Eyes of the Emperor
1
Honolulu,
August 1941
The Spirit
of Japan
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid.
"Bad, bad times," Pop mumbled just yesterday, scowling to himself in the boatyard while reading the Japanese newspaper, Hawaii Hochi. He mashed his lips together and tossed the paper into the trash.
I pulled it out when he wasn't looking.
Some haole businessmen were saying all Japanese in Hawaii should be confined to the island of Molokai. Those white guys thought there were too many of us now; we were becoming too powerful. The tension outside Japanese camp in Honolulu was so tight you could almost hear it snapping in the air.
And to make things worse, Japan, Pop's homeland, was stirring up big trouble.
In 1931, when I was six, the Japanese invaded Manchuria, and they had been pushing deeper into China ever since. Less than a year ago, they'd signed up with Germany and Italy to form the Axis, all of them looking for more land, more power. Then, just last month, Japan flooded into Cambodia and Thailand.
And my homeland, the U.S.A., was getting angry.
President Roosevelt was negotiating with Japan to ...
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