“The Japanese just bombed Hawaii, Pearl Harbor.” They had gone there with Will to look at the navy ships. “I heard it on the radio. It’s still going on. Oh my God, Aud…oh my God…please God, don’t let Will be there today.” It was just after eight a.m. in Hawaii, and neither of them knew what he was planning to do that day. Then Audrey remembered that he sometimes went out to work on his plane on the weekends, and he had always been an early riser, even as a kid, and especially once he was in the military.
“I have to feed Mom, and I don’t want to tell her. Not until we know more about it. I’ll call you back after she eats lunch. And Lizzie…pray…”
Lizzie felt too paralyzed with fear to even speak, and just hung up and went back to the radio her parents were listening to. It sounded terrible. There were explosions and fires. One ship had been bombed four times. Lizzie sat listening, deathly pale, her hands clenched in her lap.
Audrey’s hands were shaking while she fed her mother, but Ellen didn’t notice, as she chatted to Audrey, who nodded and smiled and tried to act as though everything was normal, but nothing was. Ellen seemed to take forever to eat, and Audrey hurried back to the kitchen as soon as she could get away. She closed the door and turned the radio on just loud enough to hear, but not so her mother could hear it in the downstairs bedroom she slept in now.
The news was terrifying. The attacks continued and the USS Arizona was sinking. Its fully loaded fuel tanks were feeding the explosions, according to the news commentator. And worst of all for Audrey, the airfields had been bombed too. It had been a vicious attack, which would have far-reaching effects. But all Audrey could think of was her brother, praying that somehow he had been far enough from the attack to be spared. She sat in the kitchen for an hour, listening to the news. The attack lasted less than two hours, the report on the radio was confusing as to whether nineteen or twenty ships had been destroyed. The early estimate was that thousands had been killed, and maybe as many as a thousand people injured. As she listened, they said that several hundred planes had been destroyed and the airfield decimated. They confirmed that the USS Arizona had sunk after being attacked four times by Japanese bombers, and the ship had taken many men, who had been unable to escape, down with it.
It was after three when Audrey called Lizzie. Her voice was shaking, and Lizzie was crying.
“We just have to wait and see what we hear now,” Audrey said, trying to sound stronger than she felt. “He probably won’t be able to get in touch with us for a while. It must be chaos there. The navy will contact us if he’s injured, or worse. Lizzie, we just have to believe that he’s okay.”
“What if he isn’t?” Lizzie sobbed.
“He has to be. We all love him too much to lose him.” But so did thousands of other parents, children, and men and women who had loved ones in Hawaii and would be waiting for news now. Audrey felt guilty keeping it from her mother. She would find out sooner or later. She listened to the radio at times, she read the newspapers, and she had a right to know that her son might be in danger. Audrey told her as calmly as she could, but the news was shocking. Audrey told her that the American naval base in Hawaii had been attacked. Ellen looked stunned, and asked Audrey to bring the radio in so they could listen together. Everything they heard on the radio was terrifying, and everyone in the country was wondering if the Japanese would bomb other American cities next.
Ellen and Audrey were awake until late that night, and the next day President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on the Japanese. Shortly after they heard his speech to the American people, the doorbell rang, and Audrey opened it with a pounding heart. They weren’t expecting anyone, and Mrs. Beavis was with her mother. Two naval officers stood at the door when she opened it. Audrey felt faint for a minute.
“Is Mrs. Parker home, Mrs. Ellen Parker?” they asked politely. Audrey had grown up with naval officers around her all her life, and she recognized immediately that one of them was a captain, the same rank as her father, and the other one was an officer of the Navy Air Force. She was sure that they knew who her father was, and that her grandfather had been a vice admiral, which was why they had sent such high-ranking officers. She was terrified of what they were going to tell her, and she was afraid to ask. She didn’t want to know. She wanted him to be alive, even if he was injured. He was only twenty-five years old and such a bright shining star, they couldn’t lose him. He was turning twenty-six in a few weeks.