-- The lede of one reporter's account of the attack on Pearl Harbor, never published until today because its description of war is so graphic. (More here. h/t @vhern_)
71 years later: "For seven ghastly, confused days, we have been at war. To the women of Hawaii, it has meant a total disruption of home life, a sudden acclimation to blackout nights, terrifying rumors, fear of the unknown..."
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Fri Dec 7, 2012 2:15 PM EST
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I have always had a special respect for the people who survived that horrible day. My Grandfather was there that day serving on the Maryland, and was lucky enough to have been at church when the attack happened. He never liked to talk about that day and it wasn't until just before he passed away I found out why.
When he ran back toward the ship he saw a sailor he knew who had been shot in the head and before he could do anything for him he died in his arms. It affected him deeply and profoundly. It became a burden he carried for the rest of his life.
And THAT is the one biggest reason that war should be the very last resort-- because NO ONE comes home from war unwounded.
An amazing article and one that I think would have been beneficial to run, letting others know that they weren't alone in how they felt.
"Day of Infamy..." indeed.
Extraordinary reporting.
Her description is so much in sync with my mother's, albeit mom was only 13 at the time and did not see the interiors of hospitals. She was on her way to church, walking several blocks in areas where stray US shells hit, but apparently (and thankfully!) she was not contemporaneously there. Cool story, and a keeper for my history file.
Watch the interview - she's really interesting.
Oh, I remember this day. My Uncle Ed was a career Army man, so when my Dad was sitting by the radio listening to all the news he kept shaking his head saying, "This will fall on Ed, he'll be right in the middle of it . .."
I do know my Dad said a rosary every night all through the war for Uncle Ed -- and he came home safe and sound, and he had been promoted to Major (he was an enlisted man before).
Dee Buckingham wrote a collection of stories about the women of World War II in Hawaii. Nisei women from Hawaii were recruited during the war for work in Intelligence. McIntosh ran into one of them, Sergeant Chieko Ikeda in New Delhi during her work there... Stories of the Nisei women here and an account of one of McIntosh's OSS psyops projects here.
The proximity of the war and the multiracial makeup of the island created unexpected juxtapositions- For example, there was fear of being gassed by the Japanese. The army provided masks required the power of adult lungs to force air through the filtering chemicals. So a design called a Bunny Mask was created, looking like an alien suit for children. Women volunteers made these, but not enough showed up. The quotas for the Bunny Masks were reached only due to the dedication of the women of the Japanese community. http://www.womenofworldwariihawaii.com/">(source) This sort of dedication and patriotism was common, but the military never really got over its suspicions about the loyalty of local Hawaiians.
Consider the monochromatic transformed world in this VJ day movie on Oahu 150,000 of Hawaii's 400,000 residents were of Japanese descent at this time - but you wouldn't know it from this slice of island life as seen by through the eyes of this serviceman. There were many others involved in the war effort but their contributions are as invisible as their faces are in this film.
That's part of the darkness not indicated in McIntosh's story- How the world changed overnight- not just the horrors of the Japanese threat, but the internment camps, deep suspicions of non whites and the misogynist, segregationist attitudes of the military which came frequently into conflict with multicultural attitudes in the islands. When they left, America took a pseudo experience of Oceania with them, and nostalgia for the exotic world that the youth who came of age in world war II Pacific expressed itself in the fad of Exotica music of Martin Denny and Walter Wanderly in the 50s. When these visitors returned to America's heartland, hitchhiking back with them were memories of tiki gods, free love, and interacial mixing- Casting wide a seed of liberalism across America's heartland.
Something to think about while sipping on a Blue Hawaii at your local tiki lounge.
The bunny mask link got mangled. Here is a tinyurl to the correct location at the wayback machine at archive.org.
Thanks for the links. My mother's experience contrasted very strongly with that of a friend of mine, just two years older than mom, who lived in Washington State at the time. The war brought checks on the family radio, but otherwise provided work opportunities for young Honolulu teens like mom via Victory Corp so she could help her widowed mother support the family. The friend from Washington was interned with her family, spending her high school years in camp, and of course, losing the family business. Both were and are positive in attitude, and I believe that sustained them then and throughout their adult lives.
My high school Japanese teacher told us he was interned and the family strawberry farm on Vashon Island, WA was confiscated and not returned after the war. Amazingly, he did not seem at all bitter about it, but if he had hard feelings, he was the kind of guy to never betray it.
He was a true sensei.
My 2 grandfathers were at Pearl Harbor. One of them witnessed the sinking of the Arizona, he was on the Nevada, next ship over. They never talked about it , not to children anyway. The reenactment of war is a trigger that sends some veterans to the point of insanity. No violent shows for veterans, it just feeds their distress. Everyone needs to know how to handle PTSD. It's real.