Days of Infamy (28 page)

Dave looked back as he left the room and saw the colonel leaning against the wall, head bowed. He was crying.

Who is he crying for, Dave found himself wondering. Himself, all of this, for us?

This was never how he imagined war would be.

REAR ADMIRAL NEWTON
, commander of Task Force Twelve, looked at the transcript, scaned the information, then handed it to Captain Sherman, who was in direct command of
Lexington
, the old Lady Lex.

Newton still felt uncomfortable having left his natural command post in a cruiser. He knew that in a carrier fight he ought to be near
the air component to have better dialogue about the proper tactics, but it still felt odd. He had been a surface warrior all his life, and here he was commanding-ship one of America’s biggest and most powerful aircraft carriers. Still, he would do his duty and lead the task force against the Japanese to the best of his ability.

“This puts the Jap fleet three hundred and twenty miles east of us,” Sherman said, looking up from the transcript of the radio message intercepted from Oahu and then over at the plot board.

He handed the paper back to Newton.

“Think it’s valid?” Newton asked. “It could be a Jap ruse.”

“Don’t think so,” Sherman replied. “I know Watson. We served together on
Saratoga
for a while, about ten years back. He was a year behind me at Annapolis. Good man. I remember hearing how he lost a hand when
Panay
was hit. Doubt that the Japs would know some of his details, and our radio operator who monitored it said it was definitely the Presidio broadcasting. This is the right stuff.”

Newton went over to the plot board, measuring out the distances.

“If the Japs are steaming west, and we go up to flank speed; we might be able to get a strike in before dark.”

He said it more as a question than a statement.

Sherman shook his head.

“Too many ifs, and besides, it will be dark in four hours. If we order a full strike now, the wind will require turning into the northeast for starters, angling us away from them. At least a two-hour flight out for the Devastators, two hours back—that’s recovery after dark, and that is predicated upon everything going right.

“It won’t work.”

Newton nodded his head in agreement. “So tomorrow morning then?”

“Yes, sir.”

Newton traced a line out with his finger.

“We continue on this course at twenty knots, they continue on their course at the same speed, we could pass right through each other in less than twelve hours. The last thing I want is a surface engagement at night against the Japanese.”

“Agreed, sir.”

They had monitored Draemel’s reports when his small task force had struck the Japanese battleships at night and been slaughtered. It was obvious the Japs had the edge in night combat, something that had been speculated about for years at war games and in reports from the few observers allowed to witness their fleet maneuvers. Beyond that, they had one hell of a tough battleship still in action with their fleet. Meet that at night and it could rip their more lightly armed task force to shreds.

“But, if we do this,” and Sherman traced out a different line, “and they continue due west toward the Marshalls, if at dawn we’re ready to launch, we just might get the first punch in, maybe even tear them apart.”

Newton smiled at the thought.

“That’s what I was thinking as well. We change course in fifteen minutes.”

He sighed.

“I wish to hell Halsey had waited, just maneuvered. If we had been able to combine and caught them while together, it would have evened it out.”

“You know Halsey,” Sherman replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “Anyhow, I’d have done the same. It was his only shot. He had to take the risk and do it.”

“Still …” and his voice trailed off for a moment. “Hell, I wonder if he’s even alive anymore. I am afraid the Japs got him.”

A ZERO WINGED
in low, wagging its wings as it passed at a right angle over the deck and then soared back up, part of their covering patrol, which orbited at five hundred meters above the water to keep an eye out for any torpedo bomber that might slip in out of the low tropical clouds, while a second flight of four orbited to the east, fifteen thousand
feet up, ready to pounce on any raid that might come from Oahu, now nearly two hundred miles astern.

Fuchida watched the fighter with envy. Over forty Zeroes were maintaining watch over the carriers, burning a lot of fuel and engine time, but until well clear of any strikes from Oahu, they had to watch in all directions. The PBY and B-17 that had been tagging them were nowhere to be seen, but they had monitored the radio reports.

A strike from whatever the Americans had left on Oahu had to be expected, even at this range. There was also the report from
Soryu
and
Hiryu
that after being attacked by naval planes, they had not returned back to their carrier but had flown on a heading back to Pearl. They would have been turned around by now and perhaps were already coming this way.

Scout planes, ranging westward, had yet to spot any additional carriers, and even Genda now wondered if perhaps there had been only two American carriers in the region after all, and both had been sunk by
Soryu
and
Hiryu.
Though, of course, logically, he wished for that to be true, in his heart part of him wished that it was not. Then when the admiral lifted the ban on his flying tomorrow, he could lead a strike to finish off what was left of the American fleet. Perhaps there was still one, maybe two more of their carriers out there to engage.

“You want to be up there, don’t you?”

It was his friend Genda, joining him on the open bridge, and he smiled, nodding.

“I’d like to boast that if I had been flying cover over
Soryu
, it never would have been hit.”

Genda shook his head.

“Such courage. I was in one of our planes. It was faster, I knew it would get me through. But their old Devastators? That was suicide to send them against our Zeroes.”

“It troubles the admiral, too,” Genda replied. “He says it shows they are enraged. We’ve been listening to their radio reports from the mainland. What they are saying is pure hatred of us now.”

“How would we react,” Fuchida said softly, “if it had been them surprising us and bombing our ships in Tokyo Harbor? Of course
they are enraged. The only factors now are those that should concern us. Will their rage make them reckless? I think we saw that with their attack this morning. And second, how do we beat them so they give in and negotiate despite their anger? We must sink every ship of theirs in the Pacific, that is obvious now.”

“I thought you’d find this interesting,” Genda said, and handed Fuchida a couple of typewritten sheets of paper. “One of their radio stations on Oahu is back up and broadcasting. We monitored it.”

Fuchida took the paper, scanning the transcript of the transmission, chuckling at first and then stopping.

“Did they get this right?”

“Yes. I remember you talking about him.”

He read the line again.

“This is Commander James Watson …”

He felt his throat tighten. James Watson. It was how long ago? Nearly ten years ago they had met at Etajima, the Japanese naval academy, both of them there to give guest lectures, James on Japanese-American relations, he to pitch naval aviation to the cadets.

They had formed a bond the night they met, drinking Scottish whiskey together with their mutual friend Cecil Stanford. And where was Cecil?

A close bond had been there with both, even though he and James had actually been together less than a day. It was one of those things that just happened at times between men of nations that might one day be enemies, but who at that moment shared a mutual love for their professions, and respect for their counterparts.

He had even introduced James to flying, giving him a ride back to Tokyo after their speeches, triggering in James such a love of the experience that he had gone on to get his own plane.

The friendship had broken down after China. Cecil had bitterly confronted him while he was based at Nanking, denouncing what all in the Imperial Navy found equally disgusting, the medieval-like pillage and rape of that city. He shared that outrage but had to defend the honor of his nation to Cecil, who had stormed out of his office, severing all contact.

Cecil had told him about the tragedy James endured, the loss of his hand when the
Panay
was bombed. There had been a few terse notes between them after that, James making a point of sending a photo of himself with his new plane, a hook rather than his hand clearly visible.

And so their friendships had died as their respective countries, once such good allies, had drifted toward war. The two old friends, however—well, he still considered them to be friends—had often lingered in his thoughts. Now this, a radio intercept of James broadcasting vital information back to the mainland of the United States.

So he was at Pearl Harbor, most likely bending all his efforts now to fight back against Japan.

Damn all. Did he see me yesterday? Did I or one of my comrades kill friends of his? Most likely so.

He forced a smile as he read further: Watson using the registration number of his plane to help verify who he was.

I’m sorry about that, my friend, he thought, remembering how he had introduced him to flying, the bond it had created between the two.

Perhaps someday when this is all over, and hatreds burn away, just perhaps…

He handed the papers back to Genda and said nothing.

HE
WAS
NEVER
much for literature—that was the stuff that the white-jacket officer types up on the bridge would talk about—but at this moment, it did remind him of
Dante’s Inferno
, not the book, but a movie he had seen several years earlier starring Spencer Tracy where the guy wound up on a ship that was on fire and sinking, Tracy risking his life to close some steam valve, that on a real ship never would have been located where it was.

And yeah, it did look like that Dante guy’s book as well.

Commander Stubbs, sloshing through knee-deep water, respirator
strapped to his face, goggles on to protect his eyes, followed the fire hose aft.

He was six decks down, on the starboard main corridor. Flood control doors were open here to allow access to fire crews and repair teams.
Enterprise
still had a pronounced list; he felt a bit like a drunk out for a walk, leaning against the tilt, looking for a moment at the water sloshing about on the deck, gauging the angle: at least ten degrees. The counterflooding was still not containing the intake of water cascading in, compounded by the water pumped in by the fire hoses, which was flooding down into the lower decks.

The water was warm, almost hot. He put his hand on a bulkhead and pulled it back. Fire must still be raging on the other side from a ruptured av-gas line.

The smoke was getting thicker. He saw a chain-gang crew working, men stripped down, shirts off. They should have helmets and shirts on, face protection for flash burns. If we do that, though, these kids would pass out in the heat. They were manhandling out a magazine stacked with forty-millimeter shells, passing each one up, shells going up the ladder for four decks to the hangar deck, where they were being heaved over the side.

Stubbs slowed for a minute, stepped into the line, helped move a couple of shells. Damn, the things were hot, almost blistering hot.

“Keep at it boys, that’s the stuff!”

He patted a couple of them on the backs and pushed on. The chain gang snaked down the corridor for a dozen feet and then turned out to the starboard side to where the magazine locker was located, smoke pouring out of it.

A young ensign was leading the crew inside the locker. A fire crew was playing a stream of water on him and the racks of shells.

He felt a cold pit in his stomach, a knotting-up. The youngster had guts, was holding to it, steam pouring out from the water hitting the shells. From the far wall of the magazine he could feel the heat radiating from it.

He wanted to stop, lend encouragement, get the kid’s name, make sure he was put in for a commendation, a Navy Cross at least, when this was finished, but there wasn’t time, and he had to make the cold decision that if the damn thing started to light off, it wasn’t his job to get killed, at least not yet. He should back away.

He pushed on down the main corridor, nicknamed Broadway, the parallel corridor on the port side being Main Street.

Broadway was the danger point now, starting next deck down. All the way to the keel the watertight doors were dogged down, crews evacuated where possible. A corpsman and chaplain had set up their “shop” in a cross corridor between Broadway and Main, six inches or so of filthy water sloshing back and forth as the ship rolled. The dead were stacked up atop each other, bodies, parts of bodies, while only feet away a corpsman, covered in blood, was struggling with scissors to cut off a man’s trousers, what was left of them, which were
scorched to his body. The chaplain leaned over the burned sailor. He saw the cross on the chaplain’s lapel, did not understand what he was saying to the sailor.