Awaiting authentication of the submarine sinking report, Ramsey stood near a window of the Ford Island command center, watching the color guard prepare to hoist the flag. At about 0755 he heard the scream of a plane diving over the station, turned to Ballinger, and said, “Dick, get that fellow’s number, for I want to report him for about sixteen violations of the course and safety regulations.” As the plane went into its dive, each man looked out separate windows to follow its course. “Dick, did you get his number?” Ramsey asked. “No, but I think it was a squadron commander’s plane because I saw a band of red on it,” replied Ballinger.
“Check with the squadrons and find out which squadron commanders’ planes are in the air,” Ramsey ordered. That very instant Ballinger reported, “I saw something black fall out of that plane when it completed its dive.”
At precisely 0757 an explosion reverberated from the hangar area. Ramsey’s face changed in swift comprehension. “Never mind the squadron commander, Dick,” he exclaimed. “That was a Jap plane and a delayed action bomb.”1 The words scarcely out of his mouth, Ramsey raced across the corridor to the radio room and ordered all radiomen on duty to send out in plain English: “AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT DRILL!”2
Thus, at exactly 0758 one of the most famous radio messages ever dispatched clicked over the airwaves. As we have seen, Kimmel’s headquarters followed with a similar one, but it was Commander Logan Ramsey who first sent forth the word that woke the United States from its long sleep.
As the dive bombers whistled down, Ramsey dispatched a second message ordering all patrol planes to assigned sectors, with the object of locating the Japanese Fleet. He had no idea how futile this effort was, how completely the attackers were clipping Hawaii’s wings. Then he telephoned Bellinger: “The Japanese are attacking!” But his chief replied skeptically, “You wouldn’t kid about a thing like that,” and Ramsey had quite a time convincing him that he was not joking.3
This would be Bellinger’s first day out of bed since his bout with flu, but he was not the man to stay behind when a war was beginning. “Come on, Charlie! Let’s get down to headquarters,” he called to Commander Coe, his war plans officer, who had just brought his wife and two children to the Bellinger home, where the basement provided shelter from the bombs.
“Admiral, at least let me get my pants on,” protested Coe. So Bellinger drove off “like a bat out of hell,” and Coe tore back to his quarters for suitable clothing. Driving “hell’s bells” for headquarters, Coe passed officers and enlisted men making a beeline for their battle stations, while women and children plunged toward air-raid shelters. The sky swarmed with Japanese planes.4 Within a few minutes Takahashi’s dive bombers had destroyed about half of Ford Island’s complement of carrier-based planes and made a shambles of the hangars.
Jumping out of his car on the seaplane parking apron, Ford’s commanding officer, Captain Shoemaker, gazed at the appalling spectacle of flaming aircraft and the hangar “burning like a forest fire.” Scarcely a plane remained undamaged on the apron. Seeing a petty officer and some sailors ducking behind what protection they could find, Shoemaker set them to pulling the untouched aircraft away from the fires. This was about all they could do, for when the Ford Island fire brigade clanged on the scene at that moment, they found no water pressure—Arizona had sunk on the water mains. Shoemaker’s particular nightmare was the chance of a titanic holocaust from the tank farm and the possible explosion of the tanker Neosho, moored starboard side to Berth F-4. Ford Island. Neosho had finished discharging aviation gasoline to the dock only five minutes before the Japanese struck.5
At the tank farm Shoemaker found matters in better shape than he had dared hope. An alert ensign had turned on the water sprinklers above the giant tanks. Shoemaker looked out to Neosho with anxious eyes. She was berthed near the fuel supply. These tanks held gasoline, not oil. If they had been hit or if the Japanese struck Neosho and the ship blew up, the nearby battleships—Maryland, Tennessee, West Virginia—would have turned into infernos. But Neosho’s skipper, Captain John S. Phillips, had everything under control. Her AA battery was firing by 0810, and soon Phillips had his ship under way. By 0842 she was on course to Berth M-3 at Merry’s Point.6
Meanwhile, Ramsey tried frantically to reach Patrol Wing One at Kaneohe by telephone. He hoped to get the PBYs off the ground to search for the enemy because the Japanese had complete command of the air over Ford Island.7 But Kaneohe was in no position to help either Ford Island or itself.
Aviation Machinist Mate Third Class Guy C. Avery was lazing on his bunk in the sun porch of a bungalow on Kaneohe when he heard “the sound of a lone plane quite near our house. It passed and returned. ‘To hell with the Army,’ I thought. ‘Every day is the same to them.’” But something in the sound of the engine roused his curiosity. He reached the window in time to see “Zeroes just beginning to fan out over the heart of the station and opening fire promiscuously.” He shouted to his sleeping comrades, “The Japs are here! It’s war!” To which one man replied comfortably, “Well, don’t worry about it, Avery. It’ll last only two weeks.”
Avery checked his watch. It was 0748. “We were struck first of all and about seven minutes before Pearl Harbor,” he wrote. “Our OD called nearby Bellows Field to warn them and to ask for help, but his call was regarded as a practical joke—but only for a few minutes, then it was too late.”8 In fact, a Kaneohe contractor, Sam Aweau, had phoned Hickam and Bellows fields that the Japanese had attacked, but no one believed him.9
Commander Harold M. “Beauty” Martin, Kaneohe’s popular CO, had little to fight with. He had 303 sailors and 31 officers, as well as 93 Marines plus 2 officers. Even Martin’s mobile antiaircraft had rolled back to an Army installation on December 5. He had only thirty-six PBYs and a few miscellaneous planes.
Of Kaneohe’s aircraft, four were moored in the bay “at about a thousand yards apart.” The remainder “were parked on the ramp except for four which were in No. 1 hangar.” By the time Martin reached the administration building from his home “the first plane on the water had begun to burn. . . .” Zeros launched the attack, and dive bombers followed within a few minutes. The first bomb demolished Martin’s only fire truck. Many of his personnel were so new that he wondered how they would perform in combat. He need not have worried. “It was remarkable,” he said. “There was no panic. Everyone went right to work battling back and doing his job.”10 Even so, in a brief eight minutes the Japanese had struck Kaneohe a devastating initial blow, and they were not through yet. So when Ramsey completed his call, Kaneohe was in even worse shape proportionately than Ford Island.
By this time the waters lapping at Ford Island swarmed with rescue activity. Amid explosions, strafing, and blazing oil, able-bodied survivors helped their buddies off the burning battleships and into waiting launches, barges, or anything they could muster. These plied back and forth to Ford Island with wounded, burned, and shocked officers and men. The smart gigs of Admirals Pye and Leary darted about like water bugs, hauling aboard survivors from the ships and ferrying them ashore. Countless others dived from their ships, swam ashore, and scrambled onto the island, soaked with oil, barely clothed, many with varying degrees of burns and wounds.
The wounded arrived so fast that Lieutenant Cecil D. Riggs, staff medical officer of Patrol Wing Two, and his assistants could do no more than administer morphine, then mark foreheads with Mercurochrome to indicate they had injected the drug. Within the next hour and a half almost 300 casualties of all types arrived. The medics converted the Marine barracks and the main mess into temporary hospitals. Several other doctors and about fourteen or fifteen corpsmen arrived.11
Soon patients overflowed onto the patio, where Mary Ann Ramsey, Logan Ramsey’s sixteen-year-old daughter, recorded their names and tried to do for them the little any untrained person could. She knelt beside one man after another, cradling him in her arms like a sick child, easing his last moments from the deep well of compassion the Japanese bombs uncapped. As each one died, she gently laid him down, covered him reverently, and moved on to the next shattered patient.12
Into Ford Island’s “royal rat race,” as Coe characterized the situation, flew a Navy SBD from Enterprise, with Commander H. L. “Brig” Young at the controls. He had with him Halsey’s flag secretary, Lieutenant Commander Brum Nichol. Nichol’s first impression was: “My God, the Army has gone crazy, having antiaircraft drill on Sunday morning.” A little nearer, he recognized the red ball and tried unsuccessfully to limber his gun. “Then they went through the damndest amount of antiaircraft fire and bullets fire that he had ever seen, before or since, and finally got in to the field at Ford Island.”13 When the SBD rolled to a halt, Shoemaker greeted two exceedingly indignant and confused fliers as they climbed out, demanding, “What the hell goes on here?”14
Close on Young’s wings came eighteen more aircraft from Enterprise. In fact, when Halsey received CinCPAC’s message that an air raid was in progress he leaped to his feet, shouting, “My God, they’re shooting at my own boys! Tell Kimmel!”15 American antiaircraft did indeed shoot down one of Halsey’s planes, which fell into the sea, but both pilot and observer were rescued. Itaya’s Zeros shot down four, with only two American pilots living to tell the tale. Lieutenant (j.g.) Clarence Dickinson bailed out just west of Ewa Field. Eventually he reached Ford Island in a series of hitchhikes. Another SBD crash-landed at Burns Field, Kauai. The remainder, by hock or crook, got into either Ford or Ewa. Shoemaker gratefully scooped them in, and after the attack they went out to hunt the Japanese.16
At the control tower at Hickam Field, Colonel Farthing, the wiry Texan who commanded that installation, chatted with Lieutenant Colonel Cheney Bertholf, adjutant general of the Hawaiian Air Force. Captain Gordon Blake, base operations officer, stood by to guide in the expected B-17s—the same flight for which Tyler mistook Fuchida’s blip on the Opana radar screen. Mollison phoned that he would arrive shortly.
Suddenly a cloud of planes screamed down from the north. Quickly the oncoming aircraft divided up and zoomed off in various directions, one section of nine bombers speeding toward Hickam. Farthing saw a plane flying slowly over Pearl Harbor—“just waddling like a duck.” Sick horror gripped him when he spotted the Rising Sun of Japan and watched a torpedo splash into the water and streak for a battleship. Simultaneously a series of explosions thundered across Hickam Field.17
Mollison had halfway finished shaving when he heard two detonations. He threw a bathrobe over his pajamas and hurried outside to see what was going on. Just as he emerged, a Zero came flying down the street with death winking from each machine gun. At the same moment Captain Brooke E. Allen, an acting squadron commander of Hickam’s bombers, burst out of his home opposite, bathrobe flapping, “exposing his nudity.” Frantically waving his arms in the air and shaking his fist at the Zero, he shouted in a sort of desperate triumph, “I knew the little sons of bitches would do it on a Sunday! I knew it!”
“Brooke, this is no place for us to be,” Mollison called to him. “Let’s get into our clothes and get going.” Suiting action to the word, the two officers hastened to their respective posts.18
Lieutenant Vernon H. Reeves saw what looked like an aircraft sprinkling toothpicks on the roof of Hangar No. 9. Actually a Japanese bomber had just made splinters of the roof. A plane sped by Reeves’s window, its wingtip a scant yard from the ground. It appeared to be pouring lead into the door of the Officers’ Club. Reeves’s astonished admiration of the pilot’s skill drove clear out of his mind any realization that the man was shooting up Hickam Field. Turning to some of his companions, he said, “He must be a German.” Then he did a mental doubletake. He and his buddies hastened outside and started to fire their sidearms at the planes. Reeves had no conviction that he could hit one. “If we have to win the war with this damn thing,” he said disgustedly, “we’ll never make it.”19
At headquarters Mollison called Phillips to break the news that Oahu was under Japanese attack. Phillips had already heard the bombs, and the thought went through his mind: This is Sunday. What can this be? We planned nothing. Now he met Mollison’s information with an incredulous “You’re out of your mind, Jimmy. What’s the matter, are you drunk? Wake up! Wake up!”
The sorely tried Mollison gritted his teeth and held out the receiver so that Phillips could hear the crash of the bombs. Finally, Short’s chief of staff took in the situation. “I can hear it,” he said. “I can hear it. What do you want me to do?” Then, inspired: “I’ll tell you what, I’ll send over a liaison officer immediately.” Mollison’s jaw fell. So did the ceiling of his office, as if it shared the colonel’s amazed frustration.20
Martin arrived at headquarters about ten minutes after Mollison and at Mollison’s suggestion established himself on the ground floor instead of his upstairs office so that he would have two ceilings between him and the enemy. Mollison felt deep pity and concern for his chief. Not in good health, Martin was obviously a very sick man that morning. His old ulcer had broken open, and he was hemorrhaging internally.21 But suffering in body and spirit, he was still an airman, and his “ambition at the time was to try to get the carriers if we possibly could.”22
Out on the flight line, Allen had only one thought: Get the bombers into the air and strike the enemy. At the operations area he found Takahashi’s planes “knocking the hell out of everything.” The first bomb scored a direct hit on a repair hangar.23 Another exploded in a supply building, hurtling myriads of nuts, bolts, and wheels through the air. A missile crashed through the roof of the enlisted men’s hall, located in the center of the huge main barracks, killing thirty-five men instantly. Others poured out in anguished bewilderment, dragging with them their bleeding and moaning wounded.24
The base chapel took a direct hit. The “Snake Ranch,” the enlisted men’s new beer hall, was shattered. Another bomb opened the base guardhouse and released the prisoners, who immediately manned the gun a nearby sergeant was trying to mount alone. Still another missile struck the firehouse and tore into the water mains, lifting geysers ten to fifteen feet high, making it virtually impossible for the defenders to stem the inferno.25
Allen hurled himself into his B-17 and started three engines rolling; although he could not turn the fourth, he taxied the Flying Fortress away from its neighbors to safety. At that moment Zeros of the Second Carrier Division joined the dive bombers in strafing runs. Temporarily Allen had to abandon hope of taking off, as streams of incendiary bullets turned bomber after bomber into sheets of crackling flames.26
The Japanese concentrated on the formidable B-17s. Lieutenant Yoshio Shiga strafed them three or four times, pulling out of his run at a mere 120 feet or so. He observed that this type of bomber was extremely difficult to set afire, even when helpless on the ground.27 In fact, at the end of the attack Martin could still get four B-17s into the air for a search.28
Straight into this inferno sped Landon’s B-17s, a fourteen-hour flight behind them, unarmed, low on gas, and manned by skeleton crews. From Pearl Harbor, Chief Petty Officer Harry Rafsky, enlisted aide to Rear Admiral William L. Calhoun, commander, Base Force, saw the big bombers approaching and thought they belonged to the enemy. He said to himself: Jesus Christ, the Japanese are really coming in now!29
Landon was pleased to see a group of planes flying toward them from the south. Here comes the Air Force out to greet us, he thought. At that instant he saw the planes dive in with machines guns blazing, the sun glaring from the red disk of the Rising Sun. A voice over Landon’s intercom barked, “Damn it, those are Japs!”
By skillful evasion Landon lost them. As he banked to land at Hickam, Blake warned from the control tower, “You have three Japs on your tail.” Landon looked back; sure enough, three Zeros were hanging onto his plane like bats to a cliff, pouring in slugs right and left. To make matters worse, the United States forces on the ground also slammed shot and shell at him. It speaks well for the skill and nerve of the B-17 pilots that they managed to land under such conditions, but they did so, scattered all over the island.30
By this time Martin had called Bellinger, both because the Navy was responsible for the search and because he was supposed to turn control of his bombers over to the Navy in case of attack. Bellinger informed Martin that “he had no information whatever . . . as to which direction to go to find the carriers. . . .”31 Not that it mattered. Neither Martin nor Bellinger had enough planes left airworthy to challenge Nagumo’s armada successfully. When the first-wave attackers sped off to greener pastures, they had destroyed or seriously damaged about half of Hickam’s aircraft and left behind them a hideous caricature of the smart, well-tended base it had been half an hour before.
As the Japanese swung down on their next target—Wheeler Field—First Petty Officer Kazuo Muranaka could see “through the breaks of clouds flashes of fire caused by hits on hangars. Looking at my comrades in their planes, I could see them grinning, with sharp eyes, hungry for good games. Making a single row formation, we went down through breaks in the clouds. Wheeler air base was already a sea of fire.”32 Lieutenant Akira Sakamoto’s group of twenty-five dive bombers from Zuikaku had ignited the flames. Among his pilots was Ema, who had expected to run into a hotbed of flak and could hardly believe it when no U.S. interceptors or AA fire greeted them. He could see planes “the color of gold dust” lined up in tidy rows on the ground. Although some of the dive bombers returned to strafe four or five times, none was shot down over Wheeler. “It was more like a practice run than actual combat,” said Ema.33
Colonel William J. Flood, the down-to-earth midwesterner who commanded Wheeler, had rushed the building of more than 100 U-shaped dirt bunkers, about ten feet high, in which to disperse his planes. But this morning, despite Flood’s uneasy protests, Wheeler’s fighters, in accordance with Short’s directions, stood lined up under armed guard on the concrete mat in front of the hangars. As at Hickam, the aircraft were not as lethal as they looked. Of the eighty-two in commission, a mere fifty-two were modern types—P-40Bs and P-40Cs. All thirty-nine P-36As, twenty of which were ready to fly, were obsolescent. And all the fighters had their teeth drawn, for the ammunition belts were removed at night and placed in the hangars.
Flood had settled down to enjoy his morning newspaper when he heard “this awful whang.” After rushing outside, he saw Sakamoto’s airmen “bombing and strafing the base, the planes, the officers’ quarters and even the golf course. I could see some of the Japanese pilots lean out of their planes and smile as they zoomed by. . . . Hell, I could even see the gold in their teeth.”34
As each bomber delivered its deadly load, it circled and swung into the target again to strafe. Zeros joined the bombers, and together they tore the base to shreds, sometimes flying so low that the pilots later found scraps of installation wires wrapped around their landing gear.35 As soon as they hit one of the parked fighters, it became a fountain of flame. Then the craft next to it ignited until the whole area in front of the hangars was a flowing river of fire. Shouting orders, Major General Howard C. Davidson, in command of the Fourteenth Pursuit Wing, worked feverishly with his men, disengaging undamaged planes and hand pushing them to safety. Even this proved a challenging task because the Japanese had shot the tires off many of them.36 “We did not have the guns loaded,” Davidson testified later. “That was our biggest difficulty . . . especially since one of the hangars where we had a lot of our ammunition stored was afire, and the ammunition was afire too.”37
Actually Wheeler had remarkably little protection against such an attack. When asked at the Army board what was Wheeler’s scheme of antiaircraft protection, Flood replied, “Well, there wasn’t any scheme. We didn’t have any antiaircraft other than machine guns.” He presumed his field was “covered by antiaircraft fire of the Department.” What is more, Wheeler had no “place for immediate protection,” no air-raid shelters.38
Lieutenants George S. Welch and Kenneth Taylor from Haleiwa Field had spent the night in a way after Yamamoto’s hearts—a poker game following a dance at the Wheeler Officers’ Club. It was almost 0800 when the winners picked up the last chips. At the first crackle of firing Taylor “thought a Navy man had probably gone off the main route.” But realizing the meaning of the scarlet disks, they finally reached Haleiwa by telephone and ordered their P-40s loaded. Then they scrambled into Taylor’s car and headed for Haleiwa, urged along by Japanese “machine-gunning all around. . . .”39
Okajima found the air over Wheeler so full of Japanese planes that he decided to head elsewhere for better hunting. He led his men to Ewa Field, the Marine air base at Barber’s Point.40 The dive bombers stayed at Wheeler long enough to rip open hangars, completely demolish the post exchange, and slam into an enlisted men’s barracks, killing several hundred on the spot and badly wounding others. “It was a pitiful, unholy mess,” said Flood.41
By the time the bombers and fighters winged away they had knocked out at least one-half of Davidson’s aircraft, including thirty of the new P-40s. Strangely enough, they had destroyed only four of the “obsolescent” P-36s.42 Takahashi radioed the task force jubilantly: “Bombed Ford Island, Hickam and Wheeler. Terrible damage inflicted.”43
Ewa Field had already received a baptism of fire before Sakamoto and his dive bombers followed Okajima. Indeed, the officer of the day, Captain Leonard Ashwell, sighted the Japanese bombers off Barber’s Point at 0753—before they hit Pearl Harbor. Streaking in over the Waianae Mountains, twenty-one Zeros made repeated passes at Ewa’s parked aircraft, firing one after the other until a good half had been destroyed or seriously damaged. Men erupted from their tents and ran through the fire for their planes. Gas spilled from the tanks and soon the area flamed with blazing puddles.
Corporal Duane W. Shaw, Ewa’s fire truck driver, knew the planes already burning at the end of the runway could not be saved, but he hoped to rescue valuable equipment such as guns and spare parts. He pushed the pedal to its limit and urged his vehicle down the runway. It was like trying to run a steeplechase on an army mule, for the truck dated back to 1930 and refused to go over 42 mph. A strafer shot off the rear tires, and Shaw’s valiant try ended in a screech of tortured rubber.
Ten or fifteen minutes after this initial strike, the dive bombers and fighters that had cleaned up at Hickam and Wheeler swooped in. They concentrated on buildings and personnel, not even sparing hospital tents.44 As Shiga screamed down, he found himself facing a lone marine, firing at Shiga’s 7.7 mm. guns with a pistol. Sidearms against a Zero! Shiga mentally “paid him a good respect. . . .”45
A group of marines improvised a gun mount from a scout plane, shot down one Zerp, and winged a number of others. Against this, the attackers had destroyed or temporarily knocked out nine of Ewa’s eleven Wildcat fighters, eighteen of the thirty-two scout bombers, and six out of eight utility planes. The dive bombers and fighters assigned the mission of achieving command of the skies over Oahu had fulfilled their task at a total cost of one dive bomber and three Zeros—an amazing record.46
Where were the Army’s defenses that morning? How was such a thing possible? The testimony of Charles J. Utterback, head foreman for the district engineers, put the painful truth of that dreadful day in a nutshell: “The only thing I heard that morning, sir, was ‘They caught them asleep, by God’ . . . I think I heard that comment 50 times that day.”47
When Short heard bombs exploding, his “first idea was that the Navy was having some battle practice. . . .” About “three minutes after eight” Phillips ran over with the message “that it was the real thing.”
“I immediately told him to put into effect Alert No. 3,” Short testified. “That’s all the order we needed. And by 8:10 that had been given.” For as Short explained, “I didn’t know how serious the attack might develop. If they would take a chance like that, they might even take a chance on a landing of troops, and so I sent everybody to his battle position.”48 Thus, Short swung from one extreme to another—from defense only against sabotage to defense against a full-scale invasion.
Short’s G-1, Colonel Throckmorton, rushed his wife to safety in the basement, then hastened to his office only some 400 feet away. Soon Major Swede Henderson, the headquarters commandant, charged in. “Where are the keys to the forward echelon?” he panted. The keys to the advance headquarters at Aliamanu Crater were in Donegan’s safe, but Short’s G-3 had not yet reached his office from early mass. No one knew the combination, but Throckmorton hopefully twirled the dial, and the door swung open. Throckmorton considered the feat providential, and everyone drew a breath of relief. Now Short and his staff could go to the crater and immediately set to work. For it was from this command post, several miles from Fort Shafter and under fifteen feet of rock, that Short expected to direct the defense of Oahu against a Japanese landing.49
While Colonel Dunlop, the department adjutant general, worked away, an officer’s radio nearby played church music. The favorite old hymns struck Dunlop as positively macabre under the circumstances. But the music did not last long. Soon the radio cracked out urgent messages: “Get off the roads and stay off!” “Don’t block traffic!” “Stay at home!”50
As soon as Bicknell realized what was happening, he called first his OD in downtown Honolulu, then the OD at Fort Shafter: “There is an air attack on Pearl Harbor.” Bicknell did not know who answered the phone. “But whoever the dimwit was said this: ‘Go back to sleep, you’re having a bad dream.’”
Bicknell was looking for Fielder when he bumped into Short, who seemed “in a state of animated confusion.” He knew that Pearl Harbor was under attack but nothing concerning the progress of events. “What’s going on out there?” the general asked.
“I’m not sure, General, but I just saw two battleships sunk,” Bicknell replied.
Short stared at him incredulously and snapped, “That’s ridiculous!” With that he walked away.51
Actually the Japanese paid much less attention to the Hawaiian Department’s ground forces than to the Navy or the Hawaiian Air Force. They made no attempt to knock out Army installations except those connected with air power. Anyone in an analytical mood might have reflected that this neglect quite clearly indicated that the Japanese did not have immediate invasion on their minds.
At Camp Malakole at Barber’s Point, Lieutenant Willis T. Lyman was preparing to go to church when the Japanese struck. “The first plane that we fired at . . . was approximately a hundred yards. The second plane was 75 feet at the lowest point . . . it was almost pointblank fire both ways,” he testified. “. . . That plane . . . made a climbing turn to the left and wheeled out and kept dipping down . . . and struck the water some distance out.”52
It was fitting that Fort Kamehameha, named for Hawaii’s national hero, should account for another of Itaya’s Zeros. Captain Frank W. Ebey of the Fifty-fifth Coast Artillery was reading Stephen Vincent Benét’s John Brown’s Body and had just reached “the surprise at Shiloh Church when the attack occurred.” He had a full complement of men on hand, his supply sergeant hurried up with ammunition, and Ebey set up the machine guns on the tennis court at the rear of his quarters. These started to chatter at 0813.53
Just as Ebey’s chief, Colonel William J. McCarthy, reached the battery at the lower end of Oahu Point, he saw a gruesome sight:
. . . a Japanese plane had just struck a tree and caromed off the first tree and struck into a wall at my right at the ordnance machine gun shed. . . . The pilot was dead . . . stuffed in the tree, but the plane was on the ground, and the engine went around the ordnance shop. In caroming off he sic struck several men who were in the road. One man was completely decapitated. Another man apparently had been hit by the props, because his legs and arms and head were off, lying right on the grass.54
Lieutenant Stephen G. Saltzman, communications officer of the Ninety-eighth Coast Artillery Regiment at Schofield, heard “what sounded like two planes pulling out of a dive over Kam Highway” at about 0825. Grabbing a Browning automatic rifle from one of the men nearby and “a couple of clips of ammunition,” he ran outside and dropped to his knees. Slightly behind him knelt Sergeant Lowell V. Klatt, in charge of wire communications, who also had snatched a BAR. Just at that moment the Japanese plane “opened up with his four machine guns.” Saltzman was “too mad to be scared.” The enemy pulled out of his dive to avoid high-tension wires, and after Saltzman and Klatt emptied their clips, he crashed on the other side of their building. Both men ran around the corner to check damage. The plane was burning so fiercely they could not get close. Klatt believed that the two Japanese must have been killed instantly, for they had made no effort to get out: “. . . they were just all crashed down in the cockpit. . . .”55
In Short’s testimony about his defenses, he sounded quite complacent concerning the speed with which they reacted. For example, in speaking of the Sixty-Fourth Infantry’s batteries, he said, “. . . there was no lost motion. There wasn’t any confusion as to what should be done.”56
No lost motion, but much lost time. Short had been so obsessed with guarding against a theoretical danger from within that he had made quick defense against an attack from without virtually impossible. By the time his antiaircraft guns were ready for action it was too late for them to have any significant effect. Of the four aircraft which fell to Army guns during Fuchida’s first wave, all succumbed to machine-gun or BAR fire when they screamed down to strafe within range of these relatively limited weapons.
In Washington Knox had returned to his office at approximately 1300, following his conference with Hull and Stimson. Sometime later Stark and Turner joined him in a discussion which lasted about an hour. Presently they broke off and walked out of Knox’s office into that of his confidential assistant, John H. Dillon. They were standing by Dillon’s desk when a naval commander appeared at the door with a dispatch. Dillon recalled that the message went “something like ‘We are being attacked. This is no drill.’”
Knox read it incredulously. Obviously confused, he blurted out, “My God, this can’t be true, this must mean the Philippines.” But the office of origin—CinCPAC—made the truth immediately evident. And Stark replied, “No, sir; this is Pearl.”57