The Project Gutenberg eBook of Infamous Day:

Marines at Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941

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Title: Infamous Day: Marines at Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941
Author: Robert Cressman
Author: J. Michael Wenger
Release date: July 2, 2020 [eBook #62542]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Brian Coe, Charlie Howard, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INFAMOUS
DAY: MARINES AT PEARL HARBOR, 7 DECEMBER 1941 ***
 Transcriber’s Note:
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On some eReaders, stretching and/or double-tapping an
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 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
O
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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
A
Private William Anthony of the Maine reported that the ship was afire.
“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
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).

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.
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.
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).

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.

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
B
the drydock area between 0830 and 0915. 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.
 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.
 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.
 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.
 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.
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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.
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.

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.

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.
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.
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.
 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.

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.”
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.”

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.
 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.

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.
 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.
 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.
 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
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.

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).

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
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