Red Sky Over Hawaii

by Sara Ackerman

  Inspired by real places and events of WWII, Red Sky Over Hawaii immerses the reader in a time of American history full of suspicion and peril in this lush and poignant tale about the indisputable power of doing the right thing against all odds.

  The attack on Pearl Harbor changes everything for Lana Hitchcock. Arriving home on the Big Island too late to reconcile with her estranged father, she is left alone to untangle the clues of his legacy, which lead to a secret property tucked away in the remote rain forest of Kilauea volcano. When the government starts taking away her neighbors as suspected sympathizers, Lana shelters two young German girls, a Japanese fisherman and his son. As tensions escalate, they are forced into hiding—only to discover the hideaway house is not what they expected.

  When a detainment camp is established nearby, Lana struggles to keep the secrets of those in her care. Trust could have dangerous consequences. As their lives weave together, Lana begins to understand the true meaning of family and how the bonds of love carry us through the worst times.

  Praise for the novels of Sara Ackerman

  “Ackerman’s winning historical novel is fast-paced and rife with nonstop action, romance, and suspense.”

  —Publishers Weekly on The Lieutenant’s Nurse

  “Ackerman has a real talent for writing vivid descriptions and compelling characters.... I couldn’t put this one down. Highly recommended.”

  —Historical Novel Society, Editor’s Choice, on The Lieutenant’s Nurse

  “The Lieutenant’s Nurse illuminates the attack on Pearl Harbor with a riveting drama told from a unique perspective. Sara Ackerman brings a time and place to vivid life, putting a human and heroic face on events that changed history. I savored every page!”

  —Susan Wiggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Set against the backdrop of the attack on Pearl Harbor, The Lieutenant’s Nurse is an emotional and heartfelt tale of love and courage. Depicting a dramatic period in history, Ackerman’s richly detailed and evocative writing transports the reader, bringing Hawaii to life.”

  —Chanel Cleeton, USA TODAY bestselling author of Next Year in Havana

  “A dramatic saga of motherhood, loss and the possibility of renewal... With a sensitive touch and an instinct for authenticity, Ackerman depicts the fraught nature of wartime relationships…mixes romance, suspense and history into a bittersweet story of cinematic proportions.”

  —BookPage on Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers

  “A close-up look at how wartime chaos affects a tight-knit group of women living on Hawaii in 1944 at the height of Pacific combat.... [Violet’s] journey overcoming her trials and grief through friendship, family, and romance is a story of strength and perseverance.”

  —Booklist on Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers

  “Strong female friendships and an unusual World War II home front setting add to this debut novel’s appeal for historical fiction fans.”

  —Library Journal on Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers

  Also by Sara Ackerman

  Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers

  The Lieutenant’s Nurse

  Sara Ackerman

  Red Sky Over Hawaii

  For my beautiful mother, Diane McFaull, who planted all the seeds.

  Contents

  Love & Magic

  The Road

  The Knowing

  The House

  The Homecoming

  The Germans

  The News

  The Visitors

  The Wall

  The Encounter

  The Cold

  The Volcano House

  The Hors

  The Lunch

  The Roundup

  The Room

  The Cookies

  The Crater

  The Date

  The Cards

  The Lemonade

  The Houseguests

  The Camp

  The Departure

  Christmas

  The Glow

  The Gift

  The Afterward

  Love & Magic

  Author Note

  Acknowledgments

  Reader’s Guide

  Questions for Discussion

  LOVE & MAGIC

  When I close my eyes, I still see the fiery glow of lava in Halema‘uma‘u crater. Sometimes if I’m not careful, I find myself walking through the clouds while the honeycreepers build nests in my hair. I can’t see where I’m going, but I don’t care. To be there with my boots crunching on lava is sweeter than any honey from the hives. Bees swirl around me. I still feel my hand in his and the sound of his voice whispering in my tired ear.

  In the end, we remember those slices of time where we feel the most—love, anguish, joy, sorrow, fright. I don’t care what the reason. Maybe it was the day you first realized you were mortal or that first moment you saw love walk in the door. Or that no matter how many years passed, you would still be that girl, the barefoot one with long brown hair and a penny in her pocket. Maybe it was when you suddenly realized you had everything to lose and you were too blind to notice. What matters most is what lives in your heart, and if there is one thing I know, it is this: love is the only way.

  And magic.

  I guess that’s two.

  THE ROAD

  December 8, 1941

  With every mile closer to Volcano, the fog thickened, until they were driving through a forest of white gauze with the occasional branch showing through. Lana considered turning the truck around no less than forty-six times. Going back to Hilo would have been the prudent thing to do, but this was not a time for prudence. Of that she was sure. She slowed the Chevy to a crawl and checked the rearview mirror. The cage with the geese was now invisible, and she could barely make out the dog’s big black spots.

  Maybe the fog would be to their advantage.

  “I don’t like it here at all,” said Coco, who was smashed up next to Lana, scrawny arms folded in protest. The child had to almost yell to be heard above the chug of the motor.

  Lana grabbed a blanket from the floor. “Put this over you. It should help.”

  Coco shook her head. “I’m not cold. I want to go home. Can you please take us back?”

  Goose bumps had formed up and down her limbs, but she was so stubborn that she had refused to put on a jacket. True, Hilo was insufferably hot, but where they were headed—four thousand feet up the mountain—the air was cold and damp and flimsy.

  It had been over ten years since Lana had set foot at Kīlauea. Never would she have guessed to be returning under these circumstances.

  Marie chimed in. “We can’t go back now, sis. And anyway, there’s no one to go back to at the moment.”

  Poor Coco trembled. Lana wished she could hug the girl and tell her everything was going to be okay. But that would be a lie. Things were liable to get a whole lot worse before they got any better.

  “Sorry, honey. I wish things were different, but right now you two are my priority. Once we get to the house, we can make a plan,” Lana said.

  “But you don’t even know where it is,” Coco whined.

  “I have a good idea.”

  More like a vague notion.

  “What if we don’t find it by dark? Are they going to shoot us?” Coco said.

  Marie put her arm around Coco and pulled her in. “Turn off that little overactive imagination of yours. No one is going to shoot us,” she said, but threw a questioning glance Lana’s way.

  “We’ll be fine,” Lana said, wishing she believed that.
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  The girls were not the real problem here. Of greater concern was what they had hidden in the back of the truck. Curfew was six o’clock, but people had been ordered to stay off the roads unless their travel was essential to the war. Lana hadn’t told the girls that. Driving up here was a huge risk, but she had invented a story she hoped and prayed would let them get through if anyone stopped them. The thought of a checkpoint caused her palms to break out in sweat, despite the icy air blowing in through the cracks in the floorboard.

  On a good day, the road from Hilo to Volcano would take about an hour and a half. Today was not a good day. Every so often they hit a rut the size of a whiskey barrel that bounced her head straight into the roof. The continuous drizzle of the rain forest had undermined all attempts at smooth roads here. At times the ride was reminiscent of the plane ride from Honolulu. Exactly two days ago, but felt more like a lifetime.

  Lana’s main worry was what they would encounter once in the vicinity of the national park entrance. With the Kīlauea military camp nearby, there were bound to be soldiers and roadblocks in the area. She had so many questions for her father and felt a mixed ache of sadness and resentment that he was not here to answer them. How were you so sure the Japanese were coming? Why the volcano, of all places? How are we going to survive up here? Why didn’t you call me sooner?

  Coco seemed to settle down, leaning her nut-brown ringlets against her sister’s shoulder and closing her eyes. There was something comforting in the roar of the engine and the jostle of the truck. With the whiteout it was hard to tell where they were, but by all estimates they should be arriving soon.

  Lana was dreaming of a cup of hot coffee when Coco sat upright and said, “I have to go tinkle.”

  “Tinkle?” Lana asked.

  Marie said, “She means she has to go to the bathroom.”

  They drove until they found a grassy shoulder, and Lana pulled the truck aside, though they could have stopped in the middle of the road. They had met only one other vehicle the whole way, a police car that fortunately had passed by.

  The rain had let up, and they all climbed out. It was like walking through a cloud, and the air smelled metallic and faintly lemony from the eucalyptus that lined the road. Lana went to check on Sailor. The dog stood up and whined, yanking on the rope around her neck, straining to be pet. Poor thing was drenched and shaking. Lana had wanted to leave her behind with a neighbor, but Coco had put up such a fuss, throwing herself onto her bed and wailing and punching the pillow, that Lana relented. Caring for the girls would be hard enough, but a hundred-and-twenty-pound dog?

  “Just a bathroom stop. Is everyone okay back here?” she asked in a hushed voice. Two low grunts came from under the tarp. “We should be there soon. Remember, be still and don’t make a sound if we stop again.”

  As if on cue, one of the hidden passengers started a coughing fit, shaking the whole tarp. She wondered how wise it was to subject him to this long and chilly ride, and if it might be the death of him. But the alternative was worse.

  “Deep breaths...you can do it,” Lana said.

  Coco showed up and hopped onto the back tire. “I think we should put Sailor inside with us. She looks miserable.”

  “Whose lap do you propose she sits on?” Lana said.

  Sailor was as tall as a small horse, but half as wide.

  “I can sit in the back of the truck and she can come up here, then,” Coco said in all seriousness.

  “Not in those clothes you won’t. We don’t need you catching pneumonia on us.”

  They started off again, and ten seconds down the road, Sailor started howling at the top of her lungs. Lana felt herself on the verge of unraveling. The last thing they needed was one extra ounce of attention. The whole idea of coming up here was preposterous when she thought about it. At the time it had seemed like a good idea, but now she wondered at her sanity.

  “What is wrong with that dog?” Lana said, annoyed.

  Coco turned around, and Lana felt her hot breath against her arm. In the smallest of voices, she said, “Sailor is scared.”

  Lana felt her heart crack. “Oh, honey, we’re all a bit scared. It’s perfectly normal under the circumstances. But I promise you this—I will do everything in my power to keep you out of harm’s way.”

  “But you hardly know us,” Coco said.

  “My father knew you, and you knew him, right?” Lana said. “And remember, if anyone asks, we tell them our story.”

  They had rehearsed it many times already, but with kids one could never be sure. Not that Lana had much experience with kids. With none of her own and no nieces or nephews in the islands, she felt the lack palpably, smack in the center of her chest. There had been a time when she saw children in her future, but that dream had come and gone and left her sitting on the curb with a jarful of tears.

  Her mind immediately went to Buck. Strange how your future with a person could veer so far off course from how you’d originally pictured it. How the one person you swore you would have and hold could end up wreaking havoc on your heart instead. She blinked the thought away.

  As they neared Volcano, the fog remained like a curtain, but the air around them brightened. Lana knew from all her time up here as a young girl that the trees got smaller as the elevation rose, and the terrain changed from towering eucalyptus and fields of yellow-and-white ginger to a more cindery terrain covered with red-blossomed ‘ohi‘a trees, and prehistoric-looking hāpu’u ferns and the crawling uluhe. At one time in her life, this had been one of her happiest places. Coco reached for the letter on the dashboard and began reading it for the fourth time. “Coco Hitchcock. It sounds funny.” The paper was already getting worn.

  Marie swiped it out of her hands. “You’re going to ruin that. Give it to me.”

  Where Coco was whip thin and dark and spirited—a nice way of putting it—Marie was blonde and full-bodied and sweet as coconut taffy. But Lana could tell even Marie’s patience was wearing thin.

  “Mrs. Hitchcock said we need to memorize our new names or we’ll be shot.”

  Lana said as calmly as she could, “I never said anything of the sort. And, Coco, you have to get used to calling me Aunt Lana for now. Both of you do.”

  “And stop talking about getting shot,” Marie added, rolling her eyes.

  If they could all just hold it together a little bit longer.

  There was sweat pooling between her breasts and behind her kneecaps. Lying was not her strong suit, and she was hoping that, by some strange miracle, they could sail on through without anyone stopping them. She rolled her window down a couple of inches for a burst of fresh air. “We’re just about here. So if we get stopped, let me do the talking. Speak only if someone asks you a direct question, okay?”

  Neither girl said anything; they both just nodded. Lana could almost see the fear condensing on the windshield. And pretty soon little Coco started sniffling. Lana would have said something to comfort her, but her mind was void of words. Next the sniffles turned into heaving sobs big enough to break the poor girl in half. Marie rubbed her hand up and down Coco’s back in a warm, smooth circle.

  “You can cry when we get there, but no tears now,” she said.

  Tears and snot were smeared across Coco’s face in one big shiny layer. “But they might kill Mama and Papa.” Her face was pinched and twisted into such anguish that Lana had to fight back a sob of her own.

  “We’re Americans. They would never kill them—or us, for that matter,” Marie said with pure confidence.

  A split second later Lana blinked several times to make sure she was seeing straight. Her foot pressed hard on the brakes. Up ahead were two guards standing in the middle of the road with rifles aimed at the truck. Shrouded in fog, they looked like ghost soldiers. All along the side of the road were sandbags piled high with what appeared to be machine guns set up behind them. The sight quieted Coco right down.


  “Oh hell,” Lana muttered.

  She rolled down the window and waved, wondering if she should get out or wait for them to come to her. “Hello, there,” she called. “Just a woman and two girls here.”

  Outside, the world seemed very small, pressing in from all directions. The way her heart was skipping along at two hundred beats per minute, Lana wondered if she would even be able to talk in complete sentences. She let out a big breath and opened the door.

  One of the men moved toward them. “Civilians are not supposed to be out driving around, ma’am. What’s your business here?” he said.

  She stood up and forced a smile. “We just need to get home. We were trapped in Hilo for the past few days after a trip to O‘ahu, and I got clearance from the head of the Territorial Guard to come back up here and stay put.”

  With limbs he still needed to grow into, the guard looked to be no older than eighteen. He came and stood just to the left of the truck. “You have proof of that?”

  She handed him the letter, signed by one Deputy Chester Ho’okano, a neighbor and friend of her father. Chester was in the Territorial Guard but certainly not in charge of it. He’d scribbled his name so it was nearly unreadable.

  A low growl started up in the back of the truck. Then a cacophony of honking and strange hissing followed.

  The man craned his neck. “What the dickens you got back there, ma’am?”

  “Just a dog and two nene geese. I couldn’t leave them behind. My friend was watching them while we were away,” she said.

  He hooked his fingers in his belt loops and seemed to contemplate her story. She noted his name tag said Pvt. Smith. After a moment the animals settled.

  Cigarette smoke wafted over from the other guard, who said, “Everything okay, Jimbo?”

  “Appears to be,” Jimbo said as he leaned down to glance into the cab.

  The two men had probably been standing out here for hours with nothing to do. Now they had a diversion to keep them occupied and seemed in no hurry whatsoever.