Days of Infamy

by Newt Gingrich

  COMMANDER JAMES WATSON sat back in the chair, closed his eyes, and tried not to think about what was coming next. His wife and mother-in-law were whispering in the next room, debating if they should treat his wounded arm or not.

  Don’t think about it, think about something else, anything else, anything but today and the war.

  And yet his mind would not cooperate. He had been in the Navy for over twenty-five years, nearly all that time without ever hearing a shot fired in anger, his job as a cryptanalyst, a code breaker, almost clerklike. Random chance seemed to have placed him aboard the ill-fated Panay, the American gunboat sunk by the Japanese in China. One could almost say he was one of the first casualties of this war, even though that wounding was nearly four years ago, back in 1937, a wound that had cost him his left hand. Retired out as disabled, he thought his life would be one of peace, teaching higher math at the University here in Oahu, until called back to service eleven months ago, lured back into the world of code breaking in the basement of CinCPac, Commander in Chief, Pacific, where he and his comrades had labored away tracking and trying to break the secrets of Japanese military signals. If war came again, he believed, he would experience it in the monastic basement office where never a shot would be heard.

  Some dream, he thought, flinching as another wave of pain shot up his arm. He and his CO, Captain Collingwood, had suspected an attack might be coming toward Pearl, in fact he had actually written an urgent “eyes only” memo up to the top of the command chain, warning that a Japanese fleet might be in range of the Hawaiian Islands on the morning of December 7. And of course no one had listened.

  Incredible, he thought, wounded yet again, in nearly the same spot, the stump of my left hand, hit when Arizona blew up. Damn, if I had not been hit while on the Panay four years ago, chances are I’d have lost the hand today. Is Fate trying to tell me something?

  Another thought flashed through: the last Japanese strike plane departing the target area after their third attack—an attack which had devastated the oil tank farms, shattered the main dry dock, and truly rendered Pearl Harbor ineffective as a base for months to come—the way that plane was flown: audacity, courage. He wondered. Could it possibly be his old friend Fuchida at the controls? Strange he should think of him now, at this moment. They had only met once, at the Japanese Naval Academy ten years ago, when he had paid a courtesy call there and given a brief talk. Their correspondence had stopped as the crisis between their two nations deepened. He found himself wondering if Fuchida was out there, even now, planning another attack. So strange. I’d kill him if given the chance, and yet I still do think of him as a friend. It made him think of the poem by Thomas Hardy, about killing an enemy soldier but if you met him in a pub you’d buy him a drink or “help [him] to half a crown.”

  He heard a sigh, his mother-in-law sitting down beside him. He opened his eyes.

  “You really do need stitches, James,” she whispered. “I can do it, but we think you should go to hospital instead.”

  His mother-in-law, Nana, spoke in Japanese, peering thoughtfully at the wound, the bandage Margaret had put on it soaked clean through, and now peeled back.

  “It will be OK, Nan,” James replied. Given that her name was so similar to the American endearment for a beloved grandmother, he just simply called her Nan.

  He looked down at the stump of his left arm, the hand lost in the Panay incident of 1937, and now, this morning, damn it, wounded there yet again, whether by a fragment from the exploding Arizona, Japanese strafing, or just random debris crashing down around him, he would never know. But he did know that it hurt, it hurt badly.

  The side of the stump was slashed open nearly to the bone, and as Margaret had gingerly removed the leather straps of his mechanical “claw” he thought he would pass out from the firelike agony that was nearly as bad as the pain of original wound had been four years ago.

  Margaret, sitting at the kitchen table by his side, held his right hand tightly.

  “She’s right. I can drive you over to Fort Bellows infirmary right now.”

  He shook his head. They did not know the chaos that undoubtedly reigned there; he did. And second, he did not want either of them anywhere near a military base right now. Random shots echoed from nearby Fort Bellows and an occasional thump from more distant Kaneohe. Everyone was on edge, panic stricken, and frankly he feared that the mere sight of his mother-in-law, or even his wife, who had mostly Japanese features, might set some hothead off. He remembered the nisei lined up, with hands over their heads, as he drove past a police station in Honolulu when coming home this afternoon. There was no telling how things might get on this island regarding Japanese civilians during a terror-filled night. And beyond that, there was no telling what the Japanese navy might do next.

  “Stitch it up here,” he said softly, forcing a smile. “Come on, Nan, you’ve dealt with worse.”

  As a child she had worked in the pineapple fields of the Dole plantation, carting water to the workers, and helping to stitch up more than one wound from machetes and the sharp prickly leaves of the plant that had provided a financial empire for some, and drudgery of the worst kind for the thousands of immigrants imported into the island to do the backbreaking labor. Nana had come over as a young woman in 1898, the same year the island was incorporated as a territory, and there met a Portuguese fisherman, with whom she had three children, with Margaret being the youngest. Tragically, two had died in the great flu epidemic of 1918, so Margaret, her Americanized name, held a special place in Nan’s heart.

  When first they had met during his posting to Pearl in 1920, the year Nan’s husband died, lost in a storm, there had been an instant bond between Nan and him, as if he were a lost son, and in some ways a protective husband and father. Since he had never known his own mother, who died giving him life, Nan filled a deep role in his heart as well.

  In some ways the marriage to Margaret, and his closeness to Nan, had changed his career as well. Languages had always come easily for him, and though the Japanese he learned was colloquial, nevertheless it made him one of the very few officers in the United States Navy who had a mastery of the language of what up until earlier this day was seen as a potential enemy but not truly a serious threat and now was a real enemy and a most serious threat indeed.

  With the suggestion that she handle the surgery to his injured arm, Nan visibly trembled but then nodded, becoming her old stoic self. She went into her bedroom and came back out a minute later with her sewing kit. Margaret helped her, bringing a small pot of water to boil, dumping in a couple of large needles her mother had chosen and a long length of thread.

  As he watched them, he suddenly regretted his own bravado, feeling a bit lightheaded. Memories of the Panay hit him. He remembered lying in the mud, a chief petty officer tying a tourniquet around his lower arm. He remembered the raging infection that hit within a day, the amputation of his hand while he was still awake, and the doctor fearing to use a general anesthetic because of the pneumonia that had hit him due to his aspirating the fetid waters of the Yangtze River.

  Now that his mother-in-law actually had something to do, she was all business, watching the water boil, telling her daughter to wash her hands and then pour more iodine into the wound.

  The sting of the iodine as Margaret gingerly pushed back the fold of puffy flesh made his head swim, and at the sight of his pain Margaret struggled to stifle her tears.

  “No crying now,” Nan announced. “Be brave like him.”

  Brave like him? He was all but ready to collapse in panic as his mother-in-law doused her own hands in iodine, fished the needle out of the boiling water with a spatula, did the same with the thread, expertly threaded the sewing needle, then turned to face him.

  “Maybe you look away,” she said in English, sitting down by his side. First she pried the wound open, looking at it carefully. The cut went clear to the stump of bone, blood rapidly oozing out as she spread it open.

  “Don’t see anything in the
re, looks like what hit you slashed across,” she said in Japanese.

  She gently closed the wound then held a needle aloft. Margaret grasped his good hand and he focused on her eyes.

  Surprisingly the first puncture of the needle really didn’t hurt all that much more, but after the third or fourth stitch, as she tightened the thread, pulling the open folds of the wound in together, he had to fight down the urge to scream. Even if he wanted to pull away he couldn’t; the old woman with a powerful left hand was holding his arm in place, even as she stitched with her right hand.

  Another eight to ten stitches went in. She even started to hum softly, and that did bring tears to his eyes. It was a traditional Japanese lullaby, one she used to hum to their lost child David when he was a boy, and also when he was sick and dying from leukemia nearly a decade ago.

  From the corner of his eye he saw her draw the needle up one more time, bring it down, tie it off, bite the end of the thread off, and then smile.

  “Good job,” she announced proudly, and he looked down at her handiwork and, in spite of the pain, nodded. The stitches were well placed, even, close together.

  The old woman wiped the bloody needle on her dress sleeve, dropped it back into her sewing kit, and then bandaged the wound.

  “You go to bed,” she ordered.

  He fumbled in his breast pocket. It was empty, but for once Margaret did not object and reached around behind him for the half-finished pack of Lucky Strikes. She put one to his lips and even flicked his Zippo lighter.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t make it a habit,” Margaret said, trying to force a smile. Leaning up, she kissed him on the forehead. “I plan to keep you around for a long time yet. The enemy can’t kill you but those damn cigarettes will.”

  Funny the way she chose the word enemy. She was half Japanese. She couldn’t bring herself to use the word Jap, but there was a bitter snap to how she said “enemy.”

  “I really should go back to the base.”

  “Not tonight you won’t,” Margaret replied forcefully, and her mother looked over her shoulder and nodded agreement.

  “There is nothing more you can do tonight. Besides, you said your building was destroyed, and what will they need with a cryptographer anyhow?”

  He looked at her a bit startled. In the eleven months since he had been called back to duty, not once had he used that word. He had even lectured his wife and mother-in-law on the fact that he could never discuss with them anything about his job other than that it had something to do with math.

  “What secrets does a wife not know?” she said with a soft smile. “Remember I do your laundry, and you do have a habit of talking in your sleep at times.”

  She leaned over and kissed him again.

  “Don’t worry, dear. I’m not a gossip or a boaster the way some of these navy wives are. Your secret is good with me.”

  A flash illuminated the room. For a split second civilian thinking still held sway: it was a lightning bolt. Then more flashes, strobelike, one on another spaced fractions of a second apart. His mother-in-law stood by the kitchen sink, the light cascading in from the open window, covered by a curtain.

  All three remained frozen in place, James unable to react.

  Surely it couldn’t be?

  There was still silence, though out in the street below he heard screaming, panicked voices. A gunshot echoed.

  A burst of blue glowing light ignited, holding steady, redoubling a second later, and then redoubling again. He thought he heard, as well, the distant sound of a plane engine, drawing closer.

  He came to his feet, and going to the kitchen sink pulled the curtain back, ignoring the blackout order.

  And he saw it, hovering over the airbase at Kaneohe, illumination flares floating in the sky.

  The drone of the engine grew louder, and he pulled open the side door from the kitchen that led out to the open lanai and looked up.

  Nothing for a moment. Another gunshot from the street, followed by several more.

  “The Japs are coming! The Japs!” It was his neighbor, Ed Simpson, shouting wildly, pointing his pump shotgun to the sky and then firing again.

  And now, out to sea, more flashes, several dozen and concurrent. At last came the distant sound of thunder from the first salvo of star shells.

  “James?”

  Margaret was by his side, clutching his left arm, forgetting about his wound and the pain it caused, his mother-in-law standing fearfully behind him, peering out from around his shoulder.

  He counted the seconds, ten, fifteen… and then the impacts on the naval airfield, where a dozen fires still raged from the earlier attacks.

  Seconds later the shock wave could be felt in the soles of his feet, and then finally the distant rumble of the explosions of five-, six-, and fourteen-inch shells.

  He turned and looked to his right. Fort Bellows was but a half mile distant, upslope. There was a single flash of light in reply, a couple of seconds later the concussion of the lone eight-inch coastal gun washing over them, causing Margaret and her mother to jump.

  More flashes out to sea. He had them sighted now, standing out in stark relief against the nearly full moon rising behind them. It was hard to judge, but it was apparent the ships out there were moving southward. If they were hitting Kaneohe, Bellows would be next, most likely within a few minutes, and their small town of Kailua was smack in the middle between the two.

  “We’re getting out of here now!” he shouted. “Margaret, get the keys for the car.”

  “James?”

  “Now. We’re getting out of here now!”

  He turned to go back into the house. Wincing, he struggled to get his soiled, bloodstained uniform jacket back on.

  Then Margaret was by his side, helping him to get the jacket up over his shoulder, taking the time to button it up. Though long ago he had mastered getting dressed and properly buttoned with one hand, Margaret had always insisted upon helping when she was around, and frankly even at this moment, it was still endearing.

  A thought hit him about the panic that was breaking out. He opened up the drawer of the nightstand by his side of the bed and pulled out a heavy Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, snapped it open to check if it was loaded, closed it, and stuck it into his belt, the weight of it making him feel a bit ridiculous, like some desperado. For safety he had always kept the cylinder under the hammer empty; more than one idiot had accidentally shot himself carrying a gun with a cartridge under the hammer. He pulled out a box of shells and stuffed them into his pocket.

  Margaret, watching him, said nothing. She hated guns, objected to his keeping a loaded pistol in their bedroom, but she didn’t object now.

  “Where’s Mother?” she asked.

  He looked around. She had disappeared.

  “Damn it, Mother!”

  He headed for her bedroom and found her there. She was on her knees, a tattered cardboard box pulled out from under her bed. Weeping, she was carefully sorting through aged, yellowed photographs, setting some aside.

  “We don’t have time now, Mother,” he said, trying to be gentle.

  She looked up at him, crying.

  “These are all I have,” she said in Japanese, and a lump came to his throat when he saw that most of the photos she was drawing out of the box were of her and David, one a framed picture of him on his baptism day, his grandmother proudly holding him.

  Nothing had ever been said between Margaret and him about it, but there was only one small photograph of David on display in their house, on Margaret’s vanity, her favorite picture of the two of them on his first day at kindergarten, her little boy about to face the world… and David was clutching her, arms around her shoulders, crying in front of the school, and she in tears, trying to smile bravely as he had taken the image. He did not know that his mother-in-law, had, in fact, saved all the other photographs across the years. On the day David died, in a blind fit of anguish, he had taken the photographs down from the walls, swept them off t
ables and mantle tops, and thrown them out. She had obviously recovered every one of them.

  If he had lived, David would be eighteen now. Eighteen and ever so proud of his father, he might have gone into the Navy, and perhaps at this moment be down in that hellhole at Kaneohe, or dead back at Pearl Harbor.

  “Take that one,” he finally said, pointing to the baptism photograph, struggling to hold back his own tears as he reached out with his one hand and got her to her feet.

  Clutching the one photograph, she headed for the door, Margaret running to hurry her along, and he could not help but notice that Margaret was cradling her favorite photograph of David as well.

  They went out the front door and Margaret paused to fumble with the keys. Though one rarely locked one’s home in this neighborhood, she now planned to.

  “To hell with that,” he shouted, moving the two of them along to the car.

  And then, in that instant, it hit, the shock wave of two fourteen-inch shells racing overhead. He had heard such big guns fired before, hundreds of times while aboard the Maryland or Oklahoma, but never like this, never on the receiving end. He had heard it described as sounding like a freight train roaring down a mountainside. He had never heard anything like it in real life. A split second later the two shells impacted two hundred fifty yards away, and three hundred yards short of one of the coastal gun positions at Bellows.

  It took just under a second for the shock wave to hit them—and when it did strike, it was with hurricane force, palm fronds flapping, several breaking off from the trees around their house to come clattering down, one smashing a window, followed by a heavy thundering patter of debris, shrapnel, clods of dirt, and broken bits of trees rained down around them.

  He instinctively put his arms around Margaret and Nan, forcing them down, until the storm had passed.

  “Up! Move it!”

  He started to open the driver’s-side door, but Margaret shoved him aside.

  “I’m driving,” she cried. Gone was the usually loving deference of his bride, who still carried a touch of her mother’s traditions. She was now thoroughly American. She had a wounded husband who even with his claw on had to take it a bit slow around some of the curves while trying to shift gears—and she was in charge.