“Whatever it was supposed to do, it didn’t do it,” Genda pointed out. “We caught them napping. They had no idea we were there till the bombs started falling. You were the one who signaled Tora! Tora! Tora! to show we’d taken them by surprise.”

“No, it was Mizuki, my radioman,” Fuchida said.

“And here I thought you were a Navy man, not a damn lawyer,” Genda said.

“I am a Navy man,” Fuchida said. “As a Navy man, I want to know about that installation.”

“I don’t have a whole lot to tell you. I don’t think the engineers have a whole lot to tell you, either,” Genda said.

Commander Fuchida started to get angry. “They damn well ought to by now, Genda-san. They’ve had months to unravel it. Have they found documents talking about what it does?”

Genda only shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“They should have!” Fuchida exclaimed. “If they haven’t, the Americans must have destroyed them. And why would the Americans destroy them? Because they must show the Opana installation was important. What other possible reason could they have?”

“You’d better be careful,” Genda said. “Next thing you know, you’ll hear little men who aren’t there talking behind your back.”

“So you think I’m crazy, do you?” Fuchida growled. “I’ll tell you what I want to hear. I want to hear the Americans who worked at that thing, whatever it was. They’ll know, and we can squeeze it out of them. Some of them-a lot of them, probably-will just be enlisted men. They won’t much care what they blab.”

“Go ahead, then. Find them. Interrogate them. You’re not going to be happy till you do,” Genda said. “Get it out of your system. You’ll feel better then.” He might have been recommending a laxative.

“I will,” Fuchida said. “And you’ll see-something important will come from this.”

With another shrug, Genda said, “It could be. I’m not convinced, but it could be. I hope you’re right.”

“I intend to find out,” Mitsuo Fuchida said.

JIM PETERSON WAS in a funk. So were a lot of the POWs up at Opana. They’d got less of a look at the American bombers that had raided Oahu than just about anybody else on the island. Peterson knew why. Opana was nowhere. It wasn’t even worth flying over.

Nothing he could do about it. Nothing anybody could do about it. All the prisoners could do was sit behind barbed wire, look out at the green countryside all around them and the blue Pacific to the north, and slowly starve to death.

He almost wished the Japs would stop feeding them altogether. Then it would be over. The way things were, he felt himself losing ground a quarter of an inch at a time. Everything he did, everything he thought about, centered on the miserable breakfast and lousy supper he’d got.

“You know,” he said to Prez McKinley one afternoon a few days after the raid, “I don’t hardly think about women at all any more.”

The sergeant let out a grunt. Peterson thought it was surprise. “Me, neither,” McKinley said. “I like pussy as well as the next guy-bet your ass I do. But I don’t think I could get it up with a crane right now.”

“Same here,” Peterson said. “Pussy’s the best thing in the world when your belly’s full. When it’s not… you forget about women.” He fooled with his belt. Day by day, his waistline shrank. He closed the belt several holes tighter than he had when he got here. Pretty soon, even the last hole would be too loose, and he’d have to trade the belt for whatever he could get and use rope to hold up his pants. And after a while, I’ll have enough rope to hang myself with, too, he thought. Surprisingly few men here had killed themselves. Maybe they wouldn’t give the Japs the satisfaction.

McKinley looked northeast, the direction from which the B-25s had come, the direction in which the mainland lay. “I wonder if they’re really gonna try and take Hawaii away from the Japs again.”

“Don’t wonder if. Wonder when,” Peterson said. “They haven’t forgotten about us. That’s one thing those bombers showed.”

“Wonder if they can do it, too,” McKinley said.

It was Peterson’s turn to grunt. The Japs shouldn’t have surprised the defenders here. They had, but they shouldn’t have. He couldn’t imagine an American armada catching the new occupiers asleep at the switch. How much damage could the Japs do before a landing party hit the beach? Even if Americans did land, the Japanese would fight like rabid weasels to hold on to what they’d taken.

At lineup the next morning, the Japanese didn’t release the POWs to breakfast once they had the count straight, the way they usually did. Standing there at attention in his row, Peterson eyed the guards with suspicion. What the devil were they up to now?

A nervous-looking Oriental in Western clothes-plainly a Jap from Hawaii-came into the camp along with more guards and the commandant. The Japanese officer spoke in his own language. The local turned it into English: “The following prisoners will make themselves known immediately…” The commandant handed him a piece of paper. He read off half a dozen names.

Looking confused, a lieutenant and several privates stepped out of ranks. Peterson wondered what the hell they’d done, and whether the Japs were about to make a horrible example of them. He’d already seen enough examples to last him the rest of his life, and several lifetimes yet to come.

But, to his surprise and relief, nothing dreadful happened. Guards came up to the men and hustled them away, but that was all. They didn’t beat them or kick them or anything of the sort. They weren’t gentle, but Peterson had a hard time imagining gentle Japs. They were businesslike, which in itself was out of the ordinary.

After the handful of prisoners were taken away, things went back to normal. The rest of the swarm of POWs queued up for breakfast. They had something new to buzz about. Somebody not far from Peterson said, “Those guys hadn’t even hardly left home before.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” somebody else asked.

“They were stationed at some kind of installation right around here, and this is where they ended up, too,” the first man said. “Small world, ain’t it?”

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Peterson said as a light went on inside his head.

“What’s up?” Sergeant McKinley asked. What he’d heard didn’t mean thing one to him.

In a low voice, Peterson said, “Ever hear of radar, Prez?”

“I dunno. Maybe.” McKinley screwed up his face in concentration. “Some kind of fancy range-finding gear, right?”

“Yeah.” That was as much as McKinley, a born ground-pounder, needed to know. As somebody who’d got paid from flying off a carrier deck, Jim Peterson knew a good deal more. Among the things he knew was… “They had a radar station up here at Opana.”

“Yeah?” McKinley thought about that for a little while. “You think the Japs are gonna squeeze those guys about it?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” said Peterson, who would have bet the mortgage on it. “They don’t know much about that stuff.” As far as he’d heard, the Japanese hadn’t known anything about radar. It looked as if they’d figured out there was stuff they didn’t know.

“Well, shit,” McKinley said. “I thought those suckers were lucky on account of the guards didn’t work ’em over right then and there. Shows what I know. They’re gonna get the third degree from professionals, aren’t they?”

“Can’t tell you for sure,” Peterson said grimly, “but that’s how it looks to me, too.” He looked around. “You probably don’t want to talk about it a whole hell of a lot. You don’t want to say that name, either. Otherwise, the Japs may decide to find out how much you know about it.”

“Well, shit,” McKinley said again, in a different tone of voice. He looked around, as if expecting a guard to be listening over his shoulder. Peterson would have worried even more about other POWs. Knowing who could be trusted wasn’t always easy. McKinley nodded, at least half to himself. “Gotcha.”