Days of Infamy (5 page)

“To hell with that,” he shouted, moving the two of them along to the car.

And then, in that instant, it hit, the shock wave of two fourteen-inch shells racing overhead. He had heard such big guns fired before, hundreds of times while aboard the
Maryland
or
Oklahoma
, but never like this, never on the receiving end. He had heard it described as sounding like a freight train roaring down a mountainside. He had never heard anything like it in real life. A split second later the two shells impacted two hundred fifty yards away, and three hundred yards short of one of the coastal gun positions at Bellows.

It took just under a second for the shock wave to hit them—and when it did strike, it was with hurricane force, palm fronds flapping, several breaking off from the trees around their house to come clattering down, one smashing a window, followed by a heavy thundering patter of debris, shrapnel, clods of dirt, and broken bits of trees rained down around them.

He instinctively put his arms around Margaret and Nan, forcing them down, until the storm had passed.

“Up! Move it!”

He started to open the driver’s-side door, but Margaret shoved him aside.

“I’m driving,” she cried. Gone was the usually loving deference of his bride, who still carried a touch of her mother’s traditions. She was now thoroughly American. She had a wounded husband who even with his claw on had to take it a bit slow around some of the curves while trying to shift gears—and she was in charge.

His mother-in-law was already in the backseat. He went around the ′37 Plymouth and slid in on the passenger side even as the engine roared to life and Margaret slammed it into gear.

Tires squealing, she went down the steep driveway, nearly hitting the Johnstons’ Studebaker, which was careering down the street.

“Damn Japs, damn all you Japs!”

It was Ed Simpson, now down on the street, vaguely waving his shotgun toward them.

Margaret, in yet another uncharacteristic gesture, gave Ed the finger, hit the gas, and they were off.

“Where to?” she asked, anger in her voice.

He didn’t know how to respond. Was the bombardment the prelude to a night landing? War games had theorized that if the Japs did attack and attempt a landing, a diversionary force might come into Kaneohe Bay, which could serve as a sheltered anchorage and secure the windward side of the island. In a protracted fight for the island, the airbases at Kaneohe and Bellows could be used by their bombers and fighters.

This could very well be the softening-up blow for that invasion. Get away from here, then. But where?

“Your cousin Janice,” he finally said. Margaret nodded in agreement, taking the next corner fast and hard, weaving around a car backing out of a driveway with headlights off, dodging around people standing in the street. Ahead he saw traffic, cars, the taillights of dozens of cars, their drivers and families all filled with the same thought. Head up Pali Highway and get the hell away from here.

And now he heard it again, but this wasn’t a single salvo, it was a continual roar—dozens of shells screeching in, searching out Bellows, which was illuminated by star shells. Several of the fourteen-inch shells were short, one of them impacting into a storefront, a hair salon that Margaret frequented, just a block ahead. The explosion flipped a car high into the air, end over end, buildings to either side collapsing, and a geyser of water erupting up from a broken water main.

Margaret, now cursing loudly against the “damn Japs,” wove around the wreckage like an expert, her mother sobbing at the sight of the broken bodies that had been torn apart by the blast.

Margaret ran the red light at the intersection, nearly getting hit by an old Model A as she skidded on to State Highway 61, where traffic was growing heavier by the second as more and more, in panic, started to flee, ignoring the orders of martial law. A lone cop, flanked by a portly national guardsman, holding an ′03, stood impotent at an intersection, just watching the traffic race by.

And then everything slammed to a crawl, the twisting two-lane road ahead bumper to bumper.

More flashes of light, the air continually rent by the howl of incoming shells, impacting around Fort Bellows and the coastal gun positions up on the mountain slope. Several of the fort’s guns were firing back, and cynically he knew that given the antiquity of the weapons and the ill-trained crews manning them, their reply fire was most likely splashing down miles wide of any target.

Crawling along at not much more than ten miles an hour, they started to gain up the side of the mountain, and he could see the ocean off to their left. Flashes continually rippled up and down along
the horizon. Two heavy ships, undoubtedly battleships, were firing. Smaller, more rapid firing from closer in—those were destroyers—but then every couple of minutes, with almost stately precision, two giant eruptions of light, each turret lighting off a few seconds after the next, the gun blasts so brilliant, even from five or more miles out, as to cast shadows on the mountains, followed fifteen seconds or so later by geysering impacts of fourteen-inch shells, the concussion, even at this distance, numbing.

“The hell with this,” Margaret snapped, and downshifting the car she swung out over the double yellow line, and hit the gas.

Her mother squealed in terror; he said nothing. When she hit one of these moods, which was exceedingly rare, he knew better than to protest—and besides, dozens of others, in front and behind her, were doing the same. Hardly any traffic was coming over the pass heading east, and if it was, it was being run off the road by the thousands now trying to flee into the center of the island.

They slowed for a moment, edging around the shoulder to get past where a head-on collision had occurred, most likely just moments before, one of the cars burning.

Strange how in little more than eighteen hours he had already become inured to the anguish created by war. Someone was inside the burning car, thankfully not moving. A woman clutching a child was beside the funeral pyre, screaming, being restrained by two teenage boys.

They reached the top of the pass, slowing for a moment due to the bumper-to-bumper traffic… and ironically the sea behind them was now dark. The bombardment had stopped.

A number of cars were pulled over by the side of the highway, people out, staring back at the place from where they had just fled.

At the top of the pass, working under the glare of several sets of truck headlights, some national guardsmen were setting up a couple of antiquated seventy-five-millimeter guns, relics of the last war. He shook his head. At dawn, if an invasion was on, this would be one of the first places they’d shell, or they’d send in a few bombers. They should be deploying on the back slope of the mountain, under
concealment, not out in the open as they were now doing. My God, he wondered, are we really such amateurs? He wanted to stop, to shout some advice, but knew his suggestion would be ignored.

Margaret slowed in the traffic and finally came to a stop in the confusion.

“Is it over?” she asked. “Should we go back?”

He shook his head.

“No. Janice’s place will be safer.”

She shifted back into gear, went up over the shoulder on the east-bound side to get around yet another accident, this one fortunately not fatal and burning, and started down out of the pass.

She said nothing. He looked over at her, her so-attractive black hair, dark eyes and complexion, more oriental than occidental. And he felt fear. If this indeed is the first move of an invasion, what will happen to her?

He had been at Shanghai, had talked with his friend Cecil about Nanking. A beautiful woman like Margaret? He knew what would happen if this island paradise became a battlefield.

Or on the other side, might the rage be so intense tomorrow, invasion or not, that someone might decide to start stringing up Japanese civilians? It still happened with Negroes in the South; why not Japanese on Oahu after this day, or when the invasion started, if it started?

After coasting for several miles down the Pali Highway, traffic having thinned out somewhat, they turned off into a small development on the northern edge of Honolulu. Janice lived alone; her husband, God save him, was an Army major with MacArthur in the Philippines.

As they turned into her driveway he could see a flutter of curtains. A moment later the door cracked open and she came running out, falling into the arms of Margaret’s mother, her aunt. Both spoke hurriedly in Japanese.

Janice had on her Red Cross uniform.

Margaret got out of the car and the two embraced and for a moment she didn’t notice that James had slid over and was now in the driver’s seat, the car’s engine still running.

She looked back.

“James, what are you doing?”

“I have to go back to the base. If it’s an invasion that’s where I have to be.”

“Damn it, James,” she sighed, anger in her eyes, as if arguing with a recalcitrant child, “this is ridiculous. You’re wounded, you’ve done enough.”

“I have to do my duty,” was all he could say in reply, wondering if the words sounded pompous, but knowing no other way of expressing it.

She leaned over, drawing closer to him, so close that he could smell her perfume, and it lowered his guard.

“What about us?” she whispered. “I might be OK, but what about Mom and Janice? You heard what Ed Simpson was shouting. We need you here.”

He felt his throat tighten. She was right, of course. Invasion or not, he should be thinking of his family now. They needed his protection, be it from the Japanese or some angry lynch mob that might go wild during the night.

And at that instant there were more flashes of light. It was impossible to see from which direction they were coming, or where they were hitting, but a deep rumbling echoed around them as the first shells impacted into Honolulu, as the attacking fleet rounded Diamond Head.

He thought of his comrades, Collingwood, the crew from the decrypt center. What the hell could they do now? Their building had been destroyed in the third strike. What can we do?

But he knew he had to go back, even if just to be with them. Annapolis, twenty years of active duty, were ingrained too deeply into his soul to turn his back on that duty now. He had to be with them, even if the gesture was useless, even if it meant leaving all he had left in this world.

He drew the .38 out from his belt, handed it to Margaret and clumsily fished out the box of shells and gave them to her as well.

“I’m leaving this here with you,” he said, hesitating, “just in case.”

“In case of what?” He didn’t reply at first.

“I wish to hell you had let me train you with this,” he said.

She held the gun nervously and Janice came over, took the pistol, gripping it properly.

“I’ll give her a quick run-through,” Janice said. “I used to go shooting with Tom all the time. This is a double action, isn’t it?”

“First cylinder’s empty. Load it up,” James said.

“Any news?” she asked, and he briefly told her about the bombardment on the east side of the island.

“I was getting set to go down to the fire station, where they’re setting up a blood bank center,” she said. “I’ll get Nana and Margaret settled in first though, and show her how to use the gun.”

“Thanks, Janice.”

He hesitated.

“Maybe you should stay here as well,” James finally said, “just in case things,” again a pause, “turn ugly.”

“It’s only a couple of blocks to the fire station,” she replied casually. “Besides this neighborhood is mostly folks like…”

Her voice trailed off, and her gaze was lowered for a moment.

Like us, he thought, Japanese or half Japanese.

“Promise me this, though,” he replied. “If this is the start of an invasion, I want you to get the hell out. Get Margaret and Nan, get up into the mountains and wait it out.”

He paused.

“Remember what I told you about Nanking. You got one pistol between the three of you, I expect you to know how to use it.”

Damn, this was starting to feel like a bad movie, he thought. What am I supposed to do next, tell her to save the last three bullets for themselves?

“Got ya,” Janice said airily.

She stepped back from the car window, casually flipping the gun open and taking an extra shell out of the box. She slipped it into the cylinder, snapping it shut and testing the feel of the gun. Her
husband, career army, had obviously taught her well. James tried to reassure himself that they’d be safe.

Margaret came back alongside him, reached in, and touched his face.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You know I love you.”

She hesitated, and he could sense that she was tempted to try a coup, to simply pull the car door open and drag him out. And as he gazed back at her, only inches away, he silently appealed for her not to do it. He was weak, exhausted, in pain, and just might succumb, and then forever after hold himself in contempt.

The hesitation lingered, and then she leaned in closer, putting a hand behind his neck, drawing him in, kissing him passionately.

“I understand,” she whispered, pulling back, her voice near to breaking.