he said. “Orders.”
“But—”
“Now you just go on back to your tent before you get yourself in more trouble than you might care to be in, you hear?”
What could I do?
“My cousin,” Shig said later that night in our blacked-out bivouac. “You know where he's at? Japan. He went to visit my dad's family. Now he's stuck there.”
I cringed; that had been my own fear.
“Ho,” Chik said. “What if they make him go in the Japan army?”
Shig's eyes widened. “Ahh! Me and him could come face to face on the battlefield. What I going do then?”
Cobra spat into the darkness. “Ain't going be no battlefield, you fool. Not for you, anyways. You done. You not even a grunt no more. You a prisoner now. The army ain't going say it, but when they look at us they don't see soldiers. What they see is Japs. What they see is enemies.”
“Maybe,” Chik said. “But they going straighten it out. They just confused now. Nobody knows what to do with us, that's all. Gotta be something like that.”
“Pfff.”
“What?” Chik said.
“Nothing.”
“No, tell me. Whatchoo thinking?”
Cobra spat again. “Okay. Listen. Try see what I saying, ah? First, they split you off from all the other local guys, right? Then they take away your Springfield, your bayonet, your bullets, and your pocketknife, if you was dumb enough to give them that. Then they make you go bat'room in the dirt by your tent, and when you wake up next day you got machine guns all around you. You gotta look at that and think, We prisoners. Right? Am I right, Eddy?”
“You right,” I said, scraping mud off my boots with a stick. Who cared anymore? Seemed like we were guilty no matter what we did. So why even fight it? Like Pop always said—Shikataganai, Way it is.
But the next day the machine guns were gone.
Nobody ever said a word about why they came or why they left.
Then the army stopped training us.
The Hawaiians, Portuguese, and Chinese still got trained. But all the Japanese got was cleanup work, what they gave to the lowest boot camp grunts. Shoeshine boys and dishwashers.
“They so wrong about us, Cobra,” I said, hunching over my tin dinner plate. “Makes me mad.”
He nodded. “To them we all look like Hirohito. They see us, they see the guys in those planes dropping bombs on them. We got the eyes of the Emperor. They scared of us. Scared.”
That afternoon we were free to go where we wanted. So I went up to the post exchange, the army store, and stood in line to call home.
We didn't have a telephone at our house, so I had to call the Higashis, our next-door neighbors.
Mrs. Higashi answered on the second ring. “Moshimoshi.”
“Mrs. Higashi,” I said. “This is Eddy Okubo.”
“Eddy!”
“I'm trying to find Ma, or Herbie, if she's not home.”
“Oh, oh, yes, you went army, I remember. Wait, I go find your mama.”
She clunked the phone down. I could hear her scurrying out.
A minute later Ma came on the line, out of breath. “Eddy…is that you?”
“It's me, Ma, is everything okay? Where's Pop, where's Herbie?”
A long pause.
“We all right,” she said. “What about you? Are you eating? Do you have enough—”
“Ma, I'm fine, but what about Pop? Is he home?”
That silence again.
“Ma?”
“He went down Immigration, day after those planes came. He…he turn himself in.”
“Why, Ma? What did he do?”
“You know him, so stubborn when he get some idea.”
“What idea, Ma?”
“He went down there because he was ashamed for what Japan did.…It hurt him, Eddy.”
“Where's he now?”
“Nobody knows. He didn't come back yet.”
“But that was almost a week ago.”
“Lot of men got arrested.”
“Where's Herbie?”
“Home. He's okay.”
“What about Bunichi? Where's he?”
“I don't know.”
“But why would they keep Pop? He didn't do anything. They can't just hold him for… for what?”
She didn't answer.
“Ma. How you going live? How you going get money?”
“We have savings.”
The cigar box. College money. Everything Pop had saved. “Listen, Ma. The army pays me thirty dollars a month, remember? I send you that.”
“ 'S okay, Eddy. We have friends—the Higashis, the Hamamotos. And Herbie working part-time. They need lot of help down the harbor right now, fixing boats. Don't worry about us. You just stay safe, Eddy.”
“Nothing going happen to me, Ma.”
I listened to her breathing.
We were running out of things to say. I could hear Mrs. Higashi in the background, calling her cat.
“Ma, if Pop comes home tell him to call Schofield and leave a message, okay? I want to know the minute he gets back, or else I going keep worrying about him. If Pop won't call, tell Herbie. Okay, Ma? Will you do that?”
“I tell Herbie to call you.”
“Good. And you call me too if you need something, okay? Anything. I'll get it if I can. You promise to call me?”
She fumbled with the phone, a raspy sound, like she was rubbing her hand over the mouthpiece.
“Ma,” I said. “Everything going be fine.”
She said nothing.
Then: “You… you need me send you something? You need…” Her voice trailed off.
I closed my eyes and leaned into the phone booth. Got to be so hard on her—me gone, Pop gone. Lucky Herbie was still there, and lucky he was getting big now, and stronger.
“I have everything I need, Ma.”
“Eddy?”
“Yeah?”
“What we going do?”
Words stuck in my throat. Just like they always did for Pop. I should never have joined the army. I should be home.
“Me and Herbie,” I said, searching for an answer. “Ma…we going find a way to hold everything together if they don't let Pop go. Don't worry. We going come out okay.”
There was a long silence.
“Ma?”
Mrs. Higashi came on the phone. “Eddy? I help your mama now. She's overcome. I take
care of her, don't you worry, she going be fine.”
She hung up.
I stood holding the receiver, then slowly set it on the hook.
Three days later, I got a message to call home. I ran up to the PX and dialed the Higashis. When Herbie finally came on the line, the front of my shirt was dark with sweat.
“Ma said to call when we knew about Pop,” he said.
“Where is he, Herbie? Is he okay?”
“He's home. The FBI arrested lot of guys—Shinto and Buddhist priests, language-school teachers, even fishermen. But not Pop. They kept him at Immigration for a while, asking questions. They searched his shop, too. But they let him go because they need him for help fix small boats.”
“So Pop's all right?”
“Same old grumbly self. Just like Sharky. You should have seen the FBI guys trying to walk around that dog. Was funny.”
I took a deep breath and leaned against the phone booth. Pop was home.
“Where's Bunichi, Herbie? Ma didn't know.”
“He's around, because they need him, too.”
That was a relief.
“Guess what?” Herbie went on. “They had these guards down at Kewalo, and they put one of them on every Japanese boat. They had big iron picks and were supposed to smash a hole in the bottom if they got an order to sink them.”
“What?”
“They gone now, the guards. They were there for three days.”
“That's crazy,” I said.
“That's not all. Some MPs came by our house and searched your room.”
“MPs? Like army MPs?”
“Yeah, army. They made a real mess in there. What they were looking for, I don't know, but they didn't find anything or take anything, except our radio.”
That made me so mad I couldn't speak! MPs searching my room! When will it end? When I'm in the stockade? When I'm dead?
“Eddy?”
“I'm here, just…never mind. What about Chik and Cobra's pops? They get arrested?”
“Naah, they need all those guys for fix boats.”
“And Ma, how's she doing?”
“We getting by. Stop worrying and go do army, ah? I'm here.”
“Yeah, you there, that's right. Thanks, Herbie. You call again, you got something, okay?”
“Sure.”
“It's good to talk to you, you know? Good to hear your voice.”
“Yeah.”
“Man, Herbie, I… listen, just stay safe, ah?”
“You too, Eddy. You too.”
Later that morning, Sweet drove down to our bivouac in the mess truck. Another officer was with him. When he got closer, I couldn't believe it—it was Mr. Parrish, our mechanical drawing teacher at McKinley High School.
Ho! Mr. Parrish was a captain, two silver bars on his uniform. He was okay, a haole who understood local guys like us. I remembered he said he was in the National Guard. I guess he got called up.
“Things looking better,” Chik said. “At least he knows we not spies from Japan, ah?”
Sweet got out and barked, “Atten-hut!”
We snapped to attention.
“At ease,” Sweet said. “Gather round and sit on the grass. Let's go! Look alive! Get the lead out!
“Now listen up,” he said. “The captain has a few words for you.”
Captain Parrish studied us. When he spoke, the sound of his voice took me right back to drafting class. “What happened with the machine guns was a mistake,” he said. “That's all I'm at liberty to say about the incident, except that I would personally like to extend an apology.”
A few heads nodded.
Cobra sat unmoved.
“Today we'll spend the afternoon on the rifle range,” Captain Parrish went on. “Tomorrow you're moving out to the beaches. You'll get your weapons right after midday chow.”
Cobra turned to the side and spat.
When the sound of taps in the quad ended the day, I lay wrapped in my scratchy army-issue blanket with the tent flap open, looking out at the shadowy clouds gliding over the stars, sails crossing a dark sea.
A perfect time for another attack.
The next morning we squeezed onto troop trucks and headed out. “Jeese, Chik,” I said. “When was the last time you took a shower? You stink.”
“Man smell, son.”
“Pshh.”
Golden Boy and PeeWee jabbered like they were going to a football game. Cobra smiled, listening. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back.
But when we drove by Pearl Harbor, with the sad hulls of crushed ships clearly visible, we shut up.
Even now, small snakes of smoke trailed into the sky, like smoldering campfires. It seemed quiet down there, peaceful almost. I could see trucks and jeeps and men moving around, working cranes, maneuvering tugboats, trying to save the hammered destroyers and clean up the mess.
An hour later we convoyed around the end of the island and plunged down into Waimanalo, a narrow corridor of green farmland with towering mountains on the left and a long sand beach on the right.
Shig raised his chin. “If they going attack from the ocean, this is the place. All that sand. Easy.”
One by one, the trucks pulled off the road, men scrambling out with their gear. Our truck and three others headed down a side street toward the ocean. Sweet's truck backtracked up a lane that paralleled the beach. “Good riddance,” Shig said. “I hope he don't come bothering us.”
Cobra snorted. “You dreaming.”
We stopped at the end of the road and piled out with our gear, the bright, sunny beach in front of us.
A guy whose name tag read sgt. hardy pointed down the sandy ridge to the ironwood trees that edged the beach. “You'll bivouac in those trees where you can't be seen from the sky.”
In single file, we headed to the trees.
The ocean stretched away to dark reefs a quarter mile out, where small white waves crumpled on the sparkling blue water.
Ho! I thought. Sure beats Schofield.
“Set up your tents here,” Sergeant Hardy said as more trucks arrived carrying mainland troops, who set up on the sandy ridge just above us.
“Why they don't come down here?” Chik asked.
Sergeant Hardy left without answering.
Just after sunrise the next morning two trucks drove down into the ironwoods to our bivouac. Three men got out of the first truck and started tumbling roll after roll of barbed wire off the back end onto the sand.
The second truck carried picks, shovels, stacks of empty burlap sacks, boxes of ammunition, hand grenades, tripods, and three heavy water-cooled machine guns.
They unloaded all of it without a word to any of us. When they were done, they drove back up the sand dune.
An hour later, Sweet showed up. “You, you, and you,” he said, pointing to me, Chik, and Slim. “Take two shovels and a third of these sacks and go up there above the high-tide line and dig out a pit big enough for two men and a machine gun. Do I have to tell you how to find the high-water mark?”
“No, sir,” I said.
Sweet took the rest of the squad farther down the beach. The high-water line was easy to see, because of the beach debris the waves had pushed up.
A group of mainland soldiers sat around another machine-gun pit on the dune just above, watching us. Smart, I thought. If the enemy gets past us, those guys will get them. A second line of defense.
About six hundred yards down the beach, Sweet showed Cobra's group where to place their pit. And above them more mainland guys had set up a machine-gun hole. This part of the island would be well protected.
Slim and I shoveled sand into burlap sacks that Chik held open. As they filled up, he tied them off and stacked them around the edge of the pit.
“All we need now is the machine gun,” I said.
“Maybe not going be us,” Chik said. “Maybe we digging this for some mainland guys. Wouldn't surprise me.”
I grunted. “That might make me mad.”
Sweet came ov
er to scowl down on our pit. He moved a couple of sandbags, stamped others down with his boot. “Now go get a machine gun and a tripod. And bring over a box of ammo and nine hand grenades, three for each of you.”
“See, Chik?” Slim said as we headed to the trees.
Sweet helped us lug the machine gun onto its tripod. He pried open the ammo box and showed us how to load the bandolier.
“Until further notice, this position belongs to you three,” Sweet said. “Nothing comes up out of that ocean that isn't friendly, understand? I want two men in the pit at all times. Two hours on, four hours off, around the clock. Is that clear?”
It wasn't, but I could figure it out later.
“If they're smart, they'll come at night,” Sweet said, gazing out to sea.
I squinted toward the ocean. The sky was turning dusky. Pale gray-blue clouds sat still on the horizon.
“Nobody dozes on his watch.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Everyone's kind of jumpy. Little hair-triggered, if you know what I mean.”
I turned and looked up at the guys behind us.
“You sure you boys know how to work the MG?”
“Yes, sir,” Slim said.
“Thing'll throw you clean out of that hole, you don't do it right, scrawny boys like you.”
Slim was over six feet, as tall as Sweet himself. But I guess you could say me and Chik were small guys.
I blinked when Sweet's eyes dug into mine.
He shook his head, then started down the beach toward Cobra's pit.
But he stopped and walked back.
“One more thing—you see those men up on the dune?”
We turned to look behind us. “Yes, sir,” I said. “The second line of defense, right?”
Sweet grinned. “Exactly.”
He gazed up at the mainland guys and sucked his teeth, like some old Kaka'ako guy watching a card game.
“If the Japs land on this beach and you hesitate to shoot them, or if you even turn around and think about leaving your post, those men back there have orders to shoot you. You understand that? If the Nips come ashore and you take one step out of this hole, you're dead men, because I don't trust you. Am I making myself clear?”
Chik's jaw dropped. Slim wouldn't even look up. Blood boiled into my brain. We were soldiers in the United States Army! Americans! To say what he said was insane.
Eyes of the Emperor Page 5
