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 instru
ments 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.
The World War II Collection Page 44
