story: MAC.ThePearlHarborMurders (the ending...)

FIFTEEN 　Retaliation 　 　In less than half an hour, in a peacetime attack unparalleled in the modem world, Japan had delivered the worst Naval defeat in American history. 　Thick black smoke draped Pearl Harbor, where all seven battleships moored at Ford Island had suffered damage, all hit by one or more bombs. In the overturned hull of the Oklahoma, most of the crew remained imprisoned, while others were trapped in the capsized Utah; rescue efforts in either case were hampered by continual strafing, until the silver planes of the Rising Sun finished their runs. 　In the lull that followed the first wave of attack planes, the Americans worked frantically to prepare in the event of another blow-and one was coming: a second wave of 169 fighters and bombers crossed the northern coast of Oahu at 8:40 a.m. 　Fifty-four high-level bombers and thirty-one fighters streaked toward Hickam Field and Kaneohe Naval Air Station and other bases, seeking more American planes on the ground to blow up, often strafing civilian vehicles and residential areas, apparently just for the sheer hell of it. Eighty-one dive bombers prowled for any surviving warships in the harbor, with ships awaiting repairs becoming additional targets-like the flagship Pennsylvania, and the destroyers Downes and Cassin, all in Dry Dock #1. 　During this second attack, however, the Japanese pilots met stronger American resistance, and had to deal with billowing black smoke, a cover of their own raid's creation, obscuring their targets. The commander of the second wave of fighters, encountering fiercer ground fire than he'd anticipated, wound up crashing his Zero into a flaming hangar; and efforts to sink the fleeing battleship Nevada, to seal off the harbor with a mass of steel, proved unsuccessful. 　Small victories, in so large a defeat. 　With the exception of the occasional scurrying Oriental, disappearing down an alley or into a doorway, the streets and sidewalks of Chinatown were deserted. The rows of shops and cafes were as abandoned as an Old West ghost town, lacking only tumbleweed; the hustle and bustle of the Aala Market-where Sunday was just another day, any ordinary Sunday, that is-replaced with an eerie silence, deserted stalls filled with fresh fish whose dead faces stared with mute curiosity, as if to say, Where is everybody? Under a sky black with storm clouds of war, the smell of burning could be detected: not the acrid stench of fuel-oil fires from the harbor, but the crackling scorch-scent of refuse disposal, mingled with the unmistakable smell of fear. All around Chinatown, in metal drums or (as at the Consulate) washtubs or in backyard bonfires, issei and nisei were burning books written in the Japanese language, as well as Rising Sun flags and pictures of the emperor and photos of family members in Japan, even apparel like kimonos and getta; they were burying samurai swords and family heirlooms in their backyards-doing their frantic best to nullify any signs of Japanese influence and culture in Honolulu. 　Burroughs found in Japanese-dominated Chinatown nothing to confirm the long-held local apprehension that-in the case of war with Nippon-Oahu's Japanese would come charging into haole neighborhoods brandishing guns or even samurai swords. Nor was there any sign of them skulking off to plant dynamite satchels and mines under bridges and piers or at military installations and electric lines. And predictions that your own maid, your neighbor's houseboy, the cop on the beat, the farmer down the road, the nisei Hawaii Territorial Guard members, would band together against "Americans" (which they of course were themselves) hardly seemed to be materializing. 　The distant echo of explosions provided a thunderous backdrop as Ed Burroughs and his son walked by the sampan dock, where the blue boats bobbed, unattended. 　"So much for a fifth column," Burroughs said to Hully, looking around at the desolation, as they approached the small grocery near the Aala Market. 　"I'd feel better about this," Hully said, clearly a little nervous, "if Agent Sterling were at our side." 　Burroughs held up his palm, where the tiny German automatic nestled. "We'll be fine. Sterling has his own job to do." 　"Well, the door's open, anyway," Hully said, and brushed aside the hanging black beads and gestured, politely, for his father to go in first. 　The writer stepped inside, Hully right behind him. The wooden storefront was unattended; the place had a curious fragrance, similar to incense-though to Burroughs the unfamiliar scent suggested decay. His son had told him about the shop, but Burroughs was not prepared for how little the "grocery" had to do wife his American preconceptions. He glanced around at the walls of shelves lined with jars and baskets of strange herbs, roots, dried seaweed, and other exotica. 　"I guess he's out of Ovaltine," Burroughs said dryly. 　With his left hand, Burroughs slapped the "Please Ring" bell on the counter, which stretched along the left of the shop. 　A door, opposite the beaded one they'd come in, cracked open, apparently from a rear storage area. 　"Shop is closed," Yoshio Harada said. Then he recognized them, and the grocer stepped into the storefront, closing the storeroom door behind him. He half bowed. "Burroughs-san ... Burroughs-san," he said, acknowledging them both. 　"The door was open," Burroughs said, nodding toward the beaded entry. "Sorry to drop by unannounced, but this is an extraordinary morning, wouldn't you say, Mr. Harada?" 　Nodding again, the diminutive, trimly mustached man-in a white shirt, grocer's apron, blue trousers, and sandals-shuffled behind the counter at the left; the shelves rising behind him provided a bizarre backdrop of gnarled roots, shark fins and seahorse skeletons. 　"A terrible day." Harada was hanging his head. "I am ashamed to be Japanese on this day." 　"No kidding?" Burroughs leaned a hand against the counter; his other hand, with the little gun, was behind his back. "I heard you used to have the emperor's picture on display." 　Head still bowed, he gestured with both hands, as if disgusted. "I threw it away, many weeks ago. We work so hard to be accepted-to be good American. In one morning, all is undone. I am angry at Japan." 　A faraway explosion seemed to punctuate his sentence. 　The little grocer shook a fist at the sky. "Dirty Japs!" 　"Not bad," Burroughs said, chuckling. "If Weiss-muller was as good an actor as you are, Harada, I'd be a happy man." 　Harada looked up at the writer, blinking. "Who? What?" 　Moving closer to the counter, Hully went into their prepared spiel. "We've just come from the Japanese Consulate, Mr. Harada. General Consul Kita says you and Morimura are buddies." 　Harada frowned in apparent confusion. "I know no one named Morimura." 　"How about Yoshikawa?" Burroughs asked, innocently. "A rose by any other name... You see, I thought, what with bombs dropping and all, you might be just the guy to help get the vice consul out of the limelight." 　The grocer shook his head. "I know nothing of what you speak." 　"Well," Burroughs said, "to tell you the truth, we were bluffing. Kita didn't mention your name. Matter of fact, I doubt Kita even knows your name, unless the Consulate buys seafood and vegetables from you." 　"They do not." 　"After all, Kita's not the espionage agent-he'd likely be kept out of the know, for security reasons. It's Morimura-that is, Yoshikawa-who's the spy in the woodpile." 　Harada's frown no longer seemed confused, though his words continued down the path of denial: "I understand none of what you say." 　"There's no fifth column in Oahu," Burroughs said with a grin, which quickly vanished. "But there is a tiny network of real spies. That radiophone call was a signal that this Sunday would make a fine morning for a surprise party. Your niece knew something was up- more importantly, she knew you were an agent, just like Otto Kuhn, and Morimura." 　Now the mask dropped and a tiny, but very nasty smile, etched itself on the bland features. "Are these things you can prove?" 　Burroughs shrugged. "Hell, I'll leave that to the FBI." He jerked a thumb at Hully. "My son, here, is the one who really put it together." 　Hully said, "I couldn't stop thinking about Morimura bawling Pearl out-she wasn't one of his conquests; he wasn't her type. Why would she even know him? Then it came to me: through you...." 　"As the grocer making deliveries to the Niumalu," Burroughs said, "you could easily maintain contact with your German 'sleeper' agent. And Pearl was aware of your relationship with both Kuhn and Morimura. After all, she lived with you, up above your shop, before she moved to the Niumalu, so she knew you and Morimura were in league-and she knew or figured out that he was an espionage agent; she even knew his real name. She got wind of something big coming up, and she was going to turn you, and Morimura, in to military intelligence... to show her loyalty to America." 　'To prove herself," Hully said softly, sadly, "to her boyfriend's father." 　Harada held out both empty palms and shook his head, smiling as if this was all too far-fetched, too absurd. "And you think this ... Morimura... killed my niece?" 　"No." Burroughs twitched a smile, nodding right at the grocer. "I think you killed her. I know you killed her. You confronted her about what you considered her disloyalty, to her family, to Japan, and she told you she was going to Colonel Fielder, to tell him everything. You struck her down, with a goddamn rock, crushed 　her skull-then Morimura helped cover it up, by calling Kuhn and having him finger the wrong man." 　Now the grocer folded his arms and his chin raised; his tone was quietly defiant, now. "I would take offense at these accusations, but they are ... foolish." 　"Oh, there's more. You got to thinking about your niece's close friend, that homosexual musician, and got worried that she may have talked to him, shared what she knew. Or perhaps she bragged to you that she had told Terry Mizuha what she knew, thinking it would protect her, would keep you from harming her. Either way, she was too naive, or maybe too nice a kid, to understand that this is war: that one more casualty, more or less, is nothing to a soldier... even if it is his own niece." 　Harada said nothing; however, a faint sneer could be detected under the trim mustache. 　A slight tremor in his voice, Hully said, "You made an unscheduled, unexpected delivery of seafood to the Niumalu-the day after your niece was murdered! If you had any human compassion or decency, you'd know how suspicious, how wrong that would seem to a normal person." 　"You murdered Terry Mizuha at the hotel, probably in his room," Burroughs said, "tossed him in your pickup truck, like another swordfish, and hauled him to the beach." 　Hully added, "Though you probably picked up your pal Morimura to help you carry him down that rocky slope to the beach." 　Harada smiled, just a little, then looked at each man, one at a time, with quiet contempt. "You will try to prove this, how?" 　Burroughs shrugged. "Like I said, it's not our job to prove it-that's up to the feds, and Detective Jardine. But they're a little busy this morning ... so I thought I'd help out." 　Burroughs brought his hand out from around his back and aimed the Lьger at the grocer's chest. 　"What is this?" Harada asked, only his eyes betraying any alarm. 　"It's what we Americans call a citizen's arrest." 　The backroom door flew open and suddenly Morimura was at Burroughs's side, pressing the nose of a .38 revolver into the writer's neck. 　"This is not judo," Morimura said. "This is a gun." 　The slender, handsome spy wore golf clothes-a checkered sweater vest over a white shirt and knee pants with high checkered socks; well, Kita had said Morimura had a golf date, this morning. 　With a sigh, Burroughs set the little Lьger on the counter. The grocer did not take the weapon, rather he reached under the counter and swung out a sawed-off shotgun. Hully and his father exchanged glances-this was not going quite as planned. 　"I hope you'll forgive me for eavesdropping," Morimura said, looking a little ridiculous in the golf outfit, though not enough so to take the edge off the weapon he'd stuck in the writer's neck. 　'Til let it go this time," Burroughs said, as the cold steel of the spy's gun dimpled his flesh. 　Morimura's expression was smug but his eyes had a 　wildness, a fear, in them. "You should write detective stories, Mr. Burroughs. You put the pieces together very well." 　The writer looked sideways at his captor. "What now, Morimura? You don't mind if I don't call you 'Yoshikawa'-I'm used to you the other way." 　Morimura offered half a smile. "The ineffectual, buf-foonish ladies' man, you mean? I must give you credit, Mr. Burroughs-you never did accept that masquerade." 　"By any yardstick, buddy, you're no diplomat. You'll face the firing squad, as a spy." 　The half smile dissolved into a full scowl. "You're facing a firing squad right now, Mr. Burroughs-something I have no intention of doing." 　"What are you going to do?" Burroughs did his best to show no fear; and he wasn't afraid for himself-but his son, at his side, that was something again. "You can't just kill us." 　"Really?" Morimura laughed softly. "Do you see anyone around to be a witness? Mr. Harada and I will be on the tiny island of Niihau, by nightfall, and a few days later, a submarine will take us to ... friendlier waters." 　Burroughs locked eyes with the spy. "Did you know, Morimura? Did you know today was the day?" 　The spy smirked, shaking his head. "I suspected- all signs indicated that was the case... but it might have been next week, or the next. What was the difference, with your military so obsessed with fighting fifth columnists, and ignoring the real threat?" 　Hully was looking at the little grocer, the big hollow eyes of the man's shotgun looking back at him. "How could you do it? How could you kill your own niece?" 　Harada's features were impassive, even proud. "She was a traitor." 　Hully's eyes were on fire, his nostrils flaring as he said, "She was a beautiful, talented girl, and you murdered her, you heartless son of a bitch!" 　Harada shrugged. 　Morimura's smile was pursed, like a kiss, and then he said, "Who was it said, 'War is hell'? Whoever that wise man was, he was so right, even if he was an American ... now if you will please to step in back, in the storeroom." 　Burroughs put up his hands and so did Hully, and Morimura reached behind him and pushed the backroom door open with one hand, and with the other he kept the revolver trained on the writer, the grocer keeping a bead on Hully. Morimura motioned with the gun for them to follow him into the back. 　The spy did not see Adam Sterling come into the open doorway behind him, and the grocer didn't see the FBI agent in time to warn Morimura, either. With a swift, vicious chop to the base of the neck, Sterling sent Morimura sprawling to the floor, the .38 tumbling from the spy's hands. 　Burroughs caught the weapon in midair, and Hully snatched the Lьger from the counter, while Sterling was pointing a .38 revolver of his own at the grocer behind the counter. 　Though he had a shotgun in hand, Harada was facing three guns, all trained on him, from various directions. 　"Drop it," Sterling advised. "You can't win this game." 　Harada thought that over; then he swung the sawed-off shotgun up and around and under his chin and squeezed both triggers, the explosion shaking everything-and everyone-in the small shop. What had been Harada's head dripped and dribbled and slithered down the weird jars of roots, herbs and skeletons, crawling like strange sea creatures. Then the mostly headless body slid down to the floor and sat, out of sight. 　Hully was covering his mouth, horrified. Through his fingers, he said the obvious: "He ... he took his own life." 　"You're going to be seeing a lot of that," Burroughs said, "in the coming days." 　Sterling was hauling Morimura to his feet; the dazed spy, his perfect hair askew, looking fairly idiotic in the golf togs, gave the FBI man a bewildered look. 　"Judo," Sterling explained. 　Less than two hours after it had begun, the sneak air attack on Pearl Harbor was over. The silver planes again receded into specks on the horizon, taking off in varied directions, one more act of deception designed to confuse the enemy as to the attackers' origin point. The raiders left behind a Pearl Harbor that was a smoldering, twisted landscape of inconceivable devastation. The two pieces of the Arizona lay on the bottom of the harbor; the West Virginia, too. The Utah and Oklahoma, capsized; the California sinking; the Cur-tiss, Helena, and Honolulu damaged; the Raleigh barely afloat; the Nevada, the Vestal, beached. Fires raged on bomb-damaged ships-the Maryland, the Pennsylvania, the Tennessee. 　On Ford Island, the husks of dozens of planes lay in charred disarray, while hangars burned around them. On the oil-pooled surface of the harbor floated debris, much of it human. And along the Oahu shores, the pummeled air bases continued to ooze smoke. 　Corpsman attempted, often vainly, to identify bodies and body parts at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital. At the base of Alewa Heights, just below the Shuncho-ro teahouse-where the Japanese vice consul had wooed geishas and perpetrated espionage-a makeshift morgue was set up. 　The triumph of the Japanese, however, was not complete. Huge fuel tanks, holding millions of barrels of oil, had gone unsullied. The Navy Yard itself, that sprawl of repair facilities and shops, was secure. The Naval ammo depot went untouched, as did the submarine pens. Smaller warships by the score escaped damage; and the raiders had failed to find-much less destroy-the aircraft carriers of the Pacific Fleet. 　The greatest miscalculation, of course, was the nature of the attack itself-the sheer villainy of such a peacetime assault To the Japanese military, this was a glorious day of victory, but just one day-a war, after all, was made of many days. 　But December 7, 1941, was not just any day. 　Americans would remember it 　 　 　 　Epilogue 　 　On the afternoon after the attack-in response to a radio request for help from all able-bodied men-Ed and Hully Burroughs were issued Springfield rifles and dispatched to patrol the waterfront in a civilian guard, helping to dig slit trenches along the shore. 　With the help of his friend Colonel Kendall Fielder, Burroughs earned the distinction of becoming the oldest American correspondent to cover the Second World War, making three trips to Pacific war zones. He was vocal in his support for Hawaii's Japanese-Americans, though his stereotypical, propagandist portrayal of "Japs" in his WWII novel, Tarzan and the Foreign Legion, rivaled that of the Germans in Tarzan the Untamed. 　Colonel Fielder also became known for championing the rights of Japanese-Americans; possibly he'd been touched in some private way by the deaths of his son and his son's nisei fiancee. At any rate, largely due to the efforts of Fielder and a few others-including FBI agent Adam Sterling-99 percent of Hawaii's 160,000 Japanese-Americans remained free, unlike the widespread mainland interments. 　Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Burroughs turned his hand to mystery writing, even briefly converting Tar-zan into a detective, though without particular success, including a wild crime story entitled "More Fun! More People Killed!" that The Saturday Evening Post turned down. 　After suffering several heart attacks, Edgar Rice Burroughs died in bed, on March 19, 1950, slumping over the funny papers, which were open to 'Tarzan." 　Ed Burroughs was very proud of his son Hully, who a few weeks after the Pearl Harbor raid enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Hickam Field; First Lieutenant Hul-bert Burroughs went on to be a distinguished aerial combat photographer. Toward the end of the war, Hully married Marion Thrasher; after his father's death, he took the reins of ERB, Inc., working with his brother John Coleman Burroughs to effectively administer the legacy of Edgar Rice Burroughs. 　Otto Kuhn and his wife were arrested at a beach house, and imprisoned at the Sand Island Detention Center; Tadeo Yoshikawa (alias Tadashi Morimura) was transported to an interment camp in Arizona and, in August 1942, exchanged for American diplomats held in Japan. 　Kuhn and Yoshikawa were two of only a dozen individuals determined to have actively engaged in prewar espionage in Hawaii; grocer Tosbio Harada was another. All of them had been sent to Hawaii under false names and/or pretenses; none were representatives of any local fifth column of Japanese-Americans. No such fifth column was ever shown to exist. 　Sam Fujimoto fought with the celebrated all-Japanese 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and later graduated from Yale Law School, becoming a successful Honolulu attorney. 　Harry Kamana and a smaller version of his band toured the Pacific Theater for the USO. 　After the war, Detective John Jardine was instrumental in the cleaning up of police corruption on Oahu; he retired in 1968, died a year later, widely regarded as the finest homicide detective Oahu had ever known. 　Both Admiral Kimmel and General Short were forced to retire and a hurried government report in January 1942 branded them with "dereliction of duty." Though a later report absolved them of this charge, the stigma remains, and Admiral Kimmel's son Edward has made a concerted effort to have his father and General Short advanced on the retired lists to their highest wartime ranks of four-star admiral and three-star general. 　General Short in his later years spent much time on his garden, cultivating flowers, not actively seeking rehabilitation of his reputation; he died in 1949. Admiral Kimmel-though on December 7, 1941, he seemed to blame himself, at least in part-spent the rest of his life trying to restore his good name, dying of a heart attack in 1968. 　The exact circumstances of the attack on Pearl 　Harbor, and the reasons for the success of that attack, remain the subject of controversy and debate, involving Congress, the president and media coverage, even sixty years after the fact. 　What did the Washington High Command know concerning Japanese intentions and military targets prior to the raid, and why did Washington fail to pass along this information to Kimmel and Short? If the general and admiral had been privy to this information, would they have taken more seriously the Mori message and other evidence of espionage the FBI agent and the creator of Tarzan brought to their attention, the Saturday evening before that fateful Sunday morning? 　This Pearl Harbor mystery remains unsolved. 　 　 　A Tip of the Panama 　 　This book is a combination of the factual and the fanciful. Details herein of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor-including espionage mat led up to that attack-are largely factual, although the murder case is a fictional one; and I make no claim, large or small, for this novel as any kind of definitive account of this pivotal event in our history. Any blame for historical and/or geographical inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of conflicting source material. 　Like my previous "disaster mysteries," The Titanic Murders (1999) and The Hindenburg Murders (2000), this novel features a real-life writer as amateur detective. Edgar Rice Burroughs was a great childhood favorite of mine; I was an avid reader of both the Tarzan tales and ERB's science fiction, well into my teens. The narrative technique of separating two protagonists and following the adventures of each in alternating chapters-used in this book-is one I learned from Burroughs. Tarzan the Untamed, incidentally, was my favorite of the novels-and the controversy over that "anti-German" title is accurately reported herein. 　Burroughs and his son Hulbert were indeed present on Oahu-and living at the Niumalu Hotel-on December 7, 1941; they were, in fact, playing tennis when the bombing began. My fictionalized portrayal of them is based largely upon two wonderful biographies: the massive, seminal Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan (1975) by Irwin Forges; and a book I found as compulsively readable as any Burroughs novel, Tarzan Forever (1999) by John Tali-aferro. Also helpful were the early Burroughs biographies, The Big Swingers (1967) by Robert W. Fenton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965) by Richard A. Lupoff. So was Tarzan of the Movies (1968) by Gabe Esso. 　A number of characters in The Pearl Harbor Murders are historical figures and appear under their real names, including (of course) General Short and Admiral Kimmel. Colonel Kendall Fielder existed, but the character Bill Fielder is fictional; grocer Yoshio Harada existed, but Pearl Harada is fictional. Adam Sterling is a composite of several FBI agents, one of whom lived at the Niumalu and was friendly with Ed Burroughs. The Kuhns, Colonel Teske (name changed), Tadeo Yoshikawa (a.k.a. Tadashi Morimura), Fred Bivens, George Elliot, Joe Lockard, William Outerbridge, the Morton family, Nagao Kita, and John Jardine are historical figures; Dan Pressman, Jack Stanton, Sam Fu-jimoto, Terry Mizuha, Frank Kaupiko, and Harry 　Kamana are not, although most have real-life counterparts. Marjorie Petty did visit Oahu shortly before the attack, but (to my knowledge) never dated Hully Burroughs; as a buff of pinup art and artists, I couldn't resist noting the presence in Honolulu of this real, live Petty Girl. 　Despite the use of real names and an underlying basis in history, these are all characters in a novel, fictionalized and doing the author's bidding. 　My fact-based novels about fictional 1930s/'40s-era Chicago private detective Nathan Heller have required extensive research not unlike what was required here. As usual, my Heller research assistant, George Hagenauer, provided valuable input and came up with research materials on both Pearl Harbor and Edgar Rice Burroughs. 　Many books on both Hawaii and the Pearl Harbor attack were consulted, but none was more valuable than Pearl Harbor Ghosts (1991) by Thurston Clarke. Mr. Clarke's wonderful book is a vivid picture of Honolulu in 1941 filtered through a modem prism; this work- along with Tarzan Forever-provided the spine of my research, and I am indebted to him. 　Other Hawaii references consulted include: All the Best in Hawaii (1949), Sydney Clark; Aloha Waikiki (1985), DeSoto Brown; Around the World Confidential (1956), Lee Mortimer; Detective Jardine: Crimes in Honolulu (1984), John Jardine with Edward Rohr-bough and Bob Krauss; Hawaii: A Profile (1940), Merle Colby; Hawaii Recalls (1982), DeSoto Brown, Anne Ellett, Gary Giernza; Hawaii: Restless Rampart (1941), Joseph Barber, Jr.; Hawaiian Tapestry (1937), Antoinette Withington; Hawaii! "... Wish You Were Here." (1994), Ray and Jo Miller; Hawaiian Yesterdays (1982), Ray Jerome Baker; Honolulu-Waikiki Handbook (1994), J. D. Bisignani; The Japanese in Hawaii: A Century of Struggle (1985), Roland Kotani; Remembering Pearl Harbor (1984), Michael Slack-man; Roaming Hawaii (1937), Harry A. Franck; The View from Diamond Head (1986), Don Hibbard and David Franzen; Waikiki Beachboy (1989), Grady Tim-mons; and When You Go to Hawaii (1930), Townsend Griffiss. The latter-a book I stumbled onto in a Honolulu used-book store while researching the Nathan Heller novel Damned in Paradise (1996)-was again particularly useful. 　Two especially helpful references were Pearl Harbor (1969) by A. J. Barker, and the groundbreaking Day of Infamy (1957) by Walter Lord. I also screened the film Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), directed by Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasuku. Other valuable references on the attack include: At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (1981), Gordon W. Prange; The Broken Seal (1967), Ladislas Far-ago; Dec. 7 1941 (1988), Gordon W. Prange with Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon; Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath (1982), John Toland; Long Day's Journey into War: December 7, 1941 (1991), Stanley Weintraub; Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial (1986), Richard A. Wisniewski; and Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History (1986), Gordon W. Prange with Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon. 　Internet research led me to several useful articles, including "Alewa Teahouse One of the Last of Its Kind" by Rod Ohira (Honolulu Star-Bulletin); "The Pearl Harbor Spy" by Wil Deac (thehistorynet.com); and the wonderful overview article "Turning Points: One Sunday in December" by Edward Oxford (American History magazine), the single most important research document for my portrayal of the attack itself. 　I would like to thank editor Natalee Rosenstein of Berkley Prime Crime for having the foresight to allow me to do this book sooner rather than later-and then to graciously grant me a brief but vital extension; my agent and friend, Dominick Abel; and of course my wife, Barbara Collins, who interrupted her own writing to help me survive various sneak attacks along the way. 　 　 　 　About the Author 　 　Max Allan Collins has earned an unprecedented nine Private Eye Writers of America "Shamus" nominations for his "Nathan Heller" historical thrillers, winning twice (True Detective, 1983, and Stolen Away, 1991). 　A Mystery Writers of America "Edgar" nominee in both fiction and nonfiction categories, Collins has been hailed as "the Renaissance man of mystery fiction." His credits include five suspense-novel series, film criticism, short fiction, songwriting, trading-card sets and movie tie-in novels, including such international bestsellers as In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, and Saving Private Ryan. 　He scripted the internationally syndicated comic strip "Dick Tracy" from 1977 to 1993, is cocreator of the comic-book features "Ms. Tree" and "Mike Danger," and has written the "Batman" comic book and newspaper strip. DreamWorks has bought motion-picture rights to his 1998 graphic novel, Road to Perdition. 　Working as an independent filmmaker in his native Iowa, he wrote and directed the suspense film Mommy, starring Patty McCormack, premiering on Lifetime in 19%, as well as its 1997 sequel, Mommy's Day. The recipient of a record four Iowa Motion Picture Awards for screenwriting, he also wrote The Expert, a 1995 HBO World Premiere film; and wrote and directed the award-winning documentary Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane (1999) and the innovative feature Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market (2000). 　 Collins lives in Muscaline, Iowa, with his wife, writer Barbara Collins, and their teenage son, Nathan.