The Pearl Harbor Murders

Aboard the battleships, barely awake sailors perceived the approaching attack planes as nothing more than specks-but those specks grew ever larger as they zeroed in on the harbor, crisscrossing. Swabbies-like civilians-at first dismissed the planes… crazy Army pilots, damn Navy fliers showboating, ain't that a hell of a drill….

'That's no star on the wing!' a sailor or two, on every ship, would finally say, more or less. 'That's a red ball!'

And sailors, scattering like naughty kids caught in some act, yelled, 'It's the Japs! It's for real! It's war!'

PA systems barked orders, bugles blared, ships' alarms trilled, and on every vessel in the harbor-130 of them-all hell broke loose, from the startled sailors on deck who had seen the planes 'dropping fish' (torpedoes) to the poor bastards sleeping in on Sunday who had to tumble out of their racks, and scurry to then-battle stations, pulling on their clothes as they went.

Five torpedoes, in rapid succession, blasted the Oklahoma, sending the battleship rolling slowly, inevitably to port. Breakfast dishes went flying, shattering, mess tables upended, lockers spilled open, and in the belowdeck barbettes, massive gun turrets tore free from their housings and tumbled grindingly down the slanting platforms, crushing crewmen.

When eleven-year-old Don Morton-frightened by the low-flying, strafing planes-came scooting back home without his brother Jerry, his mom wasn't mad. She just hustled him into their car and they drove down to the landing, where Don and Jerry had been fishing.

No other cars were around, but she honked her horn all the way, and Don thought maybe she was scared, too-they were driving right toward where all the explosions were coming from.

Suddenly Jerry came bursting out from some algar-roba bushes, calling, 'Mom! Mom!'

She stopped the car, let Jerry in, and hugged him.

'A man helped me,' Jerry said. 'He pushed me into the bushes when a plane was coming.'

'What man?' his mother asked.

'That man,' Jerry said, and pointed to the body of a Marine corporal alongside the dirt road.

Don's mom turned their car around and headed for Honolulu, as explosions shook the world all around them.

Bill Fielder, in the borrowed Pierce Arrow convertible, had a hell of a time trying to get to Pearl. He was crazy with desperation-all he could think of was getting back to his ship!

But it was a slow go. At first the streets were empty, but quickly they became clogged with cars and taxis, as well as emergency vehicles. Bill would whip his car around the jams, whenever possible, riding on the sidewalk if he had to. The sky boiled with black oil smoke, and it seemed like the end of the world-he passed by several water mains that had broken, shooting geysers fifty feet in the air, and people had loaded their cars up with toys and clothes, sometimes with baby buggies or bicycles strapped on the roof, like European war refugees, heading for the hills.

The rolling lanes of the Kamehameha Highway were choked with civiUan cars and taxis piled with servicemen scrambling to get to their posts. It seemed to take forever, crawling toward Pearl Harbor. Finally, when he came over a rise, at the highway's highest point, he got a panoramic view: silver planes skimming over the sea toward battleships, bombs whistling down, dive-bombers howling in on their targets, shells exploding in midair, machine guns chattering, low-flying fighters strafing anything and everything, the harbor a mass of fuel oil, smoke and flames. Even from this distance, the acrid smell of burning and battle seemed to singe his nostrils.

The worst of it was the battleships getting hit so hard-the Oklahoma had already capsized, and the Arizona could be next.

He felt sick-at heart, to his stomach.

'Come on, come on, come on!' Bill yelled, and he laid on his horn-not that honking would do any good. Everyone caught in this jam wanted it to move along just as badly as Bill did. But he was frustrated, knowing that time was running out.

He just wasn't aware how soon.

A bomb hit the Pierce Arrow, obliterating it, and Bill, leaving a charred, flaming husk of an automobile and very little of its driver.

Bill Fielder had just become the first Arizona fatality.

Moored aft of the Tennessee, a massive 608 feet long, the Arizona carried a main armament of twelve fourteen-inch guns, her hull shielded at the waterline by a thirteen-inch thickness of steel, with twenty inches of armor housing her four turrets. No more formidable weapon of war-at-sea was known to man than a battleship such as this.

An armor-piercing bomb hit the ship between its number-two gun turret and bow, punching a hundred-foot hole in the deck, then exploding in a fuel tank below. Within seconds, almost two million pounds of explosives detonated, forming a fireball of red, yellow and black, the ship lifting twenty feet in the air, tossing men like rag dolls, ship's steel opening like a blossoming flower to spread petals of huge red flame.

The halves of the ship tumbled into the water, where her skewed decks were walked by burning men, a ghostly, ghastly crew staggering out of the flames, one by one, dropping dead.

Seaman First Class Dan Pressman-whose previous battle had been on Hotel Street, last night-had been manning a gun-director unit above the bridge, when he sustained burns over most of his body; still, he managed to make use of a line that had been made fast to the mast of a repair ship moored alongside the Arizona.

Pressman and five other badly burned sailors-suffering shock, but wanting to live-swung high above the water on the line, going hand over hand to safety, even as their ears were filled with the screams of fellow crew members on the burning, dying halves of the ship, or in the water beneath, which, surrealistically, was on fire, too.

Her superstructure enfolded in flame, the Arizona- her shattered foremast tipping forward-settled to the bottom of the harbor, three-quarters of her crew…. some 1,177 officers and enlisted men … dead in the most devastating of all the blows delivered by Japan in the surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor.

In his quarters at Fort Shafter, General Short had just gotten into his golfing gear, for the planned eighteen holes with Kimmel, Fielder and Throckmorton, when he heard explosions-which he recognized at once as bombs going off.

He didn't think anything of it-the Navy was obviously having some sort of battle practice, and he was mildly annoyed that no one on Kimmel's team had warned him about it… unless they had told him, and he'd forgotten it.

But the explosions seemed to build, grow nearer, and that got the general's curiosity up. He wandered out onto his lanai-the very porch where the evening before an FBI agent had told him about a possible coded message-and he could see smoke to the west, a lot of it… and black.

Shrugging, he was heading back in to have some coffee before he left for the golf course, when he heard a loud knock at the front door. His wife was not up yet, so he went to answer it quickly, in case she had somehow managed to sleep through the Navy's infernal racket.

Wooch Fielder, in blue sport shirt and blue slacks, was standing on the front porch. Fielder had the startled expression of a deer perked by the sound of a hunter, and his face was fish-belly white.

'What's wrong, Wooch? Am I late?' The general looked at his wristwatch. 'Didn't think we were playing till-'

'Sir, we're under attack-it's the real thing.'

More explosions.

The general leaned out the door, asked, 'What's going on out there?'

'Bicknell says he saw two battleships sunk.'

'Why, that's ridiculous….'

'Sir, both Hickam and Wheeler have phoned- they've been hit.'

Short drew in a sharp breath; then, crisply, he said, 'Put into effect Alert Number Three. Everybody to battle position.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Do it, Wooch-I'll be right with you.'

And he shut the door, reeling, knowing that if the Japs would mount a damn-fool sneak air raid, they might