He just wasn't aware how soon.
A bomb hit the Pierce Arrow, obliterating it, and Bill, leaving a charred, flaming husk of an automobile and very little of its driver.
Bill Fielder had just become the first Arizona fatality.
Moored aft of the Tennessee, a massive 608 feet long, the Arizona carried a main armament of twelve fourteen-inch guns, her hull shielded at the waterline by a thirteen-inch thickness of steel, with twenty inches of armor housing her four turrets. No more formidable weapon of war-at-sea was known to man than a battleship such as this.
An armor-piercing bomb hit the ship between its number-two gun turret and bow, punching a hundred-foot hole in the deck, then exploding in a fuel tank below. Within seconds, almost two million pounds of explosives detonated, forming a fireball of red, yellow and black, the ship lifting twenty feet in the air, tossing men like rag dolls, ship's steel opening like a blossoming flower to spread petals of huge red flame.
The halves of the ship tumbled into the water, where her skewed decks were walked by burning men, a ghostly, ghastly crew staggering out of the flames, one by one, dropping dead.
Seaman First Class Dan Pressman-whose previous battle had been on Hotel Street, last night-had been manning a gun-director unit above the bridge, when he sustained burns over most of his body; still, he managed to make use of a line that had been made fast to the mast of a repair ship moored alongside the Arizona.
Pressman and five other badly burned sailors-suffering shock, but wanting to live-swung high above the water on the line, going hand over hand to safety, even as their ears were filled with the screams of fellow crew members on the burning, dying halves of the ship, or in the water beneath, which, surrealistically, was on fire, too.
Her superstructure enfolded in flame, the Arizona- her shattered foremast tipping forward-settled to the bottom of the harbor, three-quarters of her crew…. some 1,177 officers and enlisted men … dead in the most devastating of all the blows delivered by Japan in the surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor.
In his quarters at Fort Shafter, General Short had just gotten into his golfing gear, for the planned eighteen holes with Kimmel, Fielder and Throckmorton, when he heard explosions-which he recognized at once as bombs going off.
He didn't think anything of it-the Navy was obviously having some sort of battle practice, and he was mildly annoyed that no one on Kimmel's team had warned him about it… unless they had told him, and he'd forgotten it.
But the explosions seemed to build, grow nearer, and that got the general's curiosity up. He wandered out onto his lanai-the very porch where the evening before an FBI agent had told him about a possible coded message-and he could see smoke to the west, a lot of it… and black.
Shrugging, he was heading back in to have some coffee before he left for the golf course, when he heard a loud knock at the front door. His wife was not up yet, so he went to answer it quickly, in case she had somehow managed to sleep through the Navy's infernal racket.
Wooch Fielder, in blue sport shirt and blue slacks, was standing on the front porch. Fielder had the startled expression of a deer perked by the sound of a hunter, and his face was fish-belly white.
"What's wrong, Wooch? Am I late?" The general looked at his wristwatch. "Didn't think we were playing till-"
"Sir, we're under attack-it's the real thing."
More explosions.
The general leaned out the door, asked, "What's going on out there?"
"Bicknell says he saw two battleships sunk."
"Why, that's ridiculous…."
"Sir, both Hickam and Wheeler have phoned- they've been hit."
Short drew in a sharp breath; then, crisply, he said, "Put into effect Alert Number Three. Everybody to battle position."
"Yes, sir."
"Do it, Wooch-I'll be right with you."
And he shut the door, reeling, knowing that if the Japs would mount a damn-fool sneak air raid, they might even risk landing troops; there was no telling how seriously this attack might develop.
General Short knew only one thing for certain: he had to get out of these damn golf togs.
Don and Jerry Morton's mother, terrified by the explosions around them, stopped the car, and led her boys into a sugarcane field, where they all sat with hands on their ears, heads between their knees.
Now and then, Don's mother would ask either him or Jerry to peek up and see if the airplanes swooping overhead were American.
And, for the next two hours, they never were. Shivering, Don wondered if his stepfather was okay on Ford Island.
(He was not: the boys' stepfather had been among the first to die today, hit by a bomb on the Ford Island seaplane ramp.)
The U.S. Pacific Fleet was a family of sorts-big, and yet small enough that most men knew anyone else in their specialized line of work; a man might enlist and stay on one ship until retirement, twenty or thirty years later. Officers had ties, as well, often going back to Annapolis days. Admiral Kimmel knew thousands of his men by sight, and hundreds by name, and dozens were his personal Mends.
From his office window at fleet HQ, Kimmel could do little more than stand and watch his ships… and his men… die-the admiral helplessly bearing the thunder of exploding bombs, and the anvil clangs of torpedoes ravaging his ships, bleeding rolling clouds of smoke.
His people tried to establish communications with the areas under attack, and sent messages to ships at sea, advising them of what was happening at Pearl. They could hear explosions and see waterspouts and, of course, the funnels of black smoke.
"I must say," Kimmel said quietly to the officers around him, "it's a beautifully executed military maneuver … leaving aside the unspeakable treachery of it."
As he stood there, a bullet came crashing through the window and struck him on the chest-leaving a sooty splotch on his otherwise immaculate white uniform. He bent to pick up what turned out to be a spent.50-caliber machine-gun slug.
Softly, he said, "I wish it had killed me-that would've been merciful."
Then he reached up and, with both hands, tore loose the four-star boards on bis shoulders; he went into his office and came back wearing two-star boards, having demoted himself.
At the Japanese Consulate, Jardine and Sterling-with Burroughs and Hully tagging after-searched the compound. General Consul Kita was along, as well, a bored fat man in his pajamas; and when Jardine came to a locked door, toward the rear of the main building, he demanded that Kita open it. "I have no key," Kita said, unflappable.
The acrid smell of smoke was leaching out from around the door.
"They're burning papers again," Sterling said. "Kita, tell them to open up!"
Sighing, seemingly blase, Kita began to knock, but no one answered; Burroughs yanked the man aside, and Sterling crashed his shoulder into the wood, several times, until the door finally splintered open.
Four Japanese men in sport shirts and slacks were standing around a washtub in which they had been burning papers and codebooks. Around them in the small nondescript room were file cabinets whose drawers yawned open.
Hully snatched a brown, accordion-style folder out of one of the men's hands, before he could dump its contents into the tub of flames. Jardine hopped into the tub and stamped out the fire, like he was mashing grapes into wine.
Sterling had Burroughs train his gun on the four men while the FBI agent patted them down for weapons- they had none. One of the men was the Consulate's treasurer-they were all officials of the consulate.
"Look at this," Hully said, holding up a sheet of typing paper taken from the brown folder. The white sheet bore a detailed sketch of ship locations at Pearl Harbor.