Free Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salisbury

everywhere. Thanks, Herbie.”
    We glanced into each other's eyes, then quickly looked away. It wasn't something we usually did. We weren't like that. But we were getting that way.
    I shook his hand, then pulled him close and hugged him. So what if the guys saw? Who cared?
    “Write,” I said.
    “Yeah.”
    I turned to Ma, who still wouldn't look at me. “I'll be back for sure,” I said, then hugged her.
    She shook her head, the handkerchief still pressed to her mouth. She was trembling.
    It tore me up, but I had to go.
    I headed onto the gangway with my platoon and Sweet, who was still with us, barking orders, scowling.
    Halfway up I glanced back one last time. I nearly ran back down when I saw Ma gazing up at the ship, her hands reaching toward me, almost lost in the waving crowd.

    A few hours later we were steaming out of Honolulu with news that a huge battle between the U.S. and Japan was raging to the west, at Midway Island. If the Japanese won, they'd take Hawaii next.
    That thought almost made me jump overboard and swim home. Ma, Herbie, and Pop were the ones who had to be brave, not me. The monster was looking down
their
throats.
    For the first time in years, tears fell from my eyes.

We headed to San Francisco, berthed three decks down, where the air was stale and stank like fuel. We slept in triplestacked canvas bunks with less than two feet between them. The lightbulbs were dim and the portholes were blacked out. Before the first day was over, half of us were so seasick we couldn't even stand up.
    So, so miserable.
    Day after day.
    But when Admiral Nimitz announced in a radio address broadcast over the loudspeakers that the U.S. had defeated the Japanese at Midway, the whole ship broke out in the longest cheer I'd ever heard in my life. For now, our families were safe.
    It had been a long time since I'd felt that good.

    On June 10, we slipped under the Golden Gate Bridge, so big and so high I couldn't believe anybody could have built it.
    But even better was all that land—solid ground—sun-shine, clean air, green hills on one side, biggest city I ever saw on the other.
    We docked in Oakland, and the second we got off the ship, me, Chik, Cobra, and about three hundred other soldiers dropped to our knees and kissed the pavement.
    Before we could get back up, armed troops swooped down on us.
    “Move along!” they shouted, herding us away from the civilian families who had sailed with us. The troops, Sweet among them, marched us onto three different trains.
    “Keep the window shades down,” Sweet said as I stowed my gear and found a place to sit. “We don't need people seeing you and panicking over a train full of Japs.”
    That did it.
    “Sir,” I said. “You wrong to call us Japs. Japs are the ones who bombed Pearl Harbor—the enemy, not us. We're Americans.”
    Boom!
    Sweet had me in the aisle.
    “Fifty push-ups, Private, then fifty more. I want you down there licking spit until your arms fall off. You hear me? Private? You hear what I said?”
    “Yes, sir!”
    “I don't take insubordination of any kind. You don't talk back to a superior. You do that again, you're in the brig, understand?”
    “Yes, sir!” I spat.
    His boots were planted an inch from my face. I glanced up. His face was red and veins bulged in his neck. I thought he was going to kick me.
    He spun around and slammed down the aisle to the next car.
    When he was gone I got up, rubbing my burning arms. “Fool,” I mumbled.
    “We going to prison,” Cobra said. “They tricked us into thinking we were going to fight!”
    “But why, Cobra?” Chik said.
    “You watch.”
    I fell into a seat.
    Two armed guards came in and pushed down the aisle, studying us. I lowered my gaze when one of them locked on me.
    The train jerked ahead, and I soon fell asleep.
    I woke with a jump when, sometime later, the train squealed and jolted to a stop.
    I lifted the shade and peeked out. A station.
    Not twenty feet from my window, a crew of workers