Eyes of the Emperor (7 page)

Three days later, I got a message to call home. I ran up to the PX and dialed the Higashis. When Herbie finally came on the line, the front of my shirt was dark with sweat.

“Ma said to call when we knew about Pop,” he said.

“Where is he, Herbie? Is he okay?”

“He's home. The FBI arrested lot of guys—Shinto and Buddhist priests, language-school teachers, even fishermen. But not Pop. They kept him at Immigration for a while, asking questions. They searched his shop, too. But they let him go because they need him for help fix small boats.”

“So Pop's all right?”

“Same old grumbly self. Just like Sharky. You should have seen the FBI guys trying to walk around that dog. Was funny.”

I took a deep breath and leaned against the phone booth. Pop was home.

“Where's Bunichi, Herbie? Ma didn't know.”

“He's around, because they need him, too.”

That was a relief.

“Guess what?” Herbie went on. “They had these guards down at Kewalo, and they put one of them on every Japanese boat. They had big iron picks and were supposed to smash a hole in the bottom if they got an order to sink them.”

“What?”

“They gone now, the guards. They were there for three days.”

“That's crazy,” I said.

“That's not all. Some MPs came by our house and searched your room.”

“MPs? Like army MPs?”

“Yeah, army. They made a real mess in there. What they were looking for, I don't know, but they didn't find anything or take anything, except our radio.”

That made me so mad I couldn't speak! MPs searching my room! When will it end? When I'm in the stockade? When I'm dead?

“Eddy?”

“I'm here, just…never mind. What about Chik and Cobra's pops? They get arrested?”

“Naah, they need all those guys for fix boats.”

“And Ma, how's she doing?”

“We getting by. Stop worrying and go do army, ah? I'm here.”

“Yeah, you there, that's right. Thanks, Herbie. You call again, you got something, okay?”

“Sure.”

“It's good to talk to you, you know? Good to hear your voice.”

“Yeah.”

“Man, Herbie, I… listen, just stay safe, ah?”

“You too, Eddy. You too.”

Later that morning, Sweet drove down to our bivouac in the mess truck. Another officer was with him. When he got closer, I couldn't believe it—it was Mr. Parrish, our mechanical drawing teacher at McKinley High School.

Ho!
Mr. Parrish was a captain, two silver bars on his uniform. He was okay, a haole who understood local guys like us. I remembered he said he was in the National Guard. I guess he got called up.

“Things looking better,” Chik said. “At least he knows we not spies from Japan, ah?”

Sweet got out and barked, “Atten-
hut
!”

We snapped to attention.

“At ease,” Sweet said. “Gather round and sit on the grass. Let's go! Look alive! Get the lead out!

“Now listen up,” he said. “The captain has a few words for you.”

Captain Parrish studied us. When he spoke, the sound of his voice took me right back to drafting class. “What happened with the machine guns was a mistake,” he said.
“That's all I'm at liberty to say about the incident, except that I would personally like to extend an apology.”

A few heads nodded.

Cobra sat unmoved.

“Today we'll spend the afternoon on the rifle range,” Captain Parrish went on. “Tomorrow you're moving out to the beaches. You'll get your weapons right after midday chow.”

Cobra turned to the side and spat.

When the sound of taps in the quad ended the day, I lay wrapped in my scratchy army-issue blanket with the tent flap open, looking out at the shadowy clouds gliding over the stars, sails crossing a dark sea.

A perfect time for another attack.

The next morning we squeezed onto troop trucks and headed out. “Jeese, Chik,” I said. “When was the last time you took a shower? You stink.”

“
Man
smell, son.”

“Pshh.”

Golden Boy and PeeWee jabbered like they were going to a football game. Cobra smiled, listening. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back.

But when we drove by Pearl Harbor, with the sad hulls of crushed ships clearly visible, we shut up.

Even now, small snakes of smoke trailed into the sky, like smoldering campfires. It seemed quiet down there, peaceful almost. I could see trucks and jeeps and men moving around, working cranes, maneuvering tugboats, trying to save the hammered destroyers and clean up the mess.

An hour later we convoyed around the end of the island and plunged down into Waimanalo, a narrow corridor of green farmland with towering mountains on the left and a long sand beach on the right.

Shig raised his chin. “If they going attack from the ocean, this is the place. All that sand. Easy.”

One by one, the trucks pulled off the road, men scrambling out with their gear. Our truck and three others headed down a side street toward the ocean. Sweet's truck backtracked up a lane that paralleled the beach. “Good riddance,” Shig said. “I hope he don't come bothering us.”

Cobra snorted. “You dreaming.”

We stopped at the end of the road and piled out with our gear, the bright, sunny beach in front of us.

A guy whose name tag read sgt. hardy pointed down the sandy ridge to the ironwood trees that edged the beach. “You'll bivouac in those trees where you can't be seen from the sky.”

In single file, we headed to the trees.

The ocean stretched away to dark reefs a quarter mile out, where small white waves crumpled on the sparkling blue water.

Ho! I thought. Sure beats Schofield.

“Set up your tents here,” Sergeant Hardy said as more trucks arrived carrying mainland troops, who set up on the sandy ridge just above us.

“Why they don't come down here?” Chik asked.

Sergeant Hardy left without answering.

Just after sunrise the next morning two trucks drove down into the ironwoods to our bivouac. Three men got out of the first truck and started tumbling roll after roll of barbed wire off the back end onto the sand.

The second truck carried picks, shovels, stacks of empty burlap sacks, boxes of ammunition, hand grenades, tripods, and three heavy water-cooled machine guns.

They unloaded all of it without a word to any of us. When they were done, they drove back up the sand dune.

An hour later, Sweet showed up. “You, you, and you,” he said, pointing to me, Chik, and Slim. “Take two shovels and a third of these sacks and go up there above the high-tide line and dig out a pit big enough for two men and a machine gun. Do I have to tell you how to find the high-water mark?”

“No, sir,” I said.

Sweet took the rest of the squad farther down the beach. The high-water line was easy to see, because of the beach debris the waves had pushed up.

A group of mainland soldiers sat around another machine-gun pit on the dune just above, watching us. Smart, I thought. If the enemy gets past us, those guys will get them. A second line of defense.

About six hundred yards down the beach, Sweet showed Cobra's group where to place their pit. And above them more mainland guys had set up a machine-gun hole. This part of the island would be well protected.

Slim and I shoveled sand into burlap sacks that Chik held open. As they filled up, he tied them off and stacked them around the edge of the pit.

“All we need now is the machine gun,” I said.

“Maybe not going be us,” Chik said. “Maybe we digging this for some mainland guys. Wouldn't surprise me.”

I grunted. “That might make me mad.”

Sweet came over to scowl down on our pit. He moved a couple of sandbags, stamped others down with his boot. “Now go get a machine gun and a tripod. And bring over a box of ammo and nine hand grenades, three for each of you.”

“See, Chik?” Slim said as we headed to the trees.

Sweet helped us lug the machine gun onto its tripod. He pried open the ammo box and showed us how to load the bandolier.

“Until further notice, this position belongs to you three,” Sweet said. “Nothing comes up out of that ocean that isn't friendly, understand? I want two men in the pit at all times. Two hours on, four hours off, around the clock. Is that clear?”

It wasn't, but I could figure it out later.

“If they're smart, they'll come at night,” Sweet said, gazing out to sea.

I squinted toward the ocean. The sky was turning dusky. Pale gray-blue clouds sat still on the horizon.

“Nobody dozes on his watch.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Everyone's kind of jumpy. Little hair-triggered, if you know what I mean.”

I turned and looked up at the guys behind us.

“You sure you boys know how to work the MG?”

“Yes, sir,” Slim said.

“Thing'll throw you clean out of that hole, you don't do it right, scrawny boys like you.”

Slim was over six feet, as tall as Sweet himself. But I guess you could say me and Chik were small guys.

I blinked when Sweet's eyes dug into mine.

He shook his head, then started down the beach toward Cobra's pit.

But he stopped and walked back.

“One more thing—you see those men up on the dune?”

We turned to look behind us. “Yes, sir,” I said. “The second line of defense, right?”

Sweet grinned. “Exactly.”

He gazed up at the mainland guys and sucked his teeth, like some old Kaka'ako guy watching a card game.

“If the Japs land on this beach and you hesitate to shoot them, or if you even turn around and think about leaving your post, those men back there have orders to shoot you. You understand that? If the Nips come ashore and you take one step out of this hole, you're dead men, because I don't trust you. Am I making myself clear?”

Chik's jaw dropped. Slim wouldn't even look up. Blood boiled into my brain. We were soldiers in the United States Army!
Americans!
To say what he said was insane.

My fist opened and closed.

Wait, wait, wait, I told myself. Calm down. Do something stupid, you get court-martialed.

I felt like a fool, backing down like somebody's shoeshine boy.

Sweet headed over to Cobra's pit. “Look back and die, boys,” he said over his shoulder.