Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

“How did it go?” Susie asked when he got back to the apartment.

“Pretty well,” he answered, and displayed a mahimahi he hadn’t traded. It would be tasty tonight. He wanted to tell her he’d passed the word that she was safe. He wanted to, but he didn’t. If he couldn’t keep from running his own mouth, how could he expect her to manage it? Even if he couldn’t talk, he’d done a good deed. Some people said the best good deeds were the ones you didn’t talk about. Oscar wasn’t convinced. As far as he could see, this one was just the most frustrating.

JIRO TAKAHASHI LET his sons sail the Oshima Maru back toward Kewalo Basin. By now, Hiroshi and Kenzo handled the sampan’s rig nearly as well as he did. When they were working, they didn’t have time to grumble that he’d be taking fish to the Japanese consulate once they came ashore.

Actually, they’d almost given up nagging him about going to the consulate. He was, after all, a Japanese citizen. And he was at least as stubborn as his two blockheaded sons. They weren’t about to make him change his mind. The more they tried, the harder he dug in his heels.

By now, even they seemed to have figured that out. As Kenzo swung the sail about to change tacks on the way back to Honolulu, Hiroshi changed tacks on the argument. “Father- san, you really shouldn’t let the occupiers use you for propaganda,” he said.

“Propaganda?” To Jiro, it was nothing but a fancy word. “A reporter asked me questions. I answered them. So what?”

“If the United States comes back to Hawaii, people will remember things like that. They won’t like them,” Hiroshi said.

“If that’s all you’re worrying about…” Jiro snorted. “The United States isn’t coming back. These islands are Japanese now. They’re going to stay that way.”

“Are you sure?” Hiroshi asked. “What about the American bombers? What about that submarine?”

“What about them?” Jiro said. “We bombed San Francisco. Our submarines have shelled the mainland. It evens out. We won’t put soldiers over there, and I don’t think they can put soldiers over here.”

“We?” But Hiroshi let it go. They’d quarreled over that ever since the day the war started. Jiro’s we focused on his homeland and the Emperor, Hiroshi and Kenzo’s on the country where they were born.

Kewalo Basin was getting close. Kenzo made a short tack, then a longer one, and slid into the basin as smoothly as Jiro could have done it. The sampan glided up to a quay. Hiroshi hopped up onto the planking and made the boat fast.

The Takahashis weighed the bulk of the catch on the scales now supervised by Japanese soldiers. The soldiers paid them by weight, as usual. With all food so scarce on Oahu, the finest ahi was worth no more-officially-than trash fish Jiro would have thrown back into the sea before the war.

Officially. But Jiro and Hiroshi and Kenzo didn’t carry trash fish away from Kewalo Basin. Oh, no. What they carried away for “personal use” was the best of what they’d taken that day: ahi and mahimahi. They’d eat some, sell or trade some, and Jiro would take some to the Japanese consulate, as he’d got into the habit of doing.

“Waste of fish,” Kenzo said as Jiro headed up Nuuanu Avenue. “Waste of money, too.”

Jiro stopped and scowled at his younger son. “You mind your business,” he said angrily. “You mind it, you hear me? You go sniffing round after that haole girl, and then you go telling me what to do? Ichi-ban baka! ” He spat on the sidewalk in scorn.

He wondered whether Kenzo would come back at him as hotly as he sometimes did. If that happened, Hiroshi would pitch in on his brother’s side, and Jiro would have to start screaming at both of them. Back in Japan, he told himself, such a thing would never happen. Back in Japan, youngsters respected their elders. He conveniently forgot that one of the reasons he’d been eager to come to Hawaii was so he wouldn’t have to bang heads with his father any more.

But this argument collapsed instead of going on to the screaming stage. Kenzo wasn’t fair-skinned to begin with. All his time on the Oshima Maru had browned him further. Even so, he turned red. He muttered something unintelligible under his breath and turned away from Jiro.

Ha! Jiro thought. My shot went home like a torpedo hitting an American battleship. He went his way, while his sons went theirs. He wanted to do some more yelling at Kenzo for sniffing after a haole girl now, of all the idiotic times. Just as he wouldn’t listen to Kenzo, though, his son was unlikely to heed him.

Reiko and I should have arranged marriages for both of them. It would have happened like that in Japan. Here? Well, it might have. But the American nonsense about falling in love and living happily ever after had a grip on a lot of young Japanese in Hawaii. Who could guess whether Hiroshi and Kenzo would have gone along? No one would ever know now. That seemed plain enough.

Up the street Jiro went. The Rising Sun fluttered above and in front of the consulate. As usual, the soldiers standing guard outside both teased Jiro about the fish he’d brought and admired them. Before they went into the Army, they’d mostly been farmers or fishermen themselves-men of his own class. He laughed at their gibes, and sassed them back the same way. They understood one another.

After they got done with those friendly rituals, the soldiers passed him on to the men inside. That was a different business. Those people wore Western-style suits and had fancy educations-you could tell by the way they talked. Jiro spoke to them with careful politeness. He didn’t want to seem like some backwoods buffoon.

Consul Kita was in a meeting. A secretary took Jiro to meet Chancellor Morimura. With his long face, his large eyes, and especially with his missing finger joint, Morimura always put Jiro in mind of a samurai of old. His sharp suit somehow strengthened the impression instead of detracting from it.

As always, the young chancellor admired Jiro’s catch. His good manners seemed natural, effortlesss, not the product of care and a constant struggle against saying the wrong thing. He asked where Jiro had taken the Oshima Maru today and how the fishing had gone. And then he asked, “And did you notice anything out of the ordinary while you were at sea, Takahashi- san?”

“Out of the ordinary?” Jiro frowned. “I don’t think so, sir. Can you tell me what you’ve got in mind?”

“Well…” Morimura steepled his fingers. With that missing joint, one pair didn’t meet, so the steeple would have a leak when it rained. “There are reports that another American submarine has been sniffing around-rumors, really, more than reports. Did you see one today?”

“No, sir. I didn’t,” Jiro answered without hesitation. “I would have said so right away if I had.”

“All right. I thought you would.” Morimura pulled a map from one of the desk drawers. “And you were… here, more or less?” He used a pencil for a pointer to show just where the sampan had gone. Jiro was so impressed, he had to remind himself to nod. The consular official went on, “What time would that have been? Do you remember?”

“We got there late in the morning, and we fished till early afternoon. Then we sailed back to Kewalo Basin,” Jiro said. “We made a short trip to keep the fish fresh-not so easy now that ice is hard to get-and we didn’t want to spend a night on the sea. Why, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Negative information isn’t as good as positive, but it’s better than nothing,” Morimura replied. “Now at least I know one place where this submarine, if there was a submarine, wasn’t.”