_by Robert J. Cressman and J. Michael Wenger_
On the afternoon of 6 December 1941, Tai Sing Loo, the colorful Pearl
Harbor Navy Yard photographer, arranged with Platoon Sergeant Charles
R. Christenot, the noncommissioned-officer-in-charge of the Main Gate
at the Navy Yard, to have his Marines pose for a photograph between
0830 and 0930 Sunday morning, in front of the new concrete main gate.
The photo was to be for a Christmas card.
As war clouds gathered over the Pacific basin in late 1941, the United
States Pacific Fleet operated, as it had since May 1940, from Pearl
Harbor. While the security of that fleet and for the island of Oahu
lay in the Army’s hands, that of the Navy Yard and the Naval Air
Stations at Pearl Harbor and Kaneohe Bay lay in the hands of Marines.
In addition, on board the fleet’s battleships, aircraft carriers, and
some of its cruisers, Marines provided security, served as orderlies
for embarked flag officers and ships’ captains, and manned secondary
antiaircraft and machine gun batteries--seagoing duties familiar to the
Corps since its inception.
The Marine Barracks at Pearl Harbor comprised a Barracks Detachment and
two companies, A and B, the men living in a comfortable three-story
concrete barracks. Company A manned the main gates at the Submarine
Base and Navy Yard, and other “distant outposts,” providing yard
security, while Company B enforced traffic regulations and maintained
proper police and order under the auspices of the Yard Police Officer.
In addition, Marines ran the Navy Yard Fire Department. Elements of
Marine defense battalions made Pearl Harbor their home, too, residing
in the several 100-man temporary wooden barracks buildings that had
been completed during 1940 and 1941. Less commodious but no less
important was the burgeoning airbase that Marines of Marine Aircraft
Group (MAG) 2 (later 21) had hewn and hammered out near Barbers
Point--Ewa Mooring Mast Field, home for a Marine aircraft group
consisting of fighting, scout-bombing, and utility squadrons.
On 27 November, having been privy to intelligence information gleaned
from intercepted and translated Japanese diplomatic message traffic,
Admiral Harold R. Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations, and General
George C. Marshall, the Army’s Chief of Staff, sent a war warning to
their principal commanders on Oahu, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the
Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, and Lieutenant General Walter C.
Short, the Commander of the Hawaiian Department. Thus adjured to take
appropriate defensive measures, and feeling that his more exposed
advance bases needed strengthening, Kimmel set in motion a plan that
had been completed as early as 10 November, to provide planes for
Midway and Wake. The latter was to receive fighters--12 Grumman F4F-3
Wildcats of Marine Fighter Squadron (VMF) 211--while Midway was to
get scout bombers from Marine Scout-Bomber Squadron (VMSB) 231. The
following day, 28 November 1941, the carrier _Enterprise_ (CV-6)
departed Pearl in Task Force 8 under Vice Admiral William F. Halsey,
Jr., Commander, Aircraft, Battle Force, embarking VMF-211 at sea.
VMSB-231 was to embark in another carrier, _Lexington_ (CV-2), in Task
Force 12 under Rear Admiral John H. Newton, on 5 December.
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