“Oh. So sorry.” The soldier clumped off.

Elsie started to ask something. Kenzo held a finger to his lips. Even in the gloom under the house, she saw it and nodded. When Kenzo didn’t hear any Japanese soldiers close by, he explained in a low voice.

“I think you saved all of us this time, Ken,” she whispered, and put her arms around him and kissed him right there in front of her parents. He was grinning like a fool when he came up for air. Maybe he wasn’t such an outsider after all.

“Thanks, Ken,” Ralph Sundberg said. “I don’t suppose you want a kiss from me, but I’m glad you and Elsie like each other. I’ll go on being glad when we get out of here, too.”

“Okay, Mr. Sundberg,” Kenzo answered. He couldn’t have asked to hear anything better than that. If the older man really meant it… He hoped he got the chance to find out.

A couple of hours later, something a lot bigger and heavier than a machine-gun round smashed into the house above them. The shooting rose to a peak, then slowly ebbed. Kenzo heard fresh shouts. Some of them were the cries of the wounded, which could have come from any throat. Others, though, were unmistakably English.

“My God!” Mrs. Sundberg whispered. “We’re saved!”

“Not yet,” Kenzo said. And he was right. The fighting went on for the rest of the day.

As evening turned gloom into blackness, he heard a Marine outside say, “Lieutenant, I think there’s Japs under this house. I’m gonna feed the fuckers a grenade.”

“No! We’re Americans!” Kenzo and the Sundbergs yelled the same thing at the same time. Getting killed by their own side would have been the crowning indignity.

Startled silence outside. Then: “Okay. Come out under the front steps. Come slow and easy and stick your hands in the air when you’re out.”

One by one, they obeyed. Scrambling out of the hole was awkward. Kenzo helped haul Elsie out. It wasn’t quite so dark as he’d expected when he returned to the world outside the little shelter. Four Marines immediately pointed rifles and tommy guns at him. “You guys are Americans,” one of them said to the Sundbergs. “What about this-Jap-lookin’ fellow?” In the presence of two women, he left it at that.

“He’s as American as we are,” Mrs. Sundberg said.

“He saved all our lives when you were pushing the Japanese back through here,” Mr. Sundberg added, looking back at the wreckage of his house. That must have been a tank round through it: the hole in the front wall was big enough to throw a dog through. Shaking his head, he went on, “We’ve known him for years. I vouch for him, one hundred percent.”

Elsie squeezed Kenzo’s hand. “I love him,” she said simply, which made his jaw drop.

It made all the Marines’ jaws drop, too. The one who’d spoken before frowned at Kenzo. “What have you got to say for yourself, buddy?”

“I’m glad to be alive. I’m twice as glad to see you guys,” he answered in his most ordinary English. “I hope I can find my brother and”-he hesitated- “my father.” Sooner or later, they would find out who his father was. That might not be so good.

“Can you men spare any food?” Mr. Sundberg asked. “We got mighty hungry under there.” Ration cans of hash and peaches made Kenzo forget all about what might happen later on-except when he looked at Elsie. Then he saw the bright side of the future. The other? He’d worry about it when and if it came.

BY THE SOUND OF THINGS, the end of the world wasn’t half a mile away from Oscar van der Kirk’s apartment, and getting closer all the time. The mad, anguished fury of war seemed all the more incongruous played out in Waikiki, which would do for the earthly paradise till a better one came along.

“Japs can’t last much longer,” Charlie Kaapu said, looking on the bright side of things. “All over but the shouting.”

“Some shouting,” Oscar said.

“He pronounced it wrong,” Susie Higgins said. “He meant shooting.”

“Maybe I did,” Charlie said. “Never can tell.”

Plenty of shouting and shooting was going on. To any reasonable man, Charlie was right and more than right when he said things were almost over. The Japs were-had to be-on their last legs. They’d been driven out of Honolulu. Waikiki was about the last bit of Oahu they still held. Logic said that, surrounded and outgunned, they couldn’t hold it long. Logic also said they should give up.

Whatever logic said, the Japs weren’t listening to it. They fought from machine-gun nests and rooftops and doorways and holes in the ground. They fought with a singleminded determination that said they believed holding on to one more block for one more hour was as good as throwing the Americans into the Pacific. It seemed crazy to Oscar, but nobody on either side gave a damn about his opinion.

“I want to go out there and stab some of those little monkeys,” Charlie said. “What I owe them-” He carried a little more weight than he had when he came out of the Kalihi Valley-a little, but not a lot. You couldn’t put on a lot of weight in Hawaii these days no matter how you tried.

“Don’t be dumb,” Oscar said. “The Army and the Marines are giving you your revenge.”

“And the U.S. taxpayer is footing the bill,” Susie added. “How can you beat a deal like that?”

“How? It’s personal, that’s how,” Charlie growled. As if to tell him nobody gave a damn about personal reasons, a bullet came in through the open window, cracked past the three of them, and punched a hole in the far wall. The wall already had several. All Oscar and Charlie and Susie could do was huddle here and hope they didn’t get shot or blown up.

Oscar looked from Charlie to Susie and back again. As far as he knew, they hadn’t fooled around on him. He was a little surprised-Susie had a mind of her own, and Charlie was a born tomcat-and more than a little glad. He’d been looking for answers. Sometimes negative ones were better than positive.

Another bullet came in through the wall. This one tore a hole in the couch. Susie yelped. So did Oscar. The U.S. taxpayer was liable to be footing the bill for wiping him off the face of the earth. “Hey!” he said.

“What?” Susie and Charlie said at the same time.

“Not you,” Oscar told his buddy. He turned back to Susie. “If we get out of this in one piece, you want to marry me?”

She didn’t hesitate. She rarely did. “Sure,” she said. “It’s not like we haven’t been through a little bit together, is it?”

“Not hardly,” Oscar said. Charlie whistled the Wedding March, loudly and way off tune. Oscar made as if to throw something at him. He and Charlie both laughed. Susie astonished him by starting to cry. If the war hadn’t started, she would have gone back to Pittsburgh after her little fling. Oscar probably would have forgotten her by now, the way he’d forgotten a lot of girls. You never could tell how things would work out.

JOE CROSETTI SHOT UP WAIKIKI. The Japs down there stubbornly kept shooting back. It wouldn’t matter much longer, though.

Enemy troops were running around the hotels by Waikiki Beach and on the beach itself, taking positions to try to defend against the landing craft coming in from the Pacific. I’ve watched three invasions now, Joe thought. How many people can say that?

Naval guns pounded the expensive beachfront property. A long round smashed an apartment house to smithereens a few blocks inland. Joe would have thought nothing could survive the assault from the sea and the sky.

He would have been wrong. He’d thought that before, and he’d been wrong every time. As soon as the landing craft came into range, the Japanese raked them with machine-gun fire. A field gun in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel pumped rounds at the ugly boats struggling toward the beach. Joe saw splashed from near misses, and then a boat caught fire, turned turtle, and sank, all in the wink of an eye.