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 hav
e 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.
CHAPTER VIII
“I Can’t Keep Throwing Things at Them”
UP IN THE MARYLAND’S foretop, Seaman Leslie Vernon Short had abandoned his hopes of a quiet morning addressing Christmas cards. After a quick double-take on the planes diving at Ford Island, he loaded the ready machine gun and hammered away at the first torpedo planes gliding in from Southeast Loch.
In the destroyer anchorage to the north, Gunner’s Mate Walter Bowe grabbed a .50-caliber machine gun on the afterdeck of the Tucker and fired back too. So did Seaman Frank Johnson, who was sweeping near the bridge of the destroyer Bagley in the Navy Yard. Seaman George Sallet watched the slugs from Johnson’s gun tear into a torpedo plane passing alongside, saw the rear gunner slump in the cockpit, and thought it was just like in the movies.
Others were firing too — the Helena at 1010 dock … the Tautog at the sub base … the Raleigh on the northwest side of Ford Island. Up in the Nevada’s “bird bath,” a seaman generally regarded as one of the less useful members of the crew seized a .30-caliber machine gun and winged a torpedo plane headed directly for the ship. It was to be an important reprieve.
Here and there other guns joined in, but at first they were pitifully few. A “Number 3 condition of readiness” was in effect — that meant one antiaircraft battery in each sector — and orders had been given to man additional guns on the battleships. But whatever the official directives, the men actually on the ships recall no difference from any other peacetime Sunday.
On some ships key men were still ashore — five of the battleship captains … 50 percent of the destroyer officers. On others, men were pinned down by strafing, blocked by watertight doors, dazed by the suddenness of it all. Seaman Robert Benton, a sight-setter of a five-inch gun on the West Virginia, stood helplessly at his post — the rest of the gun crew never did appear. Yeoman Alfred Home waited alone so long on the signal bridge of the sub tender Pelias that he finally gave up. He started back down the ladder, almost into the arms of the skipper, who thundered, “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
There were more delays once the men reached their stations. First, the canvas awnings that stretched over the decks and guns. On the Sacramento Watertender Gilbert Hawkins found himself carefully untying each knot — he just couldn’t shake off the peacetime way of doing things. Finally a cook ran up and slashed the lines with a butcher’s knife.
Other men struggled to get guns and ammunition. At Ford Island a supply officer took a firm stand: no .30-caliber machine guns without a BuSandA 307 Stub Requisition. On the Helm a gunner’s mate asked Commander Carroll’s permission to get the keys to open the magazine locks. The skipper said, “Damn the keys — cut the locks!”
On the New Orleans they used fire axes to smash open the ammunition ready boxes. The Pennsylvania locks were knocked off by a gunner’s mate who walked around swinging a big hammer — he had been bombed by the Japanese on the gunboat Panay in 1937 and announced he wasn’t going to be caught again. On the Monaghan Boatswain’s Mate Thomas Donahue —relieved of all duties to return to the mainland — ran back to his old job as the captain of No. 4 gun. While the ammunition locks were being sawed off, Donahue whiled away the time slinging wrenches at low-flying planes. Then somebody called up from the magazine and asked what he needed. “Powder,” he called back, “I can’t keep throwing things at them.”
They took him literally and sent up powder without shells. Nothing daunted, he used a drill shell for his first shot at the enemy — at least it was better than a wrench.
On the afterdeck of the Detroit, men banged their three-inch shells against the gun shields to get the protector caps off the fuses, and Aviation Metalsmith George Dorfmeister wondered why the whole ship didn’t go up in smoke. On the Bagley, a five-inch-gun crew trained on a low-flying strafer … Seaman George Sallet squeezed the trigger … and nothing happened. Somebody on
the Honolulu just astern yelled and pointed to the barrel — nobody had taken out the tampion, a decorative brass plug that seals the barrel when not in use. Whereupon, the crew on one of the Honolulu’s after guns forgot their own tampion — but here it didn’t seem to matter: the first shot blew it out, and on they fought.
More and more guns were firing now, but ten priceless minutes had passed. At a time like this, they made a life-and-death difference on Battleship Row.
Another plane glided toward the Nevada. Again the machine guns in her foretop blazed away. Again the plane wobbled and never pulled out of its turn. The men were wild with excitement as it plowed into the water alongside the dredge pipe just astern. The pilot frantically struggled clear and floated faceup past the ship. But this time they got him too late. Marine Private Payton McDaniel watched the torpedo’s silver streak as it headed for the port bow. He remembered pictures of torpedoed ships and half expected the Nevada to break in two and sink enveloped in flames. It didn’t happen that way at all. Just a slight shudder, a brief list to port.
Then she caught a bomb by the starboard antiaircraft director. Ensign Joe Taussig was at his station there, standing in the doorway, when it hit. Suddenly he found his left leg tucked under his arm. Almost absently he said to himself, “That’s a hell of a place for a foot to be,” and was amazed to hear Boatswain’s Mate Allen Owens, standing beside him, say exactly the same words aloud.
In the plotting room five decks below, Ensign Charles Merdinger at first felt that it was all like the drills he had been through dozens of times. But it began to seem different when he learned through the phone circuit that his roommate Joe Taussig had been hit.