Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

They’d even had a tank or two clatter down off a big barge. Their tanks didn’t look very impressive-they weren’t a patch on the M3s the Forty-first Tank Company at Schofield Barracks had. But they were where they needed to be, and the M3s weren’t. Machine-gun bullets bounced off them. Their cannons were popguns, but they could take care of machine-gun nests and shell unprotected field guns. And Fletch had discovered it was damned hard to hit a moving target with a 105mm gun.

He lit another Chesterfield. God only knew where he’d get more after the pack was empty, but he’d worry about that later. Now he needed the smoke. “We did everything we could,” he said. “I really think we did.” He sounded dazed and disbelieving even to himself.

“Yeah.” The sergeant nodded. “I guess maybe we did. It wasn’t enough, though. Those fuckers are on the island now. How the hell we gonna kick ’em off?”

“Beats me.” Armitage yawned. “All I know is, I’m falling asleep sitting up.”

“Go ahead, Lieutenant. I’ll shake you in a couple of hours so I can get some shuteye, too,” the noncom said. “Or maybe I’ll shake you sooner, in case we gotta fall back again.”

He didn’t say anything about shaking Fletch if the Americans started advancing. Plainly, he didn’t think they would. Fletch knew he should have reproved him. But he didn’t think the Americans would start advancing in the middle of the night, either. They hadn’t quite come to pieces when the Japs got ashore, but some of them had sure retreated at a pace faster than a walk.

Yawning again, Fletch finished the cigarette and stretched out by the fire. Back on the mainland, it would be cold. A lot of places, it would be snowing. He didn’t even worry about a blanket here. He closed his eyes and let sleep club him over the head.

He didn’t know how much he’d had when a hard hand on his shoulder prodded him back to consciousness. He did know it wasn’t nearly enough. “What the hell?” he asked muzzily. He felt slow and stupid, almost drunk.

“Sorry, sir.” The sergeant didn’t sound very sorry. “There’s shit going on off to our left. If the Japs turn our flank and get on the road behind us-”

“We’re screwed,” Fletch finished for him. The sergeant nodded. The fire had died down to crimson embers: barely enough to let Fletch make out the other man’s face. If the Japs got on the road behind them, they might escape through the fields. Their precious gun, though, would be lost. Right now, Fletch wouldn’t have parted with that gun for all the gold in Fort Knox. He didn’t know how many others were left. He didn’t know for sure if any others around here were left. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll pull back.”

What they had to pull back with was a 1935 De Soto, taken at gunpoint from a Japanese family out for a drive. Compared to the snorting truck that had hauled the gun partway north, it was ridiculously underpowered. But compared to a horse or a dozen poor bloody infantrymen, it was a miracle of rare device.

The miracle’s engine coughed into life when Fletch turned the key. He wondered if the noise would bring a volley of gunfire his way, but it didn’t. Shells as long as a man’s arm clattered and clanked on the floorboards. The car couldn’t pull the gun and the limber both. Artillerymen put their feet on the ammo. As Fletch put the De Soto in gear, he tried not to think about what would happen if a Jap fieldpiece hit the car. Boom! Right to the moon! was what occurred to him.

He reached for the light switch, then jerked his hand away as if the switch were red-hot. Now that would have been Phi Beta Kappa! “The Japs are trying to kill you, Fletcher my boy,” he muttered. “You don’t have to try and kill yourself, too.”

He couldn’t go faster than about ten miles an hour, not if he wanted to stay on the road. Of course, even ten miles an hour would have taken him all the way down to the south coast in a little more than two hours. He didn’t get that far, or anywhere close. After ten minutes or so, he came to a roadblock manned by some nervous infantrymen. They seemed glad to see he had the gun-and even gladder that he wasn’t a Jap.

Fletch was pretty goddamn glad they weren’t Japs, too, only he did his best not to let on. He and his men piled out of the De Soto and added the gun to the roadblock’s strength. By sunup, if not sooner, he figured he’d be in action again.

MARTIAL LAW! SHOUTED posters all over Honolulu. Jiro Takahashi didn’t read English. His sons made sure he understood. “It means the Army’s in charge,” Kenzo said at breakfast Monday morning. “It means you have to do whatever soldiers tell you to do.”

“It means we’re going to land in trouble for being Japanese,” Hiroshi added.

“When have we not been in trouble for being Japanese?” Jiro asked. If his son was bitter, so was he.

“They attacked the United States. They hit us when we weren’t even looking.” Kenzo sounded furiously angry at Japan.

Jiro felt furiously angry at his younger son. Kenzo had everything backwards. As far as Jiro was concerned, Japan was we and the Americans were they. Jiro looked to his wife for support. He didn’t have to look far for Reiko. The tiny kitchen of their cramped apartment barely held the four of them. Reiko just said, “Eat your noodles, all of you. Drink your tea. Whether it’s war or whether it’s peace, work doesn’t stop. You’ve got to go to the sampan.”

She was right. Her refusal to come right out and take Jiro’s side left him punctured anyway. She’d been born in Oshima County, just as he had; her home village was only about fifteen miles from his. Surely she felt as Japanese as he did. What difference did it make that they’d lived in Hawaii for decades and probably never would go back to the old country? None-not as far as he could see. But Reiko didn’t want to quarrel with the boys, no matter how foolishly they behaved.

Hashi flying, Jiro finished the soba noodles. He’d been surprised to discover there were Americans who ate buckwheat groats, but he didn’t know of any who made them into noodles. He drank some of the hot water in which the noodles were boiled; it was supposed to be very healthy. And he gulped his tea. Then he jumped to his feet. He barked at his sons: “Come on! We haven’t got all day!”

To his dismay, they got done no more than a few seconds after he did. When they rose, they loomed over him. How could he feel he was in charge when he had to look up at them to tell them anything? But all Hiroshi said was, “We’re ready, Father.”

Down to the street they went. When they got there, Jiro coughed as if he’d smoked a pack of Camels all at once. Horrible, choking black smoke swirled through the air. For all he could see, it might as well have been nighttime. The smoke made his eyes burn and sting, too. It left greasy soot everywhere it touched.

His sons made almost identical disgusted noises. They pulled bandannas out of their pockets-Hiroshi’s red, Kenzo’s blue-and tied them over their mouths. That struck Jiro as a good idea. All he had was a dirty white handkerchief. He used it. Everything would be dirty in short order. Maybe the hankie kept some of the nasty smoke out of his lungs. He could hope so, anyhow.

The streets were crowded. It was Monday morning, after all. But people moved as if in slow motion. In the black, stinking murk, you had to. Otherwise, you’d get run into on the sidewalk or run over in the street. Cars had their lights on, but the beams didn’t pierce more than a few feet of haze.

“Go to hell, you goddamn Japs!” somebody yelled in English. Jiro understood the sentiment well enough. He squared his shoulders and kept walking. Above the bandannas, his sons’ eyes blazed. He wasn’t even sure the curses had been aimed at them. They were far from the only Japanese on the streets.