BEFORE ETERNITY

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Private James Jones was enjoying a quiet Sunday breakfast in the mess hall at Schofield Barracks, 25 miles inland from the silvery beaches of Honolulu, Hawaii. Jones had enlisted in the U.S. Army almost exactly two years earlier from his hometown of Robinson, Illinois. Although weak-eyed and undersized, Jones had readily adapted to life in the Regular Army and was now serving as assistant clerk for Company F, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division. He was on 24-hour guard duty that day, two hours on and four hours off, but his official status as an orderly had permitted him to continue bunking in the company barracks rather than sleep in the cramped, crowded guard house. It would prove to be a lifesaving arrangement.

Jones had just polished off two fried eggs and an extra half-pint of milk when a series of dull explosions resounded from the direction of Wheeler Army Airfield, two miles away. An old-timer at Jones’s table looked up from his pancakes. “They doing some blasting?”

As the explosions intensified, seeming to draw nearer, Jones and others rushed outside to see what was going on. Pressed against a barracks wall and still absentmindedly clutching his bottle of milk, Jones watched in disbelief as a Japanese fighter plane roared by, its machine guns stitching a deadly crossfire down the dusty street. Jones could see the pilot clearly, waving and grinning as he passed. “I shall never forget his face behind the goggles,” Jones remembered decades later. “A white scarf streamed