He wouldn’t be alone in the sky when the clash finally came. That was the most important thing to remember. When he looked around—the cockpit gave better visibility than a Wildcat’s, too—he saw a lot of other Hellcats from the Bunker Hill flying with him in neat formation.
Pleasure unalloyed filled his grin. Back when he volunteered to become a Navy flier, this was what he’d had in mind: roaring off a fleet carrier to take the war straight to the Japs. Plenty of guys had volunteered with the same thing in mind. Most of them hadn’t made it. Some washed out of training. Some crashed. (He crossed himself, there in the cockpit, remembering the funerals he’d gone to.) And so many were flying other kinds of aircraft: flying boats or transports or blimps on antisubmarine patrol off the coasts. But here he was, by God! He’d done what he set out to do.
And there, just a few planes away, flew Orson Sharp. Actually, Joe had been surer his roomie would get a place on a carrier than he had been about himself. He was good. He knew that. Not many who’d gone through the program with him were better. The big guy from Salt Lake City was one of the few.
The formation switched from a vee to line astern as they approached the Bunker Hill and landed one after another. It was just like landing on the Wolverine on Lake Erie—except it wasn’t. That was practice. Everybody knew it. You took it seriously. You had to, because you could get killed if you didn’t. But it wasn’t the real McCoy, all the same. This was. The Bunker Hill wasn’t a converted excursion steamer, and she wasn’t on the Great Lakes. That was the Pacific down there. Destroyers and cruisers screened the carrier, but they weren’t a one hundred percent guarantee no Japanese sub could sneak in and find her. She was in the war—and so was Joe.
His mouth twisted. He’d been in the war for a while now, ever since that Jap flying boat dropped a bomb on his uncle’s house after hitting San Francisco harbor. A lot of guys painted their wife’s name, or their sweetheart’s, on the nose of their plane. Joe’s Hellcat had two names on its nose: Tina and Gina. He’d crossed the country on a train to get to his cousins’ funerals.
Carrier landings were never automatic. If you thought they could be, it was your funeral—literally. When Joe’s turn came, he followed the landing officer’s wigwags as if he’d turned into a robot. One wing was down a little? He didn’t think so, but he brought it up. He was coming in too steeply? Again, he didn’t think so, but he raised the Hellcat’s nose just the same.
Down came both wigwag flags. Down came Joe, in the controlled crash that was a carrier landing. One of the arrester wires caught his tailhook. His teeth clicked together, hard. He was home.
He killed the engine, pulled back the canopy, and scrambled out of the plane. Men from the flight crew hauled the Hellcat out of the way, clearing the deck for the next landing. It was all as smooth and practiced as a ballet. As far as Joe was concerned, it was just as beautiful, too.
He ran for the island, so he wouldn’t be in the way if anything went wrong. When the ship wasn’t launching or recovering planes, he spent as much time as he could out on the flight deck. The North Pacific felt like home to him; he’d got to know it from the deck of his father’s fishing boat. Some of the guys who were first-rate pilots made lousy sailors. Not Joe. After a little boat’s rolling and pitching, nothing the massive Bunker Hill did could faze him.
Orson Sharp had landed before him. “We’re getting there,” the Mormon said.
Joe nodded. “You better believe it.” He’d wondered what kind of a sailor Sharp would prove—after all, his roomie had never even seen the ocean before he got to Pensacola for flight training. But Sharp seemed to be doing just fine now.
“When do you think we’ll go after the Japs?” Sharp asked.
“Beats me. Why don’t you get FDR on the phone?” Joe said. His buddy laughed at him. He went on, “I don’t think it’s gonna be real long, though. I mean, look what we’re flying, and look where we’re at.”
It was Sharp’s turn to nod. When they’d signed up to train as pilots, the Hellcat existed only on the drawing board. The Bunker Hill had been laid down, but only just barely. The USA hadn’t been serious about the war till after the Japs hit Hawaii. If it wasn’t serious now, though, it never would be.
“Look at all the other carriers we’re going to have with us, too,” Joe added, and his friend nodded again. Along with the Bunker Hill and the rest of the Es-sex class—big fleet carriers that could take on anything the Japs built—there were the repaired Hornet, the Ranger brought over from the Atlantic, several light carriers built on cruiser hulls, and even more escort carriers built on freighter hulls. Both classes carried far fewer planes than a fleet carrier. The escort carriers, with a freighter’s engines, couldn’t make more than eighteen knots. But they could all get fighters and dive bombers and torpedo planes close to the enemy, and that was the point of the exercise.
“Soon,” Orson Sharp murmured.
“Yeah.” Joe heard the raw hunger in his own voice. “Soon.”
BEFORE THE WAR, Kenzo Takahashi had never thought he would call on a girl carrying a sack of fish. Flowers, yes. Chocolates, sure. Mackerel? Mackerel had never once crossed his mind.
Chocolate had disappeared. He doubted any was left on Oahu. Flowers were there for the picking even now. As far as they went, Hawaii had an embarrassment of riches. Down by the harbor, Hawaiian women still made leis and sold them for a quarter or a yen, though Japanese sailors were less enthusiastic customers than American tourists had been.
But you couldn’t eat flowers. (Although, these days, Kenzo wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had made the experiment.) Fish made a much more practical present. Carrying them in a cloth sack let him worry less about people who might want to knock him over the head for the sake of a full belly. Even in Elsie Sundberg’s neighborhood, such a thing was a long way from impossible.
None of the cars parked in front of the neat houses here had tires any more. By now, the occupying authorities had confiscated them all. None of the cars had batteries any more, either. The Japanese had taken those, too. That didn’t show, though, not with a closed hood.
When Kenzo knocked on Elsie’s front door, her mother opened it. She smiled. “Hello, Ken. Come in,” she said.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He did. As always, he had to shift gears in this neighborhood. West of Nuuanu Avenue, he was Kenzo. But this was the haole part of town, all right. He didn’t really mind; to his way of thinking, an American needed to have an American-sounding name. He held out the sack. “I brought you folks these.”
As always, a gift of food was welcome. When Elsie’s mother said, “Thank you very much,” she plainly meant it. She went on, “We have some ripe avocados to give you when you go.”
“That’d be nice.” Kenzo also meant it. Without knowing the Sundbergs, he wouldn’t have had any for a long time.
“Let me get you some lemonade.” Mrs. Sundberg was firm in her hospitality—and avocados and lemonade were about all she could offer. She added, “Elsie will be ready in a minute.”
“Okay,” Kenzo said. The lemonade would be good. One of these days, maybe Elsie would meet him at the door and just go out with him. He shrugged. He didn’t plan on holding his breath. The Sundbergs clung to gentility with both hands. They didn’t have much else to cling to, not with the Japanese occupation knocking what had been the ruling race and ruling class over the head.
Elsie came into the kitchen while he was drinking the sweet-tart lemonade. She had a glass, too. By now, that was part of the routine for their dates. When they finished, her mom walked them to the door, saying, “Have a good time.”
“We will,” Elsie told her. As soon as the door closed behind them, she asked Kenzo, “Where do you want to go?”
“I was just thinking down to the park,” he answered. “We’ve seen all the movies on the island twice by now, and there isn’t a heck of a lot else to do. We can talk and . . . and stuff.”
“Yeah. And stuff,” Elsie echoed in ominous tones. She
knew he meant necking as well as he did. His ears got hot; he took a couple of embarrassed, shuffling steps. But then she laughed and said, “Okay, we’ll do that.”
A couple of kids were playing on the slide and the surviving swings when they got to the park. They sat down on a bench. The grass was even longer and more luxuriant than it had been the last time they were there. People had more urgent things than mowing it to worry about. None of the greenery had been trimmed any time lately, either.
“How have you been?” Elsie asked.
“Pretty good, except for Dad.” Kenzo grimaced. “That’s a big except, though. The more he talks to the Japanese radio, the more trouble he gets into with his big mouth. What’s he gonna do when the Americans come back?”
“Do you really think they will?” Elsie asked with a bigger catch in her voice than she ever got after he kissed her.
He nodded. “I’d bet on it. All those planes coming over at night, and the subs around, and . . . all those kinds of things.” He’d never said a word to anybody, not even Elsie, about the flier he and Hiroshi had rescued. What she didn’t know could help keep her safe. He wondered how Burt Burleson had done once he got ashore. The Japanese hadn’t bragged about capturing him, anyhow. That was something.
“God, I hope you’re right,” Elsie breathed. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to get things back to the way they were before all this happened?”
“Sure,” Kenzo said. Most ways, he thought. Would you still go out with me if things get back to the way they used to be? He had to admit she might. They’d been good friends before. That wasn’t quite the same, even if he had kissed her once.
A cloud passed in front of the sun. Rain started coming down. This was a little more than the usual “liquid sunshine.” It rained hard enough to send the kids home. That didn’t break Kenzo’s heart. Elsie’s sun dress clung to her. Kenzo admired the effect.
Elsie caught him doing it and wrinkled her nose in mock severity. Doing his best to be gallant, he said, “We can go under a tree if you want.”
She shook her head. “It won’t make any difference. The water’ll just drip through.” She was found to be right about that. She went on, “I don’t mind it. It’s nice and warm. And when it stops, we’ll dry out pretty fast.”
“Okay,” Kenzo said. “In the meantime . . .” He put his arm around her. She slid toward him on the bench. He kissed her. What could be better than necking in the park, even if it was raining? Actually, he knew what could be better. But Elsie didn’t want to do that—or if she did want to, she pretended not to like any other well brought-up girl.
Kisses could take on a life of their own. Kenzo opened his eyes and came up for air after what seemed like forever. Elsie’s eyes stayed closed, waiting for him to bend down to her again. But he didn’t. Instead, softly, he spoke her name.
However softly he spoke, it wasn’t the way a lover talked to his beloved. Her eyes came open, too. He pointed and said, still in a low voice, “I think you’d better get out of here.”
Three Japanese soldiers were coming into the park. They weren’t on patrol: they weren’t carrying weapons and they weren’t marching. What they were was falling-down drunk. One of them was singing something raucous.
“They won’t be any trouble,” Elsie said, but her voice lacked conviction.
The only way they wouldn’t be any trouble was if they hadn’t seen her. Kenzo hoped that was so; they were pretty well sloshed. But, like so many things, it turned out to be too much to hope for. “Hey, sweetheart, kiss me, too!” one of them called.
“Kiss my dick!” another one added. They all thought that was funny. Kenzo didn’t like the baying quality of their laughter, not even a little bit.
Elsie’s face didn’t change. For a foolish instant, Kenzo wondered why not. Then he realized they’d yelled in Japanese. He could go back and forth between the two languages without even realizing he was doing it. Elsie couldn’t. She didn’t know how lucky she was, either. “Sweetheart,” he said, “you’ve got to get out of here right now.”
That got through to her. She scrambled to her feet. But even then she asked, “What will they do to you if I take a powder?”
“Whatever it is, it won’t be half as bad as what they’d do to you. Now get lost.” He swatted her on the fanny to make sure she got the point. She yipped, but she took off. She was no dope, either. Instead of heading for any of the sidewalks, she went straight away from the Japanese soldiers, even though that was through some of the thickest bush.
“Come back!” “Where do you think you’re going, you stupid bitch?” “We can catch her!” The soldiers shouted at Elsie and at one another. They pounded toward the park bench at a staggering lope. One of them fell on the wet grass. The other two hauled him upright again.
Seeing that, Kenzo waited till the very last instant before he got up and ran. He went in the same direction as Elsie had, wanting to stay between her and the soldiers. If he went any other way, they were too likely to forget about him and just keep on after her. He thought they were too drunk to catch her, but you never could tell.
He also thought they were too drunk to catch him. The Three Stooges couldn’t have put on a clumsier act than that pratfall of theirs. But then he took a pratfall of his own, tripping over a root and landing splat! on his face. Worse yet, he knocked the wind out of himself.
He was just lurching to his feet when one of the soldiers grabbed him. “Let me go!” he yelled in Japanese. “I didn’t do anything!”
They seemed momentarily startled to hear him speak their language. One of them hit him anyway. “Shut up, you bastard!” the soldier shouted. “You told the girl to get away!” He couldn’t have known enough English to be sure of that, but he didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.
Kenzo tried to twist free. He didn’t try to fight back. One against three, even three drunks, was bad odds. All he wanted to do was get away. To his dismay, he discovered he couldn’t. They hit him a few more times, knocked him down, and started kicking him. That was bad. He did his best to roll into a ball and protect his head with his arms.
Then one of the soldiers said, “We’re just wasting time. That stupid cunt is getting away.”
They forgot about Kenzo and pounded off after Elsie. This time, Kenzo lay there for some little while before he painfully pulled himself upright again. He hoped he’d bought Elsie enough time to escape. His biggest fear had been that they would decide she had got away and it was his fault. In that case, they might have stomped him to death.
He spat red. He hadn’t done a perfect job of covering up. And that wasn’t just rainwater trickling down his jaw. Breathing hurt, too; his ribs had taken a shellacking. But he didn’t feel knives in his chest when he inhaled, so he supposed nothing in there was broken. In the movies, the hero recovered from a beating as soon as it was over. Life, unfortunately, didn’t imitate Hollywood. Kenzo felt like hell, or maybe a little worse.
None too steady on his feet, he lurched over to the water fountain in one corner of the park. When he turned the knob, water came out. He washed his face. It hurt. He started to dry it on his sleeve, but didn’t. For one thing, his shirt was already pretty soggy. For another, he didn’t want to get bloodstains on it. They hardly ever came out clean.
All he could do was hope Elsie had got home safe. He wanted to find out if she had, but he didn’t do that, either. If he ran into those Japanese soldiers again, it might literally be the last thing he ever did. And he didn’t want to lead them to the Sundbergs’ house.
Instead, he walked back to the tent he shared with his father and brother. Nobody stared at him, so maybe he didn’t look too bad. Or maybe people in Honolulu had just got used to seeing guys who’d been roughed up.
To his enormous relief, his father wasn’t in the tent. His brother was. Hiroshi did stare at him, and exclaimed, “Jesus Christ! What happened to you?”
So much for not looking too bad, Kenzo thought. “Japanese soldiers,” he answer
ed shortly. “Could have been a hell of a lot worse. I think Elsie got away from them, and I’ll be okay.”
“Jesus Christ!” Hiroshi said again, and then, “You gonna tell Dad?”
“What’s the use?” Kenzo said. “If I did, he’d probably say it was my own damn fault.” He waited, hoping his brother would tell him he was wrong. Hiroshi didn’t. Kenzo sighed, disappointed but not much surprised.
“COME ON. Let’s go!” Lester Dillon shouted as the Marines in his platoon filed onto a bus. “Move it, you lazy lugs! You want to keep Hirohito waiting?”
His company commander grinned at him. “That’s pretty good,” Captain Bradford said.
“Thank you, sir.” Dillon didn’t think it was all that funny himself, but he wasn’t about to say so, not if his CO liked it. He did say, “About time we got another shot at those slanty-eyed bastards.”
“You better believe it,” Bradford agreed. “Maybe this time the Navy’ll hold up their end of the deal.”
“They damn well better,” Dillon exclaimed. “If they don’t—”
“If they don’t, I reckon they’ll be too dead for us to complain about it,” Braxton Bradford said. “That’s how it worked out last year, anyways.”
Since he was both right and an officer, Dillon let it rest there. This was a funny kind of war. If the Navy pukes didn’t do their job, if they got killed, he and his buddies were pretty safe. But if the sailors and flyboys cleared the Japanese Navy out of the way in the Pacific, the Marines and the Army got to land on Oahu and tackle the Japanese Army. It only stood to reason that a lot of them wouldn’t live through the campaign. But he was champing at the bit, and so was every other Marine he knew. The Army’s opinion mattered to him not at all.
Does this make me patriotic, or just a damn fool? He’d got shot once, and here he was, eager to give a brand new enemy a chance to punch his ticket? He looked inside himself. He really was.
He climbed aboard the bus himself, the last man to do so. The door hissed shut. The driver put the bus in gear. Diesel engine grumbling, it started south, one of the dozens, maybe hundreds heading down from Camp Pendleton to San Diego. Pendleton had the room to train Marines by the tens of thousands. San Diego still had the port.
End of the Beginning Page 24
