Twenty years ago my niece wrote me, asking for some details about Pearl Harbor. I happened to have some, not through living that morning, now eighty years ago. But because it was a place we lived for nearly five years. I wrote her back immediately, saying: “I am far too young to have any first hand experience about the Japanese attack there. I did live in the Harbor for nearly five years, though, and I will tell you that no day on the placid and tranquil island of Oahu went by when we did not think of what happened at 0755 on 07 December 1941.”
We lived then at a little Navy bungalow at 121 McGrew Loop in the McGrew Point housing area. It was built on fill dredged from the harbor to enable the big Navy ships to ’round Ford island. We looked right down Battleship Row across the channel. It was compelling enough that I got a ladder and scaled the perimeter fence to hack at the tenacious undergrowth of tropical vegetation and provide a clear view from the lanai of the little house on the water.
I scribbled some other stuff to my niece about the grater events that led to the drama of that morning. I said that on that awful morning “America was not at war. We were at peace. Onboard the ships of the U.S. Fleet, Chaplains awoke early to get ready for morning services. Mess cooks rose to begin to cook eggs and bacon for the sailors. It was Sunday, our day of rest. The sun was soft, as it is there in the most lovely of the Hawaiian islands. The breeze was gentle, and the palm fronds drifted in the warm breeze. The waters of the Harbor sparkled blue. The Sailors that rose early walked on the decks of the mighty ships and admired the view of the Waianai Mountains to the west and of the Ko’olau Mountains to the north and east. The Sailors who were tired from staying up late enjoyed the only morning of the week when the big loudspeakers didn’t crackle to life at 0600 and demand that they “Shake down and trice Up! Sweep down all major Passageways! Now commence Ship’s business!”
In the stillness of a Sunday morning the mountains are majestic volcanic icons, colored in brilliant greens and wreathed in clouds. There is a gap between them, and it was through this gap that a watchful Sailor could hear the whine of aircraft engines, aircraft launched in the pre-dawn from Japanese aircraft carriers to the northwest of O’ahu. Holy services were in progress under the tropical awnings rigged on the sterns of the big ships. It was just a little before eight o’clock, and the world ended.
Here is how one person described combat, for that is what happened that morning, in two Japanese waves of attacks:
“I can still hear the noise, smell the stink, see the colors and feel that owl that sinks it talons into your stomach as we see the tracers fly. We will always remember those moments of terror half a life time ago. To close is to put it behind you, when you danced with that elephant it stays with you — its always right there, below the surface. The experience is like a sharp edged object located near your head, you are very aware that its there all the time, it affects all you do and every move you make. With some it impacts what they do, but with most of us its just an affect but its an affect that we will never bring to closure.”
The Japanese planes he described left the Harbor a smoking carnage. The Ford Island Dispensary- the first aid clinic- took a 500-pound bomb in the courtyard. It was also used as a temporary morgue for the 1300-odd dead retrieved from Arizona and her sisters. I know that it is haunted because I shared a bunkroom in the old building, staying alone overnight when we had the individual duty at the THIRD Fleet, alert to Soviet submarine movements that could launch missiles at the Homeland. One of those nights I awoke in the darkness, but only partly. I was looking down at my own body in my bed from the upper corner of the dark room. I was looking at myself through someone else’s eyes, and I did not know whose. But I was not afraid. I knew it was someone with whom I had something in common.
Nothing was the same there after the Japanese attack. Not ever.
Two ships were so damaged that they were left behind in the frantic effort to re-float the fleet. One is USS Utah, a former battleship converted to a target ship. Only forty men died in her, but they are still within her as she lies on her side, her portholes looking sadly to the lovely sky. We often would stop on our daily fitness jog around the island and pay our respects. The other is Arizona. She was a proud ship, and 1,213 men lie within her hull, including her Admiral. Over the years, some of her shipmates chose to join her for eternity, their ashes deposited with military honors and respect. She was ready to go to sea when the armor-piercing bomb rattled down her smokestack and detonated in her magazine. Her oil tanks still shed drops of marine fuel to this day. They leave a sheen on the still water that washes down to the channel and out to the broad Pacific. It is as if she is still crying for her dead.
It happened eighty years ago today, at just about this time in the Hawaiian Territories.
Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
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