Heroes

“The Incident had changed me from a kid who was careful to a kid who would do anything to never get hurt again. My constant fear had gotten so bad that sometimes I wouldn’t leave the house unless I had to.

But here in Hawaii, things had gotten better. Much better. And a lot of that had to do with Stanley. When we got to talking about comics, and making up our own characters and stories, it was like I forgot to be so afraid.”

Frank references the mysterious Incident that makes him so fearful, though it will be Part 2 when he explains what this Incident was. His journey throughout the novel will be to overcome his fear. Importantly, the one thing that helps him forget his anxieties is collaborating with Stanley, illustrating the power of friendship.

“Everywhere you went in Hawaii, people talked about how they didn’t want to go to war. If the radio was right, most people from California to Connecticut felt the same way.”

This passage refers to the isolationist stance that the United States held in the early years of WWII as the war raged in Europe. Though some people wanted to enter the war and lend support to the Allied Forces, a larger percentage wanted to stay out of the fighting. This attitude changed significantly following the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941.

“‘He should definitely protect his own planet,’ said Stanley. ‘But he should travel to other planets and fight for other people too. A real hero steps in when they see people getting hurt, no matter what.’”

As Stanley and Frank brainstorm ideas for their superhero character, the Arsenal of Democracy, Stanley states that their hero should be like Superman, who leaves his own planet to help others; this establishes the boys’ central tenets of heroism. Frank believes Stanley’s statement is a pointed rebuke of his cowardice for not fighting the bullies with Stanley.

“There, painted on the bottom of the plan’s wings, were the ‘meatballs’ I thought I’d seen before: the round, red circles that formed the ‘rising sun’ of the Japanese flag.

‘Stanley, it’s not a drill,’ I yelled in his ear. ‘It’s a Japanese attack!’”

This marks the first major turning point of the novel, when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor begins and the boys find themselves stuck in the middle. From here, Part 2 kicks off with action and high-stakes tension.

“Brooks yelled. ‘We’re taking on water. The Utah’s sinking!’

My heart caught in my throat. This couldn’t be happening! I had just been thinking about how sturdy the Utah was. How safe. How invincible. Two torpedoes later, all that was out the window.”

When Frank first boarded the Utah for the tour, he saw the battleship as indomitable, the safest place that he could be. Now, he discovers how wrong he was: The Utah proves to be the most dangerous place in Pearl Harbor at the beginning of the attack.

“I blinked at Stanley and the sailor huddled beside me. They were both okay. They hadn’t been hit. But the sailor would have been, if Stanley hadn’t been there. If it had been only me, the sailor would have been chewed up by tracer fire while I crouched frozen with fear.”

Frank’s fears incapacitate him, just as they had when Stanley fought the bullies. In contrast, Stanley acts instantly, saving the sailor who would have died otherwise. Frank feels shame for his inability to act, a feeling that increases as the plot progresses and that drives him to change.

“I knew that these Black sailors were not trained for combat and not expected to be on deck in the middle of a fight. But here a couple of them were, trying to help get their ship’s guns firing back. They didn’t have to put themselves in harm’s way, but they were doing just that.”

Frank knows that he would not have the courage to put himself in danger unless absolutely necessary; meanwhile, the two Black sailors have no obligation to act but do so anyway. They embody the boys’ idea of what it means to be a true hero: They help others, even at the risk of injury and death.

“Brooks and Stanley were already scrambling up the tilting deck. I knew I should follow them. I knew the Utah was capsizing, and me with it. But I couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. I stayed right where I was, huddled and shaking behind the groaning, shifting stack of timbers.”

Once again, Frank is frozen with fear. This moment will haunt him for the rest of the novel, as he believes his moment of hesitation slowed Brooks down, ultimately leading to his death.

“Stanley and I got to the sailor at last and turned him over. When I saw who it was—when I saw his face, saw the bullet hole in his chest—I shook my head and backed away. I sobbed once and put a hand to my mouth, trying not to be sick.

The body in the water was Brooks Leonard.”

This is Frank’s and Stanley’s first real encounter with death. It marks the first blow in their loss of innocence during the war. This is also the moment that Frank comes to believe he is to blame for Brooks’s death.

“I was absolutely speechless. I wanted nothing more in that moment than to punch that guy in his grinning face. I’d never felt so much anger—so much hatred—toward anybody in my entire life.”

Frank and Stanley are shocked when a Japanese plane flies low enough for them to see the men inside, who wave to them as if they are simply on a leisurely flight. Frank feels intense hatred for the first time in his life, a feeling he recalls in the face of Mrs. Summers’s fears of retaliation against Japanese Americans.

“‘Wait—are you doing that all the time in your head?’ Stanley asked. ‘Weighing how dangerous this is versus that every moment of every day?’

I nodded. […]

‘I take it back,’ said Stanley. ‘Holding your breath isn’t your superpower. Your superpower is risk assessment!’”

Stanley shows how he is a good friend by reframing Frank’s fear and anxiety as a superpower. However, the novel shows that Frank’s risk assessment hurts him more often than it helps.

“And right there, there was the fundamental difference between me and my dad. To me, headquarters’ idea made a lot of sense. The newspapers were full of warnings about saboteurs and spies, and one-third of Hawaii’s population was Japanese. Who knew how many of them were enemy agents?”

Mr. McCoy explains that the planes are hiding in their hangars because his superiors are worried about sabotage. Frank agrees with headquarters’ assessment. However, he is later ashamed of his initial fear of Japanese American spies and saboteurs when confronted with Mrs. Summers’s worries. The novel shows how Frank’s fear is racist.

“That’s when I saw the small pile of things beside her on the grass. I recognized some of them at once—they were the Japanese heirlooms from the Summers’ dining room. The framed pictures of Stanley’s ancestors, the woodblock prints of Mount Fuji, the family’s beloved samurai sword. There were also Japanese books and a stack of letters addressed in Japanese. Mrs. Summers was digging a hole to bury the whole pile.”

This moment highlights the visceral fear that Mrs. Summers feels as a Japanese American. She understands better than most how white Americans will react. She is so afraid of unjust retaliation and racist hatred that she tries to literally bury her identity before the attack has even ended.

“But my own thoughts had betrayed me. Back on the tarmac, when we’d been with our dads, I’d thought the Navy brass were right to be on guard for spies and saboteurs because there were so many Japanese Americans living here. But why had I assumed that those people would be spies? I gasped to myself. I had done to every Japanese American in Hawaii exactly what Mrs. Summers had just warned Stanley would happen. I’d judged them based only on what they looked like and where their ancestors were from.”

Frank realizes that his earlier thought about Japanese American spies was unjust and fueled by unconscious bias and paranoia. Though he is not maliciously racist, he absorbs certain attitudes from the society around him and repeats them unthinkingly. However, now that he is aware of it, he can self-correct. This is a message to the reader to be aware of their own unconscious biases.

“‘You can come in, McCoy,’ said Arthur. ‘But no Japs allowed.’ He stared right at Stanley and his mom.

I gasped. Stanley jerked back, looking hurt and confused. His mother had just warned him people would treat him this way, but neither he nor I had expected to see it so soon.”

Though Mrs. Summers has just warned Stanley about the hatred they will face now, he and Frank are still shocked to confront it so quickly and from children their own age. Arthur and Johnny, the bullies Stanley fought the day before, use racial slurs and go as far as to suggest that Stanley and his mother should go die in the attack. This will erode Stanley’s belief that he is just like everyone else and his sense of childhood innocence.

“There was a part of me that wanted to run even now. A big part of me. But there was an even bigger part of me that knew that standing up for my friend was right. That this was a good fight. One worth getting hurt for.”

Frank decides that defending Stanley against the bullies’ racist attack is a worthy cause, spurring him into action despite his fears. For the first time, his need to do the right thing pushes through his fear.

“I suddenly understood. This wasn’t just about saving sailors. It was about Brooks. Ginny couldn’t be there for him when he needed her, and now she was determined to be there for somebody else. Anybody else.

‘Just one sailor, Frank,’ Ginny said, tears streaming down her face again. ‘If we could save just one sailor, that would be enough.’”

This is the first appearance of the motif “just one,” in which Ginny and Frank feel that they need to save at least one sailor to assuage their feelings of guilt and grief. While Ginny feels this way because she was not present, Frank believes he is to blame for Brooks’s death.

“But it was the Oklahoma that made me and Stanley truly gasp. The huge battleship had gone belly-up, just like the Utah. But the Oklahoma was no retired ship used for target practice. The Oklahoma was part of the backbone of the US Pacific Fleet.”

As Frank and Stanley steer their little motorboat through the destruction of Battleship Row, they see many ships damaged or sinking. The one that shocks them the most is the Oklahoma, which Frank compares to the Utah. Both have capsized, but unlike the Utah which was old and retired, the Oklahoma was powerful and vital to the US Navy fleet.

“But of all the things in the world I was afraid of, I suddenly realized that my greatest fear was being too scared to do the right thing.

That’s who I wanted to be. That’s who I was.

‘Because this is the real McCoy,’ I told Stanley.”

This marks the turning point in Frank’s character development. He makes the conscious decision to no longer be incapacitated by his fears; he wants the real version of himself to be the brave version. He decides he must do the right thing no matter what, fulfilling the requirements of heroism.

“Then Patrick stepped up beside us, still cradling his broken arm. ‘Buddy, this kid just saved my life, and the life of another sailor,’ Patrick said, nodding toward Stanley. ‘He’s a hero. They both are.’ […] I looked at Stanley, who stood a little straighter beside me. Patrick was right, and Stanley knew it too.

We were heroes.”

Patrick defends Stanley from the racist MP at the hospital. Though both Stanley and Frank have already stated that Stanley is an American citizen, praise from an outsider affirms their courage.

“I couldn’t imagine things being worse than they were here. Besides the detentions on Sand Island, the military had taken away Japanese Americans’ cars and boats, removed the short-wave receivers from their radios, and closed down all the Japanese schools, clubs, and societies. Japanese-language newspapers had been censored, and Japanese Americans were told that if they spoke Japanese on the phone, their calls would be disconnected by the operator.”

Frank describes just a few of the unjust policies Japanese Americans face in Hawaii directly following the Pearl Harbor attack. He is so horrified that he cannot imagine how things could be worse anywhere else. Ironically, things will shortly be much worse for Japanese Americans.

“Stanley shook his head. ‘I thought I could. For a long time. But I see now that I’ve been living in this bubble, like Mom said. […] I didn’t realize until the attack that most of America doesn’t see me as American. […] Nobody is going to let somebody who looks like me draw comic books in America. Not now. Not ever.’”

Following the Pearl Harbor attack and his first experiences with anti-Asian racism, Stanley loses his belief that he is just like any other American and can do or be whatever he wants to be. He becomes disheartened, realizing that no one will allow an Asian American to be an artist or make comic books.

“Stanley had lost the belief that he was just like everybody else. That he could grow up and do anything, be anything he wanted.

Me, I’d lost that giddy, joyful feeling of creating something. Of writing words and seeing them come to life as drawings and sharing them with other people.

And most of all, I’d lost my best friend.”

Frank summarizes the things that he and Stanley have lost in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack and the arrival of the war on their doorstep. Just as Stanley has lost his belief in being an artist, Frank has lost his joy for creating. All these things mark their Loss of Innocence in War.