Book that came out around Christmas of '05 says the decks were clear. Name of the book is "Shattered Sword" Good book, decent read. Also states that the Zeros were back on station by the time the Dive Bombers came as the Devastators were destroyed about an hour earlier.
On a side note and one very good point mentioned in the book was about the Zero cap over the Japanese fleet. As the Japanese had no Radar, there was no radar direction. There was no fighter director (in it's infancy in the US fleet but still there). The Zero Cap was directed by the flight leaders. As such, it acted organically and was not directed by a central intercept command. In short, the Zeros acted much as white blood cells do when a foriegn bacteria invades a body. The Japanese ships would fire AAA at the ships which would alert the Zeros. As a consequence, any Zero that saw the AAA would react and head for the intruding bombers. There was no reserve, there were no waves of fighters attacking (producing a target rich environment). It was more of a bum rush, everybody into the pool and smother the incoming attack. The US Divebomber attacks came from different directions at the same time, unintentionally but very effectively exploiting the weakness of the Japanese Cap.
So says the book. It was very interesting reading.
On the other hand...
FBJ's teacher was there and saw it. Granted, any trial lawyer will tell you that memory is faulty, snap glimpses of an incident can be very error prone and as a tail gunner in an SBD, he was probably very busy and maybe too busy to make an accurate accessment. But he says the decks were full. The book says they were clear with a strike below decks on the way to be spotted.
But still, he was there.
That's the part about history that gets to me. Two competing and very credible opinions of an account. One, researched to the hilt, the other, first person.
Which one?