1942 by Winston Groom

Author:Winston Groom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2005-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

JAKE EXULTED SILENTLY when he received the radio signal that told him his letter to Joe Rochefort had made its way to Washington and been accepted.

He had maintained the original camp in the hills as a base from which his patrols crept out to keep an eye on the Japanese and recruit selectively from the local population. He had followed the primary rule of not letting each small group of volunteers know of the existence of the others. They suspected, of course, but knew nothing for certain. Only Jake knew them all. As his second in command, Hawkins knew more than the others, but not everything.

The Japanese in Hilo remained quiet. The island was just over four thousand square miles, and much of the terrain was extremely rugged. Mountains on the triangular-shaped island lifted several thousand feet into the air, and there were at least two active volcanoes, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, along with the craters of many dormant or dead ones. The eastern side of the island was more lushly overgrown than the west, which was windswept and comparatively barren. Because it was easier to hide there, they stayed in the eastern half even though that put them dangerously close to the Japanese garrison at Hilo.

There had been no repeats of the large patrols that had captured and massacred the American prisoners. Jake estimated there wasn't more than a battalion in Hilo along with a small detachment of kem-petei. Hilo had a population of nineteen thousand, second only to Honolulu. Most of the other places on the island were hamlets of several dozen to several hundred people. Thus, it was fairly easy for Jake's command to remain undetected.

The island of Hawaii was fertile, and there was a good deal of farming and ranching in the valleys and along the coastline. This meant they had access to food growing both wild and on farms, which had alleviated the problem of hunger for the time being. Several sympathetic landowners had begun to help Jake's small army and he was encouraged to note that some of these good people were of Japanese descent. Obviously the invasion was not a unanimously popular undertaking.

The Japanese army in Hilo was more interested in overseeing the distribution of food shipped in from the States via Honolulu than in exploring the countryside. Spending time in Hilo was much more pleasant to the occupying Japanese than patrolling through jungles and up volcanoes in search of rumored and elusive bands of Americans. As a result of this neglect, Jake's patrols had found another dozen American sailors and a pair of stray marines in the near jungles of Hawaii.

Counting the civilian volunteers who did not travel with him, his army had grown to almost a hundred men. Unfortunately, more than half had no weapons, and many of the weapons they did have were civilian shotguns and rifles. They would not be taking on Imperial Japan's finest anytime soon.

“Good message from home, Colonel Jake?” Sergeant Hawkins asked as he plopped on the ground by Jake.

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