Thomas B. O'Reilly Kaneohe Bay |
I arrived at Kaneohe Naval Air Station in February 1941. It was a seaplane base for PBYs. At the time of the attack I was an aerographers mate 2nd class. Our function was to support the PBYs on reconnaissance. There was a pattern we would fly, a sector like a piece of pie. We had a weatherman an aerographer is a weatherman on each flight because we had limited weather information and this supplemented our other information. The aerographer would sit in the blister and operate the machine guns if it was necessary, but he was there primarily for observation, not as a gunner. We had been crudely trained in aerial gunnery and in recognizing the various Japanese airplanes. This was the routine from the time we arrived to the time the war started. On the morning of the Pearl Harbor attack I was in my barracks on the second floor and I heard a tremendous commotion outside. I thought it was a fight, a Sunday morning brawl between the Marines and the Navy, a common occurrence with hangovers and such. I ran out to take a look and a plane went by my window, not more than fifty feet away. I could see the red ball, but it didn't make any sense and I thought the Army the Army was the Air Force in those days was having a drill. It only took a few seconds to realize it wasn't a drill, because shells were exploding all over and the hangers were being bombed. I got in a truck and went down to the hangers to see what we could salvage, but everything was on fire and I realized there wasn't anything to salvage. So I turned around and ran to the armory to get a rifle. Unfortunately there were only fifty rifles that weren't in cosmoline, a thick grease used to protect firearms, and it takes an awful lot of work to clean them. I grabbed one of the rifles and ran back to the administration building. Two friends one a radioman, the other a 1st class aerographer were observing what was going on. The second attack was in progress. The last plane in the attack circled the harbor, and then came directly at us at about 100 feet. The three of us got off a shot. Whether anyone else was firing, I don't know, but the plane went into a hill behind us. It turned out this was the squadron commander, and he was probably making a reconnaissance but was shot down. There is a plaque there now and the man was a lieutenant Iidea. There was tremendous excitement because of the possibility of invasion and the fact we didn't have any aircraft on the base. In the Navy, the battleship was considered the supreme ship. Se when we got word that the battleships had gone down, we were absolutely dumbfounded and were sure we were going to be invaded. The next couple of weeks were chaos. They dug pits all over the base and put in what machine guns they could, and if during the night a rabbit ran across the field all you heard was "brrrrrr." Everybody was so jittery. The morning after the attack we were ordered to take all our clothes and place them in vats of coffee; this was our camouflage. They dyed all our clothes in coffee; of course it smelled good. Radar was in its infancy so se were the main eyes and ears of the Navy. If you took us as the center and divided up the 360 degrees into sectors, as I mentioned, like a piece of pie, you get an idea of how we secured and protected the area so we wouldn't be hit. This was our main defense, and we flew out of Kaneohe about 800 miles, about a 1,600-mile roundtrip. This was the daily routine. We were not advised we had cracked the Japanese [purple] code, and there was a strong suspicion an attack was going to be made at Midway. It was a closely guarded secret through the war that we had broken the code. They would not even let us make an entry in our flight logs referring to anything. Now the question was: The Japanese fleet was missing and where were they headed? There was a general feeling among the code-breakers that they were somewhere in the central Pacific, and we finally concluded they were headed for Midway. The Japanese plan was to attack Midway and draw the American fleet out, then sink the fleet since the Japanese fleet was superior in numbers and airplanes. To confirm our suspicions, we decided to send an open message to Pearl Harbor from Midway saying we had concerns regarding our water supply. The Japanese code came back that AF was having problems with their water. That confirmed our suspicions that the destination was Midway since they knew in coding that AF was Midway. The planes that found the Japanese fleet came from Kaneohe, doing sector searches, and one of them spotted the fleet and notified Pearl Harbor. The Japanese felt they could completely cripple our fleet, realizing the carriers were the key. They knew we had very little left, only the Enterprise and the Hornet, and they considered the Yorktown so badly damaged it couldn't take part in any attack. So the strategy was to totally eliminate our Navy and then proceed to Australia or wherever they chose. Midway became the most significant battle of the war, Japan being an island nation that depended on its fleet to protect it and its supply routes. Therefore, eliminating the American fleet was its main strategy. Admiral Nimitz decided this was a great opportunity to position ourselves and attack them at the most vulnerable time when they were either coming back for refueling or when they were empty and in the process of making a changeover. We had the Hornet, the Enterprise, and Yorktown in position to attack the Japanese carriers when they were at their most vulnerable, and we were able to sink all four of their major carriers and damage other parts of their fleet. In the fighting the Japanese were able to find the Yorktown, and damaged it sufficiently so that the next day we had to torpedo it since we couldn't tow it back to Pearl Harbor. The net effect was we destroyed the fighting ability of the Japanese Navy with their loss of four carriers, and they never fully recovered from it. Definitely it was the turning point in the war in the Pacific. I have worked with the Japanese since the war. One of my very close friends was on one of those two-man submarines. Another that I was very close to was a graduate of the Japanese Naval Academy and he was sunk twice during the war. One of the astonishing things is how they feel about the bombing of Hiroshima. I never found a Japanese my age who wasn't convinced that it was the only thing that saved Japan, since our fire bombing was far worse than the atomic bomb. It took this catastrophic situation to bring the emperor to oppose the Army's reluctance to surrender. Pearl Harbor made me think, How did this happen? What brought this about? I thought, if I live through this war, I'm going to be an active citizen and not a bystander. After the war I graduated from Colgate University with a major in political science. I have spent the remainder of my life actively involved in government activity, including running for congress in New York in 1956, but not winning. I have continued to this day being active in what's happening in our government and in world affairs. Information provided by Tom O'Reilly. |
