Days of Infamy Read Online Free Page A

it. They didn’t have the fire in their bellies, the passion for work, that he did. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to give it to them.
    Hiroshi said something in English as he set his tub down on the deck. His younger brother answered in the same language. They’d both been educated in American schools on Oahu. They used English as readily as Japanese, even though Jiro had sent them to Japanese schools after the regular schools ended. They went by Hank and Ken as often as by the names he’d given them.
    They both laughed—loud, boisterous, American laughs. Jiro shot them a suspicious glance. Were they laughing at him? They sometimes used English to keep him from knowing what they were saying.
    All over Kewalo Basin, big diesel engines were growling to life. Blue-painted sampans glided out of the basin and into the wide Pacific. The blue paint was camouflage. The fishermen hoped it fooled the tuna they caught. They knew good and well it fooled other fishermen who might try to poach in fine fishing spots.
    Back when Jiro first came to Hawaii, sampans had been sail-powered. Diesels let them range much farther asea. Takahashi muttered to himself as he started the Oshima Maru ’s engine. He liked to be one of the first boats out of the basin. Not today, not when he’d had to drag his boys out of bed. Did they think the tuna were going to sleep late, too?
    Up at the bow, the two of them were tossing a hollow glass globe as big as their heads back and forth. The net float had drifted here all the way from Japan. A lot of sampans carried one or two of them, sometimes more. They showed up around Kauai more often than anywhere else: some trick of the currents, no doubt.
    Jiro hauled in the mooring line and got the Oshima Maru going. His sonswent right on tossing the float back and forth. He finally lost patience with them. “Will you two knock off that foolishness?” he shouted.
    â€œSorry, Father,” Hiroshi said. He didn’t sound sorry. He didn’t look sorry, either. He had a silly grin on his face.
    Grimly, Jiro steered the Oshima Maru south and west. “Careful, Father,” Kenzo said. “You don’t want to end up in the defensive sea area.”
    The last three words were in English, but Jiro understood them. Kenzo meant the three-mile-square region south of the Pearl Harbor outlet that the Navy had declared off-limits to sampans. The Navy patrolled aggressively to make sure the fishing boats stayed out of it, too. If you got caught in the defensive sea area, you were sure to get a warning and an escort out; you’d probably also draw a fine.
    â€œYou think I’m going to give the Navy my money?” Jiro asked his younger son. “Am I that dumb?”
    â€œNo, Father,” Kenzo answered. “But accidents can happen.”
    â€œAccidents. Oh, yes. They can happen,” Jiro Takahashi said. “They can, but they’d better not.” Straying into the defensive sea area wouldn’t be an accident, though. It would be a piece of stupidity Jiro had no intention of allowing. His boat went where it was supposed to.
    A seaplane buzzed by overhead. A Navy man with a radio was probably reporting the Oshima Maru ’s position. Well, let him , Jiro thought. I’m not in their restricted area, and they can’t say I am .
    On went the fishing boat. Pearl Harbor and Honolulu sank below the horizon. Jiro and his sons ate rice and pork his wife, Reiko, had packed for them. They drank tea. Hiroshi and Kenzo also drank Coca-Cola. Jiro had tried the American drink, but didn’t think much of it. Too sweet, too fizzy.
    It was the middle of the afternoon before they got to a spot Jiro judged likely. He couldn’t have said why he thought it would be good. It felt right, that was all. Some combination of wind and waves and water color told him the tuna were likely to be here. When he was a boy, he’d gone out