Days of Infamy

by Newt Gingrich

  “Yes, sir.”

  Newton traced a line out with his finger.

  “We continue on this course at twenty knots, they continue on their course at the same speed, we could pass right through each other in less than twelve hours. The last thing I want is a surface engagement at night against the Japanese.”

  “Agreed, sir.”

  They had monitored Draemel’s reports when his small task force had struck the Japanese battleships at night and been slaughtered. It was obvious the Japs had the edge in night combat, something that had been speculated about for years at war games and in reports from the few observers allowed to witness their fleet maneuvers. Beyond that, they had one hell of a tough battleship still in action with their fleet. Meet that at night and it could rip their more lightly armed task force to shreds.

  “But, if we do this,” and Sherman traced out a different line, “and they continue due west toward the Marshalls, if at dawn we’re ready to launch, we just might get the first punch in, maybe even tear them apart.”

  Newton smiled at the thought.

  “That’s what I was thinking as well. We change course in fifteen minutes.”

  He sighed.

  “I wish to hell Halsey had waited, just maneuvered. If we had been able to combine and caught them while together, it would have evened it out.”

  “You know Halsey,” Sherman replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “Anyhow, I’d have done the same. It was his only shot. He had to take the risk and do it.”

  “Still …” and his voice trailed off for a moment. “Hell, I wonder if he’s even alive anymore. I am afraid the Japs got him.”

  Akagi

  14:05 hrs local time

  A ZERO WINGED in low, wagging its wings as it passed at a right angle over the deck and then soared back up, part of their covering patrol, which orbited at five hundred meters above the water to keep an eye out for any torpedo bomber that might slip in out of the low tropical clouds, while a second flight of four orbited to the east, fifteen thousand feet up, ready to pounce on any raid that might come from Oahu, now nearly two hundred miles astern.

  Fuchida watched the fighter with envy. Over forty Zeroes were maintaining watch over the carriers, burning a lot of fuel and engine time, but until well clear of any strikes from Oahu, they had to watch in all directions. The PBY and B-17 that had been tagging them were nowhere to be seen, but they had monitored the radio reports.

  A strike from whatever the Americans had left on Oahu had to be expected, even at this range. There was also the report from Soryu and Hiryu that after being attacked by naval planes, they had not returned back to their carrier but had flown on a heading back to Pearl. They would have been turned around by now and perhaps were already coming this way.

  Scout planes, ranging westward, had yet to spot any additional carriers, and even Genda now wondered if perhaps there had been only two American carriers in the region after all, and both had been sunk by Soryu and Hiryu. Though, of course, logically, he wished for that to be true, in his heart part of him wished that it was not. Then when the admiral lifted the ban on his flying tomorrow, he could lead a strike to finish off what was left of the American fleet. Perhaps there was still one, maybe two more of their carriers out there to engage.

  “You want to be up there, don’t you?”

  It was his friend Genda, joining him on the open bridge, and he smiled, nodding.

  “I’d like to boast that if I had been flying cover over Soryu, it never would have been hit.”

  Genda shook his head.

  “Such courage. I was in one of our planes. It was faster, I knew it would get me through. But their old Devastators? That was suicide to send them against our Zeroes.”

  “It troubles the admiral, too,” Genda replied. “He says it shows they are enraged. We’ve been listening to their radio reports from the mainland. What they are saying is pure hatred of us now.”

  “How would we react,” Fuchida said softly, “if it had been them surprising us and bombing our ships in Tokyo Harbor? Of course they are enraged. The only factors now are those that should concern us. Will their rage make them reckless? I think we saw that with their attack this morning. And second, how do we beat them so they give in and negotiate despite their anger? We must sink every ship of theirs in the Pacific, that is obvious now.”

  “I thought you’d find this interesting,” Genda said, and handed Fuchida a couple of typewritten sheets of paper. “One of their radio stations on Oahu is back up and broadcasting. We monitored it.”

  Fuchida took the paper, scanning the transcript of the transmission, chuckling at first and then stopping.

  “Did they get this right?”

  “Yes. I remember you talking about him.”

  He read the line again.

  “This is Commander James Watson …”

  He felt his throat tighten. James Watson. It was how long ago? Nearly ten years ago they had met at Etajima, the Japanese naval academy, both of them there to give guest lectures, James on Japanese-American relations, he to pitch naval aviation to the cadets.

  They had formed a bond the night they met, drinking Scottish whiskey together with their mutual friend Cecil Stanford. And where was Cecil?

  A close bond had been there with both, even though he and James had actually been together less than a day. It was one of those things that just happened at times between men of nations that might one day be enemies, but who at that moment shared a mutual love for their professions, and respect for their counterparts.

  He had even introduced James to flying, giving him a ride back to Tokyo after their speeches, triggering in James such a love of the experience that he had gone on to get his own plane.

  The friendship had broken down after China. Cecil had bitterly confronted him while he was based at Nanking, denouncing what all in the Imperial Navy found equally disgusting, the medieval-like pillage and rape of that city. He shared that outrage but had to defend the honor of his nation to Cecil, who had stormed out of his office, severing all contact.

  Cecil had told him about the tragedy James endured, the loss of his hand when the Panay was bombed. There had been a few terse notes between them after that, James making a point of sending a photo of himself with his new plane, a hook rather than his hand clearly visible.

  And so their friendships had died as their respective countries, once such good allies, had drifted toward war. The two old friends, however—well, he still considered them to be friends—had often lingered in his thoughts. Now this, a radio intercept of James broadcasting vital information back to the mainland of the United States.

  So he was at Pearl Harbor, most likely bending all his efforts now to fight back against Japan.

  Damn all. Did he see me yesterday? Did I or one of my comrades kill friends of his? Most likely so.

  He forced a smile as he read further: Watson using the registration number of his plane to help verify who he was.

  I’m sorry about that, my friend, he thought, remembering how he had introduced him to flying, the bond it had created between the two.

  Perhaps someday when this is all over, and hatreds burn away, just perhaps…

  He handed the papers back to Genda and said nothing.

  Enterprise

  14:20 hrs local time

  HE WAS NEVER much for literature—that was the stuff that the white-jacket officer types up on the bridge would talk about—but at this moment, it did remind him of Dante’s Inferno, not the book, but a movie he had seen several years earlier starring Spencer Tracy where the guy wound up on a ship that was on fire and sinking, Tracy risking his life to close some steam valve, that on a real ship never would have been located where it was.

  And yeah, it did look like that Dante guy’s book as well.

  Commander Stubbs, sloshing through knee-deep water, respirator strapped to his face, goggles on to protect his eyes, followed the fire hose aft.

  He was six decks down, on the starboard main co
rridor. Flood control doors were open here to allow access to fire crews and repair teams. Enterprise still had a pronounced list; he felt a bit like a drunk out for a walk, leaning against the tilt, looking for a moment at the water sloshing about on the deck, gauging the angle: at least ten degrees. The counterflooding was still not containing the intake of water cascading in, compounded by the water pumped in by the fire hoses, which was flooding down into the lower decks.

  The water was warm, almost hot. He put his hand on a bulkhead and pulled it back. Fire must still be raging on the other side from a ruptured av-gas line.

  The smoke was getting thicker. He saw a chain-gang crew working, men stripped down, shirts off. They should have helmets and shirts on, face protection for flash burns. If we do that, though, these kids would pass out in the heat. They were manhandling out a magazine stacked with forty-millimeter shells, passing each one up, shells going up the ladder for four decks to the hangar deck, where they were being heaved over the side.

  Stubbs slowed for a minute, stepped into the line, helped move a couple of shells. Damn, the things were hot, almost blistering hot.

  “Keep at it boys, that’s the stuff!”

  He patted a couple of them on the backs and pushed on. The chain gang snaked down the corridor for a dozen feet and then turned out to the starboard side to where the magazine locker was located, smoke pouring out of it.

  A young ensign was leading the crew inside the locker. A fire crew was playing a stream of water on him and the racks of shells.

  He felt a cold pit in his stomach, a knotting-up. The youngster had guts, was holding to it, steam pouring out from the water hitting the shells. From the far wall of the magazine he could feel the heat radiating from it.

  He wanted to stop, lend encouragement, get the kid’s name, make sure he was put in for a commendation, a Navy Cross at least, when this was finished, but there wasn’t time, and he had to make the cold decision that if the damn thing started to light off, it wasn’t his job to get killed, at least not yet. He should back away.

  He pushed on down the main corridor, nicknamed Broadway, the parallel corridor on the port side being Main Street.

  Broadway was the danger point now, starting next deck down. All the way to the keel the watertight doors were dogged down, crews evacuated where possible. A corpsman and chaplain had set up their “shop” in a cross corridor between Broadway and Main, six inches or so of filthy water sloshing back and forth as the ship rolled. The dead were stacked up atop each other, bodies, parts of bodies, while only feet away a corpsman, covered in blood, was struggling with scissors to cut off a man’s trousers, what was left of them, which were scorched to his body. The chaplain leaned over the burned sailor. He saw the cross on the chaplain’s lapel, did not understand what he was saying to the sailor.

  “Hear O Israel, the Lord is God …” a sailor standing next to Stubbs whispered, in English.

  The corpsman cut the rest of the trousers off, looked up.

  “You’re going to make it,” he cried, “you’re going to be OK. You still got your equipment. You’re still a man.”

  Stubbs, horrified, saw that the corpsman was lying; the kid was horribly burned and torn by fragmentation that had sliced into his groin.

  The corpsman pulled a morphine syrette out of a pouch strapped to his hip, pulled off the protective cover of the needle, slapped it into the sailor’s blackened arm, and squeezed it. Part of the man’s burnt flesh came away with the needle.

  Stubbs, horrified, yet unable to turn away, could not move.

  The corpsman looked, with a penetrating gaze, at the chaplain, who was continuing to recite the prayer in Hebrew.

  The chaplain, tears in his eyes, nodded.

  The corpsman pulled out three more syrettes. Those working around him were silent. He quickly stabbed all three into the tortuted man’s arm, trying to find a vein.

  “Hear O Israel …” Others were whispering it now in English, following the lead of the Jewish sailor, who had translated it from Hebrew. In the burned, blackened face of the sailor, his lips were moving, mouthing the words… and then he was still.

  The chaplain leaned over and gently kissed him on the forehead.

  “Go in peace, son.”

  The corpsman sat back on his heels.

  “God damn it,” was all he could say, head lowered. He motioned. Two sailors picked up the body and moved it to the pile farther down the corridor.

  “Next,” was all that the corpsman could whisper.

  Stubbs turned away and pushed on, unable to bear the sight of the next man awaiting his turn, left leg gone at the knee, bloody tourniquet wrapped at mid thigh, hands and face burned.

  “Not me,” the boy started to cry.

  The chaplain was by his side.

  “Not you, son, you’ll make it. What’s your name and faith?”

  Stubbs pushed on. The smoke ahead was thick, acrid; it was impossible to see more than a few feet, Stygian, with flashes of light, men yelling, the fire crew ahead backing up a few feet. There were two sailors dragging back a third man wearing an “asbestos joe” outfit. They pulled the hood off. The sailor inside was passed out, overcome by heat. Another sailor upended a canteen on the man’s face, then pressed it to his lips as he started to come around.

  Dangling electrical cables were still hot, swaying, sparking, arcing death to any who might brush against them. He turned to one of his half-dozen assistants who had been trailing behind him.

  “Go forward to the next compartment. Cut the power mains there. Get replacement cables and …” He paused, looking at the fire forward. “Just cut the electricity. Go over to Main Street. If the fire isn’t sweeping in there, find out where it is clear. Get replacement cables out of the nearest damage control locker, plug them in, and run them back across to the starboard side. Got that?”

  The seaman first class was off, disappearing into the smoke.

  “Gangway!”

  He looked back. Half a dozen sailors were manhandling a heavy ten-by-ten piece of oak shoring. They had slings attached to it so they wouldn’t lose control of the quarter-ton length of timber. At the bottom of the gangway they paused, a sailor putting his hand on the watertight hatch down to the next level, checking for heat, squatting down to look through the small glass peephole to see how bad the flooding was.

  “It’s OK!” he shouted, and he unscrewed the hatch and pulled it back.

  “Christ,” was all he said as he guided his team hoisting the timber and started down the steps to the next deck below. They were into chest deep water by the time they hit the bottom of the ladder, men cursing about how hot the water was. They disappeared from view, part of the team next deck down that was struggling to drive ten-by-ten timbers into place to shore up one of the bulkheads inward from an oil tank that was threatening to rupture, cracked already from the impact of one of the torpedoes.

  He was tempted to go down with them, but felt it was time to report back in to the bridge. He went up the ladder the shoring crew had just descended.

  On the fifth deck, the smoke was almost as bad. Of course, the damn stuff rose, pouring up through ventilation shafts, gangways still open, emergency escape hatches not sealed off. He went forward to the damage control center for this deck, pulling the door open, going in, assistants following before they slammed it shut.

  The air inside was slightly better, drawn down by fan from a vent up on the hangar deck. A plot board in the middle of the room was covered with a chart of the ship. The lieutenant running damage control on this deck looked up at him.

  “Fire contained for the moment on this deck, sir,” he announced. “But we’re getting a lot of water runoff from the fires up on the hangar deck.”

  “How is it below?”

  “We’re surviving.”

  There was a momentary lurch; he could feel it in the soles of his feet. Something had given way below; within seconds he could sense they were taking on more of a list to starboard.

 
; He felt isolated, only aware of what was going on here, on this deck, and what he had just seen below. He picked up a phone, heard the click. Good, it was still connected to the damage control center on the bridge.

  “Stubbs here.”

  “Sir, Lieutenant Ferguson here,” came the reply, connection barely audible. “The admiral is asking what the hell just happened down below.”

  “Put him on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A momentary pause.

  “Stubbs, you there?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What in hell was that?”

  He could feel the soul of this ship, sensing that the list was stabilizing, but he’d have to counterflood again.

  “Sir, I think it was one of the bulkheads, seventh deck. It was partially staved from the torpedo impact. It probably gave way.”

  He thought of the shoring crew he had watched pass just a few minutes ago. He hoped those kids were still able to get out.

  “You are still saying we can hold on?”

  “Hell yes, sir.”

  “I trust you, Stubbs,” Halsey growled. “But it is chaos up here, the smoke is blinding. At least we’re under the clouds so the Japs can’t see us.

  “Ferguson here reports they got a phone hookup running down to the port engine room.” He hesitated. “It’s hell down there. Can we get them out?”

  Stubbs sighed. “Sir. They’re under two decks of fire and boiling hot water. Besides, if we try and pull them out now, that means abandoning the only engines we still have. That shuts down all power, that shuts down the pumps, we lose the ship.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll talk to them and explain the situation.”

  “Right then. Stubbs, we just made visual with Indianapolis and its escorts. They’re coming up alongside.”

  “Damn good! I’ll be up topside in a few minutes. Can we see if we can get them in close enough to help dampen the fires, start evacuating some of the wounded, and run some power supply across?”

  “Fine then. Signing off here.”

  “Please put Ferguson back on, sir.”

  A momentary pause.