Under the Blood-Red Sun: Chapters 7–14

Another blast of thunder boomed through the house and sent sputters of static out of the radio.

The score was three to nothing, Yankees, and Billy was practically prying the fifteen cents out of my pocket.

Then the announcer screamed that the pitch Henrich struck out on had slipped through Mickey Owen’s glove, and was rolling all the way back to the grandstand.

Charlie and Billy were so excited they jumped up and down like lunatics. Grampa gawked up at them.

Grampa still had his old purple-colored passport hidden safely under Grandma’s altar. He was proud of that purple color. Back in the olden days they had two kinds, purple and green: green for contract workers, who had to work and then go home, and purple was for the guys who came with their own businesses and skills, and could stay in the islands.

Grampa stopped singing and glared at me, looking me over from head to foot, scornfully, like he was considering how to slice me in half.

Grampa cut his singing off in the middle of a word and walked toward me in that boastful way the movie samurais do.

We stumbled to the back while the bus lurched on down the hill toward the ocean.

We kept walking, Rico strutting ahead.

“Don’t get sassy with me, young man, or I’ll knock your block off.”

Grampa grabbed my wrist, his grip as strong as an iron vise.

Then a droning of engines.

Amber, with a blood-red sun on the fuselage and under the wings...blood-red sun...the symbol of Japan. The plane raced into a sky thick with black smoke.

Grampa frantically flapped the flag.

Grampa gave me a bewildered look.

The voice on Charlie’s radio was tinny. Lots of static.

It was so close you could see the rivets on the wings, and the red sun.

In the event of an air raid, stay under cover. Many of the wounded have been hurt by falling shrapnel from antiaircraft guns.

I nearly stopped breathing when I heard a papery, rustling sound somewhere under the house.

Warning that a party of saboteurs had been landed on northern Oahu was given early Sunday afternoon by the army.

Certain enemy agents have been apprehended and detained, General Short announced.

Any infractions of military rules will be “swiftly and harshly dealt with.”

Keet snickered and said, “Well, anyway, tell your mother not to bother coming to work at our house anymore. In fact, my father is considering kicking you off our property....We don’t want to support any Jap sympathizers.”

When he finally showed up in the morning, he went and tended his chickens before coming into the house.

Off to the right was a big, freshly dug hole. A long, sloping ramp with crude stairs chopped into the dark dirt ran down into it.