Mikura flushed. He wasn’t used to sarcasm. “I was told he appears fairly sober and terrified. He said that several score men who were dressed as Japanese soldiers and who look Japanese have taken over the field, killed just about everyone there, and shot down at least one of our planes. He has no idea how all this was accomplished. He said he was in his barracks and had just finished cleaning his rifle when armed men burst in and started stabbing sleeping soldiers. He says he fired at them and thinks he hit one of them. He later fled out the back of the barracks and into the brush, where he watched as all this occurred.”
It was far-fetched, but it contained the chilling germ of truth. However, the thought of Japanese soldiers perpetrating the attack was beyond belief. Something was terribly wrong.
“What have you done?”
“Sir, I immediately contacted the admiral and then attempted to raise Wheeler by phone. I could not get through. After that I contacted one of the carriers and asked them to try to raise the combat air patrol out of Wheeler, and they were unable to do so either.”
Omori was now fully awake. “Then Admiral Iwabachi is aware of this?”
“Yes, sir. He directed me to awaken you. As we speak, a motorized column is being organized to drive up to Wheeler to investigate. It will take a while as we don’t want to send a handful of men into an ambush if the soldier is telling the truth.”
Which he probably is, Omori thought in dismay while he continued dressing. As his head cleared, he again wondered about the men who had attacked Wheeler. They could not have been Japanese. They must have been whites made up to look like Japanese. In the darkness and panic, the survivor must have been confused. Obviously, the raiders had worn what must have looked like Japanese uniforms, and the power of suggestion had resulted in the rest. The soldier would not be punished for his mistake. He had performed his duty under the circumstances.
“You’ve done well. Have Yamamoto or his staff been informed?”
“Admiral Iwabachi said he will wait until we confirm that something is truly wrong, and that it is a threat to the fleet.”
Omori dismissed the captain and prepared to see Iwabachi. He would have to swallow the bitter pill of failure. Of course the soldier’s reports were correct. He had thought the Americans incapable of a guerrilla raid on Oahu, and he’d been wrong. He would have to accept both the blame and the shame for his error in judgment.
This meant that Lieutenant Goto had failed as well. Again. He would send that stupid, spoiled child back to Japan no matter who he was related to. Whatever had just occurred at Wheeler must have had its origin with the Americans on the Big Island.
He would also wreak vengeance on the men who’d launched the traitorous attack. What they had done was unspeakably evil, and both they and their families would pay severely. Perhaps he would keep Goto around just long enough to do the interrogations.
But what was their purpose? A raid on a distant field was a minor thing. Why betray themselves for such a matter? It would be an embarrassment, but one that could be hidden from anyone outside of Oahu. In no way would it affect the fleet or change the course of events in Hawaii. The annexation had already taken place, so what was the reason?
Omori stepped outside. It was a couple of hours until dawn. He could see the fleet, and most of the ships were still illuminated. In the distance, he could hear the drone of planes. At least the fleet was well protected.
CHAPTER 23
It was a miracle, Magruder thought. The skies over Oahu were clear, and the ships below in Pearl Harbor were lit up like Christmas trees. No one had yet spotted his flight of planes, and he began to hope that he could make his attack without any interference.
It was not to be. A glowing finger of tracers lifted from a large ship-a cruiser or a battleship-as someone realized that the unexpected planes were hostile.
Magruder’s eleven pilots were confused by the abundance of targets. Their orders had been to hit the carriers first and the fuel tanks second, but it almost seemed like there were more Jap carriers than Magruder had planes. This was something Magruder hadn’t anticipated, and he ordered his pilots to spread out and attack several targets. He didn’t want all eleven dropping their bombs on the same ship.
More antiaircraft batteries opened up, and the sky was alive with shells. Magruder screamed for them to attack, and the eleven planes began their dives.
And then there were ten as a Wildcat to the left exploded. Magruder homed in on a carrier. Guns were firing everywhere, and it dawned on him that they were just firing into the sky and hadn’t really seen him in the darkness.
He pulled the release, and his two small bombs fell free and exploded on the flight deck. He banked away, and suddenly the largest ship in the world was in front of him, its antiaircraft guns blazing. Magruder fired his machine guns even though he knew doing so was like shooting spitballs at an elephant. Maybe he would hit some of the people shooting at him.
A fuel tank on a hill erupted like a volcano, and the concussion shook his plane. Or had he been hit? Magruder checked his gauges, and they were okay. He could keep on, but without bombs he was useless. He flew low over a destroyer and strafed it with some of his remaining ammo. As he flew away, he banked slightly and saw a fire on the destroyer’s stern. Hot damn, he thought. A carrier and a destroyer! But how much damage had he actually done?
After only a few moments, the raid was over. Magruder flew out over the ocean, where a line of Japanese destroyer pickets was also firing at the moon. He again broke radio silence and called for his flock to gather on him.
Four of them found him-that was all. As they flew away from Pearl Harbor, Magruder tallied the cost. He had lost six of his eleven planes. But, judging from the fires he’d seen, they had caused immense damage to the Japanese fleet. There were still no Zeros in the sky, and this meant he stood a chance of getting to another island in safety.
To sortie or not to sortie, thought Admiral Yamamoto, that was the question. He was mimicking some of what he’d learned as an English language student at Harvard before the war while he waited for damage reports in what had been the offices of Admiral Kimmel. When he got them, he would consider his options, and sortieing the fleet was one of them.
The idea of anchoring the entire fleet in Pearl Harbor had been a good one. Had he anchored a good portion outside the defended confines of Pearl, those outside the harbor would have been at the mercy of American submarines, which were getting more and more aggressive. It occurred to him that a pell-mell exodus from Pearl might just lead him to a wolf pack of waiting submarines.
In order to stay out of the clutches of the submarines, those ships outside the harbor would have had to keep in motion, maneuvering to keep the tracking subs confused. That would use up precious fuel, which was to be expended while attacking Alaska and bombarding the American West Coast. The fuel storage tanks were less than half full; thus, he had no real fallback reserve.
But the appearance of American carrier planes had been a complete shock. Cursory examination of the wreckage of one had identified it as an F4F Wildcat.
So where was the carrier? Was there a carrier? Was there more than one carrier? Despite the chaos of the attack, Yamamoto was convinced that only a handful of planes had struck and then fled. Why only a handful? A shame he couldn’t ask any of the pilots, but they’d either been killed or had not been found yet.
There was no carrier, he realized with a smile. Even a light carrier had many more fighters than had been thrown at his fleet. Thus, the planes had come from one of the other Hawaiian islands. Yamamoto concluded that they must have been hidden since before the invasion. The logical place was the Big Island of Hawaii, the only area where there was any American guerrilla activity. On such a large island, it wouldn’t have been difficult to hide the planes, and he grudgingly admired both the bravery of the American pilots and their ingenuity.