Who could have dreamt the Japs would strike at Hawaii in the first place? Oh, the people in charge of the Army and Navy here had played with the idea before. But it was only play, and everybody here had treated it that way. The trouble was, Japan hadn’t. She’d been dead serious about it.
And now we’re paying the piper, Fletch thought. He gave the car some gas. When he shifted up into second, gears clashed. The De Soto wasn’t made for towing an artillery piece. It would break down altogether pretty soon. In the meantime, he’d get what use from it he could. If a shell from one of the mountain howitzers came down on him… then it did, that was all. He had to get the gun free if he possibly could.
He did it. A spent shell fragment clanged off his fender, but he got through, skirting potholes all the way. Down toward Pearl Harbor and Honolulu he drove, wondering where the next stop would be.
JANE ARMITAGE STAYED in her apartment when the Japanese Army entered Wahiawa. She didn’t know what the Japs would do to civilians. She especially didn’t know what they would do to white female civilians. She didn’t want to find out the hard way, either.
She couldn’t help looking out the window. Was that skinny little man skulking along the street really a soldier? He looked as if he ought to be in the eighth grade. He wore short pants. His legs seemed skinny as matchsticks. By his size, the big Americans she was used to should have been able to tie him in knots and throw him away. But a helmet that looked too large perched on his head. He carried a rifle, and had the air of a man who knew what to do with it.
He looked up toward the window. Jane drew back, not wanting him to see her. He must not have, for he kept going. Two more Japs followed him a moment later. One was even skinnier, the other stocky and strong-looking but still very short. The stocky soldier had an American canteen bumping on his hip.
Occasional shots rang out. The Americans had pulled out hours before. Maybe the Japs weren’t sure about that. Maybe they were shooting people for the fun of it, or to put the fear of God into the ones they didn’t shoot. Jane laughed shakily. They sure know how to get what they want, don’t they?
She wondered if she should have headed south before the Japs came in. What she’d seen and heard from the refugees out of Waimea and Haleiwa had made her decide to sit tight. The Japanese had shelled them and shot at them and strafed them from the air. All they had was what they could carry. American soldiers had commandeered a lot of their cars. And the Army men might have shot the refugees who tried to refuse to give them up.
What had really made Jane decide to stay in Wahiawa was the fear that fleeing wouldn’t do any good. The Japs seemed only too likely to take all of Oahu. If they did, where would she be better off? In her own apartment, or somewhere on the road with only the clothes on her back? The choice had looked obvious.
Now that she’d gone and made it, she wished she hadn’t. Part of the island remained free, but not her part. If she was wrong, if the Army could somehow stop the Japs…
She wondered how Fletch was doing. She hoped he was still alive and fighting, at least as much because an artilleryman could really hurt the Japs as because, up till fairly recently, she’d loved him. She hadn’t seen him in the American retreat through town. Who could say what that proved, though, or if it proved anything?
Time crawled by. The gunfire gradually sputtered into silence. And then a man shouting something broke the silence. As he got closer, Jane managed to make out what he was saying: “Everyone come to the corner of Makani and California at four o’clock. The Japanese commander will give the rules for the occupation. Makani and California! Four o’clock! Rules for the occupation! You have to be there!” Whoever he was, he spoke good English, with only a slight Japanese accent.
Was he an invader who’d learned the language in college on the mainland? Or was he a local Jap doing what the occupiers told him? Would the local Japs do what the occupiers told them? Were they cheering to see the Stars and Stripes come down and the Rising Sun go up? Some of them are, I bet, Jane thought furiously.
She wondered if she ought to go listen to the Jap commander, or if the order was a trick or a trap. Reluctantly, she decided she had to take the chance. If the Japs gave more orders at this gathering, she didn’t want to get shot for not knowing what the rules were. Makani and California was only a few blocks east of Kamehameha Highway, and only a few from her building. She locked the door behind her when she left, not that that would do much good against a rifle butt.
Other people were also coming out of hiding. Jane waved and nodded to the ones she recognized. They all tried to pretend the Japanese soldiers prowling the streets weren’t there. The Japs just eyed the haoles. They talked with the Japanese who’d lived in Wahiawa. Some of those Japanese answered, too. Tone of voice was plenty to tell Jane the shoe was on the other foot, all right.
One of the local Japanese, a man who ran a nursery, stood on a table with a Jap officer at Makani and California. The local man translated for the invader: “Major Hirabayashi says that from now on you must bow to all soldiers of the Empire of Japan. You must make way for them on the street. Soldiers may stay with people here. If they do, you will be responsible for their room and board.”
The locals muttered at that. They did no more than mutter, though, not with soldiers all around. Major Hirabayashi went on, “All guns must be turned in. Anyone found with a gun after three days’ time will be executed. Also, all food in Wahiawa will be shared. When ordered, you will deliver your supplies to a central distribution point. Anyone caught hoarding after that will also be executed.”
More mutters. A dull horror washed over Jane. So much for what she’d bought. If only she lived in a house with a yard. She could have buried some by dead of night. Not with only an apartment around her, and lots of nosy neighbors. Maybe I should have run away after all.
V
THE OSHIMA MARU ’S planking throbbed under Jiro Takahashi’s feet. Diesel growling at the sampan’s stern, it scooted out into the Pacific. Takahashi was happy. “Now we get to go work again,” he said. Staying at home without working had been harder on him than all the backbreaking labor he went through here on the ocean.
His sons seemed less delighted. “Merry Christmas,” Hiroshi said, in sarcastic English. Jiro had always bought the boys presents at Christmastime. Why not? Everybody else did. But for the presents, though, the day meant nothing to him. What difference did a haole holiday make?
In Japanese hardly less sardonic, Kenzo added, “You know why they’ve let us go out again, don’t you, Father?”
“I don’t care why,” Jiro said. “Isn’t it good to breathe clean air?” The tank farms at Pearl Harbor had mostly burned themselves out by now, but acrid, eye-stinging haze still filled the air in Honolulu. No sooner had Jiro praised the air away from the city than he lit a cigarette. “Have to be careful with these,” he remarked. “They’re starting to run low.”
“They’re starting to run low on everything,” Kenzo said. “That’s why they’ve let the sampans out. They really need the fish we bring back.”
“As long as there’s diesel fuel, we’ll do all right,” Jiro said. “Lots of things can happen to a fisherman, but he probably won’t starve.”
“How long will there be diesel fuel?” Hiroshi asked. “It comes from the mainland just like everything else. It came from the mainland, I mean. Nothing’s going in or out, not any more.”