Mary Carol
28-01-06, 05:06 PM
If it had not been for a fire one night in the home of my great-grandfather, I might have been a Japanese soldier myself, fighting on the other side. But that fire changed everything. Before it could he extinguished, it had destroyed three homes--my great-grandfather Wasaburo Inouye's and two others.
THE FAMILY was up by 6:30 that morning, as we usually were on Sundays, to have a leisurely breakfast before setting out for nine o'clock services at church. Around eight o'clock, as I was dressing, I automatically clicked on the little radio by my bed. I remember that I was buttoning my shirt and looking out the window. It was going to be a beautiful day. Already the sun had burned off the morning haze over Honolulu and, although there were clouds over the mountains, the sky was blue.
The radio suddenly emitted a frenzied cry: "This is no test! Pearl Harbor is being bombed by the Japanese! I repeat: This is not a test!"
"Papa," I cried, and then froze into stunned immobility. Almost at once my father was in the doorway with agony showing on his face, listening, caught by that special horror instantly sensed by all Americans of Japanese descent.
". . . not a test. We can see the Japanese planes . . ."
"Come outside, Dan," my father said. I was 17 and considered mature enough to share his apprehension. My younger brothers John and Bob and my sister May started to follow us out, but he ordered them back. "Stay with your mother!"
We stood in the warm sunshine by the side of the house and stared out toward Pearl Harbor, where the U.S. Pacific Fleet was anchored. Black puffs of anti-aircraft smoke dotted the sky, trailing away in the breeze, and the dirty-gray smudge of a great fire obscured the mountains. Then we saw the planes -- dive-bombers -- zooming up out of the smoke with that unmistakable red ball on the wings, the rising sun of the Japanese Empire.
As we went back into the house, the telephone rang. It was the secretary of the Red Cross station where recently I had been teaching first aid. "How soon can you be here, Dan?" he asked.
"I'm on my way," I told him. I grabbed a sweater and started for the door.
"Where are you going?" my mother cried, terrified.
"Let him go," my father said firmly. "He must go."
I took a couple of pieces of bread from the table, hugged my mother and ran for the street. "I'll be back as soon as I can," I called. But it would be five days before I returned--a lifetime--and I would never be the same. The 17-year-old high school boy who set out on his bicycle that morning of December 7, 1941, was lost forever amid the debris, and the dead and the dying, of war’s first day.
The aid station was more than a mile away, and the planes were gone before I reached it. I pumped furiously through the teeming Japanese ghettos of McCully and Moiliili, where crowds had spilled into the streets, wide-eyed with terror. Almost dispassionately, I wondered what would become of them, these poverty-ridden Asians now rendered so vulnerable by this monstrous betrayal.
An old Japanese man grabbed the handlebars of my bike as I tried to maneuver around a group. "Who did it?" he yelled at me. "Was it the Germans? It must have been the Germans!"
I shook my head, unable to speak, and tore free of him. My eyes filled with tears of pity for him and for all these frightened people. They had worked so hard. They had wanted so desperately to be accepted, to be good Americans. Now, in a few cataclysmic minutes, it was all undone and there could only be deep trouble ahead.
Pedaling along, I realized at last that I faced that trouble, too. My eyes were shaped just like those of the old man in the street. My people were only a generation removed from the land that had spawned the bombers and sent them to drop death on Hawaii. And suddenly, choking with emotion, I looked up into the sky and screamed the hated words, "You dirty Japs!"
http://www.senate.gov/~inouye/gfb/index.html
THE FAMILY was up by 6:30 that morning, as we usually were on Sundays, to have a leisurely breakfast before setting out for nine o'clock services at church. Around eight o'clock, as I was dressing, I automatically clicked on the little radio by my bed. I remember that I was buttoning my shirt and looking out the window. It was going to be a beautiful day. Already the sun had burned off the morning haze over Honolulu and, although there were clouds over the mountains, the sky was blue.
The radio suddenly emitted a frenzied cry: "This is no test! Pearl Harbor is being bombed by the Japanese! I repeat: This is not a test!"
"Papa," I cried, and then froze into stunned immobility. Almost at once my father was in the doorway with agony showing on his face, listening, caught by that special horror instantly sensed by all Americans of Japanese descent.
". . . not a test. We can see the Japanese planes . . ."
"Come outside, Dan," my father said. I was 17 and considered mature enough to share his apprehension. My younger brothers John and Bob and my sister May started to follow us out, but he ordered them back. "Stay with your mother!"
We stood in the warm sunshine by the side of the house and stared out toward Pearl Harbor, where the U.S. Pacific Fleet was anchored. Black puffs of anti-aircraft smoke dotted the sky, trailing away in the breeze, and the dirty-gray smudge of a great fire obscured the mountains. Then we saw the planes -- dive-bombers -- zooming up out of the smoke with that unmistakable red ball on the wings, the rising sun of the Japanese Empire.
As we went back into the house, the telephone rang. It was the secretary of the Red Cross station where recently I had been teaching first aid. "How soon can you be here, Dan?" he asked.
"I'm on my way," I told him. I grabbed a sweater and started for the door.
"Where are you going?" my mother cried, terrified.
"Let him go," my father said firmly. "He must go."
I took a couple of pieces of bread from the table, hugged my mother and ran for the street. "I'll be back as soon as I can," I called. But it would be five days before I returned--a lifetime--and I would never be the same. The 17-year-old high school boy who set out on his bicycle that morning of December 7, 1941, was lost forever amid the debris, and the dead and the dying, of war’s first day.
The aid station was more than a mile away, and the planes were gone before I reached it. I pumped furiously through the teeming Japanese ghettos of McCully and Moiliili, where crowds had spilled into the streets, wide-eyed with terror. Almost dispassionately, I wondered what would become of them, these poverty-ridden Asians now rendered so vulnerable by this monstrous betrayal.
An old Japanese man grabbed the handlebars of my bike as I tried to maneuver around a group. "Who did it?" he yelled at me. "Was it the Germans? It must have been the Germans!"
I shook my head, unable to speak, and tore free of him. My eyes filled with tears of pity for him and for all these frightened people. They had worked so hard. They had wanted so desperately to be accepted, to be good Americans. Now, in a few cataclysmic minutes, it was all undone and there could only be deep trouble ahead.
Pedaling along, I realized at last that I faced that trouble, too. My eyes were shaped just like those of the old man in the street. My people were only a generation removed from the land that had spawned the bombers and sent them to drop death on Hawaii. And suddenly, choking with emotion, I looked up into the sky and screamed the hated words, "You dirty Japs!"
http://www.senate.gov/~inouye/gfb/index.html