Ian Slater - Payback

She nodded. They lay in silence together in the dreamy afterglow of their passionate release, and understood each other without talking, so that when she finally did speak it was in answer to a question he had not asked, but which she’d felt. “Don’t worry, Tay. I’m strong enough. I could pull up the whole floor with my fingers.”

He squeezed her shoulders, looking into the imperturbability of her eyes. “I hope you never have to.” He started to get up.

“No, stay,” she begged.

He turned his wristwatch toward her — it read 6:20. “Already late, sweetheart. We should have been out of here ten minutes ago. I’ll go ahead, set up the stall.” He kissed her. She dragged him back down. “Let them wait. No one wants to eat till ten. Everyone sleeps in today.”

“You’re a seductress!” he said happily, pulling away, unlocking his arms from her. She was strong.

“Your body,” she said, her eyes fixed on his nakedness, “is showing me you want to stay.”

He threw her a kiss. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had been pouring rain outside, his mood after making love with Yoko was always upbeat. He felt, as Grandfather Omura would have said, like a lion. The fact that the early sun was shining in a near-cloudless sky, the blue not yet paled, and there was the myriad birdsong of barred doves, mynah birds, and sparrows, amid the fragrance of plumeria, whose white blossoms stood out amid the verdant hibiscus-splashed green of indigenous plants, only elevated his mood that much more. Instead of the downcast feeling that had always accompanied his morning walk to work before he met Yoko, he now had the feeling that with her he could endure. It was true: love did conquer all.

As if it was being performed just for him, sweet music floated across the harbor from Pearl’s Ford Island, where colors were being struck as the sailors in their Sunday whites began their day. The approaching dots of planes coming in over the Waianae Mountains to the northwest, Tayama thought, must be some kind of fly-past, the pilots’ timing impeccable. As the dots became larger, Tayama saw the bloodred suns painted on the fuselage and suddenly stopped, all his attention riveted on the planes and the black cigarlike appendages slung beneath them. Torpedoes. It was as if a giant’s hand had grasped his throat, his larynx paralyzed, unable to utter a sound though his mouth was wide-open.

It was 7:49 as Air Commander Fuchida, breaking radio silence, signaled, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” —Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Received by Admiral Nagumo, commander of “Red Castle,” the carrier Akagi, 275 miles northeast of Oahu, the message from Fuchida was confirmation that the Japanese spearhead squadrons of forty-three Mitsubishi Zero fighters, forty-nine Nakajima bombers, fifty-one Aichi dive-bombers, and forty Torpedo bombers had attained complete surprise, catching the Americans off guard not only in Pearl Harbor but at other U.S. airfields and barracks throughout Hawaii, as well. Fuchida joked gleefully with his fellow pilots that they had caught the Americans “with their pants down.” Bombs were raining even before morning colors aboard the American ships had been completed, the Japanese pilots struck by how, save for the absence of several U.S. carriers, the layout in Pearl Harbor had been so precisely duplicated by Japanese Intelligence in the pilots’ practice mockups in Japan.

Tayama, like so many other inhabitants of Honolulu watching the massive raid unfold, could feel the concussion of the massive explosions in the pit of his stomach, the attack so savage and unexpected that for many the curling palls of thick, black smoke in the distance and the roiling eruptions of orange-crimson fire on Ford Island and belching fire from the docked and anchored fleet seemed surreal at first — it couldn’t possibly be happening, not against America’s Pacific bastion. It must be Hollywood people making a film.

Those too far away from Pearl to hear the screams and other agonies of the dying sailors and civilian employees who were trying to save themselves and their vessels nevertheless saw the carnage, marked by the great curdling black columns of oil smoke, so thick at times that it obscured the stricken battleships under attack.

Yoko came running down to join Tayama, who hadn’t moved since the first torpedo struck. The reek of the oil fires and the death and destruction was so strong, it had overwhelmed the usually flower-scented trade winds, indelibly impressing the pungent odor of the tragedy on the senses of those who saw and smelled it.

Out of breath, Yoko grabbed Tayama’s arm, gripping it tightly. “I–I—got rid of the camera. The landlady—” Yoko had to stop for air. “The landlady ran outside with everyone else as soon as the first bombs — Oh, Tayama, what’ll we do?”

It was as if he hadn’t heard her, his head shaking in stubborn disbelief, yet he could taste the fumes of burning oil. “Yesterday,” he told Yoko, “the radio announcer said our people and theirs were having discussions in Washington to avoid any—” Tayama’s voice was lost amid a bone-shaking detonation. A battleship had split apart as its forward magazine exploded from a direct hit, what had been its deck now a gaping hole, vomiting flame skyward as gunpowder packs for the leviathan’s big fourteen-inch guns blew up and ammunition cooked off amid the blazing infernos. Yoko was crying, utterly confused. “What do you mean?” she asked, shaking. “our people and theirs?”

Tayama didn’t answer. Instead, he quietly took her hand.

It was 8:30, just over a half hour after the beginning of the attack, and already seven of the American battleships— West Virginia, Arizona, Maryland, Tennessee, Nevada, Oklahoma, and California —had been either sunk, run aground, or engulfed in flames from explosions the likes of which few Hawaiians, even those who had witnessed Hawaii’s legendary volcanic eruptions, had ever witnessed.

“We have to get into town,” Tayama told Yoko. “One of the fishermen I know does a run to Kauai.”

Yoko had often dreamed of going there, to the lushly beautiful island, but as a visitor, not on the run. “How long will it take us?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, knowing only that Kauai was about 120 miles from Oahu. “Twelve, maybe fifteen hours. If we can leave straightaway, we should be there about midnight.”

Tayama flagged down a Waikiki-bound bus. The bus driver was also Japanese-American, the three of them avoiding eye contact. What would the American authorities do? How would they decide who were loyal Niseis and loyal immigrants and who weren’t?

Tayama saw a neighbor, also Japanese-American. They exchanged glances nervously. The man, holding tightly on to the back of one of the seats as Tayama and Yoko passed him, suddenly blurted out, “We’ll be all right.”

Tayama and Yoko said nothing. At the next bus stop an elderly white couple got on, the man glaring at the driver. “I’m not paying you !” he said.

“Walter!” the man’s wife snapped. “There’s no need for that. Pay the man.”

“See,” said Tayama’s neighbor, “we’ll be fine. Look at the German-Americans. They’re fine.” The man’s voluble, unsought opinion embarrassed everyone on the bus, especially Tayama and Yoko, the man’s public display not at all in the nature of the Japanese-born Americans. And it was delivered in such a tremulous voice that it suggested he was merely trying to reassure himself. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “We’ll be fine.”

As the bus neared the fishermen’s wharf a mile or so west of Waikiki, Yoko could see a huddle of a half-dozen or so people by several of the boats off to the right, involved in some kind of altercation with a Navy shore patrol, the latter’s highly polished white helmets and black-lettered MP armbands standing out in the bright sun against the surf-fringed turquoise ocean.