Attack on Pearl Harbor Read online

  Ranger peered down into the sleeping compartment. He wanted Ben’s friends to come above deck. It wasn’t safe down there! Ranger smelled smoke. Then there was a terrible bang and a rattle. The ship jolted under Ranger’s paws as if something had hit it.

  Ben scrambled up the ladder and nearly tripped over Ranger when he got to the top. Ben didn’t have a regular battle assignment — his work was with the airplanes, and they weren’t on the ship now. But he knew that every man’s help would be needed. He ran for the quarterdeck.

  When he got there, it was on fire! Ben hurried over to a sailor who was tugging on a fire hose. Ben pointed toward the flames. “Over here!”

  “The hoses aren’t working!” the other man shouted, yanking on the one he held. It was barely dripping water. It would never begin to put out the flames spreading over the deck!

  Ranger’s eyes and nose burned from the smoke. But he could still make out other smells on this loud, frantic ship: polished wood, hot metal, and sweat. He heard men shouting and alarms clanging, and then — a muffled cough and a wheeze, coming from an opening in the deck.

  Ranger ran to the opening that led below deck. It was dark down there. He smelled smoke and hot metal and … a person smell!

  Ranger barked. Someone was down there. Someone who needed help!

  But none of the sailors on the deck were paying attention. The man below burst out coughing again.

  Ranger looked down. He’d learned how to climb ladders in his search-and-rescue training with Luke and Dad. First, he’d practiced walking across a ladder that was flat on the ground. He’d learned how to place his feet, one at a time, on the rungs. Little by little, Luke and Dad raised one end of the ladder so Ranger was climbing instead of just walking.

  He didn’t like it at all. The wide-open spaces between the rungs made the fur on his neck feel all prickly, and he was afraid he might fall through. But Luke had placed Ranger’s paws on the first rung and said, “You can do it, Ranger! You got this!” So Ranger had climbed the ladder. He went slowly at first. Sometimes he jumped off when he was partway up. But with practice, Ranger had learned to climb steeper and steeper ladders. Now he could climb the one on the slide at Luke and Sadie’s favorite playground.

  But this ladder wasn’t going up. It was going down, and that was harder. Ranger would have to go headfirst.

  Below, in the dark, the man coughed again. Ranger stepped onto the ladder with his front paws. The metal rungs felt cold and slippery. But someone needed help, so Ranger kept going.

  Front paws down a rung. Then back paws down a rung. Ranger couldn’t even see where the ladder ended, but finally, he felt the floor under his paws and bounded down into the smoke.

  Ranger barked, and then someone croaked out, “Here!”

  Ranger found the man huddled in a corner of the small room, wheezing. Ranger nuzzled the man’s hand and pawed at his arm.

  The man had to get up! He had to climb out of the smoke! But he didn’t move. He just kept coughing.

  The tiny room was growing hotter and hotter. Ranger knew he had to get help. He nuzzled the sailor’s hand once more and then went back up the ladder. The quarterdeck was packed with people, and all of them were shouting.

  “Get that hose over here!”

  “There’s not enough water pressure!”

  Ranger found Ben in the crowd of sailors. He ran to him and barked. Ben didn’t look up from the fire hose, so Ranger jumped up on him.

  Ben pushed him away. “Get down, dog!”

  But Ranger didn’t give up. He kept barking and jumping. Finally, Ben looked at him. Ranger ran to the top of the ladder and barked again. He ran back and forth until Ben followed him over.

  “Anybody down there?” Ben called into the smoke. His friend Ed’s bunk was down there, but Ed should have come up by now.

  Ben squatted and peered into the darkness. He looked at Ranger. “You hear somebody?”

  Ranger barked again, and then a muffled cough came from below.

  Ben turned and climbed backward down the ladder. The sleeping compartment was so dark and smoky that he couldn’t see anything.

  “Where are you?” Ben called. There was no answer. Or if there was, the chaos coming from above deck drowned it out. “Help me out, mate! We need to get you out of here!”

  Ben felt along the wall as he headed for the far corner of the bunk. After a few steps, his foot hit something soft and he heard a quiet “Oof!”

  He bent down and felt around until he touched the man’s shoulder. “Ed, is that you? Are you all right?” Ben asked. Ed gasped but couldn’t answer. Ben grabbed his arm and tried to help him stand, but he was too weak.

  Now Ben was coughing, too. The small space was too hot and smoky. If he stayed there much longer, he’d pass out. He grabbed hold of Ed’s leg and dragged him to the ladder.

  “Come on now!” Ben tried to push his friend up the rungs. “Up you go! If you stay, you’re going to die down here!”

  But Ed was too weak to climb. And he was too heavy to lift. Finally, Ben looked up and saw Ranger.

  “Get help!” he shouted up at the dog. “Go find help!”

  Find? Ranger barked.

  Find!

  Ranger understood that Ben needed help. He raced over to the men who were struggling with the broken fire hose. Ranger barked and barked, but they couldn’t hear him over the ship’s alarms and panicked shouting. The fire was spreading. The smoke was thicker and the voices louder.

  Ranger jumped up on a short sailor and pawed at his chest. The man spun around and shoved him down. But Ranger jumped up again. Then he raced back and forth between the ladder and the sailor, pawing and barking, until the man’s eyes opened wide. He grabbed another sailor by the arm. “Someone’s down there!” he shouted, and pointed.

  Ranger waited on the upper deck while the two men climbed down into the dark to join Ben. Ben grabbed Ed by the belt and worked with the other sailors to haul him up the ladder into the fresh air.

  “He needs medical attention!” Ben said. “We have to —”

  BOOM!

  Ben hit the deck and covered his head. A wave of heat washed over him. When it passed, he looked up. A bomb had hit the turret and blasted through the quarterdeck. Now the deck below was on fire, too. Flames shot up from the hole like a torch.

  “Man the fire hose!” someone shouted. Another sailor dragged a hose over, but the water pressure wasn’t strong enough. The fire kept spreading.

  “Take cover!” another sailor shouted.

  Ben looked up to see a new group of planes approaching. They were heading straight for Battleship Row.

  “Grace!” Paul Yamada shouted his sister’s name over the roar of planes and gunfire. He crouched low in their little rowboat. “Get down!”

  Grace ducked and covered her head as bullets sprayed over the waves. “We have to get to the island!” she cried.

  Paul shook his head. “They’re attacking it!” He pulled hard on one oar to turn. “We have to head back!”

  It had been only minutes since they’d spotted the first Japanese planes flying in over the mountains. Now bombers filled the sky, flying in formation. The air was thick with smoke. Paul’s heart pounded. He pulled harder on the oars. But where should they even go? The entire harbor was full of smoke and flames.

  A new group of planes turned. Paul gripped the oars, frozen in place as the planes swooped lower. They were coming in fast.

  “Those bombers are after the battleships!” Grace cried as the first plane dropped its torpedo. Paul had read enough war comics to know how torpedoes worked. When planes dropped them, the torpedoes became underwater missiles. He watched the first one disappear into the waves and held his breath as it barreled toward its target.

  Seconds later, the ship exploded in a burst of flames and black smoke. Paul could feel the heat on his face. Then another blast echoed over the harbor. And another! Booms shook the sky.

  Another plane buzzed low over them. Any second, one of
the bombs would find their little boat. There was no escape. There was nowhere to hide.

  Paul dropped the oars. He put his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut to block it all out.

  “Paul!” Grace shouted. “Paul! We have to get out of here!” She lurched across the boat and stumbled toward him, grabbing for the oars.

  It shook Paul out of his terrified daze. He took the oars from her and started rowing again. “I’m sorry, I just —” He swallowed hard. He couldn’t admit to his sister that for all of his Captain America talk, he was terrified. He could barely breathe as bombs exploded around them and even more planes buzzed overhead. He didn’t know what Captain America would do now, but all he could do was row. So he tugged on the oars, inching them back toward the dock they’d set off from less than an hour ago. Away from the battleships. Away from the worst of the attack.

  Paul’s heart pounded with the effort. His throat burned from the smoke, and his eyes stung with tears. But as he rowed toward shore, he couldn’t stop staring past Grace, out at the battleships. All around them, debris floated in the water.

  Paul could still hear the blasts and the diving planes. He heard the rat-a-tat-a-tat of machine guns as ships fired back at the attacking planes. And now there was another sound, too. A quieter, haunting sound amid all the chaos. The cries of injured sailors drifted over the waves.

  “Grace, look!” There were men in the water. Dozens of them.

  Grace looked back, and Paul heard her gasp. Then she turned to face him. “We can’t leave now!” she said.

  Paul swallowed hard. He held the oars loose in his hands and felt the waves tugging at them. His sister’s words tugged at the rest of him.

  Grace had a huge heart. When she grew up, she wanted to be a nurse, just like Helen. But did she really understand what it meant to put themselves in the line of fire? The Japanese planes weren’t letting up. If anything, more were streaming into the harbor. Their little rowboat would be an easy target for low-flying gunners.

  Still, Paul couldn’t stop thinking about the heroes in Jimmy’s comics. They never ran from danger. They never left someone to face trouble alone.

  Grace shouted what he already knew. “We have to help them!”

  She was right. They had to go back. Paul took a deep breath. He pulled hard on the right oar.

  Just as the rowboat started to turn, a bomb fell from a plane high above. It landed on one of the giant battleships, and the whole harbor lit up in flames.

  Ranger was staring up at the planes when the bomb hit.

  First, there was a jolt. The big ship shuddered under his paws. Then a massive explosion shook the sky. The blast raised the battleship right out of the water. It jumped up from the sea and splashed down again, as if it were trying to shake off its crew.

  Ben dropped the hose he’d been holding and covered his head as a fireball roared toward them. Ranger crouched low beside him and closed his eyes. A terrible wave of heat and smoke and noise blasted him from the deck. WHOOSH! It was as if an enormous, flaming giant had knocked him clear off the ship.

  The next thing Ranger knew, he was in the water. It was cold and pressing on him all around. He paddled and kicked and fought his way to the surface until finally his face burst up from the waves.

  Ranger sucked in a breath and barked. The air was full of smoke and screams. It smelled sharp and dangerous — like fire and oil and hot, hot steel. Above him, what was left of the ship was engulfed in flames. Even the ocean was on fire! Smoke and flames licked up from patches of oil on the surface.

  Ranger paddled through the waves, trying to keep his face out of the water. The sea was coated in oil that stung Ranger’s eyes and made it almost impossible to swim. No matter how hard he paddled, he couldn’t push it away.

  And where was Ben? The young sailor had been right next to Ranger on the deck.

  Ranger turned to look back at the ship. He couldn’t see anyone alive in the smoke and ruin. The ship’s decks were engulfed in flames, and it was already sinking. Ben must have been blasted into the water, too.

  Ranger swam as best he could through the hot oil. He ignored the whirring plane engines and explosions all around him. He tried to keep his head above water so he could sniff the air.

  Mostly, he smelled smoke. But there were other scents floating over the waves, too — ocean water and oil and fear. Another plane swooped low above him, buzzing and blasting the sea with gunfire. Water sprayed up around him and splashed in his face.

  Ranger struggled to keep his nose above the waves. He sniffed the salty air until finally … there!

  It was faint, mixed with the smells of smoke and seawater, but it was definitely the Ben person! Ranger kept paddling until he spotted Ben’s light hair above the waves. Ben was trying to swim through the oily water, too. He was having even more trouble than Ranger. Every so often, his head would slip below the surface. Then he’d burst up again, sputtering and coughing.

  Ranger wanted to paddle faster, but the oil slowed him down. When he finally got close to Ben, the young man was flailing in the water, barely afloat. Ranger barked at him.

  “Dog!” Ben called out, and then swallowed a mouthful of water. He gasped and coughed and reached out to Ranger, splashing at the oily waves. No matter how hard he tried to swim, the oil seemed to keep him from moving. His whole left side had been badly burned when the fireball from the explosion blasted him off the ship. The salt water stung his wounds. Every time he moved, pain shot down his side.

  More than anything, Ben was thinking about his friends. They’d been standing beside him on the deck of the ship. Where were they all now? Had they been thrown into the water like him and the dog? When he looked back at the Arizona, sinking and in flames, he hoped so. That was their only chance.

  But how much hope was there, really? When Ben had first surfaced after the blast, he’d started swimming toward Ford Island. Soon it became clear that he’d never make it. He was badly burned and already exhausted. Instead, he’d turned toward the Nevada, but now it was on fire, too. He was trying to stay calm, to rely on his training, but with every second that passed, it was harder to keep his head above water. Each time he slipped beneath the waves, he thought about giving up.

  He tried to stay strong by remembering his family back home. He thought about his sisters and his mother. Ben reached down to feel his pocket. His poem was still there, through the blasts and the fire and the sea.

  Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed …

  Ben’s head slipped below the waves and he inhaled a mouthful of water. He pushed himself back up and coughed it out.

  Droops on the little hands little gold head.

  Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares …

  He couldn’t give up. Not yet. But he was so tired.

  Ranger barked again, and Ben looked at him. “Get help, dog!” He choked out the words, gasping. “Find help!”

  Find? Ranger wanted to help Ben now. But he knew he couldn’t get closer or Ben would pull him under the water. Ben needed real help!

  Ranger barked once more. Then he turned and started swimming away. He lifted his head high above the waves, searching for someone — anyone — who could help Ben. There were other men in the water, but they were all hurt and scared and exhausted, too. Some of them weren’t moving at all.

  So Ranger kept paddling. Finally, he saw a small boat up ahead with people in it. The people weren’t very big. They looked more like kids than rescuers, but maybe they would be able to help. Ranger knew Ben couldn’t stay afloat much longer.

  Ranger couldn’t swim much longer, either. He didn’t know if he could make it all the way to the little boat in this awful fiery water with the planes buzzing all around. But he knew he had to try.

  “What’s that?” Grace pointed past Paul’s shoulder.

  He didn’t want to look. He felt braver rowing toward the smoke and fire when he didn’t have to stare into the chaos. But Grace kept pointing, so Paul twisted around. “Is that …” He
squinted into the smoke. Then he heard barking. “It’s a dog!” Paul started rowing again.

  Ranger barked some more. When he was sure the kids in the boat had seen him, he turned and started swimming back toward Ben. They had to come. They had to help Ben! Every once in a while, Ranger would pause and bark again.

  “He keeps swimming away!” Grace said as Paul rowed. Another explosion roared through the harbor, and she shuddered. “Maybe … maybe we should go back.”

  Paul glanced over his shoulder just as the dog barked again. He kept doing that, barking and then swimming away. Paul looked past the dog’s bobbing head and saw something else in the water. “He’s found someone!”

  Paul pulled harder on the oars. Blisters on his hands had torn open, and his palms felt as if they were on fire. Soon, the rowboat was close enough for Paul to see the face of a young man struggling in the water. He wasn’t swimming. Not really. Just splashing up and down, trying not to drown.

  “Here!” Paul tossed the man the life preserver that his father insisted they keep on the boat.

  Ben didn’t see it. He didn’t hear Paul call to him. His eyes burned with smoke. His ears still rang from the explosion on the Arizona, and his mouth was full of seawater. He couldn’t hold on anymore.

  Ranger swam to the floating ring in the water. He nudged it toward Ben with his nose. But the sailor just flailed at it and pushed it away.

  Ranger barked. He pushed the life preserver at Ben’s face, barking again and again. Finally, Ben’s hand came down on it. He pulled it to his chest and clung to it, gasping for breath.

  “You’re going to be all right!” Grace called from the rowboat. She started to reach out to Ben, but Paul pulled her back.

  “Wait!” Paul whispered. “We can’t get him into the boat until he settles down. He could capsize us, and then we’ll all be in trouble.”