Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

Finally, the Japs decided no one had escaped. The sergeant in charge of the count gestured. The men in the first couple of rows could see him. When they peeled off, the rest of the Americans did, too.

Peterson and McKinley had been smart enough to pitch their tent on the highest ground they could find. The rain wouldn’t get the ground inside too muddy. Besides, it would probably stop before too long. A little on, a little off, a little on… There was the tent. “Home, sweet home,” Peterson said, not altogether ironically.

“Right,” Prez McKinley answered. They dried off as best they could and rolled themselves in their blankets. Sleep slugged Peterson over the head.

LEARNING TO HANDLE the sails that had sprouted on the Oshima Maru kept Kenzo Takahashi busy. He and Hiroshi were both surprised to find their father a good teacher. Most of the time, their old man lacked the patience to teach well. Not here: he took everything one step at a time, and didn’t ask them for more than they knew how to do. “It’s his neck, too,” Kenzo said in English as they came in after a fair fishing run.

“That’s part of it,” Hiroshi said, also in English. “The other part is, he’s learning it at the same time as he’s showing us. He doesn’t have it down pat himself. If he did, he’d think we ought to know it just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

Kenzo didn’t need long to think it over. “Well, you’re right,” he said.

“What are you two going on about?” their father asked in Japanese. “You talking about me again?”

He knew they did that. He wasn’t a fool, however much Kenzo wanted to think of him as one. He didn’t have much education, but that wasn’t the same thing. “No, not about you-we were talking about the sampan and sailing,” Kenzo said, the second part of which held some truth.

Jiro Takahashi let out one of the grunts he used to show he didn’t believe a word of it. “You could do that in Japanese.”

“We feel more at home in English,” Hiroshi said, and that held nothing but the truth.

It got another grunt from the senior Takahashi. “Foolishness,” he said. “Foolishness any old time, but especially now. Japanese is the language everybody needs to know.”

He succeeded in getting his sons to stop speaking English for a while. Kenzo didn’t want to say anything in any language. Was Japanese going to drive English into second place in Hawaii? It would if Japan won the war and kept the islands. From all the news, that looked to be the way to bet right now. Wake Island and Midway were gone. The Philippines were going. Singapore had just fallen, finishing the British collapse in Malaya. And the Japanese were rampaging through the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch, the Australians, and the Americans seemed able to do little to stop them.

“Wouldn’t that be just our luck?” Hiroshi said-in English-to break that long silence. “We spend our whole lives trying to turn into Americans, and just when we start to get good at it it turns out not to be worth anything.”

“Funny,” Kenzo said. “Funny like a crutch.”

“You think I was kidding?” his brother asked.

“No.” Kenzo left it at that. Would he have to spend the rest of his life trying to make himself Japanese? The New York Yankees meant more to him than the Emperor did. On the mainland, spring training would be starting soon. The closest that came to Hawaii was the Cubs’ springtime home on Catalina Island near Los Angeles.

He and Hiroshi brought the Oshima Maru into Kewalo Basin. Their father watched everything they did, but said not a word. That had to mean they’d done it right. If they’d messed up, they would have heard about it.

As usual these days, Japanese soldiers took charge of the catch. Onto the scales it went, and the Takahashis got paid by weight. Also as usual, nobody fussed when they took some fish for themselves and for Eizo Doi. “Personal use?” a noncom asked Kenzo.

“ Hai. Personal use,” he answered. The formula kept the soldiers happy. Kenzo saw speaking fluent Japanese was especially useful just now. He would sooner have slammed the sampan into a pier than admitted that to his father.

It was late in the afternoon, but not too late. They’d brought in as much fish as the Oshima Maru would hold. People hurried here and there, trying to get on with their lives as best they could. More than a few of them sent jealous glances toward Kenzo and his brother and father. If they hadn’t been three stalwart men walking together, they might have had trouble.

A girl coming out of a side street waved and called, “Ken!”

“Hi, Elsie,” he answered, not sorry to see her without her stuck-up friends. “How are you doing?”

The haole girl shrugged. “Okay, I guess. I’m looking for a job. Nobody has enough these days, but there isn’t much out there.” She shrugged again. “Everything’s gone to pot since… since the surrender.”

What had she almost said? Since the Japs took over? Something like that, Kenzo supposed. Well, she hadn’t said it. He asked, “Are you getting enough to eat?”

“Nobody’s getting enough to eat these days except people like you who catch your own,” Elsie said. “It’s not too bad. We’re not starving or anything.” Not yet hung in the air. “But we’re hungry some of the time.” By the way she said it, she’d never gone hungry before.

Neither had Kenzo. Elsie was right about that. A fisherman’s family might not have much money, but the Takahashis had always had food on the table. Impulsively, Kenzo held out a nice aku. The striped tuna was as long as his forearm. “Here. Take this back to your folks.”

She didn’t say, Oh, you shouldn’t, or anything like that. She reached out and took the fish by the tail. What she did say was, “Thank you very much, Ken. This means a lot to me.”

“Be careful with it. Don’t let anybody get it,” he told her. She nodded, then hurried away with the prize.

“What did you go and do that for?” his father said. “Now we have to tell Doi we’re short this time.”

“So we give him some extra next time,” Kenzo answered. “He knows we’re good for it. He’d better, everything we’ve brought him so far.”

“You’re sweet on this girl, neh? ” his father said.

How am I supposed to answer that? Kenzo wondered. If he said he wasn’t, his old man would know he was lying. If he said he was, his father might pitch a fit. He might have pitched a fit any old time. With Japanese soldiers on the streets of Honolulu, with civilians of all colors scrambling out of their way and bowing as they went by… “Maybe some,” Kenzo said cautiously.

“Foolishness. Nothing but foolishness.” But his father left it there.

Hiroshi was the one who spoke up, and he did it in English: “Dad may be right. Is this a smart time to show you like a haole girl?”

“Jesus Christ! Not you, too!” Kenzo said.

His brother flushed. “I didn’t say it wasn’t a smart time to like her. I know you like Elsie, for crying out loud. I said it wasn’t a smart time to show you like her-and you know why as well as I do.”

As if to make his point for him, four or five more Japanese Army men turned the corner and came up the street toward the Takahashis. Kenzo had taken men in U.S. uniforms for granted. Getting used to the new occupiers was harder. Bowing didn’t grate on him the way it had to on haoles, though. He’d grown up with it, and took it for granted.

“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” Kenzo said.

“Good. Make sure you don’t,” Hiroshi told him.

Since it was still daytime, they went to Eizo Doi’s shop instead of his home. The place was tiny; if you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t find it. A sign over the door said HANDYMAN in English in small letters. The hiragana characters for the same thing were twice as tall.