Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

“You’re agitatin’ me.” Newcomb spoke without heat. “But seriously, you gotta let the niggers know who’s boss. You don’t, and pretty soon they’ll start thinkin’ they’re just as good as white folks.”

“You mean like the Japs here in Hawaii started thinking they were just as good as haoles ?” Fletch asked. Whites here hadn’t lynched local Japanese, the way whites lynched Negroes in Mississippi. They’d found other, not quite so brutal, ways to keep them in their place. Even so, they were paying now for what they’d done then. If the Japs here had been treated better, there would be fewer collaborators these days.

Clyde Newcomb gave him a funny look. “Yeah, kind of-only niggers really are down lower than we are.”

Fletch took it no further. What was the point? Newcomb was so blind to some things, he didn’t even know he couldn’t see them. And we’re supposed to win this war? God help us! Did the Japs have clodhoppers like Newcomb running around loose? Maybe they did. Some of these guards sure acted as if a rifle was far and away the most complicated thing they’d ever had to worry about. Fletch hoped so. If the other side’s yahoos didn’t cancel out ours, we were in a hell of a lot of trouble.

Another load of dirt flew from Fletch’s shovel, and another, and another. Every so often, a noncom would yell at the POWs to hurry up again. And they would… for a little while, or till he turned his back. Even if Newcomb didn’t know his ass from third base, it was the rhythm of a cotton field, but of a cotton field back in slavery days before the Civil War. Nobody here worked any harder than he absolutely had to.

The overseers knew it as well as the slaves. They made an example out of somebody who moved too slowly to suit them-or maybe somebody chosen at random-almost every day. And they were more savage than the overseers of the American South. Negro slaves had been expensive pieces of property; overseers back then could get in trouble for damaging them. None of the Japs cared what happened to POWs here. The more of them who dropped dead, the happier they seemed.

A whistle blew when the sun went down. The work gang lined up for the little lumps of rice and greens that wouldn’t have been enough to keep men alive if they’d lain around doing nothing. Then they slept. Exhaustion made bare ground a perfect mattress. Fletch closed his eyes and he was gone.

When he dreamt, he dreamt of Jane. That hadn’t happened in a while. But he didn’t dream of her naked and lively in the bedroom, the way he had after they first broke up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d dreamt of Jane-or even of a Hotel Street hooker-that way.

This dream was even more excruciatingly sensual, and filled him with an even more desolate sense of loss. He dreamt of Jane naked and lively… in the kitchen. She was fixing him the breakfast to end all breakfasts. Half a dozen eggs fried over medium-just the way he liked them-in butter. A dozen thick slices of smoke-rich bacon, hot fat glistening on them. A foot-high pile of golden flapjacks slathered in more butter, yellow as tigers, and real Vermont maple syrup. Wheat toast with homemade strawberry preserves. Coffee, as much as he could drink. Cream. Sugar.

“Oh, God!” He made enough noise to wake himself up. He looked down to see if he’d come in his pants. He hadn’t. He was damned if he knew why not.

CORPORAL TAKEO SHIMIZU LED HIS SQUAD on patrol down King Street. The Japanese soldiers marched in the middle of the street; there was no wheeled traffic to interfere with them except for rickshaws, pedicabs, and the occasional horse-drawn carriage or wagon. It was another perfect Honolulu day, not too hot, not too muggy, just right.

Shiro Wakuzawa’s eyes swung to the right. “I still say that’s the funniest-looking thing I ever saw,” he remarked.

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” Shimizu asked. The rest of the squad laughed at Wakuzawa. But it wasn’t cruel laughter, as it would have been in a lot of units. Shimizu hadn’t said it intending to wound. He’d just made a joke, and the soldiers he led took it that way.

And Wakuzawa wasn’t far wrong. The water tower decked out with painted sheet metal to look like an enormous pineapple was one of the funniest-looking things Shimizu had ever seen, too. Senior Private Yasuo Furusawa, who had a thoughtful turn of mind, said, “What’s even funnier is that it stood up through all the fighting.”

He wasn’t wrong, either. After bombing Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes had also pounded Honolulu’s harbor district. The Aloha Tower, down right by the Pacific, was only a ruin. But the water tower, which had to be one of the ugliest things ever made, still stood.

On the patrol went. Japanese soldiers and sailors on leave scrambled to get out of their way. Since Shimizu was on patrol, he could have asked them for their papers if he felt officious. Some of them probably didn’t have valid papers. If he wanted to make his superiors smile on him, catching such miscreants was a good way to do it. But Shimizu was a long way from officious, and didn’t like sucking up to his superiors. He enjoyed a good time himself; why shouldn’t others feel the same way?

Civilians bowed. Shimizu marched his men through one of the unofficial markets that dotted this part of Honolulu. They were technically illegal. He could have caused trouble for the locals by hauling in buyers and sellers. But, again-why? You had to go along to get along, and he didn’t see how a trade in fish and rice and coconuts did anybody any harm.

Besides, this market was within sight of Iolani Palace. If the guards didn’t like it, they could close it down. Shimizu snickered. The Japanese soldiers and naval landing troops at Iolani Palace were just as much a ceremonial force as the Hawaiian unit with whom they now shared their duty. They probably weren’t good for much that involved actual work.

“Corporal- san, do those Hawaiian soldiers have live ammunition in their rifles?” Private Wakuzawa asked.

“They didn’t used to, but I hear they finally do,” Shimizu said. “We’re pretending they’re a real kingdom, so it would be an insult if they didn’t, neh ?”

“I suppose so,” Wakuzawa said. “Are they reliable, though?”

Senior Private Furusawa answered that before Shimizu could: “As long as we outnumber them, they’re reliable.”

Everybody in the squad laughed, Shimizu included. It looked that way to him, too. “This is like Manchukuo, only more so,” he said. The soldiers nodded at that; they all understood it. Manchukuo had a real army and a real air arm, not the toy force the King of Hawaii boasted. But the soldiers and fliers obeyed the Japanese officers on the spot, not the puppet Emperor of Manchukuo. And if they ever decided not to, Japan had more than enough men in Manchukuo to squash them flat.

The Hawaiians were impressive-looking men. Many of them were more than a head taller than their Japanese counterparts. But the American defenders of Oahu had been bigger than Shimizu and his comrades. And much good it did them, he thought.

On marched Shimizu’s squad. Every so often, he looked back over his shoulder to make sure his men were parading properly. He didn’t catch them doing anything they shouldn’t. They always pointed their faces straight ahead, and kept them impassive. If their eyes slid to the right or the left every now and then to look at a pretty girl in a skimpy sun dress or a halter top-well, so did Shimizu’s. No woman back in Japan would have let herself be seen dressed-or undressed-like that.

A Japanese captain stepped out from a side street. “Salute!” Shimizu exclaimed, and smartly brought up his own right arm.