Rising Sun by Robert Conroy

the attacks began, they’d watched as a handful of American planes rose to meet the Japanese horde. They’d been saddened and sickened as the brave American pilots had their planes blown from the sky by Japanese Zeros that seemed to dance among them. There were few parachutes and those that did blossom were attacked by the Japanese and shredded, the pilots falling to their deaths.
    “Why don’t we have any good planes!” lamented Sandy Watson, the other roommate. She was twenty-three and, like the others, a civilian contract nurse.
    Or good leaders, Amanda thought. Somebody should go to jail for this litany of disasters. Why weren’t we prepared when the first attack on Pearl Harbor occurred? She’d been in bed on December 7th after a normal Saturday evening dancing with young officers. She’d awakened to the explosions and the improbable fact that Pearl Harbor was being attacked and the fleet slaughtered before her eyes. Why did so many good young men have to be killed and wounded before somebody woke up to the fact that the Japs wanted to kill us? And now it was even worse and not very likely to change.
    The explosions changed in volume. One of the older men in the basement with them nodded solemnly. “Those aren’t bombs, girlies, those are shells. The damned Japs are close enough to shoot at us with their ships.”
    Normally, Amanda would have resented being called a girlie, but this was too serious for trivialities. If Japanese warships were close enough to shoot at land-based targets, would the Japanese soon be landing troops? God help them if this was the invasion they all feared and anticipated.
    After half an hour, there was silence. The all clear sounded, and they left their shelter and went outside. The area around her apartment was largely untouched, although a few small fires burned and were being attacked by neighbors with brooms and buckets. The old man explained that the fires were probably caused by American shells being shot into the air and coming down on something flammable. The harbor was again in flames as the giant fuel tanks that provided oil, the lifeblood of the fleet, sent enormous clouds of black smoke billowing thousands of feet into the sky. The only good news was that there didn’t appear to be a Japanese landing force approaching the shore.
    Shouting and screams distracted them. Scores of people were headed toward a grocery store. The plate glass windows were broken and a small elderly Japanese man was futilely waving a broom at the mob pouring in while others left with armloads of bread, beer, canned goods, and anything else that struck their fancy.
    The owner grabbed a looter’s arm and was knocked down. The looter and a couple of his companions kicked and stomped the poor man until he lay bloody and still. A woman, probably the grocer’s wife, emerged screaming. Her face was bloodied and bruised. She fell down beside the injured man and continued to scream. A police siren wailed and the crowd vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
    Amanda and the others ran to the fallen man and began to check him over. “He’s breathing,” she said. The woman’s howls diminished into sobbing. Grace tried to comfort her while Sandy and Amanda helped the man, who was having trouble breathing.
    “Maybe broken ribs,” Sandy said, and Amanda concurred. “And perhaps a heart attack, too.”
    An ambulance arrived and they helped put him inside along with the woman who was indeed his wife. Some neighbors tried to board up the store even though it had been pretty well stripped of anything valuable. The cops took their statement although they could add nothing to the obvious. Nor did anyone recognize any of the looters.
    “I wonder if the stupid bastards in Washington can see this,” Grace said as she looked at the desolation that had once been a family’s livelihood. That it had been caused by Americans and not the enemy made it even more difficult to swallow. “I voted for Roosevelt and look