She was already staggering by the time she got to Jane. Sticking out a foot was the easiest thing in the world. Annabelle Chung went down with a wail of despair. Jane yanked at her hair—yanked some of it out. She threw it aside and kicked the Chinese woman in the side of her head. Pain shot through her foot. She didn’t mind. It felt wonderful.
Annabelle Chung didn’t make it to the far end of the two lines. Once she fell, the comfort women converged on her. After they finished, she lay unmoving on the ground. Jane got a good look at her then. Part of her wished she hadn’t; the sight wasn’t pretty. Even so . . . One of the other women said, “Not half what she had coming.” Jane nodded. She’d just helped maim or kill—more likely kill—somebody, and she wasn’t the least bit sorry. Maybe she should have been. Maybe she would be later. Not now, though. Oh, no. Not now.
A mynah bird hopping on the grass flew away before she got close. It was just a bird to her these days, not a potential supper. The same was true of zebra doves. The tame, foolish little birds would be everywhere again in a few years; the way they bred put rabbits to shame. She didn’t mind them. Their twittering swarms would help make Hawaii feel normal once more.
Normal? Jane laughed. What was normal after close to two years of hell? Did anybody on these islands have the slightest idea? Jane knew she didn’t, not any more.
From Hawaii’s worries, she soon came back to her own. What was she going to do about Fletch? That she didn’t disgust him still amazed her—she disgusted herself most of the time. Maybe he really did love her. How much did that matter? Enough, when she knew his flaws only too well?
Maybe. He wasn’t the same person he had been before December 7, 1941, any more than she was. She wasn’t the only one who’d gone through hell. He’d suffered longer than she had, if not in the same ways.
Did she want him back? Could she stand living with him? If she couldn’t, could she ever stand living with anybody again? Those were all good questions. One of these days soon, she needed good answers for them.
GET TING RESCUED WITH THREEHAOLES who vouched for him wasn’t enough to keep Kenzo Takahashi from being thrown into an internment camp behind barbed wire. He would have been angrier had he been more surprised. It was going to be open season on Japanese in Oahu for a while.
That was thanks to people like his own father. For Dad’s sake, Kenzo hoped he had got out of Honolulu on a submarine. He wasn’t in this camp. If he was still on Oahu, he’d get caught before long. God help him if he did. Better he was long gone, then. Even if he had collaborated, Kenzo didn’t want him strung up.
Hiroshi was alive. He’d been in the camp longer than Kenzo had. He walked with a stick and a limp—he’d got shot in the leg after the special naval landing forces dragooned him into hauling and carrying for them. The wound was healing. He tried to make light of it, saying, “Could have been worse.”
“Oh, yeah?” Kenzo said. “How?”
“They could have shot me in the head, or in the belly,” his brother answered. “I saw guys that happened to.” He grimaced. “Or the Marines could’ve finished me off when the Japanese soldiers fell back. This one bastard damn near did. I’m lying there bleeding, right, and he’s got this goddamn bayonet poised to stick me”—he gestured with his cane—“and when he finds out I speak English he wants to know who plays short for the Dodgers.”
“Pee Wee Reese,” Kenzo said automatically.
“Yeah, well, I got it right, too,” Hiroshi said, “but try coming up with it when you’ve just been shot and some maniac wants to stir your guts with a knife. If they gave you tests like that in school, people would study a hell of a lot harder.”
“I believe it.” Kenzo set a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad I’m anywhere,” Hiroshi said—with feeling.
Like just about everybody on Oahu, they ate rations out of cans. Because they’d done so much fishing, neither of them was as skinny as a lot of the Japanese in the camp. All the same, beef and pork—even beef and pork out of cans—tasted mighty good to Kenzo.
People knew who he and Hiroshi were. They knew who their father was. Some of them must have hoped blabbing to the authorities would win a ticket out of camp. Kenzo never found out whether it did. He did know his name and Hiroshi’s got called at a morning lineup. When they stepped forward, they got hustled away for interrogation.
“Your father is Jiro Takahashi, the Japanese propagandist sometimes called ‘the Fisherman’?” asked a first lieutenant who couldn’t have been much older than Hiroshi.
“That’s right,” Kenzo said—no point denying the truth.
“Do you know his current whereabouts?” the lieutenant asked.
“No, sir,” Kenzo answered.
“We heard he was on a sub headed for Japan, but we can’t prove it,” Hiroshi added.
“Uh-huh.” The lieutenant wrote that down. “Do you have any way of demonstrating your own loyalty to the United States of America?”
Kenzo wondered if he wanted to be loyal to a country that didn’t want to believe he was, but only for a moment. He thought about mentioning Elsie, but figured that wouldn’t do him any good—it sure hadn’t yet. “That gunner we pulled out of the Pacific,” Hiroshi said. “What the heck was his name?”
Hope flowered in Kenzo. “Burleson. Burt Burleson,” he said, and felt as if he’d passed a test of his own. He and Hiroshi explained how they’d rescued the man from the flying boat and landed him somewhere near Ewa.
The lieutenant wrote that down, too. “We will investigate,” he said. “If we can’t confirm your story, it will be held against you.”
“Jesus Christ!” Kenzo said. “We don’t know what happened to this guy once he got off the sampan. For all we know, the Japanese grabbed him ten minutes later and he’s been dead for months.”
“For all I know, he never existed in the first place, and you’re making him up,” the lieutenant said coldly. “We will investigate. In the meanwhile . . .”
In the meanwhile, they went back into the camp. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with them after that. People seemed to think collaboration was as catching as cholera. Why not? The U.S. military had the same attitude.
Eleven days later—Kenzo was keeping track—they got summoned at morning roll call again. Off they went, to be confronted by that same kid lieutenant. He looked as if he’d bitten down hard on a lemon. “Here,” he said, and thrust a typed sheet of paper at each of them.
Kenzo looked down at his. It stated that he’d been certified loyal and had full privileges of citizenship in spite of his race and national origin. “Oh, boy,” he said in a hollow voice. Hiroshi looked as thrilled as he sounded.
“What’s the matter? You’ve got what you wanted, don’t you?” the lieutenant said.
“What I want is for people to think I’m loyal till I do something that makes ’em think I’m not,” Kenzo answered. “That’s what America’s supposed to be about, right? This says you thought my brother and me were disloyal till we showed you we weren’t. See the difference?”
“Maybe.” If the officer saw, he didn’t care. “Maybe it’ll work that way one of these days. I don’t know. What I do know is, there were local Japs who played footsie with the occupation. Your father did. Okay, so it looks like you didn’t. Terrific. You’re free to go. If you want a medal for doing what any loyal American was supposed to do, forget about it.”
“What do we do now?” Hiroshi asked.
“Whatever you want. Like I said, you’re free to go. If you’re smart, though, you’ll hang on to those letters and show ’em whenever you have to.” The lieutenant jerked a thumb toward the tent flap. “Go on, get out of here. Beat it.”
Out they went. The guards outside started to lead them back into the internment camp. Kenzo displayed his letter. The corporal in charge of the guards read it, moving his lips. He grudgingly nodded. “I guess they’re legit,” he told his men.
“Fuck ’em. They’r
e still Japs,” one of the soldiers said.
“Yeah.” The corporal scowled at Kenzo and Hiroshi. “I don’t know how you conned your way into those papers, but you better find somewhere else to be, and I mean now.”
They left as fast as they could. Hiroshi grimaced against the pain in his leg, but he didn’t let it slow him down. Kenzo looked out at the wreckage of the city where he’d lived his whole life. He had to glance toward Diamond Head to get a notion of just where he was. Not enough still stood in these parts to tell him.
Later, he supposed, he would go over to the Sundbergs’ and see how Elsie was doing. He wondered how often he would have to display his loyalty letter between here and there.
“Free,” he said tightly. “Right.”
LES DILLON’S PLATOON CAMPED on the cratered ground outside Iolani Palace. Even now, they kept sentries out. A few Japanese snipers were still running around loose. Just the other day, one of them had wounded a guy near what was left of Honolulu Hale before the Marines hunted him down and sent him to his ancestors.
The stench of death lingered in the air. A lot of bodies remained in the wreckage. Sooner or later, bulldozers would knock things down and either get them out or cover them up. It hadn’t happened yet.
Somebody in a clean new uniform approached the perimeter. Seeing unfaded, untorn, unstained olive drab automatically roused Les’ suspicions. Another worthless replacement for a Marine who’d known what he was doing but hadn’t been lucky? But this guy walked up with an air of jaunty confidence and had a cigar clamped between his teeth.
“Dutch!” Les shouted. “You son of a bitch!”
“Yeah, well, I love you, too, buddy,” Dutch Wenzel answered. His hand was still bandaged, but he showed he could open and close his fingers. “They decided not to waste cargo space shipping me back to the mainland, so here I am.”
“Good to see you. Good to see anybody who knows his ass from third base,” Les said. “Some of what we’re getting to fill casualty slots . . .” He shook his head, then laughed. “They must’ve been saying the same crap about me when I went into the line in 1918.”
“They were right, too, weren’t they?” Wenzel said. Les affectionately cuffed him on the side of the head. Wenzel looked around. “Boy, we liberated the living shit out of this place, didn’t we?”
“Bet your ass,” Dillon said, not without pride. Iolani Palace would never be the same. Half of it—maybe more than half—had fallen in on itself. Somebody’d put up a flagpole on the ruins, though. The Stars and Stripes flew from it. Les figured he would start selling sweaters in hell before the old Territorial flag showed up again. Nothing like being used by a collaborator king to turn it unpopular in a hurry.
Over to the east, Honolulu Hale was in even worse shape. Being a modern building, the city hall was more strongly made than the old royal palace. That meant the Japs had used it for a fortress. After gunfire from tanks and artillery pieces leveled it, Marines and Army troops had to clear out the surviving Japs with flamethrowers and bayonets. The Stars and Stripes flew over that pile of wreckage, too. Les was proud to see the Star-Spangled Banner waving, but he wasn’t sorry to have missed that fight. He’d been in enough of them, and then some.
The rest of Honolulu wasn’t in much better shape. Even the buildings that still stood had pieces bitten out of them. The Japs had made a stand, or tried to, in just about every stone or brick building in town. They’d taken it out on civilians, too, which only added to the stench in the air.
Les sighed, thinking of what was left of the honky-tonks on Hotel Street: not bloody much. “This town is never gonna be the same,” he said.
“This whole island is never gonna be the same,” Dutch Wenzel said. “Pineapples? Sugar cane? All that crap’s down the drain now. Nothin’ but fuckin’ rice paddies left. The Doles’ll be on the dole, by God.” He laughed at his own wit.
So did Les. “Who’s gonna worry about any of that for a while?” he said. “Who’s gonna worry about cleaning up this mess here, either? Only thing anybody’s gonna give a damn about is getting this place ready to fight from. Hickam and Wheeler are up again, so the carriers don’t all have to hang around, but Christ only knows how long it’ll be before we can use Pearl again.”
“Tell me about it,” Wenzel said. “More wrecks in there—ours and the Japs’—than you can shake a stick at. All the fuel burned or blown up, the repair yards smashed to scrap . . . It’ll be a while yet.”
“Reckon so.” Les lit a cigarette, partly to fight the stink from his friend’s cigar. He looked north and west. “Even before then, we’ve gotta clear those bastards off of Midway and Wake—especially Midway. I won’t be sorry to get rid of Washing Machine Charlie.” Bettys from Midway could reach Oahu. Every few nights, a handful of them would buzz overhead, drop their bombs, and then head for home. They were only an annoyance . . . unless one of those bombs happened to come down on you.
Wenzel nodded. “Yeah, the sooner that starts, the better. And after we take care of those places—well, it’s wherever we go next, that’s all.”
“Wherever the fuck it is, they’ll need Marines,” Les said positively. Dutch Wenzel nodded again. Both of them looked west, towards islands whose names and dangers they didn’t know. Les blew out a cloud of smoke. “Wonder how many of us’ll be left by the time it’s all over. Enough, I expect.” Dutch nodded one more time.
ONLY A FEW HUNDRED JAPANESE SOLDIERS AND SAILORS had been captured in the downfall of Oahu. The Americans kept them in a camp not far from Pearl City, near the northern tip of Pearl Harbor.
Yasuo Furusawa suspected one reason the Americans did that was to let their prisoners watch them at work. Getting Pearl Harbor usable again would have taken Japan years, if the Japanese had tried at all. Furusawa would have judged it an impossibly big job. The Americans threw more machines at it than he would have guessed there were in all the home islands put together. They had plenty of fuel, too, even if they were bringing every liter of it from the mainland.
And things got done. Sunken ships were raised. Some were refloated for repair. Torches attacked others, turning them into scrap metal. Buildings went up on the shore and on Ford Island. It all happened so fast, it reminded him of a movie run at the wrong speed.
“We didn’t know how strong they were when we started fighting them,” he said gloomily as he stood in line for rations. Even those were a sign of U.S. might. He ate more and better as an American prisoner than he had as a soldier of the Japanese Empire. He remembered what his own side had fed American POWs, and how they’d looked after a while. The comparison was daunting.
The prisoner in front of him only shrugged. “What difference does it make?” he said. “What difference does anything make? We’ve disgraced ourselves. Our families will hate us forever.”
Even among the humiliated Japanese prisoners of war, a hierarchy had sprung up. Though only a senior private, Furusawa stood near the top of it. He’d been captured while unconscious. He couldn’t have fought back. Men like him and those who’d been too badly hurt to kill themselves stood ahead of those who’d simply wanted to live, those who’d thrown away their rifles and raised their hands instead of hugging a grenade to their chest or charging the Americans and dying honestly.
Several captured prisoners had already killed themselves. The Americans did their best to stop prisoners from committing suicide. Some of the captives thought that was to pile extra disgrace on them. Furusawa had at first. He didn’t any more. The Americans had rules of their own, different from Japan’s. Suicide was common among his people, but not among the Yankees. He would have said they were soft had he not faced them in battle. Even the first time around, they’d fought hard. And trying to stop their reinvasion was like trying to hold back a stream of lava with your bare hands.
Every so often, prisoners got summoned for questioning. The enemy had plenty of interrogators who spoke Japanese. Furusawa wondered how many of the locals now working for the USA had served the occupation forc
es before. He wouldn’t have been surprised if quite a few were doing their best to cover up a questionable past with a useful present.
Whatever they wanted to know, he answered. Why not? After the disaster of being captured, how could anything else matter? “Did you ever see or know Captain Iwabuchi, the commander of the defense in Honolulu?” an interrogator asked.
“I saw him several times, drilling his men. I never spoke to him, though, nor he to me. I was only an ordinary soldier, after all.”
The interrogator took notes. “What did you think of Captain Iwabuchi?” he asked.
“That he asked more from his men than they could hope to give him,” Furusawa said.
“Do you think there are other officers like him? Do you think there will be other defenses like this?”
“Probably,” Furusawa said. By the way the local Japanese’s mouth tightened, he hadn’t wanted to hear that. Furusawa went on, “How else would you fight a war but as hard as you can? The Americans weren’t gentle with us when they came back here, either.”
“It will only cost Japan more men in the long run,” the interrogator said. “You must have seen you can’t hope to win when America strikes with all her power.”
Furusawa had seen that. It frightened him. Even his full belly frightened him. But he said, “I am only a senior private. I just do what people tell me to do. If you had caught a general, maybe you could talk to him about such things.”
“We caught a lieutenant colonel and two majors—one was knocked cold like you, the others both badly wounded,” the interrogator said. “Everyone of higher rank is dead. Almost all of the men of those ranks are dead, too.”
“I am not surprised,” Furusawa said. “You have won a battle here. I cannot tell you anything different. But the war still has a long way to go.”
They brought him back to the camp after that. He watched four-engined bombers take off from Hickam Field—one more facility repaired far faster than he would have thought possible. The huge planes roared off toward the northwest. The war still had a long way to go, and the Americans were getting on with it.
End of the Beginning Page 54
