Melissa had left her son with an older woman in the neighborhood while she went out to work. As a woman with a small child, she might have been exempt from the work gangs, but the field workers were also given additional food because of their strenuous tasks. This meant she had more for Jerry Junior.

Alexa agreed silently. At least the women were being given enough food to get by, while the men were fed less than minimal rations. She’d heard someplace that one of the Japanese strategies was to keep the men so weak that they wouldn’t be able to think of rebelling or sabotage. From the looks on the men’s faces, it was working and after only an extremely brief time.

“Of course,” Melissa whispered and giggled, “I could always put out for that guard. He seems to be enjoying our legs and what he can see of our boobs when we bend over. I really think he likes his women all sweaty and covered with mud.”

“I heard he has the clap,” Alexa said sweetly. “But go ahead if you must.”

She then wondered how many women already were trading sex for favors from the Japs. It was almost inevitable. For a woman, sex might be the only weapon or item of value she had left. Alexa wondered if Melissa would trade sexual favors for food for her son and decided that, under the circumstances, she probably would. Then she wondered whether she would do the same to prevent starvation or physical harm. The thought repelled her, but she could not deny the likelihood. Jake had said survive, and survive at all costs.

The Japanese strategy seemed to be to strip all semblance of dignity and respect from their civilian prisoners. And that, Alexa realized, was exactly what they were. The Japanese were not an occupying force that permitted the civilian world to function as before. No, they were restructuring the entire economy and social fabric of the islands.

The thought occurred to her that aching muscles from planting rice might someday be the least of her worries.

The gentleman from the Portuguese embassy, Rodrigo Salazar, was a little nervous. He was a low-ranking functionary and had never been in the White House, much less met President Roosevelt.

“Please understand,” Salazar said in correct but halting English, “my country and I are merely the messengers in this unfortunate situation.”

By early 1942, Portugal was one of a diminishing number of neutral nations left among the major powers. In Europe, the others were Switzerland, Spain, Ireland, and Sweden. To a large extent, their neutrality was a fiction. Portugal was unofficially with the Allies, while the other nations were more or less in the Axis camp. Some of this was geographic pragmatism. Switzerland and Sweden bordered Axis powers, while the Spanish government had been supported by Hitler in their civil war and had a long land border with Nazi-dominated France.

Ireland, of course, hated anything British and was only now coming to grips with the fact that the United States, the land where so many of her sons and daughters had emigrated, was allied with Great Britain, whom she despised.

Portugal, facing westward on the Atlantic, and thoroughly distrusting neighboring Spain, leaned toward the United States. Portugal also had diplomatic ties with Tokyo, which made her useful for the unofficial exchange of messages.

In the New World, most of the nations of Latin America were in the Allied camp, while the larger nations of South America-Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru-still straddled the fence.

“This is amazing,” Roosevelt said as he handed the message to his secretary of state, Cordell Hull. “First they conquer Hawaii and now the Japs expect us to provide food for the Hawaiians.”

“It confronts a hard reality,” Hull said. “The islands do not grow enough food to support their population, and the only way to prevent starvation is to permit ships to bring food. Japan does not have surplus food, so that leaves us. We may have instituted rationing and be feeding other nations, but we will always have food for our own people.”

“The Japanese say it will only be for a short while,” Salazar said. “They are converting the islands into a self-sustaining agricultural economy, and this process should be completed within a few months.

In the meantime, they require a convoy of food each month to feed Americans in Hawaii.”

“And none of this good food will reach their army, will it?” Hull asked sarcastically and then apologized when he saw the discomfort on Salazar’s face. “Of course it will, and please forgive me. I did forget that you are the messenger and not the message.”

Salazar grinned. “At least you will not have me beheaded.”

“Not immediately,” Roosevelt said. “How many ships do we need each month?”

Salazar checked his notes. “It depends on the size of the vessel. Between twenty-five and fifty. You do understand that the Japanese will not permit American flagged ships to enter Hawaiian waters, do you not? They understand that declarations of war on them by some of the South and Latin American countries are without substance and will accept ships flying those flags.”

“Ducky,” Hull said with uncharacteristic candor.

“We accept,” Roosevelt said. “I will not permit Americans to starve if there is any way I can prevent it.”

After a moment’s polite conversation, Salazar departed.

“I wish to see King and Marshall,” Roosevelt said. “Perhaps there’s something useful they can make of this.”

Hull demurred. “The Japs’ll be watching the convoy like hawks. I’m sure they are familiar with the legend of the Trojan horse.”

Roosevelt started to make a pair of martinis. “What we do and how we do it are the military’s problem. I do think, however, that they could be looking so hard for a Trojan horse that they might miss something more obvious, such as submarines landing men and supplies.”

The thought pleased him, and he began to chuckle.

CHAPTER 12

Staff Sergeant Charley Finch was just about the only American who was delighted by the Japanese attack on December 7. Charley was a supply sergeant who had access to the vast warehouses that housed the army’s store of supplies.

At thirty-eight, short and overweight, Charley had been preparing for his retirement from the army by padding his nest. He had sold substantial amounts of material and army equipment to international dealers at a tenth of its worth. Even with this fragment of value, he saw thousands of dollars coming in, which he cabled to an account at the Bank of America in San Francisco. It was, he thought, foolproof.

At least it was until he got greedy and sold stuff to some local people who got stupid and then got caught, at which point he began to sweat bullets. The local crooks’ possession of military goods had brought in the FBI and, if it hadn’t been for the Japanese attack, would have seen him arrested when they traced it back. As it was, he’d been tipped off, and, while the bombs were fortuitously falling, he’d set fire to a couple of warehouses, figuring that “bomb damage” would account for any shortages.

He’d been right, and the FBI forgot about trivial matters like missing equipment and went chasing more important targets.

What he hadn’t counted on was being thrown into a POW camp. The conditions were brutal, the food was totally inadequate, and the guards were sadists who took great delight in beating prisoners to bloody pulps for the most trivial of reasons. They thought it was fun for one guard to direct a prisoner to perform one task while another would come along a few seconds later and change the order. Then the first guard would brutally beat the hapless prisoner for not carrying out the original assignment. If the prisoner tried to protest or did anything other than stand and take it, the beating got even more severe. Already, several prisoners had been beaten to death. Everyone knew it was a sadistic game the guards played, but there was nothing anyone could do about it.