1 What's That Buzz? Oahu, Hawaii
In his uneasy sleep, he heard a distant, steady hum. Bees.
He often dreamed of the bees, buzzing out behind the small cottage in the Florida Keys where he'd grown up. His mother, Bella, was a fanatic for fresh honey, a staple of her native Italy, where beehives were part of her family's country villa. Bella loved spreading the honey over fresh-baked bread or drizzling it over yogurt. She was born in Florence, of a prosperous family whose leather-tanning business failed, leading them to emigrate through Ellis Island early in the century. On the weekends in Italy, the family would go to a rustic cabin in the Tuscan hills for long, lazy dinners. The table was covered with bowls of fresh berries, cream in beautiful clay pitchers, bowls of yogurt, grilled lamb and rosemary-scented sausages, strong Chianti in green glass pitchers. For dessert there were beautiful sugar-dusted pastries, which the family drizzled with local honey. Bella had learned to gather fresh honey as a child, and in the hills around their rustic country home the family kept beehives. Each weekend night, the trees over the big table on the swept gravel behind the villa swayed in the summer breeze, leaning approvingly down toward the happy diners.
The love of sweetness came with her to America, and in Florida she devotedly tended a half dozen hives behind their home in the Keys. From his tiny bedroom at the back of the house, Scott Bradley James would often hear them droning on hot afternoons while he tried to focus on his schoolwork.
Long after Scott left Florida in 1937 to attend the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, he would hear the bees in his dreams. The buzz would start softly, then grow louder and more insistent as the bees traversed the short distance from the tropical foliage on the fringe of the property to the hives. The bees loved the purple wild orchids, white and green honeysuckle, and bright-pink bougainvillea, returning again and again from their white wooden homes.
He'd been stung plenty but had learned to appreciate the bees' single-minded focus on the mission at hand: creating their tiny kingdom and fighting to build its waxy walls, guarding a queen at its buzzing heart. And the honey was good, raw, and sweet.
As he slept in Hawaii on this Sunday morning in late 1941, the hum began so distantly and softly that Scott was puzzled, even in his dreams, at the bees' lethargy. But then the droning became more insistent, at a pitch he recognized, and in his mind's eye he pictured his mother walking out the back door and heading toward the hives, her smoke pot in hand. He smiled in his sleep.
Then the buzzing changed pitch again, and Scott stirred, half waking. Something did not fit into the normal pattern of his dream. He opened his eyes. Kai, the young woman sleeping by his side, seemed to sense his unease and cried out softly in her sleep. She turned her head slightly, and in the dim first light shining around the edges of the khaki window blind, he could see the small gold cross dangling from her neck.
As he stirred, Scott remembered with pleasure that Kai's parents were away on the Big Island visiting relatives of her mother, a native Hawaiian. He knew they weren't entirely comfortable that their daughter had been dating an officer lately. He'd told them that he had duty aboard his battleship, USS
West Virginia, that weekend and wouldn't be spending time with their only daughter. Changing a duty section sign-in sheet was easy. He had quietly slipped down the ship's after brow and jumped on his 1938 Indian Sport Scout motorcycle.
As he felt her next to him, all the images of the night before came alive in his mind. They had slept together for the first time, and Kai had fallen asleep well after midnight. He had stayed up another hour, smoking and looking at her. God, it was so good being here next to her. He wondered where all of this would lead.
Suddenly the lovely dreams and memories vanished. The buzzing climbed to a crescendo, and instantly he was fully awake. That sound was not made by South Florida honeybees.
Aircraft were passing overhead, many aircraft, flying in close formation above the dark green hills in the Lualualei Valley, where the small bungalow stood. They were not American planes. Scott loved the beautiful view out over the Waianae Mountains from the lanai in the back, where he had spent many evenings alongside Kai. Now all that was changing.
As the insistent buzz rose and rose, the full impact of his situation landed: absent without leave from his assigned duty, in bed with a chief petty officer's daughter, and uncertain why waves of planes were flying overhead. His stomach clenched, and he realized he was scared.
He reached for his watch on the nightstand. It was 7:30 a.m.
The buzzing grew even louder.
He stepped outside the bungalow and looked to the east for confirmation. Long lines of Japanese Zeros were overhead. Jesus, he thought, where are our fighters? He scanned the horizon, searching for U.S. aircraft and seeing none. All he registered besides the Zeros were the high, heavy rain clouds in the distance above the mountain range, which seemed gravid, with dark gray underbellies, serving as a cold, uncaring backdrop to the enemy aircraft whose engines whined louder and louder as they passed by.
He walked back into the bedroom and shook Kai awake. He leaned over her and kissed her. She murmured something he couldn't understand. "Those are Japanese aircraft, and they are headed toward Pearl," he said. "Do you have an air raid shelter on this compound?"
Confused, she shook her head. "I don't know."
Scott hugged her quickly. "Stay inside. Wait for the shore patrol. I have to get back to my ship." He walked outside, kick-started his motorcycle, and roared off.
Copyright © 2024 by Admiral James Stavridis, USN. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
