Looking confused, a lieutenant and several privates stepped out of ranks. Peterson wondered what the hell they’d done, and whether the Japs were about to make a horrible example of them. He’d already seen enough examples to last him the rest of his life, and several lifetimes yet to come.
But, to his surprise and relief, nothing dreadful happened. Guards came up to the men and hustled them away, but that was all. They didn’t beat them or kick them or anything of the sort. They weren’t gentle, but Peterson had a hard time imagining gentle Japs. They were businesslike, which in itself was out of the ordinary.
After the handful of prisoners were taken away, things went back to normal. The rest of the swarm of POWs queued up for breakfast. They had something new to buzz about. Somebody not far from Peterson said, “Those guys hadn’t even hardly left home before.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” somebody else asked.
“They were stationed at some kind of installation right around here, and this is where they ended up, too,” the first man said. “Small world, ain’t it?”
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Peterson said as a light went on inside his head.
“What’s up?” Sergeant McKinley asked. What he’d heard didn’t mean thing one to him.
In a low voice, Peterson said, “Ever hear of radar, Prez?”
“I dunno. Maybe.” McKinley screwed up his face in concentration. “Some kind of fancy range-finding gear, right?”
“Yeah.” That was as much as McKinley, a born ground-pounder, needed to know. As somebody who’d got paid from flying off a carrier deck, Jim Peterson knew a good deal more. Among the things he knew was… “They had a radar station up here at Opana.”
“Yeah?” McKinley thought about that for a little while. “You think the Japs are gonna squeeze those guys about it?”
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” said Peterson, who would have bet the mortgage on it. “They don’t know much about that stuff.” As far as he’d heard, the Japanese hadn’t known anything about radar. It looked as if they’d figured out there was stuff they didn’t know.
“Well, shit,” McKinley said. “I thought those suckers were lucky on account of the guards didn’t work ’em over right then and there. Shows what I know. They’re gonna get the third degree from professionals, aren’t they?”
“Can’t tell you for sure,” Peterson said grimly, “but that’s how it looks to me, too.” He looked around. “You probably don’t want to talk about it a whole hell of a lot. You don’t want to say that name, either. Otherwise, the Japs may decide to find out how much you know about it.”
“Well, shit,” McKinley said again, in a different tone of voice. He looked around, as if expecting a guard to be listening over his shoulder. Peterson would have worried even more about other POWs. Knowing who could be trusted wasn’t always easy. McKinley nodded, at least half to himself. “Gotcha.”
“Attaboy, Prez.”
The chow line crawled forward. As usual, there wasn’t enough to eat and it was lousy. Also as usual, everybody emptied-indeed, polished-his mess kit. The only thing worse than not enough food was no food at all. Camp rations came altogether too close to that, but they weren’t quite there.
Fighters on patrol buzzed overhead. The Japs were bound to be taking that much more seriously since the American raid. Peterson glanced up at the warplanes, then all at once eyed them seriously. “Goddamn!” he exclaimed.
“Now what?” Prez McKinley asked.
Peterson pointed to the fighters. “Those aren’t Zeros.” He spoke with complete authority. He’d earned the right, by God, not just through study but because a Zero had knocked his Wildcat out of the sky. “They’ve got to be planes from the Japanese Army instead.”
“Yeah? And so?” Prez didn’t see the point. He was shrewd, no doubt about that, but he really did have a noncom’s narrow view of the world. He was also an infantryman. What happened in the air and on the water didn’t mean so much to him.
Peterson spelled things out: “No way in hell those could’ve flown here all by themselves. Stinking slanty-eyed bastards had to ship ’em in. This place is like a great big old aircraft carrier right out in the middle of the Pacific, and the Japs are sure as hell making the most of it.”
“They’ll ship in planes. They’ll ship in gas and ammo for ’em. They’ll ship in enough chow for their own guys.” McKinley pointed to one of the guards. Sure enough, the man hadn’t missed any meals. “What does everybody else get? Hind tit, that’s what.”
“Yeah.” Peterson wondered how much more weight he could drop and still keep going. He didn’t know, but he had little doubt he’d find out.
BY NOW, OSCAR van der Kirk got more envious comments than astonished ones when he assembled his sailboard on Waikiki Beach. He wasn’t the only one who’d made the conversion any more; several others, Charlie Kaapu among them, had imitated him. He didn’t mind. There seemed to be enough fish to go around. Some of the others were using the boards more for sport than for fishing. He’d seen people do some pretty spectacular things. The more he watched them, the more he felt like doing spectacular things himself. He’d already tried one the first day he came in, but they were outdoing him now.
Beside Oscar, Charlie planted his newly converted sailboard’s mast in its socket. “You were one sly haole to come up with this scheme,” Charlie said admiringly. “I didn’t think it would work when you started talking about it, but I was wrong.”
Oscar shrugged. “What’s being a haole got to do with it? Hawaiians were the ones who started this whole surf-riding business in the first place.”
“That was a long time ago,” Charlie said, which seemed to make sense to him even if it didn’t make a whole lot to Oscar. He added, “We were okay as long as we were just in the game against us, you know what I mean? But then haoles came along, and you knew how to do all this stuff we couldn’t, and so we pretty much stopped trying to figure out new stuff on our own.”
Was that why Hawaiians and hapa — Hawaiians were the way they were? Oscar had no idea. A lot of them just seemed to drift without trying to make much of their lives, though.
Since Oscar had spent most of the time since coming to Hawaii drifting through life, he couldn’t very well blame them. He made sure his mast was firmly seated, then said, “Let’s go on out.”
Fishermen stepped aside to let them go into the surf. Oscar wondered if there was any beach on Oahu that didn’t have its complement of fishermen these days. Unless he missed his guess, there wasn’t. Fishing wasn’t just a sport any more. It was a vital part of feeding the island, just like the gardens that had sprung up everywhere. If you didn’t have access to fish or to garden vegetables, what did you get? Rice, and not very much of it.
Into the water he slid. As usual, the Pacific was not too hot, not too cold. “Just right,” he murmured. Not for the first time, he thought of Goldilocks and the three bears.
He and Charlie paddled out to sea, guiding their surfboards over the waves till they could stand up and unfurl their sails instead. “This is really something, you smart son of a bitch,” Charlie called. “You could make sailboards for everybody in the world, make yourself a million dollars.”
He might even have been right-had Oscar had the idea at another time. As things were… “There’s this little thing called the war.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember that.” By the way Charlie said it, he hadn’t remembered till Oscar reminded him. Oscar laughed, wishing that could be true. He would never be able to forget those horrible moments off Waimea, stuck in the crossfire between the Japanese invasion force and the American defenders on the shore. He’d never forget pissing himself in terror, either.