Jake was stunned and sickened by the devastation. Which horror was worse? The sunken and shattered ships settling in the harbor or the long rows of casualties, most of whom lay in uncomplaining silence despite their horrible burns and wounds? Saddest of all were the bodies that had been sewn into mattress covers. Many of them were burned or shattered beyond recognition and would never be identified.
As a result, Jake was physically and mentally exhausted by the time he was done. It was the evening of December 8, and he’d barely been able to grab an hour’s sleep since the fateful morning of the day before.
He had stopped to talk with the guards at the gates to the naval base and was just about to drive through them and down the road to his apartment in Honolulu and a long overdue shower when he heard his name.
“Captain Novacek, may I talk to you?”
A woman was standing in the shadows outside the gate, where he couldn’t quite recognize her. “Ma’am?”
“Captain,” one of the guards said, “it’s Mrs. Sanderson. She’s been out there for a couple of hours.”
Sanderson? Did he know anyone named Sanderson? His groggy mind refused to kick in for a moment. Of course. He’d played touch with Tim Sanderson just a couple of days earlier and had met his wife at a party following the Army-Navy Game of November 29. God, he was more tired than he thought if he couldn’t recall meeting someone like Tim’s wife only a week earlier.
Jake parked his car and walked over to the woman. She was distraught, although she was doing an admirable job of keeping herself under control.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Sanderson, I didn’t recognize you right away.”
“That’s all right,” she said with a forced calmness. “I need a favor from you.”
“What is it?” he asked warily.
“I want to see the Oklahoma.”
Jake sagged. He recalled that Tim was on the ship that lay virtually upside down alongside Ford Island.
“Captain, Tim has not come home, and there’s been no word of him. I’ve seen the ship from the hill, and I’ve heard horrible things about what’s happening. I want to see if they’re true, Captain. I want to see where Tim might be.”
“Mrs. Sanderson, I will not take you there for the simple reason that the navy will not allow me there either. Yes, it is true there are people trapped in the ship, but the navy is moving heaven and earth to get them out.”
Jake saw the woman bite her lower lip and turn her head away. He hadn’t the heart to tell her that he had been by the devastated battleship, and it was a nightmare. Sailors were trapped in the ship, and the sounds of their clanging against the armored hull served as beacons for those who were desperately trying to drill through and rescue them. He couldn’t begin to imagine the nightmarish conditions in the pitch black of an overturned battleship.
Several sounds from within the hull had already ceased as air must have run out of the pockets in which men were trapped. Farther away, other sailors and workers played their radios loudly in order to drown out the agonies of the incessant pounding. If Tim Sanderson was trapped in the Oklahoma, then God help him.
Jake had been truthful when he’d said the navy was trying desperately to save the trapped men. As the hours dragged on, however, it was becoming a losing battle.
Jake asked where she lived, and she told him. She added that a neighbor had dropped her off. When he offered to drive her home, she almost pathetically said not to bother.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Sanderson, your place is on the way to Shafter and pretty near mine.”
With that, she demurred, and they drove in silence to her home. When they arrived, Missy Wilson walked up with her young child sleeping in her arms.
“I’ll take care of her,” Missy said after hearing that nothing had come of Alexa’s vigil by the base. She took Alexa by the arm and led her into the house. Alexa neither resisted nor complained. To Jake it seemed that she was beyond feeling.
Jake shook his head in sadness. He had met Tim’s wife only once before and been struck by her poise and patrician good looks. She was the type of woman he would never have otherwise met if it hadn’t been for the weekly football games.
Football? God, he thought, was the world ever that innocent? As he headed back to his car, another vehicle pulled up and a grim-faced naval lieutenant emerged.
The two men introduced themselves. The naval officer was Jamie Priest, and he was from the Pennsylvania. Like dogs sniffing, the two men checked each other’s rank and academy rings. Priest was a lieutenant in the navy, which was equivalent to a captain in the army. He looked several years younger than Jake, a fact that Jake had found more and more frustrating lately. Jamie Priest was also much smaller, wiry, and, when he removed his hat, showed thinning straw-colored hair.
“I’ve got to talk to her,” Jamie said. “They found her husband’s body in the harbor.”
“Christ,” Jake said.
What a waste of a decent young guy, Jake thought, and what a hell of a way to destroy a young woman. But at least that meant Tim hadn’t been trapped in the Oklahoma, spending a day and a half going mad in the claustrophobic blackness. Should she be thankful for small favors?
Missy emerged from the house, the sleeping child still on her shoulder. She had heard the conversation. “You won’t be talking to her tonight. I gave her some pills my doctor gave me after Killer here was born. Let her sleep. I’ll break the news to her when she wakes up.” Then she looked puzzled. “Shouldn’t there be a chaplain with you?”
Jamie shrugged. “Too many dead and not enough chaplains. Since I knew Tim, I volunteered.”
Jake made a mental note to find out when the funeral was and to check up on Tim’s wife. No, he corrected himself, Tim’s widow. The grief on Mrs. Sanderson’s face as she waited in vain for word of her husband’s fate had touched him deeply.
As he drove away, he realized that Alexa Sanderson’s innocent plight had brought the war home to him in a way that was far different from what the rows of wounded, the anonymous dead, the planes shooting at him by Hickam, and the sight of Lieutenant Simpkins’s shredded body after the Zero had strafed them had done. At least Tim’s widow and her blond friend were far enough away from the carnage that they didn’t have to smell it, or watch as the last of the flames were put out.
Admiral Husband Kimmel touched his chest and felt the bruise where a spent Japanese bullet had struck him during the height of the attack. At the time he had lamented that it would have been better had the bullet killed him instead of dropping harmlessly onto the floor. Since then, nothing had happened to change his mind. The spent piece of lead was now in his pocket.
“I just received a telegram saying I’ve been relieved,” Kimmel said. “I guess no one’s surprised, although I think it’s without justification. The war-warning message from Washington was manifestly ambiguous. They did not tell me to beware of an attack on Pearl.”
To the contrary, Kimmel thought. No one felt that any navy had the capability to do what Japan had done. And, in particular, no one felt that a semibarbaric country full of nearsighted little yellow men with buck teeth would even attempt such an enterprise.
“No one even informed me that the Jap fleet was at sea.”
General Walter Short nodded politely. He wondered if he too would be relieved and thought it was quite possible, although unlikely. After all, he’d lost only a few score planes, while Kimmel had lost almost the whole damned Pacific Fleet.
Short was confident that what he’d done would hold up under the inevitable scrutiny, although he understood the navy’s screaming need for a scapegoat. Sadly, Kimmel would be it. Hell, you don’t lose a fleet without blaming someone.
The navy had been horribly unprepared for anything remotely resembling war on the morning of December 7, 1941. The army, by contrast, had been prepared for the only type of assault deemed possible-sabotage by untrustworthy elements among the very large Japanese population on Oahu. The fact that the attack had been from the sea had been the navy’s fault, not the army’s.
“They name a replacement for you yet?” Short asked. He scarcely knew Kimmel. Neither the two men nor their underlings met frequently. Each had his own responsibilities. Now Short wondered if they shouldn’t have coordinated their efforts more closely. It would be something to take up with Kimmel’s replacement.
“Chester Nimitz is replacing me. He’s anticipated out here in a few days. He’s a good man. You will work
