They both laughed-loud, boisterous, American laughs. Jiro shot them a suspicious glance. Were they laughing at him? They sometimes used English to keep him from knowing what they were saying.

All over Kewalo Basin, big diesel engines were growling to life. Blue-painted sampans glided out of the basin and into the wide Pacific. The blue paint was camouflage. The fishermen hoped it fooled the tuna they caught. They knew good and well it fooled other fishermen who might try to poach in fine fishing spots.

Back when Jiro first came to Hawaii, sampans had been sail-powered. Diesels let them range much farther asea. Takahashi muttered to himself as he started the Oshima Maru ’s engine. He liked to be one of the first boats out of the basin. Not today, not when he’d had to drag his boys out of bed. Did they think the tuna were going to sleep late, too?

Up at the bow, the two of them were tossing a hollow glass globe as big as their heads back and forth. The net float had drifted here all the way from Japan. A lot of sampans carried one or two of them, sometimes more. They showed up around Kauai more often than anywhere else: some trick of the currents, no doubt.

Jiro hauled in the mooring line and got the Oshima Maru going. His sons went right on tossing the float back and forth. He finally lost patience with them. “Will you two knock off that foolishness?” he shouted.

“Sorry, Father,” Hiroshi said. He didn’t sound sorry. He didn’t look sorry, either. He had a silly grin on his face.

Grimly, Jiro steered the Oshima Maru south and west. “Careful, Father,” Kenzo said. “You don’t want to end up in the defensive sea area.”

The last three words were in English, but Jiro understood them. Kenzo meant the three-mile-square region south of the Pearl Harbor outlet that the Navy had declared off-limits to sampans. The Navy patrolled aggressively to make sure the fishing boats stayed out of it, too. If you got caught in the defensive sea area, you were sure to get a warning and an escort out; you’d probably also draw a fine.