The Pearl Harbor Murders

by Max Allan Collins

  He'd recently moved into this house at Makalapa Heights, about five minutes from HQ, and the place was underfurnished—severely lacking the touch his wife would have brought to it. On days off like this, he missed her dearly; but most of his time was so filled with work, he scarcely remembered he had any private life.

  This week had been filled with protracted discussions over whether the fleet should be kept in Pearl Harbor or sent to sea; and now this business was looming of the supposed espionage activities that Adam Sterling—a good man, if overeager—and the ever-imaginative Ed Burroughs had brought to his attention last night.

  He was still in his pajamas, and hadn't even shaved yet, when Commander Murphy, duty officer at HQ, called to say the Ward had ash-canned a sub near the harbor.

  "Sorry to bother you on Sunday morning, sir," Murphy said.

  Kimmel realized this was probably just another false alarm—incorrect reports of subs in the outlying area were common.

  But he said, "You acted correctly, Commander—all submerged sub contacts must be regarded as hostile....I'll be right down."

  Around five minutes later, freshly shaved and just getting into uniform, Kimmel again answered the phone and once more it was Murphy.

  But this time the businesslike commander's voice was strangely shrill: "Sir, we have a message from the signal tower saying the Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor—and this is no drill!"

  Kimmel slammed the phone down and ran outside, onto the front lawn, into the garden which overlooked the base, buttoning his white uniform jacket as he went.

  The sky was filled with the enemy—the Rising Sun on their wings. He knew at once this was no casual raid, by a few stray planes.

  "Unbelievable," he murmured.

  Aghast, he stood frozen among the flowers-poin-settias and hibiscus in bloom-watching Jap aircraft swoop down on the base, circling in figure eights, dropping bombs, turning and dropping more, machineguns chattering. Explosions rocked the sky-and ships, fires already burning fiercely on their decks. "Impossible," he whispered.

  Four miles west of Pearl Harbor, the Ewa Marine Corps Air Station was hit by two squadrons of silver planes bisecting the field at two hundred mph, fishtailing to better lash their bullets into broad patterns.

  Of the base's forty-nine fighters and scout planes, thirty were decimated on the ground.

  Four blocks from Beretania Street, the black Ford managed to crawl through the traffic jam and make it across Kuakini Street, bordering Pauoa Park, where on the left-hand corner squatted the two-story concrete compound of the Japanese Consulate.

  Sterling pulled up in front, into the no-parking zone, and Burroughs and his son hopped out, following the FBI agent up the stairs, where-oddly-Consul General Nagao Kita stood halfway down... in his dark blue silk pajamas.

  Burroughs had met the usually affable Kita before, socially, as had Sterling-the consul general was short, plump, with dark thick hair, and a broad, bushy-browed face that, with its flattened pug nose, gave him the appearance of a cheerful ex-prizefighter.

  "Good morning, gentlemen," Kita said, arms folded, smiling like a friendly genie.

  "Don't you know there's a war on?" Sterling demanded.

  Kita shrugged. "This is just another American exercise-an elaborate one, I admit."

  "Take a look at the color of that smoke," Sterling said, nodding toward the sky. "It's black, not white- fuel oil. Your planes are bombing Pearl Harbor."

  "Nonsense."

  "I'm going to have to take you in custody, Mr. Kita. We're at war, and I have evidence of espionage on the part of your vice consul."

  The smile disappeared into an impassive mask. "I'm a diplomat, Mr. Sterling. Even if we are at war-I have certain rights."

  "You have no rights-American boys are dying right now in this vicious underhanded attack. Where is your vice consul? Where is Yoshikawa?"

  Kita's eyes tightened. "I know no one by that name."

  "I'll settle for Morimura, then."

  A siren screamed and tires squealed as a police car came to a halt next to the black Ford. Three uniformed police officers-two Hawaiians and a Chinese- jumped out, shotguns in hand, and so did a plainclothes officer... Detective John Jardine, a .45 automatic in his fist.

  Jardine took the steps two at a time and joined the little discussion group, nodding to Burroughs and Hully, then saying to Sterling and Kita, "We're putting this building under armed guard."

  "Why?" Kita said, his impassive face finally offering up a frown.

  "For the protection of the consul general," the Portuguese detective said, "and the members of your staff."

  Kita lifted a bushy eyebrow. "And if I don't want your protection?"

  Jardine's wide thin mouth made a faint smile. "Well, we could wait an hour or so, for a nice mob to build, and then throw your ass to it."

  That seemed to sober Kita, who said, "Shall we step inside?"

  "What a good idea," Jardine said, then turned to the FBI man, who was already holding open the door. "Agent Sterling, we intend to fully cooperate with your office. If I might ask, why are Mr. Burroughs and his son with you?"

  "I had to press them into service," Sterling said, as they allowed Kita to lead the way into the vestibule. "I've been cut off from my office."

  "Glad to have your help," Jardine said, nodding at both Burroughs and Hully. "But why do I have the feeling we're still working the Pearl Harada murder case?"

  "Help us find Vice Consul 'Morimura,' " Burroughs said, "and you'll find out."

  A guard fence separated Pearl Harbor from the two thousand acres of Hickam Field, biggest Army base on Oahu, home of the Army's bomber squadrons. Here, a quarter mile of neatly arranged A-20s, B-17s and B-18s served themselves up to the hungry waves of silver planes. The incessant bombing and strafing-not only of the sitting-duck aircraft but barracks, support facilities and hangars-did not dissuade the men of Hickam from working fiercely to disperse their aircraft, or from fighting back.

  Two Japanese-American civilians-laborers employed at the field-helped set up a machine gun and fed it with ammo belts while a boy from Michigan fired away at the diving planes.

  Standing near a hangar, Corporal Jack Stanton-one eye slightly swollen, even blackened, from his Hotel Street brawl of the night before-saw the friend standing next to him strafed into explosive splashes of blood, bone and flesh. Horrified, then energized into action, Stanton ran across the tarmac-not even pausing when another bomb blew a khaki-clad soldier in two-and managed to climb up into a bomber.

  Stanton began firing the machine gun in the nose of the bomber, its deadly chatter knocking one of the silver planes out of the sky.

  But when a Zero swooped down, delivering its own machine-gun fire, the fuel tank ignited and Stanton was trapped in the cockpit, flames all around him, caged in a crackling hell.

  Stanton didn't bother trying to get out. As the flames slowly consumed him, he kept firing up at the sons of bitches, and witnesses said his red tracer bullets could be seen zinging skyward, long after flames had encompassed the nose of the plane.

  Winging eastward in groups of three, past the Pearl Harbor entry, cutting inland at an altitude of a mere sixty feet, twenty-four torpedo planes threw their supple blue shadows across the Navy Yard and the Southeast Loch, closing in on Battleship Row-where those gray behemoths, the Arizona, California, Maryland, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia, pride of the Navy, slumbered in the sunlight. In groups of two, coming from the west, sixteen more torpedo planes took a direct route across the island, their targets the ships docked on the far side of Ford Island, as well as those at the Navy Yard piers over the east channel.

  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 even risk landing troops; there was no telling how seriously this attack might develop.

  General Short knew only one thing for certain: he had to get out of these damn golf togs.

  Don and Jerry Morton's mother, terrified by the explosions around them, stopped the car, and led her boys into a sugarcane field, where they all sat with hands on their ears, heads between their knees.

  Now and then, Don's mother would ask either him or Jerry to peek up and see if the airplanes swooping overhead were American.


  And, for the next two hours, they never were. Shivering, Don wondered if his stepfather was okay on Ford Island.

  (He was not: the boys' stepfather had been among the first to die today, hit by a bomb on the Ford Island seaplane ramp.)

  The U.S. Pacific Fleet was a family of sorts-big, and yet small enough that most men knew anyone else in their specialized line of work; a man might enlist and stay on one ship until retirement, twenty or thirty years later. Officers had ties, as well, often going back to Annapolis days. Admiral Kimmel knew thousands of his men by sight, and hundreds by name, and dozens were his personal Mends.

  From his office window at fleet HQ, Kimmel could do little more than stand and watch his ships... and his men... die-the admiral helplessly bearing the thunder of exploding bombs, and the anvil clangs of torpedoes ravaging his ships, bleeding rolling clouds of smoke.

  His people tried to establish communications with the areas under attack, and sent messages to ships at sea, advising them of what was happening at Pearl. They could hear explosions and see waterspouts and, of course, the funnels of black smoke.

  "I must say," Kimmel said quietly to the officers around him, "it's a beautifully executed military maneuver ... leaving aside the unspeakable treachery of it."

  As he stood there, a bullet came crashing through the window and struck him on the chest-leaving a sooty splotch on his otherwise immaculate white uniform. He bent to pick up what turned out to be a spent .50-caliber machine-gun slug.

  Softly, he said, "I wish it had killed me-that would've been merciful."

  Then he reached up and, with both hands, tore loose the four-star boards on bis shoulders; he went into his office and came back wearing two-star boards, having demoted himself.

  At the Japanese Consulate, Jardine and Sterling-with Burroughs and Hully tagging after-searched the compound. General Consul Kita was along, as well, a bored fat man in his pajamas; and when Jardine came to a locked door, toward the rear of the main building, he demanded that Kita open it. "I have no key," Kita said, unflappable.