Days of Infamy

He reached the terraced area, the coops just ahead.   From here was the most beautiful view.   The sky to the east was bright orange and pink.  Below him were the terraced fields of sugar cane, one thousand acres, and above him were the other six hundred.  It was such a clear day.   The city of Honolulu shimmered below and to the right of it was Pearl Harbor where all the ships lay, quiet but powerful.  What a great sight those big battleships were!  Everything still seemed asleep.   The only movements were a few small boats that seemed no bigger than ants and which left tiny trails of foam behind them.  Everything was so small that no humans could be seen.

As he got closer, he could hear the general clucking of the chickens, but as he got closer he began to individualize them.

His father and he had built the coops from lumber around the plantation.   The posts that the roofs supported were the trunks and limbs of some puny cumquat trees that Mr. Van Meer requested be chopped down.  The roofs were corrugated tin, which came from some old sheds that had collapsed.   The floors of the coops came from old wooden crates that were scattered about when the plantation owners had grown pineapples.   The chicken wire was purchased in Honolulu and it was the only real expense.   The feed troughs were made from the gutters of an old packing plant that was still standing but out of use.  The coops had taken weeks to build but Kobi was proud of the work and pleased that his father and he had done it together.

Kobi opened the small shed they had built.   He filled up a large tin can with feed from the fifty-pound burlap sack, which was now only about a third full.  His father would have to go the feed store, about eight miles up the dirt road north of them.  If it rained they would have to wait.  Their old Model A Ford truck could never make it through the mud, especially since the road went up and down numerous hills.   His father, brother and he got stuck on it many times, had to desert the truck and walk back home and wait to get the truck when the road dried out.

The chickens musically clucked as Kobi dispensed the feed into their trough.  Even though they were dumb animals, it always seemed to Kobi that the chickens were greeting him and then thanking him for their care.   One chicken did not come forward in the coop.  Her feathers seemed to droop. Was she sick?  He’d ask his father about her.  While the chickens pecked at their feed, Kobi walked down the hill to the next terrace where there was a water hydrant.   He filled up a bucket and toted it back, caring not to slosh any water out.   He doled out the water into the water troughs, using another tin can.

The rooster paraded himself in the open yard.   With his sharp talons he was cutting criss-cross patterns into the damp earth.   With Kobi as his only audience, he strutted over to his trough to get his feed.  He poured out some water while the rooster took some fast pecks at the feed.   Through some mechanism or impulse the rooster fluttered his stubby wings and rose several inches off the ground, almost as if he were showing off to his benefactor. He lit down quickly and then turned in the opposite direction, at once deciding to leave the barnyard stage to retire into his coop in the corner.

Kobi picked up one of the cardboard boxes in the shed and proceeded to gather up the eggs.  Each hen had a separate coop and the hinges for each one were makeshift, strips from some old leather belts.  After collecting the batch he brought the eggs over to the faucet and washed each one carefully, then he dried them with a rag and placed them back into the box.

As he turned to go back, he heard a strange sound.  He looked toward the harbor.  In the sky and descending were a flock of planes, dozens of them.   With so many and even far away, they created a droning hum, like a swarm of bees.   Each one looked no bigger than his smallest fingernail.  Was it some kind of maneuver?   Were they going to land at Hickham Field?   The planes dropped lower as they approached the harbor.  They were flying over the fleet. 

But no, oh no.  There were orange flashes.  Pom! Pom!