The end of the beginning...

I finished reading Winds on Thursday evening. It's a great story and I've learned a lot from reading it. The fateful day arrived. The suspense was killing me. Janice is a witness to the attack at Ford Island (Battleship Row) from her Pearl City suburban home and she has a tough time convincing her Chinese housekeeper that it is not a drill. I said previously that I found the character of Janice to be sort of one dimensional. That was back in Chapter 12. Now, forty-seven chapters and 777 pages later, we finally get to see what she is made of. She does not disappoint. She remains remarkably composed throughout the ordeal. Even when her husband Warren shows up at the front door, bloodied from crash landing his SBD Dauntless dive bomber, she remains calm and dutifully tends to his wounds while he recounts the Enterprise's interception of the attackers and the subsequent aerial "dog fight" that ensues. Curiously, Warren seems only minimally disturbed buy the death of his crew mates DeLashmutt and Plantz. "Poor DeLashmutt..." he says, "I yelled but he didn't answer...he was certainly dead." Perhaps it was the adrenaline that kept these two from falling into panic; then again, perhaps military families are trained for this sort of thing. As for Byron, that restless, underachieving middle child, he is fighting for his own and his submarine crew's lives in a similar attack at Clark Air Base, on Luzon Island in the Philippines. This installation was also destroyed by the Japanese on December 8, 1941, just 12 hours after the infamous attack at Hawaii. We don't hear much about Clark Field in the history books. As Wouk acknowledges, the destruction at Clark was at least as catastrophic as at Pearl Harbor but the incident is virtually ignored by historians because "Clark Field was half a day late for immortality." Meanwhile, Pug is taking every form of transportation available in order to get out of Moscow and to Hawaii for his new assignment. I won't say what that assignment is (because I want my readers to read the book!), but I will say that while the bombs were falling on Oahu and Luzon, other kinds of bombs were falling on Pug, even though he was safely thousands of miles away from the action. My heart aches for this guy: a fine, honorable man who just can't get a break. Later in conversation with Warren, Pug describes Tokyo, Japan as a pathetic shantytown that "smells from end to end of sewage and bad fish." This image of "the ugliest city in the world" runs contrary to my perceptions of pre-war Japan. I don't know why I should think so, but I thought that by 1940, Tokyo was a thoroughly sophisticated modern city. Evidently, it was not. As for Natalie and Uncle Aaron, that's another nail-biter. They are still stuck in Italy when the bombs start falling on the other side of the world and Mussolini stupidly declares war on the USA. Natalie has to make some agonizing decisions. I caught myself shaking my head in disgust when she finally realizes her recklessness (rather, foolishness) in trying to fetch her uncle out of Italy. Then, when she makes what seems to make a safe and sensible decision (for the first time in a long while) regarding their plans for departure, it turns out to be a mistake! I won't even begin to share my frustrations about Rhoda! By chapter 57, The Bouleversement (in English: The Reversal), the story moves very quickly, as if Wouk is tying up lose ends in preparation for the next installment of the saga, War and Remembrance. Winds of War, a mere 1047 pages, packs a lot of historical detail into the story of Pug Henry, and I must say that I never once grew weary or bored while reading it. In fact, my experience was quite the opposite. Steve says that Remembrance is much more graphic and descriptive of the crimes and atrocities that when on during this war. This makes me cautious about reading it. I abhor violence and cruelty, and even the one or two incidents described in Winds tend to haunt me. I may skip reading Remembrance for now. Steve got me a whole stack of Michener novels that I'm anxious to start on. I started reading Caravans last night. Its about Afghanistan and I already think its awesome!