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A
las 7:55 sonó la primera explosión. El ataque había comenzado. Y en la
radio
japonesa tronaba ya otro mensaje “Tora! Tora! Tora!” Mitsuo Fuchida, que
lideró
la primera oleada, transmitió la clave que hacía saber al Almirante
Isoroku Yamamoto,
estratega del ataque, que Pearl Harbor no tenía defensa. 353 aeronaves
japonesas con sus cazas de combate, bombarderos y torpederos habían
desembarcado de los seis portaviones más imponentes de la Armada
Japonesa. El ataque fue por tanto comandado por los almirantes Chūichi
Nagumo, Isoroku Yamamoto y Mitsuo Fuchida. Desde el sudeste se
precipitaban ya sobre Oahu infinidad de aeronaves formando una V,
descargando el fuego ininterrumpido de sus ametralladoras, y planeando
sobre edificios próximos y cuarteles militares. Los abiertos patios
servían de blanco perfecto para los aviones, cuyos discos rojos eran
perfectamente visibles, mientras se deslizaban por encima, planeando y
disparando sobre los hombres que se replegaban y corrían a guarecerse
por todos los pisos de los cuarteles. Las balas repercutían en paredes y
miles de cristaleras ahora hechas añicos. Volvían una vez y otra los
aviones japoneses manteniendo su disposición en forma de V. Y por fin,
sobre los techos de acuartelamiento se apostaron tiradores, hombres jóvenes
y hábiles, tratando con su artillería incesante de derribar parte de
aquella oleada de relámpagos que flameaban con su fuego mortífero bajo
la ardiente solana de la isla. Los aviadores japoneses, con sus rostros y
cabezas ocultos por los cascos y las lentes cuadradas que solapaban sus
sonrientes ojos rasgados, lanzaban saludos de burlona victoria. Y sus
largas bufandas, que parecían aves inverosímiles que olfatearan ansiosas
el viento que azotaba las cabinas japonesas, hendían los espacios
azulados por los que planeaban los aviones. En los tejados, el fuego de
artillería no cesaba; el rugido de la metralla era ensordecedor Un par
de aviones japoneses recibieron el impacto de las ametralladoras
norteamericanas, y los artilleros lanzaron alegres vivas de triunfo. El
enorme hangar de la Air Force del Campo Wheeler
fue bombardeado y una gigantesca columna de humo pareció carbonizar
aquel tramo de tierra que ahora se mostraba negruzco y deshecho. Como
resultado de la explosión, algunos edificios de las céntricas calles
McKully y King acabaron destrozados y los cuarteles de las Compañías F y
G fueron sacudidos por una especie de vórtice tormentoso por el que
volaron pequeños mobiliarios, lozas y cacharros que tan sólo encontraron
resistencia sólida en el suelo.
Era
ya innegable que la Armada Estadounidense había sufrido una espantosa
derrota en Pearl Harbor, aunque en aquellos terribles momentos de gran
tribulación la amplitud total del daño —según el comunicado de la radio- era absolutamente desconocida, y "probablemente seguirá
siéndolo durante algún tiempo", insistió el locutor. Las bajas
fueron asistidas con los escasos dispositivos médicos de que disponía el
hospital Queen's de Oahu, donde jamás se podría haber llegado a
concebir que, aparte del armamento militar destruido, una hecatombe de
vidas humanas como la que se había vivido aquella mañana hubiese podido
llegar a producirse. Las camillas y otras muchas más improvisadas
atestaban vestíbulos y corredores. Jóvenes de varias edades, los más de
diecinueve y veinte años, aparecían mutilados, y sus cuerpos y rostros, casi sin
cejas y pestañas, y mucho menos cabello, aparecían horriblemente
quemados. Se solicitaban donantes de sangre para que se presentasen
inmediatamente en el hospital Queen's. Se apostaron centinelas con
cascos ante las estaciones de radio y la mansión del Gobernador de la
Isla, y en la playa de Waikiki los soldados supervivientes empezaron a
colocar alambradas. La radio había empezado a emitir programas musicales
y pasar los anuncios de siempre. Beretania Street mostraba algunos
edificios en ruinas. Los más afectados fueron los de McCully
y King, pero el aspecto del arrabal costero de Honolulu, en su
aislamiento de los cuarteles militares, era el que menos eficazmente
había sufrido el primer y más feroz asalto de los bombardeos japoneses,
que naturalmente, y en especial, no dieron cuartel a los ocho acorazados
estadounidenses atracados en el puerto. Entre las bajas sufridas se
contaron 4 acorazados hundidos, 3 acorazados dañados, 1 acorazado
encallado, otros 5 barcos hundidos, 3 cruceros y 3 destructores dañados,
188 aviones de la de la Air Force del Campo Wheeler
destruidos y 159 dañados. Y el balance de víctimas ascendió a 2402
muertos, entre lo que se barajaron de 48 a 68 civiles, y 1247 heridos a
los que sumar 38 civiles.
Pearl Harbor, de un oasis en medio de la inmensidad oceánica, se convertiría en un recuerdo edénico para el mundo antes de que los humanos nos volviéramos locos con una nueva guerra. Y para Thomas Huntington en el azote siniestro de un castigo. Allí concluía la capturada esencia de su servicio envidiable al ejército. Nada había en él del implacable hijo de la guerra. Aquella mañana, se desvanecía incluso esta posibilidad. Se preparaba una matanza. Y nada invitaba a contemplar las imposibles reacciones y el desorden trágico con que se desplegaba la tropa a la ardiente luz del sol naciente de Oahu. Pérdidas y esfuerzos humanos iban a quedar sin compensación. La mente de Huntington, tras la fatiga del Seconal, se sintió demasiado horrorizada para moverse o bajar desde su habitación a aquel patio donde el ataque japonés iba a conseguir un triunfo tan auténtico como histórico, y la defensa de unos cientos de infelices soldados no iba a influir en la victoria final del Japón atacante. Fuera del área de peligro por el que planeaban los aviones nipones y sus ráfagas de muerte, Huntington avanzó finalmente por un ala solitaria del cuartel, observando que sus muros se hallaban intactos por el momento de la hostilidad del exterior. Desde los tejados del cuartel, animados por el sentimiento patrio, su tropa dirimía el ataque japonés magníficamente con su artillería. Pero para cualquiera de los aviones enemigos que sobrevolaban el enorme edificio militar aquella irrisoria defensa sería presa fácil. Los japoneses habían comprobado perfectamente el insignificante grupo de soldados que se encontraban en los tejados y de los restantes reclutas que se distribuían en cada pasillo o estancia cuartelaria. A Huntington lo atrapó el zumbido ametrallador de uno de los aviones desde un ventanal cuando trataba de ocultarse en uno de los dormitorios de la tropa. Los cristales saltaron y varios trozos le hirieron la mejilla que empezó a sangrar. Con la débil esperanza de no ser descubierto, se arrinconó entre dos literas, tratando de restañar la sangre con una de las sábanas. Un estruendo ensordecedor, estallido de varios bombardeos en el puerto, hizo temblar el edificio. El sargento siguió refugiado, ileso. En su mente el esquema de la supervivencia era completo, porque le proporcionaba una certeza de juicio consecuente y lógico: salvar su vida. Una perezosa excusa de que su pellejo no debía exponerse a ser agujereado por una jornada de implacable aventura patriótica.
-Si no está herido, por lo menos ayúdeme,... mi sargento. Hay tres compañeros más en la entrada... y están sangrando- dijo el soldado.
Huntington asintió en voz muy baja, sin dejar de escrutar en torno por si acaso aparecía algún infante más de la compañía. Entre el sargento y el soldado no medió una nueva palabra. Acomodaron a los cuatro heridos, que gemían de dolor, en las literas. Uno de ellos había perdido una pierna a la que su compañero había arrollado una sábana para contener la hemorragia; otro se hallaba quemado y lloraba exclamando que estaba ciego; los dos restantes se habían desmayado.
-No... se pueden quedar... aquí...- titubeó Huntington- Hay que llevárselos... Buscar la forma de...
-No son los únicos... mi sargento...- aclaró el soldado mirando de reojo a Huntington- Menos nosotros... -dudó- Quien debería hacer algo es usted...
El soldado se quedó callado, muy quieto, observando a los heridos. Era una voz en la que no bullía el agravio, pero empañada por la negra gelatina de sus ojos.
-Usted, ahora, debería cambiarse... mi sargento...
Y a Huntington le asomó una órbita mordida por la vergüenza, un nuevo extravío de lacerante fragilidad ante aquel subordinado cuya presencia fugaz lo desnudaba. Salió de allí fatigosamente. Corrió por el pasillo desierto hasta su habitación, y se introdujo en la ducha. Las cañerías de agua no habían sufrido ningún desperfecto tras el ataque. Se enjabonó febrilmente como si tratara de reparar un daño inexcusable infligido a su cuerpo, y se cambió a toda prisa de pantalón. Antes del atardecer, los cuatro infantes heridos entraron en el hospital Queen's. El joven quemado murió poco después.
Lentamente, tras una culminación de fuego y humaredas que convulsionaban las estructuras destruidas de los acorazados Arizona, Tennessee, West Virginia, California y Oklahoma entre otros, más allá de la gran bocana del puerto que se abría a la bahía de Pearl Harbor, comenzaba a salir la geometría montañosa del Nuʻuanu Pali, que asomaba de nuevo en aquel cielo siempre sumergido en la inocencia del mar, horas después de que las aeronaves japonesas hubiesen rasgado su virginidad.
El sargento Thomas Huntington, fue ascendido a capitán, y permaneció en Hawai hasta el fin de la guerra. Y el recluta Jason Tracy fue condecorado con la Cruz de la Armada por haber contribuido al derribo de un avión japonés y salvar a muchos de sus compañeros. Fue destinado al marco de la Guerra del Pacífico, participó en la campana de Guadalcanal y en la batalla de Tarawa. En 1945, tras la derrota de Japón, aunque mentalmente inestable, desistió de abandonar el ejército. Respetada su decisión por sus heroicidades, fue destinado a un campamento militar de Carolina del Norte.
[On September 27, 1940, the Japanese government leadership joined the Berlin-Rome axis in the Tripartite Pact that was at war with England, France, the USSR and other European countries invaded by Hitler's troops. Japan, after agreeing not to attack the Soviet Republics, was granted territorial primacy in Asia. The expansion of the Japanese country in the Pacific had resulted in the invasion of its only rival: China, where Japanese troops were at that time committing all kinds of atrocities. However, and with the rest of a large part of the weakened Asian countries, such as the Philippines, in its power, the Japanese Empire now only found one possible resistance: that of Washington. There was therefore no other option, as the Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo justified, but to promote an attack by sea and air on the important and threatening US naval base in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu (Honolulu ).
This terrible aggression was to change the course of the Second World War. The then isolationist North American nation was forced to take part in the world warlike conflict that Germany and Italy had unleashed in Europe. This event, without solving anything for the moment, and even though it sadly wounded the seasonal pacifism maintained by the United States and its nationalist population, as well as the lacerated flesh of its military and civilian population based in Pearl Harbor, it shook the rest of the compatriots like a gigantic blaze of outrage against Japan. It became clear that North America, initially completely disoriented by the unforeseen Japanese military action, entering the fray, and from the Eastern perspective, was going to break with the dynamics of history in Asia.
And the Japanese world, which had taken a joyful part in the tragic game of war, which publicly praised its eagerness to achieve a new territorial power, and the enviable service and warlike enthusiasm that its fanatical army displayed in the face of its first victories on the fronts. Asians, he had risen to his place in the fray like a fueled glory that would surpass all his dreams of conquest. The truth is that Japan considered a mortal offense to doubt the triumphal limit that had been set to satisfy a whim of imperial supremacy. Thus, the inner night of the Japanese titan and its red moon, which at that time lay dazzling over the waters of the Pacific, received the serious and inhuman disagreement of the warlike conflagration. And the trembling echoes of its shores broke away in its complacency, in its boastfulness, in its doubtful art. Because war always expects rewards or, in its blindness, fantastic punishments.
... For First Sergeant Thomas Huntington, 42, his future was very clear. Outposted in Unit G at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, in the Pacific, his military career was established in that kind of perpetual miracle of military usufruct and his life annuity. Which is silly, because a perpetual miracle would immediately cease to be a miracle. Huntington's greatest aspiration at the moment was to rise to the rank of captain and be transferred away from the hot Pacific climate to a military camp in his country. Upon being transferred with his unit to the Pearl Harbor base in 1940, he had assumed full responsibility for his mandate among his men, taking full advantage of the opportunity in the army to prove his absolute worth for command. But Huntington was a stubborn man, a narrow-minded man, an exaggeratedly suspicious temperament, who, moreover, obsessively indulged in an irrefutable and self-righteous exposition of a religious position within Catholicism. And always ready to sacrifice his sordid vanity to the totalitarian unity of command of the army, since any remote opposition to this way of life would have spoiled all his future plans, in which a war naturally had no place. Thus, the punctilious arrogance of Thomas Huntington never betrayed a mentality such as his, as narrow in civil behavior as broad in military matters and its ordering. An order that showed at the same time the most tendentious side of blameless men, although methodical and mean, always ready to deny the worth of their opponents. And as a uniformed soldier in the inevitable conviction of his absolute esteem, he was also incapable of calculating the possibility of being hated. Accepting it would have meant a reckless impulse in his irreproachable behavior. Finish off a nonexistent monster. A martial David, endowed with the staff of command, like a Saint Michael, like a Saint George.
The atmosphere on that Sunday morning on December 7 at Pearl Harbor was dense, fiery, characteristic of a natural harbor such as that located on the great coastal lagoon of the island of Oahu. Already dawn, at the base, momentarily, there seemed to be not a breath of life. The prevailing heat emanated intense humidity, a feeling of Sunday laziness after which the breakfast service in the military dining rooms began to move with some inertia. Its open windows as well as those of the rest of the buildings eagerly tried to capture some gusts of sea breeze. And in the neighboring neighborhood, Beretania Street, there were no barking dogs or crying babies. Its paved streets, wide enough to allow the transit of all kinds of vehicles, were still half sleepy; screened the first morning steps of some civilians who seemed to be sneaking into some typical island bazaar. But most of the doors of their houses remained closed. Many of these houses had facades so embroidered that they looked like cardboard sets for a Hawaiian movie set. The fiery rooftops of Beretania Street stood out especially, which slid down to the harbor, approaching the foot of the summit of Nuʻuanu Pali. And also in the distance you could see the Aloha tower; and beyond the Arena Island channel, as the sun blazed blindingly on the intense blue waters of the Pacific.
At 7:55 the first explosion sounded. The attack had begun. And the Japanese radio already thundered another message “Tora! Torah! Torah!" Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the first wave, transmitted the key that let Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, strategist of the attack, know that Pearl Harbor had no defense. 353 Japanese aircraft with their fighter jets, bombers and torpedo boats had disembarked from the six most imposing aircraft carriers in the Japanese Navy. The attack was therefore commanded by Admirals Chūichi Nagumo, Isoroku Yamamoto and Mitsuo Fuchida. From the southeast, countless aircraft were already rushing over Oahu in a V-shape, unloading uninterrupted fire from their machine guns, and hovering over nearby buildings and military barracks. The open courtyards served as the perfect targets for the planes, whose red discs were perfectly visible, as they glided overhead, gliding and firing at the men who retreated and ran for cover on all the barracks floors. The bullets hit walls and thousands of windows now shattered. Again and again the Japanese planes kept their arrangement in the shape of a V. And finally, on the barracks roofs, shooters, young and skillful men, were stationed, trying with their incessant artillery to shoot down part of that wave of lightning that flamed with its deadly fire under the burning sun of the island. The Japanese aviators, their faces and heads hidden by helmets and square lenses that overlapped their smiling slanted eyes, gave salutes of mocking victory. And their long scarves, which looked like unlikely birds sniffing anxiously at the wind that whipped through the Japanese cabins, sliced through the bluish spaces through which airplanes soared. On the rooftops, the artillery fire did not stop; the roar of shrapnel was deafening. A pair of Japanese planes were hit by American machine guns, and the artillerymen fired cheers of triumph. The huge Air Force hangar at Wheeler Field was bombed and a gigantic plume of smoke seemed to char that stretch of land that was now blackish and undone. As a result of the explosion, some buildings in downtown McKully and King streets were destroyed and the headquarters of Companies F and G were shaken by a kind of stormy vortex through which small furniture, china and pots were blown up, meeting only solid resistance. on the floor.
It was now undeniable that the US Navy had suffered a gruesome defeat at Pearl Harbor, although in those terrible moments of great tribulation the full extent of the damage - according to the radio statement - was absolutely unknown, and "will probably remain so for some time to come." the announcer insisted. The casualties were assisted with the scarce medical devices available at the Queen's Hospital on Oahu, where it could never have been conceived that, apart from the destroyed military weapons, a hecatomb of human lives such as the one that had been experienced that morning could have arrived to occur. The stretchers and many more makeshift cluttered hallways and corridors. Young people of various ages, those over nineteen and twenty, appeared mutilated, and their bodies and faces, with almost no eyebrows and eyelashes, and much less hair, were horribly burned. Blood donors were requested to report immediately to Queen's Hospital. Helmeted sentries were posted outside radio stations and the Island Governor's mansion, and on Waikiki Beach surviving soldiers began laying barbed wire. The radio had started broadcasting music programs and running the usual commercials. Beretania Street showed some buildings in ruins. Those most affected were those of McCully and King, but the aspect of the coastal suburb of Honolulu, in its isolation from military barracks, was the one that had suffered the least effectively the first and most ferocious assault of the Japanese bombing, which naturally, and in In particular, they gave no quarter to the eight American battleships docked in the port. Losses included 4 sunken battleships, 3 damaged battleships, 1 stranded battleship, 5 other sunken ships, 3 cruisers and 3 damaged destroyers, 188 aircraft of the Wheeler Field Air Force destroyed and 159 damaged. And the balance of victims amounted to 2402 dead, among which were considered from 48 to 68 civilians, and 1247 wounded to which 38 civilians were added.
... The night before the Japanese attack, the chronic insomnia that afflicted First Sergeant Thomas Huntington did not provide any support for the sporadic training activity with his infants that he had to maintain the next day. And for that very reason, if he couldn't head off at least a six-hour sleep in the morning, which he also had to do target practice, he wouldn't be clear enough. It was a great responsibility for an officer so proud and intolerant of the missions entrusted to him in the Company. Lightening the burden of insomnia was, as it happens to any human being, to avoid brooding. The soldiers in the garrison numbered about two hundred, and he knew that every effort on his part to weigh his authority was very attenuated and relative. The inconvenience of his nervousness and his discomfort he could easily remedy. It was enough to take one or two pills of Seconal, a drug that he had been able to obtain somewhat fraudulently. But this was a secret that he kept with a very deliberate caution. To bow to that drug that subjected him to a heavy and deathly stupor meant being connected to a kind of electrical detonator with its explosive charge and the fear that no sentry would be able to monitor his awakening. And it is that Thomas Huntington, in reality, was a coward and feared his troops. The continued military service, the full obligation of command that, with inevitable conviction, he had to maintain even at the risk of his reputation, (although in that collective responsibility that the army meant he also maintained a firm deprivation of any contact with women), made him feel (despite his rejections, his fears and his long arguments of confusion with himself) especially favored by a virilely worked confinement. So that night, he swallowed two Seconal pills and waited. The Oahu sky had almost a near touch of hard cloth and whiter than blue, which always invited him to meditate on his loneliness. And the distant sea, discolored, of an archaic pallor, also turned its back on him because the sweet carelessness of its waves seemed to speak to him of the little traffic that his life had hitherto possessed. Far and alone. No one!
Pearl Harbor, from an oasis in the middle of the vast ocean, would
become an Edenic memory for the world before humans went crazy with a new war.
And for Thomas Huntington on the sinister scourge of punishment. There the
captured essence of his enviable service to the army ended. There was nothing
in him of the implacable son of war. That morning, even this possibility was
fading. A slaughter was being prepared. And nothing invited to contemplate the
impossible reactions and the tragic disorder with which the troops were
deployed to the fiery light of the rising Oahu sun. Losses and human efforts
were to be left without compensation. Huntington's mind, after the Seconal's
fatigue, was too horrified to move or go down from his room to that courtyard
where the Japanese attack was going to achieve a triumph as authentic as it was
historic, and the defense of a few hundred unhappy soldiers was not going. to
influence the final victory of attacking Japan. Out of the danger area through
which the Japanese planes and their death blasts were gliding, Huntington
finally advanced through a solitary wing of the barracks, noting that its walls
were intact at the time of hostility from outside. From the roofs of the
barracks, animated by the national sentiment, his troops solved the Japanese
attack magnificently with their artillery. But for any of the enemy planes that
flew over the enormous military building, that laughable defense would be easy
prey. The Japanese had perfectly verified the insignificant group of soldiers
that were in the rooftops and of the remaining recruits that were distributed
in each corridor or barracks room. Huntington was caught by the machine-gunning
drone of one of the planes from a window as he tried to hide in one of the
troop's bedrooms. The crystals jumped and several pieces injured his cheek that
began to bleed. In the feeble hope of not being discovered, he cornered himself
between two bunks, trying to staunch the blood with one of the sheets. A
deafening roar, the outbreak of several bombardments in the harbor, shook the
building. The sergeant remained sheltered, unharmed. In his mind the scheme of
survival was complete, because it provided him with a certainty of consistent
and logical judgment: save his life. A lazy excuse that his skin should not be
exposed to being pierced by a day of relentless patriotic adventure.
For half an hour Huntington waited without moving for the aircraft incursion to end. From the corner where he was hidden and more or less protected, he could not watch the Japanese retreat. In front of him, and further down, was the great courtyard where the bloody corpses of some soldiers of the garrison who had not been able to take refuge from the air attack were distributed. The war started again showed its original aspect and had not limited its criminal powers. And because war never pities the defeated enemy: it always wants novel heroes. And terror, which also causes the demoralization of cowardice, forcing him not to waste his last strength to guard it. After all, Sergeant First Thomas Huntington, even wanting to prove himself, until that very day, consubstantial to the military spirit of war, was nothing more than an impassive second-class officer who demarcated the true essence of the army with a silent rivalry. and aggressive towards his soldiers, although never negligent because for him everything consisted of always waiting for some order to obey. And now his investigative temperament was not at all interested in what was going on outside that bedroom where he was hiding. The most egotistical human side is never lacking in their little disasters. Seriously discussing the way to overcome now the first impression of unfavorable terror that had saved him from the Japanese attack, immersed in the maximum heat of noon, a great shudder shook his body at that moment. Huntington's eyes met a fixed gaze on him. He was an elemental figure, the warm, carnal, youthful outline of the recruit, with childlike wonder, but hard-eyed. Immediately he backed away between the bunks that concealed the sergeant, to have a slack in his gesture and in his silhouette, behind which another young soldier was leaning at the end of the cot like a broken and bloody skeleton. Then so that his dishonor would jump to the new life outside after the embarrassing moment in which his cowardice had been surprised, like a silent rattle his urine slipped from the dull nakedness that covered his pants. Huntington didn't know what to do with his hands. Again that unknown soldier had discovered a secret of denigrating fragility.
-If you are not injured, at least help me, ... my sergeant. There are three more companions at the entrance ... and they are bleeding- said the soldier.
Huntington nodded very quietly, still scanning his surroundings in case any more infants of the company appeared. There was no new word between the sergeant and the soldier. They settled the four wounded, who were groaning in pain, on the bunks. One of them had lost a leg to which his partner had rolled a sheet to contain the bleeding; another was burned and cried, exclaiming that he was blind; the remaining two had passed out.
-They cannot ... they can stay ... here ...- Huntington hesitated- We must take them away ... Find a way to ...
-They are not the only ones ... my sergeant ...- clarified the soldier, looking askance at Huntington- Except for us ... -he doubted- The one who should do something is you ...
The soldier was silent, very still, watching the wounded. It was a voice not seething with outrage, but clouded by the black jelly in his eyes.
-You, now, should change ... my sergeant ...
And Huntington had an orbit bitten by shame, a new loss of excruciating fragility before that subordinate whose fleeting presence undressed him. He left there wearily. He ran down the deserted hallway to his room, and stepped into the shower. The water pipes had not suffered any damage after the attack. He soaped feverishly as if trying to repair inexcusable damage inflicted on his body, and hurriedly changed into trousers. Before sunset, the four injured infants entered Queen's Hospital. The burned young man died shortly after.
Slowly, after a culmination of fire and smoke that convulsed the
destroyed structures of the battleships Arizona, Tennessee, West Virginia,
California and Oklahoma among others, beyond the great mouth of the port that
opened to the bay of Pearl Harbor, it began to leave the mountainous geometry
of the Nuʻuanu Pali, which loomed again in that sky always submerged in the
innocence of the sea, hours after the Japanese aircraft had torn its virginity.
Sergeant Thomas Huntington, was promoted to captain, and remained in Hawaii until the end of the war. And recruit Jason Tracy was awarded the Navy Cross for helping to shoot down a Japanese plane and saving many of his teammates. He was assigned to the framework of the War of the Pacific, participated in the Guadalcanal bell and in the Battle of Tarawa. In 1945, after the defeat of Japan, although mentally unstable, he gave up leaving the army. His decision respected for his heroics, he was assigned to a military camp in North Carolina.]
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