House of the Red Fish Read Free

moving parts were probably crusted with corrosion.
    Billy nudged me and motioned with his chin.
    Down the way, emerging from the bushes, seven guys broke out and bunched toward us. Haoles. Older than us, maybe by two or three years. I’d seen some of them around but didn’t know them by name.
    Except for one.
    Seeing him was like swallowing gasoline.
    Me and Billy slipped into the weeds.

Back on the streets it was easy to hide.
    For sure, the seven white guys didn’t know this part of Honolulu like we did, a jungle of alleys and old buildings. Loose-planked fences to escape into. Spooky streets they might worry about going down, streets with mean dogs and centipede boys who wouldn’t be happy to see haoles anytime, anywhere, especially rich guys who lived in green neighborhoods up near the mountains, sons of the BMTC who made it clear that they were keeping their eyes on anyone who wasn’t like them.
    Which meant me.
    Billy, too, for that matter. They called him a Jap-loving traitor.
    Mr. Davis, Billy’s father, told us, “Guys like that are ignorant,” as if he were spitting the words. “Ignore them.Don’t engage them. You fight with skunks, you always come away smelling bad.”
    Which was just exactly what Papa would have said if he’d been here.
Don’t fight, Tomi-kun,
he would say.
Don’t shame the family. Be helpful, be generous, be accepting.
He always said stuff like that, even about people who were anything but those things.
    Papa didn’t know how hard that was for me.
    But my Grampa Joji would fight back. I knew he would— at the right time, and someplace where shame wouldn’t be a problem, because no one would see him. Grampa had no second thoughts about standing up for himself.
    But Grampa was over seventy years old.
    I frowned, thinking back to right after Pearl Harbor got bombed. Fear had made me and Grampa Joji hide everything we had that was Japanese—the
butsudan,
the altar to my grandmother; all Mama’s letters from Japan; the photograph of the emperor; Grampa’s flag of Japan; and whatever else we had. Most important was our family
katana,
or samurai sword, the symbol of our family’s long history. I’d wrapped it in a
furoshiki
scarf and a burlap sack, then buried it in a secret place in the jungle, feeling ashamed that I’d had to do it. I’d thought to ask Billy if he would hide it at his house, but didn’t, because if he got caught helping us do that it might get the Davises in trouble.
    I mashed my lips together. Just thinking about doing that to Billy’s family made me feel ashamed.
    After I’d buried the katana I went back into the jungle every few weeks to dig it up and clean it so it wouldn’t rust or corrode. Then I’d bury it in a new location in case of … Idon’t know what … but it made me feel better. Nothing was as important to our family as that katana, and I would fight to my last breath to guard it. I dreamed of the day when I would dig it up for the last time and shine it until I could see my face in its blade, then display it so it would be the first thing Papa and Grampa would see when they came home.
    “Look,” Billy said, lifting his chin toward the side of a sorry-looking concrete building freckled with bullet holes. Boards covered its windows, and the front was pockmarked and gouged with shrapnel from the day of the attack. Most of the damage around Honolulu had been done by us, firing back at the Japanese planes. Those bullets had to land somewhere.
    We hurried on, racing the sun.
    Like seeing the shot-up boat, the pocked building made me think about Papa. Long ago I’d given up hope that the army would figure out that he wasn’t siding with Japan and would release him. Now, my only hope was the end of the war. When it was over he’d come home—I would never stop believing that. And when he did, he would need that boat. I couldn’t even imagine what his life would be like without it. How would he work? How would we survive? We’d never be able