Cicada Moving

Chapter 1189: Beating Workers Zuo Zhong

 A few more days passed.

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

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

 “円西, that’s okay.”

“The first ship from the left of the pier, the Pennsylvania-class battleship Arizona, 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 the cover of Zuo Zhong and watched the US warships on the pier constantly whispering the model, ship name and even the hull number.

 Ship identification is the basic ability of naval officers.

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

While Ozawa Chuan was reporting, Zuo Zhong was silently memorizing 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.

Ozawakawa finished reporting the information that could be seen visually, quickly retracted the 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 roar from behind that was very different from that of a civilian vehicle. He turned around and saw a US military jeep approaching quickly.

Ozawachuan turned pale with fright at the sudden change. He immediately wanted to throw the telescope 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. American 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 American 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 pay, but the boss showed no sign of being angry at all. He had a wrinkled smile on his face, nodded and bowed his head to serve the American godfather, and was very attentive.

Zuo Zhong suddenly realized that it was no wonder that a teahouse appeared on the commanding heights of the military port. It turned out that it was deliberately done by grassroots American soldiers.

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

Hearing the voices of the soldiers, Zuo Zhong calmly looked into the distance with his arms crossed. Ozawa also breathed a sigh of relief, imitating his behavior and not looking at the American beasts until the jeep rumbled away.

“Okay, now that I’m gone, you don’t have to shake your legs anymore, Mr. Ozawa.” 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 the Japanese sent him to Anqing to serve as the commander of the river fleet for a reason. The combined fleet needs 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 telescopes and took a closer look. Although the magnification 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 provided by the Japanese said that in addition to Chinese and Japanese, there are many Filipinos on Oahu, numbering tens of thousands.

 The Americans gave a certain amount of trust to these colonial citizens and allowed them to work in low-end jobs such as construction, cleaning, and painting in Pearl Harbor.

Suddenly, he thought of Gui Youguang pretending 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 almost the same, and are commonly known as "face-blind". Can we use this to sneak into Pearl Harbor?

Happling his right elbow with his left hand, he 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 exporter of labor services, the workers must be familiar with each other, so the possibility of borrowing the worker's identity is unlikely.

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

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

Zuo Zhong's memory is good, but it's not good enough 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 activating the system 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 "fellows" are really powerful!

Following the clues provided by a Japanese trading company owner, Zuo Chong came to the shantytown between Honolulu and Pearl Harbor. This is the gathering area of ​​Filipinos on Oahu.

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

 And because of different ethnic groups, the types of work often change, and 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 get familiar with him first and then sneak into Pearl Harbor.

So, for most of the next half month, Zuo Zhong continued to observe the dynamics of US warships in Pearl Harbor from the commanding heights, and "reported" to Tokyo every seven days. At the same time, after putting on disguise, he mingled in the Filipino gathering area and made various friends.

The identity he made up for himself is that of a Japanese-Filipino mixed-race, who understands Japanese, English and some Spanish. He came to Oahu to make a living because his family was poor 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 is very sure that there must be a Japanese mole in the U.S. Customs. This is a real "fake document", and the record may 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 shantytown 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 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. The wages paid to workers are enough for a family to live a good life.

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

More than ten minutes later, amidst the chaos and curses, the U.S. military trucks that had recruited enough manpower quickly started to leave.

Perhaps they were deliberately trying to mess with 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 while of jolting, 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 in the air for inspection. Just as he had guessed, the so-called inspection was just a formality. The US military did not 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 the identity.

 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.

Zuo Zhong walked and chatted with a group of workers along the flat cement road, 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 suffering, the whistle for the lunch break finally sounded. All the workers were slumped 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.