He sounded dead serious. That only made Joe laugh harder. He said, “God help the Japs when we turn you loose on them.”
Now Orson Sharp was the one who laughed. And Joe had been joking. But, while he’d been joking, he probably hadn’t been kidding. How many pilots had the Navy lost in the failed attack on Hawaii? Too damn many-Joe was sure of that. A lot of what had been the first team wasn’t there any more. If the United States tried again-no, when the United States tried again, for he too was sure the country would-a lot of the guys who flew off the flattops would be rookies like him.
Yeah, he thought. Just like me.
FOR THE FIRST time in Kenzo Takahashi’s life, the Fourth of July wasn’t a holiday. It was a little slower than usual, because it was a Saturday. But no firecrackers spit and snarled. No fireworks displays were scheduled for the evening. No admirals and generals made pompous, boring speeches about the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Instead, both the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin ran banner headlines: GREAT JAPANESE VICTORY! and JAPAN SAVES HAWAII! respectively. Both got more paper than the occupying authorities normally doled out to them. The Japanese wanted them to make a big fuss about this. Japanese-language newspapers shouted even louder.
Kenzo wanted to believe all the shouts were a pack of lies. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t just that no American planes appeared over Oahu and no American fighting men splashed ashore. Word always got around when the Japanese were telling tall tales. Kenzo wasn’t sure how. He supposed some people still had shortwave sets and listened to news from the mainland, even if they took their lives in their hands when they did it.
He kept hoping he would hear that Japan was inventing a battle that hadn’t happened or exaggerating about one that hadn’t gone so well. He kept hoping, but nobody said anything like that. It looked as if those gloating headlines were nothing but the truth.
His father had no doubts. Jiro Takahashi rubbed it in. “You see?” he said as he and Kenzo and Hiroshi lined up for their rice that evening. “You see? This is what happens when the United States fights Japan. Twice now, big battles-and who won? Who won, eh? Japan won, that’s who!”
“Banzai,” Kenzo said sourly.
That only made his old man mad. He’d known it would, which was why he did it. “You should always say that with respect! With spirit!” Jiro growled. “You don’t joke around with it!”
Kenzo hadn’t been joking. Before he could say so, Hiroshi stuck an elbow in his ribs. He gave his brother an Et tu, Brute? look. But Hiroshi only shook his head, ever so slightly. And Kenzo realized his brother was right. If he sounded too American, somebody in earshot was liable to report him to the occupying authorities. His father wouldn’t-they might disagree, they might quarrel, but he knew his old man would never betray him. Some stranger who might get some cash or some extra food, though…
“Yeah,” Kenzo said in English. “Thanks.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Hiroshi told him.
“What are you two going on about?” their father asked. Neither one of them answered. He sniffed. “You’re so proud of your English. How much good does English do you now?”
They didn’t answer that sally, either. The line snaked forward. Kenzo held out his bowl for rice and vegetables. Some people had to live on this and nothing else. Kenzo would have been happy out on the Pacific now, not just for the sake of food but because he and his father didn’t fight so much when they had bait and hooks and ahi and aku and lines and sails to talk about. Everything came back to politics on dry land… and everything that had to do with politics was going his old man’s way.
Once he got fed, he took the bowl off by himself to eat in peace. He even waved Hiroshi away when his brother started to follow him. Hiroshi just shrugged and found somewhere else to go. To Kenzo’s relief, his father didn’t come after him.
A lot of the trees that had been proud parts of the botanical garden were long since gone to firewood. Shrubs and bushes and ferns persisted. Why not? They weren’t worth pulling up and burning. He sat down on the grass close by a jungly clump and started eating. With automatic ease, he scooped up rice with his hashi and brought it to his mouth.
He started to laugh, not that it was funny. He told anybody who’d listen that he was an American. No matter what he told people, what was he doing? Sitting on the ground and eating rice with chopsticks. Circumstances seemed to be conspiring to turn him into a Jap no matter what he wanted.
He told himself Elsie Sundberg wouldn’t think so. No matter what he told himself, he had a hard time believing it. After what had happened out in the Pacific, she’d probably figure him for a Jap now, no matter what he’d told her. And if she didn’t, her folks would.
At just short of twenty, gloom came easily. Getting rid of it was harder. Kenzo washed his bowl after he finished eating. The chopsticks were cheap bamboo. Even here, even now, they weren’t in short supply. He threw them in a corrugated-metal trash can.
Then he looked west, toward Pearl Harbor. No, no fireworks tonight. The U.S. Navy was gone from these parts. Everything else that had to do with the United States seemed gone, too. So where was there a place for a person of Japanese blood who thought he had the right to be an American?
Anywhere at all?
MINORU GENDA COUGHED behind his masuku. Admiral Yamamoto looked around Akagi ’s wardroom with affectionate amusement. “Is this an after-action conference or a sick-bay gathering?” he asked.
“Sorry, sir,” Genda said. If not for the conference, he would have been back in sick bay. Commander Fuchida sprawled across three chairs at the doctor’s orders. He was a long way from being over his appendectomy. Captain Ichibei Yokokawa of Zuikaku had a bandaged left shoulder. A ricocheting bullet from a Wildcat had wounded him. He was lucky it had lost most of its momentum before striking; a.50-caliber round could kill from shock without penetrating anything vital. Of course, if he were really lucky he wouldn’t have been wounded at all.
“We did what we set out to do when we sought this battle,” Yamamoto said. “The Americans will not come forward. They will not invade Hawaii. The islands will remain our bastion, not theirs.”
“Well done!” Captain Tomeo Kaku said. “And I say, ‘Well done!’ to the crews of Shokaku and Zuikaku in particular. However fine the ships are, they are new, and their crews do not have so much experience working as a team as Akagi ’s does. But no one will say they are not veterans now.”
“Arigato,” said Captain Jojima Takatsugu of Shokaku. Captain Yokokawa started to nod his thanks, then grimaced and thought better of it. Eyeing that thick pad of bandages on his shoulder, Genda couldn’t blame him.
“We are not finished, though,” Yamamoto said sternly. “This is a victory, but not one that will end the war. The Americans paid a high price, but they will be back when they feel strong enough. We have to see what we paid, what we can do to make good our losses, and how best to face the Yankees when they return-for they will.”
“Are you sure, sir?” Captain Kaku asked. “How many times must we crush them before they know we are their masters?”
“How many times?” Yamamoto shrugged. “I don’t know. I do know that what we’ve done so far isn’t enough. We have awakened a sleeping giant, and we have yet to see everything he can do.”
“What is our best course, then, sir?” Genda asked.
“To make these islands strong. To make the fleet that protects them strong,” Yamamoto replied. “American arms factories and shipyards are just now getting up to full war production. What we have seen is not a patch on what we will see. Fuchida-san! ”