Words were worth enough to send young Japanese men into the face of enemy guns by the hundreds, by the thousands. A lot of those young Japanese men were part of that battlefield stench now. How could anything be worth more than a man’s life? The words said the country was, the Emperor was. And the young men, or most of them, believed it.

He knew what questioning it here and now would get him: a bullet in front of the ear or in the back of the neck, unless some officer who heard him decided to make him into an example for other doubters. In that case, he’d die a lot slower and hurt a lot more while he was doing it.

He opened a ration can he’d taken from a dead American. A lot of the food the enemy ate was nasty, but he got lucky this time-it was chopped, salty meat. It wasn’t anything he would have got back home, but it was like something he might have got. He wolfed it down. As he did, he remembered the cans of the stuff called Spam he’d found for his squad when the Japanese were conquering. He sighed nostalgically. Now that-that had been really good.

Not five minutes after he’d finished, the Americans started shelling the Japanese line. Furusawa huddled in his hole, right next to the can he’d dropped. Had the kami decided to discard him the same way? Getting discarded hadn’t hurt the can. If his time was here, he hoped he would be as lucky.

Huddled next to him, the corporal who wanted a smoke said, “Stinking Hawaiians. It’s their fault we’re in this mess.”

He didn’t mean Japan. Japan’s problems weren’t the Hawaiians’ fault. But those of this particular knot of Japanese soldiers were. Furusawa said the most he could for the men of the Royal Hawaiian Army:

“Some of them fought well.”

“And some of them damn well didn’t,” the noncom snarled as a nearby shell burst sent splinters screeching overhead. “Some of them ran away. Zakennayo! Some of them surrendered, the worthless turds.” Furusawa had run away. He would have been dead if he hadn’t. The corporal had probably run away, too.

Surrender… That was scarier than the artillery barrage. You didn’t just disgrace yourself if you gave up. You disgraced your family, too. Who could say what the authorities would do to them if word that you were a prisoner got back to Japan? And it wouldn’t be only the authorities. Who would go to a druggist whose son had thrown down his rifle? Who wouldn’t turn away when a man like that, a man who had raised such a worthless son, walked by? Who wouldn’t talk about him behind his back? — not that he wouldn’t know what all his neighbors, all his former friends, were saying.

Mortar bombs hissed down along with the shells. Furusawa really dreaded mortars. You could hardly hear them coming, and they dropped straight down into foxholes. You couldn’t hide from them, the way you could from ordinary artillery. If one of them decided to rip you up, there you were-sashimi-and you couldn’t do a thing about it.

Then, as suddenly as a Hawaiian rain shower, the bombardment stopped. Furusawa and the corporal looked at each other, each one making sure the other was still breathing and hadn’t been blown to red rags without even a chance to scream.

Shouts in harsh English came from the north. So did bursts of machine-gun fire to make the Japanese keep their heads down. And so did clanking rattles that sent fresh ice walking down Furusawa’s spine. Tanks! He’d seen the new U.S. tanks before-always from some little distance, or he wouldn’t be here worrying about them now. They were bigger and tougher-looking than their Japanese counterparts, not that any Japanese tanks were close by. Their cannon would wreck machine-gun nests, their machine guns would chew up infantrymen, and what could a poor damned foot soldier do about them? Not bloody much.

Furusawa popped out of his hole a couple of times to fire at the oncoming Marines. Bullets cracked past him whenever he did. He took his life in his hands even to try to shoot. But he knew the Yankees would run up and kill him if he didn’t fight back. The risk of death against its certainty… You braced yourself, you took the risk, and you hoped for the best. If no bullet found you, you did it again.

A burst of machine-gun fire from one of the U.S. tanks almost tore his head off. He crouched in the hole, shuddering. Then the machine gun swung elsewhere, to torment other luckless Japanese soldiers.

As soon as it did, the corporal with whom Furusawa had been talking sprang up and ran toward the tank, which was horribly close. He scrambled onto the metal monster before the bow gunner could swing his weapon back to bear on him. Through the din of battle, Furusawa heard the noncom tap two grenades on his helmet, or possibly on the side of the tank, to start their fuses. He opened a hatch and chucked them in. Then he jumped down and tried to get away.

One of the American tankers cut him down with half a dozen rounds from the submachine gun he carried as a personal weapon. The grenades went off: two muffled thumps inside the big steel box. An instant later, much bigger booms followed-the grenades must have touched off the tank’s ammunition. The big machine ground to a halt. A thick column of greasy black smoke rose from it.

Five men and a traveling fortress slain. The corporal’s spirit would have a lot to be proud of as it took its place with so many others in Yasukuni Shrine. Furusawa admired the man’s bravery, and admitted to himself he couldn’t match it.

Seeing the tank go up in flames made the Yankees hesitate. It filled the Japanese with new spirit, at least for a little while. Another soldier used a bottle full of burning gasoline to disable a second tank, though Furusawa thought some of that crew got away. He hoped the new loss would make the Americans draw back. It didn’t. They might have lacked the stubborn stoicism of Japanese troops, but they were brave, tough men.

“Give up!” someone shouted in Japanese. “You won’t be harmed after surrender! You’ll be fed and treated well.”

Only a long burst of machine-gun fire answered that call. The Americans must have found a local Japanese to do their talking-to do their lying-for them. They’d done that when the American Army was advancing, too. You listened to those wills-o’-the-wisp at your peril. Furusawa had seen men do what they said and then get shot down.

Another call came from behind him: “Back here! We’ve got another line set up!” That was a Tokyo man talking. He didn’t have the Hiroshima accent of the men from Furusawa’s regiment-and of most Japanese settlers in Hawaii. That made Furusawa believe him. It also gave the senior private an excuse to retreat with his honor more or less intact.

He seized the chance, scrambling and scurrying and scuttling. Bullets whipped by him, but none bit. He flopped down into a hole deeper and much better made than the one in which he’d sheltered. This had to be a position American POWs had prepared in advance. He nodded to himself. Good. Now the Army would get some use out of all that digging.

A U.S. FIGHTER PLANE ROARED LOW OVER THE VAST POW CAMP in Kapiolani Park. Fletcher Armitage stood in line for the evening meal-whatever rice and weeds the Japs cared to give their prisoners. The plane’s pilot waggled his wings as he zoomed away. When American fliers first started doing that, some of the prisoners had waved back. After the beatings the Japanese guards handed out, that stopped in a hurry.

One of the guard towers sent a stream of bullets after the fighter, but it was long gone. The machine guns in the towers bore on the camp. When the towers went up, the Japs hadn’t figured those guns would need to shoot down U.S. planes. Too bad, you bastards, Fletch thought.

A man in front of him said, “I wonder what the hell they call that aircraft. Sure as hell didn’t have anything like it when we got took.”