“You got him!” Philly shouted.
“Don’t get too riled up,” Deke said. “There’s a lot more where he came from.”
Unfortunately, that was more than true. Fire from the machine guns and entrenched Japanese troops forced the GIs to keep their heads down. They kept up constant return fire, but with little effect. The tap, tap, tap of the Nambu continued to echo across the hillside.
The day’s shadows lengthened as the sun began to settle toward the horizon, becoming an angry red ball over the hill’s shoulder so that they were shooting into the glare, making their task even harder.
After his initial luck against the enemy, Deke couldn’t seem to pick off any more machine gunners. Maybe they had gotten wise to him and had withdrawn deeper into their hidey-holes. He settled for whatever targets he could find, Philly calling some of them through the binoculars. The Japs were close enough that he caught glimpses of enemy faces through the scope. He pulled the trigger again and again.
He took a breath, and the gunpowder’s lingering acrid taste remained on his tongue and clung to the back of his throat. The smell and taste were not altogether unpleasant, as anyone who loved shooting could tell you.
On the other side, the Japs were doing the same, plying their own deadly trade. They had the advantage of deep defenses, located higher up than the trench. Like the Americans, they clearly had a few snipers at work. The enemy snipers watched and waited. Not all the soldiers who were part of the US assault force were as experienced as the men of Patrol Easy. More than one exposed himself too long after taking a shot, only to fall prey to one of the Japanese snipers.
In particular, many of the most accurate shots originated from a stretch of the enemy defenses almost directly across from Deke. There would be a shot, then a sudden cry or curse, or worse yet — an empty silence as a soldier fell dead instantly.
Deke couldn’t help but think of the sniper that he had tangled with on his last trip up this hill. Could it possibly be the same Japanese sniper?
“I’d like to shoot that bugger,” Deke said. “He’s got us pinned down good.”
Philly stared through the binoculars. “No sign of him.”
During lulls in the fire, they could hear murmured snatches of Japanese voices.
“Yoshio, what are they saying?” Deke asked.
The interpreter cocked an ear in the direction of the Japanese lines to listen but finally shook his head. “They are too far away to hear.”
“Why don’t you ask them to surrender?” Philly suggested.
Yoshio stared at him as if he might have cracked, but then a slow smile spread across his face. “Why not?”
He started to raise himself even with the top of the trench, but Deke tugged him back down. “Easy there, cowboy. Keep your head down.”
Yoshio stayed down, gathering his words.
As Yoshio studied the Japanese trenches during this lull in the fighting, Deke studied him in turn. He thought that it couldn’t have been easy to be in Yoshio’s shoes, fighting against people whom you might even be related to in some way. Sure, Yoshio called himself an American, but there was no denying the fact that he was also Japanese. Like it or not, Yoshio had a lot more in common with the enemy than he did with Americans from city tenements or the hills of Tennessee.
Also, Yoshio was not a natural-born hard case like Deke, or even a tough-talking city boy like Philly. It didn’t matter that Yoshio was roughly the same age as Deke. From Deke’s point of view, Yoshio had a naivete or innocence that made him seem younger than his years.
If Deke had known Yoshio’s whole story, he might have reconsidered. He didn’t know how Yoshio’s family had worked hard on their West Coast farm, trying to be good neighbors, but had also been held apart because of their Japanese heritage.
For Yoshio, no matter how much he wanted to be seen as American or how much he considered himself to be one, he and his family were always segregated because of the color of their skin and their distinctive Asian features. Then had come the war, which made matters worse. His family, along with other Japanese Americans in their community, had been forced off their land and into internment camps — perceived as a threat by their neighbors and their government.
In the early days of the war, there had been real fears about a Japanese invasion or sabotage on the heels of Pearl Harbor. In hindsight, the internment camps would be viewed as a terrible injustice.
Yoshio had seen the heartbreak of his mother having to choose what few family heirlooms she could take with her into captivity.
Some of their non-Japanese neighbors had been helpful, even embarrassed by what was taking place. They promised to maintain the property for however long this nightmare lasted for Yoshio’s family.
Those were the decent people.
Others had been greedy, offering to purchase the land for a ridiculously low price or hoping to get a bargain on the family’s household goods. When moving day came — a hurried affair carried out under the watchful eye of armed soldiers — some neighbors had shown up to help. Others came looking for bargains, not much different from crows or buzzards picking over a roadkill.
What they could bring with them was limited to a single suitcase. There wasn’t even enough room to bring extra clothes or bedding. A lifetime of possessions and all the farm equipment had to be left behind.
Yoshio had watched his mother agonize over bringing a teapot and cups that had come all the way from Japan, brought over by her grandparents. The delicate porcelain had occupied a place of honor in the house and been used only for special occasions. The space in the suitcase would have been better put to use for warm clothes rather than a teapot.
One of the neighbors, a man whom Yoshio had never particularly liked and who had a big house at the edge of town, had sensed his mother’s dilemma as she cradled the teapot in her hands.
“I’ll give you two dollars for that,” he’d said. He wore a smug smile. “Where you’re going, you can probably use the money.”
His mother had glared at the man in a rare show of anger. Her eyes said it all. Two dollars for an heirloom that is priceless to my family?
The man appeared oblivious. When his mother didn’t respond, he’d said, “All right, you Japs drive a hard bargain. I’ll give you three dollars if you toss in that stack of plates over there.”
To Yoshio’s astonishment, his mother hadn’t said a word but had raised the teapot over her head, preparing to smash it to the wooden floor. Yoshio held his breath.
Another neighbor stepped forward, a widow who had a plot of land and a modest house down the road from his family. She held out her hands to Yoshio’s mother. “Let me keep it safe for you,” the woman had said. “When you come back, I’ll have that teapot waiting for you.”
With a nod, his mother had handed over the teapot. The neighbor took it with the same care that women used cradling an infant.
That day had been a display of human nature, the good with the bad.
His father had stood mutely, looking out at the fields, saying goodbye to the land. And then they had been taken by truck and train to a distant camp and forced to live in canvas tents and rough barracks. The food was of poor quality, and there wasn’t enough fuel to heat their shelters. To make things worse, no provisions had been made for young children to attend school. A few of the young women organized classes so that the children’s reading, writing, and math skills did not languish completely.
Yoshio had volunteered to fight, joining the ranks of the Nisei, not only to do his duty to his country, but also to prove a point. He was just as American as any man in this army. The road hadn’t been easy. The drill instructors had been extra hard on the Nisei recruits and reluctant to let them train with actual rifles, as if they still didn’t trust them. Maybe some of the soldiers nearby still didn’t trust him.