Robert Conroy: Rising Sun

“I’ve done both, Lieutenant, but what the devil does that have to do with our predicament?” Spruance asked, even as understanding dawned. “Of course, there was a scene where Ben Hur and the Roman admiral were adrift in the sea, and the admiral wanted to die because he was shamed by what he wrongfully believed was a defeat. Nice thought, Dane, but I am not suicidal because I’m ashamed of a defeat. No, I want to live to get another crack at them; I simply know too much to be taken prisoner. They would torture me until I told them everything I know and that would be terrible for the United States.”

Spruance looked away. He didn’t want the young lieutenant to see the anguish in his eyes. He was fifty-six years old and the Midway battle was his first major command, and he’d botched it horribly. His two carriers were destroyed and only God knew how many other ships damaged or sunk and, Jesus, how many young men were dead or wounded? Surely the butcher’s bill would eclipse that of the attack on Pearl Harbor. On a purely personal and selfish note, he wondered if he would ever get another command even if he did survive.

He shook his head. He had to think clearly. A new command was the least of his worries. He could not be captured. He did not want to die, but he could not live as a prisoner of the Japanese. He understood full well just how brutal interrogations could ultimately break anyone. He had no illusions regarding his ability to resist torture. Sooner or later and after untold agonies, he would break.

Aside from the sound of the waves slapping against their raft, there was silence. The Japanese planes were gone. A couple of American destroyers and the light cruiser Atlanta were burning furiously on the horizon. Worse, all the surviving ships were moving farther away. Dane and Spruance were truly alone in the vast Pacific. There was no drinking water in their damaged raft and their enemy would now be thirst, which Dane was feeling already, thanks to the salt water he’d swallowed. Unless the Japanese fleet arrived and plucked them from the sea they were doomed to die an agonizing death from thirst.

Dane understood what Spruance had said and realized that the admiral was both sane and correct. Word of Japanese atrocities against prisoners was spreading. He didn’t want to be taken alive either, but could he kill himself after killing Spruance? He doubted it. Not only did he consider suicide morally wrong, but he simply wanted to live. Could it get any worse, Dane wondered?

Spruance grabbed Tim’s arm. “Dane, is that a periscope or am I losing what’s left of my mind?”

Dane turned in the direction the admiral was staring. A submarine’s periscope peered at them from a distance of maybe a hundred yards. It looked like a one-eyed sea monster, which, Dane decided, was exactly what it was, but whose? He pulled the pocket knife from his pants pocket and opened it. Spruance looked at it sadly and nodded.

There was a rush of water and the submarine surfaced.

“I can’t see too well, Lieutenant. Whose is it, ours or theirs?”

Dane rubbed his eyes to clear his vision. Damned salt water made it difficult to see. He squinted and caught the name. She was the Nautilus . He smiled. “Ours.”

DANE WAS DRESSED IN HIS UNIFORM, SITTING ON THE EDGE OF his hospital bed in the naval hospital in Honolulu, and thinking of how very different he was from most navy officers. After four years of ROTC at Northwestern University, and several more years in the Naval Reserve, he’d never been on board anything larger than a fishing boat in Lake Michigan. Thus, the sheer size of the aircraft carrier Enterprise had been both daunting and humbling upon his last-minute arrival. Even though the Enterprise had been huge, he knew that many of the carriers and battleships now under construction were much larger. The soon-to-be-completed aircraft carrier Essex was a third bigger than the sunken Enterprise , and the Essex was the first of a class of ships just like her. She had a number of sisters that would be just as large when they were completed.

The doomed Enterprise had been capable of going thirty-two knots, which was, he thought ruefully, close to forty miles an hour and was what his old Ford could do on a good day. Dane hadn’t seen the car in ten months and wondered if his young nephew hadn’t run it into the ground. Tim had been activated in October of 1941 and had been in San Francisco when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

The other officers on the Enterprise had teased him about his lack of seagoing experience and laughed hysterically when he got thoroughly seasick during the early part of the voyage. Some of them did as well, which pleased Tim.

Dane was still mildly puzzled as to why he had been assigned to the Enterprise in the first place. He’d had one very brief conversation with Spruance, who’d also wondered, and pointedly asked him just why he thought he’d been assigned to his staff. Dane had prudently decided not to say he had no idea either. Instead, he said he thought it was because he could read and speak Japanese, a skill that was in short supply.

Spruance had smiled slightly and asked if Dane thought there were many Japanese on the carrier who might need interrogating, and whether he thought he’d run into any out in the Pacific.

Before Dane could answer, the admiral had laughed and said the ways of the United States Navy were wondrous indeed and that Dane should simply try to make himself useful. Barring that, he should stay out of everyone’s way. That was weeks ago and now he was in a hospital in Honolulu, and the Enterprise was at the bottom of the Pacific along with the Hornet and a number of other American warships.

There had been time to find out that fewer than three hundred men had survived the sinking of the two carriers. He was astonished to find that one of them was Lieutenant Commander Mickey Greene, the man who’d said that Tim didn’t know how to handle a fire hose. Greene had been burned over much of his body and was wrapped up like a mummy. He told Tim that most of the burns were superficial and that he had no recollection of how he’d survived. He assumed that some of the crew had dragged him into a raft and he dimly recalled being hauled onto a destroyer that had managed to survive the slaughter. Greene said he was lucky and that he would survive. It humbled Dane, who was so much better off.

While horrified by the numbers of dead, Tim felt oddly disconnected. He’d only been on the carrier a short while and, with the possible exception of Mickey Greene, hadn’t really known many of men all that well. They were acquaintances, not friends. Even he and Greene hadn’t had time to become close.

After seeing Greene and trying to imagine the pain the man was enduring, Tim decided to quit feeling sorry for himself. His head had been shaved, he had six stitches in his scalp, a couple along his mouth, and his leg still hurt. His knee would heal and the dark brown hair on his scalp would grow back and, if it didn’t, who cared? Half the men in his family were bald and he thought his hairline was already beginning to recede. He wondered how Mickey Greene would look when his bandages came off. Greene once had thick and curly red hair. Was any of it left? Tim’s own burns were rapidly fading and wouldn’t likely leave any significant scars.

He realized with a start that a young nurse was standing in front of him, looking at him quizzically.

“Good morning, Lieutenant, I’m glad to see you obeyed the instructions to get properly dressed. My name is Amanda Mallard and I’m a nurse, and unless you want some particularly painful injections in very sensitive parts of your body, you will never, ever refer to me as Ducky Mallard or Nurse Ducky or anything like that. Nurse Amanda, or simply Amanda, will do just fine. Understood?”