Chapter 16

United States Naval Base

Pearl Harbor, Hawaiian Islands

December 7, 1941

From the quarterdeck of the USS Arizona, Seaman Billy Brewer rubbed his eyes as the sun crested Diamond Head, just a few miles to the east of the large American Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. For the last few weeks, with the Arizona moored with the U.S. Pacific battleship fleet at Ford Island, Billy had found himself looking forward to sunrises.

Especially on Sunday mornings.

That was because the sun rose in the east—from the direction of his family. It was like God sending him a big, orange, warm ball which he imagined had been launched by Little Billy in Plymouth floating west across America and then across the Pacific to remind him that the kids and Ellie were alive and well and doing fine.

He missed them more than he imagined he ever would when he came up with the idea of enlisting in the Navy. The separation had made him wonder how he wound up with such a pretty, sophisticated wife. He was just a plain, simple tobacco farmer’s grandson from Jamesville. Yet somehow, he was married to the envy of eastern North Carolina, the beautiful Ellie Williams.

He looked toward the rising sun and remembered the last time he saw her. It was at the bus station in Plymouth the morning he shipped out for boot camp at Great Lakes. She had looked into his eyes and spoken one of those quotations she liked to speak. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” she said. “You’ll see what I mean.”

And she was right. He wasn’t much of a reader and he wasn’t an educated man like his brother, but he had heard that saying before. He’d never given much thought to it, but now he knew. His heart ached by the great divide of time and distance from her.

Billy looked out at the beautiful aqua sparkling waters of Pearl Harbor, at the light, choppy ripples reflecting the rising sun. If he had to be separated from his family, at least the unrivaled, scenic beauty of Hawaii provided some consolation. If only Ellie could see this place. The beaches back home, Nags Head and Albermarle Sound, were pretty in their own right.

But nothing like this.

One day, when he got out of the Navy, he would bring Ellie here. Maybe even the kids too, if he could afford it.

And if he couldn’t afford it, maybe he’d swallow his pride and dip into the Williams trust fund to finance the trip.

Billy snapped a salute as a Navy commander in summer whites, whose black-and-gold shoulder boards showed him to be a Christian chaplain, walked onto the quarterdeck from the catwalk.

Probably headed to morning chapel.

When the officer of the deck waved the chaplain aboard, Billy dropped the salute and looked around at the still-sleeping gray warships.

A few white-clad sailors were moving about on the deck of Arizona. On the deck of USS West Virginia, the same scene was unfolding. The same was true for the deck of USS Nevada, at least from what Billy could see. Just a few sailors scurrying about, unfolding the American flag with buglers in place, getting ready for morning colors. Most of Arizona’s crew and the rest of the Pacific battleship fleet was asleep down below decks. Even Admiral Kidd was down below somewhere.

At least the war was in another part of the world and America wasn’t involved. It was a good thing. Many of his shipmates were sleeping off hangovers. Too much whiskey.

It was just his luck. On this clear, beautiful Sunday morning, he was stuck with quarterdeck duty. Not that Billy would be sleeping off a hangover. For the last few weeks, he had discovered that Sunday mornings were the most peaceful time of the week. A time for a couple of hours when it seemed he had paradise all to himself.

Were it not for quarterdeck duty, he would have already caught a boat ashore for an early-morning church service followed by a late-morning breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and pineapple juice at his favorite Honolulu café, the Pacific Breeze. Then he would catch a cab down to Waikiki Beach, spread a towel on the warm Hawaiian sand, and pen a letter to Ellie and the kids and return to the ship when liberty expired at eighteen-hundred hours.

Billy checked his watch.

7:55 a.m.

“What’s that idiot doing?” Someone shouted as the buzzing roar of an airplane engine grew louder.

Billy looked to his right out over the bay and saw a fighter bomber flying into the entrance of the harbor, hugging close to the surface and flying inbound at maybe twenty feet off the water.

Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!

“What the . . .” someone shouted as bullets from the fighter cut down the center of the harbor, spraying a wave of water high into the air.

“Here comes another fool!” someone else shouted.

Boom!

“They ain’t ours!” Billy heard someone yell.

“They’re Japs!” the officer of the day screamed. “Sound general quarters!”

Black smoke suddenly billowed from one of the other battleships. Billy felt his heart sink as air raid sirens cranked up around the harbor. Now dozens of planes were swooping in from the harbor entrance.

Alarm bells were now ringing on the Arizona and other ships.

“Battle stations! Battle stations! This is no drill! All hands to battle stations!”

Billy sprinted to his battle station, a 50-caliber antiaircraft gun, as wave after wave of torpedo bombers bore down upon the aqua-blue waters of the gorgeous harbor.

For twenty-eight-year-old Billy Brewer, the screeching sound of the approaching aircraft was surreal. How could this be happening?

The sun was shining. His shipmates were sleeping. The carriers were at sea, and the American planes at Hickam Field were still grounded. This was not supposed to be happening. Not in this, the most beautiful of all places Billy had ever known.

No one at Pearl was on guard. Billy’s shipmates were sleeping like sitting ducks before a double-barrel shotgun. Neither the Navy nor the Army had prepared Billy or anyone else for a surprise attack.

There would be plenty of blame to smear around later. But he might not be around to witness the blame game. Now was the moment of truth. In a few moments, it would be Billy Brewer against the entire Japanese Navy.

In a flash, his mind began racing from the palm and coconut trees of Pearl to the tobacco and peanut fields of Carolina; from his shipmates to his family; from his wife Ellie to his kids Little Billy and Margaret; from his brother Walter’s last hug before shipping out to his first deer, shot on their grandfather’s farm outside Jamesville.

Billy had fired a gun many times. But never in anger. Never in war. Now in this picturesque paradise, Billy’s adrenaline kicked in. He knew the attack was coming. The planes were now in his gun sight and bearing down on the Arizona. It was time to lock and load.

Billy engaged his firing mechanism as thunderous explosions occurred all around the Arizona. Water and fire sprayed everywhere. Billy wheeled around and squeezed the trigger. The 50 millimeter shook like a loud jackhammer, spraying a wave of lead into the deep-blue sky. More explosions as smoke, fire, and water sprayed everywhere.

Billy winced at the sparks and the sound of ricocheting bullets from a Japanese Zero bouncing on the steel around his head. The near-miss only made him more determined.

Billy fired again, hanging on to the powerful, vibrating, antiaircraft machine gun as it sprayed another round at the enemy. This time, a green dive bomber with the Rising Sun emblazoned on its fuselage burst into flames. Bull’s-eye! He kept firing. A Japanese Zero started smoking. But more smoke was billowing from the crippled American battleships moored in the harbor. The planes kept coming. Too many planes, not enough bullets.

His mind ran in slow motion, the sight carrying him back to Grandaddy Brewer’s Martin County farm, to a field called the John Grey Field. Named for a beloved slave who died a hundred years ago, the field had an old tobacco barn in the middle of it and a large beehive in the far corner. Now in the midst of battle, Billy remembered his granddaddy reaching into the beehive for the honeycomb. How Billy loved sucking on fresh honeycomb. But Granddaddy never got stung because he was always wearing long, thick gloves.

Here at Pearl Harbor, Billy had no gloves.

Now in a surrealistic two-dimensional mind frame, Billy was at the same time fighting the Japanese and walking across the field toward the beehive. As black, billowing clouds of smoke blocked the sun’s rays, Billy squeezed the trigger again with one hand. With his other, he reached back to Martin County, to his granddaddy’s beehive. With each step across the field, the roar of the bombers and the buzzing of the bees grew louder. As he reached his gloveless hand into the swarm of bumblebees, a deafening explosion rocked the ammunition magazine of the Arizona. The blinding fireball blasted Billy into the air, the fire burning his arms and legs before splashing him into the oily, flaming waters below.

The splash doused the flames off his back and pants legs. He bobbed under then back up. His leg throbbed as he tried treading water, his eyes focused on his ship. Bobbing up and down, struggling to stay afloat and dodge the patches of fire on the water, he saw USS Arizona spewing an inferno of flames and a torrent of black smoke from her magazine rack.

He felt the salt water burning the gash in his back. Blood bubbled up under his arms, and he felt dizzy. He gasped for air then inhaled water. His natural instincts forced him to cough violently, which sent his head under again.

Help me, Jesus.

When Billy kicked his feet to resurface, it felt like a blunt axe swung against his shin. His mind wandered to Ellie’s last smile, then Margaret’s curls. He kicked once more, enduring enough pain to stay afloat for a last thought of Little Billy asking him “Can I be in the Navy too?”

With the stabbing in his knees growing more violent and with his own blood floating around his neck, he tried floating on his back, praying that a rescue boat would pick him up. Overhead, the sky was black with buzzing hornets—not Grandaddy’s bees. Airplanes with red meatballs painted under their wings.

The meatballs began to blur. The booming explosions sounded more distant now. Muted, they yielded to a ringing in his ears. In the distance, he heard the Jamesville Christian Church choir. At homecoming. When he was a boy.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.

Grandaddy!

A wave of salt water sloshed over his head and into his mouth. Billy choked, heaved, coughed, and slipped under the water.

***

On December 9, 1941, Ingrid received Heinrick’s letter via the local postal carrier, postmarked from German Military Command in Tripoli. The envelope had been opened and the letter had been cleared by military censors. Ingrid read the letter and wept. Heinrick was still alive.

Despite Heinrick’s desire to go to the Eastern Front, Ingrid had a bad premonition about Germany’s war with Russia. She had hoped since the invasion in June that Heinrick would be spared being sent there.

She and the girls would celebrate at dinner tonight, knowing that her husband and their father was safe—for the time being—in North Africa. Next day, she penned a response.

December 10, 1941

Dear Heinrick,

Your letter speaks of the desert, but to us your letter was like water to dehydrated nomads.

None of the other letters you spoke of had reached us, and we had heard nothing from you in more than a year. We are so grateful to learn that you are alive and that you are safe with General Rommel in North Africa.

It sounds as if this General Rommel is a wise and prophetic man—especially about the Americans. I’m sure you have heard what has been reported here on German radio and also on the BBC, that the Americans were attacked in Hawaii by the Japanese and that our government is now in a state of war with the Americans. Since it was the Japanese who attacked them and not our nation, perhaps their armies will head to the Pacific and leave Europe to Germany.

Since you have been gone, Stephi has taken up the violin. She is taking lessons from Frau Brauberger of the Nuremberg Symphony. She is progressing quite nicely. Frau Brauberger is having her learn a few pieces by Wagner. She says that Stephi may be ready to audition for the Nuremberg Junior Youth Symphony by next spring. She is practicing an hour every day, working toward that goal. She has her papa’s drive and determination. You would be so proud of her.

Leisel has been busy at school and is doing well in her ballet classes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. We were required to purchase her a pair of new pointe shoes because we have some great news. Your oldest daughter was selected to dance in “The Nutcracker” over the holidays! She was among a handful out of over 200 who auditioned. She will be in “The Sugar Plum Fairy.” I have never seen her so excited as when she got the news. She did not sleep for three nights. Her performance will be Sunday night, December 21. I wish you could see her in her costume. She is so beautiful. Her only disappointment is that her papa won’t be able to make it. Think of her that night, Heinrick.

As for me, I too have embarked upon a new venture. In July, I was approached by three members of the local Party about teaching English at the academy where the girls attend school. The committee knew of my background and said that English would be valuable in the future, as Germany would someday occupy Britain and possibly America. Because of the opportunity for extra income and also because things are so lonely here with you gone, I accepted the position. I was a little rusty at first, but now I have gotten more comfortable and am enjoying working with the youngsters.

The job helps the daylight hours pass more quickly. At night, once the girls have gone to bed, I prepare my lesson for the next day or grade examinations.

We are proud of you, Heinrick. You are a credit to our nation and this family. But the girls and I hope for peace soon so that you can return to us. We love you. Write us again soon.

With Love,

Ingrid