The World War II Collection

by Lord, Walter;

  Now the planes were asking for landing instructions from the tower. A calm, flat voice gave wind direction, velocity, the runway on which to land, as though it were any other day. Occasionally the voice observed without emotion that the field was under attack by “unidentified enemy planes.”

  Lieutenant Allen was the first to land. Then came Captain Raymond Swenson’s plane. As it circled in, a Japanese bullet exploded some magnesium flares in the radio compartment, which set the whole plane on fire. It bounced down heavily … the blazing tail section broke off … and the forward half skidded to a stop. Lieutenant Ernest Reid, the copilot, reacted to habit and set the parking brakes as usual. The crew all reached shelter except Flight Surgeon William Schick. A Zero riddled him as he ran down the runway.

  Now it was Major Landon’s turn to come in. The same nasal voice in the tower told him to “land from west to east” and added laconically that there were three Japanese planes on his tail. With this encouraging news he came on in, landing safely at 8:20.

  As the planes rolled to a stop, the men jumped out and raced for the boondocks on the Honolulu side of the field. Sergeant Brawley lay in the keawa bushes, listening uneasily as the bullets thudded around him. Lieutenant George Newton picked a swamp, Lieutenant Ramsey a drainage ditch. Lieutenant Allen tried to disappear into grass three inches high. Lieutenant Homer Taylor ran the opposite way, winding up in some officer’s house under a couple of overturned sofas. The officer’s wife and children huddled there too, and every time a Japanese plane roared by, a small boy tried to get out from under the sofa and look outside. He would nearly get to the end of the sofa, then Taylor would grab an ankle and drag him back just in time. This duel continued until the end of the raid.

  Taylor had the right idea — nothing was immune. Even the Snake Ranch, the new beer garden for enlisted men, exploded in a shower of glass and lumber. The only thing saved was a recording of “San Antonio Rose” — when the place was later rebuilt, it was the only record the old-timers allowed.

  The base fire department was now in action, but no firemen ever operated under greater handicaps. Bombs blasted the water mains, then the firehouse itself. As Hoseman Howard King manned one of the engines, his crew chief, Joe Clagnon, suddenly yelled to look out. Before King could move, there was a blinding flash and something that felt like a ton of bricks. Lying in the smoke, he saw dimly the twisted engine, Clagnon dying, his own leg shattered. He begged a passing GI to put a tourniquet around his leg; the man said dazedly that he was sorry but he didn’t have a handkerchief.

  Through it all Fire Chief William Benedict calmly directed his men, munching an apple. Soon he was hit but the wound was minor. Then he was hit worse, but he got up again and continued supervising the work. The third time he stayed down, but as they carried him away badly injured, he was still munching the apple.

  Some of the casualties were needless. One first sergeant, in a well-meaning attempt to organize his unit, lined them up on the edge of the parade grounds just outside the big barracks. The target was too inviting to miss — a couple of Zeroes peeled off and strafed the men.

  Perhaps it didn’t make much difference — the strafers seemed just as interested in individuals. One Zero caught a lineman up a telegraph pole. He yanked out his spurs and slid down the pole, as the wood splintered around him. Another strafer stitched up Hangar Avenue, sawed right through the cab of a swerving truck. Searching out targets, the planes swooped unbelievably low. Completely absorbed in his work, one pilot forgot about flying. As he skimmed along the parking ramp, his propeller tips flecked the asphalt … his belly tank scraped off and went scooting down the ramp. He finally pulled up — hitting the hills beyond the field, according to one man … crashing into the sea, according to another … getting away with it completely, according to a third.

  It’s a wonder anybody noticed. The dive-bombers were concentrating on the hangars, and most men were trying to get out of the area. A pack of men headed across the ball field for the post school building. A strafer caught up with them as they crossed the diamond—Private J. H. Thompson got two bullet holes in his canteen, one of his buddies in the bill of his cap, and others got off far worse. Corporal John Sherwood joined 200 others in a wild dash from the big barracks, which were perilously close to the hangars. They headed across the parade grounds for the post exchange, encouraged along by the inevitable Zero. Sherwood, a compact little man, was clad only in undershorts and must have been a spectacular figure. His sergeant, Wilbur Hunt, still recalls how he paused in his work and wondered how anybody that short could run that fast. Today Sherwood denies he ran, but says he passed at least a hundred who did.

  From the shelter of the PX, Corporal Sherwood watched a master sergeant pedal furiously by on a bicycle. Head down, feet pumping hard, all the time shooting a .45 pistol in the air, he seemed curiously like a cowboy in a Wild West movie. Perhaps there was something of that spirit in the air, for out in the open near the married men’s quarters a group of small children were leaping up and down shrieking, “Here come the Indians!”

  Gradually, fear and panic gave way to anger. A wounded man outside Hangar 15 kept shaking his fist at the sky in helpless rage. Sergeant George Geiger was bitterly mad, searched for a gun — any gun. He found one in the barracks supply room, but there was no ammunition. Then he heard there was a supply of arms at the main gate. When he got there, everything was gone except a .45 pistol holster. He took it, later gave it to a man who had a pistol but no holster.

  Guns began to appear. Sergeant Stanley McLeod stood on the parade ground, hammering away with a Thompson submachine gun … Staff Sergeant Doyle King fired another from under a panel truck … Technical Sergeant Wilbur Hunt set up 12 .50-caliber machine guns in fresh bomb craters near the barracks. His gunners turned up from an unexpected source. A bomb had blown off a corner of the guardhouse, releasing everybody. The prisoners dashed over to Hunt and said they were ready to go to work. It was just as he thought — the ones who are always in trouble are the ones you want with you when the going gets tough. He put them on the guns right away.

  Wheeler had its guardhouse heroes too. All the prisoners were turned loose, and two of them helped man a machine gun on the roof. At the main barracks men broke down the supply room doors, and three guns were firing from the narrow back porch. Somebody had set up another out in the open, toward the main road. Pfc. Arthur Fusco helped set one up in front of a hangar, but by now all the smoke made it useless. At one point he took cover in the hangar office, and was surprised to hear the phone ringing. He automatically picked up the receiver. A post wife was on the other end, asking what all the noise was about.

  Most of the men had no idea what to do or where to go. Staff Sergeant Francis Glossen, like the men at Hickam, was at least sure the hangar line was a poor choice. He ran toward the road, fell down, limped on. Then a solicitous chaplain stopped him, thinking he was wounded. That out of the way, he climbed a fence … lost his shoes … and plunged into some keawa bushes. At least a dozen others had reached the patch before him.

  Pfc. Carroll Andrews was one man with a definite objective. A sergeant told him to hit for Schofield. He and a buddy started off through the noncom housing area, running in short spurts between the strafing. Once they ducked into the kitchen of an empty house. Bullets ripped the stove, and they marveled at the splintering porcelain —it was the first time they realized how the stuff could shatter.

  On they ran, and then another interruption. This time it was a soldier who had seen Andrews playing the organ for Catholic services. He asked Andrews to help him say the Catholic’s Act of Contrition. He explained he hadn’t been to mass or confession for years and needed to make an emergency peace. Andrews stopped and repeated the words with him.

  They dashed on. Soon a Filipino woman ran up with a tiny baby. She too had seen Andrews in Church, wanted him to baptize the baby. By now mildly exasperated, Andrews asked her why she didn’t do it herself. She said she wasn’t sure how. So he
went in another empty house, tried the kitchen faucets (they didn’t run), found a bottle of cold water, and baptized the baby. The mother burst into tears and ran off.

  They finally reached Schofield about 8:30. At this point it was an odd place to go for protection. The planes were gone now —they were finished with this whole area by 8:17 — but the post was in enormous confusion. The various antiaircraft units were trying to get going to their assigned positions, but there were often difficulties. The men in Battery B, 98th Coast Artillery, couldn’t get trucks to tow their guns to Wheeler Field until the raid was all over. When they were issued machine-gun ammunition, they found it was 1918 stuff—so old the belts came to pieces in the loading machine. With the Japanese likely to return any minute, Private Lester Buckley — back safely from his compost heap — opened the gates of the corral, so that at least his mules would have a chance.

  At Wahiawa, a small town next to Wheeler and Schofield, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Young listened to the explosions nearby. The Youngs were Koreans and ran a small laundry in a shed attached to their house. They had just put in a big night at mah-jongg, and Mr. Young was all for staying in bed. But Mrs. Young was curious and finally walked down to the Wheeler gate to find out what was going on. The sentry had a quick answer: “Get back home. Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

  Mrs. Young ran back, calling out the news. Mr. Young and his brother, Sung do Kim, then got up and came down to watch the show. Suddenly they saw a plane flying up the road from Pearl Harbor, looking for something to strafe. Mrs. Young sensed trouble, and they all took cover, except for their old Chinese hired man. He stayed outside, nonchalantly rolling some Bull Durham. The plane got him before he could finish making the cigarette.

  They ran out and dragged the old man in. Mrs. Young scolded him like a naughty child, asked him why he didn’t come inside with them. He replied he couldn’t talk because it hurt so much.

  Now a dogfight began. Stray bullets whined about the house — one smashed a window; another nicked the washing machine; another bored a hole through the door where Mrs. Young was peeking out. The family, crouched under the ironing table, caught occasional glimpses of the planes through the skylight. Suddenly there was an earsplitting roar. A Japanese plane sheared off the top of the eucalyptus tree in their yard, crashed in a pineapple field just beyond. The American fighter that shot it down disappeared off toward the mountains. Mrs. Young, of course, couldn’t know it, but Lieutenants Welch and Taylor had reached Haleiwa, taken off in their P-40s, and were now in business.

  At Haleiwa, eight miles away, there was now plenty of other action. Two B-17s had lumbered up from the south and were circling above. Captain Chaffin and Major Carmichael had given up trying to land in the shambles at Hickam. After rejecting Wheeler and Ewa for the same reasons, they finally decided on Haleiwa, which the Japanese apparently didn’t know about. The little strip was only 1200 feet long —certainly not inviting — but they were almost out of gas and there was no other choice. Down they came, somewhat surprisingly, to perfect landings.

  They taxied as close as they could to a clump of trees, but they were already too late. A Zero had seen them land and came over to investigate. Somebody yelled a warning, and Major Carmichael and his classmate, Colonel Twaddell, dived under a big rock on the beach. The Zero was probably low in ammunition — he gave Haleiwa a perfunctory burst and flew off. But a Pacific comber took care of Carmichael and his friend. It rolled in, completely drenching them. It even ruined Carmichae’s watch. At Kaneohe on the windward side, a strafing Japanese plane cost Ordnanceman Homer Bisbee his watch too, but much more indirectly. As he dived for cover off the seaplane ramp, he noticed he was swimming with his good watch on. At first he held his arm up out of the water; next, he put the watch in his white cap and laid it on the ramp. When he came out from under a few minutes later, the cap was still there, but the watch was missing.

  Almost anything could have happened to it — the ramp was an inferno. Again and again the dive-bombers strafed the 26 PBYs lined up in neat rows, the four others moored in the bay. Several small boats servicing the planes at anchor were riddled too, and one man had to swim all the way across Kaneohe Bay to reach safety. Only one gun was firing back — Chief Aviation Ordnanceman John Finn had mounted a machine gun on an instruction stand far out on the ramp. He hammered away at the strafers in a shower of blazing gasoline from the planes parked around him. A bullet clipped him in the heel, but he kept on firing.

  The pilots and flight crews struggled to salvage what was left. Ensign C. S. Malwein got a tractor, and with two other men struggled to save a plane that wasn’t burning yet. A Japanese fighter swooped down to stop them, and the wing fabric was soon a mass of flames.

  Another Zero cut down Aviation Machinist’s Mate Robert Ballou as he ran out on the ramp with a rifle. Two of his buddies put him on a cot and set off for a truck being used as an ambulance. They were spotted right away. Flat on his back, Ballou watched the tracer bullets smoke by; he found it especially disconcerting when he realized the men had set the cot down and were running for cover. He jumped up and outran them both.

  About 8:15A.M. the planes flew off to the north. The quiet was anything but restful. So far there had been no bombing, and everyone sensed that this was what would happen next. Sure enough, around 8:30 — Ensign Reese remembered glancing at his watch — nine horizontal bombers appeared, flying in close formation. Dirt, metal, cement, glass flew in all directions as they dropped their load. Then another formation appeared but saved their bombs perhaps for a better target — Kaneohe’s two new hangars were wrecked by now.

  All was still serene at Bellows Field, the Army’s fighter base only six miles down the coast. Captain John P. Joyce, the officer of the day, was shaving in the officers’ club just before 8:30, when a single plane buzzed the field once, firing about 50 rounds. A private of the medical detachment was hit in bed in the tent area. A messenger drove off to tell Major L. D. Waddington, the base commander, who lived about a mile away, but even this rather startling event didn’t seem to stir much excitement. Certainly not enough to keep Private Raymond McBriarty from going to church as usual at 8:30. Like everybody else, he hadn’t paid much attention to the strafing plane. But then as he sat in the pew with more time to meditate, he began to think how strange it was.

  Outside, a big B-17 was coming in downwind on the short 2600-foot strip. Lieutenant Robert Richards was another of the bomber pilots who wanted no part of Hickam — three of his crew had been wounded already. So on the tower’s advice, he was now trying Bellows. With a damaged plane almost out of gas, he decided to get down as quickly as possible, and got away with a downwind landing.

  At this point Hickam finally notified Bellows about the attack. Major Waddington hurried on over to get the defense organized, and about the same time nine Japanese planes — apparently attracted by Richards’ B-17 — dropped by and shot up the field.

  Other enemy planes kept on top of Ewa, the Marine air base west of Pearl. There were no antiaircraft guns, no planes that could fly, no chance to do anything. Lieutenant Colonel Larkin, the base commander, watched from under a truck, and most of his men were pinned down just as effectively.

  Up above, Lieutenant Yoshio Shiga raked Ewa with his Zero fighter. He noticed a Marine standing beside a disabled plane and charged down, all guns blazing. The man refused to budge … kept firing back with a pistol. Shiga still considers him the bravest American he ever met.

  Lieutenant Shiga was also impressed by the B-17. He watched one of the big bombers shake off a swarm of Zeroes and lumber on safely to Hickam. He made a mental note that in the days ahead the Flying Fortress was going to be a hard plane to knock out.

  Perhaps the visitors’ biggest surprise was the antiaircraft fire, which was now coming to life. As Commander Fuchida’s 50 horizontal bombers approached Battleship Row in a long, single line from the south, he felt they looked entirely too much like ducks in a shooting gallery. If he were doing it again, they w
ould come in some other way.

  As they neared the target, Fuchida traded positions with the leadbomber in his squadron. This plane had a specially trained bombardier, and when he released his bombs the other planes would follow suit. All the squadrons operated the same way.

  Everything depended on perfect timing. When Fuchida saw the third plane in his group get out of line and prematurely drop its bomb, he was thoroughly annoyed. The man had a reputation for carelessness anyhow. Fuchida scribbled, “What happened?” on a small blackboard and waved it at the culprit. The pilot indicated that he had been hit, that the bomb lines had been shot away, and Fuchida was filled with remorse.

  The squadron flew on. The Nevada was its particular target, and everybody waited for the lead plane to release. It never did. They ran into clouds at the crucial moment and had to try again. Next time around there was too much smoke over the Nevada, so Fuchida picked the Maryland instead. This time there was no trouble. The lead plane released and the others followed suit. Fuchida peeked down and felt sure he had two hits.

  Lieutenant Toshio Hashimoto, leading one of the rear squadrons, had an even more difficult time. The backwash of the planes in front kept throwing his group off. Then the lead plane miscalculated its range and signaled the others to hold everything. As they circled for another run, the expert bombardier Sergeant Umezawa bowed his apologies.

  There were other errors over which the planes had no control. Their map of the area was made in 1933, and the efforts to update it hadn’t been too successful. The new Navy tank farm was noted, but a 1936 artist’s conception of Hickam had been accepted as gospel, so that the map showed eight pairs of hangars instead of the five actually built. The map also put the underground gasoline system where the baseball field was — at one time it had indeed been planned for there. Also, the administration building — a vital center — was labeled the officers’ club and hence not touched. This mistake arose because dances were held there while the permanent club was being built. Whatever the other successes of Japanese agents, apparently they weren’t invited to dances at Hickam.