His sons seemed less delighted. “Merry Christmas,” Hiroshi said, in sarcastic English. Jiro had always bought the boys presents at Christmastime. Why not? Everybody else did. But for the presents, though, the day meant nothing to him. What difference did a haole holiday make?
In Japanese hardly less sardonic, Kenzo added, “You know why they’ve let us go out again, don’t you, Father?”
“I don’t care why,” Jiro said. “Isn’t it good to breathe clean air?” The tank farms at Pearl Harbor had mostly burned themselves out by now, but acrid, eye-stinging haze still filled the air in Honolulu. No sooner had Jiro praised the air away from the city than he lit a cigarette. “Have to be careful with these,” he remarked. “They’re starting to run low.”
“They’re starting to run low on everything,” Kenzo said. “That’s why they’ve let the sampans out. They really need the fish we bring back.”
“As long as there’s diesel fuel, we’ll do all right,” Jiro said. “Lots of things can happen to a fisherman, but he probably won’t starve.”
“How long will there be diesel fuel?” Hiroshi asked. “It comes from the mainland just like everything else. It came from the mainland, I mean. Nothing’s going in or out, not any more.”
“If Japan wins, she can send us diesel fuel,” Jiro said.
To his annoyance, Hiroshi and Kenzo both laughed at him. “Don’t you remember, Father?” his older son said. “One of the big reasons Japan got into a fight with the United States was that we wouldn’t sell them oil any more. They won’t have any to spare for Hawaii.” Kenzo nodded in agreement with his brother.
Jiro glared at his sons. He had forgotten about the oil embargo. Not only were they rude for laughing, they were right, which made it three times as bad. And, to Hiroshi and Kenzo, the United States was we and Japan was they. Jiro had already bumped into that, but he liked it no better now.
Hiroshi rubbed his nose in the point: “Everything except pineapple and sugar comes from the mainland, just about. If we need blue jeans or shoes or canned milk or canned corn or flour for bread or—or—anything, they have to ship it in.”
“Remember when they had the dock strike on the West Coast five years ago?” Kenzo added. “We were down to two weeks’ worth of food by the time it ended—and that was when things were coming in from the East Coast, and from Australia and Japan, too. Where will we get supplies now? We’ll start going hungry a lot faster.”
“All right. All right.” Jiro wanted to cuff both of them. He couldn’t. They were grown men, and both bigger than he was. And they were so very, very different from him. He wondered what he’d done wrong. If he’d been a better father, wouldn’t he have had sons who were more Japanese?
He busied himself on the sampan, not that there was much to do. The engine chugged away. It was noisy, but it was reliable. He almost wished it would have broken down. That would have given him the excuse to haul out the tool kit and tinker with it. Then he could have ignored his milkshake-guzzling, hamburger-munching boys. As things were, he just stared back toward the receding bulk of Oahu.
Hiroshi said something in English. Kenzo laughed. Neither of them bothered to translate for Jiro. They must be talking about me, he thought resentfully. They thought they knew everything and their old man didn’t know anything. Well, by the look of things, they’d backed the wrong horse in the war. Every day the rumble of artillery came closer to Honolulu. The Japanese advanced. The Americans retreated. They couldn’t retreat much farther, or they’d go into the Pacific.
He felt the way the Oshima Maru bumped over the waves. He watched terns and boobies and frigate birds. He remembered gulls raucous over the Inner Sea when he was young. They could guide a fisherman to schools of smelt or mackerel. But gulls, except for rare vagrants, didn’t come to Hawaii. A man had to use what other birds gave him.
There were boobies, plunging into the sea. Japanese dive bombers must have looked like that when they swooped down on the American ships at Pearl Harbor. They hadn’t gone into the sea, though; they’d pulled up and flown away to strike again and again. “Banzai!” Jiro said softly. “Banzai!” He didn’t think his sons heard him. That was just as well.
He steered toward the boobies. One of them came to the surface with a foot-long fish writhing in its beak. Jiro nodded. He waved to Hiroshi and Kenzo. They’d already started dumping nehus into the water and getting the lines ready. They did know what needed doing.
Thrilled to be free, unaware of the fate awaiting so many of them, the minnows swam off in all directions, silver flecks under the blue of the sea. And bigger flashes of silver rose to meet them. Some of those fish would get themselves a meal. Some would bite down on silver hooks, not silver scales. Instead of getting meals, they would become meals themselves.
Across miles of ocean, booms came from the north. “Are those the coast-defense guns again?” Kenzo asked.
That would have been Jiro’s guess, too. But Hiroshi shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think those are some of the ships in Pearl Harbor, shooting at the Japanese as they come farther south.”
“You notice they couldn’t get out of Pearl Harbor,” Jiro said. Both his sons sent him stony looks. He ignored them. He knew it was true, and so did they, however little they liked it. The very day the war started, Japanese bombers in the third wave had sunk two light cruisers in the channel leading from the harbor to the Pacific. That had corked the bottle and made sure the rest of the ships stayed put. Since then, Japanese planes had pounded them again and again.
Some of the ships still had working guns. Every so often, they opened fire. They were heavier artillery than any based on land except the coast-defense batteries. Jiro suspected Japanese planes would return before long. After that, very likely, fewer Navy guns would fire on his country’s soldiers.
My country’s soldiers, Jiro thought again, and nodded to himself. Yes, Japan was his country. It always would be. And if Hiroshi and Kenzo didn’t like that or couldn’t understand it, too bad.
The fish didn’t seem to care about the distant artillery. When the Takahashis pulled in the lines, they had plenty of aku and ahi on them, as well as a few mahimahi that had come to join the feast. The frenzy of gutting them and getting them into storage came next.
Then it was more minnows over the side, and fish guts, too, and the lines went back into the Pacific with them. The guts, Jiro knew, would draw sharks, but sharks were also good to eat, even if a lot of haoles were too dumb to believe it. He didn’t think he would have any trouble selling them, not today.
He and his sons brought in fish till the sun sank low in the west. Then Jiro started up the diesel again and took the Oshima Maru back to Kewalo Basin. “Now we see how we do,” he said as they tied up there.
“We see how scared people are, you mean,” Hiroshi said. Jiro only shrugged his aching shoulders. In the end, it all boiled down to the same thing.
Along with the Japanese and Chinese buyers in the marketplace, there were also tall American soldiers with bayonets on their rifles. Fear stabbed at Jiro when he saw them. Were they there to enforce price controls or, worse, to confiscate the fish the Takahashis had worked so hard to catch? If they were, Jiro was damned if he intended to go out again the next morning. He’d built his life on the cornerstone of hard work, but hard work with the expectation of fair pay for it. If he didn’t get his reward, what point to putting to sea?
But the soldiers only kept order. They needed to keep order, too, because the buyers sprang at Jiro, Hiroshi, and Kenzo like starving wolves. They frantically bid against one another. By the time they were through, Jiro had three times as much money in his pocket as he’d imagined in his fondest dreams.
He had so much money, he was tempted not to take home some especially fine ahi for Reiko. But the thought of what his wife would say if he didn’t was plenty to conquer even greed. “We’ll be rich!” he said to his sons. “Rich, I tell you!” He could think about the money he had made, if not the bi
t of extra cash that would have been in his pocket if he’d sold the rest of the tuna.
Then Hiroshi spoiled even that, saying, “No, we won’t. The buyers will just jack up the price they charge. Everybody’s jacking up the prices he charges. Look at that.” He pointed to the window of a haole grocery store they were walking past. He and Kenzo both read English fluently, which Jiro didn’t. “Flour is half again what it was when the war started. Rice the same. Onions are double. And look at oranges—a dollar thirty-five a dozen! That’s two and a half times what they were before, easy.”
Some of Jiro’s glee evaporated. Then it returned, or a portion of it did. “Yes, the prices are up, but what I got paid is up even more.”
“How much did you shell out for diesel fuel?” Kenzo asked.
Jiro scowled. “Old man Okano is a highway robber,” he said. But this time his glee didn’t come back. He knew he couldn’t have got a better price from anybody else, Japanese, Chinese, or haole. Diesel fuel was heading straight through the roof. The Army needed a lot of it, and, as his sons had said, no more was coming in from the mainland. And gasoline was going up even faster than diesel fuel. Which meant . . .
“All right, we won’t get rich,” Jiro said. He was less upset than he might have been. He wouldn’t have known what to do as a rich man anyhow.
Kenzo asked, “What happens when there is no more fuel? Can we take the engine off the sampan and rig a mast? Hiroshi and I don’t know anything about handling a sail.”
“I’ve done it, back when I was young,” Jiro said. “I think I can still manage. I’d want somebody who really knows what he’s doing to see to the rigging, I expect.” He stuck a hand in his pocket. Something like that wouldn’t come cheap. His imagined wealth seemed to be dripping away even faster than he’d got it.
THE DAY AFTER Christmas, Joe Crosetti reported to the San Francisco Naval Aviation Selection Board. A big blond Swede named Lundquist chaired the board. He looked at Joe’s papers and smiled. “Are you any relation to Frankie Crosetti, young man?” he asked.
Joe smiled, too, in a resigned way. If he had a dime for every time somebody’d asked him if he was related to the Yankees’ shortstop, he might have been making more dough than Frankie was. “No, sir, not that I know of,” he answered. “Oh, there may be some kind of connection between his family and mine back in the old country, but it’s nothing anybody can prove.”
“Okay. Doesn’t matter one way or the other,” Lundquist said. “I wondered, that’s all. How old are you, son?”
“I’m nineteen, Mr. Lundquist.” Crosetti knew he looked younger. He was five-seven and on the skinny side, with a narrow, swarthy face and a thick shock of curly black hair. He did have a five o’clock shadow that came out at three, but it was five after nine in the morning now; he’d got to the board as soon as it opened, and he’d shaved just a couple of hours before.
“You graduated from high school . . . ?”
“A year and a half ago, sir. My diploma’s in with my papers.”
“All right. And what are you doing now?”
“I’m a mechanic at Scalzi’s garage, sir,” Joe answered. “My old man’s a fisherman. Sometimes on weekends I go out with him. I used to do it every summer and Christmas vacation till I got this job.”
“So you know your way around the water, do you?”
“A little bit, maybe. I’m an okay sailor, but I’m not a sailor, you know what I mean?”
Lundquist and the rest of the men on the board looked at one another. Joe tried to figure out what that meant, but he couldn’t. The chairman said, “When you were in high school, did you play any sports?”
“Yes, sir,” Joe answered. “I played second base on the baseball team, and I was a backup guard on the basketball team.”
“No football?”
Joe shook his head. “I like playing touch in the park, but I’m not a great big guy.” That was an understatement. “I didn’t have a prayer of making the team. How come you want to know?”
“Teamwork,” Lundquist told him. “Basketball is good, football’s even better. Baseball shows coordination, but less of the other.”
One of the other men spoke up: “Second and short need it more than other positions. They have to work together if they’re going to turn double plays.” His wiry build suggested he might have been a middle infielder in his day. Whether or not, he was dead right, and Joe nodded. He and Danny Fitzpatrick, his shortstop, had taken endless ground balls and practiced 6-4-3 and 4-6-3 double plays till each knew in his sleep what the other was going to do.
Lundquist scribbled a note. He asked, “Have you got any flying experience?”
“No, sir,” Joe admitted, wondering how much trouble the admission would get him in. Again, he couldn’t tell what Lundquist was thinking. The man had one of the deadest pans Joe had ever seen; he wouldn’t have wanted to play poker against him.
“But you do drive a car as well as work on them?” Lundquist persisted.
“Oh, yes, sir,” Joe said. “I’ve had my license since I was sixteen.”
“Any accidents?”
“No, sir.”
“Tickets?”
“Just one.” Joe thought about lying, but they could check. The ticket might not wash him out. If they nailed him in a lie, he figured that was all she wrote.
The selection-board chairman shuffled through his folder. “I see you have your letters of recommendation in place.” He looked over each of them in turn. “Your boss and your two high-school coaches. They know you pretty well?”
“If they don’t, nobody does.” Joe wondered if he should have tried to get letters from important people—judges or politicians, maybe. The only trouble was, he didn’t know anybody like that. I’m an ordinary Joe, he thought, and grinned a little.
“One more question,” Lundquist said. “Why do you want to do this?”
“Why? Sir, the day after the Japs jumped on Pearl Harbor, my old man tried to join the Army. He wanted to hit back, and so do I. They wouldn’t take him—he’s forty-five, and he’s got a bad back and a bad shoulder. But I was so proud of him, I can’t even tell you. And what he did got me thinking. If we are going to hit back at the Japs, who’ll get in the first licks? Pilots flying off carriers, looks like to me. So that’s what I want to do.”
The man who looked as if he’d played second or short remarked, “Kid’s got a head on his shoulders.” That made Joe feel about ten feet tall. He tried not to be dumber than he could help, but he was no big brain. If they wanted guys with high foreheads and thick glasses to fly their fighters, he was out of luck.
“Why don’t you step outside?” Lundquist told him. “We need to talk about you behind your back for a little while.” Joe did a double take when he heard that. Lundquist was a cool customer, but maybe he was okay underneath.
Joe could hear them muttering about him in there. If he put his ear to the door, he might make out what they were saying. He didn’t do it. It was something else where getting caught would land him in hot water. Not doing it turned out to be smart. Ten seconds later, two guys in sailor suits turned the corner and came past him. They paid him no more attention than if he were part of the linoleum. But if he’d been leaning up against the door, that would have been a different story.
He wanted a cigarette, but didn’t pull the pack of Luckys out of his pocket. He didn’t want to have a butt in his mouth when they called him back in, and it’d be just his luck to get halfway down the smoke when the door opened.
Again, that turned out to be the right move, because a couple of minutes later the door did open. “Come on in, son,” Lundquist said. “Have a seat.” As usual, his face gave no clue to what he was thinking. He might have been about to give Joe what he wanted, or to arrest him and send him to Alcatraz.
Silence stretched. Joe craved that cigarette more than ever. It would have calmed his nerves, slowed his pounding heart. Finally he couldn’t stand it any more, and said, “Well?”
“Well
, we’re going to make you an appointment with the psychological officers,” Lundquist said. “If they don’t say you’ve got an unfortunate tendency to raise hedgehogs in your hat, we’ll see if the Navy can make a flyboy out of you.”
“Thank you, sir!” The words seemed cold and useless to Joe. What he really wanted to do was turn handsprings.
“No promises, mind you, but you don’t look too bad,” Lundquist said.
The man who looked like a middle infielder added, “You had all your paperwork in order the first time you came in. That’s a good sign right there—you’d be amazed how many people have to try three times before they bring us everything we need. No promises, no, but my guess is you’ve got what it takes.”
“See the petty officer at the door,” Lundquist said. “Make yourself a psych appointment for right after the first of the year. Good luck to you.”
Joe thanked him again and left the conference room. His feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. He might have been flying even without a fighter under him. The petty officer, who had an impressive array of long-service hashmarks on his sleeve, set up the appointment for testing. That Joe had passed the selection board didn’t impress him. By all appearances, nothing impressed him.
Out in the street, Joe half expected people to stare at him and point and say, There’s the kid who’s going to shoot Tojo’s medals off his chest. They didn’t, of course. To them, what he’d accomplished didn’t show. The gray-haired man at the street corner who wore a helmet and an armband with CD—Civil Defense—on it was visibly part of the war. Joe wasn’t.
On the same corner, a kid in short pants was peddling the Examiner. “More Jap landings in the Philippines!” he bawled, over and over. “Read all about it!” Joe gave him a nickel and took a paper.
He read the Examiner as he walked back to the garage where he worked. Lots of people had their noses in newspapers, far more than had read as they walked before the war started. Every so often, they’d bump into each other, mutter excuse-mes, and keep on reading as they walked.
Days of Infamy Page 16
