Winter of the World

Woody, sitting near Chuck in the bows, frowned and said: ‘What kind of plane is that?’

Chuck knew every aircraft of both the army and the navy, but he had trouble identifying this one. ‘It almost looks like a Type Ninety-seven,’ he said. That was the carrier-based torpedo bomber of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Woody pointed his camera.

As the plane came nearer, Chuck saw large red suns painted on its wings. ‘It is a Jap plane!’ he said.

Eddie, steering the boat from the stern, heard him. ‘They must have faked it up for an exercise,’ he said. ‘A surprise drill to spoil everyone’s Sunday morning.’

‘I guess so,’ said Chuck.

Then he saw a second plane behind the first.

And another.

He heard his father say anxiously: ‘What the heck is going on?’

The planes banked over the Navy Yard and passed low over the launch, their noise rising to a roar like Niagara Falls. There were about ten of them, Chuck saw; no, twenty; no, more.

They headed straight for Battleship Row.

Woody stopped taking pictures to say: ‘It can’t be a real attack, can it?’ There was fear as well as doubt in his voice.

‘How could they be Japanese?’ Chuck said incredulously. ‘Japan is nearly four thousand miles away! No plane can fly that far.’

Then he remembered that the aircraft carriers of the Japanese navy had gone into radio silence. The signal intelligence unit had assumed they were in home waters, but had never been able to confirm that.

He caught his father’s eye, and guessed he was remembering the same conversation.

Everything suddenly became clear, and incredulity turned to fear.

The lead plane flew low over the Nevada, the stern marker in Battleship Row. There was a burst of cannon fire. On deck, seamen scattered and the band left off in a ragged diminuendo of abandoned notes.

In the launch, Rosa screamed.

Eddie said: ‘Christ Jesus in heaven, it’s an attack.’

Chuck’s heart pounded. The Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, and he was in a small boat in the middle of the lagoon. He looked at the scared faces of the others – both parents, his brother, and Eddie – and realized that all the people he loved were in the boat with him.

Long bullet-shaped torpedoes began to fall from the underbellies of the planes and splash into the tranquil waters of the lagoon.

Chuck yelled: ‘Turn back, Eddie!’ But Eddie was already doing it, swinging the launch around in a tight arc.

As it turned, Chuck saw, over Hickam air base, another flight of aircraft with the big red discs on their wings. These were dive bombers, and they were streaming down like birds of prey on the rows of American aircraft perfectly lined up on the runways.

How the hell many of the bastards were there? Half the Japanese air force seemed to be in the sky over Pearl.

Woody was still taking pictures.

Chuck heard a deep bang like an underground explosion, then another immediately after. He spun around. There was a flash of flame aboard the Arizona, and smoke began to rise from her.

The stern of the launch squatted farther into the water as Eddie opened the throttle. Chuck said unnecessarily: ‘Hurry, hurry!’

From one of the ships Chuck heard the insistent rhythmic hoot of a klaxon sounding General Quarters, calling the crew to battle stations, and he realized that this was a battle, and his family was in the middle of it. A moment later on Ford Island the air-raid siren began with a low moan and wailed higher in pitch until it struck its frantic top note.

There was a long series of explosions from Battleship Row as torpedoes found their targets. Eddie yelled: ‘Look at the Wee Vee!’ It was what they called the West Virginia. ‘She’s listing to port!’

He was right, Chuck saw. The ship had been holed on the side nearest the attacking planes. Millions of tons of water must have poured into her in a few seconds to make such a huge vessel tilt sideways.

Next to her, the same fate was overtaking the Oklahoma, and to his horror Chuck could see sailors slipping helplessly, sliding across the tilted deck and falling over the side into the water.

Waves from the explosions rocked the launch. Everyone clung to the sides.

Chuck saw bombs rain down on the seaplane base at the near end of Ford Island. The planes were moored close together, and the fragile aircraft were blown to pieces, fragments of wings and fuselages flying into the air like leaves in a hurricane.

Chuck’s intelligence-trained mind was trying to identify aircraft types, and now he spotted a third model among the Japanese attackers, the deadly Mitsubishi ‘Zero’, the best carrier-based fighter in the world. It had only two small bombs, but was armed with twin machine guns and a pair of 20mm cannon. Its role in this attack must be to escort the bombers, defending them from American fighters – but all the American fighters were still on the ground, where many of them had already been destroyed. That left the Zeroes free to strafe buildings, equipment and troops.