Pearl Harbor
we were there . . .
Eyewitness accounts of the attack on Pearl Harbor
December 7th, 1941
December 7th, 1941
 Naval Air Station at Pearl Harbo. National Archives. | We were still in bed at 8:00 on Sunday morning and were trying to decide if we should go to church in Honolulu. The decision was suddenly made for us by loud explosions. Johnie thought a plane had crashed near the house. We rushed outside to find our neighbor, a navy doctor, looking at aircraft through a pair of binoculars. He suggested that I look at them because I knew more about airplanes than he did. I said "I don't need your glasses Doc, look at the Rising Sun on the side of the airplane. They are Japanese!" I could see tracer shells being fired at them - Hubert 'Dale' Gano, U.S. Navy, living in Pearl City, Hawaii - |
| "About that time bombs started dropping all over Hickam. We stayed at the windows, not knowing what else to do, and watched the fire works. It was just like the news reels of Europe, only worse. We saw a bunch of soldiers come running full tilt towards us from the barracks and just then a whole line of bombs fell behind them knocking them all to the ground. We were deluged in a cloud of dust and had to run around closing all the windows." - Ginger, age 17, living at Hickam Field, Hawaii - |  Hickam Field burning. |
 USS Arizona (BB-39) | "Well, I was out on deck doing the morning chores, which you did every morning… all of a sudden, this plane come along, and [I] didn’t pay much attention to it; because planes were landing at Ford Island all the time. And all of a sudden, the chips started flying all around me and the plane – it was strafing me…" - Carl Carson, Crewman aboard USS Arizona (BB-39) - |
| "As I stepped out of the nurses’ quarters, I had an awful feeling. Usually, the smell of gardenias and hibiscus from the garden was delightful. But I smelled the odor of sulfur and burning oil. I heard some buzzing above me. There were about twenty very small planes, flying low, almost touching the treetops." - Madelyn Blonskey, Army Nurse Corps, stationed in Hawaii - |  Burning plane. |
 USS Shaw exploding. | "When I first went down to what they call a battle station, we all were frightened. We didn’t know what was going on. But we knew the ship was taking water in and there was no way to close the water tight doors...it was just a matter of time before the ship was going to sink. And actually it took 8 minutes…" Clark Simmons, Crewman aboard USS Utah (AG-16) |
RSS Feed
