Heroes

On Saturday, December 13, nearly a week after the attack, Frank rides on a boat with several seamen headed for Honolulu. The harbor is filled with the wreckage of damaged ships. Half the Pacific fleet is destroyed, and bodies float everywhere. During the attack, several American planes had been shot down by friendly fire in the chaos, though Frank’s father survived the experience. The day after the attack, President Roosevelt addressed Congress to formally declare war on Japan. Germany and Italy responded by declaring war on the US as well. Now America has entered the war in Europe and Asia, and the whole country is ready to fight.

As the boat takes Frank across the harbor, he sees a barge filled with Japanese Americans floating by. Men, women, and children sit on the boat looking tired and dejected. One sailor on Frank’s boat calls it “the Sand Island Express” (192). Frank understands: After the attack, the Army rounded up all recent Japanese immigrants to Hawaii and placed them on Sand Island in Honolulu Harbor to detain them. Three days later, the Army also rounded up Japanese Americans, including teachers, newspaper editors, businesspeople, and community leaders, no matter how long their families had lived there. Even Stanley’s grandmother has been arrested. The government calls them “prisoners of war” (193), though they have done nothing wrong. One sailor says he would rather shoot them all on sight. Frank recoils, reminding them that they are Americans, and this is their home.

Frank has not seen Stanley since the attack. He is headed to Honolulu now to see him and tell him goodbye, as all resident military families are being sent to California for their safety.

Frank finds Stanley working with a group of other young Japanese American men, digging graves on a hillside. They are members of the VVV, the “Varsity Victory Volunteers” (195). Some members had been sailors before the attack when the Navy discharged them for being Japanese. Others are Japanese American college kids and teenagers. All of them volunteer, building shelters, fixing roads, clearing debris, and digging graves to prove their worth and loyalty.

The boys speak. Frank apologizes that he must leave, and that Stanley cannot go with him. Stanley says he is safer in Hawaii anyway. Though the government has arrested his grandmother, he has heard that in California other members of his Japanese American family have been placed in detention centers and all their businesses and property have been confiscated. Frank is shocked to realize how much worse things can become.

Stanley adds that members of the VVV have begun calling themselves “AJAs,” or “Americans of Japanese Ancestry” to emphasize that they are Americans first (198). He laments that he never had to think about being a real American before. Frank asks if Stanley has thought at all about an origin story for Arsenal. Stanley says that comic books do not seem important anymore after everything that has happened. He thinks his mother was right that he lived in a protective bubble in Hawaii and did not understand until now how much the rest of the country hates people who look like him. He had only been deluding himself that anyone would ever let him draw comics or be a professional artist.

Frank says that people do not seem to hate German Americans, even though they are also the enemy, but Stanley knows it is not the same thing: German Americans are still white. Frank realizes this is true, recalling that German Americans are not being rounded up and arrested as possible spies like Japanese Americans are. He also recalls the way comics portray Japanese villains as ugly, stupid, and monstrous. He had never noticed before, but now that he realizes it, he cannot ignore it.

As they talk, they wander through freshly dug graves until they reach Brooks’s grave. They stand silently over the grave for a moment. Then Frank says that Stanley does not have to dig graves as if he is trying to atone for an attack that is not his fault. Stanley retorts that Brooks’s death was not Frank’s fault either. Frank agrees that neither tragedy is their fault. Stanley says that while some VVV members do feel they need to atone, that is not why he does it. He merely wants to show respect for the dead and give these heroes a proper burial.

After visiting Stanley, Frank returns to the temporary barracks where he and his family live while they wait for their transfer. The government has not told anyone when they will be leaving for fear of Japanese spies learning about their movements. The entire family is packed and ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Frank stands in the small barracks, feeling lost. The feeling of being stuck in limbo makes him anxious. He tries to write a new comic script, trying to imagine Arsenal’s origin story, but no ideas come to mind.

Frank wonders what the point is now. Perhaps Stanley is right that these things do not matter anymore in the face of so much destruction. He recalls feeling like he had won a victory when he and Stanley saved Joseph and Patrick. He had felt like a hero. Now, he merely feels that he and Stanley have “lost more than [they’d] gained” (209). They have lost their innocence and joy, and Frank fears he has lost his best friend.

A week later, Frank and his family are told that it is time to leave. Just before sunrise, they head to the dock, ready to board a ship that will take them to California. Despite Frank’s fears, he realizes he does not want to leave Hawaii or Stanley, and that “some things [are] worth sacrificing a little safety for” (211), but it is too late. They begin to board with other military families and some wounded sailors. A crowd gathers on the dock to watch and say goodbye. Frank looks in the crowd but does not see Stanley. He wonders if Stanley has not heard the news, or if he simply does not care. Ginny assures him that Stanley will come.

On the dock, Frank sees Joseph being carried by stretcher onto the ship. Frank has been visiting him every day in the hospital and promises to visit him in the sick bay on the ship. Finally, just before he needs to board, Frank sees Stanley in the crowd. They run to each other and promise to write. Frank hands Stanley a stack of papers and tells him that his first letter should include drawings, as he has written the script for the first issue of their comic. Frank has kept the character Japanese American. Stanley says that no one will want to read a comic with a superhero who looks Japanese. Frank insists that he looks like Stanley, which means he looks like an American.

Frank asks Stanley to at least try. He says, “[W]hen it feels like the world is ending and nobody cares, somebody who makes comics—who makes anything creative—is a kind of hero. Because we need stories…” (217). Stanley only says maybe. Frank boards the ship.

Frank feels pride because he has rewritten his own story and become the “real McCoy” he wants to be. He hopes that Stanley will not allow the experience of Pearl Harbor to keep him from being the real him, which is an artist. He believes that someone like the Arsenal of Democracy is precisely the kind of hero they need.

As a kind of epilogue, the novel includes the first issue of Frank and Stanley’s comic, The Arsenal of Democracy. This brief comic introduces the main character, Brooks Yamashiro, who lives on the island of Pacifica. He gains the superpower to grow into a giant, as large as he needs to be to help his friends. 

One day, a boat filled with refugees arrives on Pacifica begging for help. They explain that the evil Commander Blitzkrieg has attacked their island. At first, Brooks does not believe he can help. Then his friend tells him that he is a “one-man Arsenal” and has a duty to help (224). Brooks grows tall enough to walk across the ocean and fight Blitzkrieg. He grows so large that he can punch Blitzkrieg clear across the ocean. However, he knows the fight is not over and that Blitzkrieg will return. The comic ends with the promise of more adventures coming soon, and brief bios of Frank and Stanley, who have graduated from college and reunited as adults to publish their comic.