“Yes, sir!” the men chorused.
“You will be punished if you do. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir!” they said again.
“All right, then. See that you remember it,” Horino said.
“Salute!” Shimizu called. Like him, the other men made their salutes as crisp and perfect as they could. Some officers would forbid a soldier to go on leave if they didn’t like the way he saluted. Shimizu didn’t think Lieutenant Horino was that strict, but why take chances?
Horino returned those precise salutes with one that wasn’t much more than a wave. A sergeant would have slapped a common soldier till his ears fell off for a salute like that. But officers lived by different rules. “Dismissed,” Horino said. Then he unbent enough to add, “Enjoy yourselves.”
“Yes, sir,” the men said, Shimizu loud among them. He wasn’t sure that had been an order-how could someone command you to have a good time? — but he wasn’t sure it hadn’t been, either. Again, why take chances? Lieutenant Horino strode away, sword swinging on his hip. Shimizu eyed the men he’d led since before they got on the transport back in Japan. “You have your passes? The military police are bound to ask you to show them.” He had his, in his tunic pocket.
“Yes, Corporal. We have them,” the soldiers said. Shimizu waited. One by one, they dug them out and displayed them.
When he’d seen all of them, he nodded. “All right. Let’s go. You all know what the lieutenant meant about not disgracing yourselves?” He waited. When no one said anything, he spelled it out for them: “Don’t get the clap.”
“Corporal-san?” Senior Private Furusawa waited to be recognized. Only after Shimizu nodded to him did he go on, “Corporal-san, the Americans are supposed to have medicines that can really cure it.”
Since his father was a druggist, maybe he knew what he was talking about. Or maybe he didn’t. Shimizu only shrugged. “If you don’t get a dose in the first place, you won’t have to worry about that, will you?”
Unlike some of the men in the squad, Furusawa was smart enough to know a dangerous question when he heard one. “Oh, no, Corporal,” he said hastily.
“Good. And remember to salute all your superiors, too.” Shimizu looked the men over one more time. He didn’t see anything wrong with anybody’s uniform. “Come on. Let’s go.”
They followed him like ducklings hurrying on after a mother duck. That made him proud; even if he was only a corporal, he had a fine string of common soldiers in tow. The civilians the men passed on the street didn’t care that he was only a corporal. They scrambled out of the squad’s way. The Japanese among them knew how to bow properly. The Chinese and whites didn’t, but orders were not to make a fuss about it as long as they tried to do it right.
Here came a reeling sergeant who’d had a good time somewhere. “Salute!” Shimizu said, and the whole squad did in unison. He hoped everyone did it well. That might not matter, of course. If the sergeant felt like topping off his leave by slapping common soldiers around (and maybe even a corporal, too), he could always find an excuse to do it. But he only returned the salutes and kept on going. He was singing a song about a geisha named Hanako. Shimizu remembered singing that song when he’d got drunken leave in China.
As soon as he and his squad got to Hotel Street, military policemen rushed up to them like mean farmyard dogs. “Let’s see your passes!” they shouted, their voices loud and angry.
Shimizu produced his. One by one, his men did the same. The military policemen scowled as they inspected each pass. But there was nothing wrong with any of them. All the information was there, and in the proper form. The military policemen had no choice but to give them back and nod; grudgingly, they did. “Salute!” Shimizu said again. Again, the men obeyed.
“You keep your noses clean, you hear me?” one of the military policemen growled. “If you end up in trouble, you’ll wish your mothers never weaned you. Do you understand me?”
“Hai, Sergeant-san! ” chorused Shimizu and the men he led. They must have been loud enough to satisfy the sergeant, for he and his pal went off to harass some other soldiers. Shimizu pitied anyone they found without proper papers.
But that wasn’t his worry. A lot of places that had served food were closed. There wasn’t a lot of food to serve. Bars were open, though. Some of them sported freshly painted signs in hiragana and also, Senior Private Furusawa said, in Roman letters boasting that they served sake. Shimizu was sure it wasn’t sake imported from Japan. They grew rice here. Some of it had probably been taken out of the food store and turned into something more entertaining. He wondered whose palm had been greased to make that happen, and with how much cash. More than I’ll see any time soon, he thought mournfully.
Almost all the bright, blinking neon signs were in English. One looked as good as another to Shimizu. “I’m going in here,” he said, pointing to one bigger and fancier than most. “Who’s coming with me?”
Only a couple of men from the squad hung back. “I want to start off with a woman,” one of them said. The other nodded.
“You’ll last longer if you do some drinking first,” Shimizu said. They shook their heads. Shimizu shrugged. “Suit yourselves, then. But if you aren’t back at the barracks when you’re supposed to be, you’ll wish those military policemen were beating on you. Have you got that?” He tried to sound fierce, and hoped he succeeded. He really was too easygoing to make a good noncom.
The bar was dark and cool inside, and already full of Japanese soldiers and sailors. The bartender was an Asian man. He spoke Japanese, but oddly; after a little while, Shimizu decided he had to be a Korean. “No, no whiskey, gomen nasai,” he said when the corporal asked. “Have sake, have sort of gin.”
“What do you mean, sort of?” Shimizu inquired.
“Made from fruit. Made from fruit here, understand. Is very good. Ichi-ban,” the bartender said.
A drink was one yen or twenty-five cents U.S. money-outrageously expensive, like everything else in Oahu. “Give me some of this gin,” Shimizu said. “I want something stronger than sake.” He dropped a U.S. quarter on the bar. The silver rang sweetly. The bartender set a shot in front of him.
He knocked it back. He had all he could do not to cough and lose face before his men. The stuff tasted like sweet paint thinner and kicked like a wild horse. It might have been a mortar bomb exploding in his stomach. He liked the warmth that flowed out from his middle afterwards, though.
His men followed his lead. The bartender poured them shots, too. Like Shimizu, they gulped them down. They weren’t so good at hiding what the stuff did to them. Some of them coughed. Senior Private Furusawa said, “My insides are on fire!” Private Wakuzawa seemed on the edge of choking to death. Somebody pounded his back till he could breathe easily again.
By then, Shimizu had recovered his equilibrium-and the use of his voice. He hardly wheezed at all as he laid down a new quarter and said, “Let me have another one.”
“The corporal’s a real man!” one of his soldiers said admiringly.
Shimizu drank the second shot as fast as the first. The stuff didn’t taste good enough to savor. It didn’t hurt so much going down as the first shot had. Maybe he’d got used to it. Or maybe the first assault had stunned his gullet. He managed a smile that looked as if he meant it. “Not so bad,” he said.
“If he can do it, so can we,” Furusawa declared. He put a yen on the bar. “Give me a refill, too.” The rest of the soldiers who’d come in with Shimizu followed suit. They also did better the second time around. Most of them did, anyway: even in the gloom inside the bar, it was easy to see how red Shiro Wakuzawa turned.
“Are you all right?” Shimizu asked him.
He nodded. “Hai, Corporal-san.”