From Celebration to Catastrophe: Remembering Pearl Harbor

In honor of the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, this is a that ran last year. 

On December 6, 2010, Mrs. Sara Nelson, my wife's grandmother, celebrates her 97thbirthday.  She is a remarkable woman whose daily rituals still include doing the New York Times Crossword puzzle, in pen.  Her doctor is amazed that she only requires two daily medications, and states she has the bones of a 40-year old woman.  Still very active in many community groups in her hometown of Williamsburg, VA, including the DAR and Colonial Dames, she drives herself to their meetings and luncheons.

She will quietly celebrate her birthday in the home she has owned since the 1970s;  a few visits from neighbors, some calls from family members, cake shared with friends.

And she will reminiscence especially of a birthday celebration that took place in far-off Hawaii, 69 years ago.

Life in Paradise

Her husband, Carl, was a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, which later became the Air Force.  They felt fortunate to be stationed in a tropical paradise, and had been there more than a year.   The couple decided to celebrate Sara's 28th  birthday by dining close to home with their many friends at the Hickam Field Officers Club.

This was their first time out in quite a while, for in fact they were celebrating two birthdays.  One month earlier, on November 5,  Sara had given birth to a daughter, Nancy (who would become my mother-in-law).  Protocol in those days was for a two-week hospital stay after giving birth, and this was the first chance they had to celebrate.

Sara remembers that they were seated on the outside porch, or "lanai."  They watched ships come into the channel next to Hickam, gliding in with only running lights.   "It was very peaceful," she recalls.

After saying goodbye to friends and colleagues, the couple returned to their home for the evening, not knowing that they would never see some of them  again.

Day of Infamy

 As the sun came up on Sunday, December 7th 1941, Carl was already up and about.  Although the couple was used to the noise of planes flying low over their house near the airfield,  something about this morning was different.  Carl tried to assure Sara that the swaying light fixtures and thuds were caused by Army gunners on Ford Island drilling with their 16-inch guns.  But Sara wasn't sure and went out to see for herself.

Outside the bungalow, she met her friend Mildred Van Sant, wife of a general's aide.  Mildred had just dropped her husband off to play golf.  The two women looked north toward the U.S. Naval base, where plumes of black smoke were rising.  For a moment they believed one of the oil storage tanks on the base was on fire, which would explain the explosion they felt earlier.

Then, close above them flew an open cockpit fighter plane;  it flew so close  they could see the pilot's face.  And of course they saw the markings on the tail and fuselage; a round red ball, the "rising sun" of the Japanese military.

Although they didn't know it at the time, the smoke they saw was from the destroyed USS Arizona, cut in half by Japanese bombers, resulting in a loss of 1,177 men.

Sara ran inside to tell Carl the Japanese were attacking.  She pleaded with him to stay with her and her newborn, but he knew he had a duty to perform.  Carl told her to stay inside with the neighbors, and headed to his station.  He was in charge of a detail of truck-mounted 50 caliber machine guns, used to guard the base against a possible sabotage attack.  Many had only one belt of ammunition, as they were not designed to protect against an air attack.

As Sara and her newborn gathered with the neighbors at the Van Sant house, the Japanese bombers were destroying the battleships moored at Pearl Harbor.  Five of eight were sunk or sinking, the rest badly damaged, and more than 2,400 Americans were dead.  Fleets of air combat planes were burning on the ground.  No help was coming.

Planes continued to roar over the house, strafing the ground nearby.  A fighter plane crashed into the harbor in front of the house.  The attack seemed endless.

Confusion, Chaos and Courage 

The air raid ended about 9:45 a.m.  Around noon, the general's aide returned to his house.   Forcefully, he told the women to leave the area. "Don't go to Honolulu and don't go to a military base.  Go to the mountains."

Panic had set in about a full-scale invasion, and civilians were being told to get as far away from military installations as possible.

Sara hastily wrote a barely legible note for Carl, and then four women, a baby and a dog piled into Mildred's car.  They drove past the hangar line, the hangers destroyed and planes still burning.  Chaos was everywhere.

They spent what Sara called "a miserable afternoon" with hundreds of other refugees and wounded at the Oahu Country Club.  The Red Cross then notified Sara and the families of 13 other officers that they were to move to another location in the mountains, a mansion that had once belonged to a governor of Hawaii.

For the next few days Sara did not know whether or not Carl was alive.  She  learned that one friend, an officer who had been at her birthday party the night before, had been killed.  And rumors flew rampant about more attacks coming.

It wasn't until Tuesday after the attack that Carl learned his wife and child survived, and where they were.  He drove to the mansion and presented Sara with an ominous gift, a .45 caliber pistol. 

"We were not afraid of a military attack at Pearl Harbor," she recalled.  "The fear was an attack from within. There were thousands of Japanese living in Hawaii, and a least two dozen who had been servants at the mansion."

As a new mother, Sara had been given a separate bedroom on the second floor while the others were on cots in the mansion's ballroom.  Blackout conditions were in place, and as Sara got up at 2 a.m. to make her way through the huge dark house to the kitchen to prepare Nancy's bottle, she was thankful for Carl's gift.

"That gun gave me just a little more courage," she said.

Homeward Bound 

Sara and Nancy, both Pearl Harbor survivors, were finally evacuated from Hawaii on Christmas day, 1941.  The cruise liners, carrying nearly 6,000 Americans, were surrounded by Navy cruisers front and rear and destroyers on the flanks.

"It was a terrible trip, the Pacific is cold and very rough in winter," she recalled, "and the Japanese had been attacking and sinking freighters and other ships in that part of the ocean.  We were all scared of another attack."

The ships arrived safely in San Francisco, and Sara was given a train ticket for another long journey to her mother's home in Cave Springs, Georgia.

Carl only saw Sara and Nancy once during the war, a short 10-day leave in 1943.  They were finally reunited as a family at the war's end in 1945.  Since that fateful day in 1941 they had been apart for three years and four months.

Remembrance

Sara and Carl returned to Pearl Harbor in 1991 for the 50th anniversary of the attack.  It was the only time since the war he had a desire to return.  Colonel Carl B. Nelson (USAF Ret.) passed away in 1994.

Sara has seen several movies and documentaries about the attack, and as a family event we attended the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor.  Needless to say, she was not impressed.

"After all, I was there."