COMMANDER LOGAN RAMSEY JUMPED from his desk at the Patwing 2 Command Center on Ford Island. He had been working out a search plan for the sub reported by the PBY when a single dive-bomber screamed down on the seaplane ramp at the southern tip of the island. It looked like a young aviator “flathatting,” and both he and the duty officer tried to get the offender’s number. But they were too late, and Ramsey remarked that it was going to be hard to find out who it was. Then a blast … a column of dirt and smoke erupted from the foot of the ramp.
“Never mind,” said Ramsey, “it’s a Jap.”
The plane pulled out of its dive and veered up the channel between Ford Island and 1010 dock. It passed less than 600 feet from Rear Admiral William Furlong as he paced the deck of his flagship, the antique mine layer Oglala. The admiral took one glance at the flaming orange-red circle on the fuselage and understood too. He shouted for general quarters, and as SOPA (Senior Officer Present Afloat), he hoisted the signal, “All ships in harbor sortie.” The time was 7:55 A.M.
Now two more planes screeched down. This time the aim was perfect. Parts of the big PBY hangar at the head of the ramp flew in all directions. Radioman Harry Mead, member of a utility plane squadron based on the island, couldn’t understand why American planes were bombing the place. Seaman Robert Oborne of the same outfit had a plausible explanation: it was an Army snafu. “Boy,” he thought, “is somebody going to catch it for putting live bombs on those planes.”
All this passed unnoticed by Ensign Donald Korn of the cruiser Raleigh, moored on the northwest side of Ford Island at one of the berths normally used by the carriers. He was turning over his deck watch to Ensign William Game and couldn’t see much of anything happening down by the seaplane ramp. But he did have a fine view of the valley leading up the center of Oahu. At 7:56 he noticed some planes flying in low from that direction.
Now they were gliding past the algarroba trees at Pearl City. Splitting up, two headed for the Utah just astern, one for the Detroit just ahead, and one for the Raleigh herself. Ensign Korn, thinking the planes were Marines on maneuvers, called out his antiaircraft crews to practice with them. The men were just taking their stations when the torpedo struck home about opposite the second funnel. A shattering roar, a sickening lurch. Through a blinding mixture of smoke and dirt and muddy water, men caught a brief glimpse of the Raleigh’s splintered church launch; it had been easing alongside where the torpedo hit. The Detroit got off scot-free, but the Utah shuddered under two solid blows. Watching from the destroyer Monaghan several hundred yards to the north, Boatswain’s Mate Thomas Donahue thought that this time the U.S. Army really had a hole in its head.
A fifth plane in this group saved its torpedo, skimmed across Ford Island, and let fly at the Oglala and Helena, moored side by side at 1010 dock — the berth normally used by the battleship Pennsylvania, flagship of the whole Pacific Fleet. The torpedo passed completely under the Oglala, moored outboard, and barreled into the Helena midships — her engine-room clock stopped at 7:57. The concussion burst the seams of the old Oglala alongside, hurling Musician Don Rodenberger from his upper bunk. He could only think that the ancient boilers had finally exploded.
Ensign Roman Leo Brooks, officer of the deck on the West Virginia across the channel, was thinking along these same lines. He, too, was in no position to see the plane diving on the seaplane hangars or on the ships moored across Ford Island. All he saw was the sudden eruption of flames and smoke at 1010 dock. He lost no time — in seconds the ship’s bugler and PA system were blaring, “Away the fire and rescue party!”
Even the men who saw the planes couldn’t understand. One of them was Fireman Frank Stock of the repair ship Vestal, moored beside the Arizona along Battleship Row. Stock and six of his mates had taken the church launch for services ashore. They moved across the channel and into Southeast Loch, that long, narrow strip of water pointing directly at the battleships. On their right they passed the cruisers, nosed into the Navy Yard piers; on the left some subs tucked into their berths. As they reached the Merry’s Point landing at the end of the loch, six or eight torpedo planes flew in low from the east, about 50 feet above the water and heading down the loch toward the battleships.
The men were mildly surprised — they had never seen U.S. planes come in from that direction. They were even more surprised when the rear-seat gunners sprayed them with machine-gun bullets. Then Stock recalled the stories he had read about “battle-condition” maneuvers in the Southern states. This must be the same idea — for extra realism they had even painted red circles on the planes. The truth finally dawned when one of his friends caught a slug in the stomach from the fifth plane that passed.
On the Nevada at the northern end of Battleship Row, Leader Oden McMillan waited with his band to play morning colors at eight o’clock. His 23 men had been in position since 7:55, when the blue prep signal went up. As they moved into formation, some of the musicians noticed planes diving at the other end of Ford Island. McMillan saw a lot of dirt and sand go up, but thought it was another drill. Now it was 7:58 — two minutes to go — and planes started coming in low from Southeast Loch. Heavy, muffled explosions began booming down the line … enough to worry anyone. And then it was eight o’clock.
The band crashed into “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A Japanese plane skimmed across the harbor … dropped a torpedo at the Arizona … and peeled off right over the Nevada’s fantail. The rear gunner sprayed the men standing at attention, but he must have been a poor shot. He missed the entire band and Marine guard, lined up in two neat rows. He did succeed in shredding the flag, which was just being raised.
McMillan knew now but kept on conducting. The years of training had taken over — it never occurred to him that once he had begun playing the National Anthem, he could possibly stop. Another strafer flashed by. This time McMillan unconsciously paused as the deck splintered around him, but he quickly picked up the beat again. The entire band stopped and started again with him, as though they had rehearsed it for weeks. Not a man broke formation until the final note died. Then everyone ran wildly for cover.
Ensign Joe Taussig, officer of the deck, pulled the alarm bell. The ship’s bugler got ready to blow general quarters, but Taussig took the bugle and tossed it overboard. Somehow it seemed too much like make-believe at a time like this. Instead he shouted over the PA system again and again, “All hands, general quarters. Air raid! This is no drill!”
Ship after ship began to catch on. The executive officer of the supply ship Castor shouted, “The Japs are bombing us! The Japs are bombing us!” For an instant Seaman Bill Deas drew a blank and wondered whether the man was speaking to him. On the submarine Tautog, the topside anchor watch shouted down the forward torpedo hatch, “The war is on, no fooling!”
Everybody was racing for the alarm signals now. On the little gunboat Sacramento in the Navy Yard, Seaman Charles Bohnstadt dashed over to pull the switch, lost the race to a mess attendant. On the cruiser Phoenix, out where the destroyers were moored, the loudspeaker had just announced, “Lay up to the quarter deck the Catholic church party” — then the general alarm bell drowned out anything else. On Battleship Row the Maryland’s bugler blew general quarters over the PA system, while the ship’s Klaxon lent added authority.
The Oklahoma’s call to arms needed no extra punch. First came an air-raid alert; then general quarters a minute later. This time the voice on the PA system added a few well-chosen words, which one crew member recalls as follows: “Real planes, real bombs; this is no drill!” Other witnesses have a less delicate version of the last part. The language alone, they say, convinced them that this was it.
But on most ships the men down below still needed convincing. Even as the torpedo hit, Fireman Joseph Messier of the Helena was sure the alarm bell was just another of the executive officer’s bright ideas to get the crew to go to church.
“This is a hell of a time to hold general drills,” echoed through the firemen’s quarters of the California, the signalmen’s compartment on the San Francisco, the after “head” on the Nevada. On the destroyer Phelps Machinist’s Mate William Taylor engaged in a sort of one-man slowdown. He deliberately took plenty of time getting dressed. Then he ambled topside, yawned, and strolled toward the stern to get a drink of water before going below to his station in the boiler room. As he started down the after gangway, a chief gunner’s mate came charging down behind him, shouting, “Get to hell out of the way — don’t you know we’re at war?” Taylor thought to himself, “You mumbling jackass, isn’t this drill enough without added harassment from you?”
Commander Herald Stout, skipper of the destroyer-minecraft Breese, was even more annoyed. He had left standing orders never to test general quarters before eight on Sunday. When the alarm sounded, he left his breakfast to chew out the watch.
Captain Harold C. Train, Admiral Pye’s chief of staff on the California, was sure the alarm had been set off by mistake. And on the destroyer Henley it really was a mistake. Her crew was normally mustered on Sundays at 7:55 by sounding the gas-attack alarm; this morning someone pressed the wrong button — general quarters.
Chaplain Howell Forgy of the cruiser New Orleans also thought someone had blundered. He drifted to his station in sick bay completely unconcerned. A moment later the ship’s doctor arrived and hesitantly remarked, “Padre, there’s planes out there and they look like Japs.”
The word spread faster. A boatswain dashed into the CPO wardroom on the Maryland, sat down white as a sheet: “The Japs are here …” As Ensign Charles Merdinger of the Nevada pulled on his clothes, someone outside his stateroom yelled, “It’s the real thing; it’s the Japs!” With that, Merdinger stepped completely through his sock. Watertender Samuel Cucuk looked into the “head” on the destroyer tender Dobbin, called to Fireman Charles Leahey, “You better cut that short, Charlie, the Japs are here.”
A few skeptics still held out. In the Honolulu’s hoist room Private Roy Henry bet another Marine a dollar that it was the Army, pulling a surprise on the Navy with dummy torpedoes. The men in the repair ship Rigel’s pipe and copper shop remained unperturbed when a seaman wearing only underwear burst in with the news — they figured the fellow was pretending he was crazy so he could get back to the Coast. When a sailor on the Pennsylvania said the Japs were attacking, Machinist’s Mate William Felsing had a snappy comeback: “So are the Germans.”
The last doubts vanished in an avalanche of shattering evidence. Pharmacist’s Mate William Lynch took a skeptical metalsmith to his porthole on the California, pointed to the chaos erupting outside. The man sagged away, sighing, “Jesus Christ … Jesus Christ.” On the West Virginia a sailor spattered with fuel oil ran by Ensign Maurice Featherman shouting, “Look what the bastards did to me!”
One and all, they accepted it now —some with a worldly grasp of affairs, some with almost ingenuous innocence. Captain Mervyn Bennion, skipper of the West Virginia, calmly remarked to his Marine orderly, “This is certainly in keeping with their history of surprise attacks.” A seaman on the destroyer Monaghan told Boatswain’s Mate Thomas Donahue, “Hell, I didn’t even know they were sore at us.”
Down the corridors … up the ladders … through the hatches the men ran, climbed, milled, and shoved toward their battle stations. And it was high time. The alarm was no sooner given when the Oklahoma took the first of five torpedoes … the West Virginia the first of six. These were the golden targets — directly across from Southeast Loch. Next the Arizona took two, even though a little to the north and partly blocked by the Vestal. Then the California got two, even though far to the south and a relatively poor target. Only the inboard battleships seemed safe — Maryland alongside Oklahoma and Tennessee beside West Virginia.
As the torpedoes whacked home, the men struggled to keep going, sometimes fell in jumbled heaps. On the West Virginia Ensign Ed Jacoby went out like a light when one of the first explosions toppled a steel locker over on his head. Seaman James Jensen kept his feet through the first two blasts, but the next two hurled him into another compartment, and a fifth knocked him out. Quartermaster Ed Vecera, trying to get from the quarterdeck aft to his post on the bridge, ran a regular obstacle course: torpedoes … Japanese strafing … watertight doors slammed in his face … a tide of men who always seemed headed the other way. Finally he fell in behind Captain Bennion, and for a while everything opened up to let the skipper pass. But soon they were separated, and Vecera was shunted off in another direction. Somehow he got to the main deck and was stopped again. He never made it to the bridge.
On the Helena, the mess hall crashed around Machinist’s Mate Paul Weisenberger, as he struggled toward his post in the forward engine room. A table, unhooked from the overhead, bounced off his shoulder. By the time he picked himself up, the next door forward was dogged shut. He had to settle for the after engine room instead.
The mess hall on the Oglala — racked up by the same torpedo — was a shambles too. Broken glass and china littered the deck, as Musician Frank Forgione dashed through barefoot on his way to his station in the sick bay. He cut his feet terribly — never even noticed it until hours later.
Worst of all was the Oklahoma. The second torpedo put out her lights; the next three ripped open what was left of her port side. The sea swirled in, driving Seaman George Murphy from his post in the print shop on third deck as soon as he got there. His group retreated midships, slamming a watertight door behind them. The list grew steeper, and within seconds the water was squirting around the seams, filling that compartment too.” As the ship heeled further, Chief Yeoman George Smith shifted over to a starboard ladder to reach his battle station. Everybody else had the same idea. In the flicker of a few emergency lamps men pushed and shoved, trying to climb over and around each other on the few usable ladders. It was a dark, sweat-smeared nightmare.
No matter how bad things were, men remembered to take care of absurd details. Radioman Robert Gamble of the Tennessee ignored the old shoes beside his bunk, went to his locker, and carefully put on a brand-new pair to start the war right. The Nevada musicians put their instruments away before going to their stations. (Exception — one man took along his cornet and excitedly threw it into a shell hoist along with some shells for the antiaircraft guns above.)
On the other hand, there was always the danger of forgetting something important. As Radioman James Lagerman raced for his battle station in the Ford Island Administration Building, he kept saying again and again to himself, “Just gotta try to remember this date …”
In the confusion many of the ships —unlike the Nevada — never carried out morning colors. Others did, but in somewhat unorthodox fashion. On the sub alongside the oil barge YO-44, a young sailor popped out of the conning tower and ran to the flagstaff at the stern. Just then a torpedo plane roared by, the rear-seat man swiveling his guns. The sailor scurried back to the conning tower, hugging the flag. Next try, he clipped it on; then another plane sent him diving back to shelter. Third time he got it up — just before another plane sent him ducking for cover again. The men on YO-44 laughed and clapped and cheered.
But at the sub base headquarters a few yards away, Chief Torpedoman’s Mate Peter Chang, in charge of the Navy’s Submarine Torpedo School, could only watch with sickened admiration as the Japanese planes grooved one strike after another down the narrow alley of Southeast Loch. It was a real demonstration for the reluctant students who had to watch it, and Chang didn’t hesitate to draw on it for material to be used in future lectures.
At CINCPAC Headquarters in the sub base administration building, Commander Vincent Murphy was still phoning Admiral Kimmel about the Ward’s sampan report when a yeoman burst into the room: “There’s a message from the signal tower saying the Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor, and this is no drill.” Murphy relayed the message to his boss, then told the communications officer to radio the Chief of Naval Operations, the C-in-C Atlantic Fleet, the C-in-C Asiatic Fleet, and all forces at sea: AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR, THIS IS NO DRILL. The message went out at 8:00 A.M., but Admiral Bellinger had radioed a similar message to all ships in the harbor at 7:58; so Washington already knew.
Murphy now phoned Commander Ramsey over at Patwing 2 and optimistically asked how many planes were available. The commander showed a keen grasp of the situation: “I don’t think I have any, but I’m scraping together what I can for search.”
In the Navy housing areas around Pearl Harbor, people couldn’t imagine what was wrecking Sunday morning. Captain Reynolds Hayden, enjoying breakfast at his home on Hospital Point, thought it was construction blasting — then his young son Billy rushed in shouting, “They’re Jap planes!” Lieutenant C. E. Boudreau, drying down after a shower, thought an oil tank had blown up near his quarters behind Bloch Arena until a Japanese plane almost grazed the bathroom window. Chief Petty Officer Albert Molter, puttering around his Ford Island flat, thought a drill was going on until his wife Esther called, “Al, there’s a battleship tipping over.”
As 11-year-old Don Morton scuffed back to his house in Pearl City for more fishing bait, an explosion almost pitched him on his face. Then another, and still another. He scrambled home and asked his mother what was happening. She just told him to go fetch his brother Jerry. He ran out to find several planes now gliding by at house-top level. One was strafing the dirt road, kicking up little puffs of dust. Don was scared to go any farther. As he ran back to the house, he saw his next-door neighbor, a Navy lieutenant, standing in his pajamas on the grass, crying like a child.
Up on the hill at Makalapa, where the senior officers lived, Admiral Kimmel ran out to his yard right after Commander Murphy reported the attack. He stood there for a minute or two, watching the planes make their first torpedo runs. Near him stood Mrs. John Earle, wife of Admiral Bloch’s chief of staff. At one point she remarked quietly, “Looks like they’ve got the Oklahoma.”
“Yes, I can see they have,” the admiral answered.
In a house directly across the street —and just a little down the hill — Mrs. Hall Mayfield, wife of Admiral Bloch’s intelligence officer, buried her head in the pillow and tried to forget the noise. Makalapa was just being developed, and since it was on the side of an old volcano, they had to do a lot of dynamiting through the lava. It occurred to Mrs. Mayfield that they must now be blasting the hole for her mailbox post.
But the pillow was useless. Mrs. Mayfield surrendered and opened her eyes. Her Japanese maid Fumiyo was standing in the doorway … each hand clutching the frame, the long sleeves of her kimono making her look curiously like a butterfly. Fumiyo was trying to say something, but the noise drowned it out. Mrs. Mayfield jumped out of bed and went to her. “Oh, Mrs. Mayfield,” Fumiyo was saying, “Pearl Harbor is on fire!”
Glancing through a window, she saw her husband in pajamas, standing on the back lawn. He was leveling binoculars on the harbor, which lay below the house. Seconds later the two women joined him. Mrs. Mayfield’s first words were a bit of wifely advice: “Hall, go right back inside and put in your teeth.”
The captain’s dentures were quickly forgotten as she watched the smoke billow up in the harbor. His wishful suggestion that it might be a drill failed to convince her. When two planes flashed by with the rising-sun insignia, all three of them turned and dashed back to the house.
Captain Mayfield was now pawing about his closet, hurling clothes and hangers in every direction. Mrs. Mayfield chose this moment to make a fatal mistake. “Why,” she asked, “don’t the Navy planes do something?”
The captain’s glare showed that her question was treason. “Why,” he yelled back, “doesn’t the Army do something?”
In the control tower of Hickam Field just east of Pearl Harbor, Colonel William Farthing was still waiting for the B-17s from the mainland when he saw a long, thin line of aircraft approaching from the northwest. They looked like Marine planes from Ewa Field. As they began diving, Farthing remarked to Colonel Bertholf, “Very realistic maneuvers, I wonder what the Marines are doing to the Navy so early Sunday.”
Watching the same show from the parade ground nearby, Sergeant Robert Halliday saw a big splash go up near Ford Island; he decided the Navy was practicing with water bombs. Then one of the bombs hit an oil tank, which exploded in a cloud of smoke and flames. A man said some poor Navy pilot would get into trouble for that. At this point a plane suddenly swooped down on Hickam — a rising sun gleamed on its fuselage. Somebody remarked, “Look, there goes one of the red team.”
Next instant, the group was scattering for cover. The plane dropped a bomb and followed it into the huge maintenance hangar of the Hawaiian Air Depot. It was the first in a long line of bombers diving on Hickam from the south. No one is completely sure whether these planes, or those pulling out of their dives on Ford Island, reached Hickam first. Within seconds, both groups were everywhere at once — strafing the men and the neat rows of planes … dive-bombing the hangars and buildings.
In the mess hall at the center of Hickam’s big, new consolidated barracks, Pfc. Frank Rom yelled a frantic warning to the early risers eating breakfast. It was too late. Trays, dishes, food splattered in all directions as a bomb crashed through the roof. Thirty-five men were wiped out instantly; the injured crawled to safety through the rubble — including one man wounded by a gallon jar of mayonnaise.
In the barracks, where most of the men were still asleep, the first explosions at Pearl Harbor woke up Corporal John Sherwood. Cursing the Navy, he got up and looked for something to read. As he padded about, he glanced out the window just in time to see the Hawaiian Air Depot get pasted. He took off in his shorts for a safer place, shouting, “Air raid! It’s the real thing!”
Someone dashing through the barracks woke up Sergeant H. E. Swinney. Only then did he notice the bomb bursts and low-flying aircraft. Even so, he was more curious than alarmed. But he half sensed something was wrong — the barracks were never that empty on Sunday. He got up and slipped downstairs to investigate. In the hallway a group of men were chattering in excited whispers. He could get nothing out of them and looked around for a better clue. Near a doorway he saw a man with a Springfield rifle; then another man came in with blood running down his face. Swinney peeked out just in time to see a Zero fighter streak by Hangar 7. At last he caught on — he recalls it was almost the way an idea used to come to a comic-strip character, complete with lightbulb above the head.
The men were desperately trying to get to their stations now. Some never made it —Private Mark Creighton, pinned down by strafers, dived into a latrine and hugged a toilet bowl for shelter. Others got there too late — Pfc. Emmett Pethoud found that the plane he had to guard was already blown to bits. More bombs were coming, so he ducked under a table — but not before he carefully replaced a phone receiver that had fallen off its hook.
A few were able to carry out their duties. Pfc. Joseph Nelles, the Catholic chaplain’s assistant, was returning from early-morning mass when the planes struck. His first thoughts were to safeguard the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel. He ran back and must have just reached the altar when the chapel took a direct hit and vanished in the blast.
While Pearl and Hickam rocked with explosions, all was still quiet at Wheeler Field, the Army’s fighter base in the center of the island. Staff Sergeant Francis Glossen, changing his clothes for a date at Waikiki, glanced out his third-floor window in the main barracks, saw a line of six to ten planes come through Kole Kole Pass to the west. They banked left and disappeared, blending into the background of the Waianae Mountains.
They circled back, joined others coming in from the northwest, and charged down on the field. At 8:02 A.M., Pfc. Arthur Fusco, guarding some P-40s with his rifle, froze in his tracks as the first dive-bomber peeled off. He recognized those red balls and rushed into the hangar for a machine gun. He couldn’t break the lock of the armament shack, but by now it made no difference.
Pfc. Carroll Andrews flattened against his barracks wall as bullets tore through the men’s lockers, shattered and splintered the windows around him. Somebody yanked Pfc. Leonard Egan from his cot in one of the tents along the hangar line, and for a moment he stood dazed and naked watching the dive-bombers and strafers at work. Then he grabbed his shoes and a pair of coveralls and started running.
In the housing areas families poured into their backyards in pajamas and bathrobes. A man wrapped in a bath towel raced up the post’s main street. In the officers’ club, Lieutenants Welch and Taylor stopped debating whether to go swimming. Welch grabbed the phone and called Haleiwa, where their P-40s were kept. Yes, the planes were all right… yes, they would be gassed up and loaded right away. Welch slammed down the receiver, hopped into Taylor’s car, and the two careened off to Haleiwa, prodded along by a strafing Zero.
Just north of Wheeler, Major General Maxwell Murray, commanding the 25th Division, heard a plane diving over his quarters in the General’s Loop at Schofield Barracks. He rushed to the window determined to report the pilot. The plane zoomed by only 75 yards away, but the general couldn’t catch the number. So he ran to the front door, glancing at his watch — he would at least get the landing time. To his surprise the plane dropped a bomb.
Private Lester Buckley was unloading manure nearby at the Schofield compost heap. He took one look at flames billowing up from Wheeler, jumped in his wagon, and raced back to the barracks so fast that the pitchforks rattled out.
In the barracks, Pfc. Raymond Senecal, jolted from his sleep, thought the engineers were blasting. He got out of bed and found the air full of strange-looking airplanes with fixed landing gear. Soon they were diving on the big Schofield quadrangles, where most of the men ate and slept. Senecal saw the bright red circles clearly, but still he couldn’t quite believe it. Turning to his sergeant, he offered the advice of a true citizen-soldier: “Get someone on the telephone …”
Corporal Maurice Herman ran out on his barracks porch and started cranking away at the air-raid siren. Down below, the Sunday morning chow lines wound through the quadrangle. It was an incongruous picture — heads raised to view the planes … excited discussions … questions being yelled to Herman on the porch … and every man reluctant to give up his place in the chow line. Then a plane swept by, raking the lines of men. Wild confusion, as the men scattered for their guns and stations.
Bugles began sounding. Corporal Harry Foss thought the old call to arms did more than anything else to pull the men together in the 65th Combat Engineers. Private Frank Gobeo of the 98th Coast Artillery didn’t know how to blow call to arms, but he made a brilliant substitution that brought the men swarming from the barracks — he blew pay call.
Supply Sergeant Valentine Lemanski of 27th Infantry rocketed down the stairs of Quadrangle D, found the men in his company had already smashed open the supply room doors. A young private in the 19th Infantry seized a Browning Automatic Rifle (known as a BAR in the Army) and shot off a clip while still in the building. Some men in the 27th Infantry couldn’t get guns at all — their sergeant refused to issue the ammunition because a sign said it couldn’t be released without orders from the adjutant.
In the radar information center at Fort Shaffer, Lieutenant Tyler had heard the first explosions just before his watch ended at eight. He strolled outside and for a moment or so watched what appeared to be “Navy practice at Pearl.” Then he heard a few bursts of antiaircraft fire, somewhat closer. He hung around even though his watch was now over, and a few minutes after eight got a call from Sergeant Storry up at the base: “There’s an air attack at Wheeler Field.” Tyler knew just what to do: he instantly recalled the headset operators.
General Short listened with interest to the bedlam in his quarters nearby. He decided that the Navy must be having some kind of battle practice. The explosions increased, and he wandered out on his lanai for a look. There was a lot of smoke to the west, but he couldn’t make much out of it. Then Colonel Philips, his chief of staff, burst in at 8:03 with the news — Hickam and Wheeler had just phoned that this was “the real thing.”
Pfc. William McCarthy felt the Catholic chapel at Shafter shake and tremble with every explosion. The windows rattled all through mass and the sermon. Right after the sermon a GI ran up to the priest and told him what was happening. Quickly the padre turned to the congregation: “God bless you all, the Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor. Return to your units at once.”
Twelve miles away — across the Koolau Mountains and on the windward side of Oahu — Lieutenant Commander H. P. McCrimmon heard some low-flying planes roar past the dispensary at the Kaneohe Naval Air Station.
Someone in the room mentioned Army maneuvers, and McCrimmon got up to get a better look. Three planes were flying in close formation at about treetop height, shooting tracer bullets. They made three separate passes at the hangars two blocks away, always firing their guns as they approached. Soon black smoke began pouring from one of the buildings. McCrimmon immediately sent an ambulance to the fire in accordance with base regulations.
Another plane flew by, flashing those telltale red circles. This time McCrimmon told his yeoman to “call up Pearl Harbor and ask for some help.” The call went through, but Pearl said this was one day they couldn’t lend a hand. McCrimmon next called his wife and told her not to pick him up when his duty ended — the place was under attack. Her cheerful reply: “Oh, come on home; all is forgiven.”
In the officers’ mess a little farther away from the hangars, Attendant Walter Simmons had just finished setting up the tables when the firing began. He had a few minutes to kill and went out to watch the show. After he saw the burning hangar, he darted back in, collared an officer who had just appeared for breakfast, and the pair of them rushed off to the pilots’ sleeping quarters — a two-man task force faced with the formidable job of waking up several hundred aviators Sunday morning.
Ensign George Shute burst into Ensign Hubert Reese’s room, shouting, “Some damn Army pilot has gone buster — he’s diving on BOQ and shooting!” He held out a warm bullet as evidence.
Reese looked out the window, saw the red circles, and joined the little group spreading the alarm. He woke up Ensign Bellinger, who reacted promptly: “Are you guys drunk? Get out and leave me alone!” Now it was Bellinger’s turn to look. Then he too was running up and down the halls, banging on doors, spreading the word.
“They is attacking! They is attacking!” shouted a cook, who had joined the group, as he crashed into Ensign Charles Willis’ room beating a cake pan with a spoon.
Five pilots crowded into Willis’ car and started off for the hangars. Bullets ripped through the roof, the men piled out, then back in again when Willis found that the car still worked. They reached the hangar this time, but just barely. As they got out, another strafer hit the car and this time the gasoline tank went up. It was nothing compared to the blaze they found around them: 33 planes — everything at Kaneohe except the three PBYs on patrol — were burning.
The story was much the same at Ewa Field, the Marine base west of Pearl Harbor. Captain Leonard Ashwell, officer of the day, first sensed something was wrong when he saw two lines of torpedo bombers cruising eastward along the coast toward the Navy base. Unlike almost everybody else in Hawaii, he instantly recognized them. As he ran to sound the alarm, 21 Zeroes barreled in over the Waianae Mountains and began shooting up the base.
Some headed for the planes parked in neat rows; others for the hangars and roadways. One strafer caught Lieutenant Colonel Claude Larkin, base commander, just coming to work in his 1930 Plymouth jalopy. Larkin didn’t even turn off the motor — he catapulted out of the car and into a roadside ditch as the plane swept past. Then he scrambled back in and raced for the base about a mile away. He arrived by 8:05, but 33 of his 49 planes were blazing wrecks.
At Waikiki Mrs. Larkin had already put in a big day. She and the colonel had finally found an apartment, and this morning she was moving everything over from the Halekulani Hotel, where they had set up temporary quarters. Other Halekulani guests were enjoying a typical, quiet Sunday morning. Captain J. W. Bunkley of the California slipped into his swimming trunks for a prebreakfast dip. Correspondent Joseph Harsch of The Christian Science Monitor awoke hearing sounds of explosions in the distance. They immediately reminded him of the air raids they used to have when he was in Berlin the winter before. He woke his wife and told her, “Darling, you often have asked me what an air raid sounds like. Listen to this — it’s a good imitation.”
“Oh, so that’s what it sounds like,” she replied. Then they both dozed off to sleep again.
Most of Honolulu was equally uninterested. Author Blake Clark heard the noise at his home on Punahou Street, wrote it off as artillery practice. When he came down to breakfast, he was disturbed only because the Sunday Advertiser hadn’t come. He walked down to Blackshear’s drugstore, picked up an early edition, and came back to enjoy it. When the Japanese cook began talking about planes outside, he strolled onto the lanai with Mr. and Mrs. Frear, who shared the house. There were plenty of planes, all right, and Mr. Frear observed that it was just as well in times like these.
Some civilians couldn’t help learning. Jim Duncan, foreman for a private contractor at Pearl, was taking flying lessons from Tommy Tommerlin, an inter-island pilot who gave instruction on the side. This was the day for Duncan’s cross-country check flight, and now they were cruising leisurely around the island in the Hui Lele Flying Club’s yellow Aeronca.
They had just passed the Mormon Temple near Kahuku Point when they heard machine-gun fire and the plane gave a heavy lurch. Then it happened again. At first Duncan thought some playful Army pilot was trying to scare him, but he changed his mind as he saw the red tracers pouring toward him and heard the bullets chopping into his fuselage. Two planes had come up from below, firing and passing so close that they tossed him about in their backwash. Now they turned and were charging back down on him. As they swerved by, he saw for the first time the orange-red circles on the wings. Nothing ever looked bigger.
Duncan dived for the shoreline, hoping to find cover by hugging the steep hills that came almost down to the sea. It was a good decision — the Japanese planes circled once or twice, then flew off to rejoin the armada heading for Pearl. The crippled Aeronca limped down the coast, over the pali, and back to the John Rogers Airport, the civilian field just east of Hickam and Pearl Harbor.
Another amateur pilot, lawyer Roy Vitousek, had almost as much trouble right over John Rogers. He, too, had gone up in an Aeronca for an early-morning spin, taking along his son Martin. They were just getting ready to land again when they saw the first explosion on Ford Island. Some planes were circling nearby, but Vitousek didn’t link them to the blast. Now more explosions ripped the harbor … then the hangars at Hickam … and if he still had any doubt, he knew for certain when he saw some planes flying below him and caught a glimpse of the rising sun.
Two of the planes came after Vitousek, and he gunned the Aeronca out to sea, hoping nobody would go to very much trouble just to get him. He was right — the two Japanese gave him a perfunctory burst and turned to John Rogers instead. At the first break Vitousek himself went into Rogers, landed, and found the place seething with indignation: “Did you see those fools? They must be drunk, practicing with live ammunition!”
For a long time the field tried its best to conduct normal business. When the dispatcher announced the 8:00 A.M. inter-island flight to Maui, the passengers filed through the gate as usual. Among them went Dr. Homer Izumi, a physician from the Kula Sanitarium on Maui, who had been in Honolulu on business. His hosts, Dr. and Mrs. Harold Johnson, saw him off as he boarded the plane, gingerly carrying a box of his favorite cookies. Waving good-bye through the cabin window, he noticed somebody running across the field from the Andrew Flying Service hangar. The plane door opened and everyone was ordered out.
Dr. Izumi climbed down and went back to the Johnsons. There had been more strafing — civilian pilot Bob Tyce had been killed — and the Johnsons urged Dr. Izumi to drive home with them. But he guessed it was nothing … the plane was sure to leave soon.
Dr. Izumi guessed wrong. The place was soon in chaos — smoke, shrapnel, strafers everywhere. When a big plane droned toward him from the sea, he dived for a palm tree in the middle of the parking circle. His first thought — protect the cookies; his second — if only he had kissed his son Allen good-bye the day he left Maui.