Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

After a while, the machine gun started up again, this time sending a stream of bullets over to the left. When another machine gun there answered the fire, Shimizu did look out from his hole. A tank rumbled through the pineapple field, straight toward the American machine gun. Its bow gunner shot back at the Yankees. Enemy bullets clanged off its armor, now and then striking sparks but doing no harm.

The snorting mechanical monster stopped. The cannon in the turret bellowed. The shell burst just in front of the sandbags shielding the American gun. The enemy soldiers were brave. They kept right on shooting at the tank. It did them no good. The cannon spoke again. Sandbags flew. The machine gun kept firing even after that, but not for long. The tank’s bow and turret-mounted machine guns had a clear shot at the Americans now.

Corporal Shimizu sprang from his new foxhole. “Come on!” he shouted. “Move fast! Maybe we can catch that Hawaii Japanese and give him what he deserves!” If anything would get the men out of their holes and advancing, that ought to do the trick.

And it did. They splashed through the creek and past the shattered machine-gun nest. Not many riflemen had backed up the machine gunners. The Japanese soldiers gained several hundred meters before enemy fire forced them to hit the dirt and dig in again. Shimizu was proud of the dash they showed. But the man who’d tricked them got away. He didn’t know how lucky he was-or maybe he did.

LIKE MOST NINETEEN-year-olds in Honolulu, Kenzo Takahashi had Japanese friends and haole friends and Chinese friends and Filipino friends and friends who were a little bit of everything. Everybody was packed together with everybody else in school. A good many kids had parents who wished their friends came only from their own group. But that wasn’t how things worked in Hawaii-which was why so many kids were a little bit of everything.

With his friends who weren’t Japanese (and even, a lot of the time, with the ones who were), Kenzo was just Ken. That suited him fine; Ken was a good American name, and he was at least as American as he was Japanese. When he ate with his parents, he used hashi to shovel in rice and raw fish. When he wasn’t with his parents, he was likely to order fried chicken or spaghetti and meatballs. He liked them better. So did Hiroshi.

Since the attack on Pearl Harbor, though… All of a sudden, his haole friends didn’t want to know him any more. It wasn’t just that he was spending most of his time out on the Oshima Maru, either. He was-he’d never worked so hard in his life-but that wasn’t the point.

Going home from Kewalo Basin, he’d sometimes see people with whom he’d sat for four years in math and English and history and science classes. He’d see them… and, if they were white, they’d pretend they didn’t see him. Sometimes they would even turn their backs so he couldn’t possibly miss the point. That cut like a knife.

And he knew those haoles and their folks were lining up to buy the fish he and his father and brother brought in. They didn’t mind doing that at all. Oh, no, especially not when the fish the sampans brought in was the only fresh food coming into Honolulu these days.

What really hurt was when Elsie Sundberg acted as if she’d never set eyes on him in her life. Thanks to the wonders of alphabetical seating, he’d had the desk right behind hers in just about all the classes they took together. The alphabet could have played plenty of worse tricks on him: Elsie was blond, blue-eyed, and curvy, a cheerleader for the football team. She got better grades in English and history; he was stronger in science and math. They’d spent a lot of time coaching each other. They’d gone to a few movies together, held hands. He’d kissed her once. He’d thought about asking her to the prom, but by the time he got up the nerve to do it the star halfback beat him to the punch. She’d sounded genuinely sorry when she told him no.

And now… now he was nothing but a lousy Jap to her. It made him want to cry, or else to go out and kick something or somebody.

“It’s not right, goddammit,” he raged to Hiroshi later that evening. “I’m as much an American as she is.” The one advantage of having parents who’d never learned English was that he and his brother could use it without fear of eavesdropping.

His brother made a small production of lighting a cigarette. Only after a long, meditative drag did he answer, “It’s tough, all right. Some of that same shit’s happened to me, too.”

“Tough? Is that all you can say? What’s the good of trying to be an American if the stinking haoles won’t let you?” He pointed to the pack of Chesterfields. “Let me have one of those.”

Hiroshi did, and leaned close to give him a light. After they were both smoking, Hiroshi said, “Well, what other choice have you got? Do you want to stand up and cheer for Hirohito the way Dad does?”

“Jesus Christ, no!” Kenzo exclaimed. “That’s just embarrassing.”

“It’s worse than embarrassing these days.” Hiroshi dropped his voice even though his and Kenzo’s folks couldn’t understand. “It’s damn near treason.”

“Yeah. I know,” Kenzo said heavily. “But you can’t tell him anything. He won’t listen.” He sucked in smoke, then blew it out in a ragged cloud. What with the blackout and the radio being off the air almost all the time, the night was almost eerily quiet. That made it easy for him to hear the thunder in the middle distance-except it wasn’t thunder. The boom of the guns got louder and louder, closer and closer, as the days went by. “What do we do if… our side doesn’t win?”

“I don’t know.” His brother smoked his cigarette till the butt got too small to hold between his lips. Some people were even using toothpicks or alligator clips to hold tiny butts and squeeze an extra drag or two out of them. Tobacco wouldn’t last forever. Nothing in Honolulu would last forever. If Hawaii fell, nothing would last very long. Hiroshi stubbed out the remains of the Chesterfield and stared down at the ashtray. “What can we do? Try and keep our noses clean. Try and keep Dad from busting his buttons ’cause he’s so proud.”

“It’s a good thing the sampan’s going out again,” Kenzo said. “If Dad’s on the ocean, he can’t be on the streets. Somebody’d knock his block off for him.”

“Or maybe not, depending on where he is,” Hiroshi said. “As long as he stays Ewa side of Nuuanu Avenue, he won’t do too bad.”

Kenzo only grunted. That was a half truth. Older Japanese like his father often pulled for their native country. Most of the younger ones were as American as Hiroshi and himself. And none of the Chinese and Koreans and Filipinos who helped crowd Honolulu’s Asian district had any use for Japan. That had sometimes led to fights even before Pearl Harbor. Now…

Off in the distance, the thunder that wasn’t thunder rumbled again. Kenzo grunted again. “What do we do if… if the Japanese Army marches into Honolulu?” There. He’d said it.

“What can we do?” his brother said. Kenzo shrugged. He had no answer. He’d hoped Hiroshi would.

SABURO SHINDO LOOKED down on Honolulu from his Zero. Even from his height, he could see olive-drab trucks rolling through the city. The time had come-as far as he was concerned, the time was long since past-to give the Americans a lesson. He wondered why his superiors had held off for so long. He’d heard a lot of Japanese lived in Honolulu. Maybe the powers that be hadn’t wanted to hurt them, or hoped they could somehow get the Americans to give up. It hadn’t happened. As far as Lieutenant Shindo was concerned, the best way to make somebody give up was to kick him in the teeth till he did.