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Fall Down Seven. C. E. Edmonson
Читать онлайн.Название Fall Down Seven
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781456625269
Автор произведения C. E. Edmonson
Жанр Учебная литература
Издательство Ingram
“I wanted to ask you something.” I picked up the iron, but then was distracted by a flock of black-hooded mynahs with sun-yellow beaks. They glided over the poinciana to settle, with a flurry of wings and a chorus of harsh squawks, into the branches of a gum tree.
“What were you saying, Emiko?”
“Well, I was just wondering what you’d say if I told you I want to go to college and become a botanist.”
Most women didn’t go to college in 1941 unless they wanted to be teachers. It wasn’t customary. Most girls my age looked forward to marriage and children, not careers. Even when we trained to be nurses or secretaries, we usually gave it up when the babies came along. But Dad had other ideas for me. Mom did too.
“Last week,” Dad noted, “you told me you’d settled on zoologist.”
“Yes, but I think plants are a better bet.”
“And why is that exactly?”
“Because plants are smart enough to keep their mouths shut, and they don’t run away when you try to collect them.”
I loved to make Dad laugh. He wasn’t like Mom, who hid her mouth behind her hand. Dad liked to throw his head back and bray like a donkey. He did that now, much to my satisfaction. I didn’t know it then—even as a faint buzzing registered in my brain—that it would be the last time we would laugh together for nearly four years.
Dad’s head snapped up just as I realized I was hearing the whine of airplane engines—small planes, probably fighters—on the far side of the mountains to the east. Having lived a good part of my life within a few miles of three airfields, I was used to the sound, but there was something off here, something I couldn’t put my finger on.
Dad jumped to his feet. “What is …?” he said, his tone hushed.
I listened to the rattle of a machine gun and heard an explosion in the distance, but I still couldn’t take in the simple fact that the planes weren’t ours. My mind kept saying, No, no, no. Then a torpedo bomber cleared the southern end of the mountains, then another and another and another. To my right, a constellation of black dots grew in size—dozens of planes, each with a single bomb strapped to its undercarriage. They came from the north through the central valley, crossing the fields of pineapple and sugar cane, coming closer and closer until I couldn’t avoid the emblem painted on the fuselage: a big, red sun against a background of white—the flag of Japan. Are we under attack by the Japanese air force?
Mom burst onto the porch. She watched in silence for a moment, then forced back a sob as the Whizz raced across the lanai to wrap his arms around her waist.
“I’ve got to go,” Dad said. “You’ll be fine here. It’s the harbor they’re aiming for.”
The wail of sirens rose from a dozen locations as a line of Japanese pilots—they were close enough for me to see their faces—nosed their planes into long, swooping dives. Their engines were screaming now, the sound painful, as more and more planes—too many to count—followed suit, passing us at more than two hundred miles per hour.
Before me the American fleet—battleships, cruisers, destroyers, minesweepers, and a dozen other vessels—floated alongside Pearl Harbor’s docks, their engines quiet. Just below the harbor the runways of Hickam Field straddled the entrance to the inner bay. Hickam’s runways fed into the Pacific, but no planes moved on them. Jammed close together to prevent sabotage, the planes were sitting ducks for the dive bombers.
I jammed my hands over my ears as the lead plane’s bomb detached and began its long glide toward the huddled aircraft, but my eyes remained open, as if my lids had forgotten how to work. My whole body shook as I watched flames leap from the ground a hundred feet into the air. There were people down there. American soldiers and sailors, civilians too, right inside those flames, right in the heart of those explosions. I opened my mouth to yell “stop,” but the word froze on my lips. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.
When I finally got up the courage to look over at Dad, he was gone. Out on the winding road below, I saw our gray 1938 Ford rushing downhill. A hand touched me, and I jerked away before I realized it was my mother.
“Let’s get inside,” she said.
But I couldn’t move, couldn’t take my eyes away from the slaughter. I watched a long line of torpedo bombers curl around the eastern mountains to approach the harbor from the sea. I watched their torpedoes fall into the peaceful waters of the inner bay, watched them skip over the water before they settled down. Something in me wanted to mark their passage, but the torpedoes were traveling underwater. I could only wait, helpless, until one of our battleships almost lifted out of the water. A few seconds later, the roar of the exploding torpedo reached my ears to blend with the constant explosions at Hickam and Wheeler airfields.
The blasts kept coming after that, so fast I couldn’t keep track even if I weren’t terrified. Within minutes, the harbor and the airfields were covered with an oily, black smoke pierced only by jets of flame as the bombs exploded. The stench of death and destruction reached my nostrils. Still the planes kept coming. Two waves of fighters and bombers, more than three hundred planes, for two hours that seemed more like two years. And my dad was right there in the middle of the fight.
Mom finally came to get me. I remember looking into her dark eyes, as if they might hold an explanation for the insanity, but I found only the need to protect.
“Come inside, Emiko,” she said, taking my arm. “Your brother needs you, and I need you.”
After the Japanese fighters retreated to waiting aircraft carriers, the wail of ambulance sirens replaced the whine of fighter engines. The ambulances ran back and forth between the hospitals over and over again, hour after hour. We could do nothing except choke down the fear that Dad was in one of those ambulances, or that he’d never return at all. It seemed like every ship in the harbor and every plane at the airfields was on fire.
I was inside by then, sitting on a futon with my arm around my brother’s shoulders. Charlie managed to fight back the tears, but his whole body trembled. My mother sat on the other end of the couch, her lips moving, hands folded. Maybe I should have prayed too, but I couldn’t stop looking through the window behind her at the cloud of smoke rising from the harbor, a shimmering curtain of black and gray that only gradually drifted out to sea. When I closed my eyes, I saw the planes again, swarming like insects as they poured down the valley or turned into the harbor, saw their bombs and torpedoes fall away.
Twenty-four hundred Americans died at Pearl Harbor that day. I didn’t know that at the time, but as the fires ebbed and what was left of the fleet came into view, it seemed to me that nobody could have survived the flames and the explosions. Battleships and destroyers and cruisers had sunk to the bottom and turned over. Twisted hunks of metal littered the airfields. Fires continued to burn despite the steady fountains of water pouring from the fire boats. Ten hours later, the ambulances still flew along the streets, from the docks to the hospitals in Honolulu and Diamond Head, ferrying the wounded to overwhelmed emergency rooms.
And still no word from Dad.
Mom, Charlie, and I spent most of the time on the lanai after the Japanese withdrew, peering into the smoke and the chaos as if we could bring Dad home by sheer willpower. Occasionally, a soldier on his way home wandered up the road, his face smeared with soot. Charlie called to them as they passed.
“Have you seen our dad?”
“Who’s your dad, son?”
“Lieutenant Commander Charles Arrington.”
“Sorry,