1942

“Very much so,” Kaga replied.

“I believe I can use you as a liaison between myself and the remainder of the Japanese community, who, I am sad to say, have not entirely welcomed us. This, while not completely surprising, is perplexing and disappointing.”

“Give them time, Colonel. They are terribly confused. Many of them have family on the American mainland, as well as back on the Home Islands, and some even have sons in the American military. Others are waiting and wondering when there will be an official annexation of Hawaii as a province of Japan.”

Omori looked surprised. “That will happen soon. Haven’t we made it perfectly clear?”

“Forgive me, Colonel, but most people, myself included, recognize your sincerity but do not believe you are in a position to speak for Tokyo. In short, we are afraid of supporting Japan and then being bargained back to the United States, where we will be subject to American justice that will be extremely harsh.”

Omori glared at him as he recognized both the truth of what Kaga was saying and the fact that he had said it. Such an argumentative response in Japan would have merited at least a sharp slap across the face. Here it simply pointed out the differences between the Japanese of the Home Islands and the Japanese of Hawaii.

“Then we will be patient,” Omori finally said and dismissed Kaga.

As Kaga left, he had his driver pass the crude prison camps where thousands of American soldiers lived almost without shelter. Already they looked gaunt from lack of food and sunburned from exposure. Then, as he drove back to Honolulu, he passed long columns of men, American civilians, who were going to work assignments. Most would work as laborers in grueling circumstances.

Kaga leaned back in his seat and pondered. The distribution of wealth was in its early stages, but what was going to occur was obvious. All those with white skin were being deprived of their jobs and livelihoods, and put to work as a heavy labor force. The hard work, coupled with short rations, was already taking its toll, and many of the workers in the columns looked like they were scarcely able to shuffle along. Omori didn’t seem to care if civilians under his jurisdiction died, and Kaga wondered if that was part of a plan. He would have to discuss this with some of his closest and most trustworthy friends.

Closer to the city, life was far less brutal. There, almost every field and vacant spot of land had been turned into a garden, and the crops were starting to come in. Perhaps that, he thought, would alleviate most of the now pervasive hunger problem. Kaga had to admit that the Japanese idea of turning those parts of Oahu that had been sugar or pineapple plantations into rice paddies was potentially a good one. The work was backbreaking, but the Japanese government insisted that younger, stronger American women work at least two days each week in the paddies.

He passed one such project and ordered his driver to slow down. Close to a hundred American women were knee-deep in brown water. They wore either shorts or skirts with the hems tucked up into their waists, and were hunched over as they did something to the little plants that peeked out of the muddy water. That had been the first problem to be solved-the retention of water. Without any lakes or rivers of consequence, Hawaiian agriculture was dependent on the abundant rainfall and the water that percolated just below the volcanic surface of the land.

Kaga told the driver to stop. One of the workers looked familiar. It was the woman that Jake Novacek had asked him to look out for, Alexa Sanderson. At least, Kaga thought grimly, she was alive and healthy.

Alexa straightened up and bent backward to ease the pain in her lower back. A Japanese soldier who was overseeing the group yelled at her, and she went back to work without any comment or change of expression.

Beside her, Melissa groaned. “God, I hate this,” she whispered.

The soldiers frowned on too much conversation, although this day’s guard seemed not to care very much. His yelling at Alexa appeared to be more to keep his sergeant happy than out of any degree of nastiness. Alexa thought the Jap soldier looked more like a lost kid than a terrible enemy.

“I only hope we get to eat some of this,” Melissa added. “I’m really getting worried about Junior.”

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.