Frank Frink and Robert Childan

Frank Frink and Robert Childan are two white American men navigating the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America, and their relationship is a study in colonial humiliation, mutual suspicion, and the desperate calculus of survival. Though they never meet face to face until the novel's end, their fates are entangled through a chain of deception, forgery, and betrayal that exposes the corrosive effects of living under foreign rule. Childan, the proprietor of American Artistic Handcrafts Inc., sells historic American artifacts to wealthy Japanese collectors; Frink, a skilled metalworker, has just been fired from W-M Corporation, where he secretly forged those very artifacts. Their paths cross when Frink, impersonating an admiral's gentleman, exposes one of his own forgeries to Childan, and later when Childan's testimony leads to Frink's arrest. The relationship is defined not by direct confrontation but by the indirect, almost accidental ways each man's actions destroy the other's security, revealing how the colonial system forces the colonized to turn against one another to preserve their own fragile place.

Two Men in the Same Trap

Robert Childan is a thirty-eight-year-old dealer in Americana, a man who remembers the prewar world of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World's Fair and who now must bow to every Japanese customer to keep his business alive. His store on Montgomery Street is a shrine to a lost America, filled with Civil War weapons, WPA murals, and Mickey Mouse watches, all sold to Japanese collectors who prize these relics of a defeated nation. Childan's life is a constant performance of deference: he bows to Japanese, is brusque with the Chinese pedecab drivers and black porters, and endures the deliberate mispronunciation of his name by Mr. Tagomi, a high official of the Trade Mission, as an insult within the code of colonial etiquette. Frank Frink, by contrast, is a Jew who changed his name from Fink, a former soldier drafted in 1941 who ended up on the Japanese side of the settlement line after the war. He has spent fifteen years working at W-M Corporation, where his specialty is forging Colt revolvers of the Civil War and Frontier period, feeding fake artifacts into the wholesale market that supplies dealers like Childan. Both men are trapped in the same system: Childan sells the forgeries Frink makes, and both depend on the Japanese collectors who buy them, neither willing to acknowledge the fraud that sustains their livelihoods.

The Fake Admiral Incident

The pivotal moment in their relationship occurs when Frink, desperate after being fired, impersonates the gentleman of a nonexistent Admiral Harusha and visits Childan's store. Frink claims the admiral wishes to purchase twelve Civil War side arms for his officers, a fifteen-thousand-dollar order that makes Childan tremble with excitement. But when Childan presents a Colt .44 of 1860, Frink—who made the gun himself—calmly declares it an imitation, pointing to the artificially aged wood and the acid treatment. "Sir, this is an imitation," he says, and then, with devastating politeness, adds, "We are, after all, white men." The imposture is a cruel game: Frink, the forger, exposes his own work to the dealer who unknowingly sells it, not to destroy Childan but to test the limits of the system. Childan, humiliated and terrified of losing his reputation, sends the gun to the University of California lab, which confirms it is a reproduction cast from plastic molds. He then traces the gun to his wholesaler, Ray Calvin, and demands restitution, setting off a chain of accusations that eventually reaches Wyndam-Matson, Frink's former employer. The incident reveals the deep irony of their positions: the forger and the dealer are both victims of the same fraud, yet each must protect himself by blaming the other.

The Arrest and the Testimony

Childan's response to the incident is to report it to the Kempeitai, the Japanese secret police, when a pinoc policeman visits his apartment. The policeman shows him a photograph of Frink, and Childan, recognizing him beyond any doubt, signs a paper stating that Frink tried to swindle him by misrepresenting himself. "Frank Frink. Born Frank Fink. Yes, he certainly was a Jew," Childan thinks, and he feels relief that the authorities have acted so quickly. "We live in a society of law and order, where Jews can't pull their subtleties on the innocent," he tells himself, revealing the anti-Semitism that lurks beneath his colonial deference. Frink is arrested on a bunco charge, and as the police take him away, they call him a kike and a refugee from Europe, threatening to hold him for the German consul. Frink's arrest is a direct consequence of Childan's testimony, yet Childan never sees the harm he has done; he simply feels protected by the system. The relationship between the two men is thus one of mutual destruction without direct confrontation: Frink's prank exposes Childan's vulnerability, and Childan's fear condemns Frink to the machinery of the Reich's racial law.

The Consignment and the New Life

Despite this betrayal, their relationship takes an unexpected turn when Ed McCarthy, Frink's partner in the new jewelry business, visits Childan's store to sell their handwrought pieces. Childan, wary after the Colt incident, agrees to take the jewelry on consignment, a deal that costs him nothing and gives him a potential new line of contemporary American art. He is struck by the pieces, which have no historicity and thus no problem of authenticity, and he begins to see them as "the new life of my country." When Paul Kasoura, a young Japanese businessman, later praises one of the pieces for its wu—a quality of balance and peace that transcends both art and religion—Childan is moved to defend the work of the American artisans. "The men who made this are American proud artists," he tells Paul, and he rejects the suggestion that the pieces be mass-produced as good-luck charms. This moment of pride is a quiet redemption for Childan, who has spent the novel bowing and scraping; it is also an indirect acknowledgment of Frink's skill, though Childan never learns that the man he helped arrest is the creator of the jewelry he now champions. Frink, meanwhile, is released from prison—a miracle he cannot explain—and returns to the basement workshop to continue making the pieces, unaware that his betrayer has become his advocate.

The Irony of Their Bond

The relationship between Frank Frink and Robert Childan is a microcosm of the colonial world they inhabit: two white men, both degraded by Japanese rule, who cannot see their common cause and instead turn on each other. Frink's impersonation of the admiral's gentleman is a act of defiance that backfires, leading to his own arrest; Childan's testimony is an act of self-preservation that condemns an innocent man. Yet in the end, their fates are linked by the jewelry Frink makes and Childan sells, objects that represent a new American identity free from the taint of forgery and historicity. Childan's conversion to the cause of contemporary American art is, unknowingly, a tribute to Frink's craft, and Frink's release—a fluke of the system—allows him to continue the work that Childan now champions. The irony is that neither man ever understands the other's role in his life: Frink never knows that Childan signed the paper that sent him to prison, and Childan never knows that the man he betrayed is the artist he now praises. Their bond is one of invisible threads, woven by the colonial system that pits them against each other even as it binds them together in a shared struggle for dignity and survival.