Pearl Harbor

On December 7th 1941 My parents were both at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked by the Japanese. My father was a Lt.Commander on a submarine net tender and my mother went to pick him him up when he came off duty. The guard at the gate told her they were about to have target practice over Honolulu Bay if she wanted to pull over and watch. When the planes flew over, they were not American but Japanese kamikaze pilots and the bombs they dropped nearly wiped out the American fleet.

Not knowing what to do, my mother drove on into the base only to discover that it was complete bedlam. Somebody told her to wait under the bucket of a steam shovel until it was safe to leave and then "get the hell out of here". When she left, she went to the nearest Civil Defense office and volunteered to help.

She didn't see my father for three days.

My brother and I would roll our eyes every time we heard my mother telling this story. My father never spoke of it. But now that they are both gone I realize that this is all I know. When I began to have questions about what actually happened, they were no longer around to answer.

I'm writing this down now so that the story won't get shorter with each passing generation.

I was born three years later in Honolulu and I think that in some ways, these were the happiest years of my parents' lives.

A neighbor gave me the Time/Life book of pictures taken at the time. I thought I knew it all, but when I started looking at the book I realized how hellish the reality must have been and how very little I actually did know.