Attack At Pearl Harbor, 1941

The surprise was complete. The attacking planes came in two waves; the first hit its target at 7:53 AM, the second at 8:55. By 9:55 it was all over. By 1:00 PM the carriers that launched the planes from 274 miles off the coast of Oahu were heading back to Japan.

Behind them they left chaos, 2,403 dead, 188 destroyed planes and a crippled Pacific Fleet that included 8 damaged or destroyed battleships. In one stroke the Japanese action silenced the debate that had divided Americans ever since the German defeat of France left England alone in the fight against the Nazi terror.

Word of the attack reached President Roosevelt as he lunched in his oval study on Sunday afternoon. Later, Winston Churchill called to tell him that the Japanese had also attacked British colonies in southeast Asia and that Britain would declare war the next day. Roosevelt responded that he would go before Congress the following day to ask for a declaration of war against Japan. Churchill wrote: "To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!...Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder."

On Monday, FDR signed the declaration of war granted by Congress. One day later both Germany and Italy, as partners of Japan in the Tripartite Pact, declared war on the US.

The battleships moored along "Battleship Row" are the primary target of the attack's first wave. Ten minutes after the beginning of the attack a bomb crashes through the Arizona's two armored decks igniting its magazine. The explosion rips the ship's sides open like a tin can starting a fire that engulfs the entire ship. Within minutes she sinks to the bottom taking 1,300 lives with her. The sunken ship remains as a memorial to those who sacrificed their lives during the attack. Marine Corporal E.C. Nightingale was aboard the Arizona that fateful Sunday morning:

"At approximately eight o'clock on the morning of December 7, 1941, I was leaving the breakfast table when the ship's siren for air defense sounded. Having no anti-aircraft battle station, I paid little attention to it. Suddenly I heard an explosion. I ran to the port door leading to the quarterdeck and saw a bomb strike a barge of some sort alongside the NEVADA, or in that vicinity. The marine color guard came in at this point saying we were being attacked. I could distinctly hear machine gun fire. I believe at this point our anti-aircraft battery opened up.

"We stood around awaiting orders of some kind. General Quarters sounded and I started for my battle station in secondary aft. As I passed through casement nine I noted the gun was manned and being trained out. The men seemed extremely calm and collected. I reached the boat deck and our anti-aircraft guns were in full action, firing very rapidly. I was about three quarters of the way to the first platform on the mast when it seemed as though a bomb struck our quarterdeck. I could hear shrapnel or fragments whistling past me. As soon as I reached the first platform, I saw Second Lieutenant Simonson lying on his back with blood on his shirt front. I bent over him and taking him by the shoulders asked if there was anything I could do. He was dead, or so nearly so that speech was impossible. Seeing there was nothing I could do for the Lieutenant, I continued to my battle station.

"When I arrived in secondary aft I reported to Major Shapley that Mr. Simonson had been hit and there was nothing to be done for him. There was a lot of talking going on and I shouted for silence which came immediately. I had only been there a short time when a terrible explosion caused the ship to shake violently. I looked at the boat deck and everything seemed aflame forward of the mainmast. I reported to the Major that the ship was aflame,which was rather needless, and after looking about, the Major ordered us to leave.

"I was the last man to leave secondary aft because I looked around and there was no one left. I followed the Major down the port side of the tripod mast. The railings, as we ascended, were very hot and as we reached the boat deck I noted that it was torn up and burned. The bodies of the dead were thick, and badly burned men were heading for the quarterdeck, only to fall apparently dead or badly wounded. The Major and I went between No. 3 and No. 4 turret to the starboard side and found Lieutenant Commander Fuqua ordering the men over the side and assisting the wounded. He seemed exceptionally calm and the Major stopped and they talked for a moment. Charred bodies were everywhere.

"I made my way to the quay and started to remove my shoes when I suddenly found myself in the water. I think the concussion of a bomb threw me in. I started swimming for the pipe line which was about one hundred and fifty feet away. I was about half way when my strength gave out entirely. My clothes and shocked condition sapped my strength, and I was about to go under when Major Shapley started to swim by, and seeing my distress, grasped my shirt and told me to hang to his shoulders while he swam in.

"We were perhaps twenty-five feet from the pipe line when the Major's strength gave out and I saw he was floundering, so I loosened my grip on him and told him to make it alone. He stopped and grabbed me by the shirt and refused to let go. I would have drowned but for the Major. We finally reached the beach where a marine directed us to a bomb shelter, where I was given dry clothes and a place to rest."

References: Lord, Walter, Day of Infamy (1957), Prange, Gordon, At Dawn We Slept (1981), Wallin, VAdm. Homer N. Pearl Harbor: Why, How, Fleet Salvage and Final Appraisal (1968).

Posted on Sat, Dec. 07, 2002

61ST ANNIVERSARY OF PEARL HARBOR ATTACK: On this Dec. 7, sailors' feat not doubted
Discovery of Japanese sub proved St. Paul crew of the USS Ward hit target
BY BILL GARDNER
Pioneer Press

On this morning 61 years ago, a group of Navy reservists from St. Paul fired the first American shots of World War II, sinking a Japanese two-man submarine trying to sneak into Pearl Harbor a little more than an hour before the attack.
Yes, the men on the USS Ward not only fired the shots. They sank the sub.
They've been saying that for 61 years, but not everyone believed the Ward actually sank the sub. There was no proof. No one could find the sub on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
Even Robert Ballard, who found the Titanic in 1985 and John F. Kennedy's PT-109 earlier this year, couldn't find the sub.

Decades passed, and the men from the Ward got older and older. Most have died. Only about 20 of the 82 men are alive. About a half-dozen live in St. Paul.
A little more than three months ago, on Aug. 28, researchers from the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory sent two exploratory subs down 1,200 feet to look at an object that showed up on sonar. They hoped it was the missing Japanese submarine.
"All of a sudden it appeared out of the murky depths just sitting on the sand," said John Wiltshire, associate director of the University of Hawaii laboratory.
News accounts quickly flashed around the world, and the men from the Ward excitedly called one another.

Willett Lehner, who lives in Stevens Point, Wis., recalls getting a call from a former shipmate now living in Florida.
"They found it! They found it! See, we knew we sank it," Lehner recalled hearing over the phone.
Lehner, 82, never had any doubts. The Ward was patrolling the entrance to Pearl Harbor the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when the destroyer's crew spotted the sub, one of five headed toward the harbor shortly before the attack by Japanese planes that left 2,390 people dead and 1,178 wounded.
The Japanese sub was at the surface when the Ward fired two shots, the first missing but the second striking the sub's conning tower. "I saw it when it got hit, and I saw it when it was going down, and I was sure we had sunk it," Lehner said.

After the war ended, the men from the reserve unit formed the First Shot Naval Vets club in St. Paul in 1947 and have met regularly over the years. They helped get the gun from the Ward brought to St. Paul in 1958, where it now sits on the state Capitol grounds next to the Veterans Service Building.
Every year, the men gather at the gun on Dec. 7, and they'll do so again at a ceremony this morning.
Proud of firing the first shots, the men also wanted credit for sinking the sub. They were delighted when it was found. The sub has shell damage in its conning tower and still has both of its torpedoes.
"We'd been telling them that for 60 years, and now they know it," said Orville Ethier of St. Paul, president of the First Shot Naval Vets.

Lehner traveled to Hawaii two years ago to help Ballard find the sub. Ballard searched for two weeks, and Lehner was on the ship every day.
"The thing is, he didn't want to take anyone else's advice," Lehner said of the legendary shipwreck finder. "I thought we were out too far. I kept telling him we need to move over toward the entrance to the channel. And he'd say, 'Oh, no, I know where it is.' "

Over the years, Lehner had encountered many doubters. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you think you sunk it,'' Lehner said people would say. "I said, 'I know we sunk it.' "
It didn't help that Ballard couldn't find it. "I think Ballard thought that when he didn't find it that we didn't sink it," Lehner said.
Wiltshire said the Japanese sub is the most important modern marine archaeological treasure ever found in the Pacific Ocean and, overall, second only to the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean.

The precise location of the sub has not been released, and there are no plans to raise it, Wiltshire said. The U.S. government has indicated it would like to have the site become a marine sanctuary.
"The federal government wants to protect it where it is," Wiltshire said.
Inside the sub are likely the first casualties of Pearl Harbor.
The Discovery Channel is working on a documentary about the sub and took Lehner down to look at it in October in one of the research laboratory subs.

"I think this is very, very significant for the crew of the Ward because this validates the very accurate information they transmitted to headquarters an hour before the attack began," Wiltshire said. "It's unfortunate that the Ward's report was not heeded.''
More than one hour before the 8 a.m. attack on Pearl Harbor, the commander of the Ward sent this message to headquarters in Honolulu:
"We have attacked, fired upon and dropped depth charges upon submarine operating in defensive sea area."
It was a warning that could have changed history.
"They were absolutely right," Wiltshire said. "They sounded the warning and no one listened."

Bill Gardner can be reached at wgardner@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-5461.

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