The miracle’s engine coughed into life when Fletch turned the key. He wondered if the noise would bring a volley of gunfire his way, but it didn’t. Shells as long as a man’s arm clattered and clanked on the floorboards. The car couldn’t pull the gun and the limber both. Artillerymen put their feet on the ammo. As Fletch put the De Soto in gear, he tried not to think about what would happen if a Jap fieldpiece hit the car. Boom! Right to the moon! was what occurred to him.
He reached for the light switch, then jerked his hand away as if the switch were red-hot. Now that would have been Phi Beta Kappa! “The Japs are trying to kill you, Fletcher my boy,” he muttered. “You don’t have to try and kill yourself, too.”
He couldn’t go faster than about ten miles an hour, not if he wanted to stay on the road. Of course, even ten miles an hour would have taken him all the way down to the south coast in a little more than two hours. He didn’t get that far, or anywhere close. After ten minutes or so, he came to a roadblock manned by some nervous infantrymen. They seemed glad to see he had the gun-and even gladder that he wasn’t a Jap.
Fletch was pretty goddamn glad they weren’t Japs, too, only he did his best not to let on. He and his men piled out of the De Soto and added the gun to the roadblock’s strength. By sunup, if not sooner, he figured he’d be in action again.
MARTIAL LAW! SHOUTED posters all over Honolulu. Jiro Takahashi didn’t read English. His sons made sure he understood. “It means the Army’s in charge,” Kenzo said at breakfast Monday morning. “It means you have to do whatever soldiers tell you to do.”
“It means we’re going to land in trouble for being Japanese,” Hiroshi added.
“When have we not been in trouble for being Japanese?” Jiro asked. If his son was bitter, so was he.
“They attacked the United States. They hit us when we weren’t even looking.” Kenzo sounded furiously angry at Japan.
Jiro felt furiously angry at his younger son. Kenzo had everything backwards. As far as Jiro was concerned, Japan was we and the Americans were they. Jiro looked to his wife for support. He didn’t have to look far for Reiko. The tiny kitchen of their cramped apartment barely held the four of them. Reiko just said, “Eat your noodles, all of you. Drink your tea. Whether it’s war or whether it’s peace, work doesn’t stop. You’ve got to go to the sampan.”
She was right. Her refusal to come right out and take Jiro’s side left him punctured anyway. She’d been born in Oshima County, just as he had; her home village was only about fifteen miles from his. Surely she felt as Japanese as he did. What difference did it make that they’d lived in Hawaii for decades and probably never would go back to the old country? None-not as far as he could see. But Reiko didn’t want to quarrel with the boys, no matter how foolishly they behaved.
Hashi flying, Jiro finished the soba noodles. He’d been surprised to discover there were Americans who ate buckwheat groats, but he didn’t know of any who made them into noodles. He drank some of the hot water in which the noodles were boiled; it was supposed to be very healthy. And he gulped his tea. Then he jumped to his feet. He barked at his sons: “Come on! We haven’t got all day!”
To his dismay, they got done no more than a few seconds after he did. When they rose, they loomed over him. How could he feel he was in charge when he had to look up at them to tell them anything? But all Hiroshi said was, “We’re ready, Father.”
Down to the street they went. When they got there, Jiro coughed as if he’d smoked a pack of Camels all at once. Horrible, choking black smoke swirled through the air. For all he could see, it might as well have been nighttime. The smoke made his eyes burn and sting, too. It left greasy soot everywhere it touched.
His sons made almost identical disgusted noises. They pulled bandannas out of their pockets-Hiroshi’s red, Kenzo’s blue-and tied them over their mouths. That struck Jiro as a good idea. All he had was a dirty white handkerchief. He used it. Everything would be dirty in short order. Maybe the hankie kept some of the nasty smoke out of his lungs. He could hope so, anyhow.
The streets were crowded. It was Monday morning, after all. But people moved as if in slow motion. In the black, stinking murk, you had to. Otherwise, you’d get run into on the sidewalk or run over in the street. Cars had their lights on, but the beams didn’t pierce more than a few feet of haze.
“Go to hell, you goddamn Japs!” somebody yelled in English. Jiro understood the sentiment well enough. He squared his shoulders and kept walking. Above the bandannas, his sons’ eyes blazed. He wasn’t even sure the curses had been aimed at them. They were far from the only Japanese on the streets.
A lot of intersections had policemen posted to keep traffic moving. Honolulu’s cops sprang from every group in the islands: haoles, Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Koreans (which Jiro found revolting, but Koreans weren’t subject to Japanese authority here). Normally, the police got obeyed because they were the police. Now people who weren’t Japanese swore at the Japanese cops-and sometimes, if they were ignorant, at the Chinese and Koreans, too. When the cursers guessed wrong, the policemen angrily shouted back. Stoic as samurai, the officers who were Japanese ignored whatever came their way.
Some of the intersections that didn’t have cops had soldiers. They wore helmets and carried bayoneted rifles, and looked nervous enough to shoot or skewer anybody who rubbed them the wrong way. They were cursing Japanese as loudly as any civilians. Jiro pretended not to hear; arguing with armed men struck him as suicidal madness. His sons muttered to themselves, but not loud enough to draw notice.
The Aala Market was half deserted. That shook Jiro. He hadn’t thought anything could keep the dealers away. Only the smell of fish lingered at full strength.
He and Hiroshi and Kenzo went on to Kewalo Basin. But more soldiers waited, along with a few fishermen who’d arrived ahead of the Takahashis. Some of them, the younger ones, were talking with the soldiers in English. Jiro’s sons joined the discussion. After a little while, Hiroshi’s voice rose in anger. One of the soldiers aimed a rifle at his chest. Jiro sprang forward to push his son out of harm’s way. But Hiroshi took a step back on his own, and the soldier lowered the Springfield. He and Hiroshi went on speaking English, not quite so furiously.
“What’s going on?” Jiro asked. The soldier scowled at him, probably for speaking Japanese. He ignored the man. It was the only language he could speak, and he needed to know.
“We can’t go out.” Hiroshi’s voice was hard and flat.
“What? Why not?” Jiro exclaimed. “How are we supposed to make a living if we can’t go out? Are the Americans crazy?” As he always did, he used the word to label other people. It didn’t apply to him or, as far as he was concerned, to his family.
“We can’t go out because the Army doesn’t trust us,” Hiroshi answered. “It doesn’t trust any Japanese. Didn’t you see that yesterday, when the airplane shot up that other sampan? It could have been us just as easily. The soldiers are afraid we’ll go out and tell the Japanese Navy what’s going on here, or maybe that we’ll go out and bring back Japanese soldiers.”
“That’s…” Jiro’s voice trailed away. He couldn’t say it was mad or impossible, for it was neither. He hadn’t thought about actually helping Japan against the United States, but the idea didn’t disgust him. Maybe some other fishermen had thought about it. How could he know? If they had, they would have kept their mouths shut. That was only common sense.
And some sampans, bigger than the Oshima Maru, could range out five hundred miles, maybe even more. They could surely find the Imperial Navy. They could bring back soldiers, too, if their skippers were so inclined. If a boat could carry tons of fish, it could also carry tons of men, and each ton was ten or twelve fully equipped soldiers.