June the eighth is overcast and threatening, with spasmodic bursts of bright sunlight. Whitecaps foam suddenly all ever the lagoon. The surface of the island, as white as flour, is sliced off abruptly with the drop of the dark wharf's edge. At the base of this bulkhead, moving rest lessly from side to side, float the PT boats, borne on a surfaceless liquid green, except where betrayed by flecks of foam.

In an evenly spaced row paralleling the dock, there rest flat on the sand some dozen bright flags draped over recumbent figures, stilled in their last honored sleep. The blue fields With their bright stars are next the water's edge ; the red stripes startingly contrast with the surrounding colors of sea and sky, pointing to the motionless lines of Marines standing upright above the solemn row of their country's colors. Across the column's end, the Navy stands at attention, same row of steel helmets, same warm hue of khaki. As silent as these men, their blue shadows come arid go with the passing of the clouds of heaven.

The clear ringing cry of the bugle, the throaty singsong warning—abrupt command—the slap of hands on rifles. The low intoning of the Chaplain, blown by a warm breeze over the stirring row of draped flags. Tenderly the narrow stretchers are lowered to the buoyant PT boats. With small colors halfway down their diminutive masts, they proceed slowly in formation out over the emerald reefs to the dark blue of the deep. Hove-to, the boats rise and fall, their engines stilled. The sharp crack of the rifle volleys, the covering flags pulled free, and the circles of foam make a wreath of white flowers. The boats' colors snap to the mastheads, the propellers' guttural churn, and flinging white spray high in the air, they race back in a blinding flash of sun.

The weather front moves in, bearing gray clouds filled with rain, and the Islands become wet wafers, floating on salt water, drenched with fresh. All the following day it pours in restless intermittent torrents, ceasing suddenly at evening. A PB2Y, resembling a fat sperm whale that Disney might have made to fly, rises in the last clear light from the coral waters, and bears away the surviving Ensign of Squadron 8, with twenty-nine other wounded, bound for a night flight to Pearl Harbor. Shortly before the flying whale lumbers aloft, a plane lands and transfers five more young pilots to a boat that brings them to the dock. Their faces are big blisters, their eyes swollen shut. Lifted to the white sand, they pathetically touch the land with their swollen feet, trying to make sure that it is true that they are ashore. Wrapped in blankets, Navy fashion they roll off to the underground hospital. The Doctor's voice booms in the ambulance, "You'll all be O.K. in a couple of days." They are rugged, and they will.

The pilot found their rubber boats floating amid the desolation of the aftermath of battle. Making out a great oil circle, now spread a mile wide, he came down to find the sea littered with all manner of water borne wreckage and some bloated bodies, black with oil and half eaten by sharks. Here these five surviving pilots had attacked a Japanese ship, and were now delivered from the wreckage they had helped to create.

To Americans, war is a state accepted with repugnance, waged with grim determination until victory brings back our peace. It is unthinkable for us to kill helpless men or to have anything but respect for an enemy who dies gallantly against our arms. Therefore it is decided at Midway to give decent sea burial to the Japanese Squadron Leader and three enlisted men who were shot from the sky over our Islands. A ship's carpenter makes four wooden boxes and the red ball with radiating rays is painted on the head of each coffin. Two boxes are placed on the small forward deck of each PT designated. The senior boat carries the same Chaplain who had read the service for our dead, and a squad of Marines is detailed to her. With colors at half-mast, the two boats move slowly to sea. Silhouetted against the western sky, a Marine stands at parade rest, swinging from his planted feet to the boat's windward pitch. From the tiny bridge, looking forward between the shadowed mass of the Marine and the grim shape of the machine gun pointing skyward, the red ball of the Rising Sun is prophetically repeated by the round disc and spreading rays of the sinking sun. The service read, three volleys fired, and our colors fly at full hoist.

Sinking Sun—Midway, June 10, 1942
Oil painting

Kure, the farthermost coral atoll of the Hawaiian Group, lies fifty-seven miles west of Midway, nine hundred miles east of Wake. Two PT's race, hop and skip off the smaller waves, bank in flying curves along the sides of the slow moving swells. Smallest of all Navy combat ships, they are the fastest, and if you like salt water, the most fun. In khaki trousers or shorts, with mahogany torsos and your choice of beards, with tousled hair white with salt, the youngsters that command them know their tricks, anticipate the boat's lively pranks. Picking up the small sand bar called Kure, they skim along the sharp reefs that lie beneath the breakers' thunder. Finding the narrow entrance between the white tumbling walls of foam, they watch the clear bottom as they sound with the lead. The boat at dead slow seems to float in liquid air over the colorful land below. It appears close enough to step down, yet the lead shows three fathom, and the Captain, an Ensign, has the dread of all skippers of his ship touching land. On the bottom the shadow of the boat floats up and seems to meet her underneath, curves and glides down over the ocean floor of swirling color, coral and white sand. Miniature gardens in lovely patterns with deep pools and swaying lacy trees, surmounted by towering stone castles of pink and gray, decorated with grotesque arabesque. The fish float like silver dirigibles through this toy fairyland, and the ship's soft shadow deepens the little world like a passing cloud.

Between them and the shimmering beach are two PT's, that they have come to relieve of their three day vigil. The usual dense cloud of birds hangs over the island, their sharp screams rising above the surf's hoarse roar. On the sand hundreds of fat seals sleep, oblivious of the shrill restless cries; like sun-soaked recumbent figures on our beaches at home, ignoring the high pitched squeals of scampering children. A school of porpoises rolls gracefully in through the narrow opening, frolics about, snorts once or twice and rolls silently out. The dorsal fin of a shark slips through the water toward them, disappears without a ripple. The men peer over the side as it waveringly reappears below, a big gray back. As if to give any would-be swimmers a grim warning, it rolls slowly over, and the livid fungus-like white of its belly radiates up through the limpid water. Grinning horribly, it passes beneath the boat, melts away beyond and mingles with the flickering shapes and dancing watery shadows.

The relieved boats move out, their skippers shouting and waving arms, their exhausts burbling and bubbling like a deep gargle. One of the newly arrived Ensigns prepares to lead a party ashore to search and explore. The only trace of man that he'll find is the bleached bones of an old sailing ship. A few bushes cling to the desolate beach, that ends everywhere in the sea. Pulverized coral that grew in the sea, and belongs to the sea and her creatures. Twenty young men on this farthest outpost of mid-Pacific America. Who ever heard at home of Kure? Letter box? A sea shell. Letter carrier? The wind. Address? Care of Neptune.

Because of the coral, a trip-line is bent to the base of the anchor palm, to trip it should it foul. The light rope wriggles up to the surface to the wooden buoy, gay in its orange paint. A baby seal bobs up, fascinated by this bright toy. The men crowd forward, but childlike in its momentary concentration, it heeds them not. Its round eyes are bright with admiration, its whiskers stiff with anticipation. It pats it about with its flippers, tries to push it shoreward, ducks down and sees the rope holding the plaything that it craves so desperately. Before the astonished men can make a move, it gnaws the line in two and swims off towing the buoy by the frayed rope end, a happy child with its favorite gadget. A big "boots" from Georgia runs his brown hand through his rumpled hair, spits overside. "Well, you certainly don't pay us no mind!" he says to the departing rascal. Hours later, toward sunset, the watch spies the buoy drifting down toward them on the ebb. It comes close and they fish it aboard with a boat hook. The shiny paint is punctured with little teeth marks. The baby had tired of it, cast it adrift, and gone to sleep exhausted.

On the tenth of June, late in the afternoon a boat brings in three more pilots from a rescuing plane. This makes seventeen so far recovered in this race with pursuing death. These three men are a sorry sight, after a week in a rubber boat. Unfortunately they had taken off their shoes and socks, and their ankles and feet are continuous blotched blisters. One was barely conscious, all were nearly blind, for they had lost their hats. For two days after inflating his little boat, the young j.g. floated alone. A plane passed in the distance but did not see him.

On the third day he saw something rise on a distant swell, disappear, half show again. Straining his glare-glazed eyes, he saw the two Ensigns just as they saw him. After exhausting paddling, they got alongside and made a line fast to his boat, three men in two tubs. Another scorching day and dewy night dragged by. The fifth day, big schools of fish encircled them and they made a hook from a safety pin and caught one and ate it raw. The fish kept striking up at the bottoms of their floats, attracted by the whiteness. Several big sharks slunk nearby, like hungry wolves awaiting their chance. One struck hard from below at the nibbling fish, ripping the Ensigns' boat and deflating it. They leapt and hastily scrambled into the j.g.'s boat a few inches ahead of the snapping jaws. The men hauled the collapsed boat aboard, patched it with some tape, inflated it and put it back as a spare at the end of a short warp. A shark shot up for the fish again, rising right beside them. An Ensign struck at it with a paddle, and quick as a flash the ugly teeth tore his hand. The j.g. made a tourniquet with a piece of parachute cloth that they had been keeping to catch rain water, and used the paddle loom to twist it tight. Then they covered the ragged hand with spare boat patches. That night it rained and they got some water.

After a night and a day in the hospital, the j.g. could speak through his blistered lips, and asked the pharmacist's mate to send him a yeoman. The man arrived, and standing with pencil and paper, looked down on the white sheet—face covered with white clean bandages, except for the swollen end of the red nose, swollen lips and ragged beard bristling on the raw chin. The j.g. had not heard him. "Sir, I am the yeoman you sent for." "Very well. Take the following:

Hospital
Midway Islands
June 12,1942

From: Lieutenant (j.g.) ......

To: Commander ......

Subject: Inflated rubber boats.

Reference:' Bright bottoms.

1. It is respectfully suggested, due to recent observation, that recommendations might be made to have the bottoms of rubber boats painted a dark gray, that they may not by their brightness against the surface, attract the fish to nibble at them.

2. These fish and the bright boat attract the sharks, that striking at them may cause them to be ripped and deflated, thereby endangering or causing loss of life.

3. On June 7th, at about 1330, some 150 miles west of Midway, a rubber boat was thus deflated, but fortunately a second boat was close by and they got aboard in time.

His first recovered reaction was to recommend protection against such mishaps, for the better safety of shipmates down in the sea.

A Navy Patrol plane is on a routine flight out of Midway, over the once soiled surface where battle raged. Here were many empty landing barges, jettisoned overboard from the fleeing enemy transports. Now the barges, wreckage and oil have been washed away by the cleansing
waves.

There seems to the pilot to be nothing of interest to enter in his log for June 18th, as he banks for his return to Midway. Halfway back, he sees a narrow dark spot in the monotonous, motionless blue of the sea. Gliding down, it forms into a ship's boat—lower, and it is bespeckled with little dots. He shoots over it and comes back in a descending spiral, the waves zipping away beneath, the boat shooting at him, details and colors forming, enlarging—gray boat, Japanese waving—it flies beneath him and astern. Turning, he circles and counts thirty-two men, his radio instantly informing Midway. Several other homecoming planes change course and come to look, flying noisily about over the boat, like inquisitive gulls examining some curious floating object. Hours later a destroyer arrived and picked up these thirsty survivors of the Hiryu.

Dinner is over in the Mess Hall, and some thirty-five pilots lounge in chairs at one end of the room, smoking. The windows are replaced and blacked out, the lights burn bright again, and the room is close with odor of tobacco, coffee and food. On the wall is a large chart, and the short stocky Commander is indicating to a Junior Officer certain courses to be marked with ruled lines. They finish, and the Commander taps the deck with his pointer and speaks in a rich Southern voice: "Your attention, gentlemen, please knock off the breeze." There is a scraping of chairs, and the men face him, eager to listen. His eyes, small in his round sunburned face, pass over the group with keen appraisal and fatherly affection. "You found seventeen men afloat," he says slowly, "scattered by wind and drift all over the chart, but now time is playing hell with our chances." He pauses. "We know that there is a chance of finding one more. We know who he is, and you are going to find that rubber boat. You are going to search all day."

Then he proceeds to explain the course with the aid of his pointer, as the group make careful notes, explains drifts caused by currents—makes allowances for wind. He anticipates the weather and visibility over the wide sweep, and he gives them their courses. He calls for questions and gives them answers. "If, when you have exhausted this plot that I have prescribed, you have not found him, use your own initiative according to the gas and daylight left. After tomorrow there won't be much use searching any more out there. That's all, gentlemen. You are off at dawn. Goodnight.".