With the lesson over, the reporter got their names and asked where they were from. He’d been so quiet that they had almost forgotten that he was even there. He produced a small camera from his rucksack.
“All right, I’m just going to take a picture of you fellas, if you don’t mind.”
Lieutenant Steele stepped away. “You don’t need me in there. Just get the men.”
Standing with the others, facing forward as the journalist fiddled with the camera, Deke suddenly felt self-conscious about his scars. “You don’t need me either,” he said. “I reckon I might break the camera.”
“Hold it right there, Deke,” the lieutenant said. He took hold of Deke’s chin and turned his face so that his good side faced the camera. “Is that what you were worried about? Handsome as ever. How’s that, Ernie?”
The camera clicked a few times, with Pyle winding the film between exposures. “All right, I’m all done with you good-looking sons of bitches,” he announced with a laugh. A sad smile crossed his face. “It was good meeting you boys. Take care of yourselves, will you?”
They were just wrapping up when they saw a jeep approaching down the beach. “That can’t be good,” the lieutenant muttered.
The jeep rolled to a stop, and a single soldier got out. Pyle took the opportunity for a ride back and got in before the jeep sped away, leaving the newcomer behind.
“It’s a Jap!” Philly shouted in alarm, leveling his rifle at the soldier.
“Hey, watch where you point that thing!” the soldier said anxiously, staring into the muzzle.
Slowly, Philly lowered the rifle. It was easy to see why he had been alarmed, even if the newcomer wore a GI uniform — Who knew what sort of tricks the Nips might be up to? Without doubt, the soldier had distinctly Asian features.
“All right, what’s this about?” the lieutenant wanted to know.
The soldier looked over the lieutenant and the other soldiers with what appeared to be skepticism. Then he sighed deeply. “Private Shimizu reporting for duty, sir.”
“You’re a Jap.”
“I am an interpreter.”
All that the men could do was stare. They had all heard about the Nisei interpreters, men with Japanese heritage who could speak the language of the enemy, but they had yet to set eyes on one. Until now, apparently.
“What am I supposed to do with an interpreter?”
“Apparently, headquarters was impressed that you captured a Japanese officer, and they’re hoping that you’ll capture more of them. If you do, I’m supposed to help you question the prisoner.”
The lieutenant stared at the interpreter as if waiting for the punch line. Then he laughed. “Well, boys, it just goes to show you that no good deed goes unpunished. Maybe Deke here was right. Maybe we should have shot that Jap prisoner and saved ourselves a lot of trouble. Anyhow, welcome to the squad, Private Shimizu.”
Chapter Nine
Once they had finished their crash course in sniper tactics, Deke and the rest of the squad did what they could to make themselves comfortable while Lieutenant Steele headed toward HQ to see what his latest orders were. They sprawled out on the sand, dug out rations, and smoked cigarettes. There was no hope of making hot coffee, so they had to settle for more of the rusty, oil-infused water in their canteens. It was a poor substitute for decent drinking water, let alone coffee.
“The best thing you can say about this water is that it’s wet,” Philly commented.
“Just don’t smoke around it,” Deke added. “This so-called water might burst into flame.”
The grub could have been better, too, but with the sea breeze and the sun settling toward the blue horizon, it was more than pleasant on the beach. Back in the jungle, away from the sea breeze, it would be steamy, not to mention crawling with Japs. A distant line of dark clouds threatened rain, but that was the tropics for you. Rain clouds tended to spring up out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly.
“I could get used to this. This sure as hell beats being in the jungle,” Philly said. “I can stay out here and work on my tan.”
“Somehow, I think we’re gonna get sent to where the Japs are at, which ain’t here,” Deke said.
Private Shimizu sat apart from the others, gazing out to sea. He took off his glasses and polished them on a scrap of soft cloth that he had taken from a pocket of his spotless uniform. As a late arrival to the island, he hadn’t seen any action yet — a shortcoming of which he seemed to be painfully aware.
“What’s eating him?” Deke wondered.
“He’s probably waiting for the Jap navy to show up so he can signal them,” Philly whispered to Deke. “I don’t trust any of those damn Nips.”
Deke shrugged. He was working his way through a cold can of pork and beans. It wasn’t exactly appetizing, but he had gone hungry so many nights as a boy that he wasn’t about to complain. “I don’t like it any better than you do,” he agreed. Like the others in the squad, he remained suspicious of Private Shimizu. As far as he was concerned, a Jap was a Jap. “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then I’d say it’s a duck.”
Philly looked up and called out to the interpreter. “So, you’re a Jap?”
The interpreter looked up in surprise when Philly spoke to him. “No more than you. I was born in the United States,” he said, annunciating each word perfectly.
“Yeah? Whereabouts?” Philly asked, using the too-loud voice Americans favored when trying to communicate with foreigners.
“You do not need to shout. I speak English, you know.”
Philly looked at Deke and spoke as if the interpreter couldn’t hear him. “Did you hear how good he talks? He’s hardly got any accent. Sounds like a schoolteacher too.”
“He sounds better than you do, Philly, that’s for damn sure. You talk so fast that all your words run together. You city people are always in a hurry to say a whole lot of nothin’.”
“Aw, stuff it, Deke. What would you know? You sound like a dumb hayseed to me.”
“What would you know about it, Philly Boy?”
“I know all I need to know, believe me, you dumb hayseed. Don’t even get me started.”
“I believe you already have started.”
“All right, you asked for it. You know how to find a virgin down there in the mountains, right? You just look for any girl over fourteen who can outrun her brothers.”
“Better never let my sister hear that. I reckon she’d kick your ass.”
“You’ve got a sister? Huh. Is she anyplace nearby that I have to worry about?”
“In case you ain’t noticed, we’re on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so, no, she ain’t over there in that coconut grove. But she is a police officer in Washington, DC.”
Philly was taken aback. “A female cop? I’ve never heard of that. With the war on, I guess even the police are desperate.”
Deke had turned his attention back to the interpreter. He spoke quietly to Philly: “We’ll have to watch our backs with him, and not just because he’s a Jap. He’s as green as a June tomato.” A couple of days on Guam and a night spent fighting off marauders had made them all feel like real battlefield veterans. “Hell, he doesn’t even have a rifle, does he? The poor son of a bitch. I’m not gonna watch out for him.”
“You got that right,” Philly said. He looked at Deke’s rations, which had come with two cigarettes. The military seemed to do all it could to encourage soldiers to smoke. “You want those cigarettes?”
“Nope,” Deke said. “I don’t smoke.”
“I didn’t think so, considering I haven’t seen you light up yet,” Philly said, accepting the cigarettes and tucking them gently into a pocket. He looked over at the translator. “Hey, Japbait. How do you say, ‘How many cigarettes do you want to trade for that samurai sword?’”