The Pearl Harbor Murders

FIFTEEN

In less than half an hour, in a peacetime attack unparalleled in the modem world, Japan had delivered the worst Naval defeat in American history.

Thick black smoke draped Pearl Harbor, where all seven battleships moored at Ford Island had suffered damage, all hit by one or more bombs. In the overturned hull of the Oklahoma, most of the crew remained imprisoned, while others were trapped in the capsized Utah; rescue efforts in either case were hampered by continual strafing, until the silver planes of the Rising Sun finished their runs.

In the lull that followed the first wave of attack planes, the Americans worked frantically to prepare in the event of another blow-and one was coming: a second wave of 169 fighters and bombers crossed the northern coast of Oahu at 8:40 a.m.

Fifty-four high-level bombers and thirty-one fighters streaked toward Hickam Field and Kaneohe Naval Air Station and other bases, seeking more American planes on the ground to blow up, often strafing civilian vehicles and residential areas, apparently just for the sheer hell of it. Eighty-one dive bombers prowled for any surviving warships in the harbor, with ships awaiting repairs becoming additional targets-like the flagship Pennsylvania, and the destroyers Downes and Cassin, all in Dry Dock #1.

During this second attack, however, the Japanese pilots met stronger American resistance, and had to deal with billowing black smoke, a cover of their own raid's creation, obscuring their targets. The commander of the second wave of fighters, encountering fiercer ground fire than he'd anticipated, wound up crashing his Zero into a flaming hangar; and efforts to sink the fleeing battleship Nevada, to seal off the harbor with a mass of steel, proved unsuccessful.

Small victories, in so large a defeat.

With the exception of the occasional scurrying Oriental, disappearing down an alley or into a doorway, the streets and sidewalks of Chinatown were deserted. The rows of shops and cafes were as abandoned as an Old West ghost town, lacking only tumbleweed; the hustle and bustle of the Aala Market-where Sunday was just another day, any ordinary Sunday, that is-replaced with an eerie silence, deserted stalls filled with fresh fish whose dead faces stared with mute curiosity, as if to say, Where is everybody? Under a sky black with storm clouds of war, the smell of burning could be detected: not the acrid stench of fuel-oil fires from the harbor, but the crackling scorch-scent of refuse disposal, mingled with the unmistakable smell of fear. All around Chinatown, in metal drums or (as at the Consulate) washtubs or in backyard bonfires, issei and nisei were burning books written in the Japanese language, as well as Rising Sun flags and pictures of the emperor and photos of family members in Japan, even apparel like kimonos and getta; they were burying samurai swords and family heirlooms in their backyards-doing their frantic best to nullify any signs of Japanese influence and culture in Honolulu.

Burroughs found in Japanese-dominated Chinatown nothing to confirm the long-held local apprehension that-in the case of war with Nippon-Oahu's Japanese would come charging into haole neighborhoods brandishing guns or even samurai swords. Nor was there any sign of them skulking off to plant dynamite satchels and mines under bridges and piers or at military installations and electric lines. And predictions that your own maid, your neighbor's houseboy, the cop on the beat, the farmer down the road, the nisei Hawaii Territorial Guard members, would band together against "Americans" (which they of course were themselves) hardly seemed to be materializing.

The distant echo of explosions provided a thunderous backdrop as Ed Burroughs and his son walked by the sampan dock, where the blue boats bobbed, unattended.

"So much for a fifth column," Burroughs said to Hully, looking around at the desolation, as they approached the small grocery near the Aala Market.

"I'd feel better about this," Hully said, clearly a little nervous, "if Agent Sterling were at our side."

Burroughs held up his palm, where the tiny German automatic nestled. "We'll be fine. Sterling has his own job to do."

"Well, the door's open, anyway," Hully said, and brushed aside the hanging black beads and gestured, politely, for his father to go in first.

The writer stepped inside, Hully right behind him. The wooden storefront was unattended; the place had a curious fragrance, similar to incense-though to Burroughs the unfamiliar scent suggested decay. His son had told him about the shop, but Burroughs was not prepared for how little the "grocery" had to do wife his American preconceptions. He glanced around at the walls of shelves lined with jars and baskets of strange herbs, roots, dried seaweed, and other exotica.

"I guess he's out of Ovaltine," Burroughs said dryly.

With his left hand, Burroughs slapped the "Please Ring" bell on the counter, which stretched along the left of the shop.

A door, opposite the beaded one they'd come in, cracked open, apparently from a rear storage area.

"Shop is closed," Yoshio Harada said. Then he recognized them, and the grocer stepped into the storefront, closing the storeroom door behind him. He half bowed. "Burroughs-san … Burroughs-san," he said, acknowledging them both.

"The door was open," Burroughs said, nodding toward the beaded entry. "Sorry to drop by unannounced, but this is an extraordinary morning, wouldn't you say, Mr. Harada?"

Nodding again, the diminutive, trimly mustached man-in a white shirt, grocer's apron, blue trousers, and sandals-shuffled behind the counter at the left; the shelves rising behind him provided a bizarre backdrop of gnarled roots, shark fins and seahorse skeletons.

"A terrible day." Harada was hanging his head. "I am ashamed to be Japanese on this day."

"No kidding?" Burroughs leaned a hand against the counter; his other hand, with the little gun, was behind his back. "I heard you used to have the emperor's picture on display."

Head still bowed, he gestured with both hands, as if disgusted. "I threw it away, many weeks ago. We work so hard to be accepted-to be good American. In one morning, all is undone. I am angry at Japan."

A faraway explosion seemed to punctuate his sentence.

The little grocer shook a fist at the sky. "Dirty Japs!"

"Not bad," Burroughs said, chuckling. "If Weiss-muller was as good an actor as you are, Harada, I'd be a happy man."

Harada looked up at the writer, blinking. "Who? What?"

Moving closer to the counter, Hully went into their prepared spiel. "We've just come from the Japanese Consulate, Mr. Harada. General Consul Kita says you and Morimura are buddies."

Harada frowned in apparent confusion. "I know no one named Morimura."

"How about Yoshikawa?" Burroughs asked, innocently. "A rose by any other name… You see, I thought, what with bombs dropping and all, you might be just the guy to help get the vice consul out of the limelight."

The grocer shook his head. "I know nothing of what you speak."

"Well," Burroughs said, "to tell you the truth, we were bluffing. Kita didn't mention your name. Matter of fact, I doubt Kita even knows your name, unless the Consulate buys seafood and vegetables from you."

"They do not."

"After all, Kita's not the espionage agent-he'd likely be kept out of the know, for security reasons. It's Morimura-that is, Yoshikawa-who's the spy in the woodpile."

Harada's frown no longer seemed confused, though his words continued down the path of denial: "I understand none of what you say."

"There's no fifth column in Oahu," Burroughs said with a grin, which quickly vanished. "But there is a tiny network of real spies. That radiophone call was a signal that this Sunday would make a fine morning for a surprise party. Your niece knew something was up- more importantly, she knew you were an agent, just like Otto Kuhn, and Morimura."

Now the mask dropped and a tiny, but very nasty smile, etched itself on the bland features. "Are these things you can prove?"

Burroughs shrugged. "Hell, I'll leave that to the FBI." He jerked a thumb at Hully. "My son, here, is the one who really put it together."

Hully said, "I couldn't stop thinking about Morimura bawling Pearl out-she wasn't one of his conquests; he wasn't her type. Why would she even know him? Then it came to me: through you…."

"As the grocer making deliveries to the Niumalu," Burroughs said, "you could easily maintain contact with your German 'sleeper' agent. And Pearl was aware of your relationship with both Kuhn and Morimura. After all, she lived with you, up above your shop, before she moved to the Niumalu, so she knew you and Morimura were in league-and she knew or figured out that he was an espionage agent; she even knew his real name. She got wind of something big coming up, and she was going to turn you, and Morimura, in to military intelligence… to show her loyalty to America."

“To prove herself," Hully said softly, sadly, "to her boyfriend's father."

Harada held out both empty palms and shook his head, smiling as if this was all too far-fetched, too absurd. "And you think this … Morimura… killed my niece?"

"No." Burroughs twitched a smile, nodding right at the grocer. "I think you killed her. I know you killed her. You confronted her about what you considered her disloyalty, to her family, to Japan, and she told you she was going to Colonel Fielder, to tell him everything. You struck her down, with a goddamn rock, crushed

her skull-then Morimura helped cover it up, by calling Kuhn and having him finger the wrong man."

Now the grocer folded his arms and his chin raised; his tone was quietly defiant, now. "I would take offense at these accusations, but they are … foolish."

"Oh, there's more. You got to thinking about your niece's close friend, that homosexual musician, and got worried that she may have talked to him, shared what she knew. Or perhaps she bragged to you that she had told Terry Mizuha what she knew, thinking it would protect her, would keep you from harming her. Either way, she was too naive, or maybe too nice a kid, to understand that this is war: that one more casualty, more or less, is nothing to a soldier… even if it is his own niece."

Harada said nothing; however, a faint sneer could be detected under the trim mustache.

A slight tremor in his voice, Hully said, "You made an unscheduled, unexpected delivery of seafood to the Niumalu-the day after your niece was murdered! If you had any human compassion or decency, you'd know how suspicious, how wrong that would seem to a normal person."

"You murdered Terry Mizuha at the hotel, probably in his room," Burroughs said, "tossed him in your pickup truck, like another swordfish, and hauled him to the beach."

Hully added, "Though you probably picked up your pal Morimura to help you carry him down that rocky slope to the beach."

Harada smiled, just a little, then looked at each man, one at a time, with quiet contempt. "You will try to prove this, how?"

Burroughs shrugged. "Like I said, it's not our job to prove it-that's up to the feds, and Detective Jardine. But they're a little busy this morning … so I thought I'd help out."

Burroughs brought his hand out from around his back and aimed the L?ger at the grocer's chest.

"What is this?" Harada asked, only his eyes betraying any alarm.

"It's what we Americans call a citizen's arrest."

The backroom door flew open and suddenly Morimura was at Burroughs's side, pressing the nose of a.38 revolver into the writer's neck.

"This is not judo," Morimura said. "This is a gun."

The slender, handsome spy wore golf clothes-a checkered sweater vest over a white shirt and knee pants with high checkered socks; well, Kita had said Morimura had a golf date, this morning.

With a sigh, Burroughs set the little L?ger on the counter. The grocer did not take the weapon, rather he reached under the counter and swung out a sawed-off shotgun. Hully and his father exchanged glances-this was not going quite as planned.

"I hope you'll forgive me for eavesdropping," Morimura said, looking a little ridiculous in the golf outfit, though not enough so to take the edge off the weapon he'd stuck in the writer's neck.

“Til let it go this time," Burroughs said, as the cold steel of the spy's gun dimpled his flesh.

Morimura's expression was smug but his eyes had a

wildness, a fear, in them. "You should write detective stories, Mr. Burroughs. You put the pieces together very well."

The writer looked sideways at his captor. "What now, Morimura? You don't mind if I don't call you 'Yoshikawa'-I'm used to you the other way."

Morimura offered half a smile. "The ineffectual, buf-foonish ladies' man, you mean? I must give you credit, Mr. Burroughs-you never did accept that masquerade."

"By any yardstick, buddy, you're no diplomat. You'll face the firing squad, as a spy."

The half smile dissolved into a full scowl. "You're facing a firing squad right now, Mr. Burroughs-something I have no intention of doing."

"What are you going to do?" Burroughs did his best to show no fear; and he wasn't afraid for himself-but his son, at his side, that was something again. "You can't just kill us."

"Really?" Morimura laughed softly. "Do you see anyone around to be a witness? Mr. Harada and I will be on the tiny island of Niihau, by nightfall, and a few days later, a submarine will take us to … friendlier waters."

Burroughs locked eyes with the spy. "Did you know, Morimura? Did you know today was the day?"

The spy smirked, shaking his head. "I suspected- all signs indicated that was the case… but it might have been next week, or the next. What was the difference, with your military so obsessed with fighting fifth columnists, and ignoring the real threat?"

Hully was looking at the little grocer, the big hollow eyes of the man's shotgun looking back at him. "How could you do it? How could you kill your own niece?"

Harada's features were impassive, even proud. "She was a traitor."

Hully's eyes were on fire, his nostrils flaring as he said, "She was a beautiful, talented girl, and you murdered her, you heartless son of a bitch!"

Harada shrugged.

Morimura's smile was pursed, like a kiss, and then he said, "Who was it said, 'War is hell'? Whoever that wise man was, he was so right, even if he was an American … now if you will please to step in back, in the storeroom."

Burroughs put up his hands and so did Hully, and Morimura reached behind him and pushed the backroom door open with one hand, and with the other he kept the revolver trained on the writer, the grocer keeping a bead on Hully. Morimura motioned with the gun for them to follow him into the back.

The spy did not see Adam Sterling come into the open doorway behind him, and the grocer didn't see the FBI agent in time to warn Morimura, either. With a swift, vicious chop to the base of the neck, Sterling sent Morimura sprawling to the floor, the.38 tumbling from the spy's hands.

Burroughs caught the weapon in midair, and Hully snatched the L?ger from the counter, while Sterling was pointing a.38 revolver of his own at the grocer behind the counter.

Though he had a shotgun in hand, Harada was facingthree guns, all trained on him, from various directions.

"Drop it," Sterling advised. "You can't win this game."

Harada thought that over; then he swung the sawed-off shotgun up and around and under his chin and squeezed both triggers, the explosion shaking everything-and everyone-in the small shop. What had been Harada's head dripped and dribbled and slithered down the weird jars of roots, herbs and skeletons, crawling like strange sea creatures. Then the mostly headless body slid down to the floor and sat, out of sight.

Hully was covering his mouth, horrified. Through his fingers, he said the obvious: "He … he took his own life."

"You're going to be seeing a lot of that," Burroughs said, "in the coming days."

Sterling was hauling Morimura to his feet; the dazed spy, his perfect hair askew, looking fairly idiotic in the golf togs, gave the FBI man a bewildered look.

"Judo," Sterling explained.

Less than two hours after it had begun, the sneak air attack on Pearl Harbor was over. The silver planes again receded into specks on the horizon, taking off in varied directions, one more act of deception designed to confuse the enemy as to the attackers' origin point. The raiders left behind a Pearl Harbor that was a smoldering, twisted landscape of inconceivable devastation. The two pieces of the Arizona lay on the bottom of the harbor; the West Virginia, too. The Utah and Oklahoma, capsized; the California sinking; the Cur-tiss, Helena, and Honolulu damaged; the Raleigh barely afloat; the Nevada, the Vestal, beached. Fires raged on bomb-damaged ships-the Maryland, the Pennsylvania, the Tennessee.

On Ford Island, the husks of dozens of planes lay in charred disarray, while hangars burned around them. On the oil-pooled surface of the harbor floated debris, much of it human. And along the Oahu shores, the pummeled air bases continued to ooze smoke.

Corpsman attempted, often vainly, to identify bodies and body parts at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital. At the base of Alewa Heights, just below the Shuncho-ro teahouse-where the Japanese vice consul had wooed geishas and perpetrated espionage-a makeshift morgue was set up.

The triumph of the Japanese, however, was not complete. Huge fuel tanks, holding millions of barrels of oil, had gone unsullied. The Navy Yard itself, that sprawl of repair facilities and shops, was secure. The Naval ammo depot went untouched, as did the submarine pens. Smaller warships by the score escaped damage; and the raiders had failed to find-much less destroy-the aircraft carriers of the Pacific Fleet.

The greatest miscalculation, of course, was the nature of the attack itself-the sheer villainy of such a peacetime assault To the Japanese military, this was a glorious day of victory, but just one day-a war, after all, was made of many days.

But December 7, 1941, was not just any day.

Americans would remember it