The Pearl Harbor Murders
Page 18
On Ford Island, the husks of dozens of planes lay in charred disarray, while hangars burned around them. On the oil-pooled surface of the harbor floated debris, much of it human. And along the Oahu shores, the pummeled air bases continued to ooze smoke.
Corpsman attempted, often vainly, to identify bodies and body parts at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital. At the base of Alewa Heights, just below the Shuncho-ro teahouse-where the Japanese vice consul had wooed geishas and perpetrated espionage-a makeshift morgue was set up.
The triumph of the Japanese, however, was not complete. Huge fuel tanks, holding millions of barrels of oil, had gone unsullied. The Navy Yard itself, that sprawl of repair facilities and shops, was secure. The Naval ammo depot went untouched, as did the submarine pens. Smaller warships by the score escaped damage; and the raiders had failed to find-much less destroy-the aircraft carriers of the Pacific Fleet.
The greatest miscalculation, of course, was the nature of the attack itself-the sheer villainy of such a peacetime assault To the Japanese military, this was a glorious day of victory, but just one day-a war, after all, was made of many days.
But December 7, 1941, was not just any day.
Americans would remember it
Epilogue
On the afternoon after the attack-in response to a radio request for help from all able-bodied men-Ed and Hully Burroughs were issued Springfield rifles and dispatched to patrol the waterfront in a civilian guard, helping to dig slit trenches along the shore.
With the help of his friend Colonel Kendall Fielder, Burroughs earned the distinction of becoming the oldest American correspondent to cover the Second World War, making three trips to Pacific war zones. He was vocal in his support for Hawaii's Japanese-Americans, though his stereotypical, propagandist portrayal of "Japs" in his WWII novel, Tarzan and the Foreign Legion, rivaled that of the Germans in Tarzan the Untamed.
Colonel Fielder also became known for championing the rights of Japanese-Americans; possibly he'd been touched in some private way by the deaths of his son and his son's nisei fiancee. At any rate, largely due to the efforts of Fielder and a few others-including FBI agent Adam Sterling-99 percent of Hawaii's 160,000 Japanese-Americans remained free, unlike the widespread mainland interments.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Burroughs turned his hand to mystery writing, even briefly converting Tar-zan into a detective, though without particular success, including a wild crime story entitled "More Fun! More People Killed!" that The Saturday Evening Post turned down.
After suffering several heart attacks, Edgar Rice Burroughs died in bed, on March 19, 1950, slumping over the funny papers, which were open to 'Tarzan."
Ed Burroughs was very proud of his son Hully, who a few weeks after the Pearl Harbor raid enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Hickam Field; First Lieutenant Hul-bert Burroughs went on to be a distinguished aerial combat photographer. Toward the end of the war, Hully married Marion Thrasher; after his father's death, he took the reins of ERB, Inc., working with his brother John Coleman Burroughs to effectively administer the legacy of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Otto Kuhn and his wife were arrested at a beach house, and imprisoned at the Sand Island Detention Center; Tadeo Yoshikawa (alias Tadashi Morimura) was transported to an interment camp in Arizona and, in August 1942, exchanged for American diplomats held in Japan.
Kuhn and Yoshikawa were two of only a dozen individuals determined to have actively engaged in prewar espionage in Hawaii; grocer Tosbio Harada was another. All of them had been sent to Hawaii under false names and/or pretenses; none were representatives of any local fifth column of Japanese-Americans. No such fifth column was ever shown to exist.
Sam Fujimoto fought with the celebrated all-Japanese 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and later graduated from Yale Law School, becoming a successful Honolulu attorney.
Harry Kamana and a smaller version of his band toured the Pacific Theater for the USO.
After the war, Detective John Jardine was instrumental in the cleaning up of police corruption on Oahu; he retired in 1968, died a year later, widely regarded as the finest homicide detective Oahu had ever known.
Both Admiral Kimmel and General Short were forced to retire and a hurried government report in January 1942 branded them with "dereliction of duty." Though a later report absolved them of this charge, the stigma remains, and Admiral Kimmel's son Edward has made a concerted effort to have his father and General Short advanced on the retired lists to their highest wartime ranks of four-star admiral and three-star general.
General Short in his later years spent much time on his garden, cultivating flowers, not actively seeking rehabilitation of his reputation; he died in 1949. Admiral Kimmel-though on December 7, 1941, he seemed to blame himself, at least in part-spent the rest of his life trying to restore his good name, dying of a heart attack in 1968.
The exact circumstances of the attack on Pearl
Harbor, and the reasons for the success of that attack, remain the subject of controversy and debate, involving Congress, the president and media coverage, even sixty years after the fact.
What did the Washington High Command know concerning Japanese intentions and military targets prior to the raid, and why did Washington fail to pass along this information to Kimmel and Short? If the general and admiral had been privy to this information, would they have taken more seriously the Mori message and other evidence of espionage the FBI agent and the creator of Tarzan brought to their attention, the Saturday evening before that fateful Sunday morning?
This Pearl Harbor mystery remains unsolved.
* * *
A Tip of the Panama
This book is a combination of the factual and the fanciful. Details herein of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor-including espionage mat led up to that attack-are largely factual, although the murder case is a fictional one; and I make no claim, large or small, for this novel as any kind of definitive account of this pivotal event in our history. Any blame for historical and/or geographical inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of conflicting source material.
Like my previous "disaster mysteries," The Titanic Murders (1999) and The Hindenburg Murders (2000), this novel features a real-life writer as amateur detective. Edgar Rice Burroughs was a great childhood favorite of mine; I was an avid reader of both the Tarzan tales and ERB's science fiction, well into my teens. The narrative technique of separating two protagonists and following the adventures of each in alternating chapters-used in this book-is one I learned from Burroughs. Tarzan the Untamed, incidentally, was my favorite of the novels-and the controversy over that "anti-German" title is accurately reported herein.
Burroughs and his son Hulbert were indeed present on Oahu-and living at the Niumalu Hotel-on December 7, 1941; they were, in fact, playing tennis when the bombing began. My fictionalized portrayal of them is based largely upon two wonderful biographies: the massive, seminal Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan (1975) by Irwin Forges; and a book I found as compulsively readable as any Burroughs novel, Tarzan Forever (1999) by John Tali-aferro. Also helpful were the early Burroughs biographies, The Big Swingers (1967) by Robert W. Fenton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965) by Richard A. Lupoff. So was Tarzan of the Movies (1968) by Gabe Esso.
A number of characters in The Pearl Harbor Murders are historical figures and appear under their real names, including (of course) General Short and Admiral Kimmel. Colonel Kendall Fielder existed, but the character Bill Fielder is fictional; grocer Yoshio Harada existed, but Pearl Harada is fictional. Adam Sterling is a composite of several FBI agents, one of whom lived at the Niumalu and was friendly with Ed Burroughs. The Kuhns, Colonel Teske (name changed), Tadeo Yoshikawa (a.k.a. Tadashi Morimura), Fred Bivens, George Elliot, Joe Lockard, William Outerbridge, the Morton family, Nagao Kita, and John Jardine are historical figures; Dan Pressman, Jack Stanton, Sam Fu-jimoto, Terry Mizuha, Frank Kaupiko, and Harry
Kamana are not, although most have real-life
counterparts. Marjorie Petty did visit Oahu shortly before the attack, but (to my knowledge) never dated Hully Burroughs; as a buff of pinup art and artists, I couldn't resist noting the presence in Honolulu of this real, live Petty Girl.
Despite the use of real names and an underlying basis in history, these are all characters in a novel, fictionalized and doing the author's bidding.
My fact-based novels about fictional 1930s/'40s-era Chicago private detective Nathan Heller have required extensive research not unlike what was required here. As usual, my Heller research assistant, George Hagenauer, provided valuable input and came up with research materials on both Pearl Harbor and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Many books on both Hawaii and the Pearl Harbor attack were consulted, but none was more valuable than Pearl Harbor Ghosts (1991) by Thurston Clarke. Mr. Clarke's wonderful book is a vivid picture of Honolulu in 1941 filtered through a modem prism; this work- along with Tarzan Forever-provided the spine of my research, and I am indebted to him.
Other Hawaii references consulted include: All the Best in Hawaii (1949), Sydney Clark; Aloha Waikiki (1985), DeSoto Brown; Around the World Confidential (1956), Lee Mortimer; Detective Jardine: Crimes in Honolulu (1984), John Jardine with Edward Rohr-bough and Bob Krauss; Hawaii: A Profile (1940), Merle Colby; Hawaii Recalls (1982), DeSoto Brown, Anne Ellett, Gary Giernza; Hawaii: Restless Rampart (1941), Joseph Barber, Jr.; Hawaiian Tapestry (1937), Antoinette Withington; Hawaii! "... Wish You Were Here." (1994), Ray and Jo Miller; Hawaiian Yesterdays (1982), Ray Jerome Baker; Honolulu-Waikiki Handbook (1994), J. D. Bisignani; The Japanese in Hawaii: A Century of Struggle (1985), Roland Kotani; Remembering Pearl Harbor (1984), Michael Slack-man; Roaming Hawaii (1937), Harry A. Franck; The View from Diamond Head (1986), Don Hibbard and David Franzen; Waikiki Beachboy (1989), Grady Tim-mons; and When You Go to Hawaii (1930), Townsend Griffiss. The latter-a book I stumbled onto in a Honolulu used-book store while researching the Nathan Heller novel Damned in Paradise (1996)-was again particularly useful.
Two especially helpful references were Pearl Harbor (1969) by A. J. Barker, and the groundbreaking Day of Infamy (1957) by Walter Lord. I also screened the film Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), directed by Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasuku. Other valuable references on the attack include: At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (1981), Gordon W. Prange; The Broken Seal (1967), Ladislas Far-ago; Dec. 7 1941 (1988), Gordon W. Prange with Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon; Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath (1982), John Toland; Long Day's Journey into War: December 7, 1941 (1991), Stanley Weintraub; Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial (1986), Richard A. Wisniewski; and Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History (1986), Gordon W. Prange with Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon.
Internet research led me to several useful articles, including "Alewa Teahouse One of the Last of Its Kind" by Rod Ohira (Honolulu Star-Bulletin); "The Pearl Harbor Spy" by Wil Deac (thehistorynet.com); and the wonderful overview article "Turning Points: One Sunday in December" by Edward Oxford (American History magazine), the single most important research document for my portrayal of the attack itself.
I would like to thank editor Natalee Rosenstein of Berkley Prime Crime for having the foresight to allow me to do this book sooner rather than later-and then to graciously grant me a brief but vital extension; my agent and friend, Dominick Abel; and of course my wife, Barbara Collins, who interrupted her own writing to help me survive various sneak attacks along the way.
About the Author
Max Allan Collins has earned an unprecedented nine Private Eye Writers of America "Shamus" nominations for his "Nathan Heller" historical thrillers, winning twice (True Detective, 1983, and Stolen Away, 1991).
A Mystery Writers of America "Edgar" nominee in both fiction and nonfiction categories, Collins has been hailed as "the Renaissance man of mystery fiction." His credits include five suspense-novel series, film criticism, short fiction, songwriting, trading-card sets and movie tie-in novels, including such international bestsellers as In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, and Saving Private Ryan.
He scripted the internationally syndicated comic strip "Dick Tracy" from 1977 to 1993, is cocreator of the comic-book features "Ms. Tree" and "Mike Danger," and has written the "Batman" comic book and newspaper strip. DreamWorks has bought motion-picture rights to his 1998 graphic novel, Road to Perdition.
Working as an independent filmmaker in his native Iowa, he wrote and directed the suspense film Mommy, starring Patty McCormack, premiering on Lifetime in 19%, as well as its 1997 sequel, Mommy's Day. The recipient of a record four Iowa Motion Picture Awards for screenwriting, he also wrote The Expert, a 1995 HBO World Premiere film; and wrote and directed the award-winning documentary Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane (1999) and the innovative feature Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market (2000).
Collins lives in Muscaline, Iowa, with his wife, writer Barbara Collins, and their teenage son, Nathan.
Table of Contents
Contents
ONE: December 5, 1941
TWO: A Nazi at the Niumalu
THREE: Luau Luminaries
FOUR: Nightmare at the Beach
FIVE: Sad Song
TWO: December 6, 1941
SEVEN: Mourning After
EIGHT: Halftime
NINE: Chinatown
TEN: An Evening at the Shuncho-ro
ELEVEN: Hotel Street
TWELVE: Party Crashers
THREE: December 7, 1941
FOURTEEN: Under Fire
FIFTEEN: Retaliation
Epilogue
A Tip of the Panama
About the Author