Days of Infamy by Harry Turtledove

rising from the sea. Zeros dove at the beach. Dive bombers appeared overhead. They swooped down, too. The shelling suddenly stopped.
    Some of the machine guns kept firing. Two bullets ricocheted off the shield that protected the sailor at the wheel. A soldier howled when another one, instead of ricocheting, struck home. Shimizu had fought in China. He’d seen plenty of gunfire worse than this. It was just something a soldier went through on the imperial way. To the new men, it must have seemed very heavy and frightening.
    Shiro Wakuzawa said, “The Americans won’t have any ammunition left for when we come ashore if they keep shooting like this.”
    â€œOh, I think they’ll save a bullet or two,” Shimizu said. “Maybe even three.” Some of the first-year soldiers, taking him seriously, gave back solemn nods. Most of them, though, joined the men who’d been in the Army longer and laughed.
    Somebody pointed to the water, right where the waves began breaking. “Are those people? What are they doing? They must be out of their minds!”
    Two nearly naked men rode upright on long boards toward the beach. Bullets must have whipped past them in both directions. They seemed oblivious. They skimmed along on the crest of a wave, side by side. Shimizu stared at them, entranced. He’d never dreamt of such a skill.
    â€œThey must be Americans. Shall I knock them down?” asked a machine gunner at the bow of the barge.
    â€œNo!” Corporal Shimizu was one of the dozen men shouting the same thing at the same time. He added, “They might almost be kami , the way they glide along.”
    â€œChristians talk about their Lord Jesus walking on water,” Lieutenant Yonehara said. “I never thought I would see it with my own eyes.”
    The two men reached the beach still upright on their boards. Then they did the first merely human thing Shimizu had seen from them: they scooped the boards up under their arms and ran. That was also an eminently sensible thing to do. Machine-gun bullets kicked up sand around their feet. Not all the men on the landing barges must have felt as sporting as the soldiers on this one. But Shimizu didn’t see them fall. Maybe they really were spirits. How could an ordinary man be sure?
    His own barge came ashore, much less gracefully than the surf-riders had. It didn’t quite bury its bow in the sand, but it came close. He staggered. He didn’t know how he stayed on his feet. Somehow, he managed. “Off!” the sailors were screaming. “Get off! We have to go back for more men! Hurry!”
    He scrambled out of the barge and jumped down. His boots scrunched in the sand. Some Americans were still shooting from the plants—almost the jungle—on the far side of the road. Machine-gun and rifle muzzles flashed malevolently. A bullet cracked past Shimizu’s head, so close that he felt, or thought he felt, the wind of its passage.
    He couldn’t run away. There was no away to run to, not at the edge of a hostile beach. He ran forward instead. If he and his comrades didn’t kill those Americans, the Americans would kill them instead. “Come on!” he shouted, and the men in his squad came.
    O SCAR VAN DER K IRK and Charlie Kaapu spent their Sunday morning surf-riding at Waimea Beach and grumbling that the waves weren’t bigger. Every so often, one of them would look up at the planes flying back and forth overhead. At one point, Charlie remarked, “Army and Navy must have a hair up their ass. That’s the biggest goddamn drill I ever saw. Has to cost a fortune.”
    â€œYeah,” Oscar said, and thought no more about it. Six-foot waves weren’t so much, not when he’d been hoping for surf three or four times that size, but you could still find all sorts of unpleasant ways to hurt yourself if you didn’t pay attention to what you were doing.
    Finally, his stomach started growling so