“It’s got to be the prisoners’ camp in Kapiolani Park,” Oscar answered. “I can’t think of anything else it could be.”
Charlie Kaapu grunted. “That’s a nasty business.”
“Everything that’s happened since the Japs landed is a nasty business,” Oscar said. Charlie grunted again. He didn’t say anything more, so Oscar took it for a grunt of agreement.
Off in the distance, a couple of fishing sampans headed out to sea. The light breeze filled their sails. More and more sampans were abandoning engines for the wind. Without fuel, what good were engines? Without fuel, what good was anything? Oscar’s Chevy sat on the street. It wasn’t going anywhere. Even if he could get gas for it, the battery was sure to be dead by now.
He was jealous of the sampans for the same reason the surf fishermen were bound to be jealous of him. As he could get fish the men on the beach couldn’t, so the sampans could find fish he’d never see. “Hey, Charlie!” he called.
Charlie Kaapu looked up from his paddling. “What you want?”
“You think we could rig a little mast and sail on a surfboard? That would let us get a lot farther out to sea than we can like this.”
Charlie thought it over, then shook his head. “Waste time,” he said. Oscar shrugged. His friend might well be right.
Something nibbled his finger. He looked into the water. A minnow darted away. Oscar laughed. His hands and feet were the bait he fished with. Even as he laughed, though, he also scanned the sea. Fish he wanted to catch weren’t the only sort out there. The Pacific also held fish that wanted to catch him. Sharks big enough to be dangerous were rare. Some people on the mainland imagined surf-riders devoured every day. That was a bunch of hooey. But a man who ignored the risk was a fool, too. It was like not watching the road when you got behind the wheel.
“What do you think?” he asked Charlie after a while. “We out far enough?”
Charlie looked back toward the shore. “I guess maybe. We don’t get anything, we can paddle some more.”
“Okay.” Oscar stopped paddling and let his arm trail in the water. He fluttered his fingers. Now he wanted fish to come up to him. Here, isn’t this an interesting piece of seaweed? That was what he wanted to put across to the fish. I should be writing radio spots, he thought.
A fish came up to see what he was selling. He had the net in his other hand. He didn’t advertise the net. He made a swipe with it-and the fish got away. “Oh, shit,” he said without too much heat. Such mishaps happened all the time.
Charlie made a swipe of his own. He hauled something silvery out of the sea. As he stuffed it into his sack, he sent Oscar a sly smile. Oscar took his hand out of the water and flipped Charlie off. They both laughed. No mystical native talent had let Charlie catch a fish where Oscar failed. Before long, Oscar would be smiling and Charlie cussing. They both knew it. There wasn’t any point in getting excited. If you weren’t patient, you’d never make it as a fisherman.
After a while, Oscar caught a little ray. Before he came to Hawaii, he would have thrown the bat-winged fish back. A few visits to Chinese and Japanese restaurants, though, had convinced him ray and even shark could be pretty tasty if you did them right. And he couldn’t be too choosy these days anyhow.
A swarm of minnows flashed by, like shooting stars under the surface of the sea. Oscar and Charlie looked up, the same hopeful expression on both their faces. Minnows wouldn’t swim that way unless something was after them. And whatever was after them might really be worth catching.
Oscar swiped with his net. He let out a whoop-his catch almost tore the handle out of his grasp. He hauled a mackerel up onto his surfboard. A few seconds later, Charlie caught one, too. They both stuffed the fish into their sacks and thrust the nets into the sea again. If there were more, they wanted them. And there were. Oscar got another one in nothing flat. I eat today, he thought.
Lots of people in Honolulu had such worries these days. Unlike most of those people, Oscar had had them before. He’d spent a lot of time living from hand to mouth. There was a difference, though. When he’d worried about going hungry before, it was because he’d been short of money. Now he was short of food, and so was everybody else.
He went on fishing even after he caught the second mackerel. What he didn’t eat today could go into the little icebox in his room for tomorrow. Or he could trade it for other food, or sell it to get the money he needed to pay the rent. He wondered if his landlord would take fish for the rent in place of cash. Before the war started, the idea would have been ridiculous. Not any more.
“Well, shall we head back?” he asked at last, after a long dry stretch.
“Why not?” Charlie Kaapu said. “Plenty for today.” He worried about tomorrow even less than Oscar did.
They turned their surfboards toward the shore and began to paddle again. That was work: familiar work, but work. Oscar thought some more about putting a sail on the surfboard. It wouldn’t be pretty, but he was damned if he could see why it wouldn’t work. You did what you had to do. If you were making your living as a surf-rider, that was one thing. If you were using your surfboard mostly as a fishing boat, that was something else again.
Waikiki Beach neared. The fishermen still cast their lines upon the water. Oscar glanced over to Charlie. “Shall we give ’em a show?” he said.
“What else we got to do?” Charlie answered.
They rode the breakers back to the beach. Oscar was used to standing up on a surfboard supporting a skittish tourist. Doing the same thing with a net in one hand and his sack of fish in the other was no huhu. Beside him, Charlie Kaapu might have been the incarnation of Kuula, the Hawaiian god of fishermen. You got the feeling nothing could make him come off his surfboard. That feeling might be wrong; Charlie could take a tumble like anybody else. But Oscar didn’t think he would, not this time.
And he didn’t. Neither did Oscar. They glided smoothly up onto the sand. The fishermen gave them a smattering of applause. Somebody reached into his pocket and tossed Oscar a quarter. Oscar caught it out of the air with his net. That won him some more cheers. He would have got more still if he could have balanced the coin on the end of his nose.
He shrugged as he walked back to his apartment. He was a performer when he got on a surfboard. If he got paid for being a performer, what was wrong with that?
A JAPANESE OFFICER shouted in his own language. Along with the rest of the prisoners in the Pearl City camp, Jim Peterson waited for the English translation. He didn’t have to wait long. As usual, a Hawaiian-born Jap about his own age stood next to the officer. The local wore a sharp sharkskin suit. He seemed happy as a clam to serve his new bosses.
“You will be moved,” he said. “You will go to the north and central part of the island. Some of you will work in the fields. You will be well fed and well treated.”
Peterson turned his head ever so slightly toward Prez McKinley, who stood beside him. “Yeah, and the check is in the mail,” he said out of the side of his mouth.
McKinley snickered. He didn’t do it very loud, though. Guards watched the POWs. If you got out of line, they beat you. They stomped you, too, and hit you with sticks. They’d already killed at least one American. Nobody wanted to give them any excuse to go to work.
And there were probably prisoners who couldn’t be trusted. Peterson didn’t like thinking so, but it was the way to bet. Some people were out for themselves, first, last, and always. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. If you can’t lick ’em, lick their boots.
The Jap with the sword on his hip shouted some more. The quisling in the sharkskin suit translated: “This move will begin in one hour. All able-bodied prisoners must go. It is an order from the Japanese Imperial Army.” The way he said it, God might have handed it to Moses on a tablet of stone.