Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

And, being a father whose sons had ideas of their own (and what other kind of father was there?), he wasted no chance to show the younger generation it wasn’t as smart as it thought it was. “These islands are going to stay in the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” he said. “You saw what happened when the Americans tried to take them back. They couldn’t do it.”

“They’ll try again,” Kenzo said. “You can bet your bottom dollar on it.”

“I’d rather bet a yen-that’s real money,” Jiro said.

Before Kenzo could answer, Hiroshi spoke rapidly in English. Kenzo’s reply in the same language sounded hot. Hiroshi said something else. Jiro’s sons went back and forth like that whenever they didn’t want him to know what was going on. Finally, Hiroshi returned to Japanese: “Father- san, can we please leave politics ashore? There’s not much room to get away from each other here, and we all have to work together to bring in the fish.”

Perhaps a bit grudgingly, Jiro nodded. “All right. We’ll let it go,” he said. Hiroshi had been polite enough that he couldn’t very well refuse without seeming churlish even to himself. He spoke an obvious truth:

“The fish do come first.”

Now both his sons nodded, plainly in relief. The truth Jiro had spoken was truer than usual these days. Cut off from supplies from the U.S. mainland, Oahu was a hungry place. Without all the sampans setting out from Kewalo Basin, it would have been hungrier yet.

Sampans weren’t the only fishing contraptions on the water nowadays, either. The Oshima Maru glided past a surfboard with a sail mounted on it to take it farther out to sea than the blond, sun-bronzed haole on it could have gone by paddling alone. He waved to the sampan as it went by. Jiro’s sons waved back.

“Foolishness,” Jiro said. That wasn’t fair, and he knew it: the sailboard wasn’t foolish, but it sure was funny-looking.

“I think that haole is the fellow we saw coming out of Eizo Doi’s shop one time,” Kenzo said. “I bet Doi put the mast and sail on his surfboard, the same as he did for the Oshima Maru .”

“Could be.” Jiro was inclined to think a little better of the white man on the surfboard if he’d visited a Japanese handyman. Before the war, a lot of the haoles on Oahu had tried to pretend the Japanese didn’t exist… and had done their best to hold them down, not letting them compete on even terms. Well, that was over and done with now.

“We’ve got a good wind behind us,” Hiroshi said.

“ Hai. ” Jiro nodded. He liked the Oshima Maru better as a sailboat than he had when she was motorized. She was silent now except for the thrum of the wind in the rigging and the slap of waves against her beamy hull. No diesel roar, not now. No diesel vibration felt through the soles of the feet, either-just the undulating motion of the sampan over the chop. And no stinking diesel exhaust; Jiro didn’t miss that at all.

The one drawback to traveling with the wind was the obvious one: she’d been faster with the diesel. Kenzo said, “We’re liable to be out two or three days finding a decent place to fish.”

Jiro only grunted, not because his younger son was wrong but because he was right. “It’s not just that we’re slower, either,” Hiroshi said. “Fewer fish close to Oahu these days, I think.” Jiro grunted again; he suspected that was also true. There was a lot more fishing now than there had been before Hawaii changed hands. With American supplies cut off and with people desperate for any kind of food, they took whatever they could get from the sea. Before the war, he and his sons had thrown trash fish back into the Pacific. There were no trash fish, not any more.

Half a dozen flying fish sprang out of the water and glided through the air for a little ways before splashing into the sea once more. They did that to escape the bigger fish that were trying to catch them. The bigger fish- aku and ahi and mahi-mahi and even barracuda and sharks-were what the Takahashis wanted most. Kenzo dropped a hook into the water. Jiro didn’t stop the sampan. They weren’t far enough out to make this a really good place. But if his son wanted to see if he could snag a fish or two-well, why not?

And Kenzo did, too. The line jerked. He pulled in the fish. “ Ahi!” he said happily, and then, in English, “Albacore.” His gutting knife flashed. He tossed the entrails into the Pacific. The knife flashed again. He cut strips of flesh from the fish’s side and handed them to Jiro and Hiroshi. Then he cut one for himself. They all ate. The flesh was nearly as rich as beef.

“Not American food, raw fish,” Jiro jeered gently.

“Still good,” Hiroshi said.

Kenzo nodded. Jiro couldn’t tease them too hard about that. Even if they’d preferred burgers and fries when they could get them, they’d always eaten sashimi, too. Kenzo said, “And it’s an awful lot better than what we’d get ashore.” That might have been the understatement of the year. Rice and greens and not enough of either… No, Jiro couldn’t argue there. Kenzo went on, “And sashimi’s always better the fresher it is, and it just doesn’t get any fresher than this.”

“People who aren’t fishermen don’t know what really fresh fish tastes like,” Hiroshi said. “Cut me some more, please.”

“And me,” Jiro said.

Kenzo did. He cut another strip for himself, too. Before long, there wasn’t much left of the ahi . All three of the Takahashis were smiling. Jiro nodded to his older son. Hiroshi had hit the nail on the head. People who didn’t put to sea had no idea how good fish really could be.

WAIKIKI BEACH STRAIGHT AHEAD. Oscar van der Kirk decided to put on a show. He had a stringbag full of fish at his feet. He made sure it was closed and tied to a peg he’d set into his sailboard. The peg was new, something he’d thought of only a little while before. Quite a few surf-riders were taking sailboards out to sea these days. Oscar had been first, though. He didn’t begrudge anyone else the use of the idea, even if he might have made a nice chunk of change from it in peacetime. War and hunger had laws of their own, laws sterner and less forgiving than the usual sort.

For that matter, Oscar seldom begrudged anybody anything. He was a big, good-natured fellow at the very end of his twenties. The sun and the ocean had bleached his already blond hair somewhere between the color of straw and snow. His hide, by contrast, had tanned such a dark brown that a lot of people wondered if he was part Hawaiian in spite of that blond hair.

He could hear the waves crashing on the shore now. Soon they would lift the board-and him. They would slam him down in the Pacific and make him look like a prize chump if he wasn’t careful, too. But he commonly was careful, and skillful to boot. He’d scratched out a living as a surf-riding instructor-a surf-riding show-off, if you like-for years before the Japs came, and even for a while afterwards.

The wave he rode, as tall as a man, started to lean toward the beach ahead. He stood atop the sailboard like a Hawaiian god, one hand on the mast, the other arm outflung for balance. Speed built as he skimmed along the crest. Wind in his face, shifting water under the shifting board… There was no sensation in the world like this. Nothing else even came close.

He knew quite a bit about other sensations, too. He’d given surf-riding lessons to a lot of wahines over from the mainland who were trying to recover from a broken heart or just looking for a romance that would be fun but wouldn’t mean anything once they sailed away. His good looks, his strength, and his aw-shucks attitude meant he’d also given a lot of them lessons in things besides surf-riding.