for getting shot and stabbed? Not a chance.”
Amanda had to agree with Mack’s logic. But what had he done in the past that made him afraid to talk to cops?
Mack laughed. “Ladies, we are on our way. California, here we come!”
Farris thought his little command was shaping up fairly well, especially with Stecher around to yell at his platoon of rank amateurs. While one squad patrolled the beach and the dirt road leading to it, the others worked on being soldiers and that included plenty of marching and running. The men were losing a lot of fat and getting into shape. Stecher had set up a firing range and they’d used a few clips of ammo each until they could at least get close to hitting the target. Nor did Captain Lytle seem to mind when Farris asked for more ammunition. Just as long as Farris’s military exercises kept him away, the captain was happy.
The men had bitched, but they really couldn’t complain too much since Farris made a point of leading them on all their endeavors. Steve found he could march and run and keep up with the best of them, which pleased him no end. At the end of a long march, Farris generally called for a race to the finish with about a quarter mile to go. To his amazement, the men jumped at the chance to beat their lieutenant who, to their mock dismay and his total astonishment, generally won. He even beat Stecher, who loudly proclaimed that every good NCO always let his officers win. This was met with even more good-natured laughter.
After a while, it was clear that no one missed being with Captain Lytle even if it meant being farther away from the pleasures of San Diego.
Farris had found a nice spot for their new camp two miles north of Lytle’s base, which was itself north of La Jolla, and positioned the platoon behind a low hill. Lookouts could see in all directions, and their tents were concealed from the sea and from the land. Borrowing a small boat, Farris had confirmed that the camp wasn’t visible until you were almost onto it.
And no rocks were painted white.
The dirt road led inland to a village that was little more than a settlement. The locals called it Bridger, maybe after the frontiersman, Jim Bridger, or maybe not. Nobody was certain. Farris was of the opinion that it didn’t matter because it would be swallowed up as San Diego inevitably grew and sprawled. Bridger had a loose population of just over a hundred and was centered on a combination store and gas station owned by an old-timer named Sullivan. The store carried food that supplemented their rations and, even better, a decent selection of beer, which Sullivan made sure never ran out. Thousands of soldiers and Marines were stationed nearby, but their presence hadn’t yet made it felt this far from San Diego. It was like living in another world.
They had a shortwave radio and there was a phone line in Bridger that one of Farris’s men had managed to extend to their camp. The phone company would probably pitch a fit if they found out, but who cared? Hey, there’s a war on. The area was scenic, with sandy beaches and rocky hills, and even Stecher had begun to come around to the idea that not going anyplace wasn’t all that bad, although he still wanted to kill every Jap who’d ever been born. His grief was becoming manageable and he definitely looked on Steve with a growing measure of respect.
Their first patrols along the shore had produced shock. There were many footprints and they wondered if they were from Japs sneaking ashore during the night. One night they’d waited in ambush and found only the local people fishing for pleasure, or drinking and watching the surf, or drinking and making love and watching the surf. To their dismay, the majority of people having sex in the sand were older, and they made a conscious effort to not look. Some of them reminded Farris too much of his parents.
“I gotta get my uncle up here,” Farris said to Stecher. He’d gotten mail from home saying that Uncle Tim Dane had been promoted and was now at San Diego. Farris bet he’d enjoy some time on the beach, and maybe he knew some women he could bring along. All the women in Bridger were old, at least in their thirties, and some of the seals and otters cavorting in the waves were beginning to look really good. It was rumored that Sullivan had a family, but no one had seen them. If true, Farris wondered why.
Tim Dane considered himself far from stupid, so when he was told to be on the alert for saboteurs, he wondered if anybody knew for certain or if it was someone’s wildass guess. If they did know for certain, then how did they know? He was in Intelligence, which meant everyone was paranoid, and why not? Overconfidence had led to Pearl Harbor, hadn’t it? However, nobody in the office knew anything specific; therefore, it must be more fear of the Japanese bogeyman, which was on the increase since Midway and the slaughter of the refugee ships.
Of course there was another reason for paranoia. German saboteurs had landed on America’s Atlantic coast and, even though they’d been either rounded up or killed, everyone had to wonder if all of them were accounted for, or if there were others hiding and waiting for the opportunity to attack America at home. Thus, there was real concern that the Japanese would try the same thing.
Dane was relatively alone in thinking that such attacks would not come from what remained of the local Japanese community in California. On the other hand, Governor Olson and Lieutenant General James L. DeWitt, commander of the Fourth Army and the Western Defense Command, were adamant that all Japanese were potential subversives. They would be rounded up and held until further notice. When it was brought to their attention that most of those being rounded up and interned were American citizens, including many native born, DeWitt’s response was quite simple, “a Jap is a Jap.”
Sadly, he had a point. The Tokyo government had decreed that all who’d immigrated to the U.S. were still considered Japanese citizens whether they’d become U.S. citizens or not. Tokyo further said that this also applied to their children, who were native-born American citizens. This had caused a great deal of confusion and even more distrust because of the disasters at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and Midway. Intelligence was an inexact science, and neither Dane nor anyone else could say with certainty what the native Japanese population in California was thinking or what they would do. Being able to speak and read the language was some advantage for Dane, but he could say nothing with confidence. He could not read people’s minds or peer into their souls.
Nor did it help that Yamamoto himself had been quoted as saying that it might be necessary to invade the West Coast and even Washington, D.C., to bring the United States to the peace table. Dane thought the Japanese admiral had been engaging in hyperbole, since such was clearly far more than the Japanese could accomplish, but many people thought otherwise.
The Japanese internees were sent to a camp at Manzanar in the Owens Valley, east toward the mountains. A number of local Japanese had been rounded up and were being held in a warehouse near the San Diego waterfront and were waiting for transportation. Dane was ordered to see them and interview them, a task that he found totally odious.
Only a score of Japanese waited for him, older people, a few small children, and a handful of youngsters in their early teens. They were sitting on the cement floor of the warehouse and looking confused. A couple of the young teenagers appeared angry.
“I was born here,” one of them said. He was no older than fourteen. “And so was my mother. So why the hell are we being sent away?” It didn’t go unnoticed that the boy spoke perfect, unaccented English.
Major Cullen was from the 32nd Division and in charge of the ragtag group. He turned and snarled at the boy. “Because you’re Japs, that’s why, and the only good Jap is a dead Jap.”
When the kid looked like he was going to say something more, Dane told him not to lest he get his skull cracked. He said it in Japanese, which surprised the boy and stunned Cullen.
“You speak Jap?” asked Cullen.
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”
“No matter, they all speak English.”
Dane shook his head. “I find it very hard to think that any of these people are saboteurs. Did you find any weapons, any radios?”
Cullen shrugged, “A couple of hunting rifles, but no shortwave radios. You’re probably right, Dane, none of this group is any threat whatsoever. However, until we sort them out they stay locked up, and I don’t care what the bleeding hearts say. You know what they’re doing to our people in the Philippines and Hawaii, don’t you?”
Dane knew all too well. American prisoners of war were being brutalized, while many American civilians in the Philippines had been jammed into a concentration-camp-like place called Santo Tomas in Manila, where they were being poorly fed and probably abused. Americans in Hawaii were slowly starving while the Japanese Navy blockaded the islands and prohibited food from going in. He couldn’t help but think of Amanda and whether she’d made it out or was dying in Hawaii. She had been fairly thin in the first place. How would she survive? He had a
