Christopher Lennertz - Requiem For The California

Monday this week marked the 79th Anniversary of the Japanese surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet moored in Pearl Harbor and I had been wanting to try a watercolor painting depicting the attack - key word being 'try'. Of course, I wanted this set in my bizarre little alternate universe, so it's this world's version of Pearl Harbor where we're supposed to see the US battleships West Virginia, Commodore Decatur, Admiral Dewey and Benjamin Rush; Oregonian battleships Commodore O'Brien and New Caledonia; and Free Californian battleships Arizona, Baja, Utah, and Empress Dominga I all aflame as they are struck by bombs and torpedoes, the smoke plumes towering over the harbor and blocking out the sun.

In the first few years of the Second World War, the Kingdom of Hawaii had remained officially neutral, much as it had during the First; however, Queen Wahi'ika'ahu'ula and Prime Minister RSamuel W. King feared Communist aggression in the Pacific, so Hawaii was a quiet supporter of the Allied cause. The Hawaiian islands served as an important fueling and resupply station for ships from the Americas heading for Asia and the other Pacific islands, or vice versa; as a result, they held great strategic importance, so much so that there had been several incidents with Soviet and French submarines unloading spies to sneak inland to gain information on Allied naval movements. Indeed, the Japanese had their eye on the island chain, realizing not only its strategic position in the Pacific, but also how the Allied fleets were all concentrated together in one harbor.

On the morning of December 7, a large number of ships lay moored in Pearl Harbor, their crews either asleep or just getting started with their morning routines; they had heard of news concerning the war ongoing elsewhere in Europe, Africa, and Antarctica. However, the turmoil of the war was far away, and many of the Allied sailors had spent the previous night ashore partying, drinking, and dancing with local girls (or guys, in the case of the lady sailors); Christmas was right around the corner, and most of the crews looked forward to the prospect of returning home to see their families (with the exception of the Californians, whose hometowns were still under Communist control). So the arrival of a huge swarm of mysterious planes came as a surprise, particularly so when they started bombing and torpedoing the ships; the explosions were enough to awake those still breathing, who tried to scramble to above deck to fight the attackers off. A number of fighter planes, stationed at a nearby Royal Hawaiian Air Force airfield, attempted to get airborne, but many were quickly shot down by the fast, maneuverable Zeroes that were among the attack force. The Free Californian battleship Nevada attempted to sail out to sea, but it was set upon by dive and torpedo bombers, and it became submerged in the shallow waters of the harbor.

After over an hour, the two-wave attack force departed with twelve ships sunk or damaged, one hundred Hawaiian aircraft (which comprised 90% of the RHAF) destroyed, and some 3,400 Allied personnel dead or wounded, most of them hailing from the mainland American states. The comparatively-light Hawaiian casualties was due to the fact that most of their ship crews were on shore, sleeping in their homes, so most weren't aboard the ships when the Japanese attacked. The following day, the news of the attack had reached Washington D.C, and President Willkie gave a speech before the Congress about the sudden attack and how now, the United States and her allies were at war with the Empire of Japan. Oregonian President Oscar Nelson issued a similar declaration before the Oregonian Congress the previous day, as news had reached Oregon City a lot quicker than it had in the United States, although the Willkie speech would become more famous in North America in future years. The USA, Oregon, and the Free Californian government were now at war with Japan; days later, on December 11, the governments of Serbia, Greece, and Romania (who were allied with Japan) issued declarations of war on the United States and Oregon. The resulting chain reaction would lead to the war becoming a three-way affair between the Allied Powers, the Comintern, and the Axis Powers over the next three-and-a-half years.