JAG - "Go For Broke"

Title: Go For Broke
Author: Haruo Chikamori

E-mail: hhchikamori
Rating: G
Classification: Angst w/resolution
Spoilers: not that I know of
Summary: One of my very rare Harm/Mac/Animal short stories from wayyy back. Tells of the story of how Grandma Sarah (nee Koechner) Nakamura and Grandpa Osamu Nakamura got together.
Disclaimer: Harmon Rabb Jr. Sarah Mackenzie, AJ Chegwidden, Bud Roberts, Harriet Sims, et al characters
regularly seen on JAG, are creations of Donald Bellisario and are the property of CBS, Paramount
and Bellisarius Productions. Animal, Lia, Metalman et al (other than the above) are the creative property of Hugo and Heather Chikamori.
Author's Note: The story line I chose to write touches on the experiences of Japanese families in America during the early days, before the Second World War before Pearl Harbor, and to an extent even us in Canada. My mother and my grandparents, and uncles were interned in Slocan in Canada during the Second World War, so this kind of hits really close to home. And thats why I wrote it.

November 16, 2003
Washington D.C.,

Commander Harmon Rabb Jr. tucked his hands in his great-coat pockets as far as they would go to keep them from the chilling winds emanating from the Potomac River. A murder investigation, his best friend going to South America to help Clayton Webb and damned near getting herself killed in the process. It had been an eventful year, one that he didn't want to repeat. Rounding the corner, he ran into another old friend, "Animal, fancy meeting you here. I thought you were still out on deployment?" Looking up at the sky he realized just how grey and dismal the clouds were reflecting the lights from the city at night.

"Naw…" Animal replied, tucking his gold-encrusted admiral's cap even father down his forehead to keep away the chill. "First tour as battle group commander and all it was…was a shakedown cruise. Hell, wasn't even a test for my old air wing. So, being an intuitive soul, I decided to walk down here…" and he shrugged, "…and ended up running into you." He grinned widely, "So what's bothering you? You look as if your best friend died."

"Nice way of putting it." replied Harm, with a touch of bitterness. "She decided to date Clay after I resigned my commission, went down to Paraguay and nearly got my ass shot off trying to rescue her. Then of course, I went back to JAG after Imes let loose the information that she didn't pass the bar before she became a JAG. Sure beat wrestling alligators." He said sarcastically.

Animal whistled considerately, "hmmmm, that is bad" Animal really didn't think much of Clayton Webb. A rich CIA spook, who didn't really have much good to do other than to make other people's lives miserable. But that wasn't really the case. He didn't live off his mothers coffers. He had a good job and tried to do it effectively despite the major f***-ups from those higher up. Animal had to give him his due; AND that was what really rubbed the Asian flag-officer the WRONG way.

"Yeah, I think I should try the monastery as a viable alternative, considering how much of a relationship I've had in the past two years." Harm grumbled.

"OK, Harm, it ain't that bad." Animal grinned. "It could be worse. Did I ever tell you about my Grandpa?"

"No…" Harm replied looking at him quizzically. "So?"

"Well…" Animal said looking down the river reflectively. "It was back in the 20s, back when the rest of the population didn't like us Japs too much. He said, as his eyes gazed at the ships going down the shipping lane."

June 16, 1923
Rock Hills, NV

Osamu Nakamura looked up at the hot mid-day sun and swore to himself that he was in line for a major case of sunstroke.

"Hard work, healthy, ne." his father, Masanobu Nakamura grinned. A short little wiry man with jet black hair, wizened with lines from the tough work day in day out, that was farming, especially in this rocky desert which didn't grow much of anything except the Japanese horse-radish that they used as a garnish on their vegetables. "You work ground, ground give you vegetaburu." He patted his son on the back. "Ne? Hard work good for you. Make you strong."

Osamu had heard the same thing over and over again. He didn't believe it. He knew that there was something out there that he could do that wouldn't break him and put him into the ground before the age of fifty.

He continued slamming his pick into the ground, each consecutive stroke causing his arms to jar. This ground was hard and unforgiving. He still didn't know how his father managed to make vegetables grow out of this ground. Hell, neither did the neighbors and the neighbors were not in the least bit tolerant of that fact.

"Damn Japs, think they're better than us. Working like dogs taking our land and making the ground work for em. Pretty soon they'll have all our jobs. Damn Japs." He heard it all the time. It wasn't right to him, but what could they do. You couldn't start a fight over it. More than likely with the mood the way in that town, they would end up being forced out of town. Whenever he went with his mother to town to pick up supplies, he saw it; the sneers, the suspicion, the dislike. The hate was palpable. All the townspeople exuded the same contempt and dislike for the Nakamura family in that town, except for Sarah. She was different.

He kept slugging away at the ground, until he heard a shout "OSAMU!" A young blonde woman riding a bicycle waved at him. "I thought we were going to bike-ride to the creek?"

Osamu heard a snort coming from beside him. His father was looking in the direction of the waving young woman, his face dark with a frown. "Osamu, you go with hakujin girl? Many say no good. Hakujin girl, if she get tired of you, she go find some other man maybe take your money too."

"Dad, I love her, she's the only one who understands me! Dad, she's not that kind of girl."

His fathers face told Osamu that he wasn't convinced in slightest. "Your mother…what she say? Your father go to take vegetaburu to market five man spit on ground beside your father. Father no can do any thing. Hakujin, they think Japanese not even human. Maybe she want you for pity." His father shook his head. "OK you go. No you say, I no warn you." his father glowered darkly at him. Osamu felt his fathers glare at his back all the way up to his girlfriend's bike.

Later

Sarah looked over at her boyfriend. "Osamu" she insisted. "Something's bothering you."

Osamu brushed it off. Its nothing.

Sarah said. "I think I know what it is. It's the look that your father gave me. As if I wasn't good enough for you. It's the same look that I see in the other people's faces staring at you when I'm with you."

Osamu looked up at her with surprise. "You mean you've noticed."

Sarah said. "How could I not notice how they look at you. To them, you're so different, why's she going out with HIM. That Jap shouldn't be out with one of our girls." Sarah rolled her eyes. Please like I would have anything to do with ANY of them."

Osamu looked at her with pain in his eyes. "Is that how you see me, Sarah? Do you think I'm exotic, different, maybe not a threat, but do you see me as someone who needs to be rescued from that? Because I don't!" He said assertively.

"No Osamu, I see you as an individual. You've got the same quirks as everyone else. Sometimes you're bull-headed, you're obstinate, and above all, I like you that way. You're the guy I fell in love with and that's the reason why I stay with you, not because you're different in skin color from me." Sarah leaned in close as Osamu wrapped his arm around her shoulder. They sat quietly in the shade as the sun charted its course through the heavens.

Later that evening.

"SARAH?!" her father glared at her. "You are dating a JAP?! Let me tell you something. Harry Peterson is out of work, because the cannery he works for just hired five Japs for the amount of pay that Harry works for. After twenty years, they fired Harry because the boss could get five monkeys to work for him for less than Harry. Those slant-eyed b*****ds are putting us out of work. And NOW you want to bring one of them into this FAMILY?" her father spit. I'd sooner shoot one of them than have them as a relative.

"But, Osamu is different" Sarah said. "He's polite, he's sweet"

"ENOUGH!" her father roared. "There is NO WAY IN HELL I'm allowing you to marry a JAP!"

Next day

"But Sarah, what are we going to do for work, for food." Osamu asked Sarah. She had come over sobbing, saying that she was leaving her family's home and not going back. "Where are we going to live? And no one likes a mixed couple around these parts."

"Then we'll go west to the coast. San Francisco or someplace like that." Sarah said, vehemently. "I can't stand this place any more."

"So, how are we supposed to do this?" Osamu asked. "We barely have any money."

I don't know. All I know is that I don't want to be here any more where we have to sneak around just to be together" Sarah said, impetuously as she cried out. "If my dad won't let me be with you, then…then…I'll run away from home."

"I know" Osamu said finally after pacing the floor clear enough to wear a hole through it. "I'll join the Army." Osamu decided. "That'll give us a place to live and money to live on."

2003

"So my grandpa and grandma ran away from home. When the Depression hit, my grandpa was in the Army so Grandma and Grandpa were all right, but times were tough all around, back then." Animal said to Harm.

"I didn't know your grandma was white." Harm stated. "You've always looked fully Japanese…" he looked chagrined and corrected himself. "fully Japanese-American, I mean."

"That's because my mom married a full-blooded Japanese." Animal replied. "Come the Second World War, my grandfather and grandmother ended up at Tule Lake. Grandma ended up just as interned as my grandpa cause she was married to him. She had the option of staying outside, but she wanted to be with him. Well, that didn't stay like that for long, since the military wanted him back in, even though they discharged him after Pearl Harbor. He was sent to the infantry because of his prior military service to serve in the 442nd Battalion. Go For Broke, they called it." Animal said as he peered off into the distance. "He won the Distinguished Service Medal taking a hill in Italy. His friends said the single-handed attack was worthy of a Medal of Honor, but the bias behind the military against anyone who was of Asian descent, prevented him from getting anything higher than a DSM. Animal paused for a long moment, contemplating, as Harm watched him. My grandma Sarah died when I was fifteen. Cancer. She had a tough life, but the one thing was. She loved my grandpa and stuck by him through all the tough times, even when everyone was against him. My grandma, though, wasn't around to see me get through AOCS and come as far as I have through the Navy. But my grandpa was proud of me." Animal said, smiling wryly at the memory.

"Where is he now?" Harm asked.

"I'll take you to see him. If you don't mind the walk…that is" Animal stated as Harm nodded that he didn't mind in the slightest.

Arlington National Cemetary
Arlington, VA

The crisp white tombstone was marked STAFF SERGEANT OSAMU NAKAMURA, UNITED STATES ARMY. There was an engraving of the Medal of Honor on the tombstone.

Animal merely said simply. "They made it right two years after he died."

"At least he was alive to see yours." Harm replied gazing somberly at the tombstone, now aware of another story behind a marker at Arlington.

"Yeah." Animal said simply as the two naval officers stood in front of the grave and saluted it.

"Now." Animal said as he turned away from the grave marker and looked Harm directly in the face. "This entire discourse was meant to show you one thing." He paused "When you love someone, you hang on to them, despite all opposition. My grandfather faced down the worst possible opposition in the world; he faced down prejudice and won the love of his life. My grandmother and grandfather loved each other more than anything in the entire world. Grandma turned her back on her own culture and became a part of her husbands. Maybe you and Mac can make a go of it together. But you'll never know unless you fight for her. Don't be complacent and then have to live with nothing but regrets and could have been's." Animal looked firmly into Harms eyes as he uttered the final words to him that evening "That's my lecture for today, Harm. Don't make the mistake of letting her go."

Harm stood at the head of his friend's grandfather's tombstone for a long time after his friend had left.

Macs Apartment
Georgetown, WA

There was a knock at the door.

"Who is it?" Mac asked.

It's me Harms voice sounded from the other side of the door.

OK Mac replied as she opened the door. "Can't be too careful now."

Harm looked like he was half a snowman. A snowstorm had hit earlier on his way from Arlington National Cemetery. He had also stopped by the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial to pay his respects to his own father. "I ran into Animal today." Harm said. "It was just a coincidence."

Mac looked at him quizzically, trying to make heads or tails out of that comment. "He say anything."

"He showed me his grandfather's gravestone. And told me this whole life-story his grandfather went through. Animal tried to tell me something and it finally sunk through." Mac looked about ready to call the head-shrink when Harm continued. "Something I guess I've been trying to run away from for the longest time. And I just realized it when you were away doing that mission with Clay. When you asked me why I never express myself, why I always had to be on top? It hit me when Animal related his grandparents' story." Mac silently let him continue. "I can't keep running away if I want you to stay and I can't be top dog in this relationship if I want it to succeed. I need to allow you to be yourself. We need to have mutual respect for each other." Harm continued. Macs eyes softened as her mind churned over those words. At last he was seeing the light. "Animal told me." Harm said, struggling to get the words out. "I have to fight for who I love, against all opposition. And I have to tell you, honestly, that I love you." he finally said.

There wasn't time for anything more as Mac looked at him with tears in her eyes. "Damn you, Rabb." she said. You know, I've been waiting for that for a long time?" She whispered as she melted into his embrace. I've been wondering if you'd ever get around to it. You're not the only one who's been thinking about this. And it's not entirely your fault either. I've strung you along for a long time, not thinking that it was the right time. Just think of how much more time we could have had together if we had got our act together sooner?"

"I'm slow, I guess" was Harms reply before Mac's lips on his smothered any other comment. Mac's last thought before they moved to the bedroom was that she would have to deal with the problem of telling Clay that their relationship was over tomorrow.