by Craig Nelson
If the Pearl Harbor attack devastated Americans, it had a remarkable impact on these young girls. Mary Ann Ramsey: “A young man, filthy black oil covering his burned, shredded flesh, walked in unaided. He had no clothes on, his nudity entirely obscured by oil. The skin hung from his arms like scarlet ribbons as he staggered toward my mother for help. Looking at me, he gestured to his throat, trying to speak: he must have swallowed some of the burning oil as he swam through the inferno. His light blue eyes against the whites, made more so by the oil clinging to his face, were luminous in visible shock at what they had seen and experienced that awful morning.
“We gave cigarettes to those who wanted to smoke and held them for others who could not use their hands. We covered the men with sheets and tried to reassure them that transport to sick bay was forthcoming. There wasn’t much else we could do except listen if they wanted to talk. A sailor told me, tears streaming down his cheeks, how his best friend was blown apart in front of him; another was grieving over the loss of his brother. From many there was only the deadly silence of shock or the soft moaning of pain.”
When the second wave of attacks began, the dungeon’s power and water failed, including its only toilet, creating an unimaginably grim atmosphere. The marine guards decided that now was a good time to eat and passed out cans of emergency-ration food. Everyone tried not to think how this might be his or her last meal. Miriam Bellinger got a can of sweetened yams, and the woman beside her, a can of clams. One woman thought a sing-along would help their spirits. Since Christmas was coming, she started up with “Jingle Bells.”
The young children were quiet and seemed fine, under the circumstances, until news arrived that Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd, a wonderful man they all knew from his daily jogs through the neighborhood, his pockets filled with signature matchbooks from each capital ship, had been killed on Arizona. The little girls began to wail.
Mary Ann Ramsey: “Turning my attention to my mother for the first time, I realized her face had become an ashen mask. I had been so preoccupied with the wounded, and she with the children, that the initial fear for self had disappeared. For her, it was back. As the noise increased, we looked at each other almost like strangers. I had no fear at all. I believe now that this was simply the difference in our ages. When I saw that first sailor, so horribly burned, personal fear left me. He brought to me the full tragedy of that day, drastically changing my outlook. At sixteen, the idea that any man could be the instrument of such desecration of another, in so hideous a manner, had been incomprehensible.”
After sending out his morning radiogram warning, “This is No Drill,” Mary Anne’s father, Patrol Wing 2’s Logan Ramsey, called his commander, Admiral Bellinger, who was at home suffering from the flu, to get permission to order all of the navy’s patrol planes to their assigned sectors to search for enemy ships. He then told Bellinger’s operations and plans officer, Vice Admiral Charles Coe, “to get on the operational telephone, call Army Air, and find out where the hell the Japanese planes were coming from and try to get any other information.” Coe did his best, but the same lack of preparation that had undercut the warnings from Opana and Outerbridge now sabotaged a chance for striking back. “Lines were not manned,” Coe said, “and I could not get through to anybody, [besides which] we were simply not in a position to retaliate.” Ramsey then turned to Kaneohe’s Patrol Wing 1’s PBYs, but they had been too decimated to now operate as a surveillance force. Ramsey’s own seaplane apron at Ford had been so thoroughly strafed that barely any aircraft were left.
Still available to fly were the planes of Utility Squadron One, used for mail deliveries and target tows. Radioman 2nd Class Harry Mead was assigned to a search mission aboard an antique Sikorsky JRS-1, a parasol wing amphibian, and he remembered the selection process. Chief G. R. Jacobs pointed to various men in the room and said, “I want three volunteers—you . . . you . . . and you.” To defend themselves against Nagumo’s mighty fleet, they had Springfield rifles. The squadron searched in a broad circle, found nothing, and reported back that the Japanese had left the area. But this information seems to have gone nowhere, and its facts diminished no one’s fears of enemy invasion.
In time, reports from the B-17 crews and the Opana radar station clearly indicated that the Kido Butai was to the north of Oahu. At 1018, Kimmel’s office signaled his ships at sea that there were “some indication” of a Japanese force there. Then at 1030 the navy’s antenna at He‘eia intercepted a signal between Nagumo and Yamamoto, but could only get a reciprocal bearing, which meant the location could be interpreted as either due north or due south. Since someone had insisted they’d seen the enemy thirty miles southwest of Barbers Point—they had in fact seen American cruiser Minneapolis—Kimmel’s office ordered Minneapolis to launch float planes to scout south and told Halsey to search there as well. When Minneapolis then responded that no enemy craft were to be found, her message was misread by headquarters as that two ships were seen.
The destroyers that had succeeded in avoiding torpedoes, bombs, and fire to sortie from Pearl Harbor—St. Louis, Blue, Phelps, and Lawson—were ordered to now group together and join Halsey’s Task Force Two. As they prepared to do that, they were instead ordered to sail for Barbers Point and attack the First Air Fleet. Blue’s Ensign Nathan Asher assembled a group of officers to decide on a strategy in confronting what they knew damn well was a far greater foe. Their decision was to speed to the location, fire torpedoes from port, lay down a smoke screen, make a 180, and fire starboard torpedoes, all interspersed with gunfire to protect their maneuvering. It was the best they could do, but no one believed it would work, and each man assumed he would not survive. Then as they rocketed through high seas at full throttle to war, one of Blue’s torpedoes started running in its tube, throwing itself out onto the deck. A group heaved it overboard, saving the ship. But it seemed like a bad omen.
At about 1100, six Seagull scouts—little biplanes—were launched from three of Halsey’s cruisers. Forty minutes later, two from Northampton, piloted by Lieutenant Malcolm Reeves and Ensign Fred Covington, found themselves a hundred miles north of Kauai and under attack by a Zero. In six dives, the Japanese fighter piled fourteen hits into Reeves’s little plane and eleven into Covington’s, but on each strike, the two Americans kept a low altitude and pulled a diving turn. After twenty minutes, the Zero gave up, and the men escaped. Their bravery, though, went unappreciated by Halsey, since Reeves and Covington didn’t break radio silence to report the sighting until after they’d already landed back at Ford.
Enterprise’s Scouting Squadron Six’s Lieutenant Commander Hopping ordered the Dauntless SBDs that had survived landing at Ford Island that morning be refueled and rearmed, and when Japanese ships were reported twenty-five to forty miles west or southwest of Barbers Point, Hopping was sent to scout: “At 1030 took off in 6-S-1, and from Barbers Point flew tracks west 30 miles, south 20 miles, east 60 miles and back to Ford Island. There were no contacts except with our own ships and sampans. During the return, orders from the Enterprise were received to ‘refuel, rearm and rejoin.’ These orders were acknowledged and passed on to 6-S-7 who was in the air with three other planes.”
The surviving Dauntless crews now looking for Nagumo meant a small squadron “of us against an unknown number of surface ships and aircraft,” remembered radioman Jack Leaming. “Every second in the air was fraught with anxiety, apprehension, anger, and searching the skies for the enemy. The situation grabbed our whole being, your thoughts and feelings. The past alternates with the present. The determination to destroy and obliterate the men and force that wreaked this havoc upon our fleet and shipmates superseded even personal safety. All of a sudden you seem to realize that life itself is a defeat, a constant, incessant losing game. But, somehow, you summon the courage to continue, to accept what is, run with it, and hope the future will be brighter. If ever there was a suicide mission, this was one.”
When some Enterprise SBDs spotted the American destroyers, they rad
ioed back that they’d found enemy ships. St. Louis, Blue, Phelps, and Lawson were told they were hot on the trail. It turned out they were hot on the trail of themselves. Hopping: “At 1145 landed at Ford Island and reported to ComPatWing Two that there were no Japanese surface craft within rectangle covering area 100 miles west and 60 miles south of Barbers Point and informed him of my orders from Enterprise. ComPatWing Two then directed me to search sector 330° to 030°, attack enemy forces encountered, and return to Ford Island. At 1210 we took off with 9 VSB armed with 500 lb. bombs. No contacts were made.”
A Japanese pilot shot down near Fort Kamehameha had been found carrying a map with ten courses flowing north, so Hawaiian Air Force commander General Frederick Martin ordered planes off in that direction. Private Earl Schaeffer had gotten emergency furlough to visit his dying father back on the mainland and was scheduled to depart on December 8. Instead he was assigned as turret gunner to one of Captain Waldron’s two B-18s in the northern search for Nagumo’s fleet. After flying for seven and a half hours and spotting nothing but whales, which, thinking they were enemy subs, they almost bombed, the squadron gave up. Waldron later said that if they had found the Japanese carriers, “I wouldn’t be here.” A B-18 didn’t have the firepower to battle such a foe.
By the time Waldron and his crews returned, Oahu was under blackout, and they couldn’t see to land and were fired upon. Waldron had to break radio silence to beg, “This is Gatty, your friend! Please let me land!” Finally someone turned on a searchlight, and they used that to set down. They were then told that the Japanese had poisoned the local water supply, so the only thing safe to drink was soda pop.
The failure of any American response ended in finger-pointing. Halsey said that the contradictory information from Kimmel’s headquarters “succeeded only in enraging me. It is bad enough to be blindfolded, but it is worse to be led around the compass.” The navy’s Bellinger commented, “I never did know actually what the Army Air had available, and I never did know what they had actually done,” while the army’s Harold “Beauty” Martin said that the navy didn’t provide search missions to the army until late in the afternoon, when the surviving B-17s were sent south on yet another false alarm. Command errors were then exacerbated when Martin had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized. Kimmel insisted that the many false alarms being reported to his headquarters must be the work of Axis agents, telling General Short, “The fifth column activities added great confusion,” and being so adamant on this point that Navy Secretary Frank Knox would tell reporters, “The most effective fifth column work in this war was done in Hawaii, with the exception of Norway.” Yet, Halsey later had to admit, “Suppose that the enemy was located, and suppose that I could intercept him: What then? A surface engagement was out of the question, since I had nothing but cruisers to oppose his heavy ships. In addition, we were perilously low on fuel. . . . On the other hand, my few remaining planes might inflict some damage, and by the next forenoon the Lexington task force would reach a position from which her aircrew could support an attack.”
One American success at Pearl Harbor happened because there was a place where nobody wanted to be. Ten miles north of Wheeler lay the auxiliary field Haleiwa (holly-eva). Since no aircraft were stationed there permanently, Haleiwa apparently escaped the notice of Yoshikawa and the other Japanese agents. It did not appear on Genda and Fuchida’s target list and was only mildly strafed around 0830 from a passerby. The ground crew there was ready to fight.
On the night of December 6, Second Lieutenants Kenneth Taylor and George Welch went to a formal dance at the Wheeler Officers’ Club, followed by an all-night game of poker, getting back to barracks to fall asleep in their tuxedos. Kenneth Taylor: “When you’re awakened suddenly, as I was, you generally jump into the first pants that you can find. Mine happened to be tuxedo pants.
“The Japanese had already bombed the field and they were busy strafing it. There was a lot of excitement in the quadrangle. But basically there were no officers, so the sergeants began to give their commands. I called my buddies and told them to arm a couple of planes and we were in the air maybe fifteen minutes after the attack started. . . . They were machine-gunning all around while we were driving for the post.”
Taylor and Welch were so quick to get into the air with their P-40s that they hadn’t picked up any .50-caliber ammo. They were looking for bear with just their four wing-mounted .30-caliber guns. Welch: “We got over to Easy [Barbers Point] and didn’t see any planes. We didn’t get a radio, so we went around by Wheeler and saw a B-17 and saw Japanese strung out, strafing Ewa.”
Taylor and Welch dove in and started to fire. Each took down one enemy plane, even after one of Welch’s guns stopped working. His cockpit was then hit by an incendiary and started to smoke, and he had to take shelter in a cloud bank, to see if it was critical. The plane was okay to fly, but by that time both Taylor and Welch needed to set down at Wheeler to refuel and rearm.
Welch: “We had to argue with some of the ground crew. They wanted us to disperse the airplanes and we wanted to fight. I got ammunition and gasoline. Just as they were loading some .50-caliber, the Japs came back again. We took off directly into them and shot down some.”
Taylor: “As I was rearming at Wheeler, the second wave suddenly came up the valley. I would say this time they were going very low over Pearl Harbor. I turned on the grassy field and took off right into them so they could not run me down too easily.” As their ground crew ran for cover, Welch and Taylor lifted directly into strafing attacks. Taylor: “Then I got in the middle of their line . . . a string of six or eight planes. The P-40 was very good at dogfighting. I was on one’s tail as we went over Waialua, firing at the one next to me, and there was one following firing at me, and I pulled out. I don’t know what happened to the other plane.”
The plane following Taylor shot him in the left arm, and in the leg. But he would get his. Welch: “I shot down one right on Lieutenant Taylor’s tail. I went back to Ewa and found some more over Barbers Point and engaged them there.”
Taylor: “We had absolutely no trouble at all finding plenty of targets. We caught up with them at Ewa, a Marine base. They were in a strafing lineup, and I merely got into the line. There was a whole string of planes looking like a traffic pattern. We went down and got in the traffic pattern and shot down several planes there. I know for certain I had shot down two planes or perhaps more; I don’t know.” As the air filled with the firecracker pops of machine guns, the two young pilots twisted and spun to avoid fire, then climbed, backflipped, and dropped straight behind the enemy for speed. When they got a strike, the enemy plane suddenly sprouted a ball of fire and plummeted into the sea, leaving behind a soaring black-and-white trail.
Following right behind Welch and Taylor in driving through strafer bullets from Wheeler and then flying into battle out of Haleiwa were Lieutenant John Dains in another P-40, and Lieutenants Harry Brown and Robert Rogers, both in P-36s, while First Lieutenant Lewis Sanders organized members of Wheeler’s Forty-Sixth Pursuit Squadron to counterstrike. Lieutenant Othniel Norris started up, but found his chute was no good and left his plane, with the engine running, to get another. Instead, Second Lieutenant Gordon Sterling of the Forty-Fifth jumped into her and taxied right out with the rest of the group. No one noticed until they were at eleven thousand feet and Sanders spotted Sterling on his right wing, with nine Japanese planes below. The Americans pulled into formation and dove, Sanders firing on the leader, which started to smoke. As Sanders then made a 360, he saw the young and inexperienced Sterling bring down one of the enemy. Almost immediately, a Zero was on his tail, and the little P-36 was no match. His plane exploded in fire, and Sterling fell to his death.
At Kaena Point, Rogers got himself cornered by two Zeros, but bluffed one and fired on the other from fifty feet. Confronted with nearly a dozen enemy craft, Brown swooped straight at them like an American kamikaze. He was perhaps the luckiest American in the story of Pearl Harbor, for th
is was the very moment that the Japanese were under orders to withdraw back to their carriers. Brown’s courage and Genda’s timeline saved his life.
The American pilots reported getting some hits on the enemy, but none reported actually downing any. Kaaawa radar station operators, however, reported a P-40 took down a Zero, and the only man unaccounted for was John Dains. Dains flew two missions in a P-40, then switched to a P-35 for a third sortie, in the company of George Welch.
War Department records credit Welch and Taylor with dropping an incredible seven enemy planes, nearly a quarter of Japan’s twenty-nine losses for the day. But Schofield antiaircraft guns blasted away at the returning US airmen, and John Dains was killed trying to come home.
Admiral Nagumo’s First Air Fleet, meanwhile, remained on radio silence about two hundred miles north of Oahu, undetected and unharmed. Sailor Iki Kuramoti: “The deck is now transformed into a whirlpool of excitement. As the glorious battle results are announced one after another by the pipes of the hurrying orderlies, shouts of joy are raised on all sides, all gloom is completely swept away. Meanwhile, the fleet moves swiftly onward at a high speed of twenty-six knots.
“In this moment we are repaid for all our painstaking labors. The gods themselves will bear witness to the glory of our great enterprise!
“About 0900 the welcome shapes of the returning raiders begin to appear through the clouds. One by one, like fledglings longing for their nest, they come to rest on the decks of the carriers. Well done! But have they all come back? At this moment, my most earnest hope is that our losses my be small.