CHAPTER ONE

Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

Jasper Cole always did have keen eyes, which meant he was the first one to see the planes coming in.

The young man from Tennessee was among several crew members who had the bad luck to be on duty this Sunday morning, while others got to sleep in a little later in their cramped bunks in the depths of the battleship USS Arizona.

Low in the sky, the early morning sun glinted off the waters of Pearl Harbor, forcing Jasper to raise his hand and shade his eyes. Truth be told, the light felt like glittering shards hitting his eyes, and his head ached with a dull throb. That was to be expected, considering that the night before had been spent ashore, visiting the bars that sailors frequented for cheap beer and a chance at female company.

There was plenty of one and not much of the other. Of course, female company could be bought for a price, but so far Jasper had resisted the urge, having heard horror stories from his fellow sailors about being given three minutes to get the job done. Then there were the required visits to the sick bay for an embarrassing exam to prevent venereal disease.

He’d stuck with spending his money on beer, with no regrets.

One thing about Pearl Harbor — the locals had made an art of getting every last dime out of the sailors stationed there.

Despite the revelry of the night before, he had been on duty bright and early. That was just fine with him, considering that none of the senior officers would be around on a Sunday morning. There were only a few hungover petty officers and junior officers, none of them inclined to shout at the sailors because of their own aching heads.

“We almost needed a winch to get Ostrowski out of the bar last night,” said one of the sailors working alongside Jasper. “You should have seen him. Of course, he had to pick the biggest marine in the joint to pick a fight with.”

“Sounds like Ostrowski. He ain’t got no sense,” Jasper said, grinning in amusement at the story. He looked around and didn’t see Ostrowski on deck. “Where’s he at now?”

“In sick bay with a broken nose and a hell of a hangover.”

“Is that right? Some guys will do anything to miss out on a little work.”

On deck, the sailors traded a few more stories that would never appear in letters home, bragging about exploits that were typical of young men far from home and looking to blow off steam.

Listening, Jasper chuckled and bent to his task, which involved arranging large lines on the deck into neat coils. Other crews were oiling the Arizona’s vast teak deck, a space so expansive that the entire crew of more than a thousand could be assembled there. Beneath the wood lay several inches of steel decking, but the wood provided a better grip and was a throwback to the days of wooden sailing ships.

He had developed a fondness for the ship and found its sheer size, as well as the sight of the massive guns, to be more than reassuring. There wasn’t anything on the sea as mighty as a battleship.

It wasn’t hard work that he was doing, but he was already starting to sweat in the semitropical heat.

He didn’t mind. Despite the heat and the early hour, Jasper considered himself to be a lucky man. He felt grateful to be in the navy these past two years, having escaped the Depression-era hills and mountains back home, where there were no jobs and sometimes not even anything to eat. Nobody ever went hungry in the navy, even if the pay wasn’t all that great.

Two years ago, what he knew about ships and the sea wouldn’t have filled a teaspoon, but the navy had taken him on anyway. He was just grateful to have a purpose and a job, however inconsequential that job might be in the overall mechanism of the United States Navy.

Finally, he was just grateful to be alive on this December morning, watching the sunlight at play over the warm waters. As he worked, his headache faded.

Back home, the creeks would be starting to freeze over, and there might even be snow on the mountains. In the mountains, winter was a time to survive. Getting through the season was a daunting challenge that went back to the first settlers and their log cabins. Before that, the Indians who had once occupied those hills found winter to be a season that must be endured.

Here in Hawaii, things were different. The tropical warmth didn’t pose challenges to anyone except on the rare occasions when the heat and humidity got to be a bit much. Then again, Jasper supposed that he didn’t have much to complain about when he looked around at the palm trees, green lawns, and blue waters.

“Quit lollygagging and pay attention to what you’re doing,” the petty officer grumbled, probably in a bad mood because he, too, had been out on the town and was paying the price this morning. “The last thing I want to be doing right now is nursing you worms.”

Jasper redoubled his efforts, hiding a smile at the thought that the petty officer was likely suffering from a wooden head. Nearby, he could also see a grin on the face of one of his buddies, Jim Butler, who, like Jasper, had the bad luck to be on deck this morning. Neither said a word as they focused on their task. Never mind that these ropes were already neatly coiled. They had been neatly coiled yesterday, and they would be neatly coiled again tomorrow. There was never anything sloppy about the navy, that was for sure.

That was when he saw the planes.

Something caught his eye, or maybe it was a sound carrying on the morning air. He straightened his back and shaded his eyes to watch the squadron approach.

“See them planes? I reckon we ain’t the only ones out and about this morning,” Jasper said.

“Huh, looks like the flyboys are doing some kind of exercise. I’ll bet they were none too happy about it being Sunday morning.”

“That’s for sure.”

Something about the planes didn’t look right. He couldn’t say what, exactly. It was more like a feeling.

Maybe it was the way that the squadron appeared to be heading right at them. Just behind the first group of planes, he could see another squadron, and another behind that. This in itself was unusual.

What was going on? That’s a lot of planes for a Sunday morning.

Jasper raised his hand again and squinted intently into the azure bowl of the sky. He had sharp eyes like everyone in his family. In fact, he couldn’t even think of a Cole who had ever worn eyeglasses, not even Granny Cole, who was eighty years old.

He began to realize that the color of the planes was all wrong.

They were angled to come in low, awfully low. They weren’t supposed to be this close to the ships.

“Here they come. Mighty low. I guess those flyboys are showing off again,” Butler said. “There’s gonna be hell to pay for that.”

“Something ain’t right,” Jasper said.

The planes kept on coming, close enough now that they could hear the menacing whine of the engines, sweeping lower and closer.

And then a curious thing happened. He saw tiny objects begin to fall away from the aircraft and splash into the harbor.

“What in the world is going on?” Butler asked. “Are those supposed to be fuel tanks or maybe dummy torpedoes?”

They had all seen planes on training exercises drop dummy bombs, but never in the harbor itself.

Somebody laughed. “Geez, those flyboys must be really hungover. Don’t those guys know they’re not supposed to bomb our own vessels in the harbor!”

Jasper stared, a feeling of horror going through him.

“Those aren’t dummy bombs,” he said, pointing to the white trail of wakes that the torpedoes were leaving in the water.

Nearby, the petty officer hadn’t shown much interest in the planes at first. But now he, too, had spotted the torpedoes in the harbor.

“Holy hell,” he said, his voice stricken.

The torpedoes were headed right toward the hull of the Arizona and other ships in the harbor. There wasn’t time for anyone to do a damn thing about it.

Moments later, a huge explosion rocked the ship. The sailors were all thrown from their feet, scattered like bowling pins across the deck. The massive deck itself heaved into the air and rippled like a sheet snapped over a bed. The beautifully oiled teak shattered and splintered.

Dazed, Jasper looked up as a plane passed overhead. He could clearly see the red circles on the wings — the rising sun symbol of the Japanese empire.

“Those are Japs!” he shouted, as if anyone could still hear, or if anyone hadn’t figured that out by now.

He couldn’t believe it. They were being attacked by the Japanese. It seemed such a strange thing, considering that they weren’t even at war with Japan. Sure, people had talked about it, but now it was actually happening. He stared in disbelief at the carnage all around him. The petty officer lay nearby, impaled through the belly by a teak board. Jasper thought that maybe he would wake up, and all of this would be a bad dream.

But like they used to say back home in the mountains, wishing don’t make it any less so.

More planes came in, dropping bombs and torpedoes. A few sailors had managed to get on the antiaircraft guns and were firing back.

“Get to your stations!” someone yelled, although to Jasper, it seemed too late for that.

He ran to join a gun crew. Like most sailors, he had been cross-trained to serve in many positions.

The gun was firing up at the sky, unleashing a frenzied line of tracers that barely showed against the bright sky. However, the nimble Japanese Zero planes were almost impossible to hit, so small and fast as they zipped overhead after decimating the fleet. Their single Mitsubishi engines propelled them at more than three hundred miles per hour — three times the speed of a fastball pitch. By the time anybody got a Zero in his sights, it was almost instantly out of range.

Another explosion ripped through the ship, and Jasper found himself hurled away from the gun, clawing for a grip as the deck tilted at a precarious angle.

Where was Butler?

Gone.

Everything seemed to be on fire. Nearby, he saw a badly burned man who looked like meat that had been left on the grill too long. Jasper wrinkled his nose at the smell of burned flesh.

He fought down the urge to vomit. He had more important things to do, like get off this burning ship, but it was easier said than done. The smooth teak-covered deck was gone. In its place was a wreckage of splinters and gaping holes through which flames leaped. Jasper wouldn’t have thought it was possible for anything to penetrate the armored steel. His eyes were seeing it, but his mind still couldn’t register that this was real.

The whole ship was on fire. The sight was terrifying. At this point there was no more thought of fighting the Japanese, only of surviving. His sole hope was to get off the ship and into the water as quickly as he could.

Crawling and sliding on the tilted deck, he made his way down to the gunwales and stared at the water below, weighing his chances.

Other survivors were doing the same, then leaping into the water.

He looked below and his heart sank.

The still, blue waters of the harbor were gone. Instead, a sea of flaming oil surrounded the ship. He heard screams as the men who had jumped into the harbor were consumed alive by the flames.

Did he really need to jump? The deck tilted yet more, and it was clear that the mortally wounded ship was threatening to “turn turtle” and capsize. If he didn’t get clear, he would be sucked down as the ship sank.

His only option would be to dive down through that mess of burning oil and try to swim beneath it to safety.

He looked in the direction of where the burning oil ended and there was clear water again. It seemed an awfully long way to swim underwater, but he didn’t know what else to do.

He had to at least try.

Taking a massive deep breath, Jasper slid off the deck feet first, pinning his arms to his side, and spiked into the fiery water below. He felt the heat of the burning oil. He let the momentum of his dive carry him as deep as possible. Even so, some of the flaming oil was not extinguished right away and followed him down in a trail of fire.

Jasper did not panic. That was not how he had been raised or trained by the navy. As unreal as this all seemed, he forced himself to stay in the moment. Rather than clawing for the surface, he fought against every instinct and swam deeper into the darker waters of the harbor. Only when he was far enough down did he begin to swim laterally, trying to get out from underneath the flaming waters above him, but there was nothing easy about it.

Swim, boy, swim.

His lungs began to ache for air. His legs hurt too. He realized that he had been torn open and wounded on the deck above. In fact, one of his legs wasn’t working right at all, which slowed him down. When he tried to kick, it hurt him painfully.

He had no choice but to keep going, because to rise to the surface would mean certain death in the flames. He kept swimming, but it was too far, too much distance to cover underwater. He became disoriented and had no idea where the flames above ended. He couldn’t even remember which way to swim. He realized that he had been swimming in circles under the flames rather than escaping the burning oil above.

He was still in disbelief that just twenty minutes ago he had been enjoying a beautiful Hawaiian Sunday morning.

And now he was staring into the depths of hell, burning sea above him and darkness below.

The Japanese, he thought, a sudden burst of hate and anger running through him. They did this to me. They killed me.

They didn’t just want to kill him. They wanted him to burn alive. They wanted him to suffer.

Jasper was having none of it.

He was almost out of air. His lungs ached to inhale, and in the end he knew from his navy training that no matter how hard he tried, he would eventually open his mouth to let in the sea, and that would be that.

Instead of swimming up into the flames, desperate for air, he pivoted and swam deeper into the harbor, down into the depths of the black water. It was his way of denying the enemy their victory. He would die on his own terms. After all, there never had been a Cole who wasn’t stubborn by nature.

The depths of the harbor were cold and dark, but oddly peaceful, far removed from the carnage of war above.

His last thoughts were of home. He remembered a spring morning in the mountains, the soft, fresh air. It smelled of a new rain, the morning sunlight warm on the new leaves.

Jasper let himself sigh, and then his world went eternally black.

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