Days of Infamy

VII

COMMANDER MITSUO FUCHIDA adjusted the cap of his white dress uniform as he walked up to Iolani Palace to take part in the surrender ceremony. The cap, with its anchor-and-chrysanthemum badge, felt odd on his head. He was more used to a flying man’s leather helmet that covered his ears.

He turned to Commander Minoru Genda, who walked along beside him, also in dress uniform. Honolulu’s bright sun flashed from the two silver chrysanthemums on each of Genda’s gold shoulder boards. Like Fuchida’s, those shoulder boards were striped with an aviator’s blue. “Congratulations,” Fuchida said. “You are the architect of this day.”

Modest as usual, Genda shook his head. “Admiral Yamamoto planned the attack,” he said. “And you so ably led the fliers. Both of you deserve far more credit than I do.”

Although burly General Tomoyuki Yamashita and his aides stumped along ahead of the Navy officers, Genda said not a word about what the Army had contributed to the conquest of Oahu. Fuchida understood that. He was sure Yamashita had not a single good word for the Navy, either, though without it the soldiers the general led could not have come within five thousand kilometers of Hawaii.

Iolani Palace, luckily, had not suffered much during the Japanese bombardment of Honolulu. Ornamental plaster and cement work covered the brick walls. Cast-iron columns with fancy floral capitals upheld the deep veranda on the second floor. Shorter but otherwise similar columns there-these with a fancy iron balustrade between them-helped support the roof.

Atop the palace, the flags of the United States and the Territory of Hawaii still fluttered. The territorial flag-also the flag of the former Kingdom of Hawaii-amused Fuchida. The Hawaiians had been doing their best to please and appease Britain and the USA at the same time. Red, white, and blue stripes covered most of the field; the Union Jack occupied the canton. Much good such pandering had done the Hawaiians. The United States annexed their islands anyway.

And now Hawaii had a new master. The territorial flag might go on flying. The Stars and Stripes would be coming down. The Rising Sun would wave in their place.

A low, broad stairway led up into the palace. General Yamashita tramped up the stairs as if he intended to capture the place single-handed. Captain Kiichi Hasegawa, skipper of the Akagi, led the naval delegation. The Akagi and the Soryu would stay in Hawaiian waters to defend the new conquest against attack from the American mainland. The damaged Kaga was already under repair in Japan. Admiral Nagumo had taken the other three carriers west to aid the Japanese advance through the Dutch East Indies.

At the top of the stairway, an American honor guard came to attention and presented arms as the Japanese dignitaries approached. General Yamashita brushed past the American soldiers as if they did not exist. The Navy officers, Fuchida among them, did the same. How could any men who were surrendering imagine they still kept their honor?

Just inside the entrance stood three weary-looking Americans and a nervous local Japanese man in a business suit. The latter bowed and said, “I am Izumi Shirakawa. I am the interpreter for the Americans. I present to you Admiral Kimmel, General Short, and Governor Poindexter.” He turned and spoke in English, explaining what he’d just said.

Admiral Kimmel spoke. Shirakawa turned his words to Japanese: “He says he hopes you will use the Americans in the spirit of bravery with which they fought.”

General Yamashita grunted. “Let’s get on with it,” was all he said. Kimmel’s face fell when the interpreter translated that.

Governor Poindexter, who was older than the two military men with him, said, “This way to the Throne Room, gentlemen. That is where the Territorial Legislature meets, and so we thought it fitting that…” He ran down, like a watch in need of winding.

“Where you surrender does not matter,” Yamashita said. “That you surrender matters.”

Air seemed to leak out of the governor. He turned and walked into the palace. Admiral Kimmel followed. General Short, who wore cavalry breeches tucked into shiny boots, paused for a moment. He had to call back the interpreter, who’d started to go with Poindexter. Short said, “I know that Japan has not signed the Geneva Convention, but I trust you will treat the prisoners of war you are taking in accordance with its usages.”

He waited. Fuchida did not think General Yamashita would answer, but one of Yamashita’s aides murmured something to him. The Army commander nodded brusquely. “We will do what is necessary to secure these islands,” he said. General Short had to be content-or discontented-with that.

Into the palace the Japanese delegation went. Commander Fuchida admired the Grand Hall. “Handsome,” he murmured to Genda.

“If you like the old-fashioned European style, yes,” answered Genda, whose tastes were modern, even radical.

Fuchida was more conservative. He admired the tall arched doorways with their wooden frames, the portraits of Hawaiian monarchs hung between them, and most of all the splendid staircase ascending to the second floor. The rich brown wood of which it was made seemed to glow under the electric lights. Statues carved from the same wood sprang from the pillars at the bottom of the bannisters.

The Throne Room was all white plaster, red velvet hangings, and red carpet underfoot. The Territorial legislators’ desks looked small and silly and out of place in the midst of such magnificence. So did the table that had been brought in for the surrender ceremony.

Flashbulbs popped as the American dignitaries sat down on one side of the table. General Yamashita and Captain Hasegawa took the other. Army and Navy aides on both sides grouped themselves behind their principals.

Yamashita set the instrument of surrender-written in both Japanese and English-on the table. “This surrender is unconditional on your part,” he told Short and Kimmel. “All military men in the Hawaiian Islands will yield to the Empire of Japan. They are prisoners. All destruction of military stores and weapons is to cease at once. All civil authority is suspended. All civil functionaries will obey orders from the Japanese military. Any violation of these terms will be punished most severely. Is that clear?”

“May we read the terms?” Admiral Kimmel asked.

“You may read,” Yamashita said. “And then you may sign.” He hardly bothered hiding his scorn for men who would surrender.

Kimmel-erect, gray-haired, handsome-and Short-pinch-faced, looking stunned at the disaster that had overtaken his side-studied the English half of the document. Fuchida would not have been surprised if the English was imperfect. That did not matter, as long as it was understandable.

When the military men were done, they passed the instrument to Governor Poindexter. His presence here was plainly an afterthought. Their own declaration of martial law had already superseded his authority. Kimmel said, “These terms are very harsh.”

“The best way not to get harsh terms is not to lose the fight,” General Yamashita said. When Izumi Shirakawa translated that, Kimmel bit his lip and stared down at the table.

“May I say a few words?” Governor Poindexter asked through the interpreter. For a moment, Mitsuo Fuchida thought General Yamashita would refuse. Then the Army commandant gave another curt nod. “Thank you,” Poindexter said. “I speak on behalf of the civilians in Hawaii who now come under your control. Food is already in short supply, and will only grow more scarce as time goes by. If we are to avoid starvation, we will need help from the Empire of Japan in feeding our people.”

“We will do what we can,” Yamashita said. The American official looked relieved. Commander Fuchida had a hard time holding his face straight. Was Poindexter really so naive? Did he think he’d got a promise from Yamashita? Surely anyone could tell that was nothing but a polite phrase intended to keep him quiet. It had worked better than Yamashita probably intended.

“This is the hardest duty of my life,” Admiral Kimmel said. “In spite of the handicaps of surprise, isolation, lack of food, and lack of ammunition, we have given the world a shining example of patriotic fortitude and self-sacrifice. We yield now more to save civilian lives than our own. The American people can ask for no finer example of tenacity and steadfast courage than our men have shown.”

He looked to Yamashita, perhaps hoping for some sympathetic response. Yamashita said only, “It is over now. You must sign the surrender. The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy will continue to prosecute the war until it formally ends.”

Kimmel sighed. “The morning the fighting started, a spent bullet hit me in the chest”-he tapped his left breast pocket with a forefinger-“and fell to the ground at my feet. That round should have killed me.”

There was the first thing he’d said that made sense to Fuchida. Of course an officer who’d seen his command caught flat-footed would not wish to go on living afterwards. A Japanese officer in that position would have taken matters into his own hands, but the Americans were soft.

Kimmel looked across the table. General Yamashita stared back stonily. Captain Hasegawa was a livelier man than the Army commandant, but was also junior to him. He did not give the American admiral whatever he was looking for-atonement, perhaps? — either. Kimmel lowered his head and scratched his name below the English text of the surrender. General Short and Governor Poindexter also signed. The civilian hid his face in his hands. His shoulders shook.

Yamashita and Hasegawa signed for Japan. To Fuchida’s surprise, the taciturn Army commandant proved a formidable calligrapher. You never could tell what sort of accomplishments a man hid within himself.

Bombs burst, not too far away. General Short said, “It’s over now.” He seemed to be fighting tears. “It’s over, dammit. Call off your attacks, sir. They aren’t needed any more.”

“They will stop,” Yamashita said. “Those who have surrendered, though, are in no position to make demands. No position-do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Short replied. “I’d hoped to hear something worthy of a soldier.”

Yamashita growled, down deep in his chest. Something ugly could have happened then. Captain Hasegawa forestalled it by pointing to the two American officers and saying, “Your sidearms.”

With a face that might have been carved from stone, Admiral Kimmel took his ceremonial sword from his belt and laid it on the table. Short wore no sword. He pulled a pistol from the holster on his belt and set it beside the sword. More photographs recorded the moment. With ill-disguised greed, Yamashita grabbed the gold-hilted blade. That left the pistol, an ordinary.45, for Captain Hasegawa. He took it with no outward show of anger. Since he’d suggested that the American commanders turn over their weapons, Commander Fuchida thought he should have had first choice.

“Now it is over,” Yamashita said, satisfaction in his voice. Shirakawa translated that into English. Yamashita turned to one of his aides: “Order the cease-fire, effective immediately.” The interpreter translated that, too. The Army commandant sent him a hard look, but it was done.

Kimmel might have been a dead man talking as he said, “We are your captives, sir. What are your orders for us?”

Maybe he was trying to rouse sympathy in the Japanese. If so, he’d made a mistake. To a Japanese soldier, captives roused nothing but contempt. Yamashita did not bother to hide it as he answered, “Just stay here. You will be taken care of.” He gathered up his officers by eye. “Let’s go.”

Once out in the bright sunshine again, Fuchida looked up at the central flagpole, the tallest of the five atop Iolani Palace. The American flag had come down during the ceremony. The Japanese flag flew there in its place.

Tears stung Fuchida’s eyes. Such a gamble-but they’d brought it off. He turned to Minoru Genda. No matter how modest Genda was, he more than any other man had been the man who made this victory possible. Impulsively, Fuchida bowed low. “Congratulations!” he said once more.

Genda returned the bow. “It was for the Empire,” he said, but not even his quiet words could hide all the pride in his voice.

RUMORS OF SURRENDER had swept through the Americans still fighting for a couple of days before they turned out to be true. Even then, Fletcher Armitage didn’t want to believe them. Neither did the men he’d hauled into serving his now-abandoned 105. “What do you think, sir?” Clancy asked. “Should we steal us some civvies and make like we were never in the Army? I’ll be damned if I want to put myself in the hands o’ them heathen bastards. I seen what they do to prisoners.”

“I’m not going to give you any orders about that,” Fletch answered. “If you want to try and disappear, go ahead. I won’t say boo. I don’t know who you are. But if you try and disappear and the Japs find out who you are, your neck isn’t worth a plugged nickel.”

Arnie said, “If everybody’s surrendering, they’ll have to play fair by us, won’t they?”

“Get your head out of your ass, man,” Dave said. “They’re the Japs. They just won. They fucking licked us. They don’t have to do shit. They can do whatever they goddamn well want.”

Clancy nodded. “That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s why I’m thinking about bugging out.” He glanced over to Fletch. “What are you gonna do, Lieutenant?”

Back when he was still married to Jane, Fletch might have tried to get up to Wahiawa and pretended to be part of a civilian couple with her. And you might have been an idiot, too, he thought. What if one of your neighbors turned you in? You’d get shot, and so would she.

He shrugged. He didn’t have that choice any more. “I’m sticking,” he said. “I am in the Army, goddammit. But I’m not going to tell anybody else what to do, not for this. Whatever you think gives you the best chance, you go ahead and do it, and good luck to you.”

Clancy set his rifle and his tin hat on the ground. “I’m gone,” he said. “Good luck back atcha, Lieutenant.” He slipped away. Dave followed. Arnie stayed.

They looked at each other. “What the hell happens next?” Arnie asked. “Uh, sir?”

“Beats me,” Fletch said. “We had drills and exercises for everything under the sun, but I don’t think we ever practiced surrendering.” No American had ever imagined that he could taste defeat. After the Japanese landed on Oahu, Fletch’s imagination had been expanded.

Somewhere not far away, someone with a loud, official-sounding voice shouted, “Come stack your weapons here! Fighting’s done! Come stack your weapons!”

“Jesus,” Arnie muttered. He was a little, swarthy guy with a clotted Chicago accent.

“Got to get rid of your piece even if you bug out,” Fletch reminded him. “Japs catch you with it, you’re history.” There were places-the Philippines, for instance-where a man might take to the jungle and go on with the fight. Oahu wasn’t a place like that. It had jungles, sure enough, but they didn’t have anything to eat in them.

“Jesus,” Arnie said again, and then, “They really gonna treat us like prisoners of war now?”

That poked Fletch’s worst fears. He remembered too well what the Japs had done to American soldiers they’d captured. But they couldn’t do things like that to all the men who’d surrendered… could they? He shook his head. Impossible. “They’re supposed to,” he answered. “We wouldn’t have quit if we thought they wouldn’t, would we?”

“I guess not.” Arnie still sounded dubious, but he nodded. “Lead the way, Lieutenant.”

Rank hath its privileges, Fletch thought. This was one he could have done without. But he had no choice now that he’d decided not to disappear. He trudged along the road toward the man who was shouting about stacking arms. Here in the western suburbs of Honolulu, buildings weren’t jammed together the way they were in the city proper. There was more greenery than there were houses and shops. But war had laid its hand here. Shell and bomb craters scarred the ground. Flame had gutted one of the houses Fletch and Arnie walked past. And the sickly-sweet battlefield reek of dead meat was in the air.

Springfields made neat pyramids on the grass, stocks down, barrels pointing up. The soldiers who’d already stacked their weapons were anything but neat. They looked like Fletch and Arnie: dirty, weary, tattered, dejected. They looked fearful, too. “What the hell are the Japs gonna do to us?” was a question Fletch heard again and again. The answer to that one would win the sixty-four dollars, all right. It might win something even better: life.

A few minutes later, somebody pointed west and said, “Here they come.” Several soldiers, Arnie among them, crossed themselves.

The Japs advanced cautiously, rifles at the ready. Fletch had seen them before, but they’d only been targets to him. Now, suddenly, they were men. Most of them were shorter and skinnier than their American opposite numbers-most, but not all. They weren’t the buck-toothed, bespectacled caricatures he’d more or less subconsciously expected. They looked like the Japanese men who lived in Hawaii.

What a surprise, Fletch thought sarcastically. And yet, in a lot of ways, it was a surprise.

“Attention!” shouted the American with the authoritative voice. “Form ranks!”

Some soldiers heeded him. More didn’t, but just stood around, waiting to see what happened next. Fletch was one of those. He’d had all the shouting he could stand. A Japanese soldier with a scraggly mustache came up to him. He made himself hold still and nod to the victor.

“Tabako? ” the Jap asked, holding out his hand. Fletch frowned. “Tabako? ” the soldier repeated, more insistently this time.

A light dawned. Fletch pulled out a mostly empty pack of cigarettes and handed it to the Jap. The fellow grinned and stuck one in his mouth. Then he looked crestfallen. He mimed striking a match. Fletch fumbled in his pockets. Did he have any matches? He did, and gave them to the soldier. The man lit the cigarette. He seemed happy as a hog in front of a bucket of strawberries.

After a long, almost ecstatic drag, though, he pointed to Fletch’s wristwatch. Fletch hesitated. He didn’t want to give that up. But he didn’t want to get shot or bayoneted, either.

Before he had to make up his mind, a noncom strode over. He said something to the soldier, who answered hesitantly. Wham! The noncom hauled off and hit the other Jap a lick that sent his cigarette flying and snapped his head back. Wham! This time, it was a backhand across the face. The soldier staggered, but did his best to stay at attention. The noncom screamed what was obviously abuse at him. The Jap soldier stood there, wooden as a cigar-store Indian. A tiny trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. His cheeks looked to be on fire. The noncom belted him one more time, then barked something contemptuous. Face still impassive, the soldier bowed and got the hell out of there.

Jesus H. Christ! Fletch thought. This is what they do to their own guys. No wonder they’re hell on wheels to the poor suckers they catch.

The noncom looked him over. He made himself stand there. If he showed any kind of fear, he thought he was a dead man. If this monkey started beating on him, though… Well, in that case he would be a dead man, because he intended to jump the Jap. He also intended to take the noncom down to hell with him.

Instead of hitting him, the fellow pointed to his wristwatch, the same as the ordinary soldier had done. Despite what Fletch had seen the noncom do, he hesitated again. Plundering prisoners was supposed to be against the rules. Maybe it was-if you were a private, and a corporal or sergeant or whatever this bastard was caught you at it. For him, though… To the victors go the spoils.

A curt word or two of Japanese had to mean, Make it snappy, Charlie! The noncom reached out and undid the watchband himself. Fletch didn’t knock his hands away, however much he wanted to. The Jap put the watch on his own wrist. When he fastened it, he closed the band a couple of holes farther along than Fletch did. Off he went, peacock-proud.

Other Japanese soldiers were relieving American prisoners of their minor valuables. Seeing his countrymen robbed made Fletch feel a little better. Maybe misery really did love company. And it could have been worse. It wasn’t a massacre. That noncom had done worse to the poor greedy private than the Japs were doing to the Americans.

You know you’ve hit bottom when you’re glad ’cause they’ve only stolen your watch, Fletch thought. He was glad, too. Maybe it would be all right, or at least not too bad.

WHEN THE ORDER to cease fire and lay down his arms reached Jim Peterson, he was in a house in Pearl City with his back to the sea. He couldn’t have stayed there too much longer. Either he’d get killed or he’d be squeezed off into the west-into irrelevance-while the Japs reached the oil-befouled waters of Pearl Harbor.

He was damned if he felt like giving up. He had a good position and plenty of clips for his Springfield. Had he signed up as a ground-pounder only to surrender to the enemy? What would you have done if you’d stayed aboard the Enterprise? he jeered at himself. You’d have been shot out of the sky or gone down with her.

As a matter of fact, he had got shot out of the sky. But he’d had golfers for company, not sharks. The Pacific was a wide and lonely place.

He wondered if he ought to put his lieutenant’s bars back on. He might get better treatment if he did. After a moment’s thought, he shook his head. He’d signed up to be an infantryman, and he’d go into captivity as one. He knew that was pride talking-perverse pride, probably. He shrugged. He didn’t give a damn. Perverse or not, it was his.

“Come out and assemble!” some loudmouth was yelling. “Come out! If the Japs take you later, they’ll say you tried to go on fighting after the surrender. You don’t want that to happen. Believe me, you don’t.”

Loudmouth or not, he was much too likely to be right. Regretfully, Peterson slung his rifle and came out of the house. Other similarly draggled men were doing the same thing elsewhere along the block. They’d been in close contact with the Japs. Japanese soldiers were coming out, too, to look them over.

The Japs were about as grubby as the Americans. Their beards weren’t so thick, but plenty of them needed shaves, too. Even though neither side showed much in the way of spit and polish, you could sure as hell tell who’d won and who’d lost. The Americans walked with their shoulders slumped and their heads down. They mooched along as if they’d just watched a tank run over their cat. That was about how Peterson felt, too.

By contrast, the Japs might have just conquered the world. They’d sure as hell just conquered one of the nicest corners of it. And boy, were they proud of themselves! They swaggered. They strutted. They grinned. Some of them seemed almost drunk with happiness-or was it relief?

Japanese officers were easy to spot. They were the ones who wore swords. Peterson had seen they really thought they could fight with them, too. At close quarters, he would have preferred a bayonet-it gave more reach. He hadn’t seen any hand-to-hand combat, though. People shot each other before they got that close. Bayonets were handy things to have, but they didn’t get blood on them very often.

“Over here!” the loudmouth bawled. “Stack arms!”

One of the Jap officers had a local Oriental with him. The local gave him a running translation. He nodded in reply.

Collaborators already, Peterson thought. Happy day! The officer said something in Japanese. The local Japanese man translated: “Even though you have surrendered and are dishonored, you must try to remember that you are men.”

That was a dangerous thing to say to soldiers with weapons still in their hands. For a nickel, Peterson would have blown that Jap’s head off for him. Fear for himself didn’t keep him from doing it. Fear for what would happen to other Americans all over Oahu did.

His rifle joined others stacked in neat pyramids. Japanese soldiers watched the Americans giving up their weapons. Peterson looked down at his hands when the Springfield was gone for good. He felt naked without the rifle. Whatever the Japs wanted to do to him, they could.

Dishonored? Maybe that officer hadn’t been so far wrong. If losing to these bastards wasn’t a humiliation, what was? As far as he was concerned, the USA should have been able to lick Japan with one hand tied behind its back. Maybe it had tied both hands back there, because it had sure as hell lost.

And what would happen next? How the devil was the United States supposed to fight a war in the Pacific from the West Coast? What would happen to Australia and New Zealand? How could America get soldiers and supplies down there without going through Hawaii? It wouldn’t be easy-if it was possible at all.

“Hey, you lousy little monkey, keep your goddamn hands off me!” a soldier with a thick Southern drawl said angrily. He shoved away a Jap who’d been about to lift something from him.

Peterson didn’t think the Japanese soldiers spoke any English. That didn’t matter. The tone and the shove were all they needed. Half a dozen of them jumped the American. All the others close by raised their rifles, warning the rest of the newly surrendered Americans not to butt in.

They stomped the Southerner. It was angry at first, and got angrier when he managed to land a blow or two of his own. That didn’t last long, not against six. After he stopped fighting back, it turned cold-blooded and methodical. To Peterson’s mind, that was worse. They knew exactly what they intended to do, and they did it. By the time they finished, it wasn’t a human being on the ground any more: only dead meat in khaki wrappings. They had blood on their boots and puttees.

To Peterson’s surprise, they didn’t have smiles on their faces. They hadn’t particularly enjoyed what they’d done-which didn’t mean they hadn’t done it. It was just… part of a day’s work. That was pretty scary, too.

The Japanese officer watched the whole thing without making a move to interfere and without batting an eye. He spoke in his own language. The local Jap, by contrast, was green and gulping. The officer had to nudge him before he remembered to translate: “Let this be a lesson to you. You are prisoners, nothing more. When a Japanese soldier comes up to you, you are to bow and you are to obey. Do you understand?” Appalled silence answered him. He spoke again, sharply. He didn’t have to nudge the local this time: “Do you understand? ”

“Yes, sir!” It was a ragged chorus, but it plainly said what the Jap wanted to hear. Peterson joined in. He understood, all right. He understood this was nastier trouble than he’d imagined in his worst nightmares.

You should have run away, he jeered at himself. But where could he have run? Oahu had nowhere to hide, except maybe among the civilians in Honolulu. He hadn’t been able to stomach the notion… and now it was too late.

A Japanese soldier came up to him and waited expectantly. You are to bow and you are to obey. Tasting the gall of the defeated, Peterson bowed. It’s only politeness, he told himself. It’s what they do, too. It would have been only politeness had the Jap returned the bow. He didn’t. He accepted it as nothing less than his due. He deserved it for being on the winning side, and he didn’t have to give it back.

He reached into Peterson’s pockets. Peterson stood there, stiff as a statue. You lost. This is what happens when you lose. The Jap found his Navy rank badges. He kept them. All he cared about was that they were silver. I really am nothing but a corporal now. Then the Jap found his billfold. He had fourteen dollars, just about what he’d had when he took off from the Enterprise ’s flight deck. It wasn’t a whole lot of money, and he sure hadn’t had any place to spend it since he’d parachuted down onto that golf course.

By the way the Jap clutched the greenbacks in his fist and hopped up and down and jabbered in his own language, he might have broken into Fort Knox. People talked about inscrutable Orientals, but this guy wasn’t inscrutable. He was damn near out of his mind with glee.

He was so overjoyed, he even gave the wallet back to Peterson once he’d pocketed the money. “Thanks a lot,” Peterson said, sarcastic before he remembered sarcasm might be deadly dangerous. Then he had a rush of brains to the head. He bowed again.

This time, the Jap bowed back. You’re nothing but a lousy prisoner, but I can be polite about robbing you. That was what it boiled down to. It couldn’t mean anything else. You son of a bitch, Peterson thought. You rotten, stinking son of a bitch.

The other Japs were plundering the rest of the Americans. The prisoners took it quietly. Flies landed on the ruined face of the soldier who’d resented it. The Japanese officer barked a command. The interpreter said, “This way,” and pointed. The Americans trudged off into the new world of captivity.

SUSIE HIGGINS LAY on the narrow bed and sobbed. “I wish to God I’d never come here!” she wailed.

Even though Oscar van der Kirk had come to Hawaii years before Susie had, that same thought had occurred to him. He said, “A little too late to worry about it now.”

She glared at him. Even with her makeup smeared and tear streaks down her face, she looked good. Not a hell of a lot of women could say that. “What are we going to do? The Japs are taking over the island.”

“Yeah, I noticed that,” Oscar said. “I don’t know what we can do except keep our heads down, try to stay out of trouble, and hope there’ll be enough to eat. Have you seen the prices? Food’s going up like a Fourth of July skyrocket.”

“We lost! ” Susie exclaimed. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“You knew it was going to, same as I did,” Oscar answered. “You said so.”

This time, Susie glared at him in a different way. She didn’t like getting reminded of what she’d already said. “They’re Japs,” she said. “They’re not Americans. They’re not even white men. They shouldn’t be able to do this.”

Oscar shrugged. “The guy who owns this building is a Jap. A lot of the people who’ve made it big for themselves here are Japs-and that’s in spite of everything the haoles do to hold ’em down. When I first moved here, I thought the same way you do. The longer I’ve stayed, the more I don’t. The Japs can do anything we can do, and I don’t give a damn if they’re green.”

“Are you going to teach them to surf-ride?” she spat.

He grunted. That question had occurred to him, too, and he wished it hadn’t. “I guess so. If they want to learn. If they want to pay me,” he said slowly. “Their money’d spend just like anybody else’s. Lord knows we’re going to need it.”

“I wouldn’t have anything to do with them,” Susie said.

“Yeah, well, surf-riding lessons aren’t what they’d want from you,” Oscar said.

Susie’s hand reached out for something to throw. Fortunately, nothing was in reach of where she lay. “And if I gave ’em that, how would it be any different than you giving ’em lessons?”

“It would, that’s all.” Oscar had to stop and figure out how. He did his best: “Giving lessons is what I do for a living. It’d be like a cabby giving a Jap a ride. The other-if you did that, you’d be doing it ’cause you wanted to, not because it was your job.” If he said it was, she’d get up to find something to throw at him. He’d deserve it, too.

Instead of getting up, she changed the subject. She hardly ever came out and admitted she was wrong. This sort of thing was her nearest approach. She asked, “Are you going to watch the victory parade tomorrow?”

“Heck, I don’t know. I was thinking about it,” he answered. “Why not? It’s something to do. I’m not going to cheer or anything.”

“Jesus, I hope not,” she said. “I bet everybody who’s there’ll be a Jap, though.”

Oscar grunted again. He hadn’t thought of that. “I bet you’re right. Okay, I’ll stay away. Wouldn’t that be just what I need, showing up on some lousy Jap propaganda newsreel? If it got back to my folks, they’d never live it down.”

“That’s more like it,” she said. “What’ll we do instead?”

“We can go out on the ocean, or else we can stay here. Your call,” he said.

She shrugged. “Worry about it in the morning.” She got up from the bed and looked at herself in the little mirror over the sink. “Lord! I’m a fright! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Then we’d fight over something else, he thought. Aloud, he said, “You always look good to me, babe.” That was true enough. He knew exactly what hold Susie had on him. Knowing it didn’t make it any less real.

In the morning, he wanted to go out to the Pacific. Susie said, “Go ahead. I just don’t feel like it.” She looked at him in a way that would have been sidelong except, in a fashion he couldn’t quite define, it wasn’t. “I don’t much feel like anything else today, either,” she added, just in case he hadn’t got the point.

But he had. He was no dummy, not where people were concerned. “See you later,” he said, and hurried out the door. He trotted down toward Waikiki Beach like a man going toward his beloved. He got his surfboard from the Outrigger Club and was heading across the soft sand of the beach to the sea when somebody behind him let out a yell.

He stopped. There was Charlie Kaapu, also with his surfboard under his arm. “You can’t stand the Japs, either, hey?” Charlie said.

“That’s… part of it,” Oscar answered. “Come on-let’s go.”

They entered the water side by side. Setting his skill against the surf, Oscar didn’t have to think about the Japs or anything else. If he had done any thinking, he surely would have taken a tumble. If you were anything but a creature of reflex and reaction on the waves, you were in trouble.

When he and Charlie came up onto the beach after one long, smooth ride, he saw a pair of Japanese officers watching. Well, would I teach a Jap to surf-ride? he wondered. He didn’t want to think about that, either, and plunged into the Pacific again. But the Japanese officers were still there when he got back. So were the rest of his troubles, of course. He knew they wouldn’t disappear no matter how he ran. Knowing didn’t stop him from running.

After a while, he’d had enough. He walked up the beach to the Outrigger Club. He passed within about ten feet of the two Japs. He wanted to pretend they didn’t exist. But they both bowed to him. He’d heard things about how touchy Japs were, so he figured he’d better nod back. That seemed to satisfy them. He’d never been sorry to get a salute for what he did on a surfboard, but he was now.

The apartment was empty when he walked in. A note lay on the bed. He picked it up. Good luck, Susie had written. It isn’t fun any more. Nothing is much fun any more. He stared down at that, then slowly nodded. It wasn’t as if she were wrong.

Then he checked the place. She hadn’t cleaned him out. Maybe that meant that, in her own way, she had style. Maybe it just meant he didn’t own anything she thought worth stealing. He went back and looked at the note again. “Good luck, Susie,” he said.

JIRO TAKAHASHI CLIMBED out of the tent where he and his sons were living. They were lucky to have even a tent. Their apartment building was a burnt-out wreck. No one had found any trace of his wife. Officially, Reiko was listed as missing. Jiro clung to that. He knew what it meant, knew what it almost had to mean. The less he had to think about that, though, the better.

Escaping the tent felt good. If he stayed in there, he’d just quarrel with Hiroshi and Kenzo again. They blamed Japan for the bombs that had left them without a home and their mother missing or worse. He blamed the Americans for not surrendering once things were hopeless. He also scorned them for surrendering at all. He didn’t even notice the inconsistency.

Before the tent city sprang up, this had been a botanical garden. A lot of the trees here had come down for the sake of firewood. At first, the haole in charge of the place had fussed about that, but people had to cook food and heat water. What were they supposed to do, go without fire?

“Ha! Takahashi!” There was old man Okamoto. He’d lost his house in the bombing, too. “You going to watch the parade?”

“I don’t know,” Jiro answered. “It’s hard to care about anything any more, you know what I mean?”

“Life is all confused,” Okamoto said.

“Hai. Honto,” Jiro agreed. Confused he was. When the fighting started, he’d wanted Japan to teach the United States a lesson. Haoles had the arrogance to treat Japanese like inferiors. They deserved a comeuppance.

And they’d got it. Oahu belonged to the Empire of Japan. All the Hawaiian islands did. But Jiro had never imagined victory would come at such a high price to him. He’d never imagined the war would come home to civilians at all. When you thought of war, you thought of soldiers shooting at soldiers, of airplanes shooting down airplanes, of ships sinking ships. You didn’t think of bombs and shells landing on your city, on your home. You didn’t think any of your loved ones would go missing, which was only a politer way of saying get killed.

You didn’t think about that, but you were only a civilian, so what did you know? The officers in the fancy uniforms figured that war involved making your life miserable. They were the ones who gave orders to the soldiers and the airplanes and the ships. What they said went. And if you happened to get in the way… well, too bad for you.

“Come on,” old man Okamoto said. “I mean, what else have we got to do?”

Takahashi had no answer for that. He could stay here and brood. Or he could stay here and quarrel with his sons, which was a loud, external kind of brooding over whose officers in fancy uniforms were to blame for the way things were in Honolulu.

“All right,” Jiro said, his mouth making up its mind before his brain did. “Let’s go.”

To get to King Street, down which the parade would run, they had to walk down Nuuanu Avenue through the bombed-out part of town. Scavengers picked through the ruins for whatever they could salvage. Jiro walked on, his face hard and set as a stone. He would not think of Reiko lying there lost in the wreckage. He would not think that her body added to the stench of death still lingering here.

He would not-but he did.

King Street wasn’t too badly damaged. Here and there, buildings had broken windows, or perhaps plywood where windows had been. Takahashi didn’t see any craters in the street itself. Rising Sun flags fluttered from lamp poles. Okamoto pointed to one of them and said, “The Japanese consulate had people putting those up yesterday.”

“Really?” Jiro said. “I know the consul a little. I’ve sold Kita-san tuna fairly often-whenever I had some that was particularly good. And Morimura, the chancellor at the consulate, knows a good piece of fish, too.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Okamoto said. “Morimura drives all over the place. Did you ever notice? I wonder how much spying he did for Japan.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Jiro said. “I was out on the ocean. I only paid attention to him when I had fish I thought he might like.”

“Well, he did. He bought gas from me plenty of times,” Okamoto said. “And Oahu’s not a big island. You can do a lot of driving here without using much gas. So if you’re filling up twice a week, or even three times, you’re doing a lot of driving.”

Before Takahashi could answer, a Japanese boy who couldn’t have been more than six handed him a small Japanese flag on a stick. “Here, mister,” the boy said in English. He gave Okamoto a flag, too, and then went on up the sidewalk passing them out.

Following the kid with his eyes, Jiro took in the other people who’d come to watch the Imperial Japanese Army’s victory parade. Almost all of them, unsurprisingly, were Japanese themselves. Most of them were of his generation, the generation that had been born in Japan. A few men and women in their twenties and thirties accompanied them, but only a few.

“Here they come!” People pointed west. Jiro craned his neck to see better. He’d watched U.S. military parades often enough, so he had some idea what to expect. This one didn’t seem too different, not at first. Standard-bearers carrying Japanese flags led the procession. Half a dozen tanks followed them.

The tanks were both more and less impressive than Jiro had expected. They weren’t very big. But they’d plainly seen combat. They were splashed with mud and other stains. Their yellow-green paint was chipped and scarred by American bullets. Still, the bullets hadn’t penetrated their armor. The tanks were here. They’d won.

Here and there, someone would clap or shout out, “Banzai! ” Most of the crowd stayed quiet, though. That made Jiro notice the absence of a marching band. He’d never paid much attention to the ones in American parades. Now, to his surprise, he found himself missing them.

Japanese officers stood in open cars and waved to the crowd. Unlike the tanks, the cars hadn’t come from Japan. They were convertibles with Hawaii license plates. That didn’t bother Takahashi too much. If you won, you captured what you needed. Japan had won.

Behind the tanks and the officers came regiment after regiment of Japanese soldiers. More “Banzai! ”s and applause rang out for them. They marched proudly, eyes straight ahead, faces expressionless, bayoneted rifles on their shoulders.

“They look brave. They look tough,” Jiro said to old man Okamoto. The other Japanese nodded.

And then sudden silence slammed down on the crowd. After the neat ranks of imperial soldiers, and plainly included as a contrast, shambled a swarm of American prisoners. The U.S. Army men went up the street in no particular order. They were skinny. They were dirty. They were unshaven. Their uniforms were torn and filthy. Most of them trudged along with their heads down, as if they didn’t want to meet the eyes of the people staring at them.

For as long as anyone but the oldest residents could remember, Americans had ruled the roost and called the shots in Hawaii. The sight of those prisoners-and the smell of them, for they hadn’t bathed any time lately, which became only too clear as they went by-said one era had passed here and another was beginning. The handful of Japanese guards who herded the Americans along seemed a different and superior species.

Still more Japanese soldiers followed the prisoners. “Not bad,” Okamoto said. “Funny watching all those haoles go by like so many sheep.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Jiro answered. “They didn’t let Japanese join their divisions here. Now they’re paying the price.”

“That’s the truth.” But Okamoto lowered his voice and added, “We’re all paying the price now. It’s going to be a hungry time.”

Takahashi nodded. “I’ve got to get that Doi fellow to put a mast on my sampan. That’s not going to wait any more. If I can catch fish, I won’t starve.” Soup kitchens fed the refugees in the botanical garden. There wasn’t enough to go around, and what there was wasn’t very good.

“Bound to be a good idea for you. Nobody knows where fuel’s going to come from now,” Okamoto said. He nudged Jiro. “Nobody will know what you eat that you don’t bring in, either. You’re lucky.”

“Some luck,” Jiro said. No home, his wife missing and probably dead…

No matter what he thought, old man Okamoto nodded this time. “Yes, lucky. Your children are alive, and fishermen don’t starve any more than cooks do.”

“I won’t be a fisherman any more if Doi can’t rig the sampan.” As always, saying that frightened Jiro. He’d been a fisherman as long as he could remember. His father had started taking him out on the Inland Sea when he was a very little boy. If he couldn’t be a fisherman, what could he be? Anything at all?

Okamoto shrugged. “He’ll manage. He’d better manage. If we don’t get boats out there, nobody eats.”

Jiro grunted. That was too likely to be true. As stocks of everything got shorter, prices went on soaring. But if Okamoto or anybody else thought the sampan fleet could feed Oahu by itself… Jiro knew what a dream that was. There weren’t enough sampans. There probably weren’t enough fish, either. And the sampans wouldn’t be able to go out nearly so far with sails as they could with their diesels. Or if they did go out as far, they wouldn’t be able to do it so often.

“Japan can’t want us to starve,” Jiro said.

Another shrug from Okamoto. “Why should she care? As long as she’s got soldiers and airplanes here, what difference do we make? We’re just a nuisance.”

Shaking his head, Jiro said, “That can’t be so. You and I, we’re Japanese, too.” Old man Okamoto only shrugged again.

AT OHIO STATE, Jane Armitage had read Candide. The advice the naive hero had got could be boiled down to one phrase: tend your garden. While Jane was in college, she’d never understood what important advice it could be. She did now. Now she had a garden of her own.

Her little plot of turnips and potatoes had sprouted. With luck, they would grow fast. She eyed the turnip greens. The only people she’d ever heard of who ate such things were niggers. She shrugged. If you got hungry enough, you’d eat almost anything.

A mynah bird fluttered down and landed in her plot. It pecked at something: a bug. “Good for you,” Jane said. “Eat lots of bugs. Get fat.” Were mynahs good to eat? She wouldn’t have been surprised if, somewhere on the island, some people were already finding out.

And then there were zebra doves. The blue-faced birds were so tame, you could grab them with your bare hands. They made pigeons seem smart by comparison. They weren’t very big, but they were meat. And they were all over the place. They ate anything that wasn’t nailed down. She’d shooed them out of the plot more times than she could count. If she didn’t shoo them… If she grabbed them or netted them…

Could I wring their necks? Could I pluck them and gut them? She wasn’t a farm girl. She’d never dealt with chickens or hogs or anything like that. She suspected that gutting a zebra dove might make her lose her lunch. But if she had no lunch to lose, if she was empty in there… And after she’d done it a few times, wouldn’t she get used to it?

Something brown and low to the ground skittered toward the mynah bird, which fluttered away. The mongoose reared up in almost palpable frustration. Jane didn’t worry about him. He didn’t care about turnips or potatoes or any of the other crops different people were growing. He might assassinate some zebra doves, but that was as far as he went toward being a pest.

Jane wished he would have gone as far as assassinating rats. That was why people had brought mongooses here in the first place. But the mongooses preferred eating birds that were out and about during the day, as they were. Rats came out at night. Traps didn’t do much to discourage them. Jane had known about rats back in Columbus. Nothing did much to discourage them.

A Japanese soldier tramped by. Jane bent and dug out a weed with her trowel. She didn’t want the Jap paying any special attention to her, either because he thought she was lazy or because he liked her looks. Bad things could happen both ways.

He kept going. She breathed a silent sigh of relief. Some of the local Japanese women had got friendly, or more than friendly, with the new occupiers. And, to Jane’s shame, so had a few of the local white women. If you can’t join ’em, lick ’em, she thought scornfully. The heat that rose to her cheeks after that had nothing to do with the warm sun in the sky. That was the sort of thing Fletch would have said.

As she got rid of another weed, she wondered how Fletch was doing. However much she wanted not to, she couldn’t help herself. They’d been together most of her adult life, and apart for not very long. She was used to worrying about what was going on with him. She didn’t want him dead, just out of her life. She’d got that. For all she knew, he was dead, whether she wanted him that way or not.

A shadow made her look up. There stood Yosh Nakayama, watching her. Major Hirabayashi’s local go-between nodded. “You do well,” he said in his slow, careful English. “Plot looks good.”

“Thanks,” Jane said. She didn’t want to collaborate with the Japs and their quislings, but she didn’t want to get them angry at her, either. Very bad things happened if the Japs got mad at you.

“Hope everything grows fast,” Nakayama said. “Hope food we have lasts till it does.”

“Aren’t the Japanese”-Jane was careful not to say Japs to a Jap-“ bringing in supplies?”

“For their own men, yes. For anybody else…” Nakayama shrugged. “They don’t have a lot of ships to spare.” By the way he said it, that was liable to be an understatement.

“What do we do if… if things run out?”

The Hawaiian Japanese man shrugged again. “Eat sugarcane. Eat pineapple. Eat whatever birds and fruit we can. Then we start to starve.” He didn’t wait for any more questions. With a curt nod, he walked away to inspect the work of some other involuntary gardener.

Jane eyed the zebra doves even more thoughtfully than she had before.

She worked till almost sundown. Her hands had blistered at first. Now they were starting to callus. Her nails were short, and had dirt under them. Her face was sunburned, her hair a sweaty mess. She didn’t worry as much about that as she’d thought she would. All her neighbors were in the same boat. And if that boat happened to be the Titanic… She shoved the thought aside.

She still had running water in her apartment. She didn’t have hot water, though, and she couldn’t even make any on the stove. Like the water heater, the stove ran on natural gas. There was no more natural gas for them to run on. A cold shower in January would have been an invitation to double pneumonia-to say nothing of frostbite-in Columbus. Here in Wahiawa, it was refreshing, as long as she didn’t linger under the water too long.

No more shampoo, either. Jane did still have a couple of bars of Ivory left after the one she was using. What she would do once the last suds gurgled down the drain, she didn’t know. Her mouth twisted as she brushed her hair in front of the mirror. Figuring out what she’d do then wasn’t very hard. One of her pupils could have done it with no trouble at all. She’d be filthy and she’d stink, that was what.

Other such worries were cropping up, too. She was almost out of Kotex pads. Like everything else, those came, or had come, from the mainland. What would she use without them? Rags, she supposed. What else was there? Her mouth twisted again, harder this time.

She put on a sun dress to go to the communal supper. It was fairly clean: she didn’t do farm work in it. Most people dressed a little nicer than usual for supper. Some didn’t bother.

A couple of Japanese soldiers with rifles on their shoulders strode up the street toward her. She got out of their way and bowed, holding the pose till they’d gone past. They mostly didn’t bother people who followed the rules they’d set. Mostly. But you never could tell. That was part of what made them so scary.

Supper was rice and noodles with a little tomato sauce and some canned mushrooms for flavor. Dessert was canned pineapple. That had been the only dessert for some time. Jane was sick of it, but ate it anyhow. Her body cried out for all the food it could get. Supper wasn’t really enough. When she finished, she didn’t feel she was starving any more, but she didn’t feel full, either.

Everybody else seemed as tired as she was. Nobody said much. Nobody said anything at all about the Japs. Early on, a woman had cursed them at a communal meal. A couple of days later, she abruptly stopped showing up. No one had seen her since. Somebody had listened to her. Somebody had betrayed her. Nobody knew who, or even whether the informer was Japanese, Chinese, or haole. Nobody was inclined to take a chance. The first lesson of tyranny: shut up and keep your head down, Jane thought.

Something with eyes that glowed in the dark startled her as she was walking home. After a moment, she realized it was only a cat. She relaxed and walked on. And then, all unbidden, a phrase she’d heard in an Italian restaurant in Columbus popped into her mind: roof rabbit. The fellow who’d said it had laughed. So had the girl with him. Maybe an occasional cat had gone into the pot back in the old country. People in America didn’t do things like that… did they?

What Jane thought was, A lot more meat on a cat than on one of those little zebra doves. Spit flooded into her mouth. It had been a while since she’d tasted meat. Then tears stung her eyes. Was this what hunger, and fear of hunger, did to people? She nodded to herself, there in the night. So it seemed.

CORPORAL TAKEO SHIMIZU stood in a long line at a Japanese field post office in Honolulu. The package he carried was addressed to his parents. The line moved with the glacial pace of post-office lines everywhere. He didn’t care. He’d expected nothing different. Sooner or later, he’d get to the front of it. He didn’t have anything else going on in the meantime.

At last, he came up to a clerk. The man looked even more bored than Shimizu felt. “Contents of the package?” he asked. By his tone, he couldn’t have cared less.

“Souvenirs of war: an American flag and a bayonet I took from the rifle of a dead Yankee,” Shimizu answered. “I want my honorable parents to see that I have not been idle here.”

The postal clerk grunted. Had he seen any combat while the Japanese were overrunning Oahu? Shimizu wouldn’t have bet on it. Some people always managed to land soft jobs behind the lines. The clerk threw the package on a scale. “Postage is seventy-five sen,” he announced.

Shimizu gave him a one-yen coin and got his change. The clerk put stamps on the package. They were, Shimizu saw, American stamps. But they had a blue overprint that said Hawaii in Japanese characters. One was also overprinted 50, the other 25.

“Our islands now,” Shimizu said, not without a certain pride. He’d earned the right to be proud, as far as he was concerned. The Hawaiian Islands were Japanese now because of him and men like him.

“Hai.” The clerk sounded indifferent. He didn’t quite yawn in Shimizu’s face, but he came close. What were you to do with such people? Yes, my friend, have you ever seen machine-gun fire? Shimizu wondered. How would you like it if you did? Would you still be bored? I doubt it.

He stepped away from the clerk. Another Japanese soldier walked up with a bigger, heavier package than the one he’d just mailed. What was in that one? Clothes, maybe, Shimizu thought. Shirts and trousers would make very good spoils of war to send home.

When Shimizu went outside, a white woman was walking up the street toward him. She hastily dipped her head-it wasn’t much of a bow, but it would do-and got out of his way. He walked past her as if she didn’t exist. He’d never seen a white woman before he landed on Oahu. He could count the times he’d seen white men on the fingers of one hand.

A local Japanese man about his own age who wore American-style clothes did a better job of bowing. With him, Shimizu felt he could unbend a little: “This is the prettiest country in the world. You’re lucky to live here all the time.”

“Please talk slow,” the local said. “Talk only little Japanese. So sorry.” He wasn’t kidding. He didn’t just have a peasant accent, either. He had the sort of accent an English-speaker would. He might look Japanese on the outside, but he was American where it counted.

Corporal Shimizu felt betrayed. “Why didn’t your parents teach you the way they should have?” he asked angrily.

The young man flinched as if Shimizu had threatened him with a bayonet. “So sorry,” he said again. He sounded tolerably Japanese when he brought out the stock phrase. But then he went on, fumbling for words and butchering his grammar: “Grandfather, grandmother come here. Father, mother born here. They speak Japanese with grandfather, grandmother, speak English with me. Speak Japanese when no want I to know what they meaning. I learn some, not much. English number one here.”

“Disgraceful,” Shimizu said. What was even more disgraceful was that the young local didn’t even understand the word. Shimizu tried again: “Bad.”

Yes, the local got that. He bowed again, repeating, “Gomen nasai.” Shimizu didn’t care if he was sorry or not. He jerked his thumb down the street. The young man hurried away.

When Shimizu got back to his company’s encampment, he was still in a foul mood. “What’s the matter, Corporal-san?” Shiro Wakuzawa asked. “You look like you could bite nails in two.”

“I’ll tell you, that’s how I feel,” Shimizu said. The story of the young man who could hardly speak Japanese poured out of him. “And he was happy that way!” he raged. “Happy! English number one here, he said-‘English ichi-ban.” He mocked the way the local spoke. “And he couldn’t even understand when I told him what a disgrace he was.”

“So sorry, Corporal,” Wakuzawa said. That did nothing to make Shimizu feel better. It just reminded him of the Hawaiian Japanese stuttering apologies. Private Wakuzawa went on, “Everything is pretty crazy here, though. Some of the policemen in Honolulu are Koreans. Koreans, if you can believe it! And everybody, even the Japanese, even the whites, has to do what they say.”

“Koreans? That is crazy,” Shimizu agreed. Korea had been part of the Japanese Empire longer than he’d been alive. Any Japanese knew Koreans were hewers of wood and drawers of water, and that was about all. They got drafted into the Army, but as laborers and prison guards. They weren’t good for anything else. Shimizu wouldn’t have wanted to go into battle alongside Koreans with rifles in their hands. He said, “Americans have to be a little screwy to let something like that go on. I bet we take care of it now that we’re in charge.”

“I hope so, Corporal,” Wakuzawa said. “If anybody thinks I’m going to do what some Korean tells me to do, he’d better think twice.”

“Oh, no.” Shimizu shook his head. “Maybe they call themselves Americans, not Koreans. I don’t care if they do. Maybe they call themselves policemen. I don’t care about that, either. We are soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. We obey no one except our superiors in the Army. If some Korean cop-or even a real American cop-tries to tell you what to do, kick him in the teeth.”

Wakuzawa was a skinny little fellow with a ready smile. He couldn’t look very fierce no matter how hard he tried. But he did his best now. “Hai, Corporal-san! ” he said, and mimed a kick at someone taller than he was.

Shimizu laughed out loud. “I don’t think you’d get him in the teeth with that, but it would probably do the job.” He slapped the private on the back. In Japan, that would have been an unheard-of familiarity between noncom and first-year soldier. Here in easygoing Hawaii, it seemed natural enough.

KENZO AND HIROSHI Takahashi used shovels and rakes and hoes to clear rubble from the streets of Honolulu. Till the Oshima Maru put to sea with sails taking the place of her engine, that was the most use they could be. The job also paid well: three full meals a day, plus a dollar.

The work was steady, if you liked that sort of thing. Kenzo didn’t. “Is this why we graduated from high school?” he asked bitterly, filling the shovel full of broken bits of brick and dumping them into a waiting wheelbarrow.

His older brother shrugged and added a shovelful of his own. “It’s what we’ve got,” Hiroshi answered. “If we don’t pitch in, the town just stays a mess.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Kenzo said. He and Hiroshi didn’t just speak English-they made a point of speaking English. He wondered if it was a point the rest of the men in the labor gang understood, or even cared about. Like any outfit in Honolulu, the rubble-clearing party had men of every blood and every mix of bloods in it. Some of them used English, some the pidgin that did duty for English among those who didn’t speak it very well, and some the languages of their homelands. The straw boss was a Hawaiian Japanese who was fluently profane in both his own language and an English that was almost but not quite pidgin.

“No waste time!” the straw boss shouted. “You waste your time, you waste my time. You waste my time, you be sorry!”

This was harder work than fishing. Kenzo hadn’t thought anything could be. It never got as frantic as pulling tuna off the line and gutting them one after another, but it never let up, either. One shovelful after another, the whole day long… “The guys who built the Pyramids worked like this,” he said.

Hiroshi shook his head. “They didn’t have wheelbarrows.”

Kenzo grunted. He sounded very much like his father when he did it, though he would have brained anybody who said so with his shovel. He said, “Well, you’re right. It could be worse. I wouldn’t’ve believed it.”

“Keep an eye peeled for cans,” Hiroshi added. “Guys who built the Pyramids didn’t have those, either.”

This time, Kenzo refused to back down. “They didn’t know how lucky they were,” he said.

The rule was that any cans found intact had to go into the communal food store. Nobody paid attention to the rule unless Japanese soldiers were close by to enforce it. Otherwise, an older rule prevailed: finders keepers. Of course, half the time you didn’t know what you’d found till you got it open. Labels didn’t last, not when big chunks of the city had turned into wasteland. Corned-beef hash? Canned peaches? Tomato soup? Nobody was fussy, not these days.

Every so often, Japanese soldiers would march past. When they did, the laborers had to stop what they were doing and bow. Kenzo ground his teeth at showing the invaders a respect he didn’t feel. Like most Japanese his age in Hawaii, he’d always felt more ties with America than with the old country. Japan had been something for his father to talk about nostalgically. But the war had made sure no haole, no Chinese, no Korean-nobody-would ever treat him as anything but a damn Jap.

After lowering his spade one more time to bow to some soldiers, he noticed something interesting. “You see what I see?” he asked Hiroshi in a voice not much above a whisper.

“What’s that?” his brother said, just as quietly.

“They don’t come around by ones or twos any more,” Kenzo said. “They’re always in bunches-like bananas.”

“Heh,” Hiroshi said-about as much laughter as the crack deserved. “I can tell you how come, if you really want to know.”

“Sure,” Kenzo said. “Spit it out.”

Hiroshi paused till the straw boss went by. He didn’t stop shoveling. Neither did Kenzo. The straw boss went on to yell at somebody else. The two Takahashis looked busy enough to suit him. Once he’d moved out of earshot, Hiroshi said, “They don’t go around by ones or twos any more because they got knocked over the head when they did-always where nobody could see anything or find out what happened.”

“Yeah?” Kenzo asked eagerly.

“Yeah,” his brother said. “No way to take hostages or anything when they haven’t got any idea who done it.” He threw another shovelful of wreckage into the wheelbarrow, then stopped when he took a look at Kenzo’s face. “Don’t you go getting any dumb ideas, now!” He wagged a finger at Kenzo.

“If I’m going to knock anybody over the head, I’ll start with Dad,” Kenzo said. Hiroshi snorted as if he’d been joking. To show he wasn’t, he went on, “Even after what they did to Mother, he still went to their stinking parade.”

“Hell, you know Dad,” Hiroshi said. “He stands up and whinnies when he hears ‘Kimigayo.’ ”

That made Kenzo snort. It damn near made him giggle. He could picture his father-picture him all too well-as an aging cart horse responding to the Japanese national anthem. “Damn you,” he said, still snorting. “Now I’m going to want to give him a lump of sugar whenever I see him.”

“Well, go ahead,” Hiroshi said. “We’re short on all kinds of stuff, but we’ve got sugar. Sugar and pineapple. How long can we eat ’em?”

“Here’s hoping we don’t have to find out, that’s all.” When Kenzo thought about food, he didn’t feel like joking any more. He went back to work. If he was busy, he wouldn’t have to think so much. And laborers were getting fed well… so far, anyhow.

Japanese soldiers weren’t the only people on the streets. There were also scroungers, men and women picking through the ruins for whatever they could grab. Both laborers and soldiers chased them when they saw them. But the scroungers were like mongooses; they were good at not being seen.

And there were ordinary people trying to lead ordinary lives in times that were anything but ordinary. They often had a faintly lost air, as if they not only couldn’t believe how much things had changed but also refused to acknowledge it. Most of the people like that seemed to be haoles. They’d been on top so long, they’d come to take it for granted. They didn’t know how to cope now that Hawaii was under new management. They seemed to think this was all a bad dream. They’d wake up pretty soon, and everything would be fine. Except it wouldn’t.

Kenzo froze with his shovel in midair. Up the street toward him came Elsie Sundberg and a couple of other girls. The last time she’d seen him, she’d pretended she hadn’t. The memory of that still burned. Would she do it again? He didn’t think he could stand it if she did, even though she wasn’t exactly his girlfriend and never had been.

He knew just when she recognized him. She half missed a step, then turned to one of her friends and said something Kenzo was too far away to catch. The other girls just shrugged, which told him nothing.

Elsie squared her shoulders. She kept walking. When she came to where Kenzo was working, she nodded and said, “Hello, Ken. How are you?”

He felt like cheering. Instead, he nodded back. “I’m okay. How are you? Is your family all right?”

“I’m… here,” she answered. That could have meant anything. “My family’s safe, yes. How about you? I see your brother’s here.”

“Yes.” Kenzo nodded jerkily. “And my father’s fine. My mother…” He didn’t go on. His face twisted. I won’t cry in front of her. I won’t, he told himself, and somehow he didn’t.

“Oh, Ken! I’m so sorry!” All of a sudden, Elsie sounded like the girl he’d known for so long, not the near-stranger who thought he was nothing but a Jap.

One of the girls she was with, a brunette named Joyce something who’d graduated a couple of years ahead of her and Kenzo, said, “I didn’t know the Japs did anything to their own.”

He gripped the handle on the shovel very tightly. She probably hasn’t got any brains to knock out, he told himself. He made himself hold still. It wasn’t easy. Neither was holding his voice steady as he answered, “I’m not a Jap. I’m an American, just as much as you are-or I would be if you’d let me.”

By the way Joyce looked at him, he might as well have spoken to her in Japanese. Elsie’s other friend rolled her eyes, as if to say she’d heard it before and didn’t believe a word of it. Kenzo waited to see what Elsie would do. She eyed him as if she were seeing him for the first time. In a way, maybe she was. She said, “Take care of yourself. I’ve got to go.”

And she did. Joyce wagged a finger at her. She just shrugged. The straw boss yelled, “You work, Takahashi, you lazy baka yaro!” Kenzo did. Maybe the world wasn’t such a wretched place after all.