Days of Infamy (31 page)

Clancy nodded. “That's what I'm afraid of. That's why I'm thinking about bugging out.” He glanced over to Fletch. “What are you gonna do, Lieutenant?”

Back when he was still married to Jane, Fletch might have tried to get up to Wahiawa and pretended to be part of a civilian couple with her.
And you might have been an idiot, too
, he thought.
What if one of your neighbors turned you in? You'd get shot, and so would she
.

He shrugged. He didn't have that choice any more. “I'm sticking,” he said. “I
am
in the Army, goddammit. But I'm not going to tell anybody else what to do, not for this. Whatever you think gives you the best chance, you go ahead and do it, and good luck to you.”

Clancy set his rifle and his tin hat on the ground. “I'm gone,” he said. “Good luck back atcha, Lieutenant.” He slipped away. Dave followed. Arnie stayed.

They looked at each other. “What the hell happens next?” Arnie asked. “Uh, sir?”

“Beats me,” Fletch said. “We had drills and exercises for everything under the sun, but I don't think we ever practiced surrendering.” No American had ever imagined that he could taste defeat. After the Japanese landed on Oahu, Fletch's imagination had been expanded.

Somewhere not far away, someone with a loud, official-sounding voice shouted, “Come stack your weapons here! Fighting's done! Come stack your weapons!”

“Jesus,” Arnie muttered. He was a little, swarthy guy with a clotted Chicago accent.

“Got to get rid of your piece even if you bug out,” Fletch reminded him. “Japs catch you with it, you're history.” There were places—the Philippines, for instance—where a man might take to the jungle and go on with the fight. Oahu wasn't a place like that. It had jungles, sure enough, but they didn't have anything to eat in them.

“Jesus,” Arnie said again, and then, “They really gonna treat us like prisoners of war now?”

That poked Fletch's worst fears. He remembered too well what the Japs had done to American soldiers they'd captured. But they couldn't do things
like that to all the men who'd surrendered . . . could they? He shook his head. Impossible. “They're supposed to,” he answered. “We wouldn't have quit if we thought they wouldn't, would we?”

“I guess not.” Arnie still sounded dubious, but he nodded. “Lead the way, Lieutenant.”

Rank hath its privileges
, Fletch thought. This was one he could have done without. But he had no choice now that he'd decided not to disappear. He trudged along the road toward the man who was shouting about stacking arms. Here in the western suburbs of Honolulu, buildings weren't jammed together the way they were in the city proper. There was more greenery than there were houses and shops. But war had laid its hand here. Shell and bomb craters scarred the ground. Flame had gutted one of the houses Fletch and Arnie walked past. And the sickly-sweet battlefield reek of dead meat was in the air.

Springfields made neat pyramids on the grass, stocks down, barrels pointing up. The soldiers who'd already stacked their weapons were anything but neat. They looked like Fletch and Arnie: dirty, weary, tattered, dejected. They looked fearful, too. “What the hell are the Japs gonna do to us?” was a question Fletch heard again and again. The answer to that one would win the sixty-four dollars, all right. It might win something even better: life.

A few minutes later, somebody pointed west and said, “Here they come.” Several soldiers, Arnie among them, crossed themselves.

The Japs advanced cautiously, rifles at the ready. Fletch had seen them before, but they'd only been targets to him. Now, suddenly, they were men. Most of them were shorter and skinnier than their American opposite numbers—most, but not all. They weren't the buck-toothed, bespectacled caricatures he'd more or less subconsciously expected. They looked like the Japanese men who lived in Hawaii.

What a surprise
, Fletch thought sarcastically. And yet, in a lot of ways, it
was
a surprise.

“Attention!” shouted the American with the authoritative voice. “Form ranks!”

Some soldiers heeded him. More didn't, but just stood around, waiting to see what happened next. Fletch was one of those. He'd had all the shouting he could stand. A Japanese soldier with a scraggly mustache came up to him. He made himself hold still and nod to the victor.

“
Tabako?
” the Jap asked, holding out his hand. Fletch frowned. “
Tabako?
” the soldier repeated, more insistently this time.

A light dawned. Fletch pulled out a mostly empty pack of cigarettes and handed it to the Jap. The fellow grinned and stuck one in his mouth. Then he looked crestfallen. He mimed striking a match. Fletch fumbled in his pockets. Did he have any matches? He did, and gave them to the soldier. The man lit the cigarette. He seemed happy as a hog in front of a bucket of strawberries.

After a long, almost ecstatic drag, though, he pointed to Fletch's wristwatch. Fletch hesitated. He didn't want to give that up. But he didn't want to get shot or bayoneted, either.

Before he had to make up his mind, a noncom strode over. He said something to the soldier, who answered hesitantly.
Wham!
The noncom hauled off and hit the other Jap a lick that sent his cigarette flying and snapped his head back.
Wham!
This time, it was a backhand across the face. The soldier staggered, but did his best to stay at attention. The noncom screamed what was obviously abuse at him. The Jap soldier stood there, wooden as a cigar-store Indian. A tiny trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. His cheeks looked to be on fire. The noncom belted him one more time, then barked something contemptuous. Face still impassive, the soldier bowed and got the hell out of there.

Jesus H. Christ!
Fletch thought.
This is what they do to their own guys. No wonder they're hell on wheels to the poor suckers they catch
.

The noncom looked him over. He made himself stand there. If he showed any kind of fear, he thought he was a dead man. If this monkey started beating on him, though . . . Well, in that case he would be a dead man, because he intended to jump the Jap. He also intended to take the noncom down to hell with him.

Instead of hitting him, the fellow pointed to his wristwatch, the same as the ordinary soldier had done. Despite what Fletch had seen the noncom do, he hesitated again. Plundering prisoners was supposed to be against the rules. Maybe it was—if you were a private, and a corporal or sergeant or whatever this bastard was caught you at it. For him, though . . .
To the victors go the spoils
.

A curt word or two of Japanese had to mean,
Make it snappy, Charlie!
The noncom reached out and undid the watchband himself. Fletch didn't knock
his hands away, however much he wanted to. The Jap put the watch on his own wrist. When he fastened it, he closed the band a couple of holes farther along than Fletch did. Off he went, peacock-proud.

Other Japanese soldiers were relieving American prisoners of their minor valuables. Seeing his countrymen robbed made Fletch feel a little better. Maybe misery really did love company. And it could have been worse. It wasn't a massacre. That noncom had done worse to the poor greedy private than the Japs were doing to the Americans.

You know you've hit bottom when you're glad 'cause they've only stolen your watch
, Fletch thought. He
was
glad, too. Maybe it would be all right, or at least not too bad.

W
HEN THE ORDER
to cease fire and lay down his arms reached Jim Peterson, he was in a house in Pearl City with his back to the sea. He couldn't have stayed there too much longer. Either he'd get killed or he'd be squeezed off into the west—into irrelevance—while the Japs reached the oil-befouled waters of Pearl Harbor.

He was damned if he felt like giving up. He had a good position and plenty of clips for his Springfield. Had he signed up as a ground-pounder only to surrender to the enemy?
What would you have done if you'd stayed aboard the Enterprise?
he jeered at himself.
You'd have been shot out of the sky or gone down with her
.

As a matter of fact, he
had
got shot out of the sky. But he'd had golfers for company, not sharks. The Pacific was a wide and lonely place.

He wondered if he ought to put his lieutenant's bars back on. He might get better treatment if he did. After a moment's thought, he shook his head. He'd signed up to be an infantryman, and he'd go into captivity as one. He knew that was pride talking—perverse pride, probably. He shrugged. He didn't give a damn. Perverse or not, it was his.

“Come out and assemble!” some loudmouth was yelling. “Come out! If the Japs take you later, they'll say you tried to go on fighting after the surrender. You don't want that to happen. Believe me, you don't.”

Loudmouth or not, he was much too likely to be right. Regretfully, Peterson slung his rifle and came out of the house. Other similarly draggled men were doing the same thing elsewhere along the block. They'd been in close
contact with the Japs. Japanese soldiers were coming out, too, to look them over.

The Japs were about as grubby as the Americans. Their beards weren't so thick, but plenty of them needed shaves, too. Even though neither side showed much in the way of spit and polish, you could sure as hell tell who'd won and who'd lost. The Americans walked with their shoulders slumped and their heads down. They mooched along as if they'd just watched a tank run over their cat. That was about how Peterson felt, too.

By contrast, the Japs might have just conquered the world. They'd sure as hell just conquered one of the nicest corners of it. And boy, were they proud of themselves! They swaggered. They strutted. They grinned. Some of them seemed almost drunk with happiness—or was it relief?

Japanese officers were easy to spot. They were the ones who wore swords. Peterson had seen they really thought they could fight with them, too. At close quarters, he would have preferred a bayonet—it gave more reach. He hadn't seen any hand-to-hand combat, though. People shot each other before they got that close. Bayonets were handy things to have, but they didn't get blood on them very often.

“Over here!” the loudmouth bawled. “Stack arms!”

One of the Jap officers had a local Oriental with him. The local gave him a running translation. He nodded in reply.

Collaborators already
, Peterson thought.
Happy day!
The officer said something in Japanese. The local Japanese man translated: “Even though you have surrendered and are dishonored, you must try to remember that you are men.”

That was a dangerous thing to say to soldiers with weapons still in their hands. For a nickel, Peterson would have blown that Jap's head off for him. Fear for himself didn't keep him from doing it. Fear for what would happen to other Americans all over Oahu did.

His rifle joined others stacked in neat pyramids. Japanese soldiers watched the Americans giving up their weapons. Peterson looked down at his hands when the Springfield was gone for good. He felt naked without the rifle. Whatever the Japs wanted to do to him, they could.

Dishonored? Maybe that officer hadn't been so far wrong. If losing to these bastards wasn't a humiliation, what was? As far as he was concerned, the USA should have been able to lick Japan with one hand tied behind its back. Maybe it had tied both hands back there, because it had sure as hell lost.

And what would happen next? How the devil was the United States supposed to fight a war in the Pacific from the West Coast? What would happen to Australia and New Zealand? How could America get soldiers and supplies down there without going through Hawaii? It wouldn't be easy—if it was possible at all.

“Hey, you lousy little monkey, keep your goddamn hands off me!” a soldier with a thick Southern drawl said angrily. He shoved away a Jap who'd been about to lift something from him.

Peterson didn't think the Japanese soldiers spoke any English. That didn't matter. The tone and the shove were all they needed. Half a dozen of them jumped the American. All the others close by raised their rifles, warning the rest of the newly surrendered Americans not to butt in.

They stomped the Southerner. It was angry at first, and got angrier when he managed to land a blow or two of his own. That didn't last long, not against six. After he stopped fighting back, it turned cold-blooded and methodical. To Peterson's mind, that was worse. They knew exactly what they intended to do, and they did it. By the time they finished, it wasn't a human being on the ground any more: only dead meat in khaki wrappings. They had blood on their boots and puttees.

To Peterson's surprise, they didn't have smiles on their faces. They hadn't particularly enjoyed what they'd done—which didn't mean they hadn't done it. It was just . . . part of a day's work. That was pretty scary, too.

The Japanese officer watched the whole thing without making a move to interfere and without batting an eye. He spoke in his own language. The local Jap, by contrast, was green and gulping. The officer had to nudge him before he remembered to translate: “Let this be a lesson to you. You are prisoners, nothing more. When a Japanese soldier comes up to you, you are to bow and you are to obey. Do you understand?” Appalled silence answered him. He spoke again, sharply. He didn't have to nudge the local this time: “
Do you understand?
”