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By Root 4501 0

that hot, terrifying afternoon Shigeo Sakagawa reached the end of his route, and he pedaled his Cable Wireless bicycle up the long drive leading to the residence of General Hommer, where the ashen-faced military leader took the cable and scribbled his name in pencil across the receipt. His command had been virtually destroyed. The islands he was supposed to protect were at the mercy of the enemy. Even his own headquarters had been strafed with impunity. At the end of this debacle he was forced to receive cables from Washington, but this particular one was more than he could stomach. He read it, swore, crumpled it up, and threw it on the floor. As it slowly unfolded itself, Shig could read that it came from the War Department. It warned General Hommer that from secret sources Washington had concluded that Japan might attempt to attack Pearl Harbor. With all the instantaneous systems of communications available to the government, Washington could have rushed the message through in time to prevent the holocaust, but it had transmitted this most urgent of contemporary cables by ordinary commercial wireless. It arrived tea hours late, delivered on bicycle by a Japanese messenger boy.

The speed with which Goro and Tadao rushed to offer their services to America was not matched by America in accepting those services. The 298th Infantry Regiment, which Goro joined at Schofield Barracks, was composed mostly of Japanese enlisted men commanded by non-Japanese officers, and it was this unit which was dispatched to clean up the bomb damage at Hickam Field, where dozens of American aircraft had been destroyed by Japanese bombers. When the air corps men saw the truckload of local Japanese boys invading the wrecked air strip they yelled, "They're invading!” And some frightened guards started shooting.

"Knock it off!" the 298th shouted. "We're Americans!" and in the next three days of crisis the outfit put forth a remarkable effort, working eighteen and twenty hours a day to make the airfield operable. "Best crew on the island," one haole superior reported admiringly. "Not much question as to where their loyalty rests."

But on the night of December 10 somebody in Honolulu headquarters received a message from California pointing out how energetic California was in rounding up its criminal Japanese, and some senior officer pushed the panic button. So in the silent hours before dawn three companies of trustworthy haole soldiers were sent with an extra complement of machine guns to perform one of the war's most curious tasks, and when dawn broke, Goro Sakagawa was the first Japanese boy in the 298th to look out of his tent and cry, "Christ! We're surrounded!"

His mates tumbled out of their sacks and started to rush onto the parade ground when a stern voice, coming over an impersonal metallic loud-speaker commanded: "You Japanese soldiers! Listen to me. Stay right where you are. Don't make one false move. You're surrounded by guns. Stay where you are!”

Then a different voice cried: "You Japanese soldiers. I want you to nominate one man from each tent to step outside. Quick!"

From his tent Goro stepped into the gathering light, wearing shorts and nothing more. Then the voice continued: "You Japanese soldiers inside the tents. Pass out your rifles, your revolvers, your grenades. Quick! You men outside, stack them."

When this was done the voice commanded: "If there are any non-Japanese soldiers in this encampment, they are to leave now. You have five minutes. Quick."

Friends, unable to look their Japanese partners in the eye, shuffled away, and when the five minutes were gone, only Japanese boys stood bewildered in the tents. "Does this mean prison camp?" one whispered.

"Who knows?" his mate shrugged.

What it meant the Japanese boys were now to discover. "Muster out here!" the tinny voice commanded. "As you are! As you are!" And when the bewildered troops were in line, the colonel who had spoken first advised them: "You have been disarmed as a precautionary measure. We cannot tell when your countrymen will try to attack us again and we