were referred to as zoot suits. The two sides were brawling with fists, clubs, knives, and broken bottles. The zoot suits were a type of uniform worn by young Mexicans to show they were tough. With extremely wide lapels, stuffed shoulders, and baggy pants, they were a caricature of a man’s business suit and, in Tim’s opinion, looked ridiculous. Amanda agreed and had laughed when she’d first seen them lounging on street corners.
Dane was in uniform and had a .32 caliber revolver tucked in a shoulder holster under his jacket. The gun made the jacket bulge and the waiter at the restaurant had looked in surprise.
Before dinner they’d gone to a movie and watched John Wayne and Claire Trevor in
Tim and the others had taken to carrying a weapon after the several confirmed acts of sabotage that had culminated in the destruction of a passenger train a couple of days before. He’d made a quick trip to the site with Agent Harris and discovered nothing new in the saboteurs’ modus operandi, with the glaring exception of the three young men who’d been shot to death.
As they decided and as he told Amanda, he and Harris felt that the three young men had probably stumbled onto the saboteurs and paid with their lives for their bad luck. She’d earlier teased him about carrying a weapon, but now, as the rioters seemed headed toward them, it seemed like a good idea.
Dane shifted the pistol so that it was visible and he could take it out quickly. A couple of young and nervous- looking members of the Shore Patrol trotted by. Armed only with billy clubs, the Shore Patrol had a reputation for being poorly trained, and this pair looked it. Dane hurriedly grabbed the closest one, who looked angry until he saw Dane’s rank.
“What the hell’s going on, sailor?”
The young man stopped and swallowed. “Sir, a rumor’s going around that some Mexicans caused that train wreck the other day. A bunch of sailors were killed, and apparently some of these fucking zoot-suiters—sorry, ma’am—were bragging about how great it was that Americans got killed.”
The sailor turned and trotted toward the brawl, which now included more than a hundred fighters. A number of men were already on the ground, bleeding and cut. It looked like the relatively few Mexicans were getting the worst of it. Sirens were howling louder and more sailors from the Shore Patrol were arriving along with San Diego police.
Amanda grasped his arm. “I’m a nurse. I should be doing something.”
He squeezed her hand. “Wait until they stop killing each other. It looks bad, but it’s happened before and unless someone goes crazy with a knife and guts someone, or uses a gun, it’ll mainly be cuts and bruises. Most of them are probably drunk, which means you won’t be able to work with them until they are either unconscious, strapped down, or at least partly sober.”
Amanda recalled a number of frantic Saturday nights in the emergency ward of the hospital in Honolulu. She’d seen the results of bar brawls and small drunken riots, but never the fight itself. It was hypnotic to watch grown men behaving so foolishly and dangerously. And Tim was right, sometimes injured drunks had to be strapped down so they could be helped.
A rioter in a torn zoot suit emerged from the pile and staggered toward them. There was blood pouring down his face from a cut above his eye. He lurched toward them. The smell of alcohol was heavy, he was clearly drunk, and there was fury in his eyes.
Dane pulled his weapon and pointed it at the Mexican’s head. “Stop right there.”
The drunk blinked and said something in rapid Spanish. He stepped closer, lurching unsteadily.
Amanda gasped. “You’re not going to shoot him, are you?”
Dane swore. He had made a big mistake. They could have run and easily outdistanced the staggering drunk, but now it was too late and he had a gun in his hand. Shit.
The drunk took another step closer and howled in fury. A couple of his teeth were broken. Dane reversed the weapon and smashed it down on the drunk’s nose, crushing it and sending blood gushing. The zoot-suiter staggered and fell on to his hands and knees. A pair of sailors raced over, ready to finish off the drunk.
“Get back to your quarters,” Dane snapped. The two sailors saw the gun and that he was an officer. They ran off as quickly as they could.
Dane looked around and quickly holstered the pistol after wiping it off on a handkerchief.
A police officer approached and took control of the drunk, handcuffing him. “Nice job, Commander, and I didn’t see that gun. Obviously, this clown fell and hurt himself. You were leaving now anyway, weren’t you?”
Dane thought it was a great idea and led Amanda away from the scene.
“Well done,” Amanda said with an exaggerated sigh, “my hero.”
“Yeah, now let’s get far away from here.”
As they walked down the street, a score of police and shore patrol ran by them. The rioters were now outnumbered by the cops, which, they thought, was the way it should be.
“The Mexicans didn’t do it, did they?” she asked.
“Nope. Somebody must’ve picked up on the police finding the three dead bodies and the story got turned around to where they were Mexicans shot by the cops for sabotaging the train. We’re trying to get the papers to run a retraction, but it’ll be on page twenty if at all.”
Sometimes he thought he told Amanda too much of what was going on, but their relationship was deepening and he felt no reason to keep secrets from her. It was almost as if they were already married. Screw the navy. He wondered what his boss, Captain Merchant, was saying to the other nurse, Grace. They were spending a lot of time together as well.
Amanda took a deep breath. “So this is what passes for normal in Southern California. Take me someplace nice and buy me a drink, Tim. After that we’ll find a place near my luxurious barracks and you can kiss me goodnight eight or ten times.”
He laughed. The thought of making out like a couple of teenagers had marvelous appeal.
Shore leave on the clean white beaches of Hawaii by the small city of Hilo was something that Masao Ikeda had only dreamed of in the past. To the average educated Japanese, Hawaii was a beautiful and exotic place that was held by the American imperialists and far out of reach. Before the war, Hilo had a population of just below twenty thousand, but most of them had departed when the Japanese arrived. Their absence didn’t matter to the Japanese conquerors. Hawaii was indeed a paradise. That a boy from a small village north of Tokyo could be in such a place was a wonder. It was marvelous to watch the waves and even better to swim in them and try to surf through them on his belly, all the while giggling and laughing like a child while his fellow pilots did the same thing.
He could see the volcano called Mauna Loa rising majestically in the distance. It wasn’t the beautiful and symmetrical sacred Mount Fuji, but it would do for today.
Even better, he was a full-fledged member of Japan’s military elite. Military intelligence had reviewed his data and the testimony of witnesses and concluded that he had shot down seven American fighters. He was truly an ace. No more teasing from his comrades. He was a warrior and his comrades accepted him as such, while the replacement pilots looked on him with awe.
Another pleasant surprise came when his squadron was assigned to the carrier
Toki was not jealous. That was not in his nature, and over numerous bottles of sake, they discussed families and the village. After a number of good laughs about life in the Imperial Japanese Navy, Toki grew serious.
“Masao, just how do you think the war is coming?”
Ikeda was surprised. “We are winning, of course. The Americans are everywhere on the run and will soon sue for peace. Why?”
Toki shook his head. “Do you know what I do? I am on Admiral Kurita’s staff and work as a communications expert. I see top-secret messages that no one else does. They leave me very disturbed when I read them. I code and decode them for Kurita and his staff. Sometimes I think they believe I’m either invisible or a mute and incapable of understanding what the messages say. If the Americans could decode our messages they would be gaining in confidence. Thank God they can’t.”
Masao did not like this sudden turn in their conversation. “Should you be telling me this?”
