“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 glad 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.
That was a Japanese production. It seemed to have American models, but watching it was like looking in a mirror: everything was backwards. The Allies were the bad guys, the armed forces of the Axis the heroes. To blaring, triumphal music, Japanese soldiers advanced in China and Burma. Japanese bombers knocked the stuffing out of towns in Australia and Ceylon. They also pounded a British aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean. “Banzai! ” the sailors shouted as flames and smoke swallowed the carrier.
Somehow-by submarine? — the Jap newsreel makers had also got hold of some German footage. Men in coal-scuttle helmets dashed forward with artillery support on the Russian front. More German soldiers led bedraggled Englishmen into captivity in North Africa. And U-boats sent ship after ship to the bottom off the East Coast of the USA. Those sinking freighters drew more “Banzai! ”s from the Japanese sailors, who no doubt had a professional appreciation of their allies’ murderous competence.
By the time the newsreel got done, only a Pollyanna would have given a nickel for the Allies’ chances. “It’s all propaganda,” Kenzo whispered to Elsie. She nodded, but she was blinking rapidly, trying to hold back tears.
Then the Western came on. That was a merciful relief. You knew Gary Cooper would drive off the Indians, save the pretty girl, and live happily ever after. The movie had no subtitles, but the Japanese sailors didn’t need any help figuring out what was going on.
They made a noisy audience. Before the war, ushers would have thrown anybody that raucous right out of the theater. Obviously, nobody was going to try throwing the sailors out. Kenzo expected them to root for the Apaches or Comanches or whatever the Indians were supposed to be. But they didn’t-they were all for tall, fair, white-skinned Gary Cooper. “Shoot the savages!” they called. “Kill them all!” Cooper earned as many “Banzai! ”s as the German U-boat captains had.
Elsie couldn’t understand the sailors. She did frown when they made an especially loud racket, but that was all. After a while, Kenzo reached out and took her hand. She squeezed his, and squeezed it again whenever the Japanese sailors got uproarious.
“Let’s leave before the lights come up,” he said as the six-shooter epic drew to a close.
When they went out into the lobby, Kenzo wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. Half a dozen soldiers with the Japanese Army’s star on their caps were buying lemonade and macadamia nuts there. But he managed to get Elsie outside before their eyes lit on her.
Both of them blinked against the bright sunshine. “Thank you, Ken,” Elsie said. “It was nice to get out of the house for something besides trying to find enough to eat.”
“Can we do it again?” Kenzo asked, and he felt like jumping in the air when she nodded. He steered her away from the theater, away from trouble. As they started back toward her house, he asked, “Is it really so bad?”
She looked at him. “You’re a fisherman. You don’t know how lucky you are. Believe me, you don’t. Nobody we know who keeps chickens lets them go outside any more. They disappear.”
Kenzo suspected she didn’t know anybody who’d kept chickens before December 7. He admitted to himself that he might have been wrong, though. Some haole families couldn’t seem to forget they’d come off the farm in Iowa. He said, “It’s not an easy time for anybody.”
Elsie drew in a breath. She was going to scorch him. He could tell-something like, What do you know about it, with your dad licking Kita’s boots? But her anger died before it was born. All she said, quietly, was, “I forgot about your mother for a second. I’m sorry.”
Back at the theater, she’d been the one who kept squeezing his hand. Now he squeezed hers. “Thanks for remembering,” he said.
When they got back to her house, they stood on the front porch. She spoke the ritual words: “Thank you for a very nice time.”
He gave her a kiss. With the sun still in the sky, it was a decorous kiss. If her folks were watching-and they probably were-he didn’t want them saying she couldn’t go out with him any more. But a kiss it definitely was, and he wore a big, silly grin on his face all the way back to the tent in the botanical garden.
COMMANDER MINORU GENDA and Commander Mitsuo Fuchida met in front of Iolani Palace. They bowed politely to each other. Genda grinned wryly. “Here we are again,” he said.
“Hai.” Fuchida spoke with amused resignation: “Maybe we’ll have better luck this time.”
“Well, it couldn’t be much worse,” Genda said.
The Hawaiian and Japanese flags fluttered over the palace as the two Navy officers climbed the stairs. Japanese guards at the top of the stairs saluted and stepped aside to let Genda and Fuchida in. They climbed the koa-wood interior stairway and went into the library. Their Army counterparts, Lieutenant Colonels Minami and Murakami, were waiting for them behind that Victorian battleship of a desk. The Army men looked no more hopeful about the coming interview than Genda felt.
“We’ll try it again, that’s all,” Murakami said.
Izumi Shirakawa scurried into the library next. As usual, the local man looked nervous and unhappy about translating for the occupiers. Odds were he sympathized with the other side. If he did his job and otherwise kept his mouth shut, no one would have to ask him any questions about that. He was a good interpreter. Genda knew enough English to be sure of that.