Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salisbury Read Free Book Online Page A

escorted to it.”
    We were under
guard
?
    “Please,” he said. “Somebody step out of line. Anyone. I would
love
to deal with that.”
    We got our rations and milled around the tents.
    I felt like I'd been stabbed with a broken bottle. What were they thinking? That we were going join up with the guys who bombed us? Were they insane?
    It got worse.
    Later that day, Chik got a note from his Wahiawa girlfriend, Helen. She said the FBI was going into Japanese homes all over the island, arresting men and taking them away.
Lot of families are so afraid,
she wrote.
    It made my head spin.
    No, no, no, this is all wrong.
    I couldn't stand still. Pacing, pacing. Had they arrested Pop? Or even
Herbie
?
    I had to know.
    What was going on out there? All we got were rumors and notes slipped inside from families and friends.
    That night I asked a guard for permission to call home.
    “Can't let you do that,” he said. “Orders.”
    “But—”
    “Now you just go on back to your tent before you get yourself in more trouble than you might care to be in, you hear?”
    What could I do?
    “My cousin,” Shig said later that night in our blacked-out bivouac. “You know where he's at? Japan. He went to visit my dad's family. Now he's stuck there.”
    I cringed; that had been my own fear.
    “Ho,” Chik said. “What if they make him go in the Japan army?”
    Shig's eyes widened. “Ahh! Me and him could come face to face on the battlefield. What I going do then?”
    Cobra spat into the darkness. “Ain't going be no battlefield, you fool. Not for you, anyways. You done. You not even a grunt no more. You a prisoner now. The army ain't going say it, but when they look at us they don't see soldiers. What they see is Japs. What they see is enemies.”
    “Maybe,” Chik said. “But they going straighten it out. They just confused now. Nobody knows what to do with us, that's all. Gotta be something like that.”
    “Pfff.”
    “What?” Chik said.
    “Nothing.”
    “No, tell me. Whatchoo thinking?”
    Cobra spat again. “Okay. Listen. Try see what I saying, ah? First, they split you off from all the other local guys, right? Then they take away your Springfield, your bayonet, your bullets, and your pocketknife, if you was dumb enough to give them that. Then they make you go bat'room in the dirt by your tent, and when you wake up next day you got machine guns all around you. You gotta look at that and think, We prisoners. Right? Am I right, Eddy?”
    “You right,” I said, scraping mud off my boots with astick. Who cared anymore? Seemed like we were guilty no matter what we did. So why even fight it? Like Pop always said—
Shikataganai,
Way it is.
    But the next day the machine guns were gone.
    Nobody ever said a word about why they came or why they left.

    Then the army stopped training us.
    The Hawaiians, Portuguese, and Chinese still got trained. But all the Japanese got was cleanup work, what they gave to the lowest boot camp grunts. Shoeshine boys and dishwashers.
    “They so wrong about us, Cobra,” I said, hunching over my tin dinner plate. “Makes me mad.”
    He nodded. “To them we all look like Hirohito. They see us, they see the guys in those planes dropping bombs on them. We got the eyes of the Emperor. They scared of us. Scared.”

That afternoon we were free to go where we wanted. So I went up to the post exchange, the army store, and stood in line to call home.
    We didn't have a telephone at our house, so I had to call the Higashis, our next-door neighbors.
    Mrs. Higashi answered on the second ring.
“Moshimoshi.”
    “Mrs. Higashi,” I said. “This is Eddy Okubo.”
    “Eddy!”
    “I'm trying to find Ma, or Herbie, if she's not home.”
    “Oh, oh, yes, you went army, I remember. Wait, I go find your mama.”
    She clunked the phone down. I could hear her scurrying out.
    A minute later Ma came on the line, out of breath. “Eddy…is that you?”
    “It's me, Ma, is everything okay? Where's Pop, where's