Free Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley

the fig tree and meowed, waiting for me to rescue it. Jimmy was looking straight at me, his hands somehow strong again at his sides. He picked up the cat and handed it to me. “Enlist,” he said. “Come with me and enlist today. Don’t mention America. With luck we might make the military band. With luck you might grow old in Los Angeles, Teddy, just as you’ ve always hoped you would.”
    The grandfather came and motioned us in for tea and rice cakes, the beginning ritual for our long days ahead. Kazuko was wearing a more beautiful and formal kimono, and her mother had turned the flowers in the tokonoma in fresh directions. Only Ike, still playful, had maintained himself. He had slipped into his grandfather’s old uniform and was turning about the room like a fashion model.
    When Jimmy stepped inside, the cat leaped from my arms and followed him, leaving me alone in the garden once more. I could see the Japanese battle flag, vaguely, through the open doors. The grandfather was holding it up, trying to make it flutter in the breezeless room.
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    During the next days things happened fast. Kazuko calmed, finally, to my initial fears, and the rest of the family accepted me again. The newspapers and radios told people what to do, where men should report, and which factories were in need of female laborers. The community was mobilized. Kazuko and her mother began working making uniforms. Ike was gone from the house most of the time, coming in and out like a man with a purpose. He seemed to have warmed to his new role, making the change from band manager to military man with ease. Then one night he came back with ward instructions. “Of course all the club dates are canceled” was all he ever said about the band.
    The athletic field next to the local middle school was to be used for induction ceremonies, and Ike, now clearly in charge,
said he’d get us proper clothes, tell us the times, bring us first news of any battles that might have started, of Japanese victories at sea.
    Jimmy liked to remain within the confines of his house, but I found it hard to stay off the streets. Students like the ones I lived with were in evidence everywhere. Flags appeared, like the one the grandfather had, and businesses were booming.
    I rode one day, on a bus, down around the Imperial Palace. I imagined the Emperor sitting somewhere inside, his aides all about him, maps of the United States staring down at him from his wall. What would happen? I wondered. How long could such a war last?
    The people around me were full of goodwill toward each other, and nobody was uninvolved. Barbers about town were busy shaving heads. Trucks with loudspeakers roamed here and there, giving information to the general public that the family and I had gotten from Ike the day or the night before. By the beginning of the new year the Japanese had beaten the British at Singapore and the Americans in Manila. “Asia stands united,” our loudspeakers told us, “and will stay that way. From this day forward the western world will have to pay for the pleasures that it takes, for the natural and human resources that it has, until now, taken from us at will.”
    Ike’s grandfather was with Jimmy in the garden and had shaved half his head by the time I walked in one evening. “Good,” he said, “you’re next.” The ward had received its orders.
    Kazuko came out with a large framed photograph of Ike in her hands. She held a camera. “We’re going to make an altar,” she said cheerfully. “Ike and Jimmy, and your photo too, Teddy. We’ll have a shrine to the sacrifices you all are making.”
    Jimmy was sitting silently again, very serious, so I said nothing. What was the use? When he finished with Jimmy the old man motioned to me, so I sat down in his chair, my feet among Jimmy’s black droppings, and watched as Kazuko positioned her husband in a solemn pose, his American-made