Nothing he could do about it. Nothing anybody could do about it. All the prisoners could do was sit behind barbed wire, look out at the green countryside all around them and the blue Pacific to the north, and slowly starve to death.
He almost wished the Japs would stop feeding them altogether. Then it would be over. The way things were, he felt himself losing ground a quarter of an inch at a time. Everything he did, everything he thought about, centered on the miserable breakfast and lousy supper he’d got.
“You know,” he said to Prez McKinley one afternoon a few days after the raid, “I don’t hardly think about women at all any more.”
The sergeant let out a grunt. Peterson thought it was surprise. “Me, neither,” McKinley said. “I like pussy as well as the next guy-bet your ass I do. But I don’t think I could get it up with a crane right now.”
“Same here,” Peterson said. “Pussy’s the best thing in the world when your belly’s full. When it’s not… you forget about women.” He fooled with his belt. Day by day, his waistline shrank. He closed the belt several holes tighter than he had when he got here. Pretty soon, even the last hole would be too loose, and he’d have to trade the belt for whatever he could get and use rope to hold up his pants. And after a while, I’ll have enough rope to hang myself with, too, he thought. Surprisingly few men here had killed themselves. Maybe they wouldn’t give the Japs the satisfaction.
McKinley looked northeast, the direction from which the B-25s had come, the direction in which the mainland lay. “I wonder if they’re really gonna try and take Hawaii away from the Japs again.”
“Don’t wonder if. Wonder when,” Peterson said. “They haven’t forgotten about us. That’s one thing those bombers showed.”
“Wonder if they can do it, too,” McKinley said.
It was Peterson’s turn to grunt. The Japs shouldn’t have surprised the defenders here. They had, but they shouldn’t have. He couldn’t imagine an American armada catching the new occupiers asleep at the switch. How much damage could the Japs do before a landing party hit the beach? Even if Americans did land, the Japanese would fight like rabid weasels to hold on to what they’d taken.
At lineup the next morning, the Japanese didn’t release the POWs to breakfast once they had the count straight, the way they usually did. Standing there at attention in his row, Peterson eyed the guards with suspicion. What the devil were they up to now?
A nervous-looking Oriental in Western clothes-plainly a Jap from Hawaii-came into the camp along with more guards and the commandant. The Japanese officer spoke in his own language. The local turned it into English: “The following prisoners will make themselves known immediately…” The commandant handed him a piece of paper. He read off half a dozen names.
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 O
scar, 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.
Not even Charlie Kaapu knew about that. A sudden thought occurred to Oscar. He glanced over at his friend. Could Charlie have done the same thing? Maybe wondering about it was just misery loving company-but if Charlie hadn’t been scared to death out there, too, he wasn’t human.
I’ll never know for sure, Oscar thought. I can’t ask him. And if he did, he can’t ask me, either. Just one of those things.
Charlie took to sailboarding as if it were his idea and not Oscar’s. That was no great surprise; any surf-rider could adapt to the addition of the sail pretty fast. But Charlie also seemed to enjoy skimming along over the waves under wind power as if he’d thought of it. Of course, Charlie enjoyed everything he did. If he didn’t enjoy it, he didn’t do it.
“You ever see that blond wahine any more after she move out?” he asked.
“Susie? Nope, not lately.” Oscar shook his head and shrugged. “She was fun in bed, but she was kind of rugged any other way.”
“Yeah, well, dames are like that sometimes.” Charlie took everything in stride. “Enjoy ’em while you can, then kiss ’em good-bye.” He’d kissed a lot of women good-bye. So had Oscar, but Charlie never let it bother him. “No huhu,” he said now. It might have been his motto.
Oscar looked back over his shoulder. Oahu receded behind him-much faster than it would have before he’d had his surfboard altered. “We ought to split up,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t love you”-Charlie boomed laughter and blew him a kiss-“but we both ought to bring in as many fish as we can.”
“Oh, yeah.” Charlie didn’t argue about that. Hunger was something even he took seriously. “See you later, alligator.” He slanted off toward the west, as slick as Vaseline on the sailboard.
Am I that good? Oscar wondered. He shrugged again. He probably wasn’t quite that stylish, but he got the job done even so. He swung a little toward the east, to put as much room between himself and Charlie Kaapu as he could.
He had a pretty good day fishing-not a great day, but a pretty good one. He got plenty of fish for himself, some for Eizo Doi, and some to sell. The Japs hadn’t got around to regulating sailboarders the way they did with the men who fished from sampans. He could take what he didn’t give to the handyman and sell it in one of the unofficial markets. A little cash was always nice. Food that wasn’t fish or rigidly rationed rice was even nicer.
Doi bowed to him when he brought fish to the handyman’s cramped little shop. “You good fella, you keep make pay,” the Japanese man said in what was intended for English.
“Sure I do,” Oscar said. “I always pay my bills.” That was pretty much true, too. Sometimes he took a little longer than he might have-he’d had plenty of spells of living hand-to-mouth even before the war-but he never forgot. When he had money (or, here, fish), he got out of hock.
“Good, good,” Doi told him. “Some fella, even some Japanese fella-not all Japanese fella, but some Japanese fella-get sails, forget make pay.” His face twisted as if he were smelling his fish a week from now.
After leaving Doi’s, Oscar headed for one of the open-air outfits that had been replacing grocery stores and supermarkets since the war started. Most of them were in the Oriental part of town west of Nuuanu Avenue. Haoles came here to buy and sometimes, like Oscar, to sell, but few markets sprang up in their neighborhoods. It was as if they were saying such things were good enough for Japs and Chinamen, but not for them. Or maybe the Asians just took to huckstering more naturally than whites did.
Fish always went fast. Oscar got some cash and some fruit. Dietitians would probably tell him he wasn’t eating a balanced diet, but he didn’t care. He would have murdered for a big greasy hamburger and French fries, but nobody except a few millionaires could get beef any more.
Greenbacks in his pocket, fruit in a cloth bag, he started back toward Waikiki. No buses ran; they had no fuel. Some enterprising Orientals propelled pedicabs and pulled rickshaws, but Oscar couldn’t stomach riding in something like that. Using a man like a draft horse-even paying a man to use himself as a draft horse-stuck in his craw. It didn’t stop a lot of prosperous haoles. It didn’t stop a lot of Japanese officers, either. Of course, from what Oscar had seen, the SPCA would have landed on them like an avalanche if they’d treated draft animals the way they treated their own troops. And that said nothing about what happened to the American POWs.
“Oscar! Hey, Oscar!” Across the street, Susie Higgins waved to him. She was wearing an electric-blue silk sun dress she sure hadn’t had when she was living in his apartment.
“Speak of the devil,” he said, and then, louder, “Hi, Susie.” He didn’t know what to do or say after that. Most of the time, he didn’t need to worry about running into ex-girlfriends after a fling had had its day. They got on an ocean liner or a Pan Am Clipper flying boat, and that was that. Susie would have done the same thing but for the small detail of the Japanese invasion. He trotted over to the other side of the street. Dodging a horse-drawn wagon full of greens was a hell of a lot easier than jaywalking when a truck would just as soon knock you flat as let you cross. “How are you?” he asked, adding, “You look good.”
She’d always looked good. She looked better now. She’d acquired a proper Hawaiian suntan, which the bright blue silk only played up. She cocked her head to one side and gave him a saucy smile. “So do you-good enough to eat, in fact.”
“Promises, promises,” he said. Susie laughed out loud. Oscar knew he had to play it light. If he didn’t, he might want to haul off and belt her, and people would talk. �
�How are you doing these days?” he asked, and then, “What are you doing these days?”
“I’m taking dictation-and the accent isn’t on the first syllable, either, you nasty man.” She wrinkled her nose and winked at him. “Happens I’m an A-number-one secretary. Even if all my references are back on the mainland, I showed Mr. Underhill what I could do.”
“I’ll bet you did,” Oscar said, again lightly. She made as if to hit him. He made as if to duck. They both laughed this time. Oscar wouldn’t have been surprised if she was a first-class secretary. She’d be good at anything she set her mind to. She sure as hell screwed as if they were going to outlaw it day after tomorrow.
“What are you up to?” she asked.
“Some surfboarding lessons. Some sailboarding lessons. You know about sailboards?” He waited till she nodded, then struck a pose and went on with what he hoped was pardonable pride: “I invented ’em. And I do some fishing, and I trade the fish for other stuff.”
“You thought of sailboards?” Susie said. Now Oscar nodded. She grinned at him. “That’s swell. I’ve seen some guys using them. Maybe I’ve even seen you out there on the water-who knows?”
“Like you’d care.” Oscar did his best to sound as if he was still teasing. It wasn’t so easy now.
“I might,” Susie said. “How do you know unless you try to find out?”
“And get slapped down for my trouble? Fat chance.”
“Hey, we had fun.” Susie might have been challenging him to deny it, and he couldn’t. She continued, “Maybe we could have some more.”
“We’d just start fighting again.” Now Oscar dared her to tell him he was wrong.
“Maybe we wouldn’t,” she said-if that meant she thought he was wrong, it didn’t mean she thought he was very wrong.
He’d thought he would gloat, but he didn’t. All he said was, “What’s wrong with the fellow you’re taking dictation from?”
Even as he said it, he wondered if it would make her mad. It didn’t. She answered matter-of-factly: “Underhill? He’s got a Chinese wife he’s crazy about and three little kids. It happens.” Her shrug held all sorts of knowledge.
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