It was the morning of December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor, on the Island of Oahu, Hawaii.
I woke up shortly after 6 A.M. and walked to the mess hall at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base for breakfast. At the time I was a Tech Sergeant in the 5th Bomber Group.
After breakfast, I headed for the bus stop to wait for the 8:15 am bus to take me to Honolulu Golf Course where I was to play golf.
While sitting there on the bench, I noticed a large flight of aircraft approaching from the northwest flying at a high altitude. I couldn't identify the aircraft but I had seen similar flights come in preceding the arrival of U.S. aircraft carriers. I just assumed another of our carriers was coming into port at Pearl Harbor. They approached at a point almost due north of where I was sitting and suddenly began to peal off in a steep dive towards the harbour.
Aerial photograph of the Pearl Harbor Naval Base s...
English: Puʻuloa (Pearl Harbor) in the 1880s.
Pearl Harbor naval base. The West Loch the green-t...I watched a large bomb drop from the first aircraft followed by a huge explosion.
As other aircraft dropped their bombs, giant explosions and flames were plainly visible. At the time, I thought it strange but possible that the Navy was conducting some sort of exercise and possibly destroying something over in the west harbour where the target ships and other old ships were. As the aircraft pulled up above me, only several hundred feet to my left with machine guns blazing, I saw the Rising Sun insignia on the wings and knew we were under attack by the Japanese.
Aircraft were flying low over the airfield at about 150 ft. A young boy was waiting at the bus stop with me and I told him to get home as fast as he could. By then, clouds of...