“This battle has been going on for nearly three hours,” the man continued. “One of the bombs dropped within fifty feet of KTU tower. It is no joke. It is a real war.”
Mary Marder looked at her husband gravely and then at her son. Her eyes welled up and she reached across the table to grasp Charlie’s hand tightly. Winston pulled out his wallet and threw bills blindly on the table, then he pulled Mary to her feet and shepherded his reeling family outside.
In their brownstone on the Upper East Side, Winston, Mary, and Charlie spent the rest of that Sunday the same way millions of Americans did, huddled around their radio, terrified that Japanese planes would soon be attacking the U.S. mainland.
Charlie became filled with an emotion other than fear. He was furious. A sneak attack on Honolulu by the Japanese—he could think of nothing more cowardly.
The moment had been inevitable. Anyone with basic cognitive skills had been able to see for months that sooner or later the United States was going to have to make a choice about whether it was going to enter the war or allow the Fascists to seize Europe.
Charlie had long ago concluded that the United States needed to do the former. He had listened to all of Edward R. Murrow’s broadcasts about the Nazi bombing of London the previous year, in September 1940. Since then, the Germans had started attacking American ships in the Atlantic Ocean; a U-boat had torpedoed the USS Kearny in October, killing eleven navy men. President Roosevelt had begun painting a dire picture of what the Western Hemisphere would look like under Nazi control; in a speech just a few weeks before Charlie’s birthday, the president had claimed that he’d obtained a secret map made by the Nazis showing how after they seized Europe, they intended to carve up Central and South America into five vassal states. Message: they’re headed to our hemisphere next.
Neither Charlie nor his parents were fans of FDR, but that speech had affected him. The president had acknowledged how difficult it was for Americans to grasp what the Nazis were doing, “to adjust ourselves to the shocking realities of a world in which the principles of common humanity and common decency are being mowed down by the firing squads of the Gestapo.” FDR added that some critics thought perhaps the American people had grown so “fat, and flabby, and lazy” they would be “now no match for the regimented masses who have been trained in the Spartan ways of ruthless brutality.” But nothing could be further from the truth, he’d said, as if anticipating the Pearl Harbor attack: “We Americans have cleared our decks and taken our battle stations. We stand ready in the defense of our nation and the faith of our fathers to do what God has given us the power to see as our full duty.”
Our duty, Charlie recalled. And our homeland is now directly under attack.
His father was studying his face. “Don’t get any ideas, Charlie,” Winston said.
The news got worse throughout the day. Wave after wave of Japanese aircraft had killed at least four hundred Americans, though accurate numbers were difficult to come by; it was possible that thousands had been killed. The governor of Hawaii revealed that it hadn’t just been sailors killed; civilians in Honolulu had been slaughtered as well. Unconfirmed reports suggested that the U.S. battleships Oklahoma and West Virginia had been sunk, along with up to seven U.S. destroyers. More than three hundred American airplanes were believed to have been obliterated.
Later that night, after Mary had fallen asleep on the couch, Winston turned off the radio and guided his son into his study, where he poured eighteen-year-old scotch into two glasses. A single lamp illuminated the wood-paneled room, which was packed with books of law and history and held one small locked file cabinet where he kept papers too important to leave at his downtown office.
Winston eased his bulky frame into his favorite leather chair and motioned Charlie to the sofa. They sat silently for a few minutes, the only sound a muted tick from the nearby desk clock. Charlie looked at his dad, a big bear of a man whose hair was beginning to thin up top. Winston looked at his son, his only child, the person he knew best in the world.
“You have to graduate in May,” his father said.
“Tomorrow, I’m going to register with Selective Service,” Charlie responded. “It’s the law. I’m twenty-one.”
“I know that,” said Winston. The lamp sat to his left, silhouetting his face. “We anticipated this day. Your mother will push you to go to divinity school to escape the draft.”
“Divinity school?” Charlie laughed.
“Yes, divinity students get deferments,” Winston said. “Of course, she already asked me to look into getting you a job at the draft board. Another way to avoid shipping out.”
Charlie was about to protest, but he decided to hold back and hear what else his father had to say. His mother was always after him for rushing-rushing-rushing in speech and not allowing conversation to breathe, not letting decisions and realizations happen naturally.
“I’m not going to do that,” Winston finally said.
“I’m not going to shirk this. I have a duty. I’m enlisting.”
“I know,” said his dad. “But let’s…let’s do this wisely.”
“I don’t want a desk job at the Pentagon,” Charlie said. “I want to do my part, just like everyone else has to, just like all the kids in the Brooklyn neighborhood where you grew up. My life is worth no more than theirs.”
His father looked at him gravely. Charlie didn’t know much about his dad’s time overseas after being drafted to fight the Germans in 1918, just that he had been there and he didn’t talk about it.
“The Battle of the Argonne Forest…” His voice trailed off and he stared at the floor. He scratched his cheek with his right forefinger. Charlie held his breath. “This was before the Battle of Montfaucon, before Corporal York caught all those Krauts. It was a bad time. The Thirty-Fifth Division got shredded.” He took a sip of his drink. “I can’t even begin to describe how awful it was,” he said. “I would never wish it on you. If someone tried to draft you into it, I would do everything I could to prevent it.”
“I know, Dad. But I don’t think I have a choice here. They attacked us.”
His father stood and walked over to the small fireplace. The housekeeper had already prepared the kindling, so all Winston needed to do was light a match, but the box, perched near a small stack of wood, was empty. “Damn,” he said. Charlie got up and handed his father his Zippo lighter. Winston struck the spark wheel six times before a flame appeared.
“Should have got you a new lighter for your twenty-first,” he said with a small smile. “Birthdays seem sort of stupid right now, don’t they?” He ignited the rolled-up newspapers tucked under the stack of wood in the fireplace. The kindling began to crackle.
Charlie leaned his elbows on his knees and stared absently at the flames as they grew higher until at last his father broke the silence.
“Charlie,” his father said, “you need to finish school. Graduate. After that, I know you might enlist. I’ll pull whatever strings you want for you to fight the Axis scum in whatever way you think best.”
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t want special treatment.”
“You’re not just any guy off the street in Brooklyn,” his father said. “You’re smarter. And you’re softer. We’ve been protecting you.”
“Softer?” Charlie asked. “Dad, I’m not—”
“Please, Charlie, I know exactly who you are,” Winston Marder said. “Maybe softer isn’t the right word, but you’re good. And even more than that, you believe in goodness.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I don’t,” Winston said bluntly. And then he gave his son a tender smile. “It’s funny. You and I are motivated by diametrically opposed views of human nature. But we agree on the need to kill as many Nazis and Japs as possible.”
They sat in silence, the fire warming but not comforting them.
“You may prove to be a great soldier,” Winston Marder said. “Not because you’re tough. Because you’re smart. But sacrifices are made in the field of battle, Charlie. Sacrifices will have to be made.”