“Anybody would have done the same thing,” Kenzo said.
“I don’t think so.” Elsie sounded almost angry. “I don’t think you should be so modest, either. They could have killed you.”
It wasn’t that she was wrong. On the contrary. Uncomfortably, he said, “I don’t like thinking about that any better than you like thinking about, uh, the other stuff.”
“Okay,” Elsie said; that must have made sense to her. “What do you want to think about instead? How about this?” She kissed him again.
The kiss took on a life of its own. His arms tightened around her. She molded herself against him. He squeezed her backside, pressing her closer yet. She didn’t try to pull away. She just made a wordless sound of pleasure.
They finally broke apart, but not very far. “Elsie-” he began, and stopped.
“I know, sweetheart. It’s okay. It’s… better than okay.” She kissed him once more, gently this time.
“You risked your life for me. That counts for a lot. Anything I can do to pay you back is pretty small stuff, anything at all.”
“You don’t have to do anything because of that,” he said. “I didn’t do it to get paid back.”
“I know. It’s better that way,” Elsie said. “Suppose I do it because I want to, then?”
This time, he kissed her. When his hand found her breast, she didn’t try to slap it away. She just made that happy noise again. He made one quite a bit like it, but deeper. After a while, his heart pounding, he asked, “What about your mom?”
Elsie laughed. “She won’t be back for a while. Mom’s no dummy. She didn’t leave by accident. Don’t worry about that.”
“I’m not worried about anything,” Kenzo said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along.
“Come on, then.” She took his hand and led him back to her bedroom.
A teddy bear almost the size of a three-year-old sat on the bed. Elsie set it on the floor with its back to the bed. Then she nodded, as much to herself as to Kenzo, and pulled the sun dress off over her head. She sat down on the edge of the bed to take off her bra and panties.
Kenzo tried not to stare as much as he wanted to. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. He got out of his own clothes in a hurry.
“Oh, Ken!” Elsie said when she saw the bruises and welts on his ribs and his back and one thigh. She jumped up and kissed them one by one, so softly that her lips almost weren’t there. “Is that better?” He didn’t know what it did for the bruises. What it did for the rest of him was obvious. Elsie giggled.
They lay down together. It wasn’t quite Kenzo’s first time, but it was his first time with anybody who mattered to him, who didn’t want him to go away as soon as he could so she could take on somebody else. Elsie sighed when his mouth found the pink tips of her breasts.
A little later, with him poised above her, she inhaled sharply. “Be careful,” she said. “It hurts.”
“I’ll try,” he told her, though nothing in all the world could have kept him from driving deeper then. Elsie bit her lip, but didn’t say anything more. Before long, his world exploded in delight. As he came back to himself, he asked, “Are you okay?”
“I-think so,” she answered. “They say it’s supposed to hurt the first time, and they aren’t wrong. But you’re sweet.” She squirmed under him. “Let me up. I don’t want to leave a stain on the bedspread.” When she stood up, she laughed and said, “Oops-too late. Well, cold water will get most of it out. I hope.”
“Me, too.” He felt foolish, and started getting dressed again. Elsie carried her clothes down the hall to the bathroom. She walked spraddle-legged, as if she’d been riding a horse for a long time. When she came back she had a wet washrag, which she used to scrub at the red stain.
“There,” she said after a bit. “That’s better, anyhow.”
“Uh-huh.” Kenzo didn’t know what to do or say next. He tried, “I think maybe I better go.”
“Okay,” Elsie said, and then, in a different tone of voice, “I hope to God I don’t catch.”
“Catch? Oh!” Kenzo said. Neither of them had worried about that while it was going on. “I hope you don’t, too. That would be terrible.”
“It would be complicated, anyway,” Elsie said.
If you knocked a girl up, you either ran away and started over somewhere else or you married her. Kenzo couldn’t run far, not the way things were now. He didn’t want to marry anybody yet, though he didn’t suppose Elsie would be too bad. But she was dead right: no matter who ran Hawaii, a Japanese guy marrying a haole girl would cause complications. They’d be different complications, depending on whether the Rising Sun or the Stars and Stripes flew over the islands, but they’d always be there.
He and Elsie walked out into the front room. “We’ll be careful,” she said. He didn’t know if she meant careful about her not getting pregnant or careful about going where Japanese soldiers could cause trouble. It struck him as a good idea either way.
“Sure,” he said. “So long.” He kissed her, then went out the door. He looked back when she closed it, but didn’t blow her a kiss or anything. The neighbors didn’t need to know. Neither did Elsie’s mom-not officially, anyhow.
CORPORAL TAKEO SHIMIZU LED HIS SQUAD through the streets of Honolulu. It was a routine patrol. Nobody gave them any trouble. By now, the locals had learned to bow and get out of the way when they saw Japanese soldiers. They hadn’t needed object lessons for quite a while.
The only thing even slightly unusual that Shimizu saw was a local Japanese man, about the age of most of the privates in his squad, who walked along whistling even though a black eye and a fat lip said he’d been in a brawl and probably lost it. Shimizu almost stopped him and asked him what he was so happy about, but in the end he didn’t. Being happy wasn’t against the rules.
He wasn’t the only one who noticed the local. “Whatever that guy’s been drinking, I want some,” Private Wakuzawa said.
That was funny enough to make not only Shimizu but also several other soldiers laugh. Wakuzawa was already the most cheerful man in the squad. Why did he need anything to make him happier yet? Better something like that should go to Senior Private Furusawa, who thought too much for his own good-or so it seemed to Shimizu, anyhow.
Soldiers were drilling in a park. They weren’t Army men-they belonged to the special naval landing forces. They wore olive-drab uniforms, not Army khaki, and their boots were black rather than brown.
The Navy officer putting them through their paces wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than perfection, and didn’t want to recognize perfection when he saw it. “You are not worthy of dying for the Emperor!” he screamed at the sweating, panting soldiers. “Not worthy, do you hear me?”
“Hai, Captain Iwabuchi!” the soldiers chorused.
“Then act like it, damn you!” Iwabuchi roared. “If we have to fight the Americans, we are going to make them drown in their own blood! And how do we do that? By making them drown in our blood!”
“Hai, Captain Iwabuchi!” the troops from the naval landing force repeated.
Iwabuchi pointed toward Shimizu and his squad. “Look at those Army men! They’re soft. They’re ragged. Do you want to be like them? You’d better not! You have to want to die for the Emperor. You have to be proud to die for the Emperor! The man who does not fear death, the man who welcomes death, will surely be triumphant!”
“Hai, Captain Iwabuchi!” the Navy men said once more.
Shimizu was furious, though of course he did not show it in the presence of a superior. A Navy captain ranked with the commander of his regiment or any other Army colonel, too: not just a superior but an almost godlike figure. Despite that, Shimizu’s own opinion of the special naval landing forces was not high. They made good enough occupation troops. But when they had to fight other soldiers, they didn’t fare so well. Despite these drills, the Army did a much better job of training its men in infantry tactics than the Navy did.