Thanking the sergeant and dismissing him, I read:
Have secured enemy sub. Fuel supply extremely low. Batteries the same. No detectable hidden purpose yet but still involved in searching the sub. Japanese captain and officers cooperating in every way. Captain speaks English well, attended University of Chicago. Expect ten more minutes to finish.
University of Chicago? I couldn’t believe it. Apparently everything good the Japs ever learned came from America. And those slant-eyed sons-of-bitches turned around and used it to bomb us. “Isn’t that about right?” I said out loud, no longer able to contain myself.
“Sir?” the officer of the deck replied.
“Major Johnson tells me the Jap bastard captain of that sub went to the University of Chicago.”
“Really?” replied the lieutenant.
“Yes, apparently so. We should have just shot him when we had him the first time, don’t you think lieutenant?
“Would have been a good idea, sir,” he said with a grin. “We could have saved all of those American war bond holders a lot of money on perfectly good ammunition.”
“No doubt,” I replied, ending the conversation, both out of not wanting to invite levity onto the bridge of my ship under such serious circumstances and another flood of hatred for these animals we called Nips welling up inside of me.
“There was nothing more we could do,” I thought as I remembered a time on this very ship not long ago. “We did everything we could to get those men out of there.” The horror, the sheer horror of it, but there was nothing that could be done; the bulkhead gave way and drowned them all like rats. All we could do was listen to them in their panic and pleas to God for a few more precious moments of life as the water flooded into the compartment. And no matter how many times I go over it in my mind, the helplessness still never goes away. There was just nothing more we could do. My promise to those men, that they would see their families again, was broken, and some of our own boys would never make it home as a result. Halsey’s plan of “Kill Japs, kill Japs, and kill more Japs” was still looking mighty good to me.
And as the seconds turned into minutes I gently tapped the grip of my holstered Colt forty-five. Since Pearl, I almost always kept my sidearm on me. Even when I didn’t think it was a likely time to find myself in combat. Not that it would do much good for a sailor most of the time. But on the other hand, I was a champion shooter, and it made me feel better that at least I could always shoot back with something.
It was loaded by my own hands just before the Japanese sub had been spotted. One round in the chamber, full magazine with four spares, cocked locked, and ready for trouble. I was ready for a fight. With all of those yellow bastards in close formation on the deck like that, I’d be sure to get at least several of them.
A recurring nightmare since the Buffalo was torpedoed came to my mind. I saw myself tied to the side of a Japanese sub shouting “From Hell’s heart I stab at thee! For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!” shooting at it in vain with my sidearm as it sank below the waves. Captain Williams or Captain Ahab from Moby Dick; in the end, what’s the difference?
Then I thought of my wife and children. What would they gain from it?
After a short time the marine sergeant interrupted my reverie by returning to the bridge bearing another note from the Major. I took it from him and told him to stand by while I read it.
Enemy sub secured. All weapons disabled and inert. The Japanese captain respectfully requests to come aboard and formally surrender.
“Sergeant,” I said, “run ahead and inform the major that I will be on the quarter deck at the top of the liberty ladder in two minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the marine; then he departed the bridge.
I picked up the sound-powered phones, which connected the bridge to the executive officer’s battle station, put them on, and keyed the microphone. “XO,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” came the usual acknowledgement of Commander Thompson’s voice.
“I’m leaving the bridge to go accept the sub captain’s surrender. You have the conn. Look sharp and keep your eyes peeled; I don’t trust these bastards.” Normally, in a potential combat area, the captain is not allowed to leave the bridge area. It’s very restrictive and almost like being in the brig to be confined to just the area of the pilot house, the navigation bridge, and my very small sea quarters. Even my meals were brought to me in my chair in the pilot house. I normally looked forward to any chance to leave the bridge, but this was an exception.
“Understood,” the executive officer said.
I would have rather told him, “I’m going down to the quarter deck to put a forty-five caliber hole right in the middle of that slant eyed bastard’s head. Send somebody down to clean his filthy bloodstain off the deck of my ship in five minutes.”
“Officer of the deck, XO has the conn. I’ll be back in ten minutes,” I said.
“Yes, sir. The captain’s off the bridge.”
I turned, stepped through the hatch, then down the ladder, and for the first time in weeks, left the bridge area of my ship.
“For all I know, this could be the same submarine and the same captain that torpedoed the North Carolina or even this ship,” I thought to myself as I stepped down onto the main deck.
I arrived at the top of the ladder down to the sub just before the major and a Japanese officer with a samurai sword stepped onto it and began to climb up the steps.
As he was climbing the ladder my thoughts once again strayed to my forty-five waiting in its holster. “I still could get him,” I thought, “I’m a good enough shot that I could hit him with no risk to the major. It’s an easy shot.”
Then they were at the top of the ladder. The Colt in its holster was feeling very heavy on my chest. They were ten feet in front of me, five, and then three.
The Japanese officer reached for his sword. I shot a quick glance at Major Johnson as I felt the snap on the strap of the holster which held my Colt pop loose against my index finger. “This is it,” I thought; “he is going to try to lop off my head with that thing. Well, if it’s him or me that is going to die, I choose him.”
Ever so slightly the major shook his head at me, his eyes widening, as if reading my mind.
The Japanese captain unhooked the sword from his belt, still sheathed, bowed, and holding it horizontally, offered it to me.
This was the only time in almost four years of war I had seen a Jap surrender without shooting at him first.
So as my sworn enemy stood in front of me, defeated and offering his sword, and me with my hand still on my forty-five, I began to feel I was missing something, something vague yet very important. I had planned and hoped for this day for some time now, and yet when the moment finally arrived, it seemed hollow.
A nebulous idea began to form in my thoughts, small at first, but growing, and very rapidly gaining energy like an avalanche, until it totally wiped out any concept of the things I had previously assumed were true. I found my mind suddenly racing backwards through time, looking at all of the events of the war that had led me to this point…
Okie
One important thing to understand about the attack on Pearl Harbor is the mindset of the United States, the navy in particular, and the world at that time. The Japanese and their friends in Europe had been stomping around, breaking things, making lots of noise, and generally creating havoc for quite some time. We in the military knew an attack was inevitable. It was going to happen and we were doing what we could to prepare for it. We just didn’t expect that attack at that time in that place, which is why it was so brilliant.