I Survived #4: I Survived the Bombing of Pearl Harbor, 1941

by Lauren Tarshis

  He pulled the car up onto the road and they drove off.

  “They caught us by surprise,” Mack said. “The Japanese blindsided us.”

  “Why?” Danny said.

  “To knock out our ships and bombers,” Mack said. “To cripple our entire Pacific fleet. That way they can take over whatever they want in the Pacific — China, the Philippines, Korea. Japan is a small country, but they want to be powerful. They need more land. So they’re taking over other countries, like Hitler has been doing in Europe. And now we won’t be able to stop them.”

  “But didn’t we know they would do this?” Danny said. “Shouldn’t we have known?”

  “Some people talked about it,” Mack said. “But nobody thought they could pull it off.”

  Mack looked at Danny.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “The Japanese made a mistake. A big mistake. They have no idea what they’ve started. This country is going to rise up and crush them. You’ll see.”

  “And what about Hitler?” Danny said.

  “Him too,” Mack said.

  Mack sounded so sure. And Danny wanted to believe him. But now he was thinking about Mrs. Mills’s map, stretched across the classroom wall. How could America fight two wars on opposite sides of the world?

  As Hickam came into view, Danny could see smoke and flames rising from the base.

  Mack swore under his breath.

  They pulled up to the gate, which was blocked by a smashed car, still smoldering.

  “Let’s go,” Mack said, opening his door.

  Danny followed Mack around the burning car and toward the gates at the base.

  Ahead, the base reminded Danny of a photo he’d seen in Life magazine of a town that had been hit by a tornado. There was wreckage everywhere — twisted metal all over the ground, shattered glass, pieces of burned wood. He stepped over a tattered hat. He wondered what had happened to the man who’d been wearing it.

  Some of the buildings had been destroyed; two were still burning. The air was hard to breathe. It smelled like burned rubber and plastic. And everywhere he looked, Danny saw wrecked planes. Some were cut right in half.

  Two armed guards stood at the gate. They both saluted when they saw Mack, and then they both started talking at once.

  “We were hit bad, sir!”

  “We’ve lost about a dozen men, sir!”

  “About a hundred are wounded.”

  “They destroyed the barracks and the mess hall. Two hangars are gone.”

  “We lost a lot of planes, sir. They torched them right on the runways.”

  Mack listened closely to the rush of information. Finally he held up his hand to quiet the men.

  “Did we get any planes into the sky?” Mack asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Hospital okay?” Mack said, reading Danny’s mind.

  “Hospital’s fine, sir. No hits. They’re treating the wounded.”

  Danny closed his eyes with relief. And then he heard a ferocious roar.

  Another wave of Japanese bomber planes roared out of the sky, whistling through the smoke, right over their heads.

  Bombs started pouring down.

  CHAPTER 11

  In an instant, a bomb exploded on the runway. A man disappeared in a blaze of flames and black smoke.

  Danny and Mack and both guards hit the ground hard.

  Mack came over and shielded Danny’s head and shoulders with his body. He waited for a lull in the explosions and then he scrambled to his feet. He grabbed Danny’s hand, yanking him up.

  “We need to get out of here!” he shouted to the guards. “We need to find cover!”

  Turning to Danny, Mack yelled, “Come on!” Mack held Danny’s hand tight as they ran. “Keep your head down!”

  But where could they go?

  Bombs were exploding all around them.

  Boom! A truck exploded.

  Boom! Three men fell to the ground.

  A plane flew in low.

  Pom, pom, pom, pom, pom.

  A spray of bullets ripped apart a car.

  Soldiers were crouched behind bushes and under cars. Some had small handguns and were firing uselessly into the sky. One soldier threw rocks. Danny couldn’t believe it; did they really think that would stop the planes?

  But he understood too. There was nothing they could do.

  Mack dragged Danny behind what was left of a huge airplane hangar. Through the enormous holes in the walls, Danny saw U.S. bomber planes — shattered and burning. In the lawn behind the hangars, bombs had blown craters into the grass. Mack pushed Danny into one and then jumped in after him.

  “Get down!” Mack said.

  Danny curled up against the dirt wall, and Mack crouched next to him, shielding Danny with his body.

  Men shouted all around them.

  “He’s hit!”

  “Watch out!”

  “We need help!”

  “They’re coming in low!”

  Danny pressed his head against the side of the hole. Mack held him tight.

  “It will be over soon!” Mack said.

  But the planes kept coming. Danny peered up, knowing he’d never forget the sight of those planes. They were small and gray, like killer birds.

  A whistling sound cut though the air, and then —

  Kaboom!

  Dirt, rocks, and metal rained down on them. Something sharp stabbed Danny in the calf. He reached around and pulled out a small piece of metal, tossing it behind him.

  Danny closed his eyes tight, praying for the attack to stop.

  Suddenly he thought of Finn. He could almost feel that Finn was with him there, telling him to be brave. The feeling was so powerful — it filled Danny’s entire body.

  And finally the thundering stopped.

  The attack was over. The roar of the planes was replaced by the shouts of men.

  Danny turned, and Mack fell back, his eyes dazed.

  “I’m hit,” he rasped. “My back. I think it’s bad.”

  Danny looked at Mack’s back. His stomach heaved as he saw a jagged wound. And more blood than he had ever seen.

  Mack wouldn’t last long, bleeding like this.

  A blond soldier appeared above the crater. His glasses were cracked and he had a gash on his face.

  “Everyone all right here?” he asked.

  “He’s bleeding bad, sir!” Danny said.

  The soldier shouted for help, and within seconds he and another man were helping Danny lift Mack from the crater. Mack winced in pain as they pulled him onto the grass and laid him on his side. The soldier pressed against the wound with his bare hand, trying to slow the bleeding.

  “Hang on, sir,” the blond soldier said. “Help is on the way.”

  But Danny didn’t see any help.

  “Are there ambulances?” Mack asked.

  “All the ambulances are out, sir.”

  Mack nodded grimly. His jaw was clenched and his face was very pale.

  “What about that car?” Danny asked, pointing to a red Studebaker parked next to the hangar.

  “That belongs to our colonel,” the soldier said.

  Danny leaped up and rushed to the car.

  “Wait!” the soldier shouted.

  But Danny ignored him.

  The car had been spared any hits. It barely even had a scratch.

  Danny lifted the hood and studied the engine. He easily found the two ignition wires Earl had shown him.

  “You never know when you need to get somewhere quick,” Earl had said with a smile.

  As usual, Earl had been right.

  Danny carefully touched the wires together. The engine sputtered to life.

  Danny flung open the door and jumped inside. He drove the car around holes and chunks of glass and metal, pulling up as close as possible to where Mack lay.

  The blond soldier looked worried. But Mack managed a smile.

  “Good work, kid,” he said. “I won’t ask where you learned how to do that. But I�
��m darned glad you did.”

  Danny and the soldier helped Mack into the car.

  “Go!” the blond soldier said. “The hospital is half a mile down, on the right.”

  “Wait,” Mack said. “There are other guys who need help. We’re not leaving until the car is full.”

  Five minutes later, there were two more wounded men in the car. One man had so much blood on his face that Danny couldn’t tell what he looked like. The other was holding on to his leg like it might fall off.

  Danny drove as fast as he could to the hospital. The road was cratered and filled with burned wreckage. Once he had to get out and drag a huge piece of a plane out of the road. But finally he made it.

  When they got to the hospital entrance, Danny blared the horn, signaling for help.

  While they waited for help, Danny turned and looked at Mack.

  Mack’s eyes were fluttering. Danny wasn’t sure what to do. And then he reached over and grabbed Mack’s hand.

  “Mack,” he said.

  “What?” Mack rasped.

  He could only think of one thing to say.

  “I’ll make my ma have dinner with you,” Danny said. “When you get better.”

  Danny saw a flicker of a smile cross Mack’s face. Outside the car, two orderlies rushed out with a stretcher.

  Behind them were two nurses.

  One of them was Ma.

  CHAPTER 12

  The next twenty-four hours rushed by in a blur of sirens and blood and moaning, shouting men. But Danny barely had time to think about any of it. He was too busy.

  After that first moment when he and Ma saw each other — Ma hugged Danny so tight she almost cracked his ribs, and he hugged her back even tighter — she put Danny to work in the hospital. Hundreds of Hickam men had been wounded. They were the lucky ones. Dozens had died when a bomb destroyed the barracks while men were just waking up. Dozens more never made it out of the dining hall when a bomb set it on fire. Others had been hit on runways, in hangars, or while firing machine guns at the bombers.

  There were only two doctors and two nurses at Hickam. They needed every spare hand they could find.

  Danny helped soldiers and volunteers make beds and sweep glass off the floor. He rolled bandages and found extra blankets for men recovering from surgery. He watched Ma as she hurried from man to man, changing bandages, holding hands, never flinching. Mrs. Sudo was right — she was brave. A few times Danny managed to peep in on Mack. Ma said he’d been given a powerful drug to take away the pain. He’d lost almost half of his blood. But Ma said he’d survive.

  As bad as things were at Hickam, Danny knew they were even worse out on the harbor. All night reports trickled in: The battleship Arizona was gone, along with more than a thousand men. The Oklahoma was capsized, and more than a hundred men were still trapped inside. The California was sinking. The destroyers Shaw and Cassin had exploded. Other ships were badly damaged. For most of the day, Pearl Harbor was a sea of fire. Even men who managed to escape the burning ships had little chance of survival. Hundreds of planes at different bases had been destroyed or badly damaged. Hospitals all over Oahu were overflowing with wounded men. Danny heard that his school had been turned into a hospital.

  Everyone expected another attack. There were whispers about a Japanese invasion of Hawaii. Danny tried not to think about this, about how easy it would be for the Japanese to take over the island with so many ships and planes wrecked.

  The hours ticked by with no more Japanese planes.

  But America was now at war. Danny knew it would be months or even years before the sound of a plane in the sky didn’t make him jump.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that Ma and Danny finally got to sit together. Ma slumped in her chair, more tired than Danny had ever seen her. Her white uniform was spattered with blood. But she listened closely as Danny told her the story of how he had been with Aki when he saw the first planes.

  Ma told him about the terrifying first minutes when the bombs started dropping on Hickam.

  “We’ll remember this moment for the rest of our lives,” Ma said.

  Then she let out a strange sigh. “To think, I got you out of New York because I wanted you in a safe place.”

  She shook her head, and Danny could see she was fighting back tears.

  “I’m glad we’re here.”

  The words came out before Danny realized what he was saying. And Ma liked hearing them. She smiled a little.

  Just then, one of the doctors peeked his head in and said he needed Ma for surgery.

  “See you soon,” she said to Danny as she headed out the door. “Don’t go away, okay?”

  She was joking, Danny knew. Because where could he go from here?

  But he thought with shame of his plan to leave on the Carmella.

  Would he really have gone?

  If those planes hadn’t attacked today, would Danny be on that ship?

  He couldn’t say.

  It seemed impossible that only twenty-four hours had passed since he first saw those planes. Because everything seemed completely different now. Not just the harbor, now in ruins. Not just America, now at war.

  But Danny too.

  Maybe yesterday morning he had been the kind of boy who would leave his ma. He would never know for sure.

  But he knew this: He wasn’t that kind of boy anymore.

  CHAPTER 13

  DECEMBER 9, 1941

  9:00 A.M.

  It was two long days before Ma and Danny left Hickam.

  The first thing Danny did was change his clothes. The next thing he did was sprint up to the Sudos’ house.

  Aki ran to him.

  Danny had brought him a present — one of the airmen had given Danny his wings.

  Danny clipped the gold pin onto Aki’s shirt.

  “Mama!” Aki shrieked. “Look!”

  Mrs. Sudo stepped away from her clothesline.

  She smiled at Danny and hugged him.

  But Danny noticed her red and swollen eyes.

  A feeling of dread came over Danny.

  He saw no sign of Mr. Sudo.

  Mrs. Sudo had Danny sit down at the little table where they’d had lunch just a few days ago. She sent Aki into the house to get his toy trains.

  And she told Danny what had happened. Somehow, Mr. Sudo had made it home from fishing the night after the attack. But the next day, the police had come to the house.

  They were searching the houses of all Japanese people in Hawaii.

  Mrs. Sudo looked down. “They are looking for spies.”

  “Spies?” Danny asked.

  “They said that local Japanese here had helped with the attack. They asked if they could search our home, and of course we said yes. Because there is nothing here we have to hide.”

  Mrs. Sudo pushed her lips together and took a ragged breath.

  “But they did find something. Something they said proved that Aki’s father was helping the Japanese. The sketchbook. With all of his drawings of ships and planes. They took it. And then they took my husband to jail.”

  Danny tried to understand what Mrs. Sudo was saying.

  “What’s wrong with drawing the ships and planes?” Danny said.

  “They said he had given information to the Japanese about what ships were in the harbor, and what kind of planes we had. They said he helped them plan the attack.”

  “But didn’t you tell them that’s not true?”

  “Of course we did, Danny. My husband has lived in Hawaii his whole life. He loves America. This attack enraged him. That night he came home from fishing, he said he wanted to join the navy — the U.S. Navy — and fight the people who did this to our beautiful Hawaii.”

  “Did you tell them that?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Sudo said. “But they didn’t listen. I heard they have arrested other Japanese people. There is a rumor that they are going to put all Japanese people in America in jail.”

  Danny couldn’t believe that was true. Mrs. M
ills always said America was the land of the free.

  Just then, Aki came running out with his toy train.

  “Danny play!” he said.

  Mrs. Sudo patted Danny’s hand and got up to finish the laundry. Probably the best thing he could do for Mrs. Sudo was to keep Aki busy.

  And so he brought Aki back to his house and they spent the afternoon playing.

  All that afternoon Danny thought about Mr. Sudo.

  Was there any way he could help?

  Nothing came to him.

  Until later that night, when he was lying in bed.

  Danny realized that there was one person who might be able to do something.

  And the next morning, he went to the post office and sent a telegram to Earl Gasky.

  There was no way of knowing whether Earl had anything to do with Mr. Sudo’s release from jail a week later.

  But Danny knew that Mr. Sudo was back, because he heard a shriek from the hill.

  “Papa!”

  An hour later, Aki had dragged Mr. Sudo down to meet Danny.

  Of course Danny didn’t mention to Mr. Sudo that he’d asked a gangster to help free him from prison. Who knew if the telegram had ever reached Earl. And if it had, who knew if Earl had even cared.

  But right now there wasn’t much Danny could believe in. So he decided to believe in Earl.

  CHAPTER 14

  DECEMBER 25, 1941

  7:30 A.M.

  On Christmas morning, Danny was awakened by a strange noise.

  He sat up in bed, wide awake, wondering if he needed to wake up Ma, if they had to rush to the air-raid shelter down the road. There had been drills all week. Everyone knew where they were supposed to go if the Japanese attacked.

  Danny peeked around the blackout curtains on his window. Every house had to have these curtains. It had to be pitch dark at night so that the Japanese wouldn’t see any targets from the sky. Danny hated being inside the sealed-up house. It made him think of being in a coffin, buried alive. It scared Danny.

  Pretty much everything scared Danny.