Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury

droned and whined, farther away.
    Crummmp … thoomp, thoomp
.
    Tat-tat-iat-tat-tat
.
    My heart began pounding. I raced into the trees after Billy, nearly blinded by snapping branches. We clawed our way up the tree. When we reached the top, another plane flew past, barely higher than the trees. Billy and I waved, but the pilot didn’t notice us. What was going on? They
never
flew that low.
    Huge, awful black clouds of smoke rolled up into the sky from Pearl Harbor. You could barely see the ships, which were lined up in neat rows like chips of gray metal. The smoke was so thick you couldn’t even see the mountains. Hundreds of planes circled the sky like black gnats, peeling off and dropping down to vanish into the boiling smoke, then reappearing, shooting skyward with engines groaning, circling back, sunlight flashing when they turned.
    “My
God,”
Billy whispered. “That smoke … it’s
… ack-ack!
… This is for
real!”
    Crummmp
.
    Explosions of seawater burst skyward in the harbor. A plane crashed in the cane fields and started a fire. Another fell into the sea, spinning like a windmill with smoke trailing off it.
    Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat
    Thoomp … thoomp …
    Another dark plane charged down on us from behind, screaming out of the valley from the mountains. Billy and I turned just as it boomed over, heading down toward the sea. The noise stabbed into my ears. The fighter banked abruptly, then sped back toward the swarm of planes circling Pearl Harbor.
    Billy and I gaped at the pilot. He was so close you could see a white band around his head. Then it hit me.
Dark
plane. Not silver. Not a navy plane. It didn’t even have a star on it.
    It was amber.
All
the planes were amber.
    A rush of fear swept over me.
    Amber.
    Amber, with a blood-red sun on the fuselage and under the wings … blood-red sun … the symbol of Japan.
    The plane raced into a sky thick with black smoke.
    A huge explosion shook the earth. Close.
Real
close. Black smoke tumbled skyward from down by the grocery store, where the school bus let us off. An ugly cloud rose like a monster out of the trees.
    “Oh my God, oh my God,” Billy said.
    I couldn’t take my eyes off the rising cloud of smoke. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
    “Come on!” Billy said, grabbing my arm.
    My hands shook as I dropped from branch to branch, slipping, scraping my chest, my stomach, retreating into the darkness of the jungle. We hit the ground and stumbled out into the field.
    Billy ran around in circles, jumping up and down, not knowing what to do.
    Grampa burst out of the bushes, running into the field with his Japanese flag. I’d never seen him move so fast. He stopped and squinted up at the sky.
    An amber fighter came up from the ocean and banked into a sweeping turn above the ridge. It headed back over us, back toward Pearl Harbor, dropping low as it approached. Grampa frantically flapped the flag. Up and down, up and down. The pilot wagged the wings of his plane, then sped past. The sound of the engine shattered the air.
    “Grampa!” I yelled. “What are you
doing!”
    “He no bomb, he no bomb,” Grampa said, his eyes filled with terror. “He see flag, he no bomb.”
    “No, no, no
, Grampa! Put that thing away! Hide it! Hide!” I put my arm around his shoulder. It felt funny to do that, but he looked so terrified. “Come,
ojii-chan
. Let’s go back. Quick, before another plane comes.”
    Grampa gave me a bewildered look. I urged him toward the trees, away from the open space. He dropped the flag. Billy picked it up, and crumpled it into a ball.
    I glanced around the ridge. Someone could have seen. There were houses up there. Someone could have watched Grampa waving the flag. Billy hurried behind us, trying to hide the white cloth, hide the red sun. In the distance, planes whined and groaned.
    Papa!
The thought slammed into me like a bullet. He could be right under those planes!
    Mama was on the porch holding Kimi, looking into the sky, with Kimi