The Pearl Harbor Murders

Arizona's dance band had come in second to the Pennsylvania, a much-contested decision-and with the dimming of the clubs and bars of the city, garish Hotel Street included, the blush in the sky over Honolulu began to fade, until the heavens again belonged to the stars. Oahu itself seemed to slumber, with only the slowly turning hands of the Aloha Tower's quartet of clock faces to mark the passing of another tropical night.

By three a.m., the darkness was broken chiefly by stoplights pulsing red, and mute, deserted streets twinkling with Christmas lights. A few pleasure palaces in Chinatown ignored the curfew, their entryways scarlet with the neon promise of sin, beckoning foolish tourists and fearless servicemen. And offshore, to the west, at the entrance to Pearl Harbor, red and green buoy lights winked in the dark, as if they and the night shared a secret.

In these deceptively peaceful hours before dawn, out in the blackness beyond the reef, destiny was bearing down upon Oahu. Three hundred miles north of Honolulu, an armada charged through heavy seas at a clip of twenty knots-destroyers and cruisers, battleships and aircraft carriers, bombers and torpedo planes-while, much closer to Oahu, a small fleet of submarines already had the island surrounded, and five midget submarines were even now gliding toward their targets.

A little before four a.m., a minesweeper signaled the destroyer Ward of the sighting of a possible periscope three-quarters southwest of the harbor's blinking entrance buoys. General quarters were sounded by Lieutenant William Outerbridge, captain of the Ward-summoned to the bridge in his pajamas, over which he wore a kimono-and for half an hour, the destroyer searched the restricted waters outside the harbor, and saw nothing, their sonarmen hearing nothing.

Then at 6:30 a.m., a Ward crewman spotted the half-submerged midget sub trailing the supply ship Antares toward the harbor entry, whose torpedo nets-usually blocking the channel-were wide open. Lieutenant Outerbridge sounded general quarters again, and took chase, quickly closing to within a hundred yards, firing and missing, then-with a point-blank hit-nailing the sub at the juncture of its conning tower, sinking the seaweed-shrouded sub, then pounding it with depth charges until the wounded ship bled oil.

The Ward, little realizing it, had just fired the first shots of the Pacific War.

Though this encounter had taken place within five miles of Battleship Row, Oahu continued to slumber- Lieutenant Outerbridge, who of course promptly radioed a coded message of the sinking to the commander of the Fourteenth Naval District at Pearl Harbor-did not receive a request for 'additional details' until 7:37 A.M.

Just before dawn, atop a ridge on the northern shore of Oahu, one of Colonel Teske's mobile radar stations was scheduled to be shut down at seven a.m. General Short had these half-dozen trailer-mounted units in operation only a few hours a day, primarily for training purposes. Private George Elliot and Private Joe Lock-ard were working a four-hour graveyard shift, three in the morning till seven; but the track that was supposed to pick them up for breakfast was late, and Private Elliot left the equipment on after seven, merely for the practice.

And just as dawn was threatening to break, a notably strong wave pattern blipped on Elliot's five-inch- diameter oscilloscope, indicating dozens of aircraft, about 130 miles north, heading toward Oahu-at a speed, they soon estimated, of around 180 mph.

Elliot called this in to the Air Warning Service at Fort Shafter, where Lieutenant Kermit Tyler-assuming these blips represented some B-17s expected in from the mainland-told the radarman, 'Well, don't worry about it.'

Lockard suggested they shut down the radar set, but Elliot wanted some more practice: he watched until the swarm of planes was only twenty-two miles north of Oahu, at which point the patterns disappeared. Unaware that this meant the planes were lost in the dead zone of the hills, as they crossed the shoreline, Elliot switched off the set and logged his final report, at 0740…

… content that he'd had enough practice for one day.

The blips on his screen had been forty-three Zeros, forty torpedo bombers, and one hundred bombers, the first wave of planes launched at six a.m. by the Japanese battle fleet 275 miles due north of the radar station. Their shadows racing across the checkerboards of sugarcane and pineapple fields, the 183 silver planes streaked over the lushly tropical, dreamily peaceful island, where a harbor as still as a millpond awaited, part of a golden landscape basking in the tranquillity of a Sunday dawn.

At around 7:30 a.m., Hully Burroughs and his father sat at a round wicker table on the Niumalu patio, having breakfast. Hully was in bis tennis whites, O. B. in a short-sleeved woven tan shirt and khaki slacks, an ensemble that looked vaguely military; both men were in sneakers. The plan was to play tennis after breakfast, so they again ate light-orange juice and coffee and muffins and fresh fruit.

Their houseguest, Bill Fielder, was still on the pallet in the bungalow, sleeping it off, dead to the world. The chief topic of discussion between father and son was their frustration that the Sunday paper was late: Hully's brother Jack's comic strip, based on ERB's John Carter of Mars stories, was making its debut today.

'Well, it's not like we haven't seen the proofs,' Hully said, buttering a muffin.

'Sure, but I'm anxious to see it in color,' O. B. said, obviously disappointed that he couldn't read this latest Burroughs spin-off-helmed by his eldest son, a fact of which he was inordinately proud-over his morning coffee.

Neither father nor son had mentioned anything about the murder investigation that had so consumed them the day before; this was a new day-witness the endless blue sky puffed with clouds, the surf rolling gentry to shore, hear and feel the wind whispering through the fronds, a strangely still morning, quiet, serene … Sunday.

When the first sounds of artillery fire interrupted that serenity, shattering it even, Burroughs, coffee cup in hand, looked at Hully with one arched eyebrow.

'No,' Hully said, to the unasked question.

And O. B. nodded.

After all, yesterday's papers had said that heavy guns would be fired from various parts of the island, over the next few days; and Oahu was a continual site of war games and realistic maneuvers.

As the sounds of battle built, other patrons of the Niumalu, at other tables, were exchanging the same information: this was just a drill, some kind of Navy battle practice, or the Army having target practice….

A woman at a nearby table said in an English accent,

'What a wonderfully realistic imitation of a European air raid.'

'Well, now I know how they sound,' her male companion, an American, said matter-of-factly.

Soon, as father and son wandered to the tennis court, rackets in hand, Burroughs was saying, 'You get used to these damn maneuvers, living on a military island like this. But I have to admit, after what we learned yesterday, I'm damned nervous. You don't think this could be…'

From the direction of the beach, the sky rumbled, and it wasn't thunder.

Nonetheless, Hully shook his head. 'Dad, we'd be hearing sirens-it'd be all over the radio, by now. We'd know if this were more than just gunnery practice.'

So they began to play tennis. Before long, many of the Niumalu guests had gathered on the sandy patch adjacent to the tennis court, that sunbathing area where, not so long ago, Pearl Har-ada had lounged in a pretty pink bathing suit. From there, the rubberneckers could enjoy-just past the stubby wooden fence-a clear view of the coast, from Diamond Head to beyond Pearl Harbor and Barbers Point, though a hill kept them from seeing the Naval base.

Even from the court, Hully and his dad could quite plainly see-pausing between serves-bombs falling into the ocean not so far away, dense black smoke billowing up as if the water were on fire.

'It's a practice smoke screen,' somebody said.

'Sure doesn't sound like practice,' someone else said, rather idly.

Antiaircraft shells were exploding in the sky, and ships at sea were firing, and the guests were oohing and ahhing, as if at a Fourth of July fireworks display, marveling at these 'realistic maneuvers the Navy was staging.'

Hully had just returned a serve, and O. B. had swatted it back, when a bomb went off surprisingly nearby, and Hully's attention jerked toward the beach, the ball bouncing past him, unattended. The hotel guests were rearing back in horror and surprise. Gasps and screams intermingled as they began to back away, and gradually turned and walked, and ran, to their bungalows or the lodge or just somewhere else, anywhere else, as long as it was inland.