Prologue

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1941

OAHU, HAWAII

The attack came out of nowhere.

No warning, no declaration of war, no siren, before the enemy descended on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in a wave of fire, panic, and destruction.

All across the island of Oahu, unsuspecting Americans were enjoying a perfect Hawaiian Sunday morning in what was as close to paradise on earth as one could get. Warm sunlight shone between the leaves of gently swaying palm trees. Stores and restaurants opened in preparation for a day of weekend shoppers. Hula music played softly on radios in windows and cars as coffee brewed and breakfast sizzled in pans. On the decks of the vessels of Battleship Row, a group of seven military battleships in port at the harbor, sailors were finishing up breakfast, playing a little early catch on deck, or getting ready for a weekend’s shore leave with their wives and families.

Then, the roar of plane engines.

The crackle of machine gun fire. The thunder of bombs exploding. The thud of torpedoes slamming into ship hulls beneath the rocking waves.

America was being attacked.

That was all anyone knew.

On the deck of the USS West Virginia, Joseph Dean, eleven years old and son of the ship’s head cook, had no idea the planes raining gunfire and destruction on him and his friends were from the Empire of Japan. He didn’t know that the aircraft carriers from which those planes had taken off had left Japan eleven days earlier with plans to destroy Pearl Harbor. He didn’t know the small black packages they dropped were armor-piercing bombs. And he had no way of knowing that the nearby USS Arizona had just taken on nearly 1.5 million gallons of fuel in preparation for a trip to the mainland.

All Joe knew was that Skipper, his new dog, had sensed something. She’d started barking at the edge of the ship, losing her cool in a way he’d never seen before. It had spooked them all—a warning of something they didn’t understand.

A warning that came too late.

Joe watched as the planes appeared overhead. They swooped aggressively low over the ships along the row, bathing them in bullets and bombs. Suddenly Joe was dodging bullets and smelling smoke, and then—

BOOM!

A wall of white-hot air slammed into Joe. He flew through the air and landed on his back.

Joe sat up, dazed and hurt. Stunned, he could only watch as the Arizona was cut in half by a massive explosion. The ship’s belly was like an opening into the pit from one of his grandmother’s Bible stories, a raging fire that filled the sky with oily black smoke. As Joe tried to regain his bearings, the thirty-four-thousand-ton battleship began to sink to the bottom of the harbor after only ten minutes, the deafening blast taking with it over a thousand American lives.

As Joe stared on in horror, Skipper appeared in front of him. She barked and barked, trying to rouse him to action. Terrified and confused, Joe threw his arms around her neck and hugged her for dear life.

“Oh, Skipper,” he cried, his body shaking against hers. “What’s going on? Who’s attacking us, girl? How did this happen?”