Pearl Harbor smoke burns in his memory

It's not quite right to call Rob Robley an eyewitness to one of the biggest events in American history.

Robley, the 65-year-old archivist for the Veterans Memorial Museum in John Hunt Park, grew up in Palama, Hawaii, just down the road from the Pearl Harbor naval base. But he was only three when swarming Japanese fighter planes attacked the base on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941 - 62 years ago this morning.

He doesn't remember much about that day: Smoke from burning battleships, an awful racket. Robley's mother was a maid at the base but had that weekend off. A cousin who drove an ambulance wasn't so lucky - bomb fragments tore off one of his arms.

As tragedies go, Pearl Harbor was immense. Over the course of about two hours, Japanese bombs and torpedoes killed nearly 2,400 people, sank the U.S.S. Arizona battleship and damaged much of America's Pacific Fleet.

In a speech to Congress the next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on Japan and vowed to get revenge for the "unprovoked and dastardly attack."

About six months later at the Battle of Midway, U.S. forces sank four Japanese aircraft carriers used in the Pearl Harbor invasion.

When the two-year-old veterans museum needed someone to speak to school groups, Cub Scouts and Redstone Arsenal soldiers about Pearl Harbor's significance, it naturally turned to Robley. He's read so many books about the attack that he can tell you, with a hint of island accent, where every ship was docked when the first Japanese fighter planes appeared in the sky at 7:55 a.m. Many of those killed were asleep or getting ready for church, he said.

But the most fascinating part of Robley's story comes when he talks about life in Hawaii during World War II.

Fearing more attacks, the government declared martial law on the islands, then a U.S. territory. People had to be home by dark. The war effort also claimed much of Hawaii's famed sugar cane crop.

"I didn't see a chocolate candy bar until 1945," Robley said. "It was a Hershey bar."

Things were strange at school, too. Robley was issued a gas mask that he kept clipped to his belt. Air-raid trenches were carved into the playground.

Here's some irony: When the war ended, Honolulu-area residents turned in their gas masks at a Japanese temple.

Robley joined the Army in 1956 - 11 days after graduating from high school - and was sent to Fort Lewis, Wash. It was his first trip off the islands. He eventually became an explosive ordnance disposal expert and now works as a project manager for EOD Technology Inc., a Huntsville defense contractor.

Hollywood, Robley said, played loose with the facts in 2001's "Pearl Harbor." For example, black and white actors make up almost the entire cast, he said, even though many native Hawaiians worked on the base at the time of the attack.

Robley's lectures are precise. He gathers groups around a wooden mockup on the harbor showing the position of the U.S.S. Arizona - now a national shrine - and other ships. Menacing plastic fighter planes painted with Japan's rising-sun flag dangle from fishing wire.

"Pearl Harbor is something people shouldn't ever forget," Robley said. "We need to remind people that there were sacrifices made for the good things we have today.

I was there and also three years old, but we were at Kaneohe. My Dad was on the Astoria, with the carriers. I do remember him leaving after the attack, since I did not see him again until after the Astoria was sunk at Savo Islands.

I was playing in the back yard and my Mom brought me in, not because of the planes going overhead to hit Kaneohe Air base, but because of some bees. She later called since they had not picked up the trash and the operator said, "For God's sake lady, we are under attack!"

Our next door neighbor was a Japanese American. My Mom told her what had happened and her comment, as she shook her fist in the air was "Damn Japs."

When my Dad left, he was in his whites and kissed my Mom, turned and left. She sat down and cried. I had no idea what was going on, but since she was crying, it must be bad, so I started crying too. She looked at me and started laughing, since she knew I was clueless.

My Uncle was out to sea on one of the carriers when the attck came. He was nearly a lifer already in the navy by then. He had just transferred from LOng Beach to the Islands and his wife was to come out to join him. After Pearl he did not get to see his wife again till 1946. And the military people whine about 6 months now. Howd they like 5 years?

I was at both the 50th ceremonies in Pearl Harbour and the 50th in Hiroshima.

Of course I speak both English and Japanese fluently, so I sat in with many old gentleman from both of those countries who were in each of those towns those very days and experienced hell from the other side. It was very interesting to informally interview.

And I did talk to a Japanese-American guy who told me that when he saw the Dai Nippon Teikoku aircraft groups approach P.H. for the second time, he cursed *Damned Japs!* in the sky....Funny, Senator Inouye had this same experience, too.

Japanese Americans viewed themselves as 100% Americans first, and it was natural for them to yell this out. Too bad so many White Americans looked at them and only saw an Imperial Army soldier out of uniform, and incarcerated many of them. An odd, horrid, panicky time indeed.

You are right. The patience index has incrementally dropped in America while the whining ratio has kept pace with it, dyanamically rising ever higher and higher. Imagine what an enemy thinks of this hearing it and seeing it on CNN international.

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