Hawaii - James Michener [496]
Shigeo, the youngest of the Sakagawas, rose early next morning and pedaled his bicycle down to Cable Wireless, where he worked on Sundays delivering cables that had accumulated during the night and those which would come in throughout the day. His first handful he got at seven-thirty and they were all addressed to people in the Diamond Head area like the Hales and the Whipples, who lived in big houses overlooking the city.
He had reached Waikiki when he heard from the vicinity of Pearl Harbor a series of dull explosions and he thought: "More fleet exercises. Wonder what it means?"
He turned his back on Pearl Harbor and pedaled up an impressive lane leading to the estate of Hoxworth Hale, and while waiting in the porte-cochere he looked back toward the naval base and saw columns of dense black smoke curling up into the morning sunlight. More explosions followed and he saw a series of planes darting and zigzagging through the bright blue overhead. "Pretty impressive," he thought.
He rang the Hale bell again, and in a moment Hoxworth Hale appeared in a dark business suit, wearing collar and tie, as if such a leader of the community were not allowed to relax. Shig noticed that the man's face was colorless and his hands trembling. The radio was making noises from a room Shig could not see, but what it was saying he could not determine. Gulping in a manner not common to the Hales, Hoxworth pushed open the screen door and said to the star of the Punahou eleven, My God, Shig. Your country has declared war on mine."
For a moment Shig could not comprehend what had been said. Pointing back to Pearl Harbor he asked, "They having a make-believe invasion?"
"No," Hoxworth Hale replied in a hollow, terrified voice. "Japan is bombing Honolulu."
"Japan?" Shig looked up at the darting planes and saw that where they passed, explosions followed and that as the planes sped toward the mountains, puffs of gunfire traced them through the sky. "Oh, my God!" the boy gasped. "What's happened?"
Hoxworth held the door open, ignoring the cable, and indicated that Shig should come inside, and they went to the radio, whose announcer was repeating frantically, yet with a voice that tried to avoid the creation of panic: "I repeat. This is not a military exercise. Japanese planes are bombing Honolulu. I repeat. This is not a joke. This is war."
Hoxworth Hale covered his face with his hands and muttered, "How awful this is going to be." Looking at bright-eyed Shig, who was only a year older than his own son, he said, You'll need all the courage you have, son."
Shig replied, "Outside you said, ‘Your country has declared war on my country.' Yours and mine are both the same, Mr. Hale. I'm an American.'
"I'm sorry, Shig. That's a mistake many of us will make in the next few days. God, look at that explosion!” The two watchers winced as an enormous thunder filled the air, accompanied by a slowly rising pillar of jet-black smoke that billowed and twisted upward from the ruins at Pearl Harbor. "Something terrible is taking place," Hale mumbled.
Then from a stairway behind him came a haunted voice, weak and piping like a child's, and he made as if to push Shigeo out the door, but before he could do so the person on the stairs had come down into the room and stood facing her husband and his visitor. It was Mrs. Hale, a frail and very beautiful woman of thirty-eight. She had light auburn hair and wide, level eyes that found difficulty in focusing. She wore a wispy dressing gown such as Shig had never seen before outside the movies, and she walked haltingly. "What is the great noise I hear, Hoxworth?" she asked.
"Malama, you shouldn't have come down here," her husband admonished.
"But I heard a shooting," she explained softly, "and I wondered if you were in trouble."
At this moment one of the bombing planes was driven off course by a burst of unexpected anti-aircraft fire, and it swerved from its planned escape route, winging swiftly over the Diamond Head area, and as it passed, Shig and Mr. Hale could see on its underbelly