THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 8, 1995 TAG: 9501060220
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Olde Towne Journal
SOURCE: Alan Flanders
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
At 12:29 p.m. on Dec. 8, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt entered a packed but hushed chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. Steadying himself at the rostrum, he opened a simple, black, loose-leaf student notebook, and read:
``Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a day which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked . . . ''
With those words, the United States entered World War II.
As word spread across the country, people went from shock to disbelief. Local telephone switchboard operators remember the entire console lighting up as calls poured into Navy towns such as Portsmouth from anyone who knew a sailor in the Pacific.
More than just a day, the entire holiday season of late 1941 and early 1942 became one vast and confused struggle for the nation to regain its footing.
Months before the attack, there had been the usual ``scuttlebutt'' about the growing size of the Japanese Imperial Navy and their designs on Southeast Asia. Even though the word was out that a Japanese task group with six aircraft carriers had deployed from the home island that first week of December 1941, allied intelligence lost track of their direction. As one veteran summarized, ``Our entire file on what the Japanese were up to was based on supposition.''
At any rate, the real excitement on Oahu on Dec. 7 was the ongoing preparation for a base holiday ``standdown'' and Christmas leave.
At 0751 that morning, lookouts spotted what they thought was a formation of American planes heading back from the fleet of carriers that had deployed from Pearl Harbor days before. Four minutes later, all hell broke loose. Some 350 Japanese fighters, dive bombers and torpedo planes began their attack on an entire fleet of battleships and destroyers lying , closely tied bow to stern, in straight rows. Over at nearby Hickam Field, a squadron of U.S. army fighters rested wing tip to wing tip, perfect targets - many without ammunition or fuel.
By 0800, chaos broke out in downtown Honolulu as machine guns and anti-aircraft fire broke the morning stillness, bringing to an immediate halt morning religious services.
But it already was too late for prayers as U.S. Navy signalmen at Pearl Harbor sent out an urgent message, ``This is no drill, repeat, this is no drill. We are under attack, repeat, we are under attack!''
Halfway around the world, it already was early afternoon at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard when the word arrived from Washington that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.
The tidal wave of outrage and sorrow that would engulf the nation hadn't enough time to build yet when the shipyard commander, Rear Admiral Felix X. Gygax, immediately returned to his office in Building (NU)33 from a quiet Sunday afternoon at Quarters ``A.'' His first act of duty was to cancel all leave and call all servicemen back to their stations.
U.S. Marines already were posted in front of the administration building and challenged everyone, regardless of rank, for an official identification. It must have seemed ironic when the admiral's flag lieutenant met him at the office door wearing a sidearm and carrying one for him. But there was talk that day that follow-up attacks might begin in the continental United States any minute and that enemy saboteurs had planned assaults on military installations along the entire East Coast.
As the list of warships damaged and sunk at Pearl Harbor began to reach Portsmouth, the enormity of the success of the Japanese surprise attack must have seemed at first unbelievable, then very personal and real.
Damage reports were devastating. In less than three hours, 18 ships were either sunk or seriously damaged. Lost were the battleships Arizona and Oklahoma, target ship Utah, destroyers Cassin and Downes. Sunk or beached-but-later-salvaged were the battleships West Virginia, California and Nevada; and the minelayer Oglala. Damaged were the battleships Tennessee, Maryland and Pennsylvania; cruisers Helena, Honolulu and Raleigh; destroyer Shaw; seaplane tender Curtiss; and repair ship Vestal.
At adjacent airfields, 188 U.S. planes were destroyed with an additional 159 put out of action.
Casualty figures were high with 2,403 servicemen killed and 1,143 wounded. Sixty-eight civilians were killed and 35 wounded.
The war was brought home to these shores with certainty as the stunned Norfolk Naval Shipyard work force reported Monday to learn the fate of the ARIZONA, which had been completely modernized at Portsmouth in 1931. The Nevada also had been modernized at the yard during the same period.
Destroyed in Pearl Harbor's drydock 7 was the Portsmouth-built destroyer USS Downes, leaving another locally built destroyer, the USS Hulbert, one of the few survivors able to fight back.
That Monday, when hundreds of stunned workers returned to work, supervisors reported that the work force needed an immediate morale booster and Admiral Gygax answered, ``They have one already - `Remember Pearl Harbor.' ''
Veterans from that time may remember little else but those three words that took them into the new year. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by UPI/BETTMANN
A small boat rescues seamen from the water near the blazing West
Virginia after it was hit by Japanese bombs during the attack on
Pearl Harbor.
by CNB