Did she want him back? Could she stand living with him? If she couldn’t, could she ever stand living with anybody again? Those were all good questions. One of these days soon, she needed good answers for them.
GET TING RESCUED WITH THREE HAOLES who vouched for him wasn’t enough to keep Kenzo Takahashi from being thrown into an internment camp behind barbed wire. He would have been angrier had he been more surprised. It was going to be open season on Japanese in Oahu for a while.
That was thanks to people like his own father. For Dad’s sake, Kenzo hoped he had got out of Honolulu on a submarine. He wasn’t in this camp. If he was still on Oahu, he’d get caught before long. God help him if he did. Better he was long gone, then. Even if he had collaborated, Kenzo didn’t want him strung up.
Hiroshi was alive. He’d been in the camp longer than Kenzo had. He walked with a stick and a limp-he’d got shot in the leg after the special naval landing forces dragooned him into hauling and carrying for them. The wound was healing. He tried to make light of it, saying, “Could have been worse.”
“Oh, yeah?” Kenzo said. “How?”
“They could have shot me in the head, or in the belly,” his brother answered. “I saw guys that happened to.” He grimaced. “Or the Marines could’ve finished me off when the Japanese soldiers fell back. This one bastard damn near did. I’m lying there bleeding, right, and he’s got this goddamn bayonet poised to stick me”-he gestured with his cane-“and when he finds out I speak English he wants to know who plays short for the Dodgers.”
“Pee Wee Reese,” Kenzo said automatically.
“Yeah, well, I got it right, too,” Hiroshi said, “but try coming up with it when you’ve just been shot and some maniac wants to stir your guts with a knife. If they gave you tests like that in school, people would study a hell of a lot harder.”
“I believe it.” Kenzo set a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad I’m anywhere,” Hiroshi said-with feeling.
Like just about everybody on Oahu, they ate rations out of cans. Because they’d done so much fishing, neither of them was as skinny as a lot of the Japanese in the camp. All the same, beef and pork-even beef and pork out of cans-tasted mighty good to Kenzo.
People knew who he and Hiroshi were. They knew who their father was. Some of them must have hoped blabbing to the authorities would win a ticket out of camp. Kenzo never found out whether it did.
He did know his name and Hiroshi’s got called at a morning lineup. When they stepped forward, they got hustled away for interrogation.
“Your father is Jiro Takahashi, the Japanese propagandist sometimes called ‘the Fisherman’?” asked a first lieutenant who couldn’t have been much older than Hiroshi.
“That’s right,” Kenzo said-no point denying the truth.
“Do you know his current whereabouts?” the lieutenant asked.
“No, sir,” Kenzo answered.
“We heard he was on a sub headed for Japan, but we can’t prove it,” Hiroshi added.
“Uh-huh.” The lieutenant wrote that down. “Do you have any way of demonstrating your own loyalty to the United States of America?”
Kenzo wondered if he wanted to be loyal to a country that didn’t want to believe he was, but only for a moment. He thought about mentioning Elsie, but figured that wouldn’t do him any good-it sure hadn’t yet. “That gunner we pulled out of the Pacific,” Hiroshi said. “What the heck was his name?”
Hope flowered in Kenzo. “Burleson. Burt Burleson,” he said, and felt as if he’d passed a test of his own. He and Hiroshi explained how they’d rescued the man from the flying boat and landed him somewhere near Ewa.
The lieutenant wrote that down, too. “We will investigate,” he said. “If we can’t confirm your story, it will be held against you.”
“Jesus Christ!” Kenzo said. “We don’t know what happened to this guy once he got off the sampan. For all we know, the Japanese grabbed him ten minutes later and he’s been dead for months.”
“For all I know, he never existed in the first place, and you’re making him up,” the lieutenant said coldly.
“We will investigate. In the meanwhile…”
In the meanwhile, they went back into the camp. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with them after that. People seemed to think collaboration was as catching as cholera. Why not? The U.S. military had the same attitude.
Eleven days later-Kenzo was keeping track-they got summoned at morning roll call again. Off they went, to be confronted by that same kid lieutenant. He looked as if he’d bitten down hard on a lemon.
“Here,” he said, and thrust a typed sheet of paper at each of them.
Kenzo looked down at his. It stated that he’d been certified loyal and had full privileges of citizenship in spite of his race and national origin. “Oh, boy,” he said in a hollow voice. Hiroshi looked as thrilled as he sounded.
“What’s the matter? You’ve got what you wanted, don’t you?” the lieutenant said.
“What I want is for people to think I’m loyal till I do something that makes ’em think I’m not,” Kenzo answered. “That’s what America’s supposed to be about, right? This says you thought my brother and me were disloyal till we showed you we weren’t. See the difference?”
“Maybe.” If the officer saw, he didn’t care. “Maybe it’ll work that way one of these days. I don’t know. What I do know is, there were local Japs who played footsie with the occupation. Your father did. Okay, so it looks like you didn’t. Terrific. You’re free to go. If you want a medal for doing what any loyal American was supposed to do, forget about it.”
“What do we do now?” Hiroshi asked.
“Whatever you want. Like I said, you’re free to go. If you’re smart, though, you’ll hang on to those letters and show ’em whenever you have to.” The lieutenant jerked a thumb toward the tent flap. “Go on, get out of here. Beat it.”
Out they went. The guards outside started to lead them back into the internment camp. Kenzo displayed his letter. The corporal in charge of the guards read it, moving his lips. He grudgingly nodded. “I guess they’re legit,” he told his men.
“Fuck ’em. They’re still Japs,” one of the soldiers said.
“Yeah.” The corporal scowled at Kenzo and Hiroshi. “I don’t know how you conned your way into those papers, but you better find somewhere else to be, and I mean now.”
They left as fast as they could. Hiroshi grimaced against the pain in his leg, but he didn’t let it slow him down. Kenzo looked out at the wreckage of the city where he’d lived his whole life. He had to glance toward Diamond Head to get a notion of just where he was. Not enough still stood in these parts to tell him.
Later, he supposed, he would go over to the Sundbergs’ and see how Elsie was doing. He wondered how often he would have to display his loyalty letter between here and there.
“Free,” he said tightly. “Right.”
LES DILLON’S PLATOON CAMPED on the cratered ground outside Iolani Palace. Even now, they kept sentries out. A few Japanese snipers were still running around loose. Just the other day, one of them had wounded a guy near what was left of Honolulu Hale before the Marines hunted him down and sent him to his ancestors.
The stench of death lingered in the air. A lot of bodies remained in the wreckage. Sooner or later, bulldozers would knock things down and either get them out or cover them up. It hadn’t happened yet.
Somebody in a clean new uniform approached the perimeter. Seeing unfaded, untorn, unstained olive drab automatically roused Les’ suspicions. Another worthless replacement for a Marine who’d known what he was doing but hadn’t been lucky? But this guy walked up with an air of jaunty confidence and had a cigar clamped between his teeth.
“Dutch!” Les shouted. “You son of a bitch!”