My Kind of Town
>> Ala Moana Beach Park Mission: delayed
The beach was filling up too fast for Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka. But it didn't matter. Even if there was a lifeguard watching from one of the two towers on this end of the park -- which there wasn't at this early hour -- he looked like just another swimmer wearing a mask and snorkel. Which proved again that what is good is bad, what is bad is good. His strength was his weakness, his weakness his strength. Every person who might see what he was really doing was also helping him blend in, just one of the people in the water.
Watching from behind his mask, the senator saw HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes wade out into waist-high water. Gomes pulled on a pair of goggles and suddenly dove into the water, and started thrashing around so much it looked like an entire classroom of fourth-graders in a water fight.
Donovan was right, Gomes couldn't swim. He moved in for the kill.
>> And so here he was, the ultimate sleeper, lying silently in wait in his one-man submarine, at last fulfilling his mission that began in 1944.
Shinjo Eiki was the little-known bastard brother of Tojo Hideki, the Japanese dictator and warlord. But Shinjo was also Tojo's beloved brother, a product of his army general father's affair with a geisha. Tojo did not know of his younger brother until his last year in the Japanese Military Academy, when he was 19. His father invited him to lunch. When Tojo arrived at the restaurant, he was surprised to see his father sitting with a boy of 7 or 8.
He introduced Shinjo and Tojo, said to both of them: "This is your brother. This is your blood." Tojo understood that this was a secret his mother must never know. He also understood his father's deeper meaning: This is your responsibility if something happens to me.
The general provided for Shinjo's education, and he dreamed of being a military man. It was in his blood too. But because he was illegitimate, Shinjo was not allowed to attend the Military Academy. Instead, he learned banking. Tojo often spoke to him of military affairs, and after WWI they discussed Tojo's developing theory of "total war," and later his plans to draft the first general mobilization of the Imperial Army. And it was Shinjo who convinced Tojo that military must be based on a strong, developed, industrial-based economy.
And late in the war, Shinjo's older brother gave him a chance to not only save Japan, but to give Shinjo eternal honor. And so here he was 57 years later at Ala Moana Beach Park, drawn here by forces he did not understand, except that he was needed. He still had a mission.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com