the pilots’ timing impeccable. As the dots became larger, Tayama saw the bloodred suns painted on the fuselage and suddenly stopped, all his attention riveted on the planes and the black cigarlike appendages slung beneath them. Torpedoes. It was as if a giant’s hand had grasped his throat, his larynx paralyzed, unable to utter a sound though his mouth was wide-open.
It was 7:49 as Air Commander Fuchida, breaking radio silence, signaled,
Tayama, like so many other inhabitants of Honolulu watching the massive raid unfold, could feel the concussion of the massive explosions in the pit of his stomach, the attack so savage and unexpected that for many the curling palls of thick, black smoke in the distance and the roiling eruptions of orange-crimson fire on Ford Island and belching fire from the docked and anchored fleet seemed surreal at first — it couldn’t possibly be happening, not against America’s Pacific bastion. It must be Hollywood people making a film.
Those too far away from Pearl to hear the screams and other agonies of the dying sailors and civilian employees who were trying to save themselves and their vessels nevertheless saw the carnage, marked by the great curdling black columns of oil smoke, so thick at times that it obscured the stricken battleships under attack.
Yoko came running down to join Tayama, who hadn’t moved since the first torpedo struck. The reek of the oil fires and the death and destruction was so strong, it had overwhelmed the usually flower-scented trade winds, indelibly impressing the pungent odor of the tragedy on the senses of those who saw and smelled it.
Out of breath, Yoko grabbed Tayama’s arm, gripping it tightly. “I–I—got rid of the camera. The landlady—” Yoko had to stop for air. “The landlady ran outside with everyone else as soon as the first bombs — Oh, Tayama, what’ll we do?”
It was as if he hadn’t heard her, his head shaking in stubborn disbelief, yet he could taste the fumes of burning oil. “Yesterday,” he told Yoko, “the radio announcer said our people and theirs were having discussions in Washington to avoid any—” Tayama’s voice was lost amid a bone-shaking detonation. A battleship had split apart as its forward magazine exploded from a direct hit, what had been its deck now a gaping hole, vomiting flame skyward as gunpowder packs for the leviathan’s big fourteen-inch guns blew up and ammunition cooked off amid the blazing infernos. Yoko was crying, utterly confused. “What do you mean?” she asked, shaking. “our people and theirs?”
Tayama didn’t answer. Instead, he quietly took her hand.
It was 8:30, just over a half hour after the beginning of the attack, and already seven of the American battleships—
“We have to get into town,” Tayama told Yoko. “One of the fishermen I know does a run to Kauai.”
Yoko had often dreamed of going there, to the lushly beautiful island, but as a visitor, not on the run. “How long will it take us?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, knowing only that Kauai was about 120 miles from Oahu. “Twelve, maybe fifteen hours. If we can leave straightaway, we should be there about midnight.”
Tayama flagged down a Waikiki-bound bus. The bus driver was also Japanese-American, the three of them avoiding eye contact. What would the American authorities do? How would they decide who were loyal Niseis and loyal immigrants and who weren’t?
Tayama saw a neighbor, also Japanese-American. They exchanged glances nervously. The man, holding tightly on to the back of one of the seats as Tayama and Yoko passed him, suddenly blurted out, “We’ll be all right.”
Tayama and Yoko said nothing. At the next bus stop an elderly white couple got on, the man glaring at the driver. “I’m not paying
“Walter!” the man’s wife snapped. “There’s no need for that. Pay the man.”
“See,” said Tayama’s neighbor, “we’ll be fine. Look at the German-Americans. They’re fine.” The man’s voluble, unsought opinion embarrassed everyone on the bus, especially Tayama and Yoko, the man’s public display not at all in the nature of the Japanese-born Americans. And it was delivered in such a tremulous voice that it suggested he was merely trying to reassure himself. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “We’ll be fine.”
As the bus neared the fishermen’s wharf a mile or so west of Waikiki, Yoko could see a huddle of a half-dozen or so people by several of the boats off to the right, involved in some kind of altercation with a Navy shore patrol, the latter’s highly polished white helmets and black-lettered MP armbands standing out in the bright sun against the surf-fringed turquoise ocean.
“Don’t get out,” Tayama told Yoko quietly, holding her hand tightly. “I don’t see his boat. We’ll go on to Waikiki and I’ll call his home. He might have anchored somewhere on the island’s northwest side, which is better anyway. It’s closer to Kauai.”
“Ha!” said their nervous neighbor. “All probably drunk. Saturday-night fling. Ha!”
Yoko smiled weakly. Farther on, at the stop a block from the pink Royal Hawaiian, which was one of only a few hotels near what is now the International Market Place, they alighted so that Tayama could use the pay phone in the plush lobby of the hotel. One of the American guests coming out of the hotel glowered at them, a bellboy trying to get the crowd waiting for the phone to form a line along one side of the lobby, where guests, early risers for a Sunday, were spilling out onto Kalakaua Avenue in confused alarm. Someone was yelling that Schofield Army Barracks were also under attack, someone else claimed that a Japanese submarine had been depth-charged off the entrance to Pearl Harbor. Perhaps, Tayama thought, that had been the first explosion he’d heard on the way to the stall.
Tayama and Yoko, avoiding the stares of guests coming and going through the lobby, kept their eyes fixed on the phone queue ahead of them, the hostility in the air so intense that for the first time in her life Yoko was aware that she could actually feel waves of hatred directed at her.
“Hey, Omura!”
Tayama turned his head back toward the hotel’s entrance.
“Come here!” It was the Naval intelligence officer, Lieutenant Suzuki.
Even before Tayama and Yoko stepped up into the back of the open khaki-green three-ton Army truck, they saw that their neighbor from the bus was among the dozen or so Japanese-Americans who had already been rounded up.
“Think we’ll be all right?” Tayama asked his neighbor as he sat down on the truck’s hard seat.
“Shut your face, Omura!” shouted Suzuki.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
On the third night of internment, as the moon slipped temporarily behind thick cumulus, Yoko, blindfolded, was taken by two men to a small, pitch-dark shed toward the rear of the camp. One of the men savagely beat her when she tried to protest, her blindfold slipping. He shoved an oily wad of cloth down her throat. After the rape, they told her if she reported it to anyone, her “Jap boyfriend” would be dragged out of the men’s barracks and would “get the shit kicked out of him.”
One of her attackers, though she could see neither clearly, given the darkness, was a black man, and the other sounded like Lieutenant Suzuki.
