Eyes of the Emperor (3 page)

Pop was raking leaves under the avocado tree when we reached the small dirt patch we called a yard. Chik and Cobra kept on going, walking backwards, grinning like the cowards they were around him—and around their own pops, too, for that matter.

Pop glanced up when I came through the gate.

He stopped and squinted at me, shadows from the tree spattered all over him. His thin eyelids sagged down at the ends, making me feel like I was being watched by a lizard.

I nodded, then glanced at the house. Maybe Ma would come out to rescue me.

I scratched my cheek, trying to think.

Stupid… not to have a plan.

I turned back to Pop and lifted my chin, Hey.

He didn't blink. Dark, hooded eyes.

I looked away.

Opah, a small black and white mixed-breed mutt, came stretching out from under the house. I squatted to pet him.

Think, think.

Opah yawned, his eyes squeezing to slits, his breath like rotting fish.

Pop started raking again.

I stood up.

“Pop,” I said, smiling, trying to look cheerful. But I didn't know what was supposed to come after that. “Uh… the yard looks nice.”

Dumb.

Pop leaned on the rake. Now that sour look said, You got something to say, say it, and stop bothering me.

Okay, I thought. Just get it out, one time fast.

“Pop, I joined the army today,” I said. “I was prob'ly going get drafted, anyway… you know, like Nick and Takeo? I thought, you know, I might as well get it over with… and…and…”

This part wasn't very clear to me yet.

“Well… somebody's got to stand up against the guys who burn sampans because they think we going…we…I don't know what they think, but it ain't right, you know? So I…I…I'll send you all my pay, and…”

That was all I could think of.

Pop's eyes darted back and forth, and I knew he was translating. I could have made it easier for him and said it in Japanese, but my English was better.

He turned his head slightly, as if listening to a faraway sound. But his eyes didn't move, studying me for way too long.

“Pop?”

He sucked his teeth, then went back to raking leaves.

And that was the end of it. Pop wouldn't look up again. Even if the avocado tree came crashing down, he would just keep on raking.

Opah glanced up at me, like What's going on?

I shook my head and started up the steps to the house. Funny how that old goat gets to me, I thought, because my hands were trembling.

What he was thinking, I could only guess.

Probably he was seeing all those years of Japanese school, all those Boy's Day celebrations with the Japanese red fish flag flying over our house, all the times we'd invited guests from Japan over for dinner so he could talk about his home and tell them how his sons were going to Waseda University—he was probably thinking about all of that—wasted. To him, my joining the U.S. Army was the worst possible betrayal. That was what was banging around in his head. Probably.

I kicked off my rubber slippers and went inside, letting the screen door slap behind me. I winced when I glanced at the flag of Japan nailed to the wall, and the picture of stifffaced Emperor Hirohito in a frame on the table by our sagging brown couch. If the haoles ever saw that, they would really think they had a Japanese problem. The Emperor's eyes followed me as I crossed the room. Spooky.

Ma was in the kitchen, small and round, black hair turning to gray tied in a knot behind her head.

She smiled, glad to see me home.

“Ma,” I said. “I…I joined the army today. I was going get drafted anyway, so I…”

She gasped and stepped back to fall into a chair. She stared at me a second, my words sinking in, her eyes welling with tears.

I dropped down on one knee and grabbed her hand. “Ma, it's the right thing, specially now when people starting to worry about us because of what Japan is doing in … in…in China.”

A tear slipped from her eye and rolled down her cheek, falling on my hand. “Your
father,
Eddy…he…”

“I know, Ma, I know.”

She rocked, taking her hand back and folding her arms across her chest, leaning into them. “Oh, this is so bad. He has such
dreams
for you. How can you do this to him, Eddy? For so long he has—”

“Do you think I dream those same dreams of his? You know I don't. I have to live my own life.…I have to… to…”

What?

What do I
have
to do that is so hurtful to my family? How come I didn't think of that?

“Look, Ma…I'll get paid thirty dollars a month, just like Chik and Cobra. We need the money, don't we? Right?”

She turned away.

“Ma, try to understand.”

“Your father knows what's best for you, Eddy. You must respect his wishes. He has taught you better than this.”

That was true.

“I'm sorry, Ma.”

There was nothing more to say.

Later, when I told Herbie, he stuck to me like a tick, wanting to know if I'd get a gun, or drive a truck or a jeep or a tank. “Can you get me a canteen? One of those ones you hang on the web belt? Ho, man, the army! How come Pop let you do that? You're not even old enough.”

“He didn't.”

Herbie gaped.

I laughed. A sad laugh.

Because on that day Pop stopped speaking to me. As far as he was concerned, I no longer existed.

It was a black time, those days before I reported to Schofield. Working in silence at the boat shop was the worst, long stretches broken up only when Bunichi or Herbie said something to me.

Sometimes I dragged around feeling terrible for what I'd done to Pop. Even Sharky could tell something was off. He mostly kept out of sight. Dogs know, somehow.

Other days, I told myself, Listen, it's
your
life, not his.…You gotta do what you think is right. If you don't, then you're just his shadow. And serving your country is right.

I tried to think…How can I please my family, and honor them—when at the same time I have something to prove?

And then I thought, Pop needs help at work—I got to be there for him. Without me, how will he get by?

I passed my physical exam and was inducted into the U.S. Army on October 15, 1941. My new home was a two man tent down in the lower quadrant of Schofield Barracks.

Boom Town, the city of tents.

I shared mine with a small guy named PeeWee Okazaki, a kid from Maui who played poker like a professional. He could make cards disappear in his hands like magic. Other guys I met were just as full of surprises. There was Shig, full of opinions; and Golden Boy, a dimple-faced ladies' man from Kauai. Another guy, Slim, was over six feet tall. Made the rest of us look like shrimps.

All together there were six hundred of us new island recruits living in those tents with mud trails like roads winding between them—Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, lots of races.

Down in Boom Town we didn't have phones or drinking fountains or regular latrines like the mainland guys up in the barracks, but still, I liked it.

I could take it.

Basic training was like swimming with barracudas—you were always on edge; somebody screaming in your face hour after hour, day after day.

“New recruit, repeat the army motto!”

“What?”

“Did I ask you to ask me a question?”

“What question?”

“I don't want to hear
anything
but one of four responses, and those four responses are ‘Yes,
sir
!’ ‘No,
sir
!’ ‘No excuse,
sir
!’ And, ‘I do not understand,
sir
!’ Do you understand
that,
new recruit?”

“Yes, sir. I understand, sir!”

“Are you
stupid,
new recruit, or just plain dumb?”

“What?”

Grunts, they called us. And that was what grunts had to face. It wasn't so bad if you could laugh about it.

Anyway, I was part of something big now, and was too busy learning army rules to worry about anything else, even the
Red Hibiscus
or the Japanese problem.

When I came home on my first pass seven weeks after I'd started basic training, Pop still wouldn't speak to me.

To him, I was a ghost.

Even so, I caught him studying me in my uniform one time, and, ho, did that make him angry, getting caught looking. I laughed. I couldn't help it. He huffed out of the room.

But Ma had accepted what I'd done and wouldn't stop fussing over me. “Oh, you must be starving from all that bad army food.” “Oh, you must be so tired from working so hard—here, sleep, take a rest.” “Oh, you must be anxious to hear about what's going on—here, read the newspaper.”

Ahhh!

On Saturday morning, I left the house before she got up. I grabbed my throw net, woke Herbie, and whistled for
Opah, and the three of us went net fishing down past the Chinese rice fields and water buffaloes, where we saw the sun rise over the mountains as we stood knee-deep in the warm ocean.

Mostly we were quiet. But we talked, too.

“Does Pop ever mention my name, Herbie?”

“No.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

I puffed up my cheeks and let the air out slowly. “In a way I don't blame him.”

“You asked for it.”

“Yeah, that's true.”

We managed to catch three fat
moi,
but we couldn't stay long. Herbie had baseball practice, and baseball to him was like fresh air. He played second base for a pretty good junkyard team called the Kaka'ako Boys.

Ma fried up the fish that night for dinner. Pop ate in silence, staring only at the food on his plate. He wouldn't talk to me, but at least he ate my fish.

I had a hard time sleeping that night, because I missed goading Pop into talking about this or that—didn't matter what, just trying to make him say a few words.

I'd given it a shot, though.

“Hey, Pop,” I'd said, then waited for him to turn my way. He didn't.

I said, “Good fishing down by the rice fields. You should go.”

His profile said everything: Are you my son? You're not
my son. My son obeys and honors his father. Are you related to me? You my flesh and blood? No.

Finally, I fell asleep.

The next morning Herbie shook me awake with wild eyes. “Eddy, get up, get up! Something going on!”

“What?” I said, jumping up and tripping into my shorts. I dragged a T-shirt over my head and stumbled outside after him.

It was noisy. Real noisy.

The sky was swarming with planes.

Some low, some way up.

More were screaming toward us in squadrons from three directions—one group ripping in from the sea, another dropping down over the Waianae range in the west, and the third zipping in over the pass up by Schofield Barracks and Wheeler Field. Must have been two hundred planes, all coming down on Honolulu.

“Who are they, Eddy? Army, navy, or what?”

I didn't answer, because I couldn't believe it. I knew who they were, but it was impossible. How could they get here from—

A fighter blasted overhead just above the treetops, rattling the tin roofs of Japanese camp.

We ducked.

“Ho!” Herbie shouted.

The roar of engines grew louder. Planes filled the sky.
One after another, swooping down, then rising to loop around and dive again. Right over our heads, like mosquitoes swirling at the edge of a campfire.

All over Japanese camp people ran out into the street, squinting up, shading their eyes. Some stood with their hands covering their mouths. A few stayed inside, peeking out their windows.

Fear prickled on my skin. My tongue tingled with brass needles.

“Look!” Herbie said. “They paint um just like Japanese ones.”

The fighters ripped down and raced toward Pearl Harbor, the round red
hinomaru
under their wings: the red sun. The symbol of Japan.

A huge explosion shook the earth, somewhere down past Honolulu Harbor. Then another, and another, and after each blast ugly black smoke boiled up over the rooftops.

I grabbed Herbie and shoved him toward the house.