cicada

Chapter 1189: Beating Workers Zuo Zhong

A few more days passed.

Zuo Zhong and Ozawa changed their costumes and came to the commanding heights near Pearl Harbor again. The two stood on a semi-suspended rock and looked down the mountain and whispered.

"Ozawa-kun, can you see the specific model and ship name?"

"Xinxi, okay."

"The first ship from the left on the dock is the USS Arizona, a Pennsylvania-class battleship, hull number BB-39."

"The second ship from the left on the pier, the USS California, a Tennessee-class battleship, hull number BB-44."

Ozawakawa took out the folding pocket telescope under Zuo Zhong's shield and watched the US warships on the pier constantly whispering the model, ship name and even the hull number.

Ship identification is a basic ability of naval officers.

On the bedside of every Etajima Naval War School graduate is a thick simplified ship yearbook. This is the heritage of a century-old navy.

While Ozawa was reporting, Zuo Zhong silently memorized the information in his mind, and the two cooperated very well.

But it is not enough to simply understand the ship name and hull number. The role of each area in the port and the location of the warning and defense facilities still require close observation to understand.

After reporting the information that could be seen visually, Ozawakawa quickly retracted his telescope and looked around, and said to Zuo Zhong furtively.

"Nan Jiajun, we can only get the general situation from here. What should we do next?"

Zuo Zhong pondered for a moment and was about to speak when he heard a motor roar from behind that was very different from that of a civilian vehicle. He turned around and saw a US military jeep approaching quickly.

The sudden change frightened Ozawa so much that his face turned pale. He immediately wanted to throw the telescope in his hand off the cliff, but as soon as he raised his hand, he was stopped by Zuo Zhong.

If the US military is really here to arrest someone, even throwing away the binoculars will not help. US soldiers are not police, and they don't need any evidence.

On the contrary, if the other party is not here to arrest someone, if the telescope falls down the mountain and is discovered, it will arouse the suspicion of the US military at the base.

So it's better to wait and see for a while to see what the other party wants to do.

Under Ozawa's covert observation, the US military jeep suddenly stopped in front of the small Japanese teahouse. Several US sailors wearing beige summer boat-shaped hats got out of the car and playfully asked the boss for a few bottles of Coke.

These people didn't give any money, but the boss didn't show any sign of anger. He had a smile on his face, nodded and bowed his head to serve the American godfather, and was very attentive.

Zuo Zhong suddenly understood. No wonder a teahouse appeared on the commanding heights of the military port. It turned out to be a deliberate move by grassroots American soldiers.

One party wanted to enjoy free drinks between patrols, and the other wanted to start a unique business, so the two parties hit it off, and the small teahouse was born.

Listening to the voices of the soldiers, Zuo Zhong calmly looked into the distance with his hands on his hips. Ozawa also breathed a sigh of relief and followed his example and did not look at the American monsters until the jeep rumbled away.

"Okay, now that I'm gone, you don't need to shake your legs anymore, Ozawa-kun." Zuo Zhong glanced at Ozawa and said slowly.

With such a coward, it is hard to imagine that the other party is a naval officer. It seems that there is a reason why the Japanese sent him to Anqing to serve as the commander of the river fleet. What the combined fleet needs is the kind of daring guy.

After Ozawa stopped trembling, Zuo Zhong looked towards the shipyard area of ​​Pearl Harbor and saw a group of people coming out of the shipyard and walking towards the base gate. It didn't look like they were American soldiers.

He and Ozawa asked for a telescope and took a closer look. Although the power of the pocket telescope was too low to see the faces of these people clearly, they could tell that they were of yellow race and there were patches of oil stains on their clothes.

Asian?

Zuo Zhong remembered that the information given by the Japanese said that in addition to Chinese and Japanese, there were many Filipinos on Oahu, numbering tens of thousands.

For these colonial citizens, the Americans gave a certain degree of trust and allowed them to engage in low-end jobs such as construction, cleaning, and painting in Pearl Harbor.

Suddenly, he thought about the time when Gui Youguang pretended to be a Southeast Asian native boy when he transferred to Hong Kong from Hawaii.

In the eyes of Americans and other Westerners, Asians look similar and are commonly known as "face-blind". Could you use this to sneak into Pearl Harbor?

He held his right elbow with his left hand, rubbed his chin and thought for a while. He thought that he could first see how these Filipino workers entered the base, and then decide whether to enter the port.

If the other party is an organized labor exporter, the workers must be familiar with each other, so the possibility of borrowing the worker's identity is unlikely.

The fact that Americans can't recognize people doesn't mean that Filipinos can't recognize the companions they live with day and night, and language is also an issue. God knows why a country has so many languages.

English, Pinatubo, Pampanga, Tagalog, Davao dialect, Cebuano, Banyan, Tagalog, Ilok.

Zuo Zhong's memory is good, but it's not good enough to be able to learn dozens or hundreds of Filipino dialects. After all, his system is useless and can't even give him a language proficiency, bah.

After whipping the system once as usual, Zuo Zhong asked Ozawa to drive the newly purchased eight-hand Ford sedan back to the city and immediately began to investigate the Filipino workers. With the help of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, he got the information he wanted in less than three days. The "fellow fellow" is really awesome!

Following clues provided by a Japanese business owner, Zuo Chong came to the shantytown between Honolulu and Pearl Harbor, which is where Filipinos gather on Oahu.

Every morning, people from the Pearl Harbor base would come here to recruit workers. As long as they had documents issued by customs, the Americans would not check their backgrounds at all, they would just pick them up and take them away.

Moreover, due to different ethnic groups, the types of work often change, and the workers are not familiar with each other.

This is good news for Zuo Zhong, but to be on the safe side, it is safer to become familiar with him before sneaking into Pearl Harbor.

Therefore, for the next half month, Zuo Zhong continued to observe the dynamics of U.S. warships in Pearl Harbor from the commanding heights and "reported" to Tokyo every seven days. At the same time, he put on disguise and mingled in the Filipino gathering area, making various friends.

The identity he made up for himself was that of a Japanese-Filipino who knew Japanese, English and some Spanish. He came to Oahu to make a living because his family had fallen into poverty and had nothing but strength.

The document issue was also easy to solve. It only took the Japanese Consulate one day to send a blank Philippine passport without a photo through a dead mailbox. The US Customs stamp on it was clear and authentic.

Zuo Zhong was very sure that there must be a Japanese mole in the U.S. Customs. This was a real "fake document", and the record might be found in the customs files.

But it had nothing to do with him. With perfect documents and a logical identity, he quickly became involved with the Filipinos on Oahu.

As the time progressed to November 1940, the maintenance of U.S. warships in Pearl Harbor became more and more frequent. A large number of Filipino workers were brought into the base every day to take charge of jobs that American workers were unwilling to perform.

This morning, thousands of Filipino workers gathered in front of the shanty town as usual, and these people surrounded more than a dozen US military trucks.

In the bed of one of the trucks, an American logistics officer held the roof of the driver's compartment and announced at the top of his lungs the types of work required and the vehicles these people would board.

"Painter, Truck No. 2."

"Rust remover, truck No. 5."

Even though they were sprayed in the face by this man's saliva, the Filipinos below did not complain at all. They happily piled into the truck and looked at the compatriots below with pride.

Although the United States has not yet completely emerged from the Great Depression, its salary levels are still among the best in the world. Especially the Navy, which is not short of money, pays its workers enough to live a good life for a family.

Zuo Zhong was also in the crowd at the moment. When he heard "Riveter", he immediately used covert techniques to push away the competitors around him and successfully boarded the truck.

After more than ten minutes, amid the chaos and curses, the U.S. military trucks that had recruited enough manpower quickly started to leave.

Perhaps deliberately to torment the workers behind them, the drivers turned right and left. The people in the truck were knocked around, but no one dared to say anything.

After a long jolt, the truck stopped in front of the gate of the Pearl Harbor base. The sentries drove the workers out of the truck like pigs, and the heavily armed soldiers began to search them.

Zuo Zhong and all the workers raised their hands for inspection. It was pretty much what he had guessed. The so-called inspection was just a formality. The U.S. military didn't even bother to open the lunch boxes with lunch at their feet.

After being inspected, the new workers, including him, were asked to show their passports, and then received a set of olive green collarless shirts as work uniforms before being put into Pearl Harbor.

It is worth mentioning that the military police responsible for verifying documents were very professional. They not only compared the photos and appearance, but also asked other workers to verify the authenticity of their identities.

But this kind of conscientiousness has no effect. I guess the biggest significance is to make the reports of the officials look better, so that any professional agent can pass the inspection.

Along the flat cement road, Zuo Zhong walked and chatted with a group of workers, and came to the outside of a huge shipyard. There were no serious guards here, only a few impatient foremen assigning work.

"You, you, go to slipway A."

"You, and that stupid guy, go to slipway B."

The stupid Zuo Zhong obeyed the order and followed his companions to the bottom of a small frigate. After receiving the tools, he entered the warship through the ladder and smashed the rivets under the supervision of the engineer.

This kind of frigate is mostly responsible for patrol patrols. It was built earlier and did not use the most advanced electric welding technology of the US military. The components are still connected by rivets.

After swinging a sledgehammer all morning, Zuo Zhong was exhausted and sweating profusely. As expected, not everyone can do heavy physical labor. If he had known it, he should have let Gui Youguang perform the task, which can be regarded as his professional counterpart.

In the midst of the ordeal, the whistle for the lunch break finally sounded, and all the workers collapsed on the steel hull, breathing heavily, not wanting to move.

Zuo Zhong opened his lunch box and took a few bites of lunch. Then he stepped off the warship, filled the kettle with cold water in front of the faucet, and drank it all in one gulp.

While raising his head to drink water, through the gap in the dock door, he saw the steel behemoths moored on the dock shining brightly in the sun.