Then the laughter died in his throat, because the door he was standing in front of opened. Had the Jap behind it been a soldier, Les would have died in the next instant. Instead, he was a skinny eight-year-old kid in ragged shorts. “Watcha doin’, Mister?” he asked.

“Jesus!” Les exploded. “I almost shot you, you dumb little-” He broke off when he saw how skinny the kid was. Fumbling through the pouches on his belt, he found a K-ration can. “Here. This is chopped ham, I think. Bet you like it a hell of a lot better’n I do.”

The kid’s eyes got big as gumdrops. “Wow!” he breathed, as if Les had just given him the Hope Diamond. “Thanks, Mister!” He disappeared, yelling, “Mom! Mom! Guess what I got!”

You almost got a.30-caliber round in the teeth, that’s what. Les’ heart still thuttered. All kinds of bad things happened during a war. Even so, how could you make yourself forget you shot a little kid? Les knew he had lots of things to worry about, but that, thank God, wasn’t one of them.

NO MORE TAKING A SAILBOARD OUT from Waikiki Beach. The Japs had put down barbed wire and machine-gun nests and mines. Years after they were gone, some damnfool tourist would probably blow his foot off on one everybody missed till he found it the hard way.

Oscar van der Kirk wasn’t especially worried about some imaginary tourist. He just didn’t want to blow off his own foot crossing Waikiki Beach. He did want to live long enough to have the chance to cross it again.

Because of the fish he’d brought home, Oahu’s hunger hadn’t pinched him and Susie as much as it had most people. Now they had to do without, and it hurt. And they had Charlie Kaapu with them, so it hurt even more.

The only way to get food now was to go out and work. The only work was helping the Japs build more roadblocks and barricades and pillboxes to hold back the U.S. Marines and Army. Oscar thought it was a lot of work for precious little rice. Charlie started going out with him after a few days. Oscar wondered if he was strong enough to do the hauling and lifting, but he took them in stride.

“No huhu,” he said when he and Oscar didn’t happen to be close to any Japs. “Up in the goddamn tunnel, I did twice this much on a quarter the food. Everybody did.”

Remembering what he’d looked like when he came out of the Kalihi Valley, Oscar believed him. He did ask, “How?”

“They’d kill you if you didn’t,” Charlie answered. “That whole setup was made to kill people. Either the work would do you in or the guards would. I hope our guys gutshoot every one of those bastards. They deserve it.” He was normally an easygoing fellow. Not here. Not now. He meant every word of it.

But he knew how to bow and smile at the Japanese riflemen and machine gunners when he got anywhere near them. Oscar knew how to do that, too, but Charlie’d had the advanced course. Oscar could satisfy the Japs. Charlie could make them smile back and even laugh.

Sometimes he would cuss them in friendly tones while he smiled. He took his life in his hands every time he did it: some of the Japs had picked up bits and pieces of English. Oscar kept trying to warn him. And Charlie would say, “Yeah, Oscar. Sure, Oscar,” and he’d go right on doing it. It was as if he had to take his revenge on them no matter what it cost him.

Off to the west, the battle for Honolulu ground on. The Americans had the artillery. They had the tanks. They had the airplanes. They even brought Navy ships off the south coast of Oahu, to blast the city with big guns. All the Japs had were the rubble and their weapons and their stubborn courage. Those were plenty to make the American reconquest a long, slow, bloody job.

“I hope they all die,” Charlie said with a big grin on his face. “I hope they all die slow, and I hope they hurt all the time while they’re doing it. Yes, you, too, Sergeant-san,” he added to a Japanese noncom who walked by after fiddling with the sight on a machine gun. Hearing only the title of respect, the sergeant grinned and returned Charlie’s bow.

“Ohhh, Charlie,” Oscar said.

“Right, Oscar,” Charlie said, and Oscar shut up.

So far, Waikiki had been only at the edges of the fight. A few overs from the U.S. bombardment of the rest of Honolulu came down there. The big raid on the POW camp in Kapiolani Park had been just east of the main part of Waikiki. Oscar began to hope his district would come through without much damage.

Artillery didn’t shatter that hope. Planes from one of the carriers somewhere out in the Pacific did. In the abstract, Oscar didn’t suppose he could blame the pilots. They wanted to soften up the Japs so that, when the American foot sloggers finally ground this far east, they wouldn’t have to work so hard.

Oscar had got used to the roar of planes overhead. He’d even got used to the deeper tones of the new U.S. aircraft. They made Japanese aircraft sound like flying sewing machines. But the sound of dive bombers falling out of the sky straight toward him was new and altogether terrifying.

The Japs reacted before he could. Some of them dove for cover. Others either manned their machine guns and blazed away at the dive bombers or fired their rifles at them. Oscar could admire that kind of bravery without wanting to imitate it.

“Get down, you damn fool!” Charlie Kaapu yelled at him as the first bomb screamed down.

“Huh?” Oscar said brilliantly. Looking back, he had to admit it wasn’t his finest hour. Charlie used the handle of his shovel to knock Oscar’s legs out from under him.

Before Oscar could even squawk, the bomb hit. Blast sucked the air out of his lungs. Had the bomb burst a little closer, it would have torn them to pieces from the inside out so he drowned in his own blood. Chunks of casing screeched through the air, some of them not nearly far enough over his head.

And that bomb was only the first of eight or ten. Somebody in the Bible had wrestled with God and prevailed. Oscar felt as if he were wrestling with God and getting the crap slammed out of him. He got bounced and slapped around, and ended up all bruised and battered. He stopped complaining, even to himself, when he fetched up against the Japanese sergeant’s head. The man’s body was nowhere in sight. Oscar almost lost his meager breakfast.

The work he and Charlie and the rest of the Japs’ forced laborers had done was smashed to hell and gone. So were a lot of Japanese soldiers and special naval landing force troops and luckless locals dragooned into working for them. And the dive bombers were only the opening act of the show. As soon as they roared away, fighters swooped low and started spraying the landscape with bullets.

Oscar watched a Jap hit by a burst literally get cut in half. The worst part was, the man’s top half didn’t die right away. Even though blood spilled from it-and from the rest of him-like water from a hose, he yammered something in his own language, tried to lever himself upright, and even looked around for the rifle he’d dropped. Only after most of a dreadful minute did the expression drain from his face. He slumped over again, finally seeming to realize he was dead.

“Jesus!” Oscar turned away, clapping a hand to his mouth. He’d already seen a lot of things he never wanted to see again. That one, though… That one topped the list.

Charlie Kaapu watched the Jap with a face that might have been carved from the basalt underlying the islands. “Serves him right,” he said.

“But-” Oscar didn’t have time for any more than that. Another fighter roared in, its machine guns winking fire. He folded himself into the smallest ball he could and prayed he didn’t get chewed up the way the Jap had. Charlie Kaapu lay on the ground beside him, also doing his best to imitate a sowbug.

Bursts of fire from Japanese machine-gun nests answered the hail of lead from the sky. The Japs had nerve, even if Oscar thought they were short on brains. Then one of the American planes slammed into the ground and went up in a high-octane fireball. The Japs yelled like men possessed. Oscar had a hard time blaming them, too. They’d just proved they could hit back.