Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [68]
Marriage took her away from all that, and sometimes she missed the exotic underpinning to her office surroundings – the men who came and went carrying manuscripts and groceries in string bags, the chessboard and piles of old books; tea with lemon, drunk from tall glasses. Very different from the all-American offices of those they called goyim, the clean-cut young men with their Ivy League shirts, fresh from Berkeley and UCLA. Very different from her husband.
With marriage to Jack came life as a naval wife and anxiety about the spreading war in Europe. Jack’s father had a cousin Charlie who had fought in World War One and never came back from France. The move to Hawaii reassured her: the naval base with its palm trees and beaches seemed a safe backwater to the main flow of action. Hawaii was a good place for a Californian newly-wed couple.
They were jolted awake when the first explosion rocked the harbour, rattling windows and sending roof tiles crashing to the ground, the dreamy montage savaged by planes diving out of a cloud-filled sky to the roar of engines, the boom of deafening explosions. Then the shock editing:
Planes fall like birds of prey on to the ships. Cut! Bombs! Cut! Sailors racing to man anti-aircraft guns, Cut! Civilians running scared. Cut! A ship explodes in flames. Another. And another.
Through the window Jack saw a line of planes approaching in tight formation, moving in and out of the thick cloud hanging low in the sky. Then planes were roaring overhead at treetop level. He glimpsed an emblem painted on the side of one fuselage: a Rising Sun. The Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor.
Above the sound of shrieking ships’ sirens he yelled at Lois.
‘Get the hell out of here, now!’
Minutes later he was on his way to Ford Island, pulling on his uniform as he ran, and she was in the car, heading for the hills.
The road was choked with cars, women and children fleeing the waterfront. As she swung uphill Lois heard the drone of the planes behind her, the thud of explosions, the quick coughs of gunfire. Women leaned on their horns as though the concerted sound would somehow get the cars ahead to move. Behind Lois, a woman with a child clutched to her breast leapt from her vehicle and began to run, leaving the door hanging open behind her. Over her shoulder, as she passed Lois, she screamed:
‘Machine guns! Get off the road!’
Lois felt panic break out like prickly heat over her body; she fought the handle, flung open the door and sprinted for the side of the road as the planes roared louder, the gunfire chasing her.
The pain seared her legs, agony shot up her body. She thought: I’ve been hit, Jesus, I’ve been hit, expecting to fall, crippled. Then she saw that she was running through pineapple fields, the razor-edged leaves lacerating her legs and thighs, shredding her skin. Blood drenched her cotton dress. She stopped, crouched low between plants and looked up at the sky. The planes passed overhead, their bullets raking the road, piercing the metal of the cars. They banked, turned and headed back towards the harbour.
Caught unprepared, the fleet lay helpless as planes dropped their load, swung round and came in for another strike, bombing and strafing the airfield and the vessels lying at anchor. From one – the battleship Arizona – a column of dark red smoke rose high into the sky, then there was a blast and a column of fiery black as the powder magazine exploded. Ships canted at alarming angles began to settle in the water as they burned, white-hot steam scalding the men desperately swimming away from the flames.
Jack, aboard a small motorboat, criss-crossed the turbulent water, searching among the burnt and the drowned for men still alive. The frail craft rose and fell, flung violently into the high waves by the force of explosions as Jack tried to keep out of the path of bullets sprayed by the planes, strafing the bay.
Then, quite suddenly, it was over. The Japanese squadron made one last circuit, banked, and