Dusk in Kahului

Off the mangy Hawaiian port of Kahului, a Japanese submarine crept closer toward shore in the dusk. A gun crew swarmed from her conning tower and gathered about the deck gun. Kahului, 90 miles by airline from Honolulu on the island of Maul, was going to get its first taste of war.

It was a fleeting taste. Flame from the gun stabbed the dusk and in Kahului mongrel dogs howled and ran for cover. A shell crashed ashore, In the dun-colored houses along Kahului's waterfront, stevedores and their women heard the gun again, like a door slamming, and again the crash of the shell. The Jap fired ten rounds in all. Then the submarine disappeared in the night. Announcing this attack on an undefended, unimportant cane-&-pineapple port, the U.S. Navy reported: no casualties, negligible damage.

Eight-hundred miles south and west, other Japanese raiders shelled Johnston Island, an eight-mile-long coral reef and subsidiary base for naval aircraft. Said Imperial headquarters: destruction of "most important defense facilities." Said the U.S. Navy: a weak attack, no casualties.

Most comforting view of these attacks was that Japanese units were making an ineffectual nuisance of themselves. But it was more likely, in view of hardheaded operations to date, that beyond the damage they might cause the chief aim of the Japanese commanders was to create diversions, to try to suck strong units of the U.S. Fleet away from more worthwhile objectives.

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