even risk landing troops; there was no telling how seriously this attack might develop.
General Short knew only one thing for certain: he had to get out of these damn golf togs.
Don and Jerry Morton's mother, terrified by the explosions around them, stopped the car, and led her boys into a sugarcane field, where they all sat with hands on their ears, heads between their knees.
Now and then, Don's mother would ask either him or Jerry to peek up and see if the airplanes swooping overhead were American.
And, for the next two hours, they never were. Shivering, Don wondered if his stepfather was okay on Ford Island.
(He was not: the boys' stepfather had been among the first to die today, hit by a bomb on the Ford Island seaplane ramp.)
The U.S. Pacific Fleet was a family of sorts-big, and yet small enough that most men knew anyone else in their specialized line of work; a man might enlist and stay on one ship until retirement, twenty or thirty years later. Officers had ties, as well, often going back to Annapolis days. Admiral Kimmel knew thousands of his men by sight, and hundreds by name, and dozens were his personal Mends.
From his office window at fleet HQ, Kimmel could do little more than stand and watch his ships… and his men… die-the admiral helplessly bearing the thunder of exploding bombs, and the anvil clangs of torpedoes ravaging his ships, bleeding rolling clouds of smoke.
His people tried to establish communications with the areas under attack, and sent messages to ships at sea, advising them of what was happening at Pearl. They could hear explosions and see waterspouts and, of course, the funnels of black smoke.
'I must say,' Kimmel said quietly to the officers around him, 'it's a beautifully executed military maneuver … leaving aside the unspeakable treachery of it.'
As he stood there, a bullet came crashing through the window and struck him on the chest-leaving a sooty splotch on his otherwise immaculate white uniform. He bent to pick up what turned out to be a spent.50-caliber machine-gun slug.
Softly, he said, 'I wish it had killed me-that would've been merciful.'
Then he reached up and, with both hands, tore loose the four-star boards on bis shoulders; he went into his office and came back wearing two-star boards, having demoted himself.
At the Japanese Consulate, Jardine and Sterling-with Burroughs and Hully tagging after-searched the compound. General Consul Kita was along, as well, a bored fat man in his pajamas; and when Jardine came to a locked door, toward the rear of the main building, he demanded that Kita open it. 'I have no key,' Kita said, unflappable.
The acrid smell of smoke was leaching out from around the door.
'They're burning papers again,' Sterling said. 'Kita, tell them to open up!'
Sighing, seemingly blase, Kita began to knock, but no one answered; Burroughs yanked the man aside, and Sterling crashed his shoulder into the wood, several times, until the door finally splintered open.
Four Japanese men in sport shirts and slacks were standing around a washtub in which they had been burning papers and codebooks. Around them in the small nondescript room were file cabinets whose drawers yawned open.
Hully snatched a brown, accordion-style folder out of one of the men's hands, before he could dump its contents into the tub of flames. Jardine hopped into the tub and stamped out the fire, like he was mashing grapes into wine.
Sterling had Burroughs train his gun on the four men while the FBI agent patted them down for weapons- they had none. One of the men was the Consulate's treasurer-they were all officials of the consulate.
'Look at this,' Hully said, holding up a sheet of typing paper taken from the brown folder. The white sheet bore a detailed sketch of ship locations at Pearl Harbor.
'Where's Morimura?' Burroughs demanded of their prisoners.
'Or should we say 'Yoshikawa'?' Sterling said. 'Where is he?'
None of them replied.
But Kita, suddenly helpful, volunteered, 'He had a golf match this morning.'
Sterling glanced at Burroughs. 'Well, he's not in the building.'
'Nor is his driver,' Kita said.
Jardine took charge of Kita and the others, and Sterling, Burroughs and Hully checked out the Consulate's garage: the Lincoln was gone.
'So we head for the golf course,' Sterling said.
'He won't be there,' Burroughs said. 'He's in hiding.'
'Where the hell
Burroughs twitched a smile; Hully was nodding as his father said, 'I think I know.'
And-under a sky momentarily quiet, but still thick with black smoke-they dashed out to the black Ford just as three more carloads of uniformed police, heavily armed, were forming a cordon around the consulate.
FIFTEEN
In less than half an hour, in a peacetime attack unparalleled in the modem world, Japan had delivered the worst Naval defeat in American history.
Thick black smoke draped Pearl Harbor, where all seven battleships moored at Ford Island had suffered damage, all hit by one or more bombs. In the overturned hull of the
In the lull that followed the first wave of attack planes, the Americans worked frantically to prepare in the event of another blow-and one was coming: a second wave of 169 fighters and bombers crossed the northern coast of Oahu at 8:40 a.m.
Fifty-four high-level bombers and thirty-one fighters streaked toward Hickam Field and Kaneohe Naval Air Station and other bases, seeking more American planes on the ground to blow up, often strafing civilian vehicles and residential areas, apparently just for the sheer hell of it. Eighty-one dive bombers prowled for any surviving warships in the harbor, with ships awaiting repairs becoming additional targets-like the flagship
During this second attack, however, the Japanese pilots met stronger American resistance, and had to deal with billowing black smoke, a cover of their own raid's creation, obscuring their targets. The commander of the second wave of fighters, encountering fiercer ground fire than he'd anticipated, wound up crashing his Zero into a flaming hangar; and efforts to sink the fleeing battleship
Small victories, in so large a defeat.
With the exception of the occasional scurrying Oriental, disappearing down an alley or into a doorway, the streets and sidewalks of Chinatown were deserted. The rows of shops and cafes were as abandoned as an Old West ghost town, lacking only tumbleweed; the hustle and bustle of the Aala Market-where Sunday was just another day, any ordinary Sunday, that is-replaced with an eerie silence, deserted stalls filled with fresh fish whose dead faces stared with mute curiosity, as if to say,
