“Wish it’d been us that did it,” he said bitterly, his attention turned away to his sound detector, who announced he had something inbound, sounding like a destroyer.
With those fat carriers out there, they were going to be swarming all over him, he realized bitterly. Angling down now through a hundred feet, his firing solution on the carrier lost, he raged in silent frustration. Without doubt the fattest targets of the war had decided to steam straight at him. He should have fired earlier, instead of electing to wait until range was down to two thousand yards. And now the moment was lost.
But at least he had had the pleasure of watching the other Jap go down, and even as they dived they could hear the distant rumbling of the huge ship, as it sank into the depths, bulkheads collapsing, explosions rumbling, the noise so loud it all but drowned out the sound of the approaching destroyers that would doggedly follow him and drop depth charges for the next two hours.
Chapter Fourteen
Lexington
December 9, 1941
09:55 hrs local time
“I THINK THERE’S supposed to be some tradition that I’m to be the last one off,” Captain Sherman announced, trying to put a smile on, though the anguish in his voice was obvious.
“Fine then, you got it,” Admiral Newton replied.
The old Lady Lex was heavy down by the bow, water now beginning to pour in through the huge hole blasted there by the secondary explosion of the aviation gas. As the thousands upon thousands of gallons of seawater began to cascade in, the ocean did what the firefighters could not, dousing the flames eight decks below. Vents of hissing steam and smoke roared back up.
A destroyer and cruiser lay off her side. Dozens of launches were in the water, picking up survivors. The last of the sixteen hundred men were leaving four hundred of their dead comrades behind.
He walked to the edge of the deck and noted something strange. There were rows of shoes; for some reason men had taken them off before jumping off. He looked down at his old “brown shoes,” proud symbol of a naval aviator, and opted to keep them on.
It was roughly a twenty-foot drop. Lex was going to go down bow first, rather than rolling over, though the list to port was significant, otherwise it would have been a nearly deadly eighty-foot jump.
A hundred or more ropes dangled over the side. More than a few of his men had decided to try and climb down rather than take the jump, but the ropes were now so slick with oil that such an attempt simply resulted in bad friction burns to the hands.
He took his flag and handed it to his steward.
“Can you manage this?” he asked.
The steward smiled, saluted, set down a duffel bag, and stuffed the flag inside. Admiral Newton asked for the same regarding his flag. The duffel bag had two Mae Wests secured to it.
Sherman looked back toward the bridge, the famed silhouette unique to Lexington and Saratoga. Fires, boiling up from the abandoned engine room, were pouring out a soaring plume of black smoke from the stacks, and the bridge itself was aflame now.
He could feel the list increasing under his feet as the bow slipped deeper beneath the waves, and as it did so the distance to the water actually began to increase where they stood.
“Over you go, gentlemen,” Sherman announced, and he even gave Newton a bit of a shove as the commander of the task force leapt off, steward and the last of the bridge staff following.
He paused a moment, looking about, wanting to make sure he was the last able-bodied man off. He saw a couple of jumpers farther aft, cradling between them a wounded comrade, an “asbestos Joe” sitting on the edge, kicking off his bright leggings and then slipping off the side, hitting the water and surfacing. He was about to jump when he spotted a chaplain who was coming out of the smoke, walking backward slowly, looking toward the inferno amidships.
“Come on, Padre! Over with you.”
The man looked at him, face tear streaked, and actually shook his head.
“Padre, now!”
“I had to leave four men down there,” the priest cried, a sob shuddering through him.
There was a moment of horror at the implication that the padre was looking for help, that he’d have to go back.
“They were dying, we couldn’t move them they were so badly burned. I gave them last rites.” He began to sob. “They told me to go. Two of them were brothers.”
He was clutching a sheet of note paper, names and addresses scribbled on them.
“Padre, you staying won’t change it for them,” Sherman said, his own voice husky with emotion. “Now come on, jump with me.”
The padre stood next to him, hesitated, and shook his head.
“Damn it, Father, you don’t go, I don’t go. The Lord is with them now, we can’t do anything more for them.”
He pointed to the paper crumpled up in the priest’s hand.
“Give that to me.”
The priest did not resist as Sherman took the sheet of paper and scanned the names: two seamen second class from Millburn, New Jersey, a lieutenant from Texas, a petty officer—merciful God, he recognized the name, an old hand on Lex from the engine room.
He folded the slip of paper up and stuck it into his pocket.
“Find me after this and we’ll write the letters together. OK?”
The priest nodded.
Before he could say another word, Sherman forcefully shoved him over the side. He spared one final glance back, saluted the bridge, the American flag still flying above it, turned, and jumped.
MINUTES later he was on the deck of the old cruiser Chicago. Picked up by their launch boat, Newton had preceded him up the netting. He had hung on to the padre, pushing him into the launch first and then up the net, just to make sure that the distraught priest did not do anything foolish and try to go back.
Ritual was followed as he was piped aboard, returning the salute of Chicago’s captain, who greeted him and shook his hand.
“Sir, Portland, Astoria, and two destroyers are currently engaged at long range with a Japanese cruiser to our southwest about twenty miles from here.”
Newton, black with oil, but face wiped clean, already had binoculars up, trained aft, and even without the binoculars Sherman could see Astoria, hull down on the horizon, flashes of gunfire.
An explosion rocked Lexington, and his attention was focused back on his ship. Her stern was rising rapidly. It seemed impossibly high out of the water, surely her back would break from the strain but she held together. And then ever so slowly she began her death slide, going down at the bow, flags still flying.
A shiver went down his back. The Chicago was noted for its band. Only a handful could be spared, a few brass and woodwinds, the rest of them at crucial battle stations. They began to play the old Navy hymn.
“Eternal Father, Strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave …”
The priest began to sing, others joined him. Sherman, too, choked with emotion, joined in.
The Lexington died as a lady, slipping away quietly. More than a few around him were crying as they sang.
The first stanza of the hymn finished, and a lone trumpeter now blew “Taps.” For so many that was what did them in, tears flowing down oil-streaked faces.
He thought of the four men below still alive, wondered how many in fact were still alive within her, trapped beneath flooded compartments, fatally wounded, comrades in anguish to be leaving them behind. He thought of the note in his pocket, how he could explain this to the parents of the two boys, what lie would he tell them to give them comfort.
“Dear God, grant them a peaceful death,” he whispered.
Her stern disappeared beneath the waves… She was gone.
There was a moment of silence, the last note of “Taps” echoing out over the ocean, distant gunfire rumbling across the waves.
Honolulu
10:05 hrs local time
DIANNE STIRRED FROM her slumber and awoke, disoriented for a moment. Where am I? The question so many
always asked when awakening in a strange place, made infinitely worse when seconds later the memories of the day before, the horrible reality of it all came back to her consciousness.
She sat up.
The house was quiet. She couldn’t remember their names, the names of James’s wife and mother-in-law. She did remember they were Japanese. Where was James?
She called his name, trying to sound formal now. “Commander Watson?” No response.
She stood and walked into the kitchen. There was the smell of fresh coffee, some toast on the table as if waiting for her. She poured a cup, looking around.
She actually had known very little about James until this last day. He was a commander, a married man, ring evident, always kind and polite to her in an almost fatherly way. She had heard about how he lost his hand in the Panay incident, had been a college professor.
She nursed the cup of coffee: Kona beans, yet another reason she loved living in Hawaii—at least up until two days ago. She walked back into the living room, noticed the sofa where she had slept, and then the recollection came back of an old woman holding her as she cried, whispering softly, singing something to her as she drifted off to sleep. Singing in Japanese, but the words had the feel of a lullaby. Incongruous, a .38 revolver rested on a side table. While I slept, she thought, these Japs had a gun.
God damn, why did that old woman have to be so nice, she thought.
She heard something outside, shouting. She walked to the door and opened it.
“LEAVE that boy alone!” Margaret screamed. If not for her mother, she would have gone into the middle of the fray. Instead, she was holding back, standing at the edge of the curb.
She had tried to stick to her promise to James not to go outside. She and her mother had had breakfast, deciding to let the woman on the sofa sleep, not quite sure what to do with her when she woke up. Margaret still felt a bit leery of her, realizing she was being foolish; if ever there was a loyal husband it was James. It was just that the girl was so darn pretty, even in her shocked, disheveled state. Her mother actually pitied her, in spite of the more than one foul racist comment that had spilled out in her hysteria, as she sobbed that all Japs would burn in hell.
“Suppose it was Chinese that killed our James,” her mother had argued, the two of them whispering together in Japanese after James had left and she had gently slipped Dianne’s head from her lap to a pillow. “How would you first feel? Remember your papa couldn’t stand the Spanish. Men are sick over such crazy things; it infects us too.”
They had decided to just let her sleep and had quietly worked around her. Margaret’s cousin had yet to come home, nor called since yesterday. All radio stations were off the air, there was no newspaper, they were in a vacuum, except when they looked out the windows and could see the fires still burning down at Pearl and in downtown Honolulu.
And then they heard the commotion.
Someone shouting and yelling. She had looked down the street. It was fifteen to twenty men and a couple of women, most of them obviously drunk, weaving their way up through the neighborhood, cursing, yelling, and in their midst they had a rope around the neck of a young man, actually more likely a boy of not much more than sixteen or seventeen, face bloody and puffy. He was Japanese.
That had set her mother off, and the old woman was out the door and down the steps, shouting for the mob to let go of the boy.
Some of the neighbors were out, watching, others nervously peeking out from behind half-closed shutters or doorways.
“Come on out, you goddamn Japs!” someone was screaming. “We got one of your murdering sons of bitches!”
The neighborhood was primarily nisei. An old man came down his walkway, shouting for the men to leave the boy alone, and to Margaret’s horror one of the drunks punched him in the face, sending him sprawling backward.
Some more neighbors were coming out, almost all of them women; old men, frightened children ordered to stay inside. Their men were gone, many called up with the national guard units, or at work. More than a few were married to Caucasian sailors and soldiers, like Margaret and her cousin, with husbands and sons in the middle of the fight—and more than a few would receive telegrams in the days to come.
One of the drunks had several rocks, and he threw them at the old man’s house, breaking a window, the sound of it shattering sent a cold shiver through Margaret and made her think of the infamous Crystal Night of Germany. So it was beginning….
The drunks were laughing, cursing, shouting that the boy was a pilot they’d caught.
Margaret drew closer, could hear the kid pleading in perfect English that he worked for Western Union as a messenger.
There wasn’t even a vague semblance between his blue uniform and that of any Japanese sailor, soldier, or pilot.
“Let him go, you damn cowards!” Margaret screamed.
“Let him go?” a drunk, breath stinking, potbellied, scrawny-looking like a scarecrow, unshaved, was up alongside her, and shoved her back so that she nearly lost her balance.
“Let’s string the son of a bitch up right here. Let the other Japs watch,” someone cried, and the small mob started to move toward a tree with an overhanging branch.
“Hey, I’ve always wanted to try one of ’em,” another drunk shouted, and he pointed toward Margaret. “Heard they put out real good.”
“Go for her, Steve,” one of the mob shouted.
The drunk, leering, stepped towards her.
Her kick caught him in the groin; he doubled over with a gasp, collapsing back.
Several of his friends now turned toward her and she backed up, three men closing in, her mother screaming…
THE bark of the .38-caliber pistol roared out. The three advancing toward Margaret froze.
Dianne stood on the porch, pistol held high, cocked it, and leveled the weapon at the three.
“I’ll kill the next son of a bitch that moves!” she cried.
There was a frozen tableau. The three that had been coming toward Margaret, the dozen or so who had been struggling vainly to toss the rope up over the limb of the tree. A couple of the men with the lynch mob had guns in their hands; one of them started to turn toward Dianne. She swung the revolver and pointed it at him.
“Move and I’ll blow your head off you, filthy bastard,” her voice breaking. “And God damn you, I know how to do it. My boyfriend is a pilot and he taught me how to shoot.”
Ever so slowly Dianne came down the three steps from the front porch, moving toward Margaret and her mother.
“Get inside,” she hissed.
The two women backed up, got behind Dianne, but refused to retreat further.
“I’m staying with you,” Margaret snapped, and then she looked over at the mob around the boy.
“Now let him go!”
More neighbors were gathering, coming over to join the three in support.
One of the drunks, apparently some kind of leader of the group, started towards Dianne. He had a pistol in his hand, his other hand up, and he was actually grinning.
“Come on, blondie, put the gun down. What are you doing defending these Japs anyhow?”
“Let the boy go!” Margaret screamed.
“Shut up, bitch,” the leader shouted.
The roar from Dianne’s pistol snapped out, spinning the man around, dropping him to the pavement, screaming, clutching his shoulder. She cocked and now trained it on the rest of the group.
“Who’s next?”
The wounded man was rolling back and forth, screaming for them to kill her. The rest of the group was frozen. Several started to back away, turned, and ran.
From up on the corner to Pali Highway a pickup truck came around the corner, tires squealing. Margaret’s heart froze. She saw guns sticking out of the back of the truck.
Oh God, it’s starting, it’s really starting!
She tried to grab Dianne by the shoulder, pull her back. The mob looked up at the truck, a few shouting, laughing that friends were coming to
help, and another crying a foul oath as to what he was going to do to the traitorous blond bitch.
The truck skidded to a stop. Three national guardsmen armed with Springfield .30s leapt off the back, one of them a nisei, led by the driver, an elderly sergeant.
Without hesitation the three enlisted men leveled their rifles straight at the group, the sergeant with .45 semiautomatic drawn, expertly poised.
“All you drunk sons of bitches, back off right now,” the sergeant shouted.
There was still a frozen moment.
“Let go of that boy now or we shoot! I’m giving you exactly three seconds!
“One …”
The mob began to break up.
“Two …”
They turned and started to run back down the street.
“Three!”
The sergeant raised his pistol and fired it twice, and now what had once been a mob was running in blind panic, facing a gauntlet of taunts from those lining the street.
Dianne, who had been standing rock solid, suddenly just seemed to dissolve, shaking.
The sergeant looked over at her, approaching cautiously, making a point of lowering his pistol.
“Ma’am, please lower your gun.”
She did as ordered.
“Now carefully uncock it.”
She put her thumb on the hammer, pulled the trigger, and let the hammer slowly drop back into place.
“That slut shot me!” the wounded man, still twisting in agony, cried.
The sergeant took it all in: the badly beaten boy, a couple of women from across the street helping untie him from the rope that was already around his neck, the kid shaking uncontrollably, sobbing, the drunk that Margaret had kicked still in the gutter, clutching himself in agony, the wounded man.
The sergeant walked over to the wounded man on the street, and then stepped on his wrist, forcing him to release his pistol, which he picked up.
“Shut your goddamn mouth or I’ll do it for you,” the sergeant snapped, sticking the pistol in his waist belt.
He walked up to Dianne.
“What happened?”
Days of Infamy Page 33