Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

“Ah, Takahashi- san,” the Japanese consul said when the fisherman walked into his office. He turned to the reporter, who wore a Western-style sport jacket with a gaudy print. “Mori- san, you ought to be talking to this fellow, not to me. He’d have some interesting stories to tell you. I can guarantee that.”

“Would he?” The reporter turned in his chair and looked Takahashi over. “Hello, there, I’m Ichiro Mori. I write for the Nippon jiji.”

“Oh, yes. Very pleased to meet you, Mori- san.” Jiro dipped his head. “I’ve seen your name in the paper many times.”

“You flatter me.” Mori had an easygoing voice and a ready grin. He was the sort of man you couldn’t help liking at first sight. “So you’re a Takahashi, eh? What’s your first name?”

“Jiro,” Takahashi answered, and the other man-who was a few years younger than he-wrote it down.

“How long have you been in Hawaii, Takahashi- san?” Mori asked.

“More than thirty years now.”

“ Ah, so desu! That’s a long time. Where were you born? Somewhere not far from Hiroshima, by the way you talk.”

“ Hai.” Jiro nodded. “Yamaguchi prefecture. I call my sampan the Oshima Maru, after the county I come from. I learned to be a fisherman there; my father took a boat out onto the Inland Sea.”

“Have you been fishing ever since you got here, then?”

“Oh, no. I worked in the sugar fields. That’s what they brought us over to do. I had to save my money for a long time before I could buy a boat and get away.” Jiro laughed reminiscently. “They weren’t very happy about it-they didn’t want cane pickers leaving. But I’d met my contract, so they couldn’t keep me.”

“You settled down here? You have family?”

“I’m a widower,” Jiro said, and no more about that. After a brief pause, he added, “I have two sons.”

“Do they speak Japanese, I hope?” the reporter asked. “Some of the people born here can’t say a word in what should be their own language.”

“Not my boys.” Pride rang in Takahashi’s voice. “I made sure they learned it.”

“Good. That’s very good.” Mori scribbled notes. “And you’re happy the way things have turned out here? Are your sons happy, too?”

Jiro glanced over to Nagao Kita. The consul was from Japan. Would he want to hear that Hiroshi and Kenzo thought of themselves as Americans? Not likely! Jiro didn’t want to hear it himself. He spoke of his own views first: “Would I bring fish here if I weren’t happy?” That let him think about what he would say next: “My sons work too hard to worry much about politics.”

“Hard work is always good,” Mori agreed. “What did you think when the Rising Sun came to Hawaii?”

“I was proud,” Jiro answered. His boys hadn’t been proud. He didn’t think the gulf between them would ever close. He added, “I waved a flag in the victory parade. The soldiers made a brave show.”

“So you were there for the parade? What did you think of all the Yankee prisoners? Weren’t you happy to see that their day in the sun was over?”

What did I think? Jiro wondered. Mostly, he’d been amazed. He’d never imagined filthy, ragged, beaten American POWs shambling through Honolulu. “The Japanese soldiers who were guarding them certainly were a lot sharper,” he said. “I told you, I was proud of all they had done. They were heroes for the Emperor.”

“ ‘Heroes for the Emperor,’ ” Ichiro Mori echoed, beaming. He turned to Consul Kita. “That’s a good phrase, isn’t it?”

“ Hai, very good,” Kita agreed. “Takahashi- san has a way with words.”

“Oh, no, not really.” The fisherman’s modesty was altogether unfeigned.

“Can you stay for a little while, please?” Mori asked him. “I’d like to call a photographer over here and get your picture.”

“A photographer? My picture? For the newspaper?” Jiro said, and the reporter nodded. In a daze, Takahashi nodded back. He’d never imagined such a thing. He’d never thought of himself as important enough to land in a newspaper. He read the Nippon jiji. Reading about himself in it… He felt himself swelling up with pride. This would show his boys!

The photographer got there in about twenty minutes. He was a wisecracking fellow named Yukiro Yamaguchi. He took photos of Jiro by himself, with the fish he’d brought, with Consul Kita, and with the consul and the fish. By the time he got done popping flashbulbs, green and purple spots danced in front of Jiro’s eyes.

Blinking to try to clear his sight, he bowed to Yamaguchi. “Thank you very much.”

“No huhu, buddy,” the photographer answered, casually dropping a Hawaiian word into his Japanese. “No huhu at all.”

KENZO TAKAHASHI HAD never paid a whole lot of attention to Honolulu’s Japanese papers. Like most people his age, he preferred the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser to Nippon jiji and Hawaii hochi. All papers had shrunk since the war, the English-language ones much more than their Japanese counterparts. Not surprisingly, the occupiers gave what woodpulp there was to papers that would back their line a hundred percent.

But when Kenzo saw his father staring out at him from the front page of the Nippon jiji, he spent a dime to get a copy-the paper had gone up since the fighting started, too. Sure as hell, there was Dad, holding an ahi and clasping the Japanese consul’s hand. Kenzo didn’t tell the newsboy he was related to the man in the paper. The kid, a few years younger than he was, might have hated him. Or he might have congratulated him, and that would have been worse.

What the devil had Dad said? Kenzo had no trouble reading the Japanese as he walked along. He hadn’t much wanted to learn it-he would rather have had fun after American school let out-but he’d conscientiously gone and done it, as Hiroshi had before him. And he’d lived in a neighborhood where there were so many Japanese signs and posters and ads that he couldn’t very well forget it once he had learned.

Now he wished he had. There was his father praising the Emperor, praising the courage of the Japanese soldiers who’d conquered Hawaii, saying he’d been proud of the victory parade, and telling the world the American soldiers they’d paraded with them were a bunch of decrepit wrecks. He also had good things to say about the way Japan was running Hawaii and about the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

“Oh, Dad,” Kenzo said, wishing he’d never seen the picture, never bought the paper. “ Oh, Dad.”

Maybe it wasn’t treason. Maybe. But if it wasn’t, it sure came close. Kenzo wondered how many words the reporter had put in his old man’s mouth. Would his father recognize the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere if it trotted over and bit him in the leg? Maybe he would, at that. He’d talked about it once.

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere damn well had bitten all of Hawaii in the leg, and wouldn’t let go. And here was Dad, a smiling propaganda tool for the occupiers. He couldn’t have known what he was doing. He must have said the first things that popped into his head when the reporter-Mori, that was the lousy snake’s name-asked him questions. But how it had happened didn’t much matter now. That it had happened did.

Kenzo started to crumple up the Nippon jiji and throw it in the trash. He started to, but he didn’t. Instead, he carefully folded the paper and put it in the back pocket of his dungarees. One of the things that no longer came into Honolulu harbor was toilet tissue. He could put that miserable story to good use. Not the picture-he’d tear that out first. But the story? Hell, yes. And the soft pulp paper would be an improvement on the scratchy, coated stuff they put in the outhouses by the botanical garden.