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HONOLULU, hello. (WDVM) – Two young Japanese Americans will never forget December 7, 1941, when hundreds of Japanese fighter planes flew low over their homes on Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands.
The first wave of planes took off from the decks of their aircraft carriers at dawn 230 miles west-northwest of the “Blowhole,” the most prominent rock formation on the north end of Oahu where Pearl Harbor is located in Honolulu.
More than 200 Japanese dive bombers and torpedo bombers, escorted by fighters, flew over the rock formation and mist-covered mountain range behind the “Blowhole” before flying south at treetop level to Pearl Harbor.
“They flew right over my house,” said 97-year-old Charles Moriyama, who lived in Wahiawa, ten miles north of Pearl Harbor.
“We could see the pilots and we could see the red rising sun on the fuselage of their planes… and we knew we were being attacked by Japan,” said Moriyama, who was only 16 at the time.
Ralph Matsumoto, a 20-year-old student at the University of Hawaii, was home over the weekend and also saw emergency crews fly over his home in Mililani Town, about five miles north of Pearl Harbor.
“We thought it was some kind of maneuver at first,” said Matsumoto, who – like Moriyama – saw Red Rising Suns on the planes and Japanese pilots in the cockpits.
Both young Japanese-Americans were too far from Pearl Harbor to see what was going on, but they could hear what sounded like thunder bombs raining down on Battleship Row and exploding.
The Japanese surprise attack began at 7:50 a.m. on a Sunday morning, but it took a while for the crews of American warships in port to deploy their anti-aircraft guns.
Four shipyard workers driving to Pearl Harbor were killed when Navy shots tore up their car like Swiss cheese. The driver can be seen in the photo below, slumped over the wheel, dead.
Some of the 5-inch shells hit downtown Honolulu about eight miles east of Pearl Harbor with devastating effect. Jack-In-The-Box, a fast food restaurant, now stands on this street corner in Honolulu.
A top-secret investigative body found that 49 of the 68 civilian casualties were due to US Navy gunfire, not Japanese bombs or machine-gun bullets.
The skies over Honolulu were littered with flak clouds from nervous gun crews firing thousands of rounds of high-explosive shells into Honolulu hours after the Japanese force returned to their carriers and headed back to Japan; convinced that he had dealt the deathblow to the American fleet.
Ralph Matsumoto told me that some grenades fell from a pool hall down the street where he was headed on December 7th.
“One exploded a few blocks away,” said Matumoto, who is now 100 years old. “It scared us to death when it exploded.
Ralph ran home, where his father was listening to KGU, Hawaii’s oldest radio station.
“This is KGU in Honolulu,” said a young reporter, broadcasting from the top of the Advertiser Publishing Building.
“We cannot estimate how much damage was done, but one of the bombs fell within 50 feet of the KGU tower,” the reporter said.
The building has changed hands since 1941, as has the neighborhood. The building is now owned by the Hawaiian Dredging and Construction Company, the island’s largest construction company. Eric Hashizume, one of HDCC’s vice presidents, escorted me to the top of the building where I could stand where the reporter stood 80 years ago and described what he saw eight miles away at Pearl Harbor.
The roof is now crammed with mechanical gear, including huge air conditioners. A ten-story parking garage blocks the KGU reporter’s view of that fateful day, but his words still send chills down my spine.
“It’s not a joke,” he said, while delivering a report to NBC News in New York City over the transpacific phone wire, “it’s a real war.”
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