“Whatever you say, sir,” replied Jiro, who wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that. Tadashi Morimura smiled once more.
WHENEVER THE JAP commandant strutted into the POW camp that had swallowed Kapiolani Park, trouble followed. Fletch Armitage had seen that was an unbreakable rule. The local Jap who scurried along in the commandant’s wake and did his translating for him reminded Fletch of nothing so much as a lapdog at the heel of some plump matron.
The prisoners assembled in neat rows. Fletch thought about how easy mobbing that arrogant Jap and tearing him to pieces would be. The POWs could do it. But the price! It wouldn’t be just the soldiers with submachine guns who extracted it, or even the guards with machine guns in the towers out beyond the barbed wire. That slaughter would be bad enough. Afterwards, though . . . If the Japs didn’t massacre everybody in the camp afterwards to avenge the miserable son of a bitch who ran it, Fletch would have been amazed.
The rest of the POWs must have thought the way he did. No one charged the commandant as he got up onto a table so he could look down on the sea of tall American prisoners. He barked something in Japanese. Of necessity, Fletch had started picking up a few words of the conquerors’ language. He couldn’t follow the commandant’s harangue, though.
“You prisoners have benefited too long from the mercy and leniency of the Empire of Japan,” the interpreter said. Even among the cowed throng of POWs, that produced a stir and a murmur. If this was mercy, Fletch didn’t want the Japs getting mad at him. He was filthy. He stank to high heaven. He didn’t know how much weight he’d lost, but guessed it was somewhere between thirty and forty pounds. His shirt hung on him like a tent. He could tie a fancy bow in the rope that held up his pants. The only reason he wished he had his belt back was so he might try to eat the leather.
“This mercy and leniency will end,” the interpreter went on. “Many of you—too many of you—do not do a lick of work. And yet you still expect to be fed. You want to live off the fat of the land, and—”
After that, the interpreter had to stop. The murmurs grew to raucous jeers. Fletch gleefully joined in. With so many men mouthing off, the Japs couldn’t shoot all of them. He hoped they couldn’t, anyway.
Those jeers were enough to make even the commandant pause. He spoke in a low voice to the local Jap, no doubt demanding to know what the obstreperous Americans were saying. He didn’t like what the translator told him. He shouted angrily and put a hand on the hilt of his samurai sword. Then he spoke again, this time with harsh purpose in his voice.
“You prisoners will be silent. You will be punished for this outrageous outburst. How dare you behave so, you who have forfeited all honor? This whole camp will go without food for three days because of your intolerable action,” the interpreter said. “At the end of that time, the commandant will return to see whether you have come to your senses.”
Out strode the commandant, the local Jap again in his wake. He was as good—or as bad—as his word. Three days with nothing to eat would have been no fun for men in good condition. For those already on the edge of starvation . . . They were the worst three days of Fletch’s life. He didn’t go quite without food: on the last day he caught a gecko about as long as his thumb, skewered it on a stick, roasted it over a tiny fire in his tent, and ate it scales, claws, guts, and all. It should have been disgusting. He remembered it as one of the most delicious things he’d ever tasted.
Several men quietly died during the enforced fast. Odds were they would have died soon anyhow. So Fletch told himself, watching two prisoners drag an emaciated corpse toward the burying ground. He half envied the dead man, who at least wasn’t suffering any more. And the poor, sorry son of a bitch didn’t look a whole hell of a lot skinnier than he was.
The commandant spoke again to the assembled POWs before the kitchens reopened. The warning was clear as a kick in the teeth: if the men gave him a hard time, maybe the kitchens wouldn’t reopen. By then, Fletch was almost beyond lessons. Standing at attention took not only all his strength but also all his concentration. He didn’t have much concentration left; he felt dizzy and light-headed.
Yammer, yammer, yammer. After the commandant spoke, the interpreter said, “Have you learned your lesson?”
Fuck you, you sadistic bastard! Fletch thought it, but he didn’t shout it. By that standard, he supposed he had learned his lesson. Instead, he chorused, “Hai!” with the rest of the soldiers and managed to bow without falling on his face. It wasn’t easy.
More yammering in Japanese. “Perhaps now you will understand that, as men who have surrendered, you have no rights, only the privileges the Imperial Japanese Army graciously pleases to grant you.” The translator paused after saying that. If some hotheaded fool told him and the commandant where to head in, the whole camp would pay for it.
Nobody said a word. Only the wind’s soft sighing broke the silence that stretched and stretched. Fletch wasn’t the only one who’d learned the commandant’s lesson.
“As you were told before, when your rudeness began, you eat only by the grace of the Imperial Japanese Army,” the interpreter said. “Supplies are short all over these islands. The Army can no longer support idle mouths. If you do not work, you will not eat. It is as simple as that. Do you understand?”
“Hai!” the prisoners chorused again. Yes, they’d learned the lessons the Japs wanted to teach them, all right.
“You will be assigned your duties,” the interpreter told them. “There is much damage to repair on Oahu, damage caused by your useless, vain, and senseless resistance. You will now have the chance to set it right. Work diligently at all times.”
So the commandant blamed the United States for the damage to Oahu, did he? Japan had nothing to do with it, eh? That’s a hot one, Fletch thought. No matter what he thought, his face showed none of it. The commandant’s idiotic opinions weren’t immediately relevant to him, the way anything that had to do with food was. The dumb Jap could think whatever he pleased.
Three or four more men keeled over waiting in the chow line once the commandant finally got done blathering. All but one came around when the men in line chafed their wrists and slapped their faces. That one, though, wouldn’t get up again till the Last Trump blew. He looked absurdly peaceful, lying there on the ground. Nothing bothered him any more. Fletch wished he could say the same.
When he did get fed, it was the same inadequate ration of rice and greens the cooks had been dishing out all along. It seemed like a six-course dinner at the Royal Hawaiian. Having anything in his stomach felt almost unnatural. And then, after he’d all but inhaled it, he realized he was just about as hungry as he had been before he got it.
It was better and more filling than a seared gecko. That he was reduced to such comparisons told him more plainly than anything else how degraded he’d become since the surrender. And what did he have to look forward to? Slave labor on starvation rations. He wondered how Clancy and Dave had done since they’d bailed out instead of giving up. One thing seemed obvious: it couldn’t have been a whole hell of a lot worse.
Of course, the Japs might have caught them and killed them, too. From where Fletch sat now, that didn’t look a whole hell of a lot worse, either.
KENZO TAKAHASHI SPLASHED Vitalis on his hands and then ran them through his freshly washed hair. The spicy smell of the hair tonic took him back to the days before the war. The bottle had cost him two nice aku. Once he’d rubbed in the lotion, he combed vigorously.
His brother clucked, watching him spruce up. “You sure this is a good idea, Ken?” Hiroshi asked dubiously.
“Not you, too, Hank!” Kenzo exclaimed. He looked down at himself. He wished he had something fancier than dungarees and a work shirt to wear. At least they were clean. Thanks to a Chinaman whose laundry had survived the fighting, he wouldn’t have the stink of stale fish fighting the Vitalis.
Hiroshi seemed embarrassed, but he was also stubborn. “Yeah, me, too. Taking out a haole girl right now isn’t the smartest thing you ever did.”
<
br /> “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Kenzo stuck the comb in his hip pocket and threw his hands in the air. “I’m not going to marry her. I’m not going to molest her, either.” He had the small satisfaction of watching his brother turn red as he went on, “All I’m going to do is take her to a movie, so what are you jumping up and down for?”
“You can say that to me. I don’t have any trouble with it,” Hiroshi persisted. “What if you have to say it in Japanese to a bunch of soldiers? You’re asking for trouble, is what you’re doing.”
“Oh, yeah?” Kenzo said. “I’ll tell ’em my dad’s in tight with the Japanese consul. They’ll leave me alone so fast, it’ll make your head swim.”
The scary thing was, he was probably right. Connections never hurt anybody. That had always been true, and it seemed all the more so now. Kenzo wished his father had nothing to do with Consul Kita and the rest of the Japanese at the consulate. The more often Dad went over there and talked with those people, the more self-important he seemed to get. He just wouldn’t see they were using him as a collaborator. The idea of using his trips over there against the occupiers struck Kenzo as delicious. Turnabout is fair play. Who’d said that? He couldn’t remember. His English teachers would have frowned. At least he remembered the phrase. That was what really mattered, wasn’t it?
Hiroshi said, “The haoles won’t like it, either.”
“Hey, butt out, okay?” Kenzo’s temper started fraying. “Let me worry about it. It’s my business, not yours.”
“You’re as pigheaded as Dad is.”
That probably—no, certainly—held more truth than Kenzo wished it did. He could either fight with Hiroshi or go get Elsie Sundberg. He chose the latter without hesitation, and without a backwards glance. Just getting out of the tent, getting out of the refugee camp, seemed wonderful. Sunday afternoon felt almost as good as it would have before the war.
Try as he would, though, he couldn’t pretend December 7 and its aftermath hadn’t happened. Too much reminded him of the changes Honolulu and all of Hawaii had seen. The ruins left from the fighting, oddly, often seemed the least of those changes. The gangs of scrawny POWs clearing rubble with picks and shovels under the guns of Japanese soldiers were much more alien to what Kenzo was used to than the rubble itself. Seeing all those hungry haoles made him feel guilty for being well fed.
Before Honolulu changed hands, it had had as much traffic as any other American city of about 200,000 people. Now moving cars and buses had disappeared from the streets, though many were parked at the curb, more often than not sitting on one or more flat tires. Gasoline and diesel fuel for civilian use had simply dried up. If the Japanese couldn’t spare fuel for fishing sampans—and they couldn’t—they couldn’t spare it for anything.
Shank’s mare, bicycles, a few horse-drawn carriages exhumed from God only knew where, rickshaws, and pedicabs did their best to take up the slack. Kenzo hated the idea of one man hauling another—by which he proved how American he was. Some of the haulers were haoles, which also would have been unimaginable before December 7. The smug look on a Japanese officer’s face as a big blond man pulled him along Vineyard Boulevard stuck in Kenzo’s memory forever.
The Stars and Stripes was gone. Hawaii’s flag still flew here and there, and looked much like that of the USA at a distance, but Old Glory was as extinct as moving motorcars. The Rising Sun had replaced it. Japan’s flag flew over post offices and other public buildings, and also over or in front of houses and businesses owned by people who wanted to get in good with the new occupiers. Not everyone who flew the Rising Sun was Japanese—not even close. Plenty of people of all bloods judged the Japanese Empire was here to stay.
Also gone, or nearly so, were the pigeons and the once even more numerous zebra doves. Kenzo knew what had happened to them. Lots of people were hungry these days, and zebra doves weren’t hard to catch. The foolish little birds did everything but carry EAT ME! signs. Mynahs, by contrast, persisted. They were less appetizing than pigeons and doves, and also had the brains to fly away when people started sneaking up on them.
Kenzo saw plenty of soldiers and sailors heading down toward the red-light district centered on Hotel Street. The uniforms and the faces had changed. The look of greedy expectation on those faces hadn’t.
When Kenzo got farther east, into the haole part of town, the absence of moving motorcars was the main thing that told him how times had changed. Lawns remained neatly mowed; trees were still neatly trimmed. A majority of the houses wrecked by bombs and shellfire had been pulled down by now, so their lots looked as if they were just vacant.
Elsie had always liked him fine. Before the war, her folks wouldn’t have been so happy if he’d shown up to take her out. They weren’t so stuffy about that kind of thing as some haoles, but they wouldn’t have been dancing in the streets, either. Now . . . When he knocked on the door now, Elsie’s mother opened the door and smiled and said, “Hello, Ken. Come in. Elsie will be ready in just a minute.” The smile seemed genuine. If it wasn’t, she could have gone on stage with it. She used his first name now, too, he noticed, which she hadn’t the first time he’d come over.
“Thank you, Mrs. Sundberg,” Kenzo answered, and did. So much room inside! He’d had that thought before. The apartment where he’d grown up couldn’t have had a quarter as much space. He refused to think about the tent where he was living now.
“Would you like some lemonade?” Mrs. Sundberg asked.
“Sure, if it’s not too much trouble,” he said. He didn’t suppose it would be. Factories had gone right on making sugar even after anybody with a brain in his head could see they weren’t going to be able to ship it to the mainland. And, while you could cook with lemons and use their juice, eating them as fruit took real determination.
The lemonade was perfect: sweet and tart and cold. Kenzo had taken only a couple of sips before Elsie walked into the front room. “Hi!” he said.
“Hi, Ken.” She smiled.
“You look nice,” Kenzo said. She was wearing a sun dress, but not one that was too revealing. Part of him was sorry. The rest, the sensible part, wasn’t: why borrow trouble with leering soldiers or, worse, with soldiers who wanted to do more than leer? He sniffed. “You smell nice, too.” She’d put on some kind of cologne. He could smell it in spite of the Vitalis he’d used on his own hair.
Elsie wrinkled her nose at him. “As long as I don’t smell like old fish, I’d smell nice to you.”
Since she was right, he grinned back at her. “Shall we go?” he said. Elsie nodded. He drained the glass of lemonade and set it down on a doily to make sure it didn’t leave a ring on the furniture. “Thanks very much,” he told Mrs. Sundberg.
“You’re welcome, Ken,” she answered. “I hope you have a nice time.” If her voice held the thinnest edge of worry, he could pretend he didn’t notice.
Little spatters of rain were coming down when he and Elsie stepped outside. They both ignored it, confident it would let up in a few minutes—and it did. Some adman had no doubt got a bonus for coining the phrase “liquid sunshine.” Advertising for tourists or not, though, it held a lot of truth. The sun hadn’t stopped shining while the rain fell, and it was warm and more refreshing than annoying.
Elsie looked up at the sky as the clouds drifted away. “If I’d just had a permanent, I’d be mad,” she said, and laughed. “I don’t think you can get a permanent here any more, so I don’t have to worry about that.”
“I hadn’t even thought about it,” Kenzo confessed.
“Men.” Elsie condemned half the human race. She laughed again while she did it.
“Hey!” Kenzo played at being more wounded than he really was. “Most of what I’ve been worrying about lately is fish. They don’t care about permanents. The rest is trying to keep Dad from . . . you know.” He didn’t want to say turning into a quisling, even if that was what it amounted to.
“Nothing you can do about that. You can’t live his life for him,” Elsie said. “I’m just gl
ad you don’t think that way yourself.”
“Nope. I’m an American.” But Kenzo looked around to make sure nobody overheard him before he said it. He trusted Elsie—and he was sure she was on the same side as he was. Some stranger? A stranger, Japanese or advantage-seeking haole, was liable to report him to the occupiers. He didn’t like having to be careful that way, but he didn’t see that he had any choice, either.
“I should hope so.” Elsie spoke in a low voice, and she looked around, too. She made an unhappy face. “It’s like living in France or Russia or something and worrying about the Nazis listening all the time.”
“It’s just like that,” Kenzo said. His father’s homeland was on the same side as Adolf Hitler. If that wasn’t enough to give Dad a hint . . . But Hitler had got a much better press in the Japanese papers his father read than he did in the English-language press. What can you do? he thought.
The closest theater was showing a Gary Cooper Western. What can you do? Kenzo thought again. He gave the ticket-seller two quarters. The theater had long since run out of tickets. Kenzo and Elsie extended their hands. The fellow stamped PAID on the backs of them. They showed the stamps to the man who would have taken tickets if they’d had any. He stood aside and let them through.
Gone from the snack bar were the familiar odors of hot dogs and popcorn. All it sold were lemonade and salted macadamia nuts—another local specialty. Kenzo got some for Elsie and him. They cost more than admission had.
Japanese sailors had taken a lot of the best seats. Kenzo and Elsie sat down near the back of the theater. They wanted to draw as little notice as they could. When they started to eat their snacks, they discovered that macadamia nuts were a lot noisier to chew than popcorn. Crunching, they grinned at each other.
No coming attractions filled the screen when the house lights went down. Theaters on Oahu swapped films back and forth among themselves, but even they didn’t think their audiences would get too excited about it. Instead, the projectionist went straight into the newsreel.
Days of Infamy Page 47
