Days of Infamy (39 page)

Jiro shook his head. “I'll choose another. This one I think I'll save for Kita-
san
.”

His sons looked at each other, the way they often did when he said something they didn't like. He waited for them to start shouting at him for having anything to do with the Japanese consul. To his surprise, they kept quiet. He supposed it was because he'd sometimes brought fish to the consulate before the war started. They couldn't say he was doing it to curry favor with Kita now.

Kenzo did sigh, but all he said was, “Have it your way. You will anyhow.”

“
Arigato goziemasu
.” Jiro made the thank-you as sarcastic as he could.
Then he cut strips of tender, deep pink flesh from another
ahi
. Maybe that fish wasn't quite so perfect as the one he'd set aside for the consul, but it was plenty good enough for him.

He and his sons threw the offal from the second run into the sea as bait for a third. They didn't do so well this time; they already taken most of what that stretch of the Pacific had to offer. After they'd stowed what fish they had caught, Jiro turned the
Oshima Maru
's bow toward the shore—actually, toward the northeast rather than due north. He'd have to tack all the way home unless the wind shifted.

“
Will
we need to spend the night on the ocean?” Hiroshi asked.

“Maybe. I don't know yet. It all depends on the wind,” Jiro answered. Actually, that wasn't quite true. It also depended on how tired he was. If he decided he had to roll himself in a blanket before the sampan got back to Kewalo Basin, well, then, they wouldn't come in till morning.

But the wind stayed steady, and the
Oshima Maru
handled better than Jiro remembered his father's boat doing back when he was a boy. Sampans weren't pretty—which was, if anything, an understatement—but they were seaworthy. He steered the boat into Kewalo Basin a little past nine o'clock. Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter shone in the night sky, Mars farthest west, Jupiter almost straight overhead. The moon, nearly full, glowed in the east and had done its share to help him home.

Japanese soldiers waited by the wharfs, where armed Americans had stood before. They weighed the Takahashis' fish and gave them their price based on that weight, not on quality. To Jiro's relief, they didn't quarrel when he and his sons took some fish off the
Oshima Maru
. “Personal use?” a sergeant asked.

“For us,
hai
, and to pay the man who added the mast and sails to the sampan, and a fine tuna for Kita-
san
, the Japanese consul,” Jiro answered.

“
Ah, so desu
.” The sergeant bowed. “I am sure he will be glad to have it. Kind of you to think of him.” He waved Jiro and Hiroshi and Kenzo on into Honolulu. Jiro thought about pointing out to his sons how useful that
ahi
had proved, but he didn't. They wouldn't pay any attention.

Eizo Doi was glad to get thirty pounds of fish when the Takahashis knocked on his door, but had his own worries: “Where am I going to freeze all of it? It's more than my freezer will hold.”

That wasn't Jiro's problem. After he and his sons left Doi's house, Hiroshi and Kenzo went back to their tent in the botanical garden. They wanted
nothing to do with Kita or the Japanese consulate. Jiro kept walking north up Nuuanu Avenue to the corner of Kuakini Street. The Japanese consular compound there had become one of the nerve centers of the imperial occupation of Hawaii; Iolani Palace was the other.

Like the rest of Honolulu, the consular compound remained blacked out. Jiro didn't understand why. No American plane could hope to bomb the city and return to the mainland. He wasn't even sure a U.S. plane could carry bombs all the way from the mainland to Hawaii. But the Japanese military could be just as unreasonable as its American counterpart.

“Halt!” a sentry called from out of the darkness. “State your name and business.” When Jiro did, the sentry said, “Ah. Go on in. You'll be very welcome, especially after the torpedoing.”

“Torpedoing?” Jiro said. “What's this? I've been out on the ocean all day without a radio.”

“A damned American submarine sank the
Bordeaux Maru
this afternoon,” the soldier told him. “She was bringing supplies to the island, but. . . . Karma,
neh?
The Americans want everyone here to starve. That's why I said Kita-
san
would be so glad to get your tuna.”

He opened the door for Jiro, who took the
ahi
inside. Nagao Kita, the consul, was a short, stocky, round-faced man. He was in animated conversation with three or four Army and Navy officers, but broke off when he saw Jiro. “Takahashi-
san
!” he said, and the fisherman was proud this important personage had remembered his name. A broad smile spread across the consul's face. “What have you got there, my friend? Doesn't that look beautiful?”

“It's for you, sir,” Jiro said, “and maybe for these gentlemen, if you feel like sharing.”

“Yes, if I do,” Kita said, and laughed. The officers were ogling the splendid
ahi
, too. A Navy captain licked his lips, then tried to pretend he hadn't. Kita stepped up and took the fish from Jiro. The consul gave him a more than polite bow. “Very kind of you to think of me, Takahashi-
san
, very kind. I won't forget it, believe me. When I have the chance, you can bet I'll think of you.”

Delighted, Jiro returned the bow. “I'm sure that's not necessary, sir.”

“I think it is.” Having received the tuna with his own hands, Kita called for one of his aides to take charge of it. He turned back to Jiro. “I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me now. We have to figure out what to do about the miserable business this afternoon.”

He didn't say what the business was. Jiro didn't show he knew. That might have landed the sentry in hot water. He just nodded and said, “Of course, sir,” and turned to go.

“I won't forget you,” Kita promised. “You're a reliable man.” As Jiro pushed through the blackout curtains that kept light from escaping when the door opened, he felt ready to burst with pride. The consul thought he was reliable! The Emperor might have just pinned the Order of the Rising Sun on his chest.

J
OE
C
ROSETTI
'
S INSTRUCTOR
in essentials of naval service was a graying lieutenant named Larry Moore. He had a face as long as a basset hound's, and normally about as doleful, too. When he came into the classroom wreathed in smiles one morning, Joe figured something was up.

And he was right. Lieutenant Moore said, “Gentlemen, yesterday the
Grunion
sent a Jap freighter to the bottom off the north coast of Kauai. We
are
starting to hit back at those slanty-eyed so-and-sos.”

A savage cheer—almost a growl—rose from the throats of the flying cadets. Joe joined in. Several young men clapped their hands. Orson Sharp raised his. When Moore pointed to him, he said, “Sir, are the Japs making any effort to bring in supplies for the civilians in Hawaii, or is everything they're shipping in for their garrison?”

“That's . . . not entirely obvious,” Moore said after a brief pause. “But that ship could have been carrying munitions or aircraft as readily as rice for soldiers or civilians.”

“Yes, sir.” As usual, Sharp was punctiliously polite. “Were there secondary explosions after the torpedo hit?”

“I don't know one way or the other, so I can't tell you,” the instructor answered. “If you'd be so kind, though, you might tell me why you're wasting grief on a bunch of damn Japs.”

Most cadets, if challenged that way, would have lost their temper or backed down. Orson Sharp did neither. “Sir, I'll wave bye-bye to all the Japs we send to the bottom. But there are an awful lot of hungry people in the Hawaiian Islands. If they're going to get hungrier, I am sorry about that.”

Lieutenant Moore studied him. Sharp hadn't been disrespectful or insubordinate in any way. He had an opinion, and he'd come out with it. If it wasn't one the instructor happened to share . . . Well, was this still a free country or
not? No, Joe realized, that wasn't the right question. The country was still free. How freely anyone in the Navy could speak up was a whole different ballgame.

At last, Moore said, “Well, we'll let it go this time, then.” He sounded like a governor pardoning a prisoner who probably didn't deserve it. After another moment or two, Moore went on, “Where were we? Oh, yes. We were going to talk about yesterday's quiz. About half of you didn't know that a chief bosun can't be tried by summary court-martial. Well, gentlemen, he can't. A chief bosun is a warrant officer, which means the rules for ratings don't apply to him.”

Bill Frank, who was sitting to Joe's left while Sharp sat to his right, whispered, “Did you get that one?”

Joe nodded infinitesimally. “Yeah,” he whispered back. “How about you?”

“I think I blew it.” His roomie put a world of pathos into five almost inaudible words.

Lieutenant Moore went over the quiz item by item, concentrating on the ones a lot of cadets had missed. Along with courts and boards, essentials of naval service covered ranks and their duties, naval customs and usages, and all the endless formalities that let officers and ratings work together smoothly. Joe had seen a commander tromp all over a j.g. for something dumb the junior officer did one morning, then play bridge with him that night as if nothing had happened.

He didn't fully understand how that worked. If anybody had been so bitingly rude to him, he would have wanted to brain the son of a bitch with a tire iron, not play cards with him. But the career Navy men seemed able to build a wall between what happened on duty and what happened off. Of course, they'd had years of practice. That kind of discipline didn't come naturally. Without it, though, a lot of guys would have grabbed tire irons.

The instructor might have been reading his thoughts. “A ship is a very crowded place,” Moore said. “The sooner you start thinking like Navy men, the better you'll fit in when you go to sea. We have round holes, gentlemen. People who insist on being square pegs don't have an easy time of it.” He was looking at Orson Sharp as he said that.

When they got out of essentials of naval service, they had to hustle to make it to introductory navigation. Joe liked that least of the three academic courses in the program; it showed him he hadn't paid enough attention in
geometry and trig. But plenty of other cadets were struggling harder than he was.

“I hope you didn't get Moore mad at you,” he said to Sharp as they hurried from one building to another.

“So do I, but I won't lose any sleep over it,” the cadet from Utah replied. “I had a legitimate question.”

“I guess so,” Joe said.

Sharp's eyes said Joe had just flunked a test. “Don't you care what happens to the civilians in Hawaii? They've got a tough row to hoe.”

“Well, yeah,” Joe admitted. “But isn't kicking the Japs out the best thing we can do for them? Odds are, whatever that freighter was carrying was going to the Jap Army or Navy, not to civilians.”

“Maybe. I suppose we have to hope so.” Sharp sounded no more convinced than Joe had a minute earlier. “They can't let everybody starve, though.”

“Who says they can't?” Joe retorted. “Look what the Nazis are doing in Russia.” Sharp winced but didn't carry the argument any further, from which Joe concluded he'd won the point.

Any pride in his prowess disappeared in introduction to navigation. He butchered a problem—and he did it on the blackboard so everyone could see. “I'm afraid that answer is just exactly 180 degrees off, Mr. Crosetti,” the instructor said. “In other words, you couldn't be wronger if you tried. Take your seat.” Ears blazing, Joe did. The instructor looked around. “Who sees where Mr. Crosetti went astray here?” Several people raised a hand. The instructor pointed. “Mr. Sharp.”

Orson Sharp solved the problem with what looked like offhand ease. He wasn't having any trouble in the class. When he sat down, he didn't act as if he'd just shown Joe up. Maybe he didn't even feel that way. Joe knew he would have were their positions reversed. That made him resent his roomie even if Sharp didn't resent him.

After the lecture, the instructor gave out more problems, these for pencil and paper. Joe thought he did pretty well on them.
You probably did, but so what?
he jeered at himself.
Everybody already watched you show what a jerk you could be
.

He breathed the heady—and chilly—air of freedom again when he got out of class. As far as he could tell, he'd never make it back to his carrier if he took off from one. But when he said that out loud, Orson Sharp shook his
head. “I saw what you did. You took the tangent instead of the sine—just a little goof. You won't do it with your neck on the line.”

“I hope not,” Joe said. Sharp perplexed him almost as much as his mangled navigation. Maybe the other cadet really wasn't mad at him after all. Did that mark almost inhuman restraint or a genuinely good person?

The cadets' other academic class was identification and recognition: how to tell bombers from fighters, cruisers from battleships, and Allied planes and ships from the ones that belonged to the Axis. They'd already had to learn the silhouettes of some new German and Japanese planes that hadn't been known when they started the course.