In article , hawaii-50
@sbcglobal.net says...
On Wed, 8 Dec 2010 08:32:53 -0500, BAR wrote:
In article 4486b8e5-bd03-42b1-b431-
, says...
Remembering the day.
My dad was there a child of 5 along with his sister watching the planes.
His one vivid memory of that day is the face of one Japanese pilot he
saw. Also, my grand-fathers ship the USS Shaw, the famous explosion
picture, was there and my grand-mother took most of the photos in the
hours and days after that were used by the media and the government.
BAR, my wife was also a witness to the attack that day. But unlike
your dad, my wife's father didn't waste anytime and hustled all the
little ones (there were 5 of them) into his bomb shelter (yes, he
built a bomb shelter in the backyard - I guess he was way ahead of his
time)
All she remembers are the planes in the sky and the sound of
explosions. She was 5yrs 3mo old.
I have read of old timers, mostly servicemen tell about seeing the
Japanese pilots in their planes. That might be true, but I doubt if a
five-year old civilian saw the same thing. Betcha your dad kinda
embellished his recount of that day. Many old timers tend to do this.
My father-in-law later helped in the raising of some of the sunken
American ships. He was a welder and worked at PH for the duration of
the war. Right after the war he moved his family to Omao, Kauai where
he built many homes. He retired after working 20 years with the state
of Hawaii.
Eddie
My dad didn't talk about Pearl Harbor much, not even when we lived their
in the late 60's. I have often wondered what thought while the movie
Tora Tora Tora was being filmed. They even used the wardroom of the ship
he had command of to film a couple of scenes for the movie.
There is a book "Hawaii Goes to War: The Aftermath of Pearl Harbor"
written by my aunt and her husband. It concentrates mostly about the
what happened form the civilian side of things and what my aunts
perspective was. My uncle has written many history books. It doesn't
have a lot about my dad in it, some pictures and a reference her and
there, mostly because it was written from my aunts perspective.
You can get copies through Amazon for as little as $3.50. There are some
fantastic pictures of some of the battle ships and some other images
from around the island that most have never seen.