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Pearl Harbor holds our great Pacific workshop. She strives day and night, Sundays and holidays, and the many thousands of men loyally keep the relay race running, shift after shift, supervised by the Navy, watch after watch. She has her tremendous daily tasks throughout her yards, yet she is ever rapidly expanding. Her golf courses and little parks lose their green complexion under piles of lumber, steel and ever blowing dust. The vast cane fields that fringe her are shaved away, and hundreds of houses all alike spring up in even rows, and are instantly filled with men, all alike in their single purpose and all alike in their sweaty khaki. The dust falls for a moment on the old gardens and rustling palms of the earlier quarters, only to rise restlessly and swirl again on the trade wind. It seeps through blackout vents, flies in open doors, lies white on the Admiral’s shining floors. Changing, ever growing, is the base’s shoreline. The piles jarringly inch their way into the bottom; land becomes water bearing the precious ships laden with supplies from the mainland; water becomes land on which to anchor vast noisy shops and dim hollow warehouses. Like her palpitating heart, the pile drivers beat harshly, unceasingly throughout the soft night, now near – now far the sound, but never ending. Aside from her strenuous routine, apart from healing the wounds and seeing the horrid scars disappear, she is ready at all times to hold out her arms to a wounded ship, to put her safely to bed in drydock, to heal her mangled sides, and put her back in her element. The ship floats once more on even keel, moves swiftly off to fight again. All this Pearl Harbor takes in her stride. She squats, an animated Colossus, her riveters' quick cadence echoing from Oahu's ancient mountains, her welding glowing white in the deep Pacific night. She is so highly organized that, quick as the bright spark from the pulled electric switch, she can rise to fight. While her hammer hits the hot iron on the anvil, her sleepless eyes see into every valley, behind every cloud, into the hollow of every wave. She sees from every point of her compass rose, and boxes the vast horizon, always alert. She is armed to the teeth, and her hidden weapons wait throughout the beautiful land behind her back. Her strong arms can strike hard high into the sky, hit crushingly far out over the surface of the sea, tear apart the enemy’s steel sides from beneath the marching waves. She is always listening, to her controlling voice from home, to her sister islands, to her ships scattered over the far reaches of the vast Pacific. Her voice carries clear to all her dependent bases, to all her roving ships. Remember Pearl Harbor? Yes, I remember Pearl Harbor. This Naval Base is self-contained, self-sufficient, self-controlled, as far as the Island is concerned. Its laws and its orders come only from distant Washington. The reason the Naval Base is where it is, is because the sea runs into the land, making the best natural harbor in all the Hawaiian group. The interest of the Navy at the Base is directed south, west, north – they stand with their backs to their country – their country backs them up. They are her western bulwark. Pearl Harbor is an invited invasion of a dependent island. It is the fence that protects the garden of our country from trampling feet. It is the kennel from which our sea-dogs rush to keep the enemy from our door. Caught treacherously at peace – that tragedy can never happen again – now she is at war. Navy Housing I know a little mouse. I have named him Ben. He wants to live with me in my small house. I am lonely, for my only callers, with few exceptions, are roaches and dust. They are uninvited too, but the tropical insects are many and the dust is legion, and beyond my coping with. But with Ben it is man to man. I feel beastly inhospitable, but I don’t trust him with my small store of provisions. The little galley windows are blackened out, so I open the door for light, air, and dust, and start to get breakfast. Ben appears suddenly on the threshold, alert, impudent, cunningly appraising his chance for a dash inboard. He is hungry, but I am heartless. "Good morning, Ben, you have no permission to enter this galley. One step more and out you go." I put my egg and steaming java on the little table in the living room, tiptoe back and peep around the corner. Ben is making short, fast runs of exploration. He doesn't see my head far above him. I stick my foot out on his level, and a gray streak, blurred by speed, shoots out the door without a sound. Cooking gear washed and stowed, I shut the back door tight and paint for hours in my living room. Yes – there it is again, that small rasp, that tiny gnawing; for Ben, the little bore, is trying the front door now! I creep forward, turn the latch with care, and fling the door open. "Belay that, Ben!" I roar. For a split second, one stubborn look aloft at me, and he vanishes nowhere, as only a mouse can. Quitting time – and I wash the dust from the bowl in the bathroom, stand under the cold shower – luke warm – shut the black-covered windows, leave the ones with deep overhanging blackout hoods open at the top for air. The room is completely dark. Outside in the late sunlight, the curving rows of little houses have bright facades, project long shadows across the road behind. It is a mile to the Officers' Club. I start to walk down Center Drive. Tired young Naval officers returning home, pass me on bicycles, mechanical scooters, and coughing jallopies. Little plots of dusty grass in front of each gray-green house, save where some energetic Ensign is hosing his flowers and lawn. Outside the gate to the Yard, the Marines are parking the big trucks, staggered broadside across the hot concrete road leading up to the narrow entrance. Cars coming in from Honolulu will have to make a slow, tortuous approach to the gate, flanked by sandbags and manned by helmeted machine-gunners. There are 150,000 Japs on Oahu, and although what weapons they had have been confiscated, and they are fingerprinted and continuously watched, the stalwart Marines are taking no chances of their rushing the gates to the Yard at night. These Japanese, all of them citizens and most of them apparently loyal, are allowed to remain because they are indispensable for working the vast plantations of sugar cane and pineapple. A big Marine stands in front of me. I hold up my wallet showing my identification card. He steps aside, clicks his heels and makes a snappy salute. Whether in uniform or not, riding or afoot, every person must show his identification. Trudging on under the palms past the old gardens of the high ranking officers’ quarters, I am conscious of the dull roar, punctuated by the staccato pile drivers. This volume of sound is the voice of the Base. On my starboard hand, looking down over the piles of building material, through the gaps between the dull brown and green camouflaged buildings, is the turquoise water of an arm of the harbor, filled with big gray ships. Liberty boats, packed with bluejackets, are forever slipping past, and beyond rise the beautiful mountains with masses of luminous clouds clinging to their heads.
Marine raiders practicing their beach tactics in Oahu during the summer of 1942, in preparation for landings in the Solomons a few weeks later. One man hurls the heavy matting over the barbed wire as the other throws hand grenades. Up and down the beach other mats flop across the wire and the men scramble over, as machine gunners, flat on their bellies in the sand, keep up their intermittent bursts. |
