_Beneath a leaden sky on 8 December 1941, Marines at NAS Kaneohe Bay
fire a volley over the common grave of 15 officers and men killed
during the Japanese raid the previous day. Note sandbagged position
atop the sandy rise at right._]
To the southeast, _New Orleans_ lay across the pier from her sister
ship _San Francisco_. The former went to general quarters soon after
enemy planes had been sighted dive-bombing Ford Island around 0757.
At 0805, as several low-flying torpedo planes roared by, bound for
Battleship Row, Marine sentries on the fantail opened fire with
rifles and .45s. _New Orleans_’ men, meanwhile, so swiftly manned the
1.1-inch/75 quads, and .50-caliber machine guns, under the direction of
Captain William R. Collins, the commanding officer of the ship’s Marine
detachment, that the ship actually managed to shoot at torpedo planes
passing her stern. _San Francisco_, however, under major overhaul with
neither operative armament nor major caliber ammunition on board, was
thus restricted to having her men fire small arms at whatever Japanese
planes came within range. Some of her crew, though, hurried over to
_New Orleans_, which was near-missed by one bomb, and helped man her
5-inchers.
_St. Louis_, outboard of _Honolulu_, went to general quarters at
0757 and opened fire with her 1.1 quadruple mounted antiaircraft and
.50-caliber machine gun batteries, and after getting her 5-inch mounts
in commission by 0830--although without power in train--she hauled in
her lines at 0847 and got underway at 0931. With all 5-inchers in full
commission by 0947, she proceeded to sea, passing the channel entrance
buoys abeam around 1000. _Honolulu_, damaged by a near miss from a
bomb, remained moored at her berth throughout the action.
_Phoenix_, moored by herself in berth C-6 in Pearl Harbor, to the
northeast of Ford Island, noted the attacking planes at 0755 and went
to general quarters. Her machine gun battery opened fire at 0810 on the
attacking planes as they came within range; her antiaircraft battery
five minutes later. Ultimately, after two false starts (where she had
gotten underway and left her berth only to see sortie signals cancelled
each time) _Phoenix_ cleared the harbor later that day and put to sea.
For at least one Marine, though, the day’s adventure was not over when
the Japanese planes departed. Search flights took off from Ford Island,
pilots taking up utility aircraft with scratch crews, to look for the
enemy carriers which had launched the raid. Mustered at the naval air
station on Ford Island, _Oklahoma_’s Sergeant Hailey, still clad in his
oil-soaked underwear, volunteered to go up in a plane that was leaving
on a search mission at around 1130. He remained aloft in the plane,
armed with a rifle, for some five hours.
After the attacking planes had retired, the grim business of cleaning
up and getting on with the war had to be undertaken. Muster had to be
taken to determine who was missing, who was wounded, who lay dead. Men
sought out their friends and shipmates. First Lieutenant Cornelius C.
Smith, Jr., from the Marine Barracks at the Navy Yard, searched in vain
among the maimed and dying at the Naval Hospital later that day, for
his friend Harry Gaver from _Oklahoma_. Death respected no rank. The
most senior Marine to die that day was Lieutenant Colonel Daniel R.
Fox, the decorated World War I hero and the division Marine officer on
the staff of the Commander, Battleship Division One, Rear Admiral Isaac
C. Kidd, who, along with Lieutenant Colonel Fox, had been killed in
_Arizona_. The tragedy of Pearl Harbor struck some families with more
force than others: numbered among _Arizona_’s lost were Private Gordon
E. Shive, of the battleship’s Marine detachment, and his brother,
Radioman Third Class Malcolm H. Shive, a member of the ship’s company.
Over the next few days, Marines from the sunken ships received
reassignment to other vessels--_Nevada_’s Marines deployed ashore to
set up defensive positions in the fields adjacent to the grounded
and listing battleship--and the dead, those who could be found,
were interred with appropriate ceremony. Eventually, the deeds of
Marines in the battleship detachments were recognized by appropriate
commendations and advancements in ratings. Chief among them, Gunnery
Sergeant Douglas, Sergeant Hailey, and Corporals Driskell and Darling
were each awarded the Navy Cross. For his “meritorious conduct at the
peril of his own life,” Major Shapley was commended and awarded the
Silver Star. Lieutenant Simensen was awarded a posthumous Bronze Star,
while _Tennessee_’s commanding officer commended Captain White for the
way in which he had directed that battleship’s antiaircraft guns that
morning.
Titanic salvage efforts raised some of the sunken
battleships--_California_, _West Virginia_, and _Nevada_--and they,
like the surviving Marines, went on to play a part in the ultimate
defeat of the enemy who had begun the war with such swift and terrible
suddenness.
_They Caught Us Flat-Footed_
At 0740, when Fuchida’s fliers had closed to within a few miles of
Kahuku Point, the 43 Zeroes split away from the rest of the formation,
swinging out north and west of Wheeler Field, the headquarters of the
Hawaiian Air Force’s 18th Pursuit Wing. Passing further to the south,
at about 0745 the _Soryu_ and _Hiryu_ divisions executed a hard diving
turn to port and headed north, toward Wheeler. Eleven Zeroes from
_Shokaku_ and _Zuikaku_ simultaneously left the formation and flew
east, crossing over Oahu north of Pearl Harbor to attack NAS Kaneohe
Bay. Eighteen from _Akagi_ and _Kaga_ headed toward what the Japanese
called _Babasu Pointo Hikojo_ (Barbers Point Airdrome)--Ewa Mooring
Mast Field.
Sweeping over the Waianae Range, Lieutenant Commander Shigeru Itaya led
_Akagi_’s nine Zeroes, while Lieutenant Yoshio Shiga headed another
division of nine from _Kaga_. After the initial attack, Itaya and Shiga
were to be followed by divisions from _Soryu_, under Lieutenant Masaji
Suganami, and _Hiryu_, under Lieutenant Kiyokuma Okajima, which were,
at that moment, involved in attacking Wheeler to the north.
[Illustration: