blasted out to give the highway passage around it. Down this cliff the highway descended steeply in a curve to come out onto the great flat hollow of the Kaneohe Valley. The strategists of the Hawaiian Department had chosen this spot to place a huge demolition of high explosives which when detonated would tumble the tip end of the mountain down over the highway and on down into the sea, to block the highway. That was the purpose of the cave the engineer company had blasted into the cliff in October. It was really one vast mine.
The strategy of this plan, as every man at Makapoo knew, centered around the fact that an enemy (which back in October had to remain nameless and amorphous but could now openly be called the Japanese) would probably attempt his main landings on the beaches of the Kaneohe Valley where the reefs were low and the beach was good. This highway here at Makapoo and the highway up over the much more famous Pali, which had been mined also, were the only two roads over the mountains into Honolulu, and if both roads were blown, the enemy would be bottled up in the Kaneohe Valley and forced to go north and around the mountains and come down the center of the island.
That was the strategy. However, the idea of leaving several tons of high explosive lying around ready to go off at any moment was disturbing to the strategists. In peacetime, they could not quite bring themselves to do this. There might even have been political repercussions, if they had. Also, it was not inconceivable that saboteurs might want to blow it up to aid the enemy. Such a demolition, once constructed and completed, became a physical fact, rather than a mere idea. And as an existing fact it could be equally as useful to the enemy as to the ones who built it, depending upon the tactical situation existing at the time. The demolition might easily, and suddenly, turn into its own opposite and become a danger rather than an aid.
So, for all of these reasons, the demolition had not been loaded back in peacetime. Then, when the attack came, and immediate invasion was expected, there were too many other things of pressing importance. So the big, empty, manmade cave had simply stood there, hollowly. And now, more than a month after the initial attack and confusion, someone had remembered it. The threat of immediate invasion was past, but the threat of future invasion in heavy force was not. So it had been decided at this late date to go ahead and load the demolition.
That was the detail Mast, along with a number of other men from Makapoo, was on that day. Trucks came from the underground vaults in the city loaded down with cases of high explosive. The small engineer detail at the cave, which could not possibly handle so much weight to be moved, had been instructed to get aid from Mast’s own lieutenant at Makapoo. So every man who could be spared at the larger infantry position, Mast among them, was sent to help unload the high explosive.
None of them from Makapoo had ever really seen the cave before. A four or five man detail of engineers under a young lieutenant had been placed there to guard it, although for what and from whom nobody knew, since the cave was totally empty except for its guards who when it rained wisely slept inside. So, not having been allowed inside it before, it was a treat to the men from Makapoo to get inside and look it over, even though the work of unloading was hard. For that matter, it was a treat to them to do anything: any detail, any job, any act that would get them outside that encircling, isolating wall of wire which they had built around themselves and which they had all come gradually to hate. So the cave was a double treat. That is, it was a treat to everyone but Mast who had seen his pistol on the hip of Corporal Winstock.
It was an exciting cave, going deep back into the mountain before it opened out into the magazine, its high vaulted ceiling echoing and at the same time muffling the sounds of the working
The strategy of this plan, as every man at Makapoo knew, centered around the fact that an enemy (which back in October had to remain nameless and amorphous but could now openly be called the Japanese) would probably attempt his main landings on the beaches of the Kaneohe Valley where the reefs were low and the beach was good. This highway here at Makapoo and the highway up over the much more famous Pali, which had been mined also, were the only two roads over the mountains into Honolulu, and if both roads were blown, the enemy would be bottled up in the Kaneohe Valley and forced to go north and around the mountains and come down the center of the island.
That was the strategy. However, the idea of leaving several tons of high explosive lying around ready to go off at any moment was disturbing to the strategists. In peacetime, they could not quite bring themselves to do this. There might even have been political repercussions, if they had. Also, it was not inconceivable that saboteurs might want to blow it up to aid the enemy. Such a demolition, once constructed and completed, became a physical fact, rather than a mere idea. And as an existing fact it could be equally as useful to the enemy as to the ones who built it, depending upon the tactical situation existing at the time. The demolition might easily, and suddenly, turn into its own opposite and become a danger rather than an aid.
So, for all of these reasons, the demolition had not been loaded back in peacetime. Then, when the attack came, and immediate invasion was expected, there were too many other things of pressing importance. So the big, empty, manmade cave had simply stood there, hollowly. And now, more than a month after the initial attack and confusion, someone had remembered it. The threat of immediate invasion was past, but the threat of future invasion in heavy force was not. So it had been decided at this late date to go ahead and load the demolition.
That was the detail Mast, along with a number of other men from Makapoo, was on that day. Trucks came from the underground vaults in the city loaded down with cases of high explosive. The small engineer detail at the cave, which could not possibly handle so much weight to be moved, had been instructed to get aid from Mast’s own lieutenant at Makapoo. So every man who could be spared at the larger infantry position, Mast among them, was sent to help unload the high explosive.
None of them from Makapoo had ever really seen the cave before. A four or five man detail of engineers under a young lieutenant had been placed there to guard it, although for what and from whom nobody knew, since the cave was totally empty except for its guards who when it rained wisely slept inside. So, not having been allowed inside it before, it was a treat to the men from Makapoo to get inside and look it over, even though the work of unloading was hard. For that matter, it was a treat to them to do anything: any detail, any job, any act that would get them outside that encircling, isolating wall of wire which they had built around themselves and which they had all come gradually to hate. So the cave was a double treat. That is, it was a treat to everyone but Mast who had seen his pistol on the hip of Corporal Winstock.
It was an exciting cave, going deep back into the mountain before it opened out into the magazine, its high vaulted ceiling echoing and at the same time muffling the sounds of the working
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