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.
“Of course,” Melissa whispered and giggled, “I could always put out for that guard. He seems to be enjoying our legs and what he can see of our boobs when we bend over. I really think he likes his women all sweaty and covered with mud.”
“I heard he has the clap,” Alexa said sweetly. “But go ahead if you must.”
She then wondered how many women already were trading sex for favors from the Japs. It was almost inevitable. For a woman, sex might be the only weapon or item of value she had left. Alexa wondered if Melissa would trade sexual favors for food for her son and decided that, under the circumstances, she probably would. Then she wondered whether she would do the same to prevent starvation or physical harm. The thought repelled her, but she could not deny the likelihood. Jake had said survive, and survive at all costs.
The Japanese strategy seemed to be to strip all semblance of dignity and respect from their civilian prisoners. And that, Alexa realized, was exactly what they were. The Japanese were not an occupying force that permitted the civilian world to function as before. No, they were restructuring the entire economy and social fabric of the islands.
The thought occurred to her that aching muscles from planting rice might someday be the least of her worries.
The gentleman from the Portuguese embassy, Rodrigo Salazar, was a little nervous. He was a low-ranking functionary and had never been in the White House, much less met President Roosevelt.
“Please understand,” Salazar said in correct but halting English, “my country and I are merely the messengers in this unfortunate situation.”
By early 1942, Portugal was one of a diminishing number of neutral nations left among the major powers. In Europe, the others were Switzerland, Spain, Ireland, and Sweden. To a large extent, their neutrality was a fiction. Portugal was unofficially with the Allies, while the other nations were more or less in the Axis camp. Some of this was geographic pragmatism. Switzerland and Sweden bordered Axis powers, while the Spanish government had been supported by Hitler in their civil war and had a long land border with Nazi-dominated France.
Ireland, of course, hated anything British and was only now coming to grips with the fact that the United States, the land where so many of her sons and daughters had emigrated, was allied with Great Britain, whom she despised.
Portugal, facing westward on the Atlantic, and thoroughly distrusting neighboring Spain, leaned toward the United States. Portugal also had diplomatic ties with Tokyo, which made her useful for the unofficial exchange of messages.
In the New World, most of the nations of Latin America were in the Allied camp, while the larger nations of South America-Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru-still straddled the fence.
“This is amazing,” Roosevelt said as he handed the message to his secretary of state, Cordell Hull. “First they conquer Hawaii and now the Japs expect us to provide food for the Hawaiians.”
“It confronts a hard reality,” Hull said. “The islands do not grow enough food to support their population, and the only way to prevent starvation is to permit ships to bring food. Japan does not have surplus food, so that leaves us. We may have instituted rationing and be feeding other nations, but we will always have food for our own people.”
“The Japanese say it will only be for a short while,” Salazar said. “They are converting the islands into a self-sustaining agricultural economy, and this process should be completed within a few months.
In the meantime, they require a convoy of food each month to feed Americans in Hawaii.”
“And none of this good food will reach their army, will it?” Hull asked sarcastically and then apologized when he saw the discomfort on Salazar’s face. “Of course it will, and please forgive me. I did forget that you are the messenger and not the message.”
Salazar grinned. “At least you will not have me beheaded.”
“Not immediately,” Roosevelt said. “How many ships do we need each month?”
Salazar checked his notes. “It depends on the size of the vessel. Between twenty-five and fifty. You do understand that the Japanese will not permit American flagged ships to enter Hawaiian waters, do you not? They understand that declarations of war on them by some of the South and Latin American countries are without substance and will accept ships flying those flags.”
“Ducky,” Hull said with uncharacteristic candor.
“We accept,” Roosevelt said. “I will not permit Americans to starve if there is any way I can prevent it.”
After a moment’s polite conversation, Salazar departed.
“I wish to see King and Marshall,” Roosevelt said. “Perhaps there’s something useful they can make of this.”
Hull demurred. “The Japs’ll be watching the convoy like hawks. I’m sure they are familiar with the legend of the Trojan horse.”
