He turned for one look back from the bridge. Akagi was now listing over thirty degrees, the starboard side of the deck awash. A last few were still going over the side just aft amidships, where there was a hole in the fires that entirely engulfed both bow and stern. Two destroyers were close alongside, cargo mats draped over into the water, oil-soaked men looking like black ants climbing up them, while launches were in the water picking up the injured and those too weak to climb. Another destroyer trailed astern, picking up men going off the aft end of the ship.
“Let’s go then,” he said softly and went back through the bridge, which was now empty except for a few of his loyal staff and his personal steward. He hesitated.
“My lighter and cigarette case?” he asked, and his steward smiled, reached into his pocket and pulled them out. The lighter, an American Zippo, keepsake gift from an American captain whose name he could no longer remember; the cigarette case, won in a card game years ago, back at Harvard.
He went out onto the deck. Several firefighters were waiting. They tossed asbestos blankets to him and Genda, draping them over their heads to ward off the intense heat, the blaze consuming the deck. Another explosion lit off below; the ship lurched, as if trying to rise out of the water. Another explosion rippled after the first one; what had been the forward elevator unhinged, lifting up thirty or more feet into the air. The fire crew pressed in around their admiral as fragments and burning pieces of deck came raining down.
The deck was slick with water and firefighting foam. It was nearly impossible to keep his footing, and he slipped, nearly sliding off and into the gun deck, its railing already beneath the water, which was black with oil.
A destroyer was lying fifty yards off, dangerously close if the ship should actually pitch up over and start a death toll. A few cables were slung across, a stretcher case being transferred, and the firefighters directed him to one of the lines. There was still a wounded man waiting to be transferred, face bloated from steam burns, eyes swollen shut.
“Him first,” Yamamoto announced, and no one thought to argue, waiting a few tense moments as the sling was run back over, the stretcher secured.
Water was now lapping up onto the side of the deck. Below came an endless cascade of crashing, as lockers, mess gear, plates, tools, anything that could move was breaking loose, each additional pound of weight shifting Akagi further off balance, adding its mass to the water still pouring in through the holes slashed by the torpedoes.
He could tell she was going.
He looked at Genda and forced a smile.
“Time to go, forget the line,” and he motioned to the water now-lapping but a few feet away. Genda hesitated.
“I am the last one off,” he announced sharply. He turned to the fire and rescue crew, who were preparing to run the transfer line back from the destroyer.
“Into the water, my men. Your duty here is done.”
They hesitated, a few even bowing, refusing until their admiral went first.
“Now! I won’t leave until you do.”
There was hesitation, and the half dozen men stepped off into the oil-slick water and started to swim toward the destroyer. Genda looked at his admiral.
“You promise you will follow. If not, sir, I could never live with the shame of leaving you. I will kill myself if you do not come with me.”
He smiled.
“I can’t allow you to do that. All right then, together, but you take the first step and try and keep our Z flag out of this muck.”
Genda stepped off into the water and he followed suit.
His life belt kept his head well above the water, but the slapping of the choppy water between the two ships splashed oil into his face and eyes, stinging them. It was hard to see as he swam the few strokes over to the destroyer. When crew members aboard realized who was approaching, several jumped in, coming to his side, and he shouted for them to first help Genda, who was floundering, trying to keep one hand above the oil-slicked water, clutching the canvas bag containing the Z flag.
Together they reached the netting, and eager hands pulled him aloft and onto the deck of the destroyer, whose captain stood at rigid attention, saluting the admiral, his white uniform now stained black with oil.
“I am transferring my flag to your ship,” Yamamoto said formally.
“I am humbled and honored by your presence, sir.”
“We’re the last. May I suggest cutting away lines and moving away,” Yamamoto ordered.
Seconds later the lines were cut. The engines slowly revved up, helm put over gently to turn away without swinging their fantail into the dying carrier. He could sense the sighs of relief by all aboard.
Akagi loomed like a giant above them. With the angle of list, the bridge all but towered directly above the small destroyer, threatening to engulf it if the ship should roll, the heat of the inferno consuming the carrier so intense he actually had to shield his face. A sailor offered him a basin of fresh water and a white towel. He made it a point of first passing it to Genda, who rinsed out his eyes, wiped his face somewhat clean, and then with a bow passed the soiled towel back to Yamamoto, who did the same. The sailor took the towel back, clutching it as if were now some honored, historic heirloom.
They were making way, standing a hundred yards off, then a hundred and fifty.
Another explosion, this one bursting somewhere below the water line, flame and a geyser of water soaring up, the great ship lurching; then more explosions, louder. He sensed it must be the torpedo or bomb lockers far below, their detonations ripping out the keel of the ship.
She started to settle, list now over sixty degrees, and then the death plunge began, deck nearly vertical so that for a moment it looked as if she would indeed roll over, and then this beloved ship simply died, like a beloved dog that drew a final breath and then slowly laid its head down. Resting on her starboard side, stern angling down slightly, Akagi settled deeper and deeper, great blasts of air, steam, and smoke venting out her starboard side, water foaming.
To his horror he saw a few men were still on board after all. Somehow they had made it up to stand precariously on what had been the side of the ship, perhaps blown clear out by the blasts of air escaping the ship. One of them actually appeared to salute. A sigh, a cry went up from all those watching and Yamamoto, crying unashamedly, saluted back. In spite of his belief in the absurdity of the tradition of a highly trained officer feeling compelled to die with his ship when rescue was but yards away, he felt a wave of guilt for leaving those who had been trapped aboard.
And then she was gone. Oil and smoke bubbled up from the foaming sea; a moment later explosions rocked the destroyer as they tore through Akagi even as she started her long slide down to the ocean floor. Then there was nothing but an oil-slick sea, wreckage bubbling up, and the vast ocean had claimed another victim of the war.
A bugler on the destroyer sounded a ceremonial flourish, a salute to the fallen. All bowed their heads, and nearly all wept. A lone Zero came down low, skimming over the water, and then pulled up, rocking its wings in salute.
Over Akagi
Fuchida wept with them. The strike wave that had destroyed Lexington was returning, and those who had flown off their beloved Akagi were being ordered to land on any carrier available.
But he could not leave her yet as he pulled up from his salute, circling one more time before breaking toward Kaga, to go into the landing pattern . . . and then he saw it. A thin, almost invisible wake was closing in on Kaga but two miles ahead.
“Submarine two miles off Kaga’s bow!” he shouted, sending the message in the clear, and he dived over, lining up, and began to strafe. With luck perhaps one of his twenty-millimeter rounds just might strike the periscope, but at least his gunfire would mark the position.
USS Thresher
“Shit!”
“Dive! Take her deep!”
Captain Lubbers slapped up the handles of the periscope, stepping back, a petty officer hitting the periscope down button. T
here was a vibration--something had hit the periscope. Thresher started to arc down.
Another minute at most, and he could have put four fish into that other damn carrier. It had been coming straight at him.
“Damn it!”
Through the hull he could hear soft thumps, explosions. He cursed that damn Zero, which he had only caught a glimpse of, as water began to foam up around the periscope lens.
“We better get ready. They’ve spotted us,” was all he said, heading down from the periscope room to the main deck.
“Did you get that signal out about the Jap carrier sinking?” he asked, looking over at his radio operator, who grinned, nodded, and gave him a thumbs up.
“Wish it’d been us that did it,” he said bitterly, his attention turned away to his sound detector, who announced he had something inbound, sounding like a destroyer.
With those fat carriers out there, they were going to be swarming all over him, he realized bitterly. Angling down now through a hundred feet, his firing solution on the carrier lost, he raged in silent frustration. Without doubt the fattest targets of the war had decided to steam straight at him. He should have fired earlier, instead of electing to wait until range was down to two thousand yards. And now the moment was lost.
But at least he had had the pleasure of watching the other Jap go down, and even as they dived they could hear the distant rumbling of the huge ship, as it sank into the depths, bulkheads collapsing, explosions rumbling, the noise so loud it all but drowned out the sound of the approaching destroyers that would doggedly follow him and drop depth charges for the next two hours.
Chapter Fourteen
Lexington December 9, 1941 09:55 hrs local time
“I think there’s supposed to be some tradition that I’m to be the last one off,” Captain Sherman announced, trying to put a smile on, though the anguish in his voice was obvious.
“Fine then, you got it,” Admiral Newton replied.
The old Lady Lex was heavy down by the bow, water now beginning to pour in through the huge hole blasted there by the secondary explosion of the aviation gas. As the thousands upon thousands of gallons of seawater began to cascade in, the ocean did what the firefighters could not, dousing the flames eight decks below. Vents of hissing steam and smoke roared back up.
A destroyer and cruiser lay off her side. Dozens of launches were in the water, picking up survivors. The last of the sixteen hundred men were leaving four hundred of their dead comrades behind.
He walked to the edge of the deck and noted something strange. There were rows of shoes; for some reason men had taken them off before jumping off. He looked down at his old “brown shoes,” proud symbol of a naval aviator, and opted to keep them on.
It was roughly a twenty-foot drop. Lex was going to go down bow first, rather than rolling over, though the list to port was significant, otherwise it would have been a nearly deadly eighty-foot jump.
A hundred or more ropes dangled over the side. More than a few of his men had decided to try and climb down rather than take the jump, but the ropes were now so slick with oil that such an attempt simply resulted in bad friction burns to the hands.
He took his flag and handed it to his steward.
“Can you manage this?” he asked.
The steward smiled, saluted, set down a duffel bag, and stuffed the flag inside. Admiral Newton asked for the same regarding his flag. The duffel bag had two Mae Wests secured to it.
Sherman looked back toward the bridge, the famed silhouette unique to Lexington and Saratoga. Fires, boiling up from the abandoned engine room, were pouring out a soaring plume of black smoke from the stacks, and the bridge itself was aflame now.
He could feel the list increasing under his feet as the bow slipped deeper beneath the waves, and as it did so the distance to the water actually began to increase where they stood.
“Over you go, gentlemen,” Sherman announced, and he even gave Newton a bit of a shove as the commander of the task force leapt off, steward and the last of the bridge staff following.
He paused a moment, looking about, wanting to make sure he was the last able-bodied man off. He saw a couple of jumpers farther aft, cradling between them a wounded comrade, an “asbestos Joe” sitting on the edge, kicking off his bright leggings and then slipping off the side, hitting the water and surfacing. He was about to jump when he spotted a chaplain who was coming out of the smoke, walking backward slowly, looking toward the inferno amidships.
“Come on, Padre! Over with you.”
The man looked at him, face tear streaked, and actually shook his head.
“Padre, now!”
“I had to leave four men down there,” the priest cried, a sob shuddering through him.
There was a moment of horror at the implication that the padre was looking for help, that he’d have to go back.
“They were dying, we couldn’t move them they were so badly burned. I gave them last rites.” He began to sob. “They told me to go. Two of them were brothers.”
He was clutching a sheet of note paper, names and addresses scribbled on them.
“Padre, you staying won’t change it for them,” Sherman said, his own voice husky with emotion. “Now come on, jump with me.”
The padre stood next to him, hesitated, and shook his head.
“Damn it, Father, you don’t go, I don’t go. The Lord is with them now, we can’t do anything more for them.”
He pointed to the paper crumpled up in the priest’s hand.
“Give that to me.”
The priest did not resist as Sherman took the sheet of paper and scanned the names: two seamen second class from Millburn, New Jersey, a lieutenant from Texas, a petty officer--merciful God, he recognized the name, an old hand on Lex from the engine room.
He folded the slip of paper up and stuck it into his pocket. “Find me after this and we’ll write the letters together. OK?” The priest nodded.
Before he could say another word, Sherman forcefully shoved him over the side. He spared one final glance back, saluted the bridge, the American flag still flying above it, turned, and jumped.
Minutes later he was on the deck of the old cruiser Chicago. Picked up by their launch boat, Newton had preceded him up the netting. He had hung on to the padre, pushing him into the launch first and then up the net, just to make sure that the distraught priest did not do anything foolish and try to go back.
Ritual was followed as he was piped aboard, returning the salute of Chicago’s captain, who greeted him and shook his hand.
“Sir, Portland, Astoria, and two destroyers are currently engaged at long range with a Japanese cruiser to our southwest about twenty miles from here.”
Newton, black with oil, but face wiped clean, already had binoculars up, trained aft, and even without the binoculars Sherman could see Astoria, hull down on the horizon, flashes of gunfire.
An explosion rocked Lexington, and his attention was focused back on his ship. Her stern was rising rapidly. It seemed impossibly high out of the water, surely her back would break from the strain but she held together. And then ever so slowly she began her death slide, going down at the bow, flags still flying.
A shiver went down his back. The Chicago was noted for its band. Only a handful could be spared, a few brass and woodwinds, the rest of them at crucial battle stations. They began to play the old Navy hymn.
“Eternal Father, Strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave...”
The priest began to sing, others joined him. Sherman, too, choked with emotion, joined in.
The Lexington died as a lady, slipping away quietly. More than a few around him were crying as they sang.
The first stanza of the hymn finished, and a lone trumpeter now blew “Taps.” For so many that was what did them in, tears flowing down oil-streaked faces.
He thought of the four men below still alive, wondered how many in fact were still alive within her, trapped beneath flooded compartments, fatally wo
unded, comrades in anguish to be leaving them behind. He thought of the note in his pocket, how he could explain this to the parents of the two boys, what lie would he tell them to give them comfort.
“Dear God, grant them a peaceful death,” he whispered.
Her stern disappeared beneath the waves . . . She was gone.
There was a moment of silence, the last note of “Taps” echoing out over the ocean, distant gunfire rumbling across the waves.
Honolulu 10:05 hrs local time
Dianne stirred from her slumber and awoke, disoriented for a moment. Where am I? The question so many always asked when awakening in a strange place, made infinitely worse when seconds later the memories of the day before, the horrible reality of it all came back to her consciousness. She sat up.
The house was quiet. She couldn’t remember their names, the names of James’s wife and mother-in-law. She did remember they were Japanese. Where was James?
She called his name, trying to sound formal now. “Commander Watson?” No response.
She stood and walked into the kitchen. There was the smell of fresh coffee, some toast on the table as if waiting for her. She poured a cup, looking around.
She actually had known very little about James until this last day. He was a commander, a married man, ring evident, always kind and polite to her in an almost fatherly way. She had heard about how he lost his hand in the Panay incident, had been a college professor.
She nursed the cup of coffee: Kona beans, yet another reason She loved living in Hawaii--at least up until two days ago. She walked back into the living room, noticed the sofa where she had slept, and then the recollection came back of an old woman holding her as she cried, whispering softly, singing something to her as she drifted off to sleep. Singing in Japanese, but the words had the feel of a lullaby. Incongruous, a .38 revolver rested on a side table. While I slept, she thought, these Japs had a gun.
God damn, why did that old woman have to be so nice, she thought.
Pearl Harbour and Days of Infamy Page 68
