Dillon thought about asking Bradford if he felt like going to Camp Pendleton. He didn’t do that, either, though. He just saluted with machinelike precision, did an about-face, and left the captain’s office.

As usual, the sun was shining. As usual, it wasn’t all that warm even so. It would get up into the low seventies today, and that was it. San Diego had a milder climate than Los Angeles did, even if it was more than a hundred miles down the coast from the bigger city. Mission Bay and the ocean currents and the prevailing winds all had something to do with it. Les didn’t know the wherefores, or worry about them. He just knew it stayed mild almost the whole year around.

He was stripping a BAR that afternoon when Dutch Wenzel came up to him. “So,” Wenzel said, “you a gunny?”

“Fuck, no,” Les answered. “You?”

“Nah.” Wenzel shook his head. “Somebody else is gonna have to whip them boots into shape.”

“That’s what I told Bradford, too.” Les set down the oily rag he was using and wiped his hands on a cleaner one. “We’re the ones who’re gonna have to take those islands away from the Nips. This is what I signed up for, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna miss it.”

“I’m with you.” Wenzel turned and looked southwest. “Matter of fact, I figure I will be with you. You hit the beach, I’ll either be in the same landing craft or the next one over.”

“Gluttons for punishment, that’s us,” Dillon said. The other platoon sergeant laughed, for all the world as if he’d been joking. Dillon went on, “Hell, you haven’t even got shot up. You really want a Purple Heart that bad?”

“Look who’s talking,” Wenzel retorted. “You got it once, and you’re dumb enough to come back for more?”

“Damn straight I am,” Dillon told him. Wenzel nodded in perfect understanding. They were both Marines.

JANE ARMITAGE WAS beginning to think Oahu would make it. There had been times when she wondered if everybody on the island would starve to death. She’d lost at least twenty pounds herself, and she hadn’t carried any extra weight to begin with. Everybody she knew had lost at least that much-except Major Hirabayashi and the rest of the Jap soldiers in and around Wahiawa. They hadn’t changed a bit. That didn’t surprise her, but it did infuriate her.

She knew better than to let the occupiers see what she thought. Almost everybody in Wahiawa knew better than that. Not being noticed was the best thing you could hope for these days.

A lot of what had been pineapple fields before the invasion were rice paddies now. The Japs seemed convinced the islands could grow enough rice to feed themselves. They talked about two crops a year. Yosh Nakayama didn’t sound too dubious. Jane put more faith in that. What the Big Five had to say… What the Big Five had to say, for the first time since before Hawaii belonged to the United States, didn’t matter one damn bit. And if the families who’d run the islands for so long had any brains, they didn’t want the Japs noticing them, either.

As for Jane, she had a new crop of turnips and a new crop of potatoes coming in. Eating what she’d raised with her own hands, with her own sweat, gave her pride of a sort she’d never known before. If only there’d been more.

She’d also discovered that zebra doves were as tasty as they looked. Mynahs, on the other hand, were nothing to write home about. She wouldn’t have eaten them by choice. Roast mynah beat the hell out of going hungry, though. Nobody was fussy any more.

One of the kids who’d been in her class before the war started came by on a scooter. The school had stayed closed since the Japanese occupied Wahiawa, and especially since Mr. Murphy’s untimely demise. Mitsuru Kojima was skinnier than he had been, too, but it didn’t seem to matter so much on a little kid-and he hadn’t been fat to begin with.

“Hello, Mitch,” Jane said. That was what she’d always called him. Most of the Japanese kids in her class had had American names that they used alongside the ones their folks had given them.

He stared at her out of black button eyes. When he said, “My name’s Mitsuru,” he sounded more arrogant than an eight-year-old kid had any business doing. He added something in Japanese. Jane didn’t know exactly what it meant, but she’d heard soldiers say it. One thing she had no doubt of: it wasn’t a compliment.

Away Mitch-Mitsuru — Kojima went. He was just a little kid, but he’d put her in her place. He’d put everything that had been going on in Hawaii before December 7 in its place. He didn’t even know it. All he knew was that he wanted to use his Japanese name, not his American one, and that he was entitled to say rude things to a white woman, even if she had been his teacher.

That was plenty, wasn’t it?

Jane used the hoe to get rid of a few weeds. No matter how many she murdered, new ones kept popping up. She wasn’t much of a farmer, and never would be, but she’d already discovered how hard it was to keep crops alive and stay ahead of pests.

She looked down at her blue jeans. The fabric over the knees was getting very, very thin. It would split pretty soon. None of her other pairs was in any better shape. Some already had patches on the knees or at the seat. Had these been normal times, she would have needed to buy more. She did need to buy more, but there were none to buy. Make do or do without was the rule these days.

She suspected she would end up using one pair for fabric to keep the others going as long as she could. Then another pair would have to be cannibalized, then another, until finally she’d have one pair left, made of bits and pieces from all the rest.

And what would happen when that pair bit the dust? Jane used a savage slash to decapitate another weed. She might almost have been Major Hirabayashi, cutting off Mr. Murphy’s… Stop that, she told herself fiercely. Just stop it, right this minute. But the thought wouldn’t go away. Neither would the memory of the meaty thunk the sword had made biting into-biting through-the principal’s neck.

Somehow, that memory joined with the way Mitch Kojima didn’t want to be Mitch any more to drive home to her that the Japanese were liable to hold Hawaii for a long time. What would people do as things from the States wore out and broke down? Could Japan supply replacements? On the evidence so far, Japan didn’t give a damn about supplying anything beyond a minimum amount of food-and the Japs grudged even that.

Sudden tears stung Jane’s eyes. She stood there in the middle of her plot, clutching the hoe handle till her knuckles whitened. She didn’t usually let things get to her. She went on from day to day, doing what she had to do to get by in this horribly changed world. Doing that kept her too busy and too tired to worry about anything more.

But she didn’t want to be out here tending turnips and digging weeds and killing bugs when she was thirty-five, or forty-five, or sixty-five, and she was damned if she could see what to do about it. Damned was the word, all right. If this wasn’t hell, it would do till she made the acquaintance of the genuine article.

Two Japanese soldiers strode by. Jane bowed and lowered her eyes to the ground. She didn’t want them noticing she was upset. She didn’t want them noticing her at all. Every once in a while, they would drag somebody into the bushes and do whatever they wanted with her-to her. Several women in Wahiawa went around with dead eyes and started to shiver whenever they saw a Jap.

If they came for her… If they came for her, she had to run. She would have liked nothing better than splitting their skulls with the hoe. But bayonets sparkled on their rifles. If she hurt them, they wouldn’t just rape her and they wouldn’t just shoot her dead. They’d kill her slowly, and they’d laugh while they did it. They might kill some other people, too, so nobody got any ideas above her station.