“Not everything,” her husband said. “We’re still here. Things are just—things.” He’d always struck Kenzo as a sensible man.
“What do we do if the house catches fire?” Elsie asked.
“Get out as best we can and pray,” Mr. Sundberg answered bleakly. “That’s the one big worry I’ve got.”
There were smaller ones. Mr. Sundberg had dug that narrow trench to a latrine pit. People used it when they couldn’t go up above. It wasn’t pleasant, or anything close to pleasant. He’d stowed bottles of water down below, but not a whole lot of food. Everybody got hungry and cranky. Kenzo also felt very much the odd man out. Elsie’s folks were polite about it—he didn’t think he’d ever seen them less than polite. But they and Elsie made a group he wasn’t fully part of.
Her father joked about it: “If you can put up with her here, Ken, you’ll never have to worry about it again.”
“I think you’re right,” Kenzo answered. He and Elsie slept huddled together. So did her parents. They had no room for anything less intimate. Mr. and Mrs. Sundberg didn’t say boo. They had to know he’d really slept with Elsie, but they didn’t let on.
And then the firing got worse. Kenzo hadn’t thought it could. Japanese soldiers were right outside. They shouted back and forth to one another, trying to set up a defensive line. They sounded excited and frightened, but still full of fight.
Maybe one of them smelled the stink from the latrine pit. He came over and shouted, “Who’s in there?”
Elsie and her folks couldn’t understand the words, but the tone made them gasp with fright. Kenzo was scared almost out of his wits, too—almost, but not quite. Trying to sound as gruff as he could, he barked, “This is a holdout position. Get lost, you baka yaro, or you’ll give it away.”
“Oh. So sorry.” The soldier clumped off.
Elsie started to ask something. Kenzo held a finger to his lips. Even in the gloom under the house, she saw it and nodded. When Kenzo didn’t hear any Japanese soldiers close by, he explained in a low voice. “I think you saved all of us this time, Ken,” she whispered, and put her arms around him and kissed him right there in front of her parents. He was grinning like a fool when he came up for air. Maybe he wasn’t such an outsider after all.
“Thanks, Ken,” Ralph Sundberg said. “I don’t suppose you want a kiss from me, but I’m glad you and Elsie like each other. I’ll go on being glad when we get out of here, too.”
“Okay, Mr. Sundberg,” Kenzo answered. He couldn’t have asked to hear anything better than that. If the older man really meant it . . . He hoped he got the chance to find out.
A couple of hours later, something a lot bigger and heavier than a machine-gun round smashed into the house above them. The shooting rose to a peak, then slowly ebbed. Kenzo heard fresh shouts. Some of them were the cries of the wounded, which could have come from any throat. Others, though, were unmistakably English.
“My God!” Mrs. Sundberg whispered. “We’re saved!”
“Not yet,” Kenzo said. And he was right. The fighting went on for the rest of the day.
As evening turned gloom into blackness, he heard a Marine outside say, “Lieutenant, I think there’s Japs under this house. I’m gonna feed the fuckers a grenade.”
“No! We’re Americans!” Kenzo and the Sundbergs yelled the same thing at the same time. Getting killed by their own side would have been the crowning indignity.
Startled silence outside. Then: “Okay. Come out under the front steps. Come slow and easy and stick your hands in the air when you’re out.”
One by one, they obeyed. Scrambling out of the hole was awkward. Kenzo helped haul Elsie out. It wasn’t quite so dark as he’d expected when he returned to the world outside the little shelter. Four Marines immediately pointed rifles and tommy guns at him. “You guys are Americans,” one of them said to the Sundbergs. “What about this—Jap-lookin’ fellow?” In the presence of two women, he left it at that.
“He’s as American as we are,” Mrs. Sundberg said.
“He saved all our lives when you were pushing the Japanese back through here,” Mr. Sundberg added, looking back at the wreckage of his house. That must have been a tank round through it: the hole in the front wall was big enough to throw a dog through. Shaking his head, he went on, “We’ve known him for years. I vouch for him, one hundred percent.”
Elsie squeezed Kenzo’s hand. “I love him,” she said simply, which made his jaw drop.
It made all the Marines’ jaws drop, too. The one who’d spoken before frowned at Kenzo. “What have you got to say for yourself, buddy?”
“I’m glad to be alive. I’m twice as glad to see you guys,” he answered in his most ordinary English. “I hope I can find my brother and”—he hesitated— “my father.” Sooner or later, they would find out who his father was. That might not be so good.
“Can you men spare any food?” Mr. Sundberg asked. “We got mighty hungry under there.” Ration cans of hash and peaches made Kenzo forget all about what might happen later on—except when he looked at Elsie. Then he saw the bright side of the future. The other? He’d worry about it when and if it came.
BY THE SOUND OF THINGS, the end of the world wasn’t half a mile away from Oscar van der Kirk’s apartment, and getting closer all the time. The mad, anguished fury of war seemed all the more incongruous played out in Waikiki, which would do for the earthly paradise till a better one came along.
“Japs can’t last much longer,” Charlie Kaapu said, looking on the bright side of things. “All over but the shouting.”
“Some shouting,” Oscar said.
“He pronounced it wrong,” Susie Higgins said. “He meant shooting.”
“Maybe I did,” Charlie said. “Never can tell.”
Plenty of shouting and shooting was going on. To any reasonable man, Charlie was right and more than right when he said things were almost over. The Japs were—had to be—on their last legs. They’d been driven out of Honolulu. Waikiki was about the last bit of Oahu they still held. Logic said that, surrounded and outgunned, they couldn’t hold it long. Logic also said they should give up.
Whatever logic said, the Japs weren’t listening to it. They fought from machine-gun nests and rooftops and doorways and holes in the ground. They fought with a singleminded determination that said they believed holding on to one more block for one more hour was as good as throwing the Americans into the Pacific. It seemed crazy to Oscar, but nobody on either side gave a damn about his opinion.
“I want to go out there and stab some of those little monkeys,” Charlie said. “What I owe them—” He carried a little more weight than he had when he came out of the Kalihi Valley—a little, but not a lot. You couldn’t put on a lot of weight in Hawaii these days no matter how you tried.
“Don’t be dumb,” Oscar said. “The Army and the Marines are giving you your revenge.”
“And the U.S. taxpayer is footing the bill,” Susie added. “How can you beat a deal like that?”
“How? It’s personal, that’s how,” Charlie growled. As if to tell him nobody gave a damn about personal reasons, a bullet came in through the open window, cracked past the three of them, and punched a hole in the far wall. The wall already had several. All Oscar and Charlie and Susie could do was huddle here and hope they didn’t get shot or blown up.
Oscar looked from Charlie to Susie and back again. As far as he knew, they hadn’t fooled around on him. He was a little surprised—Susie had a mind of her own, and Charlie was a born tomcat—and more than a little glad. He’d been looking for answers. Sometimes negative ones were better than positive.
Another bullet came in through the wall. This one tore a hole in the couch. Susie yelped. So did Oscar. The U.S. taxpayer was liable to be footing the bill for wiping him off the face of the earth. “Hey!” he said.
“What?” Susie and Charlie said at the same time.
“Not you,” Oscar told his buddy. He turned back to Susie. “If we get out of this in one
piece, you want to marry me?”
She didn’t hesitate. She rarely did. “Sure,” she said. “It’s not like we haven’t been through a little bit together, is it?”
“Not hardly,” Oscar said. Charlie whistled the Wedding March, loudly and way off tune. Oscar made as if to throw something at him. He and Charlie both laughed. Susie astonished him by starting to cry. If the war hadn’t started, she would have gone back to Pittsburgh after her little fling. Oscar probably would have forgotten her by now, the way he’d forgotten a lot of girls. You never could tell how things would work out.
JOE CROSETTI SHOT UP WAIKIKI. The Japs down there stubbornly kept shooting back. It wouldn’t matter much longer, though.
Enemy troops were running around the hotels by Waikiki Beach and on the beach itself, taking positions to try to defend against the landing craft coming in from the Pacific. I’ve watched three invasions now, Joe thought. How many people can say that?
Naval guns pounded the expensive beachfront property. A long round smashed an apartment house to smithereens a few blocks inland. Joe would have thought nothing could survive the assault from the sea and the sky.
He would have been wrong. He’d thought that before, and he’d been wrong every time. As soon as the landing craft came into range, the Japanese raked them with machine-gun fire. A field gun in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel pumped rounds at the ugly boats struggling toward the beach. Joe saw splashed from near misses, and then a boat caught fire, turned turtle, and sank, all in the wink of an eye.
“You bastards!” Joe exclaimed. He swung his Hellcat out over the ocean—and one of the landing craft opened up on him with its .50-caliber machine gun, mistaking him for a Zero. “You bastards!” he said again, this time on an entirely different note. Fortunately, the sailor with the itchy trigger finger couldn’t shoot worth a damn.
And Joe spotted what he’d been looking for: the muzzle flash from the field gun. They’d put it right inside the wreckage of that big pink pile. He dove on it. His finger stabbed the firing button. Six tongues of flame flickered in front of the Hellcat’s wings. As always, the fighter staggered in the air; all at once, the engine had to fight the recoil from half a dozen guns banging away like sons of bitches. Joe controlled the plane through the rough part with a touch honed by practice.
G-force shoved him down hard into his seat as he came out of the dive. The bastard of it was, he couldn’t see what the hell he’d done, or even if he’d done anything. Every ten seconds took him another mile from the Royal Hawaiian.
Clang! A bullet slammed into the Hellcat. “Fuck!” Joe exclaimed. Yeah, the Japs were still doing everything they could—or maybe that was an American bullet running around loose. Either way, it was doing its best to kill him. Either way, its best didn’t seem good enough. “Way to go, babe,” Joe murmured affectionately, and patted the seat the way he would have patted a reliable horse’s neck.
He made one more pass over Waikiki. By the time he finished that one, only two of his guns still held ammo. Time to head for home. He flew back toward the Bunker Hill. They’d gas him up, the armorers would reload the guns, and then he’d be off again. It was almost like commuting to work. You could get killed in a traffic smashup, too.
You could, yeah, but the jerk in the other car was just a jerk. He wasn’t trying to kill you on purpose. The enemy damn well was. It made a difference. Joe was amazed at what a difference it made.
Twenty minutes later, his teeth slammed together as the Hellcat jounced home. At least he didn’t bite his tongue; every once in a while you’d see a guy get out of his plane with blood dripping down his chin. Joe ran across the flight deck and down to the wardroom to debrief. Things had become routine, or pretty close, but the powers that be still wanted as many details as pilots could give.
“Did you radio the position of that field gun so a dive bomber could pay it a visit?” the debriefing officer asked.
“Uh, sorry, sir, but no.” Joe thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Christ, I really am an idiot!”
“Well, you did have other things on your mind,” the debriefing officer said generously. “Speaking of which, you need to see Commander McCaskill in his office right away—‘On the double,’ he said.”
“I do?” Joe yelped. Was he in trouble for not making that radio call? He didn’t think he ought to be in enough trouble for the Bunker Hill’s commander of air operations to ream him out in person. “What for, sir?”
“He’d better be the one to tell you that,” the debriefing officer answered.
Apprehensively, Joe went up to the carrier’s island. He found the door to Commander McCaskill’s office open. McCaskill, a craggy, gray-haired man in his early forties, looked up from his desk. “Ensign Crosetti reporting, sir,” Joe said, fighting not to show the nerves he felt.
“Come in, Crosetti,” the air operations commander said. “I’ve got something for you.” Joe couldn’t read anything in his voice or on his face; he would have made—probably did make—a formidable poker player.
“Sir?” Joe approached as reluctantly as a kid about to get a swat from the principal.
McCaskill reached into a desk drawer and pulled out two small boxes. He shoved them at Joe. “Here. These are yours now.” Joe opened them. One held two silver bars, the other two thin strips of gold cloth. McCaskill’s face had more room for a smile than Joe would have guessed. “Congratulations, Lieutenant Crosetti!” he said.
“My God, I made j.g.!” Joe blurted. It almost came out, Holy shit! Now that would have been something. He wondered if anybody ever had said something like that. He wouldn’t have been surprised.
Still smiling, the older man nodded. “You earned it, son. You’ve done well.”
“I wish Orson hadn’t bought the farm,” Joe said, suddenly sobered. “He would’ve got these way before I did.”
“Oh.” Commander McCaskill also sobered. After a moment’s thought, he said, “I don’t think you’ll find anyone on this ship without absent friends.” Now Joe nodded; that was bound to be true. McCaskill went on, “If it makes you feel any better, Mr. Sharp did win his promotion—posthumously.”
“Maybe a little, sir.” Joe knew he had to be polite. Yelling, Not fucking much! would have landed him in the brig. He wondered how much consolation that promotion was for Sharp’s folks back in Salt Lake. They would sooner have had their son back. Joe would sooner have had his buddy back. “Absent friends,” he muttered, and then, “This is a nasty business.”
“It is indeed,” Commander McCaskill said. “But I will tell you the only thing worse than fighting a war: fighting a war and losing it. We’re here to make sure the USA doesn’t do that.” Joe nodded again, not happily but with great determination.
OSCAR VAN DER KIRK CROUCHED IN THE RUBBLE of what had been his apartment building. He had one arm around Susie and the other around Charlie Kaapu. They all huddled together to take up as little space as they could. Oscar had a cut on his leg. Charlie was missing the top half-inch of his left little finger. Susie, as far as Oscar could tell, didn’t have anything worse than a few bruises. She’d always been lucky.
They were all lucky. Oscar knew it. They were alive, and they weren’t maimed. After everything that had hit the apartment, that was real luck. Not far away, somebody else who’d stuck it out was alternating moans and shrieks. The cries were getting weaker. Whoever it was, Oscar didn’t think he’d make it.
No way to get up and see, or to help the poor bastard. You could almost walk on the bullets flying by overhead. The Marines storming up Waikiki Beach were giving it everything they had. The more lead they put in the air, the less damage the last Japanese pocket in the Honolulu neighborhood could do to them.
And the Japs were fighting back with everything they had left. That meant rifles and machine guns and knee mortars. If one of those little bombs came down on top of Oscar and Susie and Charlie . . . That would be that. Or a U.S. shell could do the job just as well, or maybe even better.
&nb
sp; “Now we know what’s worse that everything we ran into when we were surfing at Waimea!” Oscar yelled into Charlie’s ear.
“Oh, boy!” Charlie yelled back.
Back in college, Oscar had read Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. He hadn’t understood it then. Now he had understanding rammed down his throat. You really could pay too much for some kinds of knowledge. If he lived, that would be worth remembering.
The Marines were only a block or so away. Oscar could hear them shouting at one another getting a new attack ready. With luck, this one would carry them past what was left of the apartment building. With even more luck, it wouldn’t kill his girl or his buddy—or him.
But he could also hear the Japs shouting a block or so to the north. It couldn’t mean . . . “They sound like they’re getting ready to charge, too,” Susie said.
And they did. “That’s crazy,” Oscar said. “They’d just be killing themselves.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the Japanese soldiers or naval landing forces or whatever they were charged the Marines. They were screaming like banshees and shooting from the hip. It was so spectacular, and so spectacularly mad, that Oscar stuck his head up for a moment to watch. Heading the charge was a senior Japanese Navy officer in dress whites: bald and bespectacled and waving a sword. Oscar had to blink to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.
Half a dozen bullets seemed to hit the officer at the same time. His body twisted horribly, as if it didn’t know which way to fall. His sword went flying. And Susie grabbed Oscar and dragged him down. “Getting shot’s not how you’re gonna get out of proposing to me!” she yelled.
“Okay, babe. That’s a deal.” Oscar stayed down from then on.
By the noises, some of the Japs actually got in among the Marines. They didn’t have a hope in hell of driving them back; they just died a little sooner than they would have otherwise. They probably also killed some Marines who might have lived if things went a little differently.
After that mad charge got smashed, the Marines surged forward. Only spatters of gunfire answered them. The Japs had shot their last bolt. An American in a green uniform flopped down almost on top of Oscar and Susie and Charlie. His rifle swung toward them with terrifying speed. “Don’t shoot!” Oscar said. “We’re on your side!”
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