“You’ve got to be kidding” was Lieutenant Jamie Priest’s first comment on hearing the orders.
Another of his fellow lieutenants had just informed him that the damaged battleship Pennsylvania would slip out that night and, under the cover of darkness, try to make it to the United States.
Jamie had also been informed that he would accompany her on her escape.
Grudgingly, Jamie acknowledged that it made sense. The Pennsylvania was useless where she was and, as the day’s air raid had proven, would be a prime target for the Japanese planes. She hadn’t been hit in this last attack, but further damage was inevitable if she remained. The battlewagon had to get to a California shipyard, where her two forward turrets could be replaced and her ruptured hull plates repaired.
It also made sense to sneak out at night while the Japanese navy was preoccupied with protecting the landing site on Molokai. When Molokai was secured, the Japanese fleet was certain to take up station outside Pearl Harbor’s narrow entrance and dare any ships to try to escape.
Yes, there was some danger from submarines and other, smaller, warships, but it was a chance that had to be taken. If they stayed where they were, the Jap planes would surely sink the Pennsylvania. If she fled now, there was at least a chance she would make it. It was a lousy choice, but, Jamie thought ruefully, it was the only one they had.
Jamie’s position on the Pennsylvania was undefined. Normally, he would have been directing fire control for one of the destroyed turrets. Instead, he was given a damage control party even though he had little experience at that grim task. The Pennsylvania would depart with only a little more than half of her normal crew and supplies, and her fuel tanks would not be full.
“Perhaps she’ll go faster because she’s lighter,” he heard one of the crew joke.
Not funny, Jamie thought. He also didn’t think much of the idea of heading west when they left Pearl and taking the long northern way around the island before turning toward the United States. The idea was to confuse any Japs who might be lurking east of Pearl’s entrance and get behind them before making the homeward dash. He hoped the Pennsylvania’s commander, Captain C. M. Cooke, knew what the hell he was doing. Jamie didn’t know Cooke at all well. Naval captains rarely discussed matters with lieutenants.
“A dash,” they were calling it, and he laughed. Now there was a joke. Because of the hull damage, it was unlikely that the Pennsylvania would get anywhere near her top speed of twenty-one knots. No, he would have preferred to get as far away from Oahu as fast as they could and the hell with any Japs in the way. If they were caught, they weren’t going to get away anyhow.
While they made frantic, last-minute attempts to make the battleship more survivable, the sun slowly went down and darkness covered the harbor. Jamie could see the shapes of the four destroyers that would be their escort to America. They looked terribly small and vulnerable.
The Pennsylvania raised her anchor and moved slowly toward the ocean. Their departure wouldn’t be at all heroic. They were sneaking out. Jamie looked around at others in the night and saw the same expressions on their faces. They all thought this might be their last night on earth.
CHAPTER 7
Oahu is approximately forty miles long and twenty-six miles wide. Honolulu and Pearl Harbor are about a third of the way up the length of the island, which meant that they were about an hour’s drive up the one road that led from both sites to Haleiwa, the probable landing place for the Japanese army.
“Take a look at it,” Colonel Collins had ordered. “Give me an idea whether we can hold at that point and how long it’ll take to reinforce the place if the Japs come.”
“When they come,” Jake had corrected, and Collins had agreed. How could there be any doubt? he wondered, The Japs had reworked the small airfields on Molokai in record time and now had planes over Oahu almost every minute of the day. Along with attacking fixed positions, the Japanese fighters and bombers struck at targets of opportunity, and that included anything that moved on the road to Haleiwa. The navy was now almost totally gone, and that included the Pennsylvania. This meant that the only targets were army ones. A handful of planes remained, but few were fighters. The survivors were scout planes, and PBY flying boats, and were dispersed and hidden.
Jake declined a staff car, choosing a motorcycle instead. He believed that the motorcycle would be less likely to attract attention from the Japanese than a staff car, and it could go cross-country where the road had been bombed.
Even with the advantage of mobility, the drive took four hours instead of one. There were several times when Jake had to hide the motorcycle behind a tree while Japanese planes flew low overhead in a manner reminiscent of their attack on Hickam the preceding December.
Schofield Barracks was the midpoint of his journey, and he arrived during another raid, which delayed him further. This time a Jap fighter got too close, and he cheered lustily when it was blown from the sky by American antiaircraft guns.
When he left, however, several buildings were burning, and one of the guns that had destroyed the Zero had been strafed, its crew shot to a bloody pulp.
Compared with the ride to Schofield, the short haul to Haleiwa was fairly easy, and he made it to the American coastal defenses without further incident.
Jake was not impressed by what he saw. Just under four thousand men had been allocated a front about six miles wide. The defenses were anchored on the northern ends of the Koolau and Waianae mountain ranges. These peaks ran on either side of the island, and in the fertile valley between them was the road from Haleiwa to Schofield to Pearl Harbor. The mountains were more sharp hills and knifelike ridges, and the valley gradually widened until it was twenty miles across at Pearl Harbor.
Trenches had been dug and pillboxes constructed out of sandbags, but where were the mountains of barbed wire that would stop enemy infantry, and where were the big guns that would pound Japanese warships? The largest artillery pieces Jake saw were several batteries of 155 mm howitzers, and they weren’t well dug in or protected against counterfire from Japanese warships.
Jake knew several of the officers and asked for their assessment. He was told that, because of the Japanese air attacks interdicting the road from Schofield to Hickam, the brass were now reconsidering their earlier assumptions regarding a landing at Haleiwa. Some were convinced that the Jap presence on Molokai meant a Japanese attack would be against the southern portion of the island, at a place such as Barbers Point or Kaneohe Bay. Thus, that was where most of the construction of defenses was taking place.
Jake had heard this, of course, and asked for their opinions. Almost to a man they felt that the attack would be at Haleiwa, despite what the higher-ups thought. One lanky captain from Arkansas put it succinctly: “This beach is the asshole of the world, and when this is over we’ll have been shat on.”
Jake rose to the joke. “Shat?”
“Past tense of shit, Jake. Look it up.”
Collins had told Jake to try to contact him from Haleiwa. Incredibly, the telephone lines were functioning normally, and he got through easily.
The colonel heard a brief commentary that would have meant nothing to someone listening in, but contained words that they’d agreed on to convey Jake’s impressions.
Jake heard his superior sigh deeply across the phone. “Get back as soon as you can, buddy. We’ve got other problems.”
“We do?”
“Yeah, people are picking up distress signals in the clear, so this is no secret. Looks like the Pennsylvania’s in big trouble.”