“No,” he said. “Frankly, I never gave it a thought.”
“We talked about it. One of them was raped only once, the other by a dozen soldiers. We told each other everything, and then we cried. It helped to realize I haven’t been alone. In fact, I may have been fortunate. I wonder if there will be any women in Hawaii who weren’t attacked by the time this all ends. If it ever ends,” she added. “The Japs use sex as a weapon, a tool, to achieve their ends. And we’re supposed to respect them?”
Alexa took a deep breath and looked up at the darkening sky. Some of the larger stars were already visible. “Just think. In six months, I’ve gone from a docile, wealthy, college graduate navy wife to a widow who’s been assaulted by a Jap officer, who’s betrayed her country, and who’s now a refugee in a guerrilla camp. What’s the saying? That which doesn’t kill me, strengthens me? I guess I must be getting terribly strong.”
She allowed him to put his arm around her shoulders, although he made no effort to draw her closer. He understood and sympathized far better than she realized. Someday, he thought, he’d tell her of the terrible and sometimes drunken assaults some men had made on him when he was a boy, in particular those weekends he’d spent in county jails for minor offenses. Growing strong enough to resist them had been a marvelous revelation.
She shuddered. “I’ll never be as strong as you are. My life was always so sheltered. Damn the Japs. Damn Omori and Goto.”
“Goto’s here on the island, Alexa. We’d heard about Kami’s death, although I didn’t connect it to you. Goto’s been banished until it blows over and is stationed in Hilo.”
“Are you going to kill him?”
The ease with which she asked the question surprised him. If her ordeal hadn’t strengthened her, it had apparently hardened her. “If the opportunity presents itself. I’m not going to risk what we have here for personal revenge.”
“And what do you have here, Jake?”
He explained about the secret base the engineers were building. “Our first priority is to stay alive and undiscovered by the Japs in Hilo, or by their planes. I’m glad they don’t seem to have too many planes to look for us. Whether we can build an airstrip and keep it quiet or not is another point, but we’re doing our best.”
“I’ve enlisted in your army, haven’t I?”
“Yep.”
“Good. I want to do what I can to help. Will you get me a gun and teach me to shoot?”
He decided not to tell her that the military used rifles and not guns. “I will. Gladly.”
“Good,” she said and tucked her head under his chin. “Now just hold me very strongly. I need strength, Jake. I don’t have all that much myself, although I’m working on it.”
Jake did as he was told and reveled in the feel of her body next to his and the fact that she had so much implicit faith in him. She smelled clean and good, and her breath was hot on his chest.
Jake counted his blessings. Alexa was here and safe, and considered him a part of her future. Despite the pain she’d endured, he liked that. Whatever wounds she still felt, he would help her heal them.
Then a pragmatic thought intruded. By helping Alexa escape, Toyoza Kaga had totally and completely decided whether he was Japanese or American.
After a while, Jake grinned into the night. Alexa was sound asleep and snoring slightly. Maybe the healing had begun.
Colonel Omori nodded as Toyoza Kaga entered his office and took a seat. “The people still hate us, don’t they, Kaga?”
“It will take time, Colonel. Wounds do not heal overnight. It would have been far better for Goto to have been tried, either here or in Japan. Then people would know that justice was being done and not deferred.”
Omori shook his head angrily. “Impossible.”
Kaga knew it would have been difficult to prove a crime, even under normal circumstances. Kami had committed suicide, and could not testify against Goto for the rape. And it was highly unlikely that the enlisted men who had also raped the child would ever come forward. In Kaga’s opinion, they were headed toward Japan if they were not there already.
“Then you will just have to live with the circumstances until the emotions fade.”
Omori accepted that. He had expected as much. “And your son, is he doing well?”
Kaga’s only son, Akira, had been brought by ship to Oahu. Kaga had been told that Akira’s return was a gift from the Japanese government for his presumed loyalty. His son had lost a leg in the fighting in China and was no longer of any use to the Japanese army. Kaga’s heart ached at the pain his son was feeling, but, as usual, he masked his emotions. “He is improving, thank you,” he replied.
Akira had volunteered for the Japanese army while he was a student in Tokyo, a fact that made his father loyal in the eyes of Omori. He had become an officer and been assigned to duty in China. What Omori didn’t know was that Akira had quickly become disillusioned, even horrified, by what was occurring there. On returning home, Akira had filled his father’s ears with tales of the Japanese army’s butchery. In particular, he told of the incident called the Rape of Nanking, in which tens of thousands of civilians had been raped, tortured, and murdered.
Now Kaga knew there was no honor in Japan’s enterprise or in its intentions for the people of Asia. Both Toyoza and his son had begun to meet with a small circle of friends who shared this view. A number of them were young and of military age, and several had even served in the Hawaiian National Guard. This fact had begun to give both men interesting thoughts.
Kaga feigned a proud smile. “My son has served his emperor well. Even so, I am glad he is home.”
“As am I. Perhaps your son will speak to the people of Oahu of his experiences. It might help our cause.”
My, my, Kaga thought. The man will actually help us recruit followers. Akira could meet openly with the people of Oahu and selectively with others without attracting attention.
“We will need gasoline to travel,” he said, as a merchant would. “And a vehicle. I can supply a driver.”
“No problem at all,” Omori responded loftily.
“Then I am sure we would both wish to help.”
As Kaga departed for his home and his son, he wondered how he could have been so infatuated by Japanese successes. He had served in the Japanese army against the Russians at Port Arthur in 1905. There he had seen the ruling military caste’s excesses, brutality, and contempt for life. He had been an enlisted man and treated with scorn at best by his superiors, and seen the lives of his comrades wasted in desperate assaults on Russian barbed wire. The Japanese army had succeeded, but only after crawling over the piled corpses of its soldiers.
Following the war, Kaga had deserted and, with assistance from relatives, found passage to Hawaii. How could he have been so stupid as to think only a few decades could change the minds of the masters in Tokyo? Worse, if Omori probed deep enough, he would find that Toy-oza Kaga was a felon because of his desertion.
Kaga had thought that his past was well behind him. Now he knew better.
CHAPTER 16
The congressman from Ohio was short and overweight, which partially contributed to his sweating profusely, even though it wasn’t all that warm. A Democratic representative from an ethnically Italian district in Cleveland, Dominic Cordelli had been an FDR backer since Roosevelt won his party’s candidacy for the vice presidency in 1920.
As luck would have it, FDR’s loss had also been FDR’s future gain. He was governor of New York when Herbert Hoover became reviled as the cause of the Great Depression. That the charge was unfair, and that Hoover was a decent and hardworking president, was irrelevant. Someone had to take the blame for the economic catastrophe, and it had occurred on the Republican Party’s watch, which resulted in Roosevelt’s victory in 1932.
In 1932, Dominic Cordelli had been swept to office on his president’s coattails and, like Roosevelt, never left. He had supported FDR on every issue, including Roosevelt’s ill-advised attempt to stack an uncooperative Supreme Court with more malleable members.
