Wallace Brown
US Navy
USS Curtiss
I was an engineer on the USS Curtiss stationed in Pearl Harbor.  We had seen newspaper headlines that stated there might be an attack over the weekend, but December 7th started like any other day onboard.  At the moment of the attack, 7:55 a.m., I was just sitting down to eat breakfast.  Upon hearing the explosions centered on Ford Island, in the center of Pearl Harbor, and later the heavier explosions of torpedoes striking the battleships moored across from my own vessel; and seeing the burning hangars and planes on Ford Island, there was no doubt in my mind that we were under attack.  I immediately ran to my battle station in the engine room.

At this point, the discipline and training of our crew paid off.  We did things automatically, each man going to his own battle station - just as we had done so many times during drills, simulating just such a situation.

Of the more than 2,400 military persons who lost their lives in the cowardly attack, most of them died without having a chance to defend themselves.  When a magazine of the USS Arizona was struck by an armor piercing bomb, setting off an explosion of the gunpowder stored in it's magazine, 1,177 men lost their lives.  Most of them were in their late teens or early twenties.  Only 75 bodies were ever recovered - the remaining 1,102 bodies are still there, in their water tomb.  Those who have visited the "Arizona" memorial, and gazed down at the outline of the once mighty man of war, resting just below the surface of the waters of Pearl Harbor, cannot help but be overwhelmed by the knowledge that so many brave men rest there, in silent testimony of giving their all for their country.

In 1968, I met the pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor.  My comment to him was, "Captain Fuchida, we almost met that day, since I was aboard a ship that a plane of your attackers dropped a 500 pound bomb on, killing 21 and wounding 33 others.  This action by your men spoiled my whole day!"

Captain Fuchida grasped my hand, bowed his head, and in an almost inaudible voice said to me, "I am so sorry."  Whether he meant he was sorry he and his men had come to Pearl Harbor, or whether he missed me, I dared not ask!

Rudyard Kipling, English author and poet, traveled with the British army for a number of years in India, Pakistan, and Egypt.  Among the many lines of prose he wrote were these:

"East is East, West is West, and never the twain shall meet until earth and man shall stand before God's righteous judgment seat.  For in him there is no East, or West - border, breed, or birth, when two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!"

In Pearl Harbor, on a beautiful Sabbath morning, December 7, 1941, I was present at a meeting of Eastern and Western powers, leading to the most bloody war in the history of mankind.  This struggle was only ended when the mushroom clouds of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki convinced the Japanese that to continue the war would be useless.

Let us all pray to the almighty god that it never happens again, and work to see that it does not!
Information provided by Wallace Brown.