Novato, CA

22 May 1996

‎

DECEMBER 7, 1941

I woke up that morning, got the Sunday paper, and was reading the funnies when I heard strange aircraft engines. Being an aviation nut, I went outside to see what they were. Three Japanese torpedo bombers came within about two hundred yards of where I was standing. Watched them dip down into Pearl and let their torpedoes go. I went back in and called our Finance Captain, and told him that we were being attacked by the Japanese. He said I was nuts, and to go back to bed. About that time, the bombing started hot and heavy. He came back and said to head for Headquarters where we had a .50 cal. antiaircraft gun on the top floor. Started running down the middle of the street oblivious of the fact I could get crumped by strafers. I was running along when a Jap plane started strafing two guys who were running ahead of me. He splattered them pretty good and that convinced me to take cover. Ran from palm tree to palm tree until I got to an open area about 75 yards short of the PX. It was all open so I looked around, and decided I could make it. Dashed toward the PX and was going good when a Jap headed my way. There was no door at that end of the PX, so I dived through a window. Inside I decided to go through ‎the PX and out the other side to be on my way to Headquarters. Well, that's about the time the Japs decided that the PX was base headquarters and started bombing. Their first bomb hit a wash shed out in back and blew it all to pieces. Decided I had better take cover. Over in the comer behind the serving counter was a big double coffee maker sitting on a block stand. Under was a mop bucket with a squeeze handle attached. I jerked that out of there and crawled into a snug comer. A couple of other guys decided that was a good idea and piled in behind me. A bit crowded, but I was on the bottom. A bomb hit the entrance door to the PX and the wall behind me rocked so badly I was sure it would fall down. Came more bombing and the two guys on top of me were hit with shrapnel, and I could feel blood dripping on me. There was so much dust from the bomb hits, I could hardly breathe. Must have been in shock because the next thing I remember was the medics pulling us out. They took us to the Base Hospital where they examined me, and sat me next to the entrance door of the hospital. The next two hours I sat there watching them carry the burned and wounded into the hospital. Every now and then someone would look at me and decide that my wound was not so life threatening as to require more attention. Someone had gone to the Officer's Club and was passing out pints of whiskey. I took one, and after three or four good healthy slugs, I began to feel better. I must have been in some sort of shock watching all the really serious wounded, etc. that it seemed like a dream. (I visited Hickam AFB a couple of years ago and went to the PX and the same spot at the Hospital. That visit brought it all back very vividly). After the whiskey, someone came in a 2 1/2 ton truck and took us to Tripier. I had a bomb fragment in my right leg, which they had bandaged right away. About ten o’clock that night, a Chinese reserve Captain tried to get the fragment out of my leg. It was about as big around as a pencil and maybe an inch and a half long. It had gone almost all the way through my calf and stopped just short of the other side. He dug around in there for what seemed like forever. Those pincers might just as well have been a red hot poker. I had never experienced anywhere near that much pain in my life before. He finally gave up, and I was pretty happy about that. I'm not sure, but I think his last name was Chang. They had run out of morphine and everything else, but a couple of days later, they got some and slit my leg open to get the fragment out. (I carried it, with the dried blood and skin still intact, for some time when a girl named Mary Randall borrowed it to show to some friends. She lost it.). While I was in the hospital a girl named Betty Sherpa, daughter of a local contractor, came to visit me and stayed all afternoon. I was really the envy of the ward. Tried to find her afterwards, but they had returned to the mainland, and that was the end of that. She was a doll.