Havoc at Honolulu

Incoming passengers on the American liner watched the planes swoop down over Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field, commended the U.S. Navy's thoughtfulness in staging a big-scale war game on Sunday morning. An American automobile salesman, en route to Tientsin, gawked admiringly as a bomb whooshed into the harbor a scant 100 yards away: "Boy! What if that had been a real one?" The perspiring ship's officer who finally broke the bad news flubbed his lines: "It seems there's a state of undeclared war between Honolulu and the United States."

Even the Christian Science Monitor's war correspondent, Joseph C. Harsch, was fooled: "I awoke my wife and asked her if she wanted to know what an air raid sounded like in Europe. 'This,' I remarked, 'is a good imitation.' We then proceeded to the beach for our morning swim, assuming with everyone else in the hotel that it was just another practice maneuver by the Navy....Only when the radio began telling the people what had happened could one grasp the incredible fact."

Most of the incredible facts of Japan's attack on Hawaii were given to the U.S. this week by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who flew to Honolulu to get them:

The Story. The first wave of planes slipped in at 7:55 a.m., the Rising Sun insignia clearly visible in the early morning sunlight. Single-engine bombers singled out ships and naval centers in Pearl Harbor, blanketed the area with explosives. Under subsequent attack were the Army's Hickam Field, Wheeler Field, Schofield Barracks, Bellows Field, Kaneohe Naval Air Station and that portion of the fleet offshore. In all there were six separate attacks, the others coming at 11:29, 11:59, 12:22 p.m., 7:15, and 9:10.

After the first stunning shock, the defenders swung into action. Spotters in the Navy Yard signal tower picked up the attackers, flashed air-raid warnings via visual signals. Working coolly under enemy bombs and machine-gun fire and shrapnel from defending anti-aircraft batteries, the signalmen routed scores of orders to ships standing out to sea or fighting from berths.

A recruit seaman is credited with the first blow against the enemy. General Quarters had not yet sounded when he fought off an attacking plane singlehanded with a machine gun.

A battleship captain* had his stomach laid open by a shrapnel burst as he went from conning tower to bridge to direct his ship's fight. He fell to the deck, disdained attempts to lift him to safety, continued to command until the bridge went up in flames. Two officers attempting to save him were themselves saved only after a third officer climbed above the fire, passed a line to an adjoining battleship, another to the trapped men, thus led them to safety.

Ten members of a 5-inch gun's crew fell before a strafing attack. The lone remaining bluejacket took over: three times he grabbed a shell from the fuse pot, placed it in the tray, dashed to the other side of the gun, rammed it home, jumped into the pointer's seat and fired. A terrific bomb blast finally carried him over the side. He was rescued.

When the brig door blew open a seaman confined earlier for misconduct dashed to his post at an antiaircraft gun. A hospitalized officer brushed aside his nurses when the first alarm was sounded, ran across the Yard to his ship. So effectively did he fight, despite his illness, that his captain recommended promotion. One tough sailor, unable to find a mount for a heavy machine gun, fired the weapon from his arms despite terrific rapid-fire concussion.

A moored aircraft tender, blazing under repeated attacks, downed a Japanese plane on her own decks. Simultaneously her captain spotted a midget submarine's shadow within yards of his vessel. Hits were immediately scored and, as the sub's conning tower emerged, a destroyer administered the coup de grace with depth charges. The tender then shot down a second plane. Motor launches from a vessel laid up for overhaul braved a steady hail of bullets and shrapnel, rescued scores of victims from the oil-fired harbor. Almost without exception officers and men exhibited quick thinking, coolness, coordination.

That was the heroic story. There were still questions to be answered, and Frank Knox answered most of them, giving the bad with the good:

The Good. The limited extent of U.S. materiel losses was most heartening, made complete liars out of the Japanese High Command. Lost:

> The 26-year-old battleship Arizona (Pennsylvania class, 32,600 tons), by a bomb that "literally passed down through the smokestack."

> The ancient Utah, a target-training ship long since out of combatant service. Atop the Utah was a steel platform for sandbags (as crew protection) when she was doing duty as a moving target for bomber novices. The attacking Japanese, thinking her an aircraft carrier, subjected her to repeated, withering attack.

> Three destroyers (of the Mohan class, 1933 program, displacing 1,500 tons), the Cassin, Shaw, and Downes.

> The mine layer Oglala, an old passenger ship converted during World War I.

> Other damage ranged from "ships which have already been repaired, and are ready for sea, or which have gone to sea, to a few ships which will take from a week to several months to repair." In the last category Secretary Knox placed the battle ship Oklahoma, launched March 23, 1914, which capsized.

> Harbor approaches received little damage, and the vast spread of oil storage tanks was unscathed.

The Japanese, said Frank Knox, lost two of their little-known, tiny two-man submarines (one sunk, one captured), one full-sized sub and 41 aircraft, including those shot down and those forced down for lack of fuel.

The Bad. "The United States Services were not on the alert against the surprise air attack on Hawaii. This fact calls for a formal investigation which will be initiated immediately by the President....We are all entitled to know it if: a) there was any error of judgment which contributed to the surprise, b) if there was any dereliction of duty prior to the attack."

Up-to-date Navy casualty figures dwarfed previous unofficial estimates of 1,500 dead, 1,500 wounded: officers (including Rear Admiral Isaac Campbell Kidd, commanding a battleship division of the Pacific Fleet), 91 dead, 20 wounded, enlisted men, 2,638 dead, 636 wounded. Army losses, based on "practically complete reports": 168 killed in action; 223 wounded; 26 missing. A Japanese fifth column, "the most effective actually in this war since Norway," knew the sites of all defenses, the comings & goings of the various patrols.

Unanswered Questions. Still unanswered was the question of how the defending forces were caught napping. Said Frank Knox: "The air attack simply took us by surprise. We weren't on air alert." His implication was plain: Pearl Harbor looked for attacks, if any, from the sea alone.

Whatever the reason, Frank Knox cautioned against speculation, ruled out any Pacific shake-up until a complete investigation is made. To the U.S., he spoke optimistically. To the Japanese, he issued a taunting challenge:

"The essential fact is that the Japanese purpose was to knock out the United States before the war began....In this purpose the Japanese failed....The entire balance of the Pacific Fleet with its aircraft carriers, its heavy cruisers, its light cruisers, its destroyers and submarines are uninjured and are all at sea seeking contact with the enemy."

* The Secretary explained that names of and awards to individual heroes will be announced later.

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