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Title: Infamous Day: Marines at Pearl Harbor 7 December 1941
Author: Cressman, Robert, Wenger, J. Michael
Language: English
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[Illustration:
National Archives Photo 80-G-279375
_Ford Island, seen on 10 October 1941 from much the same angle as
Japanese bomber pilots viewed it on 7 December._]
Infamous Day:
Marines at Pearl Harbor
_by Robert J. Cressman and J. Michael Wenger_
On the afternoon of 6 December 1941, Tai Sing Loo, the colorful Pearl
Harbor Navy Yard photographer, arranged with Platoon Sergeant Charles
R. Christenot, the noncommissioned-officer-in-charge of the Main Gate
at the Navy Yard, to have his Marines pose for a photograph between
0830 and 0930 Sunday morning, in front of the new concrete main gate.
The photo was to be for a Christmas card.
As war clouds gathered over the Pacific basin in late 1941, the United
States Pacific Fleet operated, as it had since May 1940, from Pearl
Harbor. While the security of that fleet and for the island of Oahu
lay in the Army’s hands, that of the Navy Yard and the Naval Air
Stations at Pearl Harbor and Kaneohe Bay lay in the hands of Marines.
In addition, on board the fleet’s battleships, aircraft carriers, and
some of its cruisers, Marines provided security, served as orderlies
for embarked flag officers and ships’ captains, and manned secondary
antiaircraft and machine gun batteries--seagoing duties familiar to the
Corps since its inception.
The Marine Barracks at Pearl Harbor comprised a Barracks Detachment and
two companies, A and B, the men living in a comfortable three-story
concrete barracks. Company A manned the main gates at the Submarine
Base and Navy Yard, and other “distant outposts,” providing yard
security, while Company B enforced traffic regulations and maintained
proper police and order under the auspices of the Yard Police Officer.
In addition, Marines ran the Navy Yard Fire Department. Elements of
Marine defense battalions made Pearl Harbor their home, too, residing
in the several 100-man temporary wooden barracks buildings that had
been completed during 1940 and 1941. Less commodious but no less
important was the burgeoning airbase that Marines of Marine Aircraft
Group (MAG) 2 (later 21) had hewn and hammered out near Barbers
Point--Ewa Mooring Mast Field, home for a Marine aircraft group
consisting of fighting, scout-bombing, and utility squadrons.
On 27 November, having been privy to intelligence information gleaned
from intercepted and translated Japanese diplomatic message traffic,
Admiral Harold R. Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations, and General
George C. Marshall, the Army’s Chief of Staff, sent a war warning to
their principal commanders on Oahu, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the
Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, and Lieutenant General Walter C.
Short, the Commander of the Hawaiian Department. Thus adjured to take
appropriate defensive measures, and feeling that his more exposed
advance bases needed strengthening, Kimmel set in motion a plan that
had been completed as early as 10 November, to provide planes for
Midway and Wake. The latter was to receive fighters--12 Grumman F4F-3
Wildcats of Marine Fighter Squadron (VMF) 211--while Midway was to
get scout bombers from Marine Scout-Bomber Squadron (VMSB) 231. The
following day, 28 November 1941, the carrier _Enterprise_ (CV-6)
departed Pearl in Task Force 8 under Vice Admiral William F. Halsey,
Jr., Commander, Aircraft, Battle Force, embarking VMF-211 at sea.
VMSB-231 was to embark in another carrier, _Lexington_ (CV-2), in Task
Force 12 under Rear Admiral John H. Newton, on 5 December.
[Illustration:
National Archives Photo 80-G-451123
_Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, looking south, on 13 October 1941. Marine
Barracks complex is located to the left of the tank farm visible just
to left of center. Several temporary wooden barracks, completed in
early 1941, ring the parade ground._]
At the outset, apparently no one except the squadron commanders knew
their respective destinations, but the men of VMF-211 and VMSB-231,
meanwhile, apparently ordered their affairs and made ready for what
was to appear as “advanced base exercises.” Among those men seeing to
his financial affairs at Ewa Mooring Mast Field on 3 December 1941 was
First Lieutenant Richard E. Fleming, USMCR, who wrote to his widowed
mother: “This is the last time I’ll be able to write for probably some
time. I’m sorry I can’t give you any details; it’s that secret.”
On the 5th, Task Force 12 sailed from Pearl. Eighteen light gray
Vought SB2U-3 Vindicators from VMSB-231, under 41-year old Major
Clarence J. “Buddy” Chappell, then made the 1.7-hour flight from Ewa
and landed on board _Lexington_, along with the “Lady Lex” air group.
Planes recovered, the force set course for Midway. The _Lexington_
departed Pearl Harbor on the morning of 5 December. That afternoon saw
the arrival of Battleship Division One from gunnery exercises in the
Hawaiian Operating Area, and the three dreadnoughts, _Arizona_ (BB-39),
_Nevada_ (BB-36), and _Oklahoma_ (BB-37), moored in their assigned
berths at the quays along Ford Island. The movements of the ships in
and out of Pearl Harbor had been the object of much interest on the
part of the espionage system operating out of the Japanese consulate in
Honolulu throughout the year 1941, for the information its operatives
were providing went to support an ambitious and bold operation that had
taken shape over several months.
Unbeknownst to Admiral Kimmel, a Japanese task force under the command
of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, formed around six carriers and the
most powerful force of its kind ever assembled by any naval power, had
set out from the remote Kurile Islands on 27 November. It observed
radio silence and steamed via the comparatively less traveled northern
Pacific.
Nagumo’s mission was to destroy the United States Pacific Fleet and
thus ensure its being unable to threaten the Japanese Southern
Operation poised to attack American, British, and Dutch possessions in
the Far East. All of the warning signs made available to Admiral Kimmel
and General Short pointed toward hostilities occurring within the
forseeable future, but not on Oahu. War, however, was about to burst
upon the Marines at Pearl Harbor “like a thunderclap from a clear sky.”
_Suddenly Hurled into War_
Some 200 miles north of Oahu, Vice Admiral Nagumo’s _First Air
Fleet_--formed around the aircraft carriers _Akagi_, _Kaga_, _Soryu_,
_Hiryu_, _Shokaku_ and _Zuikaku_--pressed southward in the pre-dawn
hours of 7 December 1941. At 0550, the dark gray ships swung to port,
into the brisk easterly wind, and commenced launching an initial strike
of 184 planes 10 minutes later. A second strike would take off after an
hour’s interval. Once airborne, the 51 Aichi D3A1 Type 99 dive bombers
(Vals), 89 Nakajima B5N2 attack planes (Kates) used in high-level
bombing or torpedo bombing roles, and 43 Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 00
fighters (Zeroes), led by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, _Akagi_’s air group
commander, wheeled around, climbed to 3,000 meters, and droned toward
the south at 0616. The only other military planes aloft that morning
were Douglas SBD Dauntlesses from _Enterprise_, flying searches ahead
of the carrier as she returned from Wake Island, Army Boeing B-17
Flying Fortresses heading in from the mainland, and Navy Consolidated
PBY Catalinas on routine patrols out of the naval air stations at Ford
Island and Kaneohe.
[Illustration:
Jordan Collection, MCHC
_Aerial view of Ewa Mooring Mast Field, taken 2 December 1941, showing
various types of planes arrayed on the mat and living accommodations at
middle and right._]
[Illustration:
Jordan Collection, MCHC
_The centrally located airship mooring mast at Ewa from which the field
derived its distinctive name, February 1941._]
That morning, 15 of the ships at Pearl Harbor numbered Marine
detachments among their complements: eight battleships, two heavy
cruisers, four light cruisers, and one auxiliary. A 16th detachment,
assigned to the auxiliary (target/gunnery training ship) _Utah_
(AG-16), was ashore on temporary duty at the 14th Naval District Rifle
Range at Puuloa Point.
At 0753, Lieutenant Frank Erickson, USCG, the Naval Air Station (NAS)
Ford Island duty officer, watched Privates First Class Frank Dudovick
and James D. Young, and Private Paul O. Zeller, USMCR--the Marine color
guard--march up and take post for Colors. Satisfied that all looked
in order outside, Erickson stepped back into the office to check if
the assistant officer-of-the-day was ready to play the recording for
sounding Colors on the loudspeaker. The sound of two heavy explosions,
however, sent the Coast Guard pilot running to the door. He reached it
just in time to see a Kate fly past 1010 Dock and release a torpedo.
The markings on the plane--“which looked like balls of fire”--left no
question as to its identity; the explosion of the torpedo as it struck
the battleship _California_ (BB-44), moored near the administration
building, left no doubt as to its intent.
[Illustration:
National Archives Photo 80-G-32463
_While a Marine, foreground, looks skyward, the torpedoed battleship_
California (_BB-46_) _lists to port. In the left background flies “Old
Glory,” raised by PFCs Frank Dudovick and James D. Young, and Pvt Paul
O. Zeller, USMCR._]
“The Marines didn’t wait for colors,” Erickson recalled later, “The
flag went right up but the tune was general quarters.” As “all Hell”
broke loose around them, Dudovick, Young, and Zeller unflinchingly
hoisted the Stars and Stripes “with the same smartness and precision”
that had characterized their participation in peacetime ceremonies. At
the crew barracks on Ford Island, Corporal Clifton Webster and Private
First Class Albert E. Yale headed for the roof immediately after
general quarters sounded. In the direct line of fire from strafing
planes, they set up a machine gun. Across Oahu, as Japanese planes
swept in over NAS Kaneohe Bay, the Marine detachment there--initially
the only men who had weapons--hurried to their posts and began firing
at the attackers.
Since the American aircraft carriers were at sea, the Japanese targeted
the battleships which lay moored off Ford Island. At one end of
Battleship Row lay _Nevada_. At 0802, the battleship’s .50-caliber
machine guns opened fire on the torpedo planes bearing down on them
from the direction of the Navy Yard; her gunners believed that they had
shot one down almost immediately. An instant later, however, a torpedo
penetrated her port side and exploded.
Ahead of _Nevada_ lay _Arizona_, with the repair ship _Vestal_ (AR-4)
alongside, preparing for a tender availability. Major Alan Shapley
had been relieved the previous day as detachment commanding officer
by Captain John H. Earle, Jr., who had come over to _Arizona_ from
_Tennessee_ (BB-43). Awaiting transportation to the Naval Operating
Base, San Diego, and assignment to the 2d Marine Division, Shapley was
lingering on board to play first base on the battleship’s baseball
team in a game scheduled with the squad from the carrier _Enterprise_
(CV-6). After the morning meal, he started down to his cabin to change.
Seated at breakfast, Sergeant John M. Baker heard the air raid alarm,
followed closely by an explosion in the distance and machine gun
fire. Corporal Earl C. Nightingale, leaving the table, had paid no
heed to the alarm at the outset, since he had no antiaircraft battle
station, but ran to the door on the port side that opened out onto
the quarterdeck at the sound of the distant explosion. Looking out,
he saw what looked like a bomb splash alongside _Nevada_. Marines
from the ship’s color guard then burst breathlessly into the messing
compartment, saying that they were being attacked.
As general quarters sounded, Baker and Nightingale, among the others,
headed for their battle stations. Aft, congestion at the starboard
ladder, that led through casemate no. 9, prompted Second Lieutenant
Carleton E. Simensen, USMCR, the ship’s junior Marine officer, to force
his way through. Both Baker and Nightingale noted, in passing, that the
5-inch/51 there was already manned, and Baker heard Corporal Burnis L.
Bond, the gun captain, tell the crew to train it out. Nightingale noted
that the men seemed “extremely calm and collected.”
As Lieutenant Simensen led the Marines up the ladder on the starboard
side of the mainmast tripod, an 800-kilogram converted armor-piercing
shell dropped by a Kate from _Kaga_ ricocheted off the side of Turret
IV. Penetrating the deck, it exploded in the vicinity of the captain’s
pantry. Sergeant Baker was following Simensen up the mainmast when
the bomb exploded, shrapnel cutting down the officer as he reached
the first platform. He crumpled to the deck. Nightingale, seeing him
flat on his back, bent over him to see what he could do but Simensen,
dying, motioned for his men to continue on up the ladder. Nightingale
continued up to Secondary Aft and reported to Major Shapley that
nothing could be done for Simensen.
[Illustration: Oahu,
7 December, 1941]
An instant later, a rising babble of voices in the secondary station
prompted Nightingale to call for silence. No sooner had the tense quiet
settled in when, suddenly, a terrible explosion shook the ship, as a
second 800-kilogram bomb--dropped by a Kate from _Hiryu_--penetrated
the deck near Turret II and set off _Arizona_’s forward magazines. An
instant after the terrible fireball mushroomed upward, Nightingale
looked out and saw a mass of flames forward of the mainmast, and much
in the tradition of Private William Anthony of the _Maine_ reported
that the ship was afire.[A] “We’d might as well go below,” Major
Shapley said, looking around, “we’re no good here.” Sergeant Baker
started down the ladder. Nightingale, the last man out, followed
Shapley down the port side of the mast, the railings hot to the touch
as they made their way below.
[A] Private Anthony, an instant after the explosion mortally
damaged the battleship _Maine_ in Havana harbor on 15
February 1898, made his way to the captain’s cabin, where
he encountered that officer in the passageway outside.
Drawing himself to attention, Anthony reported that the
ship was sinking.
Baker had just reached the searchlight platform when he heard someone
shout: “You can’t use the ladder.” Private First Class Kenneth D.
Goodman, hearing that and apparently assuming (incorrectly, as it
turned out) that the ladder down was indeed unusable, instinctively
leapt in desperation to the crown of Turret III. Miraculously, he made
the jump with only a slight ankle injury. Shapley, Nightingale, and
Baker, however, among others, stayed on the ladder and reached the boat
deck, only to find it a mass of wreckage and fire, with the bodies
of the slain lying thick upon it. Badly charred men staggered to the
quarterdeck. Some reached it only to collapse and never rise. Among
them was Corporal Bond, burned nearly black, who had been ordering his
crew to train out no. 9 5-inch/51 at the outset of the battle; sadly,
he would not survive his wounds.
Shapley and Corporal Nightingale made their way across the ship
between Turret III and Turret IV, where Shapley stopped to talk with
Lieutenant Commander Samuel G. Fuqua, _Arizona_’s first lieutenant and,
by that point, the ship’s senior officer on board. Fuqua, who appeared
“exceptionally calm,” as he helped men over the side, listened as
Shapley told him that it appeared that a bomb had gone down the stack
and triggered the explosion that doomed the ship. Since fighting the
massive fires consuming the ship was a hopeless task, Fuqua told the
Marine that he had ordered _Arizona_ abandoned. Fuqua, the first man
Sergeant Baker encountered on the quarterdeck, proved an inspiration.
“His calmness gave me courage,” Baker later declared, “and I looked
around to see if I could help.” Fuqua, however, ordered him over the
side, too. Baker complied.
Shapley and Nightingale, meanwhile, reached the mooring quay alongside
which _Arizona_ lay when an explosion blew them into the water.
Nightingale started swimming for a pipeline 150 feet away but soon
found that his ebbing strength would not permit him to reach it.
Shapley, seeing the enlisted man’s distress, swam over and grasped
his shirt front, and told him to hang onto his shoulders. The strain
of swimming with Nightingale, however, proved too much for even the
athletic Shapley, who began to experience difficulties himself. Seeing
his former detachment commander foundering, Nightingale loosened his
grip on his shoulders and told him to go the rest of the way alone.
Shapley stopped, however, and firmly grabbed him by the shirt; he
refused to let go. “I would have drowned,” Nightingale later recounted,
“but for the Major.” Sergeant Baker had seen their travail, but, too
far away to help, made it to Ford Island alone.
Several bombs, meanwhile, fell close aboard _Nevada_, moored astern of
_Arizona_, which had begun to hemorrhage fuel from ruptured tanks. Fire
spread to the oil that lay thick upon the water, threatening _Nevada_.
As the latter counterflooded to correct the list, her acting commanding
officer, Lieutenant Commander Francis J. Thomas, USNR, decided that his
ship had to get underway “to avoid further danger due to proximity of
_Arizona_.” After receiving a signal from the yard tower to stand out
of the harbor, _Nevada_ singled up her lines at 0820. She began moving
from her berth 20 minutes later.
[Illustration:
Naval Historical Center Photo NH 50931
_View from a Japanese plane taken around 0800 on 7 December 1941. At
lower left is_ Nevada (_BB-36_), _with_ Arizona (_BB-39_) _ahead of
her, with the repair ship_ Vestal (_AR-4_) _moored outboard;_ West
Virginia (_BB-48_) (_already beginning to list to port_) _alongside_
Tennessee (_BB-43_); Oklahoma (_BB-37_) (_which has already taken at
least one torpedo_) _with_ Maryland (_BB-46_) _moored inboard; the
fleet oiler_ Neosho (_AO-23_) _and, far right,_ California (_BB-44_),
_which, too, already has been torpedoed._]
[Illustration:
Author’s Collection
_Col Alan Shapley, in a post-war photograph taken while serving as an
aide to Adm William F. Halsey, Jr._]
_Oklahoma_, _Nevada_’s sister ship moored inboard of _Maryland_ in
berth F-5, meanwhile manned air-defense stations at about 0757, to
the sound of gunfire. After a junior officer passed the word over
the general announcing system that it was not a drill--providing a
suffix of profanity to underscore the fact--all men not having an
antiaircraft defense station were ordered to lay below the armored
deck. Crews at the 5-inch and 3-inch batteries, meanwhile, opened
ready-use lockers. A heavy shock, followed by a loud explosion, came
soon thereafter as a torpedo slammed home in the battleship’s port
side. The “Okie” soon began listing to port.
Oil and water cascaded over the decks, making them extremely slippery
and silencing the ready-duty machine gun on the forward superstructure.
Two more torpedoes struck home. The massive rent in the ship’s side
rendered the desperate attempts at damage control futile. As Ensign
Paul H. Backus hurried from his room to his battle station on the
signal bridge, he passed his friend Second Lieutenant Harry H. Gaver,
Jr., one of _Oklahoma_’s Marine detachment junior officers, “on his
knees, attempting to close a hatch on the port side, alongside the
barbette [of Turret I] ... part of the trunk which led from the main
deck to the magazines.... There were men trying to come up from below
at the time Harry was trying to close the hatch....” Backus never saw
Gaver again.
[Illustration: Pearl Harbor
7 December, 1941]
As the list increased and the oily, wet decks made even standing up a
chore, _Oklahoma_’s acting commanding officer ordered her abandoned to
save as many lives as possible. Directed to leave over the starboard
side, away from the direction of the roll, most of _Oklahoma_’s men
managed to get off, to be picked up by boats arriving to rescue
survivors. Sergeant Thomas E. Hailey, and Privates First Class Marlin
“S” Seale and James H. Curran, Jr., swam to the nearby _Maryland_.
Hailey and Seale turned to the task of rescuing shipmates, Seale
remaining on _Maryland_’s blister ledge throughout the attack, pulling
men from the water. Later, although inexperienced with that type of
weapon, Hailey and Curran manned _Maryland_’s antiaircraft guns. _West
Virginia_ rescued Privates George B. Bierman and Carl R. McPherson,
who not only helped rescue others from the water but also helped to
fight that battleship’s fires.
[Illustration:
National Archives Photo 80-G-32549
_Along Battleship Row, beneath a pall of smoke from the burning_
Arizona (_BB-39_) _lies_ Maryland (_BB-46_), _her 5-inch/25
antiaircraft battery bristling._ Oklahoma (_BB-37_) _lies “turned
turtle,” capsized, at right. This view shows the distance “Okie”
survivors swam to the inboard battleship, where they manned
antiaircraft batteries and rescued their shipmates._]
Sergeant Woodrow A. Polk, a bomb fragment in his left hip, sprained
his right ankle in abandoning ship, while someone clambered into
a launch over Sergeant Leo G. Wears and nearly drowned him in the
process. Gunnery Sergeant Norman L. Currier stepped from _Oklahoma_’s
red hull to a boat, dry-shod. Wears--as Hailey and Curran--soon found
a short-handed antiaircraft gun on _Maryland_’s boat deck and helped
pass ammunition. Private First Class Arthur J. Bruktenis, whose column
in the December 1941 issue of _The Leatherneck_ would be the last to
chronicle the peacetime activities of _Oklahoma_’s Marines, dislocated
his left shoulder in the abandonment, but survived.
[Illustration:
Naval Historical Center Photo NH 102556
_Sgt Thomas E. Hailey, 18 May 1942, one month after he had been awarded
the Navy Cross for heroism he exhibited on 7 December 1941 that
followed the sinking of the battleship_ Oklahoma (_BB-37_).]
[Illustration:
Naval Historical Center Photo NH 102557
_Cpl Willard A. Darling, circa 1941, was awarded the Navy Cross for
heroism in the aftermath of the Japanese air attack on the battleship_
Oklahoma (_BB-37_).]
A little over two weeks shy of his 23d birthday, Corporal Willard D.
Darling, an _Oklahoma_ Marine who was a native Oklahoman, had meanwhile
clambered on board a motor launch. As it headed shoreward, Darling
saw 51-year-old Commander Fred M. Rohow (Medical Corps), the capsized
battleship’s senior medical officer, in a state of shock, struggling
in the oily water. Since Rohow seemed to be drowning, Darling
unhesitatingly dove in and, along with Shipfitter First Class William
S. Thomas, kept him afloat until a second launch picked them up.
Strafing Japanese planes and shrapnel from American guns falling around
them prompted the abandonment of the launch at a dredge pipeline,
so Darling jumped in and directed the doctor to follow him. Again,
the Marine rescued Rohow--who proved too exhausted to make it on his
own--and towed him to shore.
_Maryland_, meanwhile, inboard of _Oklahoma_, promptly manned her
antiaircraft guns at the outset of the attack, her machine guns opening
fire immediately. She took two bomb hits, but suffered only minor
damage. Her Marine detachment suffered no casualties.
On board _Tennessee_ (BB-43), Marine Captain Chevey S. White, who had
just turned 28 the day before, was standing officer-of-the-deck watch
as that battleship lay moored inboard of _West Virginia_ (BB-48) in
berth F-6. Since the commanding officer and the executive officer
were both ashore, command devolved upon Lieutenant Commander James W.
Adams, Jr., the ship’s gunnery officer. Summoned topside at the sound
of the general alarm and hearing “all hands to general quarters” over
the ship’s general announcing system, Adams sprinted to the bridge
and spotted White en route. Over the din of battle, Adams shouted
for the Marine to “get the ship in condition Zed [Z] as quickly as
possible.” White did so. By the time Adams reached his battle station
on the bridge, White was already at his own battle station, directing
the ship’s antiaircraft guns. During the action (in which the ship
took one bomb that exploded on the center gun of Turret II and another
that penetrated the crown of Turret III, the latter breaking apart
without exploding), White remained at his unprotected station, coolly
and courageously directing the battleship’s antiaircraft battery.
_Tennessee_ claimed four enemy planes shot down.
[Illustration:
Marine Corps Historical Collection
_Capt Chevey S. White was a veteran of service in China with the 4th
Marines, where he had edited the_ Walla Walla, _the regiment’s news
magazine. White had become CO of_ Tennessee_’s_ (_BB-43_) _Marine
Detachment on 3 August 1941. Ultimately, he was killed by enemy mortar
fire on Guam on 22 July 1944._]
_West Virginia_, outboard of _Tennessee_, had been scheduled to
sail for Puget Sound, due for overhaul, on 17 November, but had
been retained in Hawaiian waters owing to the tense international
situation. In her exposed moorings, she thus absorbed six torpedoes,
while a seventh blew her rudder free. Prompt counterflooding, however,
prevented her from turning turtle as _Oklahoma_ had done, and she sank,
upright, alongside _Tennessee_.
On board _California_, moored singly off the administration building
at the naval air station, junior officer of the deck on board had
been Second Lieutenant Clifford B. Drake. Relieved by Ensign Herbert
C. Jones, USNR, Drake went down to the wardroom for breakfast (Kadota
figs, followed by steak and eggs) where, around 0755, he heard airplane
engines and explosions as Japanese dive bombers attacked the air
station. The general quarters alarm then summoned the crew to battle
stations. Drake, forsaking his meal, hurried to the foretop.
By 0803, the two ready machine guns forward of the bridge had
opened fire, followed shortly thereafter by guns no. 2 and 4 of the
antiaircraft battery. As the gunners depleted the ready-use ammunition,
however, two torpedoes struck home in quick succession. _California_
began to settle as massive flooding occurred. Meanwhile, fumes from the
ruptured fuel tanks--she had been fueled to 95 percent capacity the
previous day--drove out the men assigned to the party attempting to
bring up ammunition for the guns by hand. A call for men to bring up
additional gas masks proved fruitless, as the volunteers, who included
Private Arthur E. Senior, could not reach the compartment in which they
were stored.
_California_’s losing power because of the torpedo damage soon
relegated Lieutenant Drake, in her foretop, to the role of “... a
reporter of what was going on ... a somewhat confused young lieutenant
suddenly hurled into war.” As _California_ began listing after the
torpedo hits, Drake began pondering his own ship’s fate. Comparing his
ship’s list with that of _Oklahoma_’s, he dismissed _California_’s
rolling over, thinking, “who ever heard of a battleship capsizing?”
_Oklahoma_, however, did a few moments later.
Meanwhile, at about 0810, in response to a call for a chain of
volunteers to pass 5-inch/25 ammunition, Private Senior again stepped
forward and soon clambered down to the C-L Division Compartment. There
he saw Ensign Jones, Lieutenant Drake’s relief earlier that morning,
standing at the foot of the ladder on the third deck, directing the
ammunition supply. For almost 20 minutes, Senior and his shipmates
toiled under Jones’ direction until a bomb penetrated the main deck at
about 0830 and exploded on the second deck, plunging the compartment
into darkness. As acrid smoke filled the compartment, Senior reached
for his gas mask, which he had lain on a shell box behind him, and put
it on. Hearing someone say: “Mr. Jones has been hit,” Senior flashed
his flashlight over on the ensign’s face and saw that “it was all
bloody. His white coat also had blood all over it.” Senior and another
man then carried Jones as far as the M Division compartment, but the
ensign would not let them carry him any further. “Leave me alone,”
he gasped insistently, “I’m done for. Get out of here before the
magazines go off!” Soon thereafter, however, before he could get clear,
Senior felt the shock of an explosion from down below and collapsed,
unconscious.
[Illustration:
Naval Historical Center Photo NH 102552
_GySgt Charles E. Douglas, 24 February 1941, later awarded the Navy
Cross for heroism on board_ Nevada _at Pearl Harbor. He had seen
service in Nicaragua and in the Legation Guard at Peking, as well as at
sea in battleships_ Pennsylvania (_BB-38_) _and_ New York (_BB-34_).]
[Illustration:
Naval Historical Center Photo NH 102554
_Cpl Joe R. Driskell_, circa _1941, later awarded the Navy Cross for
heroism on board_ Nevada _at Pearl Harbor. Driskell had been in the
Civilian Conservation Corps in Wyoming before he had enlisted in the
Corps. When general quarters sounded on board_ Nevada (_BB-36_) _on
7 December, he took up his battle station as gun captain of no. 9
5-inch/51 gun, in casemate no. 9, on the starboard side._]
Jones’ gallantry--which earned him a posthumous Medal of
Honor--impressed Private Howard M. Haynes, who had been confined before
the attack, awaiting a bad conduct discharge. After the battle, a
contrite Haynes--“a mean character who had shown little or no respect
for anything or anyone” before 7 December--approached Lieutenant Drake
and said that he [Haynes] was alive because of the actions that Ensign
Jones had taken. “God,” he said, “give me a chance to prove I’m worth
it.” His actions that morning in the crucible of war earned Haynes a
recommendation for retention in the service. Most of _California_’s
Marines, like Haynes, survived the battle. Private First Class Earl D.
Wallen and Privates Roy E. Lee, Jr. and Shelby C. Shook, however, did
not. Nor did the badly burned Private First Class John A. Blount, Jr.,
who succumbed to his wounds on 9 December.
_Nevada_’s attempt to clear the harbor, meanwhile, inspired those who
witnessed it. Her magnificent effort prompted a stepped-up effort
by Japanese dive bomber pilots to sink her. One 250-kilogram bomb
hit her boat deck just aft of a ventilator trunk and 12 feet to the
starboard side of the centerline, about halfway between the stack
and the end of the boat deck, setting off laid-out 5-inch ready-use
ammunition. Spraying fragments decimated the gun crews. The explosion
wrecked the galley and blew open the starboard door of the compartment,
venting into casemate no. 9 and starting a fire that swept through the
casemate, wrecking the gun. Although he had been seriously wounded
by the blast that had hurt both of his legs and stripped much of his
uniform from his body, Corporal Joe R. Driskell disregarded his own
condition and insisted that he man another gun. He refused medical
treatment, assisting other wounded men instead, and then helped battle
the flames. He did not quit until those fires were out.
Another 250-kilogram bomb hit _Nevada_’s bridge, penetrating down into
casemate no. 6 and starting a fire. The blast had also severed the
water pipes providing circulating water to the water-cooled machine
guns on the foremast-guns in the charge of Gunnery Sergeant Charles
E. Douglas. Intense flames enveloped the forward superstructure,
endangering Douglas and his men, and prompting orders for them to
abandon their station. They steadfastly remained at their posts,
however, keeping the .50-caliber Brownings firing amidst the swirling
black smoke until the end of the action.
Unlike the battleships the enemy had caught moored on Battleship
Row, _Pennsylvania_ (BB-38), the fleet flagship, lay on keel blocks,
sharing Dry Dock No. 1 at the Navy Yard with _Cassin_ (DD-372) and
_Downes_ (DD-375)--two destroyers side-by-side ahead of her. Three of
_Pennsylvania_’s four propeller shafts had been removed and she was
receiving all steam, power, and water from the yard. Although her being
in drydock had excused her from taking part in antiaircraft drills, her
crew swiftly manned her machine guns after the first bombs exploded
among the PBY flying boats parked on the south end of Ford Island. “Air
defense stations” then sounded, followed by “general quarters.” Men
knocked the locks off ready-use ammunition stowage and _Pennsylvania_
opened fire about 0802.
[Illustration: _Close-up of the forward superstructure of_ Nevada
(_BB-36_) _taken a few days after the Japanese attack as the battleship
lay beached off Waipio Point. In the upper portion of this view can
be seen the forward machine gun position with its four .50-caliber
water-cooled Brownings--the ones manned by Gunnery Sergeant Douglas and
his men during the battle on 7 December. Note the extensive fire damage
to the superstructure below. In the lower portion of the picture can
be seen one of the ship’s 5-inch/51s, of the type manned by Corporal
Driskell at the start of the action._]
The fleet flagship and the two destroyers nestled in the drydock ahead
of her led a charmed life until dive bombers from _Soryu_ and _Hiryu_
targeted the drydock area between 0830 and 0915.[B] One bomb penetrated
_Pennsylvania_’s boat deck, just to the rear of 5-inch/25 gun no. 7,
and detonated in casemate no. 9. Of _Pennsylvania_’s Marine detachment,
two men (Privates Patrick P. Tobin and George H. Wade, Jr.) died
outright, 13 fell wounded, and six were listed as missing. Three of
the wounded--Corporal Morris E. Nations and Jesse C. Vincent, Jr., and
Private First Class Floyd D. Stewart--died later the same day.
[B] For what became of the two destroyers, and the Marines
decorated for bravery in the battle to try to save them,
see page 28–29.
[Illustration: Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Russel Fox, USMC, as the
Division Marine Officer on the staff of Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd,
Commander, Battleship Division One, was the most senior Marine officer
to die on board _Arizona_ on the morning of 7 December 1941. Fox had
enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1916. For heroism in France on 4
October 1918, when he was a member of the 17th Company, Fifth Marines,
he was awarded the Navy Cross. He also was decorated with the Army’s
Distinguished Service Cross and the French Croix de Guerre. Fox was
commissioned in 1921 and later served in Nicaragua as well as China.]
As the onslaught descended upon the battleships and the air station,
Marine detachments hurried to their battle stations on board other
ships elsewhere at Pearl. In the Navy Yard lay _Argonne_ (AG-31), the
flagship of the Base Force, the heavy cruisers _New Orleans_ (CA-32)
and _San Francisco_ (CA-38), and the light cruisers _Honolulu_ (CL-48),
_St. Louis_ (CL-49) and _Helena_ (CL-50). To the northeast of Ford
Island lay the light cruiser _Phoenix_ (CL-43).
Although _Utah_ was torpedoed and sunk at her berth early in the
attack, her 14 Marines, on temporary duty at the 14th Naval District
Rifle Range, found useful employment combatting the enemy. The Fleet
Machine Gun School lay on Oahu’s south coast, west of the Pearl Harbor
entrance channel, at Fort Weaver. The men stationed there, including
several Marines on temporary duty from the carrier _Enterprise_ and
the battleships _California_ and _Pennsylvania_, sprang to action at
the first sounds of war. Working with the men from the Rifle Range,
all hands set up and mounted guns, and broke out and belted ammunition
between 0755 and 0810. All those present at the range were issued
pistols or rifles from the facility’s armory.
Soon after the raid began, Platoon Sergeant Harold G. Edwards set about
securing the camp against any incursion the Japanese might attempt
from the landward side, and also supervised the emplacement of machine
guns along the beach. Lieutenant (j.g.) Roy R. Nelson, the officer in
charge of the Rifle Range, remembered the many occasions when Captain
Frank M. Reinecke, commanding officer of _Utah_’s Marine detachment
and the senior instructor at the Fleet Machine Gun School (and, as his
Naval Academy classmates remembered, quite a conversationalist), had
maintained that the school’s weapons would be a great asset if anybody
ever attacked Hawaii. By 0810, Reinecke’s gunners stood ready to prove
the point and soon engaged the enemy--most likely torpedo planes
clearing Pearl Harbor or high-level bombers approaching from the south.
Nearby Army units, perhaps alerted by the Marines’ fire, opened up
soon thereafter. Unfortunately, the eager gunners succeeded in downing
one of two SBDs from _Enterprise_ that were attempting to reach Hickam
Field. An Army crash boat, fortunately, rescued the pilot and his
wounded passenger soon thereafter.
On board _Argonne_, meanwhile, alongside 1010 Dock, her Marines manned
her starboard 3-inch/23 battery and her machine guns. Commander Fred
W. Connor, the ship’s commanding officer, later credited Corporal
Alfred Schlag with shooting down one Japanese plane as it headed for
Battleship Row.
When the attack began, _Helena_ lay moored alongside 1010 Dock, the
venerable minelayer _Oglala_ (CM-3) outboard. A signalman, standing
watch on the light cruiser’s signal bridge at 0757 identified the
planes over Ford Island as Japanese, and the ship went to general
quarters. Before she could fire a shot in her own defense, however, one
800-kilogram torpedo barrelled into her starboard side about a minute
after the general alarm had begun summoning her men to their battle
stations. The explosion vented up from the forward engine room through
the hatch and passageways, catching many of the crew running to their
stations, and started fires on the third deck. Platoon Sergeant Robert
W. Teague, Privates First Class Paul F. Huebner, Jr. and George E.
Johnson, and Private Lester A. Morris were all severely burned. Johnson
later died.
[Illustration:
National Archives Photo 80-G-32854
_Beneath a leaden sky on 8 December 1941, Marines at NAS Kaneohe Bay
fire a volley over the common grave of 15 officers and men killed
during the Japanese raid the previous day. Note sandbagged position
atop the sandy rise at right._]
To the southeast, _New Orleans_ lay across the pier from her sister
ship _San Francisco_. The former went to general quarters soon after
enemy planes had been sighted dive-bombing Ford Island around 0757.
At 0805, as several low-flying torpedo planes roared by, bound for
Battleship Row, Marine sentries on the fantail opened fire with
rifles and .45s. _New Orleans_’ men, meanwhile, so swiftly manned the
1.1-inch/75 quads, and .50-caliber machine guns, under the direction of
Captain William R. Collins, the commanding officer of the ship’s Marine
detachment, that the ship actually managed to shoot at torpedo planes
passing her stern. _San Francisco_, however, under major overhaul with
neither operative armament nor major caliber ammunition on board, was
thus restricted to having her men fire small arms at whatever Japanese
planes came within range. Some of her crew, though, hurried over to
_New Orleans_, which was near-missed by one bomb, and helped man her
5-inchers.
_St. Louis_, outboard of _Honolulu_, went to general quarters at
0757 and opened fire with her 1.1 quadruple mounted antiaircraft and
.50-caliber machine gun batteries, and after getting her 5-inch mounts
in commission by 0830--although without power in train--she hauled in
her lines at 0847 and got underway at 0931. With all 5-inchers in full
commission by 0947, she proceeded to sea, passing the channel entrance
buoys abeam around 1000. _Honolulu_, damaged by a near miss from a
bomb, remained moored at her berth throughout the action.
_Phoenix_, moored by herself in berth C-6 in Pearl Harbor, to the
northeast of Ford Island, noted the attacking planes at 0755 and went
to general quarters. Her machine gun battery opened fire at 0810 on the
attacking planes as they came within range; her antiaircraft battery
five minutes later. Ultimately, after two false starts (where she had
gotten underway and left her berth only to see sortie signals cancelled
each time) _Phoenix_ cleared the harbor later that day and put to sea.
For at least one Marine, though, the day’s adventure was not over when
the Japanese planes departed. Search flights took off from Ford Island,
pilots taking up utility aircraft with scratch crews, to look for the
enemy carriers which had launched the raid. Mustered at the naval air
station on Ford Island, _Oklahoma_’s Sergeant Hailey, still clad in his
oil-soaked underwear, volunteered to go up in a plane that was leaving
on a search mission at around 1130. He remained aloft in the plane,
armed with a rifle, for some five hours.
After the attacking planes had retired, the grim business of cleaning
up and getting on with the war had to be undertaken. Muster had to be
taken to determine who was missing, who was wounded, who lay dead. Men
sought out their friends and shipmates. First Lieutenant Cornelius C.
Smith, Jr., from the Marine Barracks at the Navy Yard, searched in vain
among the maimed and dying at the Naval Hospital later that day, for
his friend Harry Gaver from _Oklahoma_. Death respected no rank. The
most senior Marine to die that day was Lieutenant Colonel Daniel R.
Fox, the decorated World War I hero and the division Marine officer on
the staff of the Commander, Battleship Division One, Rear Admiral Isaac
C. Kidd, who, along with Lieutenant Colonel Fox, had been killed in
_Arizona_. The tragedy of Pearl Harbor struck some families with more
force than others: numbered among _Arizona_’s lost were Private Gordon
E. Shive, of the battleship’s Marine detachment, and his brother,
Radioman Third Class Malcolm H. Shive, a member of the ship’s company.
Over the next few days, Marines from the sunken ships received
reassignment to other vessels--_Nevada_’s Marines deployed ashore to
set up defensive positions in the fields adjacent to the grounded
and listing battleship--and the dead, those who could be found,
were interred with appropriate ceremony. Eventually, the deeds of
Marines in the battleship detachments were recognized by appropriate
commendations and advancements in ratings. Chief among them, Gunnery
Sergeant Douglas, Sergeant Hailey, and Corporals Driskell and Darling
were each awarded the Navy Cross. For his “meritorious conduct at the
peril of his own life,” Major Shapley was commended and awarded the
Silver Star. Lieutenant Simensen was awarded a posthumous Bronze Star,
while _Tennessee_’s commanding officer commended Captain White for the
way in which he had directed that battleship’s antiaircraft guns that
morning.
Titanic salvage efforts raised some of the sunken
battleships--_California_, _West Virginia_, and _Nevada_--and they,
like the surviving Marines, went on to play a part in the ultimate
defeat of the enemy who had begun the war with such swift and terrible
suddenness.
_They Caught Us Flat-Footed_
At 0740, when Fuchida’s fliers had closed to within a few miles of
Kahuku Point, the 43 Zeroes split away from the rest of the formation,
swinging out north and west of Wheeler Field, the headquarters of the
Hawaiian Air Force’s 18th Pursuit Wing. Passing further to the south,
at about 0745 the _Soryu_ and _Hiryu_ divisions executed a hard diving
turn to port and headed north, toward Wheeler. Eleven Zeroes from
_Shokaku_ and _Zuikaku_ simultaneously left the formation and flew
east, crossing over Oahu north of Pearl Harbor to attack NAS Kaneohe
Bay. Eighteen from _Akagi_ and _Kaga_ headed toward what the Japanese
called _Babasu Pointo Hikojo_ (Barbers Point Airdrome)--Ewa Mooring
Mast Field.
Sweeping over the Waianae Range, Lieutenant Commander Shigeru Itaya led
_Akagi_’s nine Zeroes, while Lieutenant Yoshio Shiga headed another
division of nine from _Kaga_. After the initial attack, Itaya and Shiga
were to be followed by divisions from _Soryu_, under Lieutenant Masaji
Suganami, and _Hiryu_, under Lieutenant Kiyokuma Okajima, which were,
at that moment, involved in attacking Wheeler to the north.
[Illustration:
Author’s Collection
_Ewa Mooring Mast Field, later a Japanese target, is seen hazily
through the windshield of a Battleship Row-bound Kate shortly before
0800 on 7 December 1941._]
In the officers’ mess at Ewa, the officer-of-the-day, Captain Leonard
W. Ashwell of VMJ-252, noticed two formations of aircraft at 0755. The
first looked like 18 “torpedo planes” flying at 1,000 feet toward Pearl
Harbor from Barbers Point, but the second, to the northwest, comprised
about 21 planes, just coming over the hills from the direction of
Nanakuli, also at an altitude of about 1,000 feet. Ashwell, intrigued
by the sight, stepped outside for a better look. The second formation,
of single-seat fighters (the two divisions from _Akagi_ and _Kaga_),
flew just to the north of Ewa and wheeled to the right. Then, flying
in a “string” formation, they commenced firing. Recognizing the planes
as Japanese, Ashwell burst back into the mess, shouting: “Air Raid ...
Air Raid! Pass the word!” He then sprinted for the guard house, to have
“call to arms” sounded.
[Illustration: _Browning Machine Gun Drill On Board Ship_
Marines man a water-cooled, .50-caliber Browning M2 machine gun during
a drill on board the gunnery training ship _Wyoming_ (AG-17) in late
1941. The M2 Browning weighed (without water) 100 pounds, 8 ounces, and
measured five feet, six inches in length. It fired between 550 and 700
rounds per minute to a maximum horizontal range of 7,400 yards. The two
hoses carry coolant water to the gun barrel. The gun could be fired
without the prescribed two and a half gallons of cooling water--as
Gunnery Sergeant Douglas’s men did on board _Nevada_ (BB-36) on 7
December 1941--but accuracy diminished as the barrel heated and the
pattern of shots became more widely dispersed. Experience would reveal
that a large number of .50-caliber hits were necessary to disable a
plane, and that only a small number of hits could be attained by any
single ship-mounted gun against a dive bomber.]
That Sunday morning, Technical Sergeant Henry H. Anglin, the
noncommissioned-officer-in-charge of the photographic section at Ewa,
had driven from his Pearl City home with his three-year-old son, Hank,
to take the boy’s picture at the station. The senior Anglin had just
positioned the lad in front of the camera and was about to take the
photo--the picture was to be a gift to the boy’s grandparents--when
they heard the “mingled noise of airplanes and machine guns.” Roaring
down to within 25 feet of the ground, Itaya’s group most likely carried
out only one pass at their targets before moving on to Hickam, the
headquarters of the Hawaiian Air Forces 18th Bombardment Wing.
[Illustration:
Prange
_LCdr Shigeru Itaya, commander of_ Akagi’_s first-wave fighters, which
carried out the initial strafing attacks at Ewa Field._]
Thinking that Army pilots were showing off, Sergeant Anglin stepped
outside the photographic section tent and, along with some other
enlisted men, watched planes bearing Japanese markings strafing the
edge of the field. Then, the planes began roaring down toward the field
itself and the bullets from their cowl and wing-mounted guns began
kicking up puffs of dirt. “Look, live ammunition,” somebody said or
thought, “Somebody’ll go to prison for this.”
Shiga’s pilots, like Itaya’s, concentrated on the tactical aircraft
lined up neatly on Ewa’s northwest apron with short bursts of 7.7-
and 20-millimeter machine gun fire. Shiga’s pilots, unlike Itaya’s,
however, reversed course over the treetops and repeated their
blistering attacks from the opposite direction. Within minutes, most of
MAG-21’s planes sat ablaze and exploding, black smoke corkscrewing into
the sky. The enemy spared none of the planes: the gray SBD-1s and -2s
of VMSB-232 and the seven spare SB2U-3s left behind by VMSB-231 when
they embarked in _Lexington_ just two days before. VMF-211’s remaining
F4F-3s, left behind when the squadron deployed to Wake well over a week
before, likewise began exploding in flame and smoke.
At his home on Ewa Beach, three miles southeast of the air station,
Captain Richard C. Mangrum, VMSB-232’s flight officer, sat reading
the Sunday comics. Often residents of that area had heard gunnery
exercises, but on a Sunday morning? The chatter of gunfire and the
dull thump of explosions, however, drew Mangrum’s attention away from
the cartoons. As he looked out his front door, planes with red ball
markings on the wings and fuselage roared by at very low altitude,
bound for Pearl Harbor. Up the valley in the direction of Wheeler
Field, smoke was boiling skyward, as it was from Ewa. As he set out for
Ewa on an old country road, wives and children of Marines who lived in
the Ewa Beach neighborhood began gathering at the Mangrum’s house.
[Illustration:
Author’s Collection
_A Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero, flown by PO2 Masao Taniguchi in the 7 December
attack on Ewa Mooring Mast Field, takes off from the carrier_ Akagi,
_circa spring 1942._]
[Illustration:
Prange
_Lt Yoshio Shiga, commander of_ Kaga’_s nine Zeroes which strafed Ewa
soon after Itaya, was assigned the task of reducing the “Barbers Point
Airdrome.”_]
Elsewhere in the Ewa Beach community, Mrs. Charles S. Barker, Jr.,
wife of Master Technical Sergeant Barker, the chief clerk in MAG-21’s
operations office, heard the noise and asked: “What’s all the shooting?”
Barker, clad only in beach shorts, looked out his front door, saw and
heard a plane fly by at low altitude, and then saw splashes along the
shoreline from strafing planes marked with red _hinomaru_. Running
out to turn off the water hose in his front yard, and seeing a small
explosion nearby (probably an antiaircraft shell from the direction of
Pearl), Barker had seen enough. He left his wife and baby with his
neighbors, and set out for Ewa.
The strafers who singled out cars moving along the roads that led
to Ewa proved no respecter of persons. MAG-21’s commanding officer,
Lieutenant Colonel Claude A. “Sheriff” Larkin, en route from Honolulu,
was about a mile from Ewa in his 1930 Plymouth when a Zero shot at
him. He momentarily abandoned the car for the relative sanctuary of a
nearby ditch, not even bothering to turn off the engine, and then, as
the strafer roared out of sight, sprinted back to the vehicle, jumped
back in, and sped on. He reached his destination at 0805--just in time
to be machine gunned again by one of Admiral Nagumo’s fighters. Soon
thereafter, Larkin’s good fortune at remaining unwounded amidst the
attack ran out, as he suffered several penetrating wounds, the most
painful of which included one on the top of the middle finger of his
left hand and another on the front of his lower left leg just above the
top of his shoe. Refusing immediate medical attention, though, Larkin
continued to direct the defense of Ewa Field.
[Illustration:
Jordan Collection, MCHC
_TSgt Henry H. Anglin, the noncommissioned officer in charge of Ewa’s
Photography Section, stands before the mooring mast field’s dispensary
on 8 December 1941, solemnly displaying the slug that wounded him on
the 7th._]
Pilots and ground crewmen alike rushed out onto the mat to try to save
their planes from certain destruction. At least a few pilots intended
to get airborne, but could not because most of their aircraft were
either afire or riddled beyond any hope of immediate use.
Captain Milo G. Haines of VMF-211 sought safety behind a tractor, he
and the machine’s driver taking shelter on the side opposite to the
strafers. Another Zero came in from another angle, however, and strafed
them from that direction. Spraying bullets clipped off Haines’ necktie
just beneath his chin. Then, as a momentarily relieved Haines put his
right hand at the back of his head a bullet lacerated his right little
finger and a part of his scalp.
In the midst of the confusion, an excited three-year-old Hank Anglin
innocently took advantage of his father’s distraction with the battle
and wandered toward the mat. All of the noise seemed like a lot of
fun. Sergeant Anglin ran after his son, got him to the ground, and,
shielding him with his own body, crawled some 35 yards, little puffs
of dirt coming near them at times. As they clambered inside the radio
trailer to get out of harm’s way, a bullet made a hole above the door.
Moving back to the photo tent, the elder Anglin put his son under
a wooden bench. As he set about gathering his camera gear to take
pictures of the action, a bullet went through his left arm. Deprived
of the use of that arm for a time, Anglin returned to the bench under
which his son still crouched obediently, to see little Hank point to a
spent bullet on the floor and hear him warn: “Don’t touch that, daddy,
it’s hot.”
[Illustration:
Larkin Collection, MCHC
_One of the seven Vought SB2U-3s destroyed on the field at Ewa. All of
VMSB-231’s spares (the squadron was embarked in_ Lexington, _en route
to Midway, at the time) were thus destroyed. In the background is one
of VMSB-232’s SBDs._]
Private First Class James W. Mann, the driver assigned to Ewa’s 1938
Ford ambulance, had been refueling the vehicle when the attack began.
When Lieutenant Thomas L. Allman, Medical Corps, USN, the group medical
officer, saw the first planes break into flames, he ordered Mann to
take the ambulance to the flight line. Accompanied by Pharmacist’s
Mate 2d Class Orin D. Smith, a corpsman from sick bay, they sped off.
The Japanese planes seemed to be attracted to the bright red crosses
on the ambulance, however, and halted its progress near the mooring
mast. Realizing that they were under attack, Mann floored the brake
pedal and the Ford screeched to a halt. Rather than leave the vehicle
for a safer area, Mann and Smith crawled underneath it so that they
could continue their mission as quickly as possible. The
strafing, however, continued unabated. Ironically, the first casualty
Mann had to collect was the man lying prone beside him. Orin Smith felt
a searing pain as one of the Japanese 7.7-millimeter rounds found its
mark in the fleshy part of his left calf. Seeing that the corpsman had
been hurt, Mann assisted him out from under the vehicle and up into the
cab. Despite continued strafing that shot out four tires, Mann pressed
doggedly ahead and delivered the wounded Smith to sick bay.
[Illustration:
Larkin Collection, MCHC
_Col Claude A. “Sheriff” Larkin, Commanding Officer, Marine Aircraft
Group 21, photographed circa early 1942._]
After seeing that the corpsman’s bleeding was stopped and the painful
wound was cleaned and dressed, Private First Class Mann sprinted to
his own tent. Grabbing his rifle, he then returned to the battered
ambulance and, shot-out tires flopping, drove toward Ewa’s garage.
There, Master Technical Sergeant Lawrence R. Darner directed his men
to replace the damaged tires with those from a mobile water purifier.
Meanwhile, Smith resumed his duties as a member of the dressing station
crew.
Also watching the smoke beginning to billow skyward was Sergeant
Duane W. Shaw, USMCR, the driver of the station fire truck. Normally,
during off-duty hours, the truck sat parked a quarter-mile from the
landing area. Shaw, figuring that it was his job to put out the fires,
climbed into the fire engine and set off. Unfortunately, like Private
First Class Mann’s ambulance, Sergeant Shaw’s bright red engine moving
across the embattled camp soon attracted strafing Zeroes. Unfazed
by the enemy fire that perforated his vehicle in several places, he
drove doggedly toward the flight line until another Zero shot out his
tires. Only then pausing to make a hasty estimate of the situation, he
reasoned that with the fire truck at least temporarily out of service
he would have to do something else. Jumping down from the cab, he soon
got himself a rifle and some ammunition. Then, he set out for the
flight line. If he could not put out fires, he could at least do some
firing of his own at the men who caused them.
With the parking area cloaked in black smoke, Japanese fighter pilots
shifted their efforts to the planes either out for repairs in the rear
areas or to the utility planes parked north of the intersection of
the main runways. Inside ten minutes’ time, machine gun fire likewise
transformed many of those planes into flaming wreckage.
Firing only small arms and rifles in the opening stages, the Marines
fought back against _Kaga_’s fighters as best they could, with
almost reckless heroism. Lieutenant Shiga remembered one particular
Leatherneck who, oblivious to the machine gun fire striking the ground
around him and kicking up dirt, stood transfixed, emptying his sidearm
at Shiga’s Zero as it roared past. Years later, Shiga would describe
that lone, defiant, and unknown Marine as the bravest American he had
ever met.
A tragic drama, however, soon unfolded amidst the Japanese attack. One
Marine, Sergeant William E. Lutschan, Jr., USMCR, a truckdriver, had
been “under suspicion” of espionage and he was ordered placed under
arrest. In the exchange of gunfire that followed his resisting being
taken into custody, though, he was shot dead. With that one exception,
the Marines at Ewa Field had fought back to a man.
[Illustration:
Larkin Collection, MCHC
_Ewa’s 1938 Ford ambulance, seen after the Japanese raid, its Red Cross
status violated, took over 50 hits from strafing planes._]
As if _Akagi_’s and _Kaga_’s fighters had not sown enough destruction
on Ewa, one division of Zeroes from _Soryu_ and one from _Hiryu_
arrived on the scene, fresh from laying waste to many of the planes at
Wheeler Field. This second group of fighter pilots went about their
work with the same deadly precision exhibited at Wheeler only minutes
before. The raid caught Master Technical Sergeant Darner’s crew in the
middle of changing the tires on the station’s ambulance. Private First
Class Mann, who by that point had managed to obtain some ammunition for
his rifle, dropped down with the rest of the Marines at the garage and
fired at the attacking fighters as they streaked by.
Lieutenant Kiyokuma Okajima led his six fighters down through the
rolling smoke, executing strafing attacks until ground fire holed
the forward fuel tank of his wingman, Petty Officer 1st Class Kazuo
Muranaka. When Okajima discovered the damage to Muranaka’s plane, he
decided that his men had pressed their luck far enough, and began to
assemble his unit and shepherd them toward the rendezvous area some
10 miles west of Kaena Point. The retiring Japanese in all likelihood
then spotted incoming planes from _Enterprise_ (CV-6), that had been
launched at 0618 to scout 150 miles ahead of the ship in nine two-plane
sections. Their planned flight path to Pearl was to take many of them
over Ewa Mooring Mast Field, where some would encounter Japanese
aircraft.
Meanwhile, back at Ewa, after what must have seemed an eternity, the
Zeroes of the first wave at last wheeled away toward their rendezvous
point. Having made a shambles of the Marine air base, Japanese pilots
claimed the destruction of 60 aircraft on the ground: _Akagi_’s airmen
accounted for 11, _Kaga_’s 15, _Soryu_’s 12, and _Hiryu_’s 22. Their
figures were not too far off the mark, for 47 aircraft of all types had
been parked at the field at the beginning of the onslaught, 33 of which
had been fully operational.
Although the Japanese had wreaked havoc upon MAG-21’s complement of
planes, the group’s casualties seemed miraculously light. Apparently,
the enemy fighter pilots in the first wave maintained a fairly high
degree of discipline, eschewing attacks on people and concentrating
their attacks on machines. Many of Ewa’s Marines, however, had parked
their cars near the center of the station. By the time the Japanese
departed, the parking lot resembled a junk yard of mangled automobiles
of various makes and models.
Overcoming the initial shock of the first strafing attack, Ewa’s
Marines took stock of their situation. As soon as the last of Itaya’s
and Shiga’s Zeroes had departed, Marines went out and manned stations
with rifles and .30-caliber machine guns taken from damaged aircraft
and from the squadron ordnance rooms. Technical Sergeant William G.
Turnage, an armorer, supervised the setting up of the free machine
guns. Technical Sergeant Anglin, meanwhile, took his little boy to the
guard house, where a woman motorist agreed to drive Hank home to his
mother. As it would turn out, that reunion was not to be accomplished
until much later that day, “inasmuch as the distraught mother had
already left home to look for her son.”
Master Technical Sergeant Emil S. Peters, a veteran of action in
Nicaragua, had, during the first attack, reported to the central
ordnance tent to lend a hand in manning a gun. By the time he arrived
there, however, there were none left to man. Then he saw a Douglas
SBD-2, one of two spares assigned to VMSB-232, parked behind the
squadron’s tents. Enlisting the aid of Private William G. Turner,
VMSB-231’s squadron clerk, Peters ran over to the ex-_Lexington_
machine that still bore her USN markings, 2-B-6, pulled the after
canopy forward, and clambered in the after cockpit, stepping hard on
the foot pedal to unship the free .30-caliber Browning from its housing
in the after fuselage, and then locking it in place. Turner, having
obtained a supply of belted ammunition, took his place on the wing as
Peters’ assistant.
Elsewhere, nursing his painfully wounded finger and leg, Lieutenant
Colonel Larkin ordered extra guards posted on the perimeter of the
field and on the various roads leading into the base. Men not engaged
in active defense went to work fighting the many fires. Drivers parked
what trucks and automobiles had remained intact on the runways to
prevent any possible landings by airborne troops. Although hardly
transforming Ewa into a fortress, the Marines ensured that they would
be ready for any future attack.
Undoubtedly, most of the men at Ewa expected--correctly--that the
Japanese would return. At about 0835, enemy planes again made their
appearance in the sky over Ewa, but this time, Marines stood or
crouched ready and waiting for what proved to be Lieutenant Commander
Takahashi’s dive bombing unit from _Shokaku_, returning from its
attacks on the naval air station at Pearl Harbor and the Army’s Hickam
Field, roaring in from just above the treetops. Initially, their
targets appeared to be the planes, but, seeing that most had already
been destroyed, the enemy pilots turned to strafing buildings and
people in a “heavy and prolonged” assault.
[Illustration:
Lord Collection, USMC
_At their barracks, near the foundation of a swimming pool under
construction, three Marines gingerly seek out good vantage points
from which to fire, while two peer skyward, keeping their eyes peeled
for attacking Japanese planes. Headgear varies from Hawley helmet
to garrison cap to none, but the weapon is the same for all--the
Springfield 1903 rifle._]
Better prepared than they had been when Lieutenant Commander Itaya’s
Zeroes had opened the battle, Ewa’s Marines met Takahashi’s Vals with
heavy fire from rifles, Thompson submachine guns, .30-caliber machine
guns, and even pistols. In retaliation, after completing their strafing
runs, the Japanese pilots pulled up in steep wing-overs, allowing their
rear seat gunners to take advantage of the favorable deflection angle
to spray the defenders with 7.7-millimeter bullets. Marine observers
later recounted that _Shokaku_’s planes also dropped light bombs,
perhaps of the 60-kilogram variety, as they counted five small craters
on the field after the attack.
In response to the second onslaught, as they had in the first, all
available Marines threw themselves into the desperate defense of their
base. The additional strafing attacks started numerous fires within
the camp area, adding new columns of dense smoke to those still rising
from the planes on the parking apron. Unfortunately, the ground fire
seemed far more brave than accurate, because all of _Shokaku_’s dive
bombers repeatedly zoomed skyward, seemingly unhurt. Even taking into
account possible damage sustained during attacks over Ford Island and
Hickam, only four of Takahashi’s planes sustained any damage over
Oahu before they retired. The departure of _Shokaku’_s Vals afforded
Lieutenant Colonel Larkin the opportunity to reorganize the camp
defenses. There was ammunition to be distributed, wounded men to be
succored, and seemingly innumerable fires burning amongst the tents,
buildings, and planes, to be extinguished.
[Illustration:
Marine Corps Historical Collection
_Sgt William G. Turnage enlisted in the Corps in 1931. Recommended for
a letter of commendation for his “efficient action” at Ewa Field on 7
December, he ultimately was awarded a Bronze Star._]
However, around 0930, yet another flight of enemy planes
appeared--about 15 Vals from _Kaga_ and _Hiryu_. Although the pilots
of those planes had expended their 250-kilogram bombs on ships at
Pearl Harbor, they still apparently retained plenty of 7.7-millimeter
ammunition, and seemed determined to expend much of what remained upon
Ewa. As in the previous attacks by _Shokaku_’s Vals, the last group
came in at very low altitude from just over the tops of the trees
surrounding the station. Quite taken by the high maneuverability of
the nimble dive bombers, which they were seeing at close hand for the
second time that day, the Marines mistook them for fighter aircraft
with fixed landing gear.
Around that time, Lieutenant Colonel Larkin saw an American plane
and a Japanese one collide in mid-air a short distance away from the
field. In all probability, Larkin saw _Enterprise_’s Ensign John H. L.
Vogt’s Dauntless collide with a Val. Vogt had become separated from his
section leader during the Pearl-bound flight in from the carrier, may
have circled offshore, and then arrived over Ewa in time to encounter
dive bombers from _Kaga_ or _Hiryu_. Vogt and his passenger, Radioman
Third Class Sidney Pierce, bailed out of their SBD, but at too low
an altitude, for both died in the trees when their ’chutes failed to
deploy fully. Neither of the Japanese crewmen escaped from their Val
when it crashed.
[Illustration:
Naval Historical Center Photo NH 102278
_TSgt Emil S. Peters, seen here on 11 October 1938, was a veteran of
service in Nicaragua and a little more than three weeks shy of his 48th
birthday when Japanese bombers attacked Ewa Field._]
Fortunately for the Marines, however, the last raid proved
comparatively “light and ineffectual,” something Lieutenant Colonel
Larkin attributed to the heavy gunfire thrown skyward. The short
respite between the second and third strafing attacks had allowed Ewa’s
defenders to bring all possible weapons to bear against the Japanese.
Technical Sergeant Turnage, after having gotten the base’s machine
guns set up and ready for action, took over one of the mounts himself
and fired several bursts into the belly of one Val that began trailing
smoke and began to falter soon thereafter.
Turnage, however, was by no means the only Marine using his weapon to
good effect. Master Technical Sergeant Peters and Private Turner, from
their improvised position in the lamed SBD, had let fly at whatever
Vals came within range of their gun. The two Marines shot down what
witnesses thought were at least two of the attacking planes and
discouraged strafing in that area of the station. However, the Japanese
soon tired of the tenacious bravery of the grizzled veteran and the
young clerk, neither of whom flinched in the face of repeated strafing.
Two particular enemy pilots repeatedly peppered the grounded Dauntless
with 7.7-millimeter fire, ultimately scoring hits near the cockpit area
and wounding both men. Turner toppled from the wing, mortally wounded.
Another Marine who distinguished himself during the third strafing
attack was Sergeant Carlo A. Micheletto of Marine Utility Squadron
(VMJ) 252. During the first Japanese attack that morning, Micheletto
proceeded at once to VMJ-252’s parking area and went to work, helping
in the attempts to extinguish the fires that had broken out amongst
the squadron’s parked utility planes. He continued in those labors
until the last strafing attack began. Putting aside his firefighting
equipment and grabbing a rifle, he took cover behind a small pile of
lumber, and heedless of the heavy machine-gunning, continued to fire at
the attacking planes until a burst of enemy fire struck him in the head
and killed him instantly.
Eventually, in an almost predictable way, the Japanese planes formed
up and flew off to the west, leaving the once neatly manicured Mooring
Mast Field smouldering. The Marines had barely had time to catch their
collective breath when, at 1000, almost as a capstone to the complete
chaos wreaked by the initial Japanese attack, seven more planes arrived.
* * * * *
Their markings, however, were of a more familiar variety--red-centered
blue and white stars. The newcomers proved to be a group of Dauntlesses
from _Enterprise_. For the better part of an hour, Lieutenant Wilmer
E. Gallaher, executive officer of Scouting Squadron 6, had circled
fitfully over the Pacific swells south of Oahu, waiting for the
situation there to settle down. At about 0945, when he had seen that
the skies seemed relatively clear of Japanese planes, Gallaher decided
rather than face friendly fire over Pearl he would go to Ewa instead.
They had barely stopped on the strip, however, when a Marine ran out
to Gallaher’s plane and yelled, “For God’s sake, get into the air
or they’ll strafe you, too!” Other _Enterprise_ pilots likewise saw
ground crews frantically motioning for them to take off immediately.
Instructed to “take off and stay in the air until [the] air raid was
over,” the _Enterprise_ pilots took off and headed for Pearl Harbor.
Although all seven SBDs left Ewa, only three (Gallaher’s, his wingman,
Ensign William P. West’s, and Ensign Cleo J. Dobson’s) would make it as
far as Ford Island. A tremendous volume of antiaircraft fire over the
harbor rose to meet what was thought to be yet another attack; seeing
the reception accorded Gallaher, West, and Dobson, the other four
pilots--Lieutenant (jg) Hart D. Hilton and Ensigns Carlton T. Fogg,
Edwin J. Kroeger, and Frederick T. Weber--wheeled around and headed
back to Ewa, landing around 1015 to find a far better reception that
time around. Within a matter of minutes, the Marines began rearming and
refueling Hilton’s, Kroeger’s and Weber’s SBDs. The Marines discovered
that Fogg’s Dauntless, though, had taken a hit that had holed a fuel
tank, and would require repairs.
[Illustration:
Marine Corps Historical Collection
_Sgt Carlo A. Micheletto had turned 26 years old less than two months
before Japanese planes strafed Ewa. He was recommended for a letter of
commendation, but was awarded a Bronze Star._]
Although it is unlikely that even one of the Ewa Marines thought so at
the time, even as they serviced the _Enterprise_ SBDs which sat on the
landing mat, the Japanese raid on Oahu was over. Vice Admiral Nagumo,
already feeling that he had pushed his luck far enough, was eager to
get as far away from the waters north of Oahu as soon as possible. At
least for the time being, the Marines at Ewa had nothing to fear.
Not privy to the musings of Nagumo and his staff, however, Lieutenant
Colonel Larkin could only wonder what the Marines would do should
the Japanese return. At 1025, he completed a glum assessment of the
situation and forwarded it to Admiral Kimmel. While casualties among
the Marines had been light--two men had been killed and several
wounded--the Japanese had destroyed “all bombing, fighting, and
transport planes” on the ground. Ewa had no radio communications, no
power, and only one small gas generator in commission. He also informed
the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet, that he would retain the four
Enterprise planes at Ewa until further orders. Larkin also notified
Wheeler Field Control of the SBDs being held at his field.
At 1100, Wheeler called and directed all available planes to rendezvous
with a flight of B-17s over Hickam. Lieutenant (jg) Hilton and the two
ensigns from Bombing Squadron 6, Kroeger and Weber, took off at 1115
and the Marines never heard from them again. Finding no Army planes
over Hickam (two flights of B-17s and Douglas A-20s had only just
departed) the three Navy pilots landed at Ford Island. Ensign Fogg’s
SBD represented the sole naval strike capability at Ewa as the day
ended.
“They caught us flat-footed,” Larkin unabashedly wrote Major General
Ross E. Rowell of the events of 7 December. Over the next few months,
Ewa would serve as the focal point for Marine aviation activities on
Oahu as the service acquired replacement aircraft and began rebuilding
to carry out the mission of standing ready to deploy with the fleet
wherever it was required.
_They’re Kicking the Hell Out of Pearl Harbor_
Although the Japanese accorded the battleships and air facilities
priority as targets for destruction on the morning of 7 December 1941,
it was natural that the onslaught touched the Marine Barracks at Pearl
Harbor Navy Yard as well.
Colonel William E. Farthing, Army Air Forces, commanding officer of
Hickam Field, thought that he was witnessing some very realistic
maneuvers shortly before 0800 that morning. From his vantage point,
virtually next door to the Navy Yard, Farthing watched what proved
to be six Japanese dive bombers swooping down toward Ford Island. He
thought that MAG-21’s SB2Us or SBDs were out for an early morning
practice hop. “I wonder what the Marines are doing to the Navy so early
Sunday?”
Over at the Marine Barracks, the officer of the guard, Second
Lieutenant Arnold D. Swartz, after having inspected his sentries,
had retired to the officer-of-the-day’s room to await breakfast.
Stepping out onto the lanai (patio) at about 0755 to talk to the field
music about morning colors, he noticed several planes diving in the
direction of the naval air station. He thought initially that it seemed
a bit early for practice bombing, but then saw a flash and heard the
resulting explosion that immediately dispelled any illusions he might
have held that what he was seeing was merely an exercise. Seeing a
plane with “red balls” on the wings roar by at low level convinced
Swartz that Japanese planes were attacking.
[Illustration: Major Harold C. Roberts had earned a Navy Cross as a
corpsman assigned to Marines during World War I, and a second award in
1928 as a Marine officer in Nicaragua. As acting commanding officer
of the 3d Defense Battalion at Pearl Harbor on 7 December, he was a
veritable dynamo, organizing it to battle the attacking Japanese. He
was killed at Okinawa in June 1945 while commanding the 22d Marines,
but not before his performance of duty had merited him the award of his
third Navy Cross.]
Over in the squadroom of Barracks B, First Lieutenant Harry F.
Noyes, Jr., the range officer for Battery E, 3-inch Antiaircraft
Group, 3d Defense Battalion, heard the sound of a loud explosion
coming from the direction of the harbor at about 0750. First assuming
that blasting crews were busy--there had been a lot of construction
recently--Noyes cocked his ears. The new sounds seemed a bit different,
“more higher-pitched, and louder.” At that, he sprang from his bed,
ran across the room, and peered northward just in time to see a dirty
column of water rising from the harbor from another explosion and
a Japanese plane pulling out of its dive. The plane, bearing red
_hinomaru_ (rising sun insignia) under its wings, left no doubt as to
its identity.
* * * * *
The explosions likewise awakened Lieutenant Colonel William J. Whaling
and Major James “Jerry” Monaghan who, while Colonel Gilder D. Jackson,
commanding officer of the Marine Barracks, was at sea in _Indianapolis_
(CA-35) en route to Johnston Island for tests of Higgins landing boats,
shared his quarters at Pearl Harbor. Shortly before 0800, Whaling
rolled over and asked: “Jerry, don’t you think the Admiral is a little
bit inconsiderate of guests?” Monaghan, then also awake, replied: “I’ll
go down and see about it.” Whaling, meanwhile, lingered in bed until
more blasts rattled the quarters’ windows. Thinking that he had not
seen any 5-inch guns emplaced close to the building, and that something
was wrong, he got up and walked over to the window that faced the
harbor. Looking out, he saw smoke, and, turning, remarked: “This thing
is so real that I believe that’s an oil tank burning right in front
there.” Both men then dressed and hurried across the parade ground,
where they encountered Lieutenant Colonel Elmer E. Hall, commanding
officer of the 2d Engineer Battalion. “Elmer,” Whaling said amiably,
“this is a mighty fine show you are putting on. I have never seen
anything quite like it.”
[Illustration:
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 65746
_Col William J. Whaling, seen here circa 1945, was an observer to the
Pearl Harbor attack, being awakened from slumber while staying in Col
Gilder Jackson’s quarters on the morning of 7 December._]
Meanwhile, Swartz ordered the field music to sound “Call to Arms.”
Then, running into the officer’s section of the mess hall, Swartz
informed the officer-of-the-day, First Lieutenant Cornelius C. Smith,
Jr., who had been enjoying a cup of coffee with Marine Gunner Floyd
McCorkle when sharp blasts had rocked the building, that the Japanese
were attacking. Like Swartz, they ran out onto the lanai. Standing
there, speechless, they watched the first enemy planes diving on Ford
Island.
Marines began to stumble, eyes wide in disbelief, from the barracks.
Some were lurching, on the run, into pants and shirts; a few wore only
towels. Swartz then ordered one of the platoon sergeants to roust out
the men and get them under cover of the trees outside. Smith, too, then
ran outside to the parade ground. As he looked at the rising smoke and
the Japanese planes, he doubted those who had derided the “Japs” as
“cross-eyed, second-rate pilots who couldn’t hit the broad side of a
barn door.” It was enough to turn his stomach. “They’re kicking the
hell out of Pearl Harbor,” he thought.
Meanwhile, unable to reach Colonel Harry B. Pickett, the 14th Naval
District Marine Officer, as well as Colonel Jackson, and Captain
Samuel R. Shaw, commanding officer of Company A, by telephone, Swartz
sent runners to the officers’ respective quarters. He then ordered a
noncommissioned officer from the quartermaster department to dispense
arms and ammunition.
While Swartz organized the men beneath the trees outside the barracks,
Lieutenant Noyes dressed and then drove across the parade ground to
Building 277, arriving about 0805. At the same time, like Swartz, First
Lieutenant James S. O’Halloran, the 3d Defense Battalion’s duty officer
and commanding officer of Battery F, 3-inch Antiaircraft Group, wanted
to get in touch with his senior officers. After having had “assembly”
sounded and signalling his men to take cover, O’Halloran ordered Marine
Gunner Frederick M. Steinhauser, the assistant battalion communications
officer, to telephone all of the officers who resided outside the
reservation and inform them of the attack.
In Honolulu, mustachioed Major Harold C. Roberts, acting commanding
officer of the 3d Defense Battalion since Lieutenant Colonel Robert
H. Pepper had accompanied Colonel Jackson to sea in _Indianapolis_,
after taking Steinhauser’s call with word of the bombing of Pearl,
jumped into his car along with his neighbor, Major Kenneth W.
Benner, commanding officer of the 3-inch Antiaircraft Group and the
Headquarters and Service Battery of the 3d Defense Battalion. As
Roberts’ car crept through the heavy traffic toward Pearl, the two
officers could see Japanese aircraft flying along the coast. When they
reached the Water Street Fish Market, a large crowd of what seemed to
be “Japanese residents ... cheering the Japanese planes, waving to
them, and trying to obstruct traffic to Pearl Harbor by pushing parked
cars into the street” blocked their way.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, as his acting battalion commander was battling his way
through Honolulu’s congested streets, O’Halloran was organizing his
Marines as they poured out of the barracks into groups to break out
small arms and machine guns from the various battalion storerooms.
After Harry Noyes drove up, O’Halloran told him to do what he could to
get the 3-inch guns, and fire control equipment, if available, broken
out and set up, and then instructed other Marines to “get tractors and
start hauling guns to the parade ground.” Another detail of men hurried
off to recover an antiaircraft director that lay crated and ready for
shipment to Midway.
* * * * *
Marines continued to stream out onto the grounds, having been ordered
out of the barracks with their rifles and cartridge belts; they
doubled the sentry posts and received instructions to stand ready and
armed, to deploy in an emergency. Noyes saw some Marines who had not
been assigned any tasks commencing fire on enemy planes “which were
considerably out of range.” At the main gate of the Navy Yard, the
Marines fired at whatever planes came close enough--sailors from the
high-speed minelayer _Sicard_ (DM-21), en route to their ship, later
attested to seeing one Japanese plane shot down by the guards’ rifle
fire.
Tai Sing Loo, who was to have photographed those guards at the
new gate, had left Honolulu in a hurry when he heard the sound of
explosions and gunfire, and saw the rising columns of smoke. He arrived
at the naval reservation without his Graflex and soon marveled at the
cool bravery of the “young, fighting Marines” who stood their ground,
under fire, blazing away at enemy planes with rifles while keeping
traffic moving.
Finally, the more senior officers quartered outside the reservation
began showing up. When Colonel Pickett arrived, Lieutenant Swartz
returned to the officer-of-the-day’s room and found that Captain Shaw
had reached there also. Securing from his position as officer of the
guard, Swartz returned to his 3-inch gun battery being set up near
Building 277. Ordering Marines out of the building, he managed to
obtain a steel helmet and a pistol each for himself and Lieutenant
O’Halloran. Captain Samuel G. Taxis, commanding officer of the 3d
Defense Battalion’s 5-inch Artillery Group, meanwhile, witnessed
“terrific confusion” ensuing from his men’s efforts to obtain
“ammunition, steel helmets, and other items of equipment.”
[Illustration:
Naval Historical Center Photo NH 50926
_Smoke darkens the sky over the Marine Barracks complex at the Pearl
Harbor Navy Yard; Marine in foreground appears to be holding his
head in disbelief. Marines at far left in background appear to be
unlimbering a 3-inch antiaircraft gun._]
Meanwhile, the comparatively few Marines of Lieutenant Colonel Bert A.
Bone’s 1st Defense Battalion--most of which garrisoned Wake, Johnston,
and Palmyra--made their presence felt. Urged on by Lieutenant Noyes,
one detail of men immediately reported to the battalion gun shed and
storerooms, and issued rifles and ammunition to all comers, while
another detachment worked feverishly assembling machine guns. Navy Yard
workmen--enginemen Lokana Kipihe and Oliver Bright, fireman Gerard
Williams, and rigger Ernest W. Birch--appeared, looking for some way
to help the Marines, who soon put them to work distributing ammunition
to the machine gun crews. Soon, the Marines at the barracks added the
staccato hammering of automatic weapons fire to the general din around
them. Meanwhile, other Marines from the 1st Defense Battalion broke out
firefighting equipment, as shrapnel from exploding antiaircraft shells
began to strike the roof of the barracks and adjacent buildings.
At about 0820, Majors Roberts and Benner reached the Marine Barracks
just in time to observe the beginning of the Japanese second wave
attacks against Pearl. Roberts found that Lieutenant O’Halloran had
gotten the 3d Battalion ready for battle, with seven .50-caliber and
six .30-caliber machine guns set up and with ammunition belted. Under
Captain Harry O. Smith, Jr., commanding officer of Battery H, Machine
Gun Group, 3d Defense Battalion, the 3d’s Marine gunners had already
claimed one Japanese plane shot down. Lieutenant Noyes was, meanwhile,
in the process of deploying seven 3-inch guns--three on the west end of
the parade ground and four on the east.
Sergeant Major Leland H. Alexander, of the Headquarters and Service
Battery of the 3d Defense Battalion, suggested to Lieutenant O’Halloran
that an armed convoy be organized to secure ammunition for the guns,
as none was available in the Navy Yard proper. Roberts gave Alexander
permission to put together the requisite trucks, weapons, and men.
Lieutenant Colonel Bone had the same idea, and, accordingly dispatched
a truck at 0830 to the nearest ammunition dump near Fort Kamehameha.
Bone ordered another group of men from the 5-inch battery to the Naval
Ammunition Depot at Lualualei just in case. He hoped that at least one
truck would get through the maelstrom of traffic. Marines from the 2d
Engineer Battalion made ammunition runs as well as provided men and
motorcycles for messengers.
Meanwhile, Roberts directed Major Benner to have the 3d Battalion’s
guns operational before the ammunition trucks returned, and to set
the fuzes for 1,000 yards, since the guns lacked the necessary
height-finding equipment. The makeshift emplacements, however,
presented less than ideal firing positions since the barracks and
nearby yard buildings restricted the field of fire, and many of the
low-flying planes appeared on the horizon only for an instant.
Necessity often being the mother of invention, Roberts devised an
impromptu fire control system, stationing a warning section of eight
men, equipped with field glasses and led by Lieutenant Swartz, in the
center of the parade ground. The spotters were to pass the word to
a group of field musics who, using their instruments, were to sound
appropriate warnings: one blast meant planes approaching from the
north; two blasts, from the east, and so on.
Taking precautions against fires in the temporary wooden barracks,
Roberts ordered hoses run out and extinguishers placed in front of
them, along with shovels, axes, and buckets of sand (the latter to
deal with incendiary bombs); hose reel and chemical carts placed near
the center hydrant near the mess hall; and all possible containers
filled with water for both fighting fires and drinking. In addition,
he ordered cooks and messmen to prepare coffee and fill every other
container on hand with water, and organized riflemen in groups of about
16 to sit on the ground with an officer or noncommissioned officer
in charge to direct their fire. He also called for runners from all
groups in the battalion and established his command post at the parade
ground’s south corner, and ordered the almost 150 civilians who had
showed up looking for ways to help out to report to the machine gun
storeroom and fill ammunition belts and clean weapons. Among other
actions, he also instructed the battalion sergeant major to be ready to
safeguard important papers from the headquarters barracks.
* * * * *
Prior to Roberts’ arrival, Lieutenant (j.g.) William R. Franklin
(Dental Corps), USN, the dental officer for the 3d Defense Battalion’s
Headquarters and Service Battery, and the only medical officer present,
had organized first aid and stretcher parties in the barracks. As
the other doctors arrived, Roberts directed them to set up dressing
stations at each battalion headquarters and one at sick bay. Elsewhere,
Marines vacated one 100-man temporary barracks, the noncommissioned
officer’s club and the post exchange, to ready them for casualties.
Parties of Marines also reported to the waterfront area to assist in
collecting and transporting casualties from the ships in the harbor to
the Naval Hospital.
By the time the Marines had gotten their new fire precautions in
place, the Japanese second wave attack was in full swing. Although
their pilots selected targets exclusively from among the Pacific Fleet
warships, the Marines at the barracks in the Navy Yard still were able
to take the Japanese planes, most of which seemed to be coming in from
the west and southwest, under fire. While Marines were busily setting
up the 3-inch guns, several civilian yard workmen grabbed up rifles
and “brought their fire to bear upon the enemy,” allowing Swartz’s men
to continue their work.
[Illustration:
Naval Historical Center Photo NH 50928
_Oily smoke from the burning_ Arizona (_BB-39_) _boils up in the
background beyond the Navy Yard water towers, one of them, in center,
signal-flag bedecked. Note several Marines attempting to deploy a
3-inch antiaircraft gun in the foreground._]
The Japanese eventually put Major Roberts’ ingenious fire control
methods--the field musics--to the test. After hearing four hearty
blasts from the bandsmen, the .50-calibers began hammering out cones
of tracer that caught two low-flying dive bombers as they pulled out
of their runs over Pearl, prompting Roberts’ fear that the ships would
fire at them, too, and hit the barracks. One Val slanted earthward near
what appeared to be either the west end of the lower tank farm or the
south end of the Naval Hospital reservation, while the other, emitting
great quantities of smoke, crashed west-southwest of the parade ground.
Although the Marines success against their tormentors must have seemed
sweet indeed, a skeptical Captain Taxis thought it more likely that the
crews of the two Vals bagged by the machine gunners had just run out of
luck. Most of the firing, in his opinion, had been quite ineffectual,
mostly “directed at enemy planes far beyond range of the weapons and
merely fired into the air at no target at all.” Gunners on board the
fleet’s warships were faring little better!
Almost simultaneously with the dive-bombing attacks, horizontal bombing
attacks began. Major Roberts noted that the 18 bombers “flew in two
Vees of nine planes each in column of Vees and [that] they kept a good
formation.” At least some of those planes appeared to have bombed the
battleship _Pennsylvania_ and the destroyers _Cassin_ and _Downes_ in
Dry Dock No. 1. In the confusion, however, Roberts probably saw two
divisions of _Kates_ from _Zuikaku_ preparing for their attack runs
on Hickam Field. A single division of such planes from _Shokaku_,
meanwhile, attacked the Navy Yard and the Naval Air Station.
Well removed from the barracks, Marines assigned to the Navy Yards
Fire Department rendered invaluable assistance in leading critical
firefighting efforts. Heading the department, Sergeant Harold F. Abbott
supervised the distribution of the various units, and coordinated the
flood of volunteers who stepped forward to help.
One of Abbott’s men, Private First Class Marion M. Milbrandt, with his
1,000-gallon pumper, summoned to the Naval Hospital grounds, found that
one of _Kaga_’s Kates--struck by machine gun fire from the ships moored
in the Repair Basin--had crashed near there. The resulting fire, fed
by the crashed plane’s gasoline, threatened the facility, but Milbrandt
and his crew controlled the blaze.
Other Marine firefighters were hard at work alongside Dry Dock No. 1.
_Pennsylvania_ had not been the only ship not fully ready for war,
since she lay immobile at one end of the drydock. _Downes_ lay in the
dock, undergoing various items of work, while _Cassin_ had been having
ordnance alterations at the Yard and thus had none of her 5-inch/38s
ready for firing. Both destroyers soon came in for some unwanted
attention.
As bombs turned the two destroyers into cauldrons of flames and their
crews abandoned ship, two sailors from _Downes_, meanwhile, sprinted
over to the Marine Barracks: Gunner’s Mate First Class Michael G.
Odietus and Gunner’s Mate Second Class Curtis P. Schulze. After
the order to abandon ship had been given, both had, on their own
initiative, gone to the Marine Barracks to assist in the distribution
of arms and ammunition. They soon returned, however, each gunner’s mate
with a Browning Automatic Rifle in hand, to do his part in fighting
back.
[Illustration: _Antiaircraft Gun Fired to a Range of 14,500 Yards_
A 5-inch/25-caliber open pedestal mount antiaircraft gun--manned here
by sailors on board the heavy cruiser _Astoria_ (CA-34) in early
1942--was the standard battleship and heavy cruiser antiaircraft weapon
at Pearl Harbor. The mount itself weighed more than 20,000 pounds,
while the gun fired a 53.8-pound projectile to a maximum range (at
45 degrees elevation) of 14,500 yards. It was a weapon such as this
that Sergeants Hailey and Wears, and Private First Class Curran, after
the sinking of their ship, _Oklahoma_ (BB-37), helped man on board
_Maryland_ (BB-46) on 7 December 1941.]
Utilizing three of the department’s pumpers, meanwhile, the first
firefighters from the yard, who included Corporal John Gimson, Privates
First Class William M. Brashear, William A. Hopper, Peter Kerdikes,
Frank W. Feret, Marvin D. Dallman, and Corporal Milbrandt, among them,
soon arrived and began to play water on the burning ships. At about
0915, four torpedo warheads on board _Downes_ cooked off and exploded,
the concussion tearing the hoses from the hands of the men fighting the
blaze and sending fragments everywhere, temporarily forcing all hands
to retreat to the nearby road and sprawl there. Knocked flat several
times by the explosions, the Marines and other firefighters, which
included men from _Cassin_ and _Downes_, and civilian yard workmen,
remained on the job.
Explosions continued to wrack the two destroyers, while subsequent
partial flooding of the dock caused _Cassin_ to pivot on her forefoot
and heel over onto her sister ship. Working under the direction of
Lieutenant William R. Spear, a 57-year-old retired naval officer called
to the colors, the firemen were understandably concerned that the oil
fires burning in proximity to the two destroyers might drift aft in the
partially flooded dry dock and breach the caisson, unleashing a wall of
water that would carry _Pennsylvania_ (three of whose four propeller
shafts had been pulled for overhaul) down upon the burning destroyers.
Preparing for that eventuality, Private First Class Don O. Femmer, in
charge of the 750-gallon pumper, stood ready should the conflagration
spread to the northeast through the dock.
Fortunately, circumstances never required Femmer and his men to defend
the caisson from fire, but the young private had more than his share of
troubles, when his pumper broke down at what could have been a critical
moment. Undaunted, Femmer made temporary repairs and stood his ground
at the caisson throughout the raid.
At the opposite end of the dry dock, meanwhile, Private First Class
Omar E. Hill fared little better with his 500-gallon pumper. As if the
firefighting labors were not arduous enough, a ruptured circulating
water line threatened to shut down his fire engine. Holding a rag on
the broken line while his comrades raced away to obtain spare parts,
Hill kept his pumper in the battle.
[Illustration:
National Archives Photo 80-G-32739
_While firefighters train massive jets of water from dockside at left_,
Shaw (_DD-373_) _burns in the Floating Drydock YFD-2, after being hit
by three bombs. Tug_ Sotoyomo (_YT-9_), _with which_ Shaw _has been
sharing the drydock, is barely visible ahead of the crippled destroyer.
Marines led these firefighting efforts on 7 December 1941._]
Meanwhile, firefighters on the west side of the dock succeeded in
passing three hoses to men on _Pennsylvania_’s forecastle, where they
directed blasts of water ahead of the ship and down the starboard side
to prevent the burning oil, which resembled a “seething cauldron,”
from drifting aft. A second 500-gallon engine crew, led by Private
First Class Dallman, battled the fires at the southwest end of the
drydock, despite the suffocating oily black smoke billowing forth from
_Cassin_ and _Downes_. Eventually, by 1035, the Marines and other
volunteers--who included the indomitable Tai Sing Loo--had succeeded in
quelling the fires on board _Cassin_; those on board _Downes_ were put
out early that afternoon.
More work, however, lay in store for Corporal Milbrandt and his crew.
Between 0755 and 0900, three Vals had attacked the destroyer _Shaw_
(DD-373), which shared _YFD-2_ with the little yard tug _Sotoyomo_. All
three scored hits. Fires ultimately reached _Shaw’_s forward magazines
and triggered an explosion that sent tendrils of smoke into the sky
and severed the ship’s bow. Several other volunteer units were already
battling the blaze with hose carts and two 350-gallon pumpers sent in
from Honolulu. Milbrandt, aided as well by the Pan American Airways
fire boat normally stationed at Pearl City, ultimately succeeded in
extinguishing the stricken destroyer’s fires.
In the meantime, after having pounded the military installations on
Oahu for nearly two hours, between 0940 and 1000 the Japanese planes
made their way westward to return to the carrier decks from whence
they had arisen. With the respite offered by the enemy’s departure
(no one knew for sure whether or not they would be back), the Marines
at last found time to take stock of their situation. Fortunately, the
Marine Barracks lay some distance away from what had interested the
Japanese the most: the ships in the harbor proper. Although some “shell
fragments literally rained at times” the material loss sustained by the
barracks was slight. Moreover, it had been American gunfire from the
ships in the harbor, rather than bombs from Japanese planes overhead,
that had inflicted the damage; at one point that morning a 3-inch
antiaircraft shell crashed through the roof of a storehouse--the only
damage sustained by the barracks during the entire attack.
Considering the carnage at the airfields on Oahu, and especially,
among the units of the Pacific Fleet, only four men of the 3d Defense
Battalion had been wounded: Sergeant Samuel H. Cobb, Jr., of the 3d
Defense Battalion’s 3-inch Antiaircraft Group, suffered head injuries
serious enough to warrant his being transferred to the Naval Hospital
for treatment, while Private First Class Jules B. Maioran and Private
William J. Whitcomb of the Machine Gun Group and Sergeant Leo Hendricks
II, of the Headquarters and Service Battery, suffered less serious
injuries. In addition, two men sent with the trucks to find ammunition
for the 3-inch batteries suffered injuries when they fell off the
vehicles.
In their subsequent reports, the defense battalion and barracks
officers declined to single out individuals, noting no outstanding
individual behavior during the raid--only the steady discharge of duty
expected of Marines. To be sure, great confusion existed, especially
at first, but the command quickly settled down to work and “showed
no more than the normal excitement and no trace of panic or even
uneasiness.” If anything, the Marines tended to place themselves at
risk unnecessarily, as they went about their business coolly and, in
many cases, “in utter disregard of their own safety.” Major Roberts
recommended that the entire 3d Defense Battalion be commended for
“their initiative, coolness under fire, and [the] alacrity with which
they emplaced their guns.”
Commendations, however, were not the order of the day on 7 December.
Although the Japanese had left, the Marines expected them to return and
finish the job they had begun (many Japanese pilots, including Fuchida,
wanted to do just that). If another attack was to come, there was
much to do to prepare for it. As the skies cleared of enemy planes,
the Marines at the barracks secured their establishment and took steps
to complete the work already begun on the defenses. At 1030, the 3d
Defense Battalion’s corporal of the guard moved to the barracks and set
the battalion’s radio to the Army Information Service frequency, thus
enabling them to pass “flash” messages to all groups. The Marines also
distributed gas masks to all hands.
[Illustration:
National Archives Photo 80-G-19943
_In the aftermath of the attack_, Pennsylvania (_BB-38_) _lies astern
of the wrecked destroyers_ Cassin (_DD-372_) _and_ Downes (_DD-375_)
_in Dry Dock No. 1. Light cruiser_ Helena (_CL-50_) _lies alongside
1010 Dock in right background; pall of smoke is from the still-burning_
Arizona (_BB-39_). _Marine firefighters distinguished themselves in
battling blazes in this area._]
The morning and afternoon passed quickly, the men losing track of time.
The initial confusion experienced during the opening moments of the
raid had by that point given way to at least some semblance of order,
as officers and noncoms arrived from leave and began to sort out their
commands. At 1105, the 3d Defense Battalion’s Battery G deployed to
makeshift defense positions as an infantry reserve in some ditches dug
for building foundations. All of the messmen, many of whom had taken
an active hand in the defense of the barracks against the Japanese
attack, returned to the three general mess halls and opened up an
around-the-clock service to all comers, including “about 6,000 meals
... to the civilian workmen of the navy yard,” a service discontinued
only “after the food supply at the regular established eating places
could be replenished.”
By 1100, at least some of the 3-inch batteries were emplaced and
ready to answer any future Japanese raids. At the north end of the
parade ground, the 3d Defense Battalion’s Battery D stood ready for
action at 1135 while another battery, consisting of three guns and an
antiaircraft director (the one originally earmarked for Midway) lay
at the south end. At 1220, Major Roberts organized his battalion’s
strength into six task groups. Task group no. 1 was to double the Navy
Yard guard force, no. 2 was to provide antiaircraft defense, and no.
3 was to provide machine gun defense. No. 4 was to provide infantry
reserve and firefighting crews, no. 5 was to coordinate transportation,
and no. 6 was to provide ammunition and equipment, as well as messing
and billeting support.
By 1300, meanwhile, all of the fires in Dry Dock No. 1 had been
extinguished, permitting the Marine and civilian firefighters to secure
their hard-worked equipment. Although the two battered destroyers,
_Cassin_ and _Downes_, appeared to be total losses, those who had
battled the blaze could take great satisfaction in knowing that they
had not only spared _Pennsylvania_ from serious fire damage but had
also played a major role in saving the drydock. As Tai Sing Loo
recounted later in his own brand of English: “The Marines of the Fire
Dep[artmen]t of the Navy Yard are the Heroes of the Day of Dec. 7, 1941
that save the _Cassin_ and _Downes_ and USS _Pennsylvania_ in Dry Dock
No. 1.”
Later that afternoon, Battery D’s four officers and 68 enlisted men,
with four .30-caliber machine guns sent along with them for good
measure, moved from the barracks over to Hickam Field to provide the
Army installation some measure of antiaircraft protection. Hickam also
benefitted from the provision of the 2d Engineer Battalion’s service
and equipment. After the attack, the battalion’s dump truck and two
bulldozers lumbered over to the stricken air base to assist in clearing
what remained of the bombers that had been parked wingtip to wingtip,
and filling bomb craters.
* * * * *
Around 1530, a Marine patrol approached Tai Sing Loo, a familiar figure
about the Navy Yard, and asked him to do them a favor. They had had
no lunch; some had had no breakfast because of the events of the day.
Going to the garage, Loo rode his bright red “putput” over to the 3d
Defense Battalion mess hall and related to his old friend Technical
Sergeant Joseph A. Newland the tale of the hungry Marines. Newland and
his messmen prepared ham and chicken sandwiches and Loo made the rounds
of all the posts he could reach.
* * * * *
In the afternoon and early evening hours of 7 December, the men
received reports that their drinking water was poisoned, and that
various points on Oahu were being bombed and/or invaded. In the absence
of any real news, such alarming reports--especially when added to
the already nervous state of the defenders--only fueled the fear and
paranoia prevalent among all ranks and rates. In addition, most of the
men were exhausted after their exertions of the morning and afternoon.
Dog-tired, many would remain on duty for 36 hours without relief.
Drawn, unshaven faces and puffy eyes were common. Tense, expectant and
anxious Marines and sailors at Pearl spent a fitful night on the 7th.
* * * * *
It is little wonder that mistakes would be made that would have tragic
consequences, especially in the stygian darkness of that first
blacked-out Hawaiian night following the raid. Still some hours away
from Oahu, the carrier _Enterprise_ and her air group had been flying
searches and patrols throughout the day, in a so-far fruitless effort
to locate the Japanese carrier force. South of Oahu, one of her pilots
spotted what he thought was a Japanese ship and _Enterprise_ launched a
31-plane strike at 1642. Nagumo’s fleet, however, was homeward bound.
While _Enterprise_ recovered the torpedo planes and dive bombers after
their fruitless search, she directed the fighters to land at NAS Pearl
Harbor.
Machine guns on board the battleship _Pennsylvania_ opened fire on the
flight as it came for a landing, though, and soon the entire harbor
exploded into a fury of gunfire as cones of tracers converged on
the incoming “Wildcats.” Three of the F4Fs slanted earthward almost
immediately; a fourth crashed a short time later. Two managed to land
at Ford Island. The 3d Defense Battalion’s journalist later recorded
that “six planes with running lights under 400 feet altitude tried Ford
Island landing and were machine gunned.” It was a tragic footnote to
what had been a terrible day indeed.
The Marines at Pearl Harbor had been surprised by the attack that
descended upon them, but they rose to the occasion and fought back
in the “best traditions of the naval service.” While the enemy had
attacked with tenacity and daring, no less so was the response from
the Marines on board the battleships and cruisers, at Ewa Mooring Mast
Field, and at the Marine Barracks. One can only think that Admiral
Isoroku Yamamoto’s worst fears of America’s “terrible resolve” and that
he had awakened a sleeping giant would have been confirmed if he could
have peered into the faces, so deeply etched with grim determination,
of the Marines who had survived the events of that December day in 1941.
[Illustration:
_Photo courtesy of Mrs. Evelyn Lee, via Paul Stillwell,
U.S. Naval Institute_
_Tai Sing Loo and His Bright Red ‘Putput’_
Tai Sing Loo, Navy Yard photographer, had scheduled an appointment
to take a picture of the Main Gate guards at the Navy Yard on the
morning of 7 December 1941. While he ended up not taking pictures of
the Marines, he gallantly helped the Marines of the Navy Yard Fire
Department put out fires in Dry Dock No. 1 and later delivered food
to famished Leathernecks. He is seen here on his famous bright red
“putput” that he drove around the yard that day delivering sandwiches
and fruit juice.]
Pearl Harbor Remembered
Several of the many memoirs in the Marine Corps Oral History Collection
are by Marines who were serving at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941,
and personally witnessed the Japanese attack. Two such memoirs--one
by Lieutenant General Alan Shapley and a second by Brigadier General
Samuel R. Shaw--vividly describe the events of that day as they
remembered it. General Shapley, a major in December 1941, had been
relieved as commander of _Arizona_’s Marine detachment on the 6th. He
recalled:
I was just finishing my breakfast, and I was just about ready
to go to my room and get in my baseball uniform to play the
_Enterprise_ for the baseball championship of the United States
Fleet, and I heard this terrible bang and crash. I thought it
was a motor sailer that they dropped on the fantail, and I ran
up there to see what it was all about. When I got up on deck
there, the sailors were aligned on the railing there, looking
towards Pearl Harbor, and I heard two or three of them say,
‘This is the best damned drill the Army Air Corps has ever put
on.’ Then we saw a destroyer being blown up in the dry dock
across the way.
The first thing I knew was when the fantail, which was wood,
was being splintered when we were being strafed by machine
guns. And then there was a little bit of confusion, and I can
remember this because they passed the word on ship that all
unengaged personnel get below the third deck. You see, in a
battleship the third deck is the armored deck, and so realizing
what was going on, this attack and being strafed, the unengaged
personnel were ordered below the third deck.
That started some people going down the ladders. Then right
after that, the _Pennsylvania_, which was the flagship of the
whole fleet, put up these signals, “Go to general quarters.”
So that meant that the people were going the other way too. Lt
[Carleton E.] Simensen did quite a job of turning some of the
sailors around, and we went up in the director. [On the way up
the mainmast tripod, Lt Simensen was killed.] He caught a burst
through the heart and almost knocked me off the tripod because
I was behind him on the ladder, and I boosted him up in the
searchlight platform and went in to my director. And of course
when I got up there, there were only seven or eight men there,
and I thought we were all going to get cooked to death because
I couldn’t see anything but fire below after a while. I stayed
there and watched this whole attack, because I had a grandstand
seat for that, and then it got pretty hot. Anyway, the wind was
blowing from the stern to the stem and I sent the men down and
got those men off. Then I apparently got knocked off or blown
off.
I was pretty close to shore.... There was a dredging pipeline
that ran between the ship and Ford Island. And I guess that I
was only about 25 yards from the pipeline and 10 yards from
Ford Island, and managed to get ashore. I wasn’t so much
covered with oil. I didn’t have any clothes on. [The burning
fuel oil] burnt all my clothes off. I walked up to the airfield
which wasn’t very bright of me, because this was still being
attacked at first. I wanted to get a machine gun in the
administration building but I couldn’t do that. Then I was
given a boat cloak from one of my men. It was quite a sight to
see 400 or 500 men walking around all burnt, just like charred
steak. You could just see their eyes and their mouths. It was
terrible. Later I went over to the island and went to the
Marine barracks and got some clothes.
At the Marine Barracks, Captain Samuel R. Shaw, who commanded one of
the two barracks companies, vividly remembered that Sunday morning as
well:
The boat guards were in place, and the music was out there,
and the old and new officer of the day. And we had a music,
and a hell of a fine sergeant bugler who had been in Shanghai.
He would stand beside the officers of the day, and there came
the airplanes, and he looked up and he said, “Captain, those
are Japanese war planes.” And one of the two of them said, “My
God, they are, sound the call to arms.” So the bugler started
sounding the call to arms before the first bomb hit.
Of course they had already started taking out the machine
guns. They didn’t wait for the key in the OD’s office, they
just broke the door down and hauled out the machine guns, put
them in position. Everybody that wasn’t involved in that drill
grabbed their rifles and ran out in the parade ground, and
starting firing at the airplanes. They must have had several
hundred men out there with rifles. And every [Japanese]
plane that was recovered there, or pieces of it, had lots of
.30-caliber holes--somebody was hitting them, machine guns or
rifles.
Then I remembered--here we had all these guys on the post who
had not been relieved, and they had been posted at 4 o’clock,
and come 9 o’clock, 9:30 they not only had not been relieved
but had no chow and no water. So I got hold of the mess
sergeant and told him to organize, to go around to the posts.
They had a depot. At the beginning it was a supply depot. I
told him to send a party over there and draw a lot of canteens
and make sandwiches, and we’d send water and sandwiches around
to the guys on posts until we found out some way to relieve all
these guys, and get people back. Then he told me that it was
fine except that he didn’t have nearly enough messmen, they
were all out in the parade ground shooting. I think the second
phase of planes came in at that time and we had a hell of an
uproar.
_Sources_
The authors consulted primary materials in the Marine Corps Historical
Center Reference Section (November/December 1941 muster rolls) and
Personal Papers Section (Claude A. Larkins, Roger M. Emmons, and
Wayne Jordan collections), as well as in the Naval Historical Center
Operational Archives Branch (action reports and/or microfilmed deck
logs for the 15 ships with embarked Marine Detachments, and those units
included in the Commandant, 14th Naval District, report), in the office
of the Coast Guard Historian, and in the Gordon W. Prange Papers.
The _Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the
Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack_ (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1946) contains useful accounts (Lieutenant Commander
Fuqua, Lieutenant Colonel Whaling, and Lieutenant Colonel Larkin), as
does Paul Stillwell, ed., _Air Raid: Pearl Harbor! Recollections of a
Day of Infamy_ (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1981).
General works concerning Pearl Harbor that were consulted include
Gordon W. Prange, et al., _December 7, 1941: The Day The Japanese
Attacked Pearl Harbor_ (New York: McGraw Hill, 1987), Walter Lord, _Day
of Infamy_ (Henry Holt & Co., 1957), and Japanese War History Office,
_Senshi Sosho_ [War History Series], Vol. 10, _Hawaii Sakusen_ (Tokyo:
Asagumo Shimbunsa, 1970).
Articles from the _Naval Institute Proceedings_ include: Cornelius C.
Smith Jr., “... A Hell of a Christmas,” (Dec68), Thomas C. Hone, “The
Destruction of the Battle Line at Pearl Harbor,” (Dec77) and Paul H.
Backus, “Why Them And Not Me?” (Sep81). From _Marine Corps Gazette_:
Clifford B. Drake, “A Day at Pearl Harbor,” (Nov65). From _Shipmate_:
Samuel R. Shaw, “Marine Barracks, Navy Yard, Pearl Harbor,” (Dec73).
From _Naval History_: Albert A. Grasselli, “The Ewa Marines” (Spring
1991). From _Leatherneck_: Philip N. Pierce, “Twenty Years Ago ...”
(Dec61)
_About the Authors_
[Illustration]
Robert J. Cressman is currently a civilian historian in the Naval
Historical Center’s Ships’ Histories Branch. A graduate of the
University of Maryland with a bachelor of arts in history in 1972, he
obtained his master of arts in history under the late Dr. Gordon W.
Prange at the University of Maryland in 1978. Mr. Cressman, a former
reference historian in the Marine Corps Historical Center’s Reference
Section (1979–1981), is author of _That Gallant Ship: USS Yorktown
(CV-5)_, and editor and principal contributor of _A Glorious Page in
Our History: The Battle of Midway, 4–6 June 1942_. He and the co-author
of this monograph, J. Michael Wenger, also co-authored _Steady Nerves
and Stout Hearts: The USS Enterprise (CV-6) Air Group and Pearl Harbor,
7 December 1941_.
[Illustration]
J. Michael Wenger, currently an analyst for the Square D Company in
Knightdale, North Carolina, graduated from Atlantic Christian College
in 1972, and obtained a master of arts from Duke University in 1973.
Mr. Wenger has taught in the Raleigh, North Carolina, school system and
writes as a free-lance military historian. He is the co-author of _The
Way It Was: Pearl Harbor--The Original Photographs_. His publication
credits include the Raleigh _News and Observer_ and _Naval Aviation
News_.
About the Cover: In the aftermath of the attack, _Pennsylvania_ (BB-38)
lies astern of the wrecked destroyers _Cassin_ (DD-372) and _Downes_
(DD-375).
[Illustration]
This pamphlet history, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines
in the World War II era, is published for the education and
training of Marines by the History and Museums Division,
Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C., as a part
of the U.S. Department of Defense observance of the 50th
anniversary of victory in that war.
Editorial costs of preparing this pamphlet have been defrayed
in part by a bequest from the estate of Emilie H. Watts, in
memory of her late husband, Thomas M. Watts, who served as a
Marine and was the recipient of a Purple Heart.
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
_DIRECTOR OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS_
=Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC= (=Ret=)
_GENERAL EDITOR,
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES_
=Benis M. Frank=
_EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION_
=Robert E. Struder=, Senior Editor; =W. Stephen Hill=,
Visual Information Specialist; =Catherine A. Kerns=,
Composition Services Technician
Marine Corps Historical Center
Building 58, Washington Navy Yard
Washington, D.C. 20374-0580
=1992=
PCN 190 003116 00
For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of Documents, Mail Stop: SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-9328
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. Some have been repositioned to improve the
appearance of pages in eBook format.
The Frontispiece originally was printed across two facing pages, so
part of the photograph was lost in the binding. In this eBook, the two
parts of that photograph have been combined into one image, with a
vertical white gap indicating the lost area. The complete photograph
used by the original book may be found by searching the Internet for
images of “ford island pearl harbor attack”, but this eBook only used
what was in the original book.
Ship identifications in the original book sometimes were printed with a
hyphen (BB-43) and sometimes with a space (BB 43). In this eBook, they
always are printed with a hyphen.
Page 32: The text on this page was superimposed on a background image
that was too faint be reproduced in this eBook. The caption of that
image is:
Photo of USS _Arizona_ Memorial, 1991, by Maj Charles D. Melson,
USMC (Ret)
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