These are not terms of endearment. The two groups—the kotonks and the Buddhaheads—genuinely dislike each other. One night, a week into basic training, Alex is walking back from the mess hall. He’s chatting with Teddy, the only other mainlander in his hutment.
A group of Buddhaheads is walking toward them. That’s another thing about these Hawaii boys. They’re always in packs. Never alone. And chatting away, loud, as usual.
The two groups pass each other. “God, the stink,” Teddy mutters under his breath.
“What you say?”
Alex and Teddy turn around. The group of Buddhaheads is facing them.
“I said you all stink. Go take a shower—”
The group descends on them. In a blink Alex and Teddy are leveled, left writhing on the ground. That’s another thing about these Buddhaheads. For all their laid-back and easygoing attitude, the Hawaiians have surprisingly thin skin. Even the smallest slight—a wrong look, a perceived insult—will set them off, and retaliation will come quickly in a flurry of kicks and punches. As it does now. And they don’t believe in a fair fight; they have absolutely no qualms about outnumbering the foe. Maybe that’s why they always travel in groups.
Alex and Teddy return to their hutment, scuffed up and bloodied. One of their hutment mates is squatting outside the door. A guy named Mutt Suzuki. “Howzit, braddahs,” Mutt says when he notices their bruised faces and disheveled hair. He laughs and follows them in. “Oy, oy brahs,” he says to the other Buddhaheads inside, “these two lolo kotonks like got their manini asses whupped!”
They all laugh like heck, as if it’s the funniest thing in the world.
44
AUGUST 13, 1943
CAMP SHELBY, MISSISSIPPI
A damp heat clings to them. They sit on their helmets, mosquitoes buzzing around their heads. The corporal’s voice drones on. This afternoon, as with most afternoons after lunch, the corporal will lecture them about how to set the howitzer cannon, how to get the gun emplacement, how to this, how to that. In an hour he will walk them over to an actual howitzer cannon sitting not twenty yards away, and they will all snap to and pay attention. But for now, sitting on their helmets under the blazing sun, this is all theoretical nonsense, and they nod not with attention but with sleep.
Twenty minutes in, a captain—Captain Ralph Ensminger, they will later learn—interrupts the lecture. Alex has never seen the man before but he has an innate air of authority about him. He is tall, with a face that is lean and almost ascetic. A pair of dark glasses sits perfectly perched on his high-bridged beak of a nose. His voice is surprisingly high-pitched, but unapologetically so. He speaks slowly, articulating every single word.
“Everyone walk over to Field Eighteen.”
They head over quickly. They are curious but quiet.
Field 18 is dotted with numerous red flags spread about, each with a different letter printed on it.
“Get into the trench.” The fifteen soldiers do so. Directly in front of the trench is a single blue flag, and instinctively they bunch behind it. They are beginning to understand. This is a test. An audition. For the front-observer position. A crucial position, one of the most highly sought-after roles in the artillery battalion. The front observer, unlike the rest of the team, is on the front lines. In the thick of it. There he scouts for enemy positions: machine-gun nests, tanks, encampments, hidden snipers. He judges the exact distance to these targets, then radios in the coordinates for the artilleries to strike them. A front observer must show grace under pressure, calm in chaos. And above all, the ability to judge distances insanely well. Everyone wants to be the front observer.
Captain Ensminger speaks from behind them. He doesn’t raise his voice, but his high-pitched, well-enunciated words cut through the humid air.
“I will give you a letter. Find the red flag with that letter written on it somewhere on the field. You are to write down your best guess for the distance between that red flag and the blue flag set before you.”
Papers are handed out; pencils, too. They barely have time to write down their names when the sergeant says, “W.”
Immediately, fifteen heads, peering over the ledge of the trench, swivel left and right. Like periscopes. Eyes squinting, trying to make out tiny letters on waving flags on this sun-blazed, blindingly bright field. Zack Okutsu’s head doesn’t clear the top of the trench, and he can’t even see the flags.
Then the captain: “B.”
Panic. Many haven’t even located the W flag yet. Random guesses are penciled in. Heads turn faster now, B, B, B, where is B?
“K.”
Somebody curses. Somebody looks over at his neighbor’s sheet. He is immediately yanked out, his paper torn up, and made to hold a push-up position for the duration of the test. No one cheats after that. They scratch in estimates. Thirty-five yards. No, thirty, twenty-five, twenty yards. The guesses are all over the map.
Alex, though. He jots his numbers down quickly but with certainty, never changing his answers. They are exact. Precise. Pretentious, some might say. 42 yards. 19 yards. 11 yards. 38 yards.
After seven more flags, the papers are collected. Three buck sergeants quickly go through the papers, scoring them. Everyone waits in the trenches, the humidity even thicker in that crowd of bodies. The sun unrelenting.
“When you hear your name, step out of the trench,” one of the buck sergeants announces.
One by one, the dejected soldiers leave the trench. Until only five remain. Four Buddhaheads and one mainlander: Alex Maki.
Another round of seven flags. The answers collected, scored. Captain Ensminger returns. His face is flushed. “Who is Alex Maki?”
Alex raises his hand.
The captain takes off his dark glasses. “Maki, stay in the trench. Everyone else out.” His voice even more high-pitched than usual.
Alex feels every eyeball focus on him. None sharper and hotter than the sergeant’s. “You’ve taken this test before, Maki?”
“No, sir.”
“You’ve seen the answer sheet? Memorized it?”
“No, sir.”
“You think you’re so smart?”
“No, sir.”
He stares at Alex for five long seconds, his cold eyes never once blinking. “We’ll see about that.” He nods to a buck sergeant, who runs out to the field. He grabs the nearest red flag, sprints to the far end. Stakes it into the ground.
“Now,” the sergeant says, “give me its distance.”
Alex scrunches his forehead, squints at the flag.
“Be as exact as possible, Maki.”
Sweat trails down into his eyes. He blinks. And in that brief blink, he is back on Bainbridge Island. In his bedroom gazing down at Frank out back throwing the football. The high-arching flight of the ball landing in a trash can set at ten-yard markers. Thirty yards. Fifty yards. Sixty yards.
“Fifty-six yards,” he says. He does not blurt it out, or shout with overbearing confidence. He simply says it matter-of-factly because it is, to him, a matter of fact.
“Fifty-six yards?” the captain repeats.
Alex is about to nod; then stops himself. Captain Ensminger’s words—Be as exact as possible—echo in his head. He stares at the flag again. “Fifty-six yards and two feet.”
Snorts from behind him.
The captain’s eyebrows shoot up over his glasses. “And two feet, did you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
The captain pauses; he has the look of a man wondering if he’s being played. “Fine, Maki, you want to be cute about this, go ahead. But tell you what, because I can be cute, too: if you’re more than a foot off, this whole unit does a ten-miler tonight.”
Groans from behind.
“And if I’m correct, sir?”
The captain’s eyes narrow. “If you’re right, within one foot, your unit gets special leave to Hattiesburg tonight.”
One of the buck corporals runs out to the flag, unspooling as he does a long tape measure. Everyone is qui
et. Most are glaring at Alex’s back, hating him, thinking about the blisters and aching feet that await them from the ten-mile hike.
The buck corporal slows down as he approaches the red flag. He pulls his face low to the tape. His head cants suddenly to the side like he’s just seen a snake. Slowly he stands up. Gets back down for another look. Stands again. “Fifty-six yards,” he shouts. A brief pause, everyone holding their breath. “Fifty-six yards and one foot, to be exact, sir.”
A moment of stunned disbelief. Then hoots and cheers break out from his unit. He turns to face them, and they’re all grinning ear to ear, and staring at him with a newfound respect. As if he’s just thrown a game-winning touchdown.
“Ho, brah,” Kash Kobayashi declares with a smile, “looks like this lolo be our front observer, braddahs. He a da kine moke, fo’ shua.”
Alex feels a grin crack his face. And as Kash and Mutt and the rest of the guys come over and pound his shoulder, Alex finds himself wishing—desperately—that Frank could be here to see this. Little Turtle Boy making front observer, proving himself in the company of tough men, in this band of mokes.
45
AUGUST 13, 1943, EVENING
HATTIESBURG, MISSISSIPPI
“Hey, braddahs, we make sure this kotonk’s glass never goes empty tonight, yeah?” Mutt shouts in the crowded Ritz Café on Main Street. He smacks Alex on the back, with a loopy, relaxed grin, his face, even through his dark tan, flushed with alcohol.
A few of their unit mates laugh back. Kash Kobayashi refills Alex’s mug, the overflowing suds spilling over his hand, soaking his sleeve.
“Ain’t got money for this, Mutt,” Alex says. He burned through his cash in the first hour. But somehow the beer has kept flowing.
“You don’t worry about that,” Mutt says. “Us boys from Hawaii, we got you covered, braddah.”
Alex leans back against the bar counter. Mutt’s not lying or merely boasting. These Buddhaheads, for all their faults, are tight-knit. They have each other’s back all the time.
“Look at this,” Mutt says, pulling out his wallet. He slides out a small black-and-white photograph, its edges frayed. A short, stocky girl, eighteen or nineteen, is standing on a beach wearing a muumuu dress, a floral headdress, and ankle bracelets made of whalebone. She has an average face, if not downright homely, a bit wide with a stubby nose. A radiant smile, though.
“The most beautiful girl, don’t you think, braddah?” Mutt says.
“Your girlfriend?”
Mutt grins. “Since we were like ten.”
Alex smiles back. “What’s her name?”
“Belinda. Belinda Tomo. I’m gonna marry her one day.”
Alex looks Mutt in the eyes. Only one way to respond. “She really is beautiful. Killer smile. You lucky bastard.”
Mutt laughs proudly, claps Alex across the back. “What about you, bruh?” he says, putting the photograph carefully away. “You got a main squeeze?”
“Nah.”
Mutt holds his gaze, studying him though his damp drunk eyes. “There is someone, isn’t there?”
“No. There really isn’t.”
Mutt grins, nudges him gently with the elbow. “Come on. Where is she?”
Alex raises the mug to his lips, takes a long drink. “I don’t know.”
“Ha! So there is someone!”
“It’s not like that. It’s … complicated.”
Mutt laughs. “You’re not sure or she’s not sure?”
Alex doesn’t answer.
“You got a picture of her? Let me see how pretty she is.”
Alex shakes his head. “She never gave me one.”
Mutt laughs again. “Then she’s the one not sure.” He grabs a pitcher, refills Alex’s mug. “Drink up. We’ll make a man out of you yet. You come back from war a warrior, and she won’t be able to resist you.” The beer overflows, suds and foam dripping onto the floor.
Mutt turns back to the group. In seconds he has them laughing with that carefree, easygoing Hawaiian camaraderie that Alex envies. Alone again at the end of the bar, Alex sets his mug down on the counter.
It’s been over six months since the last time Charlie “appeared” to him at Manzanar. Enough time has passed for him to think rationally about the appearances. And this is what he now fully accepts: it really was just his imagination. Nothing more than that. A fantasy fueled by boredom and worry and guilt and loneliness. He’d been such a sad little pathetic boy back then, so clueless and afraid of the world, clinging to fantasy.
And yet.
He still thinks of her all the time. While his comrades snore away, he gazes at the sketch of her he drew back at Manzanar, his eyes drifting over the pencil lines, her jawline, her eyes.
Even now, during a march or while doing army maneuvers in De Soto National Forest, her voice will break into his mind with a bell-like clarity that startles. Just three whispered words.
Find me, Alex.
Three words that sometimes feel like a clarion call.
It’s Alex who finally hauls the group out of the bar. They stumble to the bus stop, arms slung over one another’s shoulders, taking up the whole road as they drunkenly sing a Hawaiian native song. Zack Okutsu, the shortest and now drunkest, is in the middle, almost being carried between the taller Mutt and Shig, his boots barely touching the ground.
At the bus stop, a handful of soldiers from the 273rd Infantry Regiment are waiting there. The two groups stare at each other. Early on, there’d been fights between the whites and Niseis. The white boys, although they’d been told about the 442nd, were unaccustomed to seeing Japanese faces in American uniforms. Some of them had brothers fighting in the Pacific theater. Some had brothers killed by Japanese. At USO events at camp and in bars here in Hattiesburg, there’d been more than a few brawls.
But that was months ago. The 442nd has since gained the begrudging respect of most everyone at Camp Shelby. Because they’re damn good soldiers. The average setup time for a heavy machine gun is sixteen seconds. The 442nd does it in five. They scale the obstacle walls and finish eight-mile marches in full gear faster than any other unit, even with feet blistered from too-large, ill-fitting boots. In challenge after challenge, they’ve proven themselves quicker, slicker, better than virtually every other unit.
The bus arrives. It’s packed at this time of night with soldiers trying to make curfew, and local black laborers, exhausted after long shifts, returning home. Alex and his unit mates sit in the whites’ section up front, while the black passengers ride in the rear. Here in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the Nisei soldiers are considered white, not black. They can eat in the nicer restaurants, sit in the front section of buses, use whites-only restrooms and drinking fountains. In movie theaters, they sit with the whites below the balcony otherwise known as “nigger heaven.”
The bus doors groan shut.
“Yo, yo, hold up, mister!” Mutt shouts to the bus driver. “We got three more coming.”
The white driver is rotund and sweaty, his belly jutting into the bottom of the large steering wheel. He glances down the street. Three black soldiers are sprinting for the bus, their arms waving. He grabs the crank for the door, starts closing it.
“Hey, what you doing?” Mutt quickly rises, stepping into the way of the closing door. He holds it open with his foot. “They miss this bus, they miss curfew.”
“We got no more room for them,” the bus driver snaps. “Now git the hell outta my doorway.”
“There’s plenty of empty seats.”
“In the front half only. But the nigger half is full. No more room for them three.”
“You stop the bus.”
The driver turns his head to Mutt. “You Japs be riding with them niggers, I had my druthers. Now you git outta my door.”
Mutt leans out of the doorway. “Come on,” he shouts to the three running soldiers, waving them on. “Hurry up!”
The bus driver curses. Steps on the accelerator pedal, lurching the bus forward. Mutt is almo
st thrown out of the doorway.
The Nisei soldiers stand up, rush forward, all of them, even Teddy. Alex is the first to the driver, and he grabs the driver’s arm—it’s like sinking fingers into a tub of lard—and kicks his foot off the pedal. The others are pulling the brake crank, causing the bus to screech to a stop.
“The hell you doing!” the driver curses. “I’m calling the police on you.”
“Sit your white ass back down,” Zack shouts.
But the driver is irate. He stands, jiggling his belly past the steering wheel, pushing Alex out the way. The guy is all fat and no muscle, but there is a lot of it, and he is using it to his advantage. He shoves Alex backward, reaches down for something by the seat. Pulls out a blackjack, which he swings at Alex, narrowly missing his head.
“Yo, cool it!” someone shouts from the back.
The driver rears back for another swing, down at Alex’s ducked head, and this time there’s nowhere for Alex to retreat.
A body, massive and graceful at the same time, slides between bodies, grabs the driver’s heft arm.
“Drop it!” Mutt shouts, his hand grabbing the pasty, flabby wrist.
The driver stares back. Then tries to wrest his arm away, and swing at Mutt.
Big mistake. Mutt yanks the man’s considerable body out from behind the steering wheel, and through the opened doorway. By the time Alex jumps out, Mutt is administering a beatdown on the driver. The others join in, kicking the man. It’s the three black soldiers who finally pull Mutt and the others away.
46
AUGUST 14, 1943
CAMP SHELBY, MISSISSIPPI
The next morning, Captain Ralph Ensminger gathers the men. Alex, severely hungover, can barely keep his balance. Everyone else in the unit, even Zack, seems none the worse for wear. Their backs are straight, their eyes alert. Perhaps fear of punishment has sobered them. Because there’s going to be hell to pay.
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