Free The Navidad Incident by Natsuki Ikezawa

up, throw bombs, tack up slogans, something to give him an excuse.”
    â€œInteresting, I’ll say that. Real interesting, but it ain’t got no reality. You make us out like simple folk ain’t never seen money, but those days’re long gone. Ain’t nobody here that principled. We all want our radio cassettes. We want our blue jeans. And specially, we want our rice. The best thing them Japs ever did was teaching us the taste of rice,” preaches the big mama. “Worst thing too. ’Cause you can’t grow it here, you gotta buy it.”
    â€œYou said it!” seconds the old man. “I’m from the generation what first tasted rice. Same as Guili. Couldn’t believe it, thought I died an’ gone to heaven. Make a man go crazy, that taste. Better we shouldn’a known it at all.”
    â€œIsn’t the President’s job to protect us?” argues Mr. Know-It-All. “Keep the big countries outside the reef?”
    â€œBut the rice bomb done dropped anyway. President Guili’s not gonna stop no tide. Even Tamang did a better job of seawallin’ Japan,” says the lanky fellow.
    â€œHamburgers ’stead of rice. Big diff’rence,” says the old woman, perking up at the thought of the island’s one and only burger joint, though she’s never actually tasted a hamburger. If only her grandson would go buy her one.
    â€œWell, maybe not. Isn’t easy being a small country,” echoes the old man feebly.
    â€œTake away the country, we still got the people,” says Mr. Know-It-All.
    â€œBut that’s just what this global-ation today don’t allow,” says the lanky fellow, proud of the big words he knows. “Just like we don’t like people to leave the village, big countries don’t like us little islands floatin’ off alone. They got to work us in somehow. Give us aid, sell us junk, send us tourists, build bases, an’ we just gotta put up with it. Just the way it goes nowadays. That’s why we need somebody like Guili to do the troubleshooting with the outside world.”
    â€œThat’s right,” seconds the old man. “Somebody gotta do the dirt work. Even if he is a crook.”
    â€œHang on, don’t you think we’re all maybe just a little too smart for our own good? Know-nothing island folk talking like regular experts!” says Mr. Know-it-all.
    â€œ ’Specially since we forget ever’thing soon as we leave this here market an’ go right back to being good little villagers, glad to do what our President tell us. Something special ’bout this place,” says the lanky fellow, thinking of his time in the Philippines, “even if our soundin’ off don’t carry far. Could say it’s these benches do the talking, not us.”
    â€œYep, the gab goes on, only the speakers change. Our behinds get smarter every day, but we don’t never do nothing,” the old man sighs with resignation.
    â€œYah,” the old woman tags on, “but what d’ya make of them handbills all over town?”

    Few would disagree that World War I marked the real beginning of the twentieth century (much as the nineteenth really began with Napoleon’s defeat in 1814). By 1914, local turmoil was building toward “world” turmoil, albeit limited to European battlefields—a singular moment in time and space for people all over the planet. Only with the twentieth century is everyone implicated in one world, like it or not.
    The War to End All Wars may have been confined to Europe, but surrogate skirmishes flared up in colonies all around the globe. In a corner of New Guinea known as Kaiser Wilhelmland, a British Army brigade wiped out a defenseless German reconnaissance unit comprised mostly of natives; while in Tanganyika, German East Africa, Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn’s tiny riverboat did battle with a German gunship. In Micronesia,