Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

Never enough… Everyone in Wahiawa got thinner by the day. That had to be true of everyone on Oahu, everyone in the Territory of Hawaii, but Jane hadn’t gone outside of Wahiawa since the fighting started. She felt as if she’d fallen back through time like someone in an H. G. Wells story. What was she but a peasant from the Middle Ages, tied to her little plot of land?

She paused again in her weeding. This time, it wasn’t a broken fingernail but a distant droning in the sky. She frowned. The Japs didn’t fly all that much, certainly not so much as the Army Air Corps had before Hawaii changed hands. Maybe they didn’t have as much fuel as they would have liked. Or maybe they just didn’t think they had anything to worry about. Whatever the reason, they didn’t.

And the swelling drone didn’t sound as if it came from Japanese planes. Jane had heard enough of them to know what they sounded like. She looked up. Coming out of the northeast, over the Koolau Range, was a V of big, two-engine, twin-tailfinned airplanes. She stared at them, hardly daring to hope that…

They flew right over Wahiawa, low enough to let her make out the stars on their wings. They were! They were American planes!

Jane wanted to yell and scream and dance, all at the same time. She heard cheers here and there. She heard them, but she didn’t do anything except go on staring up at the sky. Too many people were out and about. Someone might see her and report her to the Japs if she celebrated too hard. You never could tell, and you didn’t want to take a chance.

How had they got here? They looked too big to be carrier planes. Had they flown all the way from the Pacific Coast? If they had, they surely couldn’t carry enough gas to get back. What were they going to do?

What they were going to do now was attack Wheeler Field, not far southwest of Wahiawa. A few antiaircraft guns started shooting at them, but only a few. The Japs must have been as taken aback as the Americans were when the war started. Would some Japanese politician stand up in whatever they used for a parliament and make a speech about April 18, the way FDR had about December 7? By God, I hope so! Jane thought savagely.

Crump! Crump! Crump! Yes, that was the noise of bursting bombs. Jane had become altogether too well acquainted with it to harbor any doubts. Give it to ’em! Give it to the lousy sons of bitches! She didn’t say a thing. She thought her head would burst with the effort of holding those loud, loud thoughts inside.

Not everybody bothered. She heard an unmistakable Rebel yell. And somebody shouted, “Take that, you fucking slant-eyed bastards!” She didn’t recognize the voice. She hoped nobody else did, either.

A column of greasy black smoke rose into the sky, and then two more in quick succession. They weren’t anything like the massive pall that had marked Pearl Harbor’s funeral pyre, but they were there. The bombers had hit something worth hitting.

The dinner bell rang, summoning people all over Wahiawa to the community kitchen. Jane’s amazement grew by leaps and bounds. For a few wonderful minutes, she hadn’t even realized she was hungry.

COMMANDER MINORU GENDA snatched up the jangling telephone in his office. “ Moshi-moshi! ” he said impatiently. An excited voice gabbled in his ear. Genda’s impatience gave way to astonishment. “But that’s impossible!” he exclaimed. More gabbling assured him that it wasn’t. “How the-?” He broke off. He heard bombs going off in the distance, not at Wheeler Field-that was too far away for the sound to carry-but off to the west. Hickam! he thought in dismay. “So sorry, but I’ve got to go,” he told the officer on the other end of the line, and hung up before the man could squawk any more.

He rushed downstairs and out onto the sidewalk in front of his office building. The sun was dropping down toward the Pacific. Genda caught glints of light off airplane wings. He knew the silhouette of every plane Japan made. Those weren’t Japanese aircraft.

They were, they could only be, American. He watched them drone east past the southern edge of Honolulu. He knew every carrier-based U.S. warplane by sight, too. He had to. The planes he saw weren’t any of those, either.

Other people also realized they belonged to the USA. The whoops and cheers that rang out all over Honolulu told him as much. If he’d had any doubts that Hawaii wasn’t fully reconciled to Japanese occupation, those whoops would have cured them.

Those weren’t carrier-based aircraft. They were… “ Zakennayo! ” Genda exclaimed. He seldom swore, but here he made an exception. Those were U.S. Army B-25s.

A million questions boiled in his head. How did they get here? came first and foremost. They didn’t have the range to fly from California. The answer to that one formed almost as fast as the question did. The Americans must have flown them off one of the carriers the picket boat had spotted. Genda bowed slightly toward the U.S. bombers in token of respect. That had taken imagination and nerve.

But the next question was, How do they aim to recover their planes and theirair crews? He couldn’t imagine that the United States would send men off on a suicide mission. He also couldn’t see how the USA planned to get them back. He scratched his head. It was a puzzlement.

Yet another good question was, What are we doing about this? The Japanese didn’t seem to be doing very much. A few antiaircraft guns started firing. A few puffs of black smoke stained the sky around the B-25s. Genda saw no signs that any of them was hit.

He also saw no fighters going after them. Had the Yankees blasted all the runways on Oahu? Genda couldn’t believe it. There weren’t nearly enough American bombers to do anything of the sort. More likely, they’d just caught the Japanese with their pants down. Nobody had expected the raiders till tomorrow morning. The Americans had pulled a fast one-the B-25s, with their greater range, could launch far sooner than the usual carrier-based planes would have.

The Akagi and the Soryu would be rushing north to meet the American carriers… which probably wouldn’t be anywhere near so far south as the Japanese thought they were. And Japanese fighters based here on Oahu didn’t seem to be reacting very well at all.

The Yankees may have done us a favor, Genda thought. This was-this could only be-a raid, a pinprick, an annoyance, a stunt. It wouldn’t and couldn’t settle anything. He imagined U.S. newspapers with headlines like WE STRIKE BACK AT HAWAII! People on the American mainland would cheer-and would have the right to.

But what would happen if and when the Americans seriously attacked Oahu? Genda didn’t know whether they could. But now he was sure as sure could be that they wanted to. They weren’t going to accept what had happened in the central Pacific as a fait accompli.

We weren’t ready here, Genda thought. We weren’t ready, and they’ve embarrassed us. They’ve made us lose face. That wouldn’t happen again, though. Genda intended to be one of the men who made sure it wouldn’t happen again. If the Yankees returned, they wouldn’t find Oahu too flustered to fight back. The island would be ready to repel them.

Meanwhile, still without much harassment from the ground or from the air, the B-25s buzzed off in the direction of Diamond Head. No matter what Genda might plan for the future, today belonged to them. Genda went back up to the office as fast as he’d hurried down to the street. Yes, today belonged to the Americans. He got on the telephone to do his best to ensure that tomorrow wouldn’t.

CHOW TIME. HORRIBLE glop. Not enough of it-nowhere near enough of it. Fletch Armitage didn’t care. He looked forward to every meal he got in the Kapiolani Park POW camp with greater anticipation than he ever had when he was going to some pretty fancy restaurants back on the mainland.