Robert Conroy: Rising Sun

The sky was clear and there was a half moon, so there was some visibility. There was no real reason to suspect any of the population of Hawaii of being spies, but one could never be too careful. What they couldn’t see, they couldn’t report.

Even though there was a war on, secrets were hard to keep, and several dozen onlookers were present. Both curious military personnel and a handful of civilians were kept behind a tall wire fence by armed sailors. Some of the civilians were dependents and looked distraught. Tim looked to see if Amanda was one of them, and there she was. He waved and she waved back. She didn’t smile. He thought she looked a little lost, and he ached at leaving her behind to what might be a terrible fate.

Tim needed only a little help making it down the submarine’s deck hatch and into the hull. As promised and as he recalled, the odor of oil, grease, and God only knew what overwhelmed them and a couple of officers gagged.

“Pussies,” muttered a sailor and other crewmen laughed.

“I guess we are pussies,” said Merchant. “Dane, I’ve talked to Torelli, and you and I are going to be bunking by each other. I’m taking the top, of course. I’ll be the senior officer in the group and rank does have some privileges.”

“Understood, sir.”

“If we’re going to spending a lot of time cheek by jowl, I’m going to pick your mind about anything you know about Japan and the Japanese. If nothing else, it might help pass the time. If you bore me, I’ll have Torelli fire you out a torpedo tube. If what you know is useful, you’ll be giving some briefings to the staff when we get to California. If we get to California, that is.”

The sub began to move and there was a disconcerting feeling when she slid bow down and submerged to periscope depth. The tug led her and the two others out of the harbor and through the narrow channel that led to the ocean. If the enemy was anywhere, they would be waiting for them to emerge from the harbor.

They lay in their bunks with hearts racing. They wouldn’t have far to go before they reached relative safety, as the island of Oahu was considered by some to be a mountain that jutted up from the ocean depths; the dropoff to truly deep water would be sudden and soon.

After a surprisingly short amount of time, Torelli gave orders and the sub dived to deeper waters. They had made it out of Pearl Harbor and were on their way to California. They hoped.

A few miles back, Amanda and a handful of others stood by the empty space that once held the three subs and watched and stared. That they could see nothing at all was both frightening and reassuring. For Amanda, it was a terribly lonely feeling and she tried hard not to cry. She felt a sudden and intense kinship with the man she’d so recently met and barely knew. Now, however, she had her own decisions to make, but one thing was tremendously important. She had to get to California.

The train from hell had taken an eternity, or so it seemed to Second Lieutenant Steve Farris, U.S. Army. Hell, the starting point, had actually been Chicago and the train had been overfilled with GIs and their duffle bags and some equipment, minus weapons and helmets. They had been en route to the West Coast to reinforce the troops waiting and watching for a Japanese invasion. Instead of the couple of days a train trip should have taken, the journey from hell had lasted for two long weeks. Two weeks without proper food, not enough water to drink and wash with, and, when they went through the mountains, plenty of scenery, but no heat. The toilets had backed up almost immediately and toilet paper ran out as well.

He’d even seen his first stabbing as two soldiers had gotten into an argument over something. One man wound up with a switchblade in his gut, while the other was placed under arrest and would be charged with attempted murder. Farris been shocked by both the sudden violence and the tremendous amounts of blood that had been spilled.

The men in his brand-new platoon had looked to him for leadership and Farris couldn’t provide it. The men, with the exception of Platoon Sergeant Stecher, who treated him with the polite contempt of a veteran for a novice, were all straight out of basic training and scarcely knew how to put on their uniforms. Farris wasn’t much better. He was a ninety-day wonder recently graduated from Officer Candidate School and didn’t know much more than his men, and he sure as hell didn’t know what to do when men settled arguments with knives.

Nor could he get much help from his company commander, Captain Lytle, as that man had spent most of the trip drunk. Lytle had commandeered the only compartment on the train and had filled it with crates he’d brought along. Stecher said that Lytle had owned a bar back in Pennsylvania and had brought most of his inventory.

Finally, somehow, they had made it to San Diego and the platoon stood in the train station with several hundred other men in wrinkled and filthy uniforms. Sergeant Stecher stepped up to Farris and made no effort to salute. Farris ignored Stecher’s quiet insolence. “What now, Lieutenant?”

“Food, water, and a shower, sergeant. At least that’s what I want, and then maybe some sleep.” He saw some Red Cross people giving out donuts and told Stecher to send the men over to get something to eat. To his mild surprise, Stecher didn’t put up a fuss. Maybe Farris had said the right thing. After all, didn’t an army travel on its stomach?

Captain Lytle walked unsteadily up to them. “We are now a recon battalion and part of the Thirty-Second Infantry Division currently stationed here in San Diego. When your men are through stuffing their faces, there are some trucks to take us to temporary quarters, and after some training, out to our patrol areas.”

Farris saluted and went to gather his troops. They were part of an understrength and poorly trained National Guard detachment from Pennsylvania that had been fleshed out with a number of raw recruits, brand-new officers like Farris, and a handful of real soldiers like Stecher. They were all part of a civilian army girding for war and were a long way from being soldiers. Well, he thought, so was he. The really disconcerting fact was that he was the senior lieutenant in the company, a de facto second-in-command to Lytle. The other three lieutenants were even less experienced than he and had received their commissions a few weeks after he had.

For the thousandth time he wondered why he hadn’t pulled some strings and gotten into the navy, even if it had to be as an enlisted man. At least sailors had decent places to sleep and even better food, he was told, and they didn’t have to march through swamps or climb mountains. He’d envied his uncle and still did, even though Uncle Tim had gotten damn close to being killed in the Midway Massacre. Tim had managed to get a telegram to the family that all was well, which had both relieved and shocked them. Nobody’d had any idea he was out on any ship, much less the doomed Enterprise .

Stecher returned and glared at Lytle as the short, pudgy captain departed. “What the hell does he mean by patrol areas? I want to kill Japs, not patrol some fucking beach.”

Farris didn’t think that patrolling a beach in Southern California was all that bad an idea, especially in the summertime when California girls went out sunbathing. He’d heard delicious rumors that a lot of them swam and sunned in the nude. Yes, he’d like to patrol those beaches.

However, he understood Stecher’s concern. The sergeant’s brother had been killed at Pearl Harbor and he wanted revenge. Steve had heard the story a dozen times, and it always ended with a rightfully furious Stecher raging that “The fucking Japs murdered him. He was running across a field and one of their planes strafed him. Who the hell would cut down a man who’s running away?”