Pearl Harbour and Days of Infamy

by Newt Gingrich

  With the suggestion that she handle the surgery to his injured arm, Nan visibly trembled but then nodded, becoming her old stoic self. She went into her bedroom and came back out a minute later with her sewing kit. Margaret helped her, bringing a small pot of water to boil, dumping in a couple of large needles her mother had chosen and a long length of thread

  As he watched them, he suddenly regretted his own bravado, feeling a bit lightheaded. Memories of the Panay hit him. He remembered lying in the mud, a chief petty officer tying a tourniquet around his lower arm. He remembered the raging infection that hit within a day, the amputation of his hand while he was still awake, and the doctor fearing to use a general anesthetic because of the pneumonia that had hit him due to his aspirating the fetid waters of the Yangtze River

  Now that his mother-in-law actually had something to do, she was all business, watching the water boil, telling her daughter to wash her hands and then pour more iodine into the wound

  The sting of the iodine as Margaret gingerly pushed back the fold of puffy flesh made his head swim, and at the sight of his pain Margaret struggled to stifle her tears

  “No crying now,” Nan announced. “Be brave like him.”

  Brave like him? He was all but ready to collapse in panic as his mother-in-law doused her own hands in iodine, fished the needle out of the boiling water with a spatula, did the same with the thread, expertly threaded the sewing needle, then turned to face him

  “Maybe you look away,” she said in English, sitting down by his side. First she pried the wound open, looking at it carefully. The cut went clear to the stump of bone, blood rapidly oozing out as she spread it open

  “Don’t see anything in there, looks like what hit you slashed across,” she said in Japanese

  She gently closed the wound then held a needle aloft. Margaret grasped his good hand and he focused on her eyes

  Surprisingly the first puncture of the needle really didn’t hurt all that much more, but after the third or fourth stitch, as she tightened the thread, pulling the open folds of the wound in together, he had to fight down the urge to scream. Even if he wanted to pull away he couldn’t; the old woman with a powerful left hand was holding his arm in place, even as she stitched with her right hand

  Another eight to ten stitches went in. She even started to hum softly, and that did bring tears to his eyes. It was a traditional Japanese lullaby, one she used to hum to their lost child David when he was a boy, and also when he was sick and dying from leukemia nearly a decade ago

  From the corner of his eye he saw her draw the needle up one more time, bring it down, tie it off, bite the end of the thread off, and then smile

  “Good job,” she announced proudly, and he looked down at her handiwork and, in spite of the pain, nodded. The stitches were well placed, even, close together

  The old woman wiped the bloody needle on her dress sleeve, dropped it back into her sewing kit, and then bandaged the wound

  “You go to bed,” she ordered

  He fumbled in his breast pocket. It was empty, but for once Margaret did not object and reached around behind him for the half-finished pack of Lucky Strikes. She put one to his lips and even nicked his Zippo lighter

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t make it a habit,” Margaret said, trying to force a smile. Leaning up, she kissed him on the forehead. “I plan to keep you around for a long time yet. The enemy can’t kill you but those damn cigarettes will.”

  Funny the way she chose the word enemy. She was half Japanese. She couldn’t bring herself to use the word Jap, but there was a bitter snap to how she said “enemy.”

  “I really should go back to the base.”

  “Not tonight you won’t,” Margaret replied forcefully, and her mother looked over her shoulder and nodded agreement

  “There is nothing more you can do tonight. Besides, you said your building was destroyed, and what will they need with a cryptographer anyhow?”

  He looked at her a bit startled. In the eleven months since he had been called back to duty, not once had he used that word. He had even lectured his wife and mother-in-law on the fact that he could never discuss with them anything about his job other than that it had something to do with math

  “What secrets does a wife not know?” she said with a soft smile

  “Remember I do your laundry, and you do have a habit of talking in your sleep at times.”

  She leaned over and kissed him again

  “Don’t worry, dear. I’m not a gossip or a boaster the way some of these navy wives are. Your secret is good with me.”

  A flash illuminated the room. For a split second civilian thinking still held sway: it was a lightning bolt. Then more flashes, strobelike, one on another spaced fractions of a second apart. His mother-in-law stood by the kitchen sink, the light cascading in from the open window, covered by a curtain

  All three remained frozen in place, James unable to react

  Surely it couldn’t be?

  There was still silence, though out in the street below he heard screaming, panicked voices. A gunshot echoed

  A burst of blue glowing light ignited, holding steady, redoubling a second later, and then redoubling again. He thought he heard, as well, the distant sound of a plane engine, drawing closer

  He came to his feet, and going to the kitchen sink pulled the curtain back, ignoring the blackout order

  And he saw it, hovering over the airbase at Kaneohe, illumination flares floating in the sky

  The drone of the engine grew louder, and he pulled open the side door from the kitchen that led out to the open lanai and looked up

  Nothing for a moment. Another gunshot from the street, followed by several more

  “The Japs are coming! The Japs!” It was his neighbor, Ed Simpson, shouting wildly, pointing his pump shotgun to the sky and then firing again

  And now, out to sea, more flashes, several dozen and concurrent. At last came the distant sound of thunder from the first salvo of star shells

  “James?”

  Margaret was by his side, clutching his left arm, forgetting about his wound and the pain it caused, his mother-in-law standing fearfully behind him, peering out from around his shoulder

  He counted the seconds, ten, fifteen ... and then the impacts on the naval airfield, where a dozen fires still raged from the earlier attacks

  Seconds later the shock wave could be felt in the soles of his feet, and then finally the distant rumble of the explosions of five-, six-, and fourteen-inch shells

  He turned and looked to his right. Fort Bellows was but a half mile distant, upslope. There was a single flash of light in reply, a couple of seconds later the concussion of the lone eight-inch coastal gun washing over them, causing Margaret and her mother to jump

  More flashes out to sea. He had them sighted now, standing out in stark relief against the nearly full moon rising behind them. It was hard to judge, but it was apparent the ships out there were moving southward. If they were hitting Kaneohe, Bellows would be next, most likely within a few minutes, and their small town of Kailua was smack in the middle between the two

  “We’re getting out of here now!” he shouted. “Margaret, get the keys for the car.”

  “James?”

  “Now. We’re getting out of here now!”

  He turned to go back into the house. Wincing, he struggled to get his soiled, bloodstained uniform jacket back on

  Then Margaret was by his side, helping him to get the jacket up over his shoulder, taking the time to button it up. Though long ago he had mastered getting dressed and properly buttoned with one hand, Margaret had always insisted upon helping when she was around, and frankly even at this moment, it was still endearing

  A thought hit him about the panic that was breaking out. He opened up the drawer of the nightstand by his side of the bed and pulled out a heavy Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, snapped it open to check if it was loaded, closed it, and stuck it into his belt, the weight of it making him feel
a bit ridiculous, like some desperado. For safety he had always kept the cylinder under the hammer empty; more than one idiot had accidentally shot himself carrying a gun with a cartridge under the hammer. He pulled out a box of shells and stuffed them into his pocket

  Margaret, watching him, said nothing. She hated guns, objected to his keeping a loaded pistol in their bedroom, but she didn’t object now

  “Where’s Mother?” she asked

  He looked around. She had disappeared

  “Damn it, Mother!”

  He headed for her bedroom and found her there. She was on her knees, a tattered cardboard box pulled out from under her bed. Weeping, she was carefully sorting through aged, yellowed photographs, setting some aside

  “We don’t have time now, Mother,” he said, trying to be gentle

  She looked up at him, crying

  “These are all I have,” she said in Japanese, and a lump came to his throat when he saw that most of the photos she was drawing out of the box were of her and David, one a framed picture of him on his baptism day, his grandmother proudly holding him

  Nothing had ever been said between Margaret and him about it, but there was only one small photograph of David on display in their house, on Margaret’s vanity, her favorite picture of the two of them on his first day at kindergarten, her little boy about to face the world . . . and David was clutching her, arms around her shoulders, crying in front of the school, and she in tears, trying to smile bravely as he had taken the image. He did not know that his mother-in-law, had, in fact, saved all the other photographs across the years. On the day David died, in a blind fit of anguish, he had taken the photographs down from the walls, swept them off tables and mantle tops, and thrown them out. She had obviously recovered every one of them

  If he had lived, David would be eighteen now. Eighteen and ever so proud of his father, he might have gone into the Navy, and perhaps at this moment be down in that hellhole at Kaneohe, or dead back at Pearl Harbor

  “Take that one,” he finally said, pointing to the baptism photograph, struggling to hold back his own tears as he reached out with his one hand and got her to her feet

  Clutching the one photograph, she headed for the door, Margaret running to hurry her along, and he could not help but notice that Margaret was cradling her favorite photograph of David as well

  They went out the front door and Margaret paused to fumble with the keys. Though one rarely locked one’s home in this neighborhood, she now planned to

  “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 cent
er 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?