Black Sunday, by Graham Salisbury

Early Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, seventeen-year-old David Twigg-Smith was walking along the beach in Lanikai on the windward side of Oahu. A plane, a fighter skimming the ocean, caught his attention. He shaded his eyes against the sunrise and watched the fighter bear down and let loose on a small fishing boat.

Foomp!

The boat blew apart. The plane pulled up and sped away. The smoking boat sank. Must be the marines, he thought. Target practice.

***

On the opposite side of the island a friend of his, Pete Vitousek, took off in his small plane. As he climbed into the quiet morning sky he looked back down on the airport, Hickam Air Force base, and Pearl Harbor, all three nestled together like sleepy boys in a church pew. Beyond, new sunlight poured into the wide valley of pineapple and sugar cane fields, painting them lime-green in the red dirt they sprouted from.

What a day! What a beauti–

Pete squinted into the puffy pink clouds. Planes — hundreds of them – were swarming like gnats, spilling through the mountain pass.

***

Below, in Pearl Harbor, Ensign Henry Graham and three other young naval officers filed off the Tennessee on their way to church. For a second the salt-thick air reminded him of home, and his mother back in Sea Cliff, New York. And his dog and kid brother. And Barbara, in Boston. He’d met her just before being sent here. She’d been excited about his assignment to Pearl Harbor, because she’d grown up in the islands. He’d have to look up her folks.

“Look,” one of the officers said. “What do you make of this?” All four navy men gazed upward at a mass of dark fighters, peeling off, spreading out, and bearing down on them.

***

In nearby Nu’uanu valley Barbara-in-Boston’s mother was thinking about writing a letter as she took eggs from the ice box for breakfast. “My goodness,” she mumbled, “what’s all that racket?” Still holding the eggs, she peeked out the window, but saw nothing. But there was all that noise! She went out onto the lawn and saw ugly black smoke roiling up from somewhere near Pearl Harbor, it looked like. It’s just not right to hold these maneuvers on Sunday! She vowed to call the governor to see if he could put an end to it.

***

In Kalihi valley, just up from Pearl Harbor, eleven-year-old Hank Arita tried to soothe his racing pigeons, agitated by the thundering explosions not a mile or two away. He climbed up on the roof of his garage to see if he could see what the heck was going on. All that noise. All that smoke.

Chee, he thought, looking down on the hulks of burning battleships. This isn’t war games. No, this is not games.

He was right. And he had a front row seat.

***

David in Lanikai, the younger brother of Barbara in Boston, couldn’t get the blown-up boat out of his mind. Something about it just didn’t seem right. He’d never seen that kind of target practice before. He ran from the beach to his radio: This is not maneuvers. This is the real McCoy. Repeat, this….”

He tried to call his mother in Nu’uanu valley, but the lines were jammed. He sprinted for his car to head home. But the military had already closed the Pali road. He wasn’t going anywhere.

***

Pete in his small plane suddenly found himself in the middle of a blazing battle. Planes buzzed around him like wasps. Anti-aircraft guns fired at them from the ground. Black puffs of ack-ack littered the sky. Got to get down! Got to get down!

He gambled. Landed, explosions all over the place. Stumbled out of his plane and sprinted for shelter. Kaboom! Kabam!

***

Ensign Graham also scrambled for cover, weaponless. He watched ships explode, watched men die, but could not fight back. He had no weapons. He carried wounded men off burning ships and wept at the devastation. Ensign Graham, my future father, who survived the battle, but not the war.

***

Even as Pearl Harbor fell to her knees, my future grandmother wrote that letter to Barbara-in-Boston, my future mother. “You can see red suns on their wings,” she wrote. She also sent a newspaper photo of three dead men in a shot-up car, strafed just up the street from the house. It looked like something out of Al Capone.

***

Eleven-year-old Hank Arita got a visit from the FBI. They told him to kill his “messenger” pigeons, and he did. He had no choice. He was Japanese. The FBI wasn’t taking any chances with anything or anybody. Years later, Hank’s future wife would be my uncle’s life-long administrative assistant at Honolulu’s morning newspaper.

***

Black Sunday, they called that day.

Chaotic. Shocking. Deadly.

This is what I grew up with. Stories like these that painted vivid pictures in my imagination, so real, so palpable. How scared would I have been? Or how brave?

I wrote a book about it, writing as a coroner, probing the times from which I was born. It’s called Under the Blood-Red Sun. I found fear, honor, innocence, courage, sacrifice, tragedy.

Hope.

And this about my species: we are as villainous as we are heroic.

Keep your eyes peeled.

Copyright, 2007 by Graham Salisbury