Under the Blood-Red Sun (17 page)

On the other side of the water was a dark and damp bamboo forest, loaded with mosquitoes. I had to keep slapping myself all over.

We came to a patch of tall grass that someone had recently walked through. Lucky sniffed ahead, following the new trail, getting pretty excited.

Soon we were in shade so deep I could hardly see the sky. I stopped to listen: the stream; a couple of birds chirping. That’s all.

“Lucky,” I whispered, but she was gone.

I crept to the edge of a small clearing.

Mumbling voices grew in my ears.

I peeked through the branches. On the other side of the clearing, Lucky looked back at me with ears perked
up. And next to her was Grampa, squatting near a tree with his back to me.

I stepped out into the open, and Grampa turned to look behind him.

“Tomi,” another voice said. Charlie. He’d been hidden by the tree.

On the ground between Grampa and Charlie was our
katana
. “Sit,” Charlie said, when I got closer.

It was very strange that they were out there in the jungle like that. I sat down and kept my mouth shut. For a few minutes no one spoke, just slapped at mosquitoes and listened to the stream.

“Shikata ga nai,”
Grampa finally said. “No can help.… What is done, is done.”

Charlie nodded. “That’s right.”

What were they talking about?

Grampa picked up the
katana
. He held it in front of him, one hand wrapped in the scarf under the razorsharp blade and the other on the handle. He was careful not to let the oil from his fingers touch the blade.

With a deep scowl, and very gently, he handed it to me. It almost had a glow to it, of some kind of energy that you felt in your fingers and your chest.

“That belong to your ancestor,” he said. “Long time ago. Nobody since then bring disgrace or shame to the name of this family.” He paused a moment, watching me, letting his words settle. “My country,” he went on. “My
country
, Tomikazu … they … they …”

Grampa turned away, pain carved in his face.

“This island,” Charlie said to Grampa, his voice kind. “This territory, Joji-san, this is your country now. You
couldn’t help what happened. Forget it, already. Wasn’t your fault.”

Grampa reached out, and I gave the
katana
back to him. I hoped his hiding place was good, and that he would never bury it like Mama wanted.

“Confonnit,” he mumbled. He sounded so lost. Grampa wrapped the
katana
in the scarf and carefully placed it back in the burlap bag that was folded next to him. He tied some brown string around it, then stood and walked off into the trees.

Charlie glanced at me and shook his head.

I pulled Lucky up onto my lap, feeling a sudden loneliness.

Grampa came back without the
katana
. Lucky took off, back over the trail, and the three of us followed in silence. But the feel of the
katana
stayed in my hands.

I would tell Grampa about Sand Island later. If I told him at all.

Mari

A couple of days after Christmas
, Billy came over with a big smile and his father’s binoculars. “Remember these?” he said, holding them up. A leather strap crossed his chest, and the binoculars case rested on his hip, like a canteen. Red, who now followed Billy everywhere, sniffed my foot.

“Sure, your dad’s binoculars.”

“Not anymore … He gave them to me.”

“Gave
them to you?”

“Christmas present.”

“You had Christmas?”

“Sure … didn’t you?”

“Yeah, we had it.” That was a lie. I don’t know why I said it. We had to forget Christmas, Mama said. We had to save our money. Anyway, we never made a big deal out of it like the
haoles
did.

Lucky and the rest of the pups came out from under the house and swarmed over Red. “Come on,” Billy said. “Let’s go up in the banyan tree and look at Pearl Harbor.”

We walked out to the field, the dogs following, then went into the jungle and climbed to the lookout.

The sky was white with high, thin clouds. It made the ocean silver. The boats at sea were black dots. Billy adjusted the focus on the eyepiece. “You know the
Arizona
burned for three days?”

“Let me see,” I said.

Pearl Harbor was busy with tiny men on boats and barges trying to bring the bombed ships back up. Smaller boats passed by each other, leaving crisscrossed V-shaped wakes in the glassy water. You could see jeeps and trucks driving around out on Ford Island in the middle of the harbor.

“Amazing,” I whispered. The binoculars brought everything so much closer. “I can’t believe your dad gave these to you.”

“I know. Me too.”

“What did he give Jake?”

“A Colt .45 with a carved ivory grip that Dad got from my grandfather.”

“Shee …”

“What did
you
get?” Billy asked.

“Uhh … a lantern.”

“No kidding … like a Coleman, or what?”

“Yeah, a Coleman lantern.”

“Great.”

“Tomi
,” someone called from the field. Mama.

“What?” I yelled back.

“Where you stay?”

“In the tree … wait … I’ll come down.”

Billy put the binoculars in the case and followed me.

“You come home,” Mama said when we got to the field. “We going see Sanji family. Downtown.” Mama started back to the house.

“You think I could come with you?” Billy whispered.

“Mama … can Billy come too?” Billy cringed. Mama turned back and studied him. “Sure … you come, Billy.”

Billy punched my arm. “Somebody’s got to teach you a little tact.”

“What’s that?”

“Jeese … forget it,” he said.

•   •   •

We took the bus to Sanji’s wife’s place, which was down near Hotel Street, where the sailors and army guys went for the bars. She lived down an alley as busy and as poor as Kaka’ako. Laundry hung above from one building to the next. The alley was narrow and dirty, the pavement greasy. It turned the bottoms of my bare feet black.

We had to climb to the third floor of a three-story building, up a long flight of creaky wooden steps nailed to the outside. Two doors were at the top.

I looked back down into the alley. Billy stood next to me, keeping back from the railing, which looked like it was about to fall off. People passed below, the tops of
their heads moving like round black bugs with feet swinging out in front of them.

Mama knocked on one of the doors.

A lady opened it—Sanji’s wife’s mother, we soon discovered. Mama spoke to her in Japanese, and offered her the box of eggs she’d brought along. The lady took it. She smiled and stepped back for us to come in. We exchanged bows and nods as we walked by.

The room was small and cramped with furniture—two beds, a table with a few chairs, and an old brown couch. And it smelled bad, like it never got any air. Billy sat down next to me on a wooden chest near the door. It had a thin pillow on it. There was only one window in the place. It looked out to the walkway where we’d come.

Billy whispered in my ear, “What are they talking about?”

“Sanji’s wife is out.… I think she said they went to the vegetable stand.”

“You
think
she said that? Don’t you understand them?”

“Good enough … I can catch a few words.”

“It’s so sad,” Mama was saying. “My husband loved Sanji like a son.” The lady nodded, then stared at the floor with her hands crossed in her lap.

The door opened. A young woman came in. She looked like she could have been a senior at Roosevelt. And behind her, a girl younger than Kimi, carrying a small bunch of bananas.

We all stood up.

Sanji’s wife was surprised to see Mama and me, and looked almost speechless to see Billy. Billy glanced down
at the binoculars case, which he held in front of him in both hands. The little girl hid behind her mother, completely out of view.

Sanji’s wife bowed to each of us when her mother introduced us. “My name is Reiko,” she said in English. “I heard of both of you.… Sanji talk about you all the time … talk, talk, talk … Billy and Tomi.”

Billy gave her a shy grin. Reiko put her hand behind the little girl, urging her forward. “This is Mari.”

Mari smiled, even shier than Billy, then jumped back behind her mother. Her eyes were dark and clear, and her hair was short and shiny black.

“She’s very beautiful,” Billy said. He squatted down so that his eyes were level with Mari’s. He took the binoculars out of the case and started looking through them, at the wall, at me, at the ceiling.

Mari peeked out from behind her mother. Billy handed her the binoculars. “Want to take a look?”

“Go ahead,” Mari’s mother said, gently pushing her over. Mari put the bananas on the floor and reached out. She took the binoculars from Billy. They were almost too heavy for her. “Put your eyes here,” Billy said, moving next to her and helping her hold them up. Mari pointed the binoculars toward her grandmother. A big smile came to her face.

Mama and Reiko sat down and talked for a while. They both dabbed their eyes with hankies as they spoke. It made me feel awful.

Finally Mama stood up to leave.

“Mari-chan,” Reiko said, wiping her eyes. “Give that back to Billy.”

“No, no,” Billy said. He slipped the case over his head and handed it to Reiko. “Those are for Mari.… I—I want her to have them.… When the next full moon comes, take her outside and show her the mountains on it.… You can see them pretty good through those things.”

Reiko tried to give them back, saying it was too much, but Billy wouldn’t take them. “It’s okay,” he said, not understanding how indebted it would make Reiko feel. She took some money out of her purse and tried to give it to Billy.

“Please,” Billy said. “For Mari.”

“Take
something,”
I whispered to Billy. “It will make her feel better.”

He frowned at me, then said to Reiko, “How about a banana?”

She picked up the bananas that Mari had carried in. “Here,” she said. “You take.”

He nodded, and took them.

Sanji’s wife seemed relieved, though I didn’t think Billy noticed.

When we were sitting on the bus on the way home, Mama in the seat in front of us, Mama turned around and said, “You nice boy, Billy.… You welcome our house anytime.”

Billy nodded and said, “Thank you,” then turned to look out the window. Wherever Sanji was, I knew he had tears in his eyes for what Billy had done.

Sand Island

Thinking about Papa
being a prisoner drove me crazy.
Shikata ga nai
—It can’t be helped. How could Mama and Grampa just accept it and go on like nothing had happened? Didn’t they understand that he was a prisoner of
war?
But he was just a fisherman. He wasn’t an enemy to anyone.

When I told Grampa I wanted to go looking for Papa, he got angry and told me to forget it. “You go there, they going shoot you,” he said.

“But I’m only a kid.”

“They shoot, I tell you,” Grampa spit back.

•   •   •

Dawn. Sky dark and stormlike.

Grampa was already out with his chickens. Heavy gray
clouds moved steadily toward the sea. Today I would tell Grampa I was going to see Rico.

But I would go to find Papa.

I put on a sweatshirt and a pair of shorts and made sure my ID card was in my pocket, then left the house as soon as it was light and the curfew had lifted. Leaves swirled around the yard. A shiver ran through me, as thunder rumbled far off in the mountains, muffled by the clouds.

In less than an hour I’d walked all the way to the harbor, down to where the freighters and passenger ships docked.

What I saw shocked me.

All around the water—everywhere—were barbed wire barricades wound in twisted and jumbled coils from post to post, the wire going all over like it was spun by a lunatic spider. It scared me just to look at it.

To get beyond it to the piers, you had to pass through gates guarded by soldiers.

I waited across the street, trying to figure out what to do next. Sand Island lay across the smooth gray harbor, less than a quarter mile away—a low, flat place covered with scrub brush and a few trees. I could see a white building with a red tile roof out there.