8th Grade Short Story

I Could See the Red Sun

by Jacob P.

The year, 1941. The day, Sunday, December 7th. The time is 7:46 A.M in Pearl Harbor. The sun's reflection on the water, and the sky's color in shades of orange, yellow, and blue. I was aboard the USS Arizona with my brother Mike. We both had different jobs. He was a soldier and I was a sailor. My name is Leo. If there was one word to describe me, it would be skinny. I have slicked back blonde hair, but you can't see it because of the sailor cap. I was mopping up the starboard deck when my brother Mike saw me mopping.

¨You missed a spot,¨ he would tease me.

¨Then you clean it!¨ I would yell back.

I always looked up to my brother because he was a soldier. I've always wanted to be a soldier. But I was never fit like my brother. The deck was finally clean

Then, at 7:54, the first of the planes came into sight. They were so close to the ground, I could see the red sun on the sides of the planes. At 7:55 the first torpedo hits the water and strikes the side of the USS Oklahoma. The Japanese were bombing us.

The next ten minutes went by with a blur. The Oklahoma sank, many bombs hit, almost all of the ships were on fire, after about 15 minutes of pure destruction, I heard the whistle of a bomb. The bomb hits the USS Arizona. The bomb goes right through the deck, in the spot I just cleaned. After five seconds, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, the bomb blows. It is said the USS Arizona was lifted almost 20 feet out of the water. I don't remember anything happening after the bomb blew. I just remember looking at my brother, who was at the guns. He didn't see me, but I saw him, and that was the last time I did see him.

The Oklahoma sank immediately and the bombs just kept coming. The planes just kept shooting. I was in the water, it was hot. There was metal in the water and I was getting tired of treading, so I grabbed on, The metal was hot so I burned my left arm. The water made the pain unbearable. The Arizona was sinking fast and there were still people left inside. An officer on top of the already more than half sunk Arizona yelled to the soldiers and sailors in the water.

¨We need help!¨ I got up next to the officer and I heard the people screaming for help on the inside. We tried to get them out but it was impossible. The water filling in the Arizona finally got to the top, and we could no longer hear the sailors. They were gone. The bodies lost forever. The oil leaking from the sunken ships caught on fire from all of the Japs shooting down on us. I was still on top of what remained of the USS Arizona. The screams of the burning sailors in the water rung in my ears for a long time. All of the smoke from the sinking ships filled the air to where you could no longer see the sun. Many bombs from the Japs still rained down on us. It looked like hell came upon us. There were some pieces of wood and metal floating on top of the water, so I climbed on top of a piece of wood and started paddling off the shore. I couldn't move my arm so I used my right arm.

I got to the shore in ten minutes. When I got on shore I looked at my injuries. My arm was very blistered. My head and my nose were bleeding. There was a piece of wood about an inch deep in my thigh, and my ankle was puffed up. I needed to get to the hospital which was about a half a mile away. With my bad ankle it would take a while. A few other survivors had the same idea, I had to get there fast. Luckily I was ahead of most of them.

But I knew my luck wouldn't last. The first wave of Japanese planes left and another wave came in. This wave just finished off what the first wave couldn't. For ten minutes, the planes shot every sailor that was still in the water and bombed every ship still floating. A few bombers decided to bomb the shore and shoot the injured heading for the hospital. Since I was near a group of injured sailors who were ahead of most heading to the hospital, they went for us first. They shot at me with everything they had, like I could fight back. I ran as fast as I could with my bad ankle. I ran for the trees, and the next thing I knew, the group that was in front of me were all lying lifeless on the beach. After the ten minutes passed, the planes were gone, smoke filled the sky, the harbor blood red and filled with lifeless bodies, the ships with captured souls still underneath the decks.

I had finally made it to the U.S. Naval Hospital and it was one of the worst things I have ever seen. Injured people were everywhere, there was no room for anyone else in the hospital, and people were running up and down the streets not knowing what to do. I felt sick, I knew I would never get in to get treated. I am going to die. The flesh around the piece of wood in my thigh had already started to get infected, and the blood from my head and nose was still running and I could not move or feel my ankle. I tried to push my way through the crowd of burnt and bloody people to get to the hospital, but there were too many. Then a bunch of people were running into the crowd to get to the hospital, and I got pushed from behind and fell and hit my head against the ground, my head injury got bigger.

I could not hear anything but a ringing noise. Everything was blurry and moving very slow. I was tired, I could not move my limbs, I just lay there staring at the red sun in the sky. I need to close my eyes. I thought to myself, and so I did, And the last image I ever saw was the sun, it looked like a red sun, just like the ones on the sides of the Japanese planes.