Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury Page B

guarding it from drifting off the station. I noticed that the thumping explosions and rattle of antiaircraft fire had stopped. All I could hear was an occasional pop, like a firecracker.
    “The United States Army Intelligence has ordered that all civilians stay off the streets. Do not use your telephone. Stay off the streets. Keep calm. Keep your radio turned on for further news. Get your car off the street. Fill water buckets and tubs with water, to be ready for a possible fire. Attach garden hoses …”
    Another wave of excitement and fear ran through me, like when you’re sick with a fever. I glanced over at Charlie’s clock. Eight-forty. Only an hour ago I’d been catching pop flies with Billy.
    Thoomp … thoomp
.
    The bombing started up again.
    The planes came back, droning high overhead. Billy and I ran out into the yard. Charlie followed us, but more cautiously, peeking out the door first. Now the air smelled like burning rubber.
    “Japanee plane,” Charlie said, shaking a fist at the sky. “Damn Japanee plane.”
    “We better get some hoses up to the house,” Billy said.
    Charlie nodded, and the three of us hurried over to the toolshed. Together we dragged six heavy gardenhoses up the driveway. Billy’s brother was nowhere in sight.
    The rumbling grew in the distance. More planes dotted the sky, like a swirl of flies, some circling out over the ocean, some heading toward the mountains and banking back toward Pearl Harbor. “We’d be better off hiding in the jungle,” “Billy said.” “They’re not going to bomb trees.”
    Ka-booom!
    The earth rocked. A shudder rumbled through the dirt under my feet.
    “There!” Billy said, pointing to a cloud of black smoke rolling skyward. It looked like it was over the ridge near our school. You couldn’t tell for sure.
    Another plane burst past and shot up the valley. A wide path of earth and trees shivered beneath it. It was so close you could see the rivets on the wings, and the red sun.
    We got the hoses hooked up and ran back to Charlie’s radio. The announcer said they needed doctors and nurses and shipyard workers and ROTC boys, even Boy Scouts.
    “… a warning to all people throughout the territory of Hawaii and especially on the island of Oahu.… In the event of an air raid, stay under cover. Many of the wounded have been hurt by falling shrapnel from antiaircraft guns.… If an air raid should begin, do not go out-of-doors. Stay under cover.… You may be seriously injured or instantly killed by shrapnel from falling antiaircraft shells.”
    “I gotta go,” I said, suddenly remembering Mama and Kimi. I started out the door.
    “Tomi,” Charlie said. “You folks need anything, you come see me.… Okay?”
    “Okay …”
    I turned to Billy. So much had happened. “Watch yourself,” he said, trying to smile.
    “Yeah … you too.”
    •   •   •
    The planes vanished again, sometime after nine-thirty, leaving behind mile-high stacks of black and gray smoke that spread out over the island like a dirty fishnet.
    An hour passed.
    No planes. No explosions.
    I stood on the porch, watching the sky, and filled buckets of water that I put by the front and back doors. In case there was a bomb. In case there was a fire.
    Another hour … into the afternoon … the island calming, calming. The muffled crackling of ack-ack still popped, but only every once in a while.
    The waiting was worse than anything. What would come next? Would they come back? Would they start bombing houses? Would they land on the beaches? And Papa … where was he? Did he even know what had happened?
    For the first time I could ever remember, I saw Mama crying. She stayed in the kitchen, cutting green onions and seaweed for miso soup, and washing dishes, then drying them on a towel—did all kinds of normal things—but all the time crying silently. Tears rolled down her cheeksin thin wet lines. I hated seeing that.
It’s okay, Mama
, I wanted to say. The planes were