Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

Doi was tinkering with a bicycle’s chain and sprocket when Kenzo and his brother and father came in. “You have an icebox here?” Jiro Takahashi asked.

“ Hai,” Doi answered. “Come on in back. So you make me lug the fish home, do you?”

“We didn’t want to knock on your door when you weren’t home-might scare your wife,” Kenzo’s father said. The handyman nodded. Kenzo grimaced. Nobody would have said that before the Japanese took Hawaii. Times had changed, and not for the better. Kenzo kept that to himself. He didn’t know who all of Eizo Doi’s friends were. Being wrong about such things could cost much more now than it had when the Stars and Stripes flew over Iolani Palace.

The handyman’s back room was even more crowded than the part of the shop where he worked: a dark jumble of handmade shelves full of a ridiculous variety of spare parts and odd tools and stuff that looked like junk to Kenzo but presumably was or might prove useful to Doi. Kenzo knew a couple of other handymen. They accumulated odds and ends the same way. If you weren’t part pack rat, you were in the wrong line of work.

Hiroshi pointed to the icebox-no, it was a refrigerator, for a plug snaked out of it. “Did you make that yourself, Doi- san?” he asked. Kenzo couldn’t tell whether his tone was meant to be admiring or appalled.

“ Hai,” the handyman said again, looking pleased. “It’s not that hard. I got the motor from a drill press, the compressor from… I don’t remember where I got the compressor. But I put everything together, and it works.”

“That’s what counts,” Kenzo’s father said.

When Doi opened the refrigerator door, Kenzo saw a couple of bottles of beer and other things he had more trouble identifying. By the way some of those looked, he didn’t want to know what they’d been once upon a time. They’d been in there much too long. Doi happily piled fish on the shelves, which might have started their careers as oven racks. If he wasn’t going to worry about it, Kenzo wouldn’t, either.

After the Takahashis left the place, Kenzo said, “See? He didn’t care about that aku. I bet he didn’t even notice.”

His father shook his head. “He noticed. Or if he didn’t, his wife will when he takes the fish home. But you were right-they know we’re good for it sooner or later.”

Sooner or later. The phrase made Kenzo look to the northeast, toward the American mainland. Sooner or later, the USA would try to take Hawaii back. He was sure of that. When, though? And how? And what were the odds the Americans would succeed? Kenzo had no answers for any of those questions. He was sure of one thing, though: it wouldn’t be easy.

IN BACK OF Iolani Palace stood a barracks hall. Once upon a time, when Hawaii was an independent kingdom, it had housed the Royal Guards. Commander Minoru Genda had seen a photograph of the Guards in the palace: big men in fancy uniforms with hats that made them look like British bobbies standing at attention beside and behind a battery of polished brass field pieces.

Now the Iolani Barracks held only one man: a prisoner. Walking slowly across the brilliant green lawn toward the building-with the crosses set into its square, crenellated towers, it looked more like a medieval European fortress than a barracks-Genda turned to Mitsuo Fuchida and said, “This is a bad business.”

“ Hai.” The man who’d commanded the air strikes against Oahu nodded. “I don’t know what else we can do, though. Do you?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” Genda sighed. “But I wish I could think of something. And I wish we hadn’t been chosen as witnesses.” He sent a defiant stare up toward the taller Fuchida. “Go ahead, call me soft.”

“Not you, Genda- san. Never you.” Fuchida walked along for a couple of paces before continuing, “I might say that of some other men. I might also say you would do well not to say such things to officers who aren’t lucky enough to know you the way I do.”

Genda bowed. “ Domo arigato. This is good advice.”

They went in through the rounded entranceway. The courtyard inside the barracks was a long, narrow rectangle paved with flagstones. Several Navy officers already stood inside it. Some of them looked grim, others proud and righteous. Also waiting in the courtyard was a squad of special Navy landing troops, in square rig with infantry rifles and helmets (though those bore the Navy chrysanthemum, not the Army star) and white canvas gaiters that reached their knees. They were all impassive as so many statues.

Two more witnesses came in after Genda and Fuchida. Genda was relieved not to have been the last. Captain Hasegawa of the Akagi, the senior officer present, spoke in a loud, official-sounding voice: “Let the prisoner be brought forth!”

Out of one of the rooms at the far end of the courtyard came four hard-faced guards leading a young Japanese man. Such a pity, Genda thought. A couple of the nearby officers let out soft sighs, but only a couple.

Captain Hasegawa faced the young man. “Kazuo Sakamaki, you know what you have done. You know how you have disgraced your country and the Emperor.”

Sakamaki bowed. “ Hai, Captain- san,” was all he said. He was-he had been, before his summary court-martial-an ensign in the Japanese Navy. He’d commanded one of the five two-man midget submarines Japan had launched against Pearl Harbor as part of the opening attack. Four were lost with all hands. Sakamaki’s crewmate had also perished. But Sakamaki himself had floundered up onto an Oahu beach- and been captured by the Americans.

Hasegawa nodded to the guards and the special Navy landing troops in turn. “Let the sentence be carried out.”

“Captain- san ”-Sakamaki spoke once more-“again I request the privilege of atoning for my dishonor by taking my own life.”

The skipper of the Akagi shook his head. “You have been judged unworthy of that privilege. Guards, tie him to the post.”

With another bow, Sakamaki said, “Sir, it is not necessary. I will show you I do know how to die for my country. Banzai! for the Emperor!” He came to stiff attention, his back touching the post driven between two flagstones.

For that, Hasegawa gave him a nod if not a bow. The senior officer turned to the special landing troops. “Ready!” he said. The guards hurried out of the line of fire. “Aim!” Hasegawa said. Up came the rifles, all pointing at Sakamaki’s chest. “Fire!”

As the rifles roared, Genda thought Sakamaki shouted, “ Banzai! ” one last time. His mouth opened wide and he yelled something, but the word was lost in the fusillade. Sakamaki staggered, twisted, and fell. Red had already spread over the front of his prison coveralls. It soaked the back, where the exit wounds were. The young man jerked and twitched for a minute or two, then lay still.

Captain Hasegawa nodded to the firing squad. “You did your duty, men, and did it well. You are dismissed.” They saluted and marched away. The skipper of the Akagi held up a piece of paper for the officers who’d witnessed Sakamaki’s execution. “I will need your signatures, gentlemen.”

Along with the others, Genda wrote his name under the brief report that described Kazuo Sakamaki’s failure to die in battle, his humiliating capture (it said he’d asked the Americans to kill him, but they’d refused), the court-martial following the Japanese victory, the inevitable sentence, and its completion. There on the page, everything seemed perfectly clear-cut, perfectly official. Genda didn’t look at Sakamaki’s body. He couldn’t help noticing the air smelled of blood.

“Thank you, Commander,” Hasegawa said when Genda returned the pen to him. “One more loose end cleared up.”