The Blackett Strait, Western Solomon Islands,
approximately 2.30 A.M., 2 August 1943
THE JAPANESE DESTROYER came out of the night at forty knots like a huge shark snarling across the lagoon. It struck the small American craft and cut it in half before disappearing into the blackness. Part of the fragile plywood and mahogany vessel sank almost at once, with two of the thirteen-man crew already dead. Sprays of gasoline were flung across the surface of the water, burning intermittently.
The young lieutenant in command of the craft had been at the wheel when the ramming had occurred. Fearing that the flames spreading across the water might reach the chewed-up remnants of the vessel and destroy them, he ordered the survivors over the side. In seconds, the crushing wake of the already invisible destroyer had extinguished the blaze. The eleven survivors, two of them badly hurt, hauled themselves back on board.
They remained huddled on the fractured, water-slopped deck until daybreak. As the sun edged over the horizon, the two ensigns and eight enlisted men looked to the lieutenant for instructions.
‘What do you want to do if the Japs come out?’ he asked. ‘Fight or surrender?’
The remaining half of the plywood coffin began to settle in the water, almost obscuring the inscription on its splinter shield: PT-109.