Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

The Japs went out of their way to rub it in that he wasn’t, too. A squad of guards strode through the camp, bayonets glittering on their rifles. Americans scrambled to get out of the soldiers’ way. Along with everybody else, Fletch bowed when the guards passed him. Everyone had learned that lesson in a hurry. The Japanese set on and savagely beat anybody who forgot. A couple of Americans were supposed to have died from their mistreatment. Fletch didn’t know if that was true, but he wouldn’t have been surprised. The Japs didn’t give a rat’s ass whether Americans lived or died.

Fletch sat down in front of his tent. There wasn’t much else to do. In fact, there wasn’t anything else to do. Hunger left him slow and lethargic. A fly landed on his arm. Slowly and lethargically, he brushed it away. There seemed to be more flies in the POW camp every day. That only made sense; the latrines got fouler every day. Fletch didn’t know how many thousands of prisoners were jammed in here. Enough so that their wastes overwhelmed the lime chloride the Japs deigned to sprinkle into the latrine trenches.

How long before they ran out of lime chloride altogether? How long before they ran out of chlorine for treating the drinking water? Probably not long-like damn near everything else, the chemicals came, or had come, from the mainland. What would happen when they did run out? Dysentery was the word that came to mind.

After half an hour or so, Fletch heaved himself to his feet. The one drawback to filling yourself full of water was that you didn’t stay full. It worked its way through. He trudged off toward the slit trenches. He might as well have been moving in slow motion. He didn’t have the energy to hurry.

He stood at the edge of a trench, unfastened his fly, and eased himself. Out beyond the barbed wire, Japanese soldiers kept an eye on him and on the other Americans using the slit trenches. Fletch caught a guard’s eye as he put himself back in his pants. Yeah, you son of a bitch, I’ve got a bigger one than you do, he thought. He turned away.

Such games were dangerous. If he got too obvious, the Japs were liable to understand exactly what he meant. Then there’d be hell to pay. He ambled off. The guard didn’t start yelling or open fire, so he’d got away with it.

“Fletch! Is that you? I thought sure you were dead!”

“Gordy! I’ll be goddamned. I thought you were, too.” Fletch pumped Gordon Douglas’ hand. Then both men seemed to decide at the same instant that that wasn’t good enough. They clung to each other as if each were drowning and the other a life preserver. Douglas was dirty, and thinner than Fletch ever remembered seeing him. Seeing him at all was great, though. “How the hell did you end up in one piece?”

The other artillery lieutenant shrugged. “Half the time I ask myself the same thing. They started shooting us up when we were just going out of Schofield Barracks.”

“Yeah, us, too,” Fletch broke in. “You would have been in the truck convoy right in front of mine, or maybe right behind it.”

“Behind it, I think.” Douglas rubbed at a nasty, half-healed scar on his arm. “But Jesus God, Fletch, you can’t do shit when the other guy’s got planes in the air and you don’t. You’re dead as what comes out of a Spam can.”

“I found that out, too,” Armitage said. “We didn’t get to our position till the Japs were already hitting the beaches, and that was too late.”

“Shit, you did better than we did,” Douglas said. “We never made it to Haleiwa at all. It can’t be more than fifteen fucking miles, but we never fucking got there. Air attacks, traffic on the road coming south, wrecks to try and go around-except sometimes you couldn’t go around them. You had to clear ’em-by hand-and that took forever.”

“Tell me about it!” Fletch exclaimed. “Our truck got shot up. We commandeered a civilian car. You should’ve heard the Nips in it howl when we threw ’em the hell out. Try towing a 105 with one of those babies if you want a fun time.”

“You kept your piece? You don’t know how lucky you are,” Douglas said. “We had a bomb burst right under ours early that second morning. Took out most of my crew. I was farther away-that’s when I got this.” He rubbed the scar again. “They slapped a bandage on it, but after that I was an infantryman, and a piss-poor infantryman, too, let me be the first to tell you.”

“I had all ground-pounders on the gun except for me by the time we folded up,” Fletch said. “They learned the ropes pretty good.”

“When it’s root, hog, or die you learn or you go under.” Douglas shrugged. “I learned, too, or learned enough. I must’ve-I’m still here.”

Fletch didn’t say anything to that. From what he’d seen, who lived and who died when bombs and bullets started flying was often-not always, but often-a matter of luck. Instead, he waved at what had been the charming Kapiolani Park and was now the anything but charming POW camp. “Yeah, we’re here, all right, and ain’t it a garden spot?”

Gordon Douglas only shrugged again. “The goddamn monkeys didn’t murder us all after we surrendered. Far as I’m concerned, that’s a step up from what they could’ve done. Step up from what I figured they’d do, too. Some of the shit I saw-” He spat, but didn’t go into detail.

All Fletch did was nod and say, “Yeah.” He scratched at himself. He was itching more and more as time went by. Fleas? Lice? Bedbugs? All of the above? Probably all of the above. Then he waved at the camp again. “They didn’t need to murder us all at once. Looks like they’re gonna do it by inches instead.” He poked Douglas in the belly. The other man had always had trouble keeping the pounds off. He didn’t any more. “You’re skinnier than you used to be. So am I.”

“Don’t remind me,” Douglas said. “They give us this horrible slop, and they don’t give us enough of it, and it’s the most delicious stuff in the world when you get it, on account of then you feel a little less empty for a little while.”

“I know. I know. Oh, God, do I know.” Fletch looked toward the kitchen tents. He knew how long it was till supper, too-knew to the minute even without a watch. Too long. Too goddamn long.

WHEN OSCAR VAN der Kirk and Charlie Kaapu got their surfboards from the Outrigger Club, Charlie asked, “You giving lessons today?”

“This afternoon, yeah. Not now,” Oscar answered. “How about you?”

His hapa — Hawaiian buddy only shrugged. “Not now.”

Oscar always thought of himself as a happy-go-lucky guy. Next to most of the population of Hawaii, much less the mainland, he was. Next to Charlie Kaapu, he might have been a Rockefeller or a du Pont. “Charlie, what the hell do you do for money?” he asked.

Charlie shrugged. “Never have much. Never worry much. Too much worry, too much huhu, waste time.” He slapped his rock-hard belly. “I don’t starve yet.”

“Yeah.” Oscar’s voice rang a little hollow. Before the Japs took over, that would have been a joke. It wasn’t so funny now. People were short of everything from pasta and tomatoes to toilet paper. That wouldn’t get better, only worse. Every once in a while, even though she’d walked out on him, he wondered how Susie Higgins was doing and where her next meal was coming from. He didn’t waste a whole lot of grief on her, though. She was the kind who’d always land on her feet-or, if she had to, on her back.

His toes dug into the sand as he and Charlie walked down to the Pacific. Waikiki Beach was crowded this morning-not with tourists, the way it usually was, but with fishermen. Swarms of people with a rod and reel, and quite a few people with just a rod and a length of line and a hook, were out trying their luck.