Re: Pearl Harbor
Mike Moldeven (MikeMldvn@AOL.COM)
Tue, 28 Jan 1997 15:49:43 -0500
nthoberg@GRANDFORKS.POLARISTEL.NET (Nedra Hoberg)
farmhill@connix.com (Farmhill School)
MEMORIES@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU (Project Memories of the 1940's, for Children in
Project Chatback)
Reference:
> From: farmhill@connix.com (Farmhill School)
> Hello my name is Marvin, I am 10 years old. I am doing a report on Pearl
Harbor and I have done lots of research but there are still some answers to
find. So here are some questions I would like you to answer.
> 1) How was it like witnessing the attack on Pearl Harbor and why?
> 2) When you witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor were you there on
vacation, army services, or did live there?
> 3) What were you doing when the attack took place?
> 4) When the attack on Pearl Harbor happened did you stay in your home,
fire a gun, or help the wounded?
> Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to answer the questions and
if you have any other information to send me please do so.
> Farm Hill School
> 390 Ridge Road
> Middletown, CT 06457
> farmhill@connix.com <
**********
Hello, Marvin,
This reply to your message is limited to the last paragraph of your
message in which you write, "...if you have any other information to send me
please do so." The reason I can answer only that part of your message is
that I was not at Pearl Harbor during the attack. However, my experiences
may tie in with your project because I was among the first civilian workers
to arrive in the Hawaiian Islands afterward.
Your research may have already shown that *Pearl Harbor* was one of the
several military bases on Oahu that was bombed, and that the damage and
casualties at Pearl were much greater than at all of the other U S bases on
the island, combined.
Nevertheless, the other bases on Oahu, like Hickam, Wheeler, and Bellows
Fields, Kaneohoe Naval Station, Schofield Barracks, and other places, did
suffer considerable damage and casualties.
The United States had been taken by surprise. We suddenly had a war in
the Pacific and, almost immediately afterward, another in the Atlantic and in
Europe. Merely getting organized around the job of preparing for the many
battles we knew were coming, was going to take time -- and we had no time.
Meanwhile, there were hundreds of battle-damaged ships, aircraft,
warehouses, supplies, and wounded military people that needed fixing or other
care. I was one of the tens of thousands of civilian workers who was
involved in that part of the national effort -- which began immediately, the
same day that the attack took place. My story may help fill in parts of your
project.
********
On Sunday, December 7, 1941, I was working on the night shift in the
Parachute Shop at the U. S. Army's Patterson Field, near Dayton, Ohio. I was
a parachute rigger and survival equipment maintenance technician at the time.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that morning was being reported on
the radio in continuous news flashes. About an hour after the work shift
began, my supervisor ordered all parachute riggers to go immediately to the
aircraft maintenance main hangar, nearby. Several hundred men from aircraft,
engine, and instrument repair shops, and other shops on the air base, were
already there when I arrived. They were milling about; I joined them and
everyone wondered why we had been called together.
A military officer climbed to the platform at the top of an aircraft
maintenance stand. Drawing attention to himself by rapping on the stand's
railing with a metal object, he announced that the Army Air Corps needed
skilled workers and supervisors immediately at Hickam Field in Hawaii.
Whoever wanted to go, he said, should raise his arm and his name would be
placed on a list.
I happened to be unmarried, footloose and fancy-free at the time, and
my arm got caught in the updraft. We were told to stand by, and the others
instructed to return to their shops. Those of us who stayed lined up, and
our names, work-badge numbers, and job titles were entered on a list. Each of
us was given an instruction sheet.
The next morning, following the instructions, I reported to the base
dispensary for vaccinations and immunization shots, and then on to the
Personnel Office to sign papers that came at me from all directions. I was
told I had a week to get my affairs in order; after that I would be on
stand-by to ship out. A week later, along with several hundred other
volunteer workers, I boarded a train on a siding next to a warehouse on the
base, and was on my way west.
The train, with all windows covered by blackout curtains, left
Patterson Field in the dead of night, and arrived three days later at Moffett
Field near Mountain View, California. We disembarked, lined up for bedrolls,
and were pointed toward rows of tents in a muddy field which happened to be
near a dirigible hangar. When we got to the tents, I picked one and dumped
my gear. An instruction sheet, tacked to the tent's center pole, had
information on where the mess halls were located, and the meals schedule.
More trains arrived in the days that followed. Hundreds of civilian
workers joined us in the tents, waiting for the next leg of our journey. We
quickly got to know each other; we had shipped in from various places in the
country: New York and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia, Alabama and Texas, Utah
and California. The Army Air Corps bases where we had signed up were Griffis
and Olmstead, Patterson and Robbins, Brookley and Kelly, and Hill and
McClellan. We were a vanguard, to move out with little or no advance notice.
Except for a carry-on bag, with a change of clothing and personal items,
our luggage had gone directly into the ship's hold.
Days passed. The 'alert' came one night at 2 AM. Voices shouted along
the lines of tents, 'This is it, you guys. Movin' out. One hour.'
In a torrential downpour, we slogged through ankle-deep mud and climbed
into the backs of canvas covered trucks. Flaps down all around, escorted by
armed military guards in Jeeps, all of the trucks were blacked out except for
dim lights gleaming through slits in the headlights. The trucks lined up, a
many miles-long convoy that stretched north along U.S. 101 from Moffett Field
toward San Francisco. We arrived, shortly before dawn, at Fort Mason,
adjacent San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. The trucks filled the pier from
end to end and extended into the streets outside; a gangway led up from the
wharf to the deck of a ship. I learned later that she was the U.S. Grant, a
World War I troop transport.
Herded below deck, we jammed into compartments where the narrow bunks
were five high along aisles barely wide enough for passing. A 'Now, here
this....' over the loudspeaker restricted all passengers to their
compartments, and to passageways only when necessary, until we were out of
the harbor. We were to have our life preservers with us at all times.
Hours later, the ship's vibration, a pitching and rolling in my body's
center of gravity, and creaking sounds along the bulkheads, told me we were
under way. Scuttlebutt was that we were in a convoy, escorted by destroyers.
Enemy submarines were suspected to be in the area.
Out of the harbor, and for days afterward, I took my turn going on deck.
On our way to Honolulu, the convoy zigzagged frequently to minimize the
success of an enemy air or submarine attack. Finally, on the fifth day, land
appeared on the horizon and, shortly afterward, we saw Diamond Head.
Our ship left the convoy and entered Honolulu harbor. We docked and
disembarked, under heavy military guard, at the Aloha Tower pier and boarded
the 'Toonerville Trolley', as we got to know the train on Oahu's narrow gage
railway. An hour later, we were at Hickam Field.
The devastation was appalling. Burned-out hulks of bombed aircraft were
scattered about on parking aprons, and huge accumulations of debris lay next
to aircraft hangars and along the roadways. The roofs of military barracks
hung down along the outsides of the structures; they had exploded up and
outward over the walls.
As a survival gear senior technician, I was assigned to supervise the
recovery and repair of damaged parachutes, life rafts, inflatable life
preservers, oxygen masks, and the escape-and-evasion kits that air crews
relied on when they bailed out over enemy territory.
All equipment that came to our shop was closely inspected, repaired if
possible, and, when the standards called for it, tested. As soon as survival
gear was fixed and ready for service, it was returned to the airplane from
which it came, or it was shipped to air bases in the battle zones.
Many of us joined Hickam Field's armed civilians, officially titled the
*Hawaiian Air Depot Volunteer Corps*. We were civilian employees of the base
who, during non-duty hours, trained to handle and fire a rifle and a pistol,
and guarded locations at night where high security was needed. We were armed
with 1903 Enfield rifles, shotguns, and in some fixed posts, 30 calibar
aircraft machine guns on tripods.
At night, we patrolled aircraft maintenance hangers, warehouses,
instrument repair shops, and an underground aircraft engine repair shop at
Wheeler Field, near Wahiawa in the Oahu highlands.
As armed civilians, we were each given a card to carry in our wallets.
The card stated, in fine print, that if we were captured by the enemy while
carrying a weapon, we were entitled to claim rights as a "prisoner of war."
The Army Air Corps military officer who commanded our unit said that, since
we did not wear military uniforms, nor carry military identification tags,
the card would certify us as 'combatants'. This statement on the card was
supposed to keep us from being shot as spies in the event the Hawaiian
Islands were invaded by the enemy.
During the war years, I fixed and packed thousands of man-carrying and
cargo parachutes, and serviced many other types of life-saving and survival
gear.
Soon after the U. S. took the Phillipines back I went to Nichols
Field, near Manila, and taught parachute packing and other survival equipment
repair work to American airmen and Phillipine civilians.
That's it. Hope this gives you another view of what went into
supporting the American forces during WW2.
Mike Moldeven