Half a minute later, another one of those here-I-come knocks. She hadn’t even had time to douche, not that that would have done much against either disease or getting knocked up. In came the next one: an older man, a sergeant. She flinched inside, and hoped it didn’t show. The older guys were more likely to be mean. They fed off fear, too.

This one let his trousers fall around his ankles in the middle of the little room and motioned for Jane to get down on her knees in front of him. She tried not to let him know she understood. She particularly hated that. She had to do it, not let it be done to her. She wanted to bite down hard every single time, too. Only the fear of what they’d do to her if she did held her back.

When she kept acting stupid, the sergeant yanked her out of bed and put her where he wanted her. He was shorter than she was, but strong as an ox. He motioned that he’d slap her into the middle of next week if she didn’t get down to business. Hating him, hating herself more, she did. At least he wasn’t very big. She gagged less that way. She wished she had enough Japanese to tell him what a little prick he was.

She hadn’t got very far when he suddenly pushed her away. That was out of the ordinary. He waddled the three or four steps to the window, pants still at half mast, and stared out. That was when Jane realized the deep bass rumble she felt as much as heard was real, was outside herself, not the product of her own mind grinding itself to pieces.

The Jap twitched as if he’d stuck his finger into an electric socket. He said something that should have set the peeling wallpaper on fire. Then, still cussing a blue streak, he pulled up his pants and dashed out of the room.

Jane jumped to her feet and ran to the window. Anything that would make him give up on a blowjob halfway through was something she had to see.

And she did. The sky was full of planes flying in from the northwest. They were a long way up, but they didn’t look like any she’d ever seen before. That and the Jap’s reaction made a sudden wild hope spring to life in her. Are they American? she thought. Please, God, let them be American. I stopped believing in You when You did this to me, but I’ll start again if they’re American. I swear I will.

Antiaircraft guns in and around Wahiawa started banging away. The racket sounded like the end of the world, but it was the sweetest music Jane had ever heard.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t just a nuisance raid like the one the year before. There were dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds, of planes up there. Nobody could have sent so many without meaning business.

Jane blinked. From what she knew about the state of the art-which, as an officer’s more or less ex-wife, was a fair amount-nobody could have sent that many planes from the mainland at all. B-17s that flew into Hawaii did so unarmed, with no bomb load, and arrived almost dry just the same. Or they had… in 1941. This was 1943. The state of the art must have changed while she wasn’t looking.

And it had, by God-by the God she began believing in again with all her heart and all her soul and all her might. The bombers started unloading on Wheeler Field and Schofield Barracks, just the other side of the Kamehameha Highway from Wahiawa.

The brothel shook. The window glass rattled. A not very badly aimed bomb would turn that glass into shrapnel-and might turn her into hamburger. She backed away from the window, tears streaming down her face. All at once, she wanted to live. And if that wasn’t a miracle, what would be?

Screams and cheers from other rooms said she wasn’t the only one, either. Then she heard another kind of scream: one of pain, not joy. One of the women trapped there must have started celebrating even with a Jap in her room. That was foolish, which didn’t mean Jane wouldn’t have done the same damn thing.

More bombs burst, and still more. It sounded as if the Americans were really giving it to the airport and the barracks. “Kill ’em all!” Jane yelled. “Come on, damn you! Kill ’em all!”

KENZO AND HIROSHI TAKAHASHI HAD THE OSHIMA MARU to themselves. Kenzo didn’t know exactly where his father was: at the Japanese consulate, the radio studio, maybe even Iolani Palace. His old man was in tight with the occupying authorities-and in hog heaven. The less Kenzo heard about it, the better he liked it.

Hiroshi was at the rudder, Kenzo minding the sampan’s sails-or rather, not minding them very well.

“Pay attention, goddammit!” Hiroshi barked. “Stop mooning about your girlfriend-she isn’t here.”

“Yeah,” Kenzo said. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Elsie. Going to bed with a girl would do that. He wasn’t likely to forget the set of lumps those Japanese soldiers had given him, either. If that had turned out even a little different, they would have kicked him to death.

He’d hoped his old man could do something about that-find out who the soldiers were, get them in trouble, something. No such luck. The way his father looked at things, the beating was his own damn fault. If he hadn’t got the soldiers mad at him, they would have left him alone. That they’d wanted to gang-rape his girlfriend had nothing to do with anything.

“Pay attention,” Hiroshi said again. “We’re not just running before the wind this time.”

“I know. I know.” Kenzo couldn’t very well help knowing. They had the wind to starboard. They were sailing west to try their luck in the Kaieiewaho Channel, between Oahu and Kauai. They hadn’t caught much sailing south lately; those waters were getting fished out. Not so many sampans headed this way: that was what Hiroshi had concluded after listening to a good deal of fishermen’s gossip. Kenzo hoped his brother turned out to be right.

“What’s going on there?” Hiroshi pointed north, towards Oahu.

“Huh?” Kenzo had been thinking about Elsie again. His eyes followed Hiroshi’s forefinger. “Son of a bitch!” he said.

A swarm of Japanese planes was rising from what had been Hickam Field near Pearl Harbor. As the two Takahashi brothers watched, they shook themselves out into formation and flew north.

“Some kind of drill?” Kenzo hazarded.

“Maybe.” Hiroshi didn’t sound convinced. “They’re always grousing about how they don’t have a hell of a lot of gasoline, though. That’s a lot of planes to send up on an exercise.”

“Yeah. But what else could it be?” Kenzo answered his own question before his brother could: “Maybe the good guys are getting frisky again.” The good guys. He’d thought of the USA that way even before the Japanese soldiers literally jumped on him with both feet, of course. Now his feelings for the country in which he was born had doubled and redoubled. So had his fear that he wouldn’t get credit for those feelings no matter what. If the Americans came back to Hawaii-no, when they came back-what would he be? Just another Jap, and one whose father was a collaborator.

For now, he needed to remember he was a fisherman first and foremost. The winds got tricky as the Oshima Maru rounded Barbers Point, at the southwestern corner of Oahu, and even trickier once they passed Kaena Point, the island’s westernmost extremity. By then it was late afternoon.

“Don’t you think we ought to get more out into the middle of the channel before we drop our lines?” Kenzo asked.

Hiroshi shook his head. “That’s what everybody else does.”

As far as Kenzo could see, everybody else did it for a perfectly good reason, too: the fish were most likely to be there. But he didn’t argue with his brother. He’d argued with too many people over too many things lately. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Have it your way.” They were sure to catch enough to keep themselves eating. If they didn’t catch more than that, Hiroshi would have to go out into the middle of the channel… wouldn’t he?