Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

And things got done. Sunken ships were raised. Some were refloated for repair. Torches attacked others, turning them into scrap metal. Buildings went up on the shore and on Ford Island. It all happened so fast, it reminded him of a movie run at the wrong speed.

“We didn’t know how strong they were when we started fighting them,” he said gloomily as he stood in line for rations. Even those were a sign of U.S. might. He ate more and better as an American prisoner than he had as a soldier of the Japanese Empire. He remembered what his own side had fed American POWs, and how they’d looked after a while. The comparison was daunting.

The prisoner in front of him only shrugged. “What difference does it make?” he said. “What difference does anything make? We’ve disgraced ourselves. Our families will hate us forever.”

Even among the humiliated Japanese prisoners of war, a hierarchy had sprung up. Though only a senior private, Furusawa stood near the top of it. He’d been captured while unconscious. He couldn’t have fought back. Men like him and those who’d been too badly hurt to kill themselves stood ahead of those who’d simply wanted to live, those who’d thrown away their rifles and raised their hands instead of hugging a grenade to their chest or charging the Americans and dying honestly.

Several captured prisoners had already killed themselves. The Americans did their best to stop prisoners from committing suicide. Some of the captives thought that was to pile extra disgrace on them. Furusawa had at first. He didn’t any more. The Americans had rules of their own, different from Japan’s. Suicide was common among his people, but not among the Yankees. He would have said they were soft had he not faced them in battle. Even the first time around, they’d fought hard. And trying to stop their reinvasion was like trying to hold back a stream of lava with your bare hands.

Every so often, prisoners got summoned for questioning. The enemy had plenty of interrogators who spoke Japanese. Furusawa wondered how many of the locals now working for the USA had served the occupation forces before. He wouldn’t have been surprised if quite a few were doing their best to cover up a questionable past with a useful present.

Whatever they wanted to know, he answered. Why not? After the disaster of being captured, how could anything else matter? “Did you ever see or know Captain Iwabuchi, the commander of the defense in Honolulu?” an interrogator asked.

“I saw him several times, drilling his men. I never spoke to him, though, nor he to me. I was only an ordinary soldier, after all.”

The interrogator took notes. “What did you think of Captain Iwabuchi?” he asked.

“That he asked more from his men than they could hope to give him,” Furusawa said.

“Do you think there are other officers like him? Do you think there will be other defenses like this?”

“Probably,” Furusawa said. By the way the local Japanese’s mouth tightened, he hadn’t wanted to hear that. Furusawa went on, “How else would you fight a war but as hard as you can? The Americans weren’t gentle with us when they came back here, either.”

“It will only cost Japan more men in the long run,” the interrogator said. “You must have seen you can’t hope to win when America strikes with all her power.”

Furusawa had seen that. It frightened him. Even his full belly frightened him. But he said, “I am only a senior private. I just do what people tell me to do. If you had caught a general, maybe you could talk to him about such things.”

“We caught a lieutenant colonel and two majors-one was knocked cold like you, the others both badly wounded,” the interrogator said. “Everyone of higher rank is dead. Almost all of the men of those ranks are dead, too.”

“I am not surprised,” Furusawa said. “You have won a battle here. I cannot tell you anything different. But the war still has a long way to go.”

They brought him back to the camp after that. He watched four-engined bombers take off from Hickam Field-one more facility repaired far faster than he would have thought possible. The huge planes roared off toward the northwest. The war still had a long way to go, and the Americans were getting on with it.

FLETCHER ARMITAGE FILLED OUT HIS UNIFORM better than he had the last time he came into Wahiawa. Looking at himself in the mirror, comparing himself to people who hadn’t almost starved to death, he judged he was all the way up to very skinny. From where he’d started, that showed a hell of a lot of progress.

Wahiawa had made progress, too. They’d bulldozed rubble off the streets. Some of the long-dead automobiles parked along Kamehameha Highway were gone, too. More people were on the sidewalk. Like Fletch, they had more flesh than the last time he was here.

He tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Why don’t you park?”

“Whatever you say, sir,” the soldier answered cheerfully. He pulled over. Several big trucks painted olive drab rumbled by, heading south. Fletch wondered what they were carrying to Honolulu or Pearl Harbor. Both places still needed everything under the sun. He shrugged. That wasn’t his worry. His worries were right here.

Walking to the apartment where he’d lived with Jane was easier this time. He didn’t get tired so fast. Exercise was starting to feel good again. He wasn’t doing too much without the strength to do it, the way he had while he was a POW. No Jap sergeant was going to whack him with a length of bamboo or a rifle butt if he slowed down, either.

But he didn’t have to slow down now. He went up the stairs at a good clip. He did raise his hand twice before he knocked on the door, but that was nerves, not weakness. So he told himself, anyway.

She won’t be home, he thought. But the door opened. “Oh,” Jane said. “It’s you. Come in.” She stepped aside to let him.

“You were expecting Cary Grant?” he asked with a crooked smile.

Jane laughed-sourly. “I wasn’t expecting anybody. People know I had to do… what I did. But they know I did it, too. They don’t come around much.” She closed the door, then turned to look him over.

“You seem better. You don’t look like you’d blow away in a strong breeze any more.”

“I put a roll of quarters in my pocket before I came down, just to make sure,” Fletch answered. This time, Jane really laughed. His eyes traveled her. “You’ve always looked good to me, babe.”

She stared down at the ratty rug. “Even after all that?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I know about doing things you wouldn’t do if you had a choice. Believe me, I do. The tank traps and bunkers and trenches I dug probably got our guys killed after they came back. You think I wanted to do that? But the Japs would’ve murdered me if I told ’em no, so-I dug.”

Jane took that in a direction he hadn’t expected, murmuring, “Killed.” She eyed him. “Have you ever killed anybody? Known you killed somebody, I mean?”

Artillerymen usually fought at ranges where they couldn’t see what happened when their shells came down-usually, but not always. He’d used a 105 as a direct-fire weapon when the Japs invaded Oahu.

“Yeah,” he said, and told her about blowing an enemy tank to hell and gone. Then he asked, “How come?”

“Because I did, too, or I think I did.” She told him about Annabelle Chung. “While I was doing it, it felt like the right thing. Sometimes it still does. But sometimes I just want to be sick, you know what I mean?”

“If anybody ever had it coming, babe, she did,” Fletch said. “You weren’t the only one who thought so, either, if it makes you feel any better.”

Jane nodded. “I tell myself that. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn’t.” She made a wry face. “The last couple of years, a lot of things have happened that can’t be helped.”