William A. Milligan US Navy Ford Island |
Admiral P.N.L. Bellinger was the Commanding Officer of Patrol Wing Two and I was assigned to his office as a clerk typist (Yeoman). His office was on the 2nd floor of the Administration Building of the Ford Island, Naval Air Station, Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii. On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, shortly after an early breakfast, I was at my locker getting ready for a day of shore leave in Honolulu. It was fairly quiet in the barracks, just a murmur of conversation and the laughter of sailors getting ready for a fun day ashore. Suddenly, we were startled by a nearby explosion and the loud sound of aircraft. Usually, on Sunday mornings, the Army and Navy played a little game of "dog-fighting" above Pearl Harbor, but this sound was different. We not only heard the sound of aircraft, we also heard the rata-tat-tat of machine guns and the earth shaking sound of high explosives. All of a sudden, a low flying plane went roaring by our upper story barracks window and we recognized the "bright red meat-ball" insignia of Japan. Then it felt like the whole harbor was exploding. Japanese planes were everywhere and the thunder of the detonations was deafening! The barracks emptied in a mad rush and about 200 of us wound up cowering under the sturdy tables in the downstairs mess hall. Confusion reigned supreme. Were we scared? Hell yes, we were scared!We thought we were going to die and for the moment we were petrified. Then, over the loud speaker system, came the calming voice of the station Chaplain: "This is your Chaplain speaking. We are under a cowardly sneak attack by aircraft of the Japanese Navyplease recite with me the Lord's Prayer". We all did. Then he said, "Now get out of here and man your battle stations!!!!!" Being a yeoman "Striker", I had no battle station, but a couple of guys and myself ran to the armory, located in the basement of the Ad building, to get some rifles. No such luck! The door to the armory had been broken open and the place was a mess, everything was gone, except a partly assembled Browning water cooled, 30 caliber machine gun and a tripod. We grabbed the gun and some belts of ammunition and raced up the stairs to the roof. We were unable to put the gun together, nothing seemed to fit and we never fired a shot. We found out later that we had the tripod for a Lewis air cooled gun and it was not compatible with a browningwe felt like three frustrated idiots. After we gave up on the gun, we watched in horror from our vantage point on the roof, as the USS California, Oklahoma, Maryland, Tennessee and West Virginia took tremendous hits from both bombs and torpedoes. The sound and the fury, of the attack, was deafening and much of the harbor, around the ships, was in flames. A Navy Captain, who was close by, on the roof, broke down and cried when he saw the USS Oklahoma capsize, Earlier, when the USS Arizona exploded, it sounded like the Japs had blown up the entire Naval Air Station. All of this destruction was taking place right before our eyes and it was almost too much for us to believe. While we were struggling with that confounded gun, shrapnel from our own big guns began falling all around us and we weren't wearing helmets. The Captain yelled at us to get off the roof, NOW! It's a wonder we were not hurt before we finally came to our senses and took off. After leaving the Ad building, I helped some Navy corpsmen cover oil soaked burned bodies with sheets. The lawn between the Ad building and the station hospital was being used as a collection area for burned sailors, who were being dragged out of the flaming harbor. It was a horrible sight that brought tears to my eyes. I have never forgotten those poor guys. Some time later, my CPO found me and ordered me to report to the Admiral's office for teletype machine duty. As for the men and women lucky enough to survive the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was more than an unthinkable event in history. It was a tragic journey into total chaos. After the attack was over, I spent the next 10 hours operating a teletype machine and that was a real exercise in futility. There were six machines, all going like mad and spitting out unconfirmed reports from all directions and most of it in code. I was incredible, nobody had any idea what was going on. Reports were coming in about Japanese landing parties invading the other Hawaiian islands, all kinds of sabotage, Japanese paratroops being observed in the sky and Japanese troop ships approaching from all directions. The incoming messages were driving our decoding officers nuts. This went on far into the night before things calmed down. I continued on with my teletype duty watch for the next seven days. After that, it was back to my regular duties of typing up duty rosters, emptying wastepaper baskets, running the mimeograph machine and waxing and polishing the deck. Several weeks after the attack, I was transferred to the Patrol Wing Tow, Photo Lab, where I stayed for about a year. I was then assigned to JICPOA (Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area) a brand new organization, created during the war, to prepare all the photographic work, requested by Admiral Chester A. Nimitz, for the invasion of the Japanese held islands in the Pacific Ocean Area. JICPOA began with 40 photographers (Army, Navy and Marine Corps) and wound up with over 300 photographers, lithographers and Interpretation Officers by the end of WWII. I ended my active duty tour of 4 years, with the rate of Chief Photographers Mate, USNR. |
Information provided by William A. Milligan. |
