Hawaii - James Michener [497]
"You haven't signed for the cable," Shig pointed out, and as Hoxworth took the cable and signed the receipt, his wife walked ghostlike to the door and looked toward Pearl Harbor, where the bombs were still exploding.
"Ahhhhhh!" she shrieked in a weird guttural cry. "It's war and my son will be killed." Throwing her filmy sleeves over her face, she ran to her husband, sobbing, "It's war, and Bromley will not come back alive."
Hale, holding his wife in his right arm, returned the receipt with his left hand and gripped Shigeo by the shoulder. "You must not speak of this," he said.
"I won't," Shigeo promised, not understanding exactly what it was that he was expected to keep secret.
Kamejiro had risen at six that morning and had gone down to the barbershop to sterilize everything again, for part of the success of his shop stemmed from his mania for cleanliness. Now he was back home waiting for his breakfast. His wife Yoriko, who never did her customers' laundry on Sunday, was leisurely preparing a meal, having already fed Shigeo. Goro, enjoying his pass, was sleeping late, but Tadao, who was in the R.O.T.C. at the university, had already risen. Reiko-chan was dressed and ready to go to an early service at the Community Church in Moih'ili. Minoru, nineteen and already in training for basketball at Punahou, was also sleeping.
The first to comprehend what was happening was Goro, for when the bombs struck he thundered out of bed, ran in his shorts into the yard and shouted, "This is no game. Somebody's declared war!" He ran to the radio he had built for the family and heard official confirmation of his suspicions: "Enemy planes of unknown origin are bombing Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field." Turning to his family he announced in Japanese: "I think Japan has declared war against us."
The escape route used by those bombers who attacked the eastern segment of Pearl Harbor carried them across Kakaako, and now as they flashed by in triumph the Sakagawa family gathered on their minute lawn surrounded by flowers and watched the bright red rising sun of Japan dart by. As soon as the enemy was identified Goro shouted, "Tad! We better report right away!" Accordingly, he hurried into his army uniform and hitchhiked a ride out to Schofield Barracks, while Tadao and Minoru climbed into their R.O.T.C. uniforms, Tadao reporting to the university and Minoru to Punahou. But before the boys left, they bowed ceremoniously to their bewildered father.
The impact of these sudden happenings on Kamejiro staggered him. In an uncomprehending daze he sat down on the steps of his shack and stared at the sky, where puffs of ack-ack traced the departure of the Japanese planes. Three times he saw the red sun of his homeland flash past, and once he saw the evil snout of a low-flying Japanese fighter spewing machine-gun bullets ineffectively into the bay. He tried to focus his thoughts on what was happening and upon his sons' prompt departure for the American army; but the inchoate thoughts that were rising in his mind were not allowed to become words. Japan must have been in great trouble to have done such a thing. The boys must have been in great trouble if they left so promptly to defend America. That was as far as he could go.
At eleven o'clock that Sunday morning a group of four secret police, armed and with a black hearse waiting on Kakaako Street, rushed into the Sakagawa home and arrested Kamejiro. "Sakagawa," said one who spoke Japanese. "We've been watching you for a long time. You're a dynamiter, and you're to go into a concentration camp."
"Wait!" Reiko protested. "You know who the Sakagawa boys are. At Punahou. What's this about concentration camp?"
"He's a dynamiter, Miss Sakagawa. He gave money to Japan. And he refused to denationalize you. It's the pokey for him." The efficient team whisked. bewildered Kamejiro into the hearse and it drove on, picking up other suspected seditionists.
At eleven-thirty Shigeo pedaled by on his Cable Wireless bicycle to share with the family the