by Craig Nelson
The armed forces in Hawaii ached for revenge, feared the enemy’s return, and were determined to not be caught unprepared a third time. Troops at Kaneohe that night shot at each other and then, when civilians came out to see what was happening, shot at them. A man lost his hat in the wind, and when he tried to grab it by sticking his arm through a fence, he was shot dead. Soldiers along the shore of windward Kaaawa beach thought the stars were enemy signals and shot at them. Japanese American fishermen, coming home from work, were strafed by US machine gunners. A US submarine was attacked by the USS Gamble.
Radio reports announced invading forces overtaking Waikiki . . . amphibious troops landing at Diamond Head . . . forty enemy army transports surging across the western shores . . . thousands of paratroopers, in blue coveralls, descending into the fields of cane. Saboteurs swimming onto the beaches at Oahu’s north coast had US money and Honolulu bus tokens. Arrows had been cut out of the pineapple fields directing the way to Pearl Harbor.
The Helm’s crew was informed that the whole of Halsey’s task force had been sunk, while Tangier heard that both Enterprise and Lexington had been taken out. Nevada was told that America’s Panama Canal had been invaded, sealing up the Atlantic Fleet, and that right now California was under attack. The Rigel heard that San Francisco had fallen to the Japanese, while on Pennsylvania, Long Beach had fallen, with expeditionary forces heading toward Los Angeles right this minute. And not just Japanese but Nazi aircrews were part of the attack on Hawaii, with a confirmed sighting of a big blond who spoke pure German.
Kaneohe Naval Air Station ordered everyone to change to khakis. Many no longer owned a full set of uniform, so Mess Attendant Walter Simmons helped boil strong coffee to dye their whites to nearly the right color. Then the rumor came that Japanese marines were landing in khakis, so everyone needed to be in whites. It was then insisted that the invading forces were in whites, so everyone needed to be in blues. Simmons later guessed that the nervous twitching sounds of animals in the fields just outside the base led to a massive execution of mongooses.
Wheeler’s Henry Woodrum: “I saw and heard other men whose closest friends were suddenly and shockingly dead. They walked around in profound helplessness, dazed, enraged, and shouting, or mentally berserk and deathly quiet, but each of them driven by one thought—revenge. It hit the old-timers the worst, I thought, as I watched the face of a first sergeant, dressed in fresh khakis as he strode past us, hands clenched into fists, his eyes staring, unseeing, tears streaming down his face as he muttered an endless string of curses because he somehow thought it was all his fault. . . .
“A young woman issued two packs of cigarettes, scrounged from the damaged PX, to every GI who stopped. I took the cigarettes she gave me, standing alone, watching as she served other men. Her presence there seemed wrong, like the whole day. She looked fresh and clean, in the midst of all that destruction with guys in fatigues, or stripped to the waist, still carting dead men from the lawn across the street.
“All over the island, men sat in the darkness, wondering what was going to happen, thinking that whatever did happen might be worse than what they already had experienced. The unanswered questions and the boredom of nothing to do but wait combined with the darkness of night to create the worst foe of all—apprehension. It was as if a cloak of darkness had settled over all our lives to eliminate awareness, assurance, and the security of orderly existence; we realized now that the word we had been given was wrong.”
• • •
Of over 1,400 crewmen, Arizona counted a bare 334 survivors, who were now in various stages of injury, shock, and grief. Everyone had lost a friend; John Anderson had lost his twin brother. Some had watched their buddies burn to death, unable to do anything to help. Others couldn’t stop thinking about the ones who had been trapped and drowned beneath the sea. Besides being homeless, they wondered when the next attack would come, and this time, would Hawaii be invaded?
Ralph Byard worked the chow line: “I went to work in the butcher’s shop and it was dark and no lights. I worked from daylight to dark. And at night I laid five or six orange crates in a row and laid down on the orange crates and slept all night and got up at daylight and started butchering again. . . . Birdsell said that I behaved as if things were normal. He said he took strength from that and felt that if I could be so undisturbed that he would try to do likewise. He said that I set an example for him. It was three days before I got emotional about it.”
After arriving safely on Ford Island, Bronx-born Clint Westbrook found an armory giving out guns: “We pulled over and stopped and went in and got some, too. I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to go Jap-hunting.’ I grabbed handguns. I’d love to have had a picture that day, ’cause I had a .30-06 [Springfield] slung over my shoulder, two bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossed, and two .45s strapped on my hips with extra clips. And we found a light machine gun. We set it up in the back of the truck and were prowling Ford Island looking for Japs. We saw one parachute, but he landed out in the water.”
Chief Gunner’s Mate Hendon dove into Arizona to get the contents of the paymaster’s safe, assisted by John Rampley: “He got all the money and all the pay receipts for the quarter, and I took them down into the furnace room of the receiving station and spread the pay receipts out on the deck. They were so hot there that they’d dry in just about the length of time it took you to lay them out. . . . I took them up and we reconstructed the payroll for the quarter and figured out what each man had still coming to him. We transferred that to wherever they had gone if they survived, and we transferred the information to Washington for those who were dead or missing.”
• • •
The rumors continued to swirl. Japanese spies were everywhere, landed by flotillas of sampans, disguised as an army of milkmen, or as all-American boys next door. Sailor Frank Lewis heard that a Japanese corpse had been found wearing a University of Oregon ring; marine Private E. H. Robison heard the same story, but that it wasn’t Oregon, but USC; while Lieutenant William Keogh was warned that a squadron was casually walking the streets disguised in McKinley High School sweaters.
Local saboteurs, it was said, had poisoned the reservoirs and water towers and had trained dogs to bark in a secret dog-code. Honolulu police were forced to investigate such reports as “a fifth columnist transmitting intelligence via shortwave radio”—a man listening to the radio; “a man up a telegraph pole signaling Japs at sea”—a telephone repairman; “spies signaling with blinker lights”—two men smoking cigarettes. A light was spotted flashing off and on; obviously a signal. It was a flashlight that a man had dropped and was rolling downhill.
Albert Finkel was part of a group repairing Pennsylvania: “It was just as dark as inside a cat stomach, and of course they had marines stationed everywhere with their guns ready, and you better sing out real loud and clear when you moved on that ship because if you showed a light or you just made a wrong move or a wrong noise, you didn’t know if you were going to take a bullet or not.”
When men putting up antiaircraft batteries on the San Francisco tried to use a spotlight, they were swamped in bullets, which set off other trigger fingers, until the harbor was ablaze in gunfire. Two groups at Schofield, each convinced the other was Japanese, kept up a fusillade until a soldier got hurt and cussed as only an American soldier could cuss, which made the other side realize these weren’t Japs. One sentry at a sub base kept firing at his relief, so his commander kept him on duty for the whole night.
Hawaii’s Japanese Americans heard their own terrifying rumors. First it was universally confirmed that the US Army was coming at any minute to slaughter them all. This was clarified: the soldiers were only going to kill the men; they would leave the women and children behind, to starve to death.
“When the military truck came by and told us, ‘You can’t take anything—get in the truck just as you are,’ that’s when we got scared,” Hazel Kobashigawa, who was fifteen on December 7, later wrote. “Then the truck went down
the street and got the other Japanese families from their homes—only the Japanese families. They took us up Waimano Home Road to a sugarcane field and told us, ‘Don’t move around, because you could get shot.’ ”
Five Japanese Americans were walking on a road in the hills when they were seen by a group of sailors trucking some ammo from Lualualei Depot to Pearl. The driver slammed to a halt. One sailor said, “Let’s shoot them all,” some others agreed, but then one piped up, “We are not beasts; these people had nothing to do with the attack.” The crisis was over, and the truck went on its way.
A Japanese maid told the woman she worked for, “I am so ashamed, I wish I could change my face.”
• • •
Back on Task Force Two just off the Oahu coast, Halsey needed to bring home the six F4F Wildcats of Fighter Squadron Six, which, along with the scouting and bombing Dauntlesses, had futilely searched for the Japanese task force. But Halsey now had a problem: if he lit up his flight deck so his boys could land, Enterprise might be spotted by enemy aircraft or submarines. Finally the admiral was able to get through to command at Ford Island to tell them that the six fighters would be landing at their airstrip instead of on his deck. Ford in turn ordered its men on the ground to hold their fire.
To keep from being spotted by the enemy, the Wildcats flew with lights out and radios off and approached a blacked-out Oahu to find the island’s only lights were the still-raging fires from the attack. It was so black that some pilots couldn’t get their bearing and flew all the way to the eastern shore before coming about and finding their way to Ford.
SBD ace Brig Young had landed on Ford Island earlier that day and was trying to call Halsey from the control tower. When that radio wasn’t strong enough to reach Enterprise, he tried again from his own plane’s radio.
The Enterprise planes were approaching Ford from the south, which meant coming in over Hickam. Lead pilot Lieutenant (jg) Fritz Hebel radioed that they planned to circle around, to land from the north, but Brig Young, at the control tower radio, urged them repeatedly to come straight in. Either Hebel didn’t hear him or didn’t agree with that call.
As the Wildcats tried to set down, it seemed as if every piece of American firepower on Oahu was exploding in their faces, the bullets and tracers “so thick you could walk on it,” as Captain Jim Daniels described it. While an officer ran up and down the sandbags at Ford Island shouting, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Those are our planes,” the “sky was lit up like daytime” remembered Dick Girocco, watching from Hangar 56, and the sound was deafening.
Henry Woodrum: “Two of our own .50-caliber machine-gun positions north of the highway began chattering away as several planes swept low overhead and continued on, but further back, in a momentary glimmer of moonlight, we had a glimpse of an aircraft as it began to slowly roll over before it nosed down into the pineapple patch. A horrendous thumping sound filled the air as the engine sound stopped abruptly. The aircraft skidded through the soft earth of the field as a second aircraft crashed somewhere farther up the gully. It began to skid, shredding parts and pieces here and there until it pitched up and came to rest in the pineapple field not far from the highway.
“We all started running towards the crash sites. When we reached the plane in the gully, we found it almost on its back. The canopy was smashed and the pilot hung suspended through the opening. As each man arrived at the site, he stopped abruptly, immediately seeing the insignia on the fuselage and tail, which identified the plane as US Navy. Several men eased the pilot from the aircraft and laid him down. They felt for a pulse but couldn’t be sure if he was alive or not.”
Ensign Herbert Menges was shot down, crashing into Pearl City’s Palms Hotel, and died. Fritz Hebel pulled away from Ford to try landing at Wheeler, but he was shot down and died of head injuries the next day. Lieutenant (jg) Eric Allen’s Wildcat was so riddled with bullets he bailed out. His parachute only half opened, and then he took a .50-caliber bullet to the chest. Still, he was able to swim through the water to the minesweeper Vireo. But Allen also died the following day.
Ensign Gayle Herman’s plane was struck eighteen times, then a five-inch shell blew the engine out. Herman crashed onto the Ford Island golf course. Astonishingly, he walked away, uninjured. Ensign David Flynn also bailed out, his chute opening fully and bringing him down safely into a cane field. There, soldiers immediately assumed he was a Japanese paratrooper and unleashed a barrage of fire. Flynn was finally able to convince them he was an American and survived.
Ensign James Daniels was now the only Wildcat pilot still in the air. He clicked off his lights and dove for the field’s flood lamps, trying to blind the defenders, but this didn’t stop the gunfire. So Daniels followed the channel toward Barbers Point and circled there for about ten minutes, until the firing settled down a bit. Then he again asked the tower for landing instructions, and this time the controllers tried the opposite of what they’d told Hebel, telling Daniels to come in low, fast, with no lights. He was going to land just like an enemy pilot would.
He lowered the wheels, hit his flaps, and started coming in, not at 85 knots, but at 120. It worked. He turned around at the edge of the runway and started taxiing to the hangar. A marine with a machine gun then started firing at the Wildcat in the dark, barely missing the plane. Gayle Herman came up from behind and hit the marine in the back of the head with his rifle butt to save his friend.
After then flying 110 combat missions from World War II to Korea, Jim Daniels commanded the carrier Ticonderoga during the early days of Vietnam. Gayle Herman, though, would die in a launch accident at the Battle of Midway.
• • •
Between 0600 and 0700 on the morning of December 8, 1941, army air patrols were getting ready to again search for the Japanese task force when a Bellows control tower message arrived with the news that someone had spotted “something strange in the water, out by the reef, on the beach end of the runway.” An O-47 was dispatched to circle overhead with a crewman in the “greenhouse,” its windowed surveillance belly, who quickly confirmed the sighting of an enemy submarine. At the same time, Sergeant David Akui and Lieutenant Paul Plybon were patrolling Waimanalo Beach when Akui, scanning with binoculars, sighted a body rolling in the surf. They pulled a Japanese man in uniform out of the water, determined he was not dead but unconscious, and drew their pistols. He finally came to and explained that he was the sub’s commander, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, who had so struggled to get to shore that he had passed out. He and his engineer, Kiyoshi Inagaki, Sakamaki said, “had fully expected to die in battle. Then something went wrong.”
That something was the gyrocompass malfunction, which had plagued the midget ever since they had detached from their mother submarine. Their mission was to get inside Pearl Harbor, lie submerged until the attack was under way, and then fire their two torpedoes at any suitable target. Instead, the erratic gyroscope interfered with their trim, meaning that after running around in circles in the harbor unable to get their bearings, they’d run aground onto a reef. There, destroyer Helm had seen their periscope and fired on them but missed. The shell had instead broken up the reef, allowing them to submerge, but as they tried to again enter the harbor, they were depth-charged, the blow knocking both men out. Coming to, they found their battery had ruptured, filling the tiny compartment with noxious gases, and Sakamaki decided they would suicide-crash into Pennsylvania. Instead, their power failed entirely, they could only drift about in the channel entrance, and both fell unconscious again. They came to and discovered they were stuck, quite visibly, on a reef by Bellows Field.
Sakamaki now decided that Petty Officer 2nd Class Inagaki should swim to shore, while Sakamaki would set explosives to scuttle the sub. Instead, Inagaki drowned—his body would wash ashore in three days’ time—and the sub’s charges failed to detonate. Completely humiliated, Sakamaki, a twenty-four-year-old Imperial Naval Academy graduate, was now America’s first POW of World War II. He begged the Americans not to tell the
Japanese he had been captured, said that his “honor as a soldier has fallen to the ground,” and asked them to kill him. Instead, he was taken into custody at Sand Island by naval intelligence, and his submarine was hauled away on an eighteen-wheel flatbed.
After the navy learned all they could about the midget submarine’s technology, it was outfitted with mannequins dressed as Japanese sailors and sent on a tour of forty-one states to help sell war bonds. An unwilling prisoner, Sakamaki burned his face with the lit ends of cigarettes, but after arriving at a mainland prison camp, he gave up thoughts of suicide, he later explained, because the American landscape was so pretty, and the guards treated him with such kindness. Repatriated back to Japan after the war, Sakamaki became as famous as his nine fellow midget-sub crewmen, who had spent the war years after their deaths lionized as great heroes of the nation and memorialized on Shinto shrine portraits. American POW number one, however, received either proposals of marriage or demands that he kill himself to make amends for his shameful behavior. For the whole of his life, Sakamaki refused to be interviewed by Pearl Harbor historians or journalists, and in time he became president of Toyota Brazil.
In 1960, students of the US Navy’s deep-sea diving school found another midget, sunk at the harbor’s mouth, with warping that made it appear she had been depth-charged. The US Naval Institute investigated this historical curiosity and concluded, “Little doubt exists that her two-man crew left the submarine. Whether or not they survived remains a mystery. . . . If they were able to swim the mile to shore across placid Keehi Lagoon, they could have easily melted into the local populace of Hawaii with its many Orientals. . . . Their devotion to Japanese ideology would likely have caused them to reveal to no one, either during or after the war, that they had failed in their mission. Therefore, it is a remote possibility that one or both may be alive today.” The historian of Pearl Harbor’s Naval Submarine Base, Ray de Yarmin, said, “It’s not impossible that they’re alive because the dishonor of having survived would have kept them hidden. The truth will never be known, but there are things people have overlooked.”
