Joe scrambled out. The deck crew got the plane out of the way so the next Hellcat in line could land.

“Anything special she needs, sir?” one of the ratings asked.

“Ammo’s run dry,” Joe answered. “Fuel’s still okay. Engine’s behaving.” The petty officer waved and grinned and nodded.

Joe trotted across the planking to the island, and then down to the wardroom for debriefing. He looked around. Most of the fliers who’d gone out were back, but… “Where’s Sharp?” he asked.

“Didn’t you see?” somebody said. “He took a flak hit and went down. Nobody spotted a chute, so he bought the farm for sure, poor sucker.”

“Oh… That was him?” It felt like a blow in the belly.

“You okay, man?” the other flier asked. “You look a little green.”

Numbly, Joe shook his head. He tried to put some of what he felt into words: “We were roomies at the start of training. We were buddies all the way through. He was always better in class than I was. He was always better in a plane than I was, too. And now I’m here and he’s… gone?” He wouldn’t saydead, dammit. He shook his head again, and stared down at the deck so the other pilot wouldn’t see tears in his eyes. “I don’t believe it.”

“That’s tough.” The other man-a guy Joe hardly knew, not the way he knew Orson Sharp (had he known anybody but his kid brother the way he knew Sharp?)-spoke with rough sympathy. “We’ve all lost friends. Fuckin’ war’s a fuckin’ mess. But what can you do? You gotta pick it up. You gotta suck it up. If we don’t kick the Nips’ yellow asses, none of this means shit.”

“Yeah.” Every word of that was true. None of it helped. Joe felt even more empty than he had when the Japs bombed Uncle Tony’s house. He’d got that news secondhand, after it happened. This? Hell, he’d seen Sharp go down. He hadn’t known who it was, though. Knowing would have been even worse, because it wasn’t as if he could have done anything about it.

“Just bad luck,” the other pilot said. “We’ll pay ’em back, though. We’ll pay ’em back, and then some.”

“Sure.” Joe stared down at the deck again. He imagined a house in Salt Lake City (in his imagination, it looked a lot like his house, though he knew it probably wouldn’t for real). He imagined a Western Union messenger getting off a bike or out of a car-probably off a bike, with gasoline so hard to come by these days-and going to the door with a Deeply Regrets telegram from the War Department. And he imagined the lives of his buddy’s parents and brothers and sisters-he had a big family-turned upside down and inside out.

Christ! They wouldn’t even get to bury him. There probably wasn’t enough left to bury.

If we don’t kick the Nips’ yellow asses, none of this means shit. There was the war, in one profane sentence. But with Orson Sharp dead, another thought filled Joe’s mind. Even if they did kick the Nips’ yellow asses, did any of this mean shit?

KENZO TAKAHASHI APPROACHED THE BARRICADE with more than a little trepidation. Seeing a machine gun aimed at your belly button would do that. “Who are you?” demanded one of the men behind the gun. “Why should we let you by?” Like most of the soldiers from the special naval landing force, he was both meaner and jumpier than the Army men they’d supplanted in and around Honolulu.

After giving his name, Kenzo added, “I’m Jiro Takahashi’s son. Do you listen to him?”

And that did the trick, and not for the first time, either. The scowling soldier at the machine gun suddenly grinned-and all of a sudden he was a friendly kid, no older than Kenzo. “You’re the Fisherman’s son? You must be all right, then. Come ahead.” He even gave Kenzo a hand to help him scramble up over the barricade.

It made Kenzo want to laugh and cry at the same time. He wasn’t all right, not the way the soldier meant. He was rooting for the USA, not for Japan. He hated trading on his father’s celebrity among the occupiers. However much he hated it, he did it, because it worked. He felt as if he were getting away with passing counterfeit money every time.

On he went. The soldiers at the next barricade, seeing that he’d passed the one before, didn’t give him any trouble. That was a relief. Everybody in Honolulu, locals and occupiers alike, was nervous these days. With American planes in the air, with American troops ashore, plenty of people who’d sucked up to the Japanese were trying to figure out how to explain what they’d been up to since December 7, 1941.

The occupiers knew that perfectly well. They might be bastards, but they weren’t fools. They trusted next to nobody now, and often showed mistrust by opening fire. And the way they treated locals showed no signs of getting better-if anything, it was getting worse.

Kenzo talked his way past two more barricades before he made it to Elsie Sundberg’s neighborhood. No soldiers were on her street, which relieved him. Nobody else was out and about, either. That struck him as smart. This was the haole part of town, and the Japanese trusted whites even less than they trusted anybody else. Farther west, the occupiers had plastered up propaganda posters saying things like ASIANS TOGETHER AGAINST IMPERIALISM! in several languages. They didn’t bother here. The haoles lay low and hoped neglect wouldn’t turn to massacre.

Elsie opened the door even before Kenzo knocked. “Come in, honey,” she said. “Come in quick!” He did. She shut the door behind him. The Venetian blinds were closed; nobody could see in from the street.

“Are you okay?” she asked, giving him a hug.

“Me? Yeah, sure. I’m fine.” Kenzo didn’t say anything about running the machine-gun gauntlet on the way over here. He just clung to her.

“Hello, Ken.” Mrs. Sundberg came out from the kitchen. Before he’d got Elsie away from the soldiers in the park-and before what happened afterwards-her arrival would have made him let go of her daughter as if Elsie had become red-hot. Not now. He kept on holding her, and Mrs. Sundberg didn’t say boo. She just went on with the rituals of hospitality: “Would you like some lemonade?”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you,” Kenzo said. She did make good lemonade. As she went back to the kitchen to get some, he asked Elsie, “You folks have enough to eat?”

She shrugged. “We’re all right. We’re not great, but we’re all right.” She was a lot skinnier than she had been when they went to school together. He was thinner, too, but not to the same degree; there were advantages to being a fisherman in hard times.

“How are things out in the city?” Mrs. Sundberg asked, returning with lemonade for Kenzo and for Elsie.

“We, ah, don’t get out much these days.”

“You’re smart not to,” Kenzo answered. “If you weren’t staying close to home, I sure would tell you to.” He talked about the barricades, and about how the occupation troops were getting antsier by the hour. “I think they’re liable to make a big fight right here in town, and to… heck with civilians. It looks that way, anyhow.”

“That’s not good,” Elsie said, which was a pretty fair understatement.

“Not even a little bit,” Kenzo agreed. “It’s one of the reasons I came over here-to ask if you people have any kind of hiding place you can duck into if things get really bad.” He didn’t go into detail about what really bad might mean, or how bad it might be. He had the idea he didn’t know in any detail himself, and that that might be just as well for his own peace of mind.

Elsie’s mother sniffed. “These houses aren’t like the one in Connecticut where I grew up. They don’t have a proper basement.” By the way she sounded, that might have been Kenzo’s fault.

By the way Elsie said, “Oh, Mom!” she must have thought the same thing.

“It’s true,” Mrs. Sundberg said. “And you know how much harder it made things when your father dug that hidey-hole under the walk-in closet during the… first round of unpleasantness.” She didn’t like talking-or thinking-about the Japanese invasion. Kenzo had seen that before. She would if she had to-she wasn’t far enough out in left field not to believe in it or anything-but she didn’t like it. It had turned her world upside down, and it meant she wasn’t on top of the world any more.