_Ewa Mooring Mast Field, later a Japanese target, is seen hazily
through the windshield of a Battleship Row-bound Kate shortly before
0800 on 7 December 1941._]
In the officers’ mess at Ewa, the officer-of-the-day, Captain Leonard
W. Ashwell of VMJ-252, noticed two formations of aircraft at 0755. The
first looked like 18 “torpedo planes” flying at 1,000 feet toward Pearl
Harbor from Barbers Point, but the second, to the northwest, comprised
about 21 planes, just coming over the hills from the direction of
Nanakuli, also at an altitude of about 1,000 feet. Ashwell, intrigued
by the sight, stepped outside for a better look. The second formation,
of single-seat fighters (the two divisions from _Akagi_ and _Kaga_),
flew just to the north of Ewa and wheeled to the right. Then, flying
in a “string” formation, they commenced firing. Recognizing the planes
as Japanese, Ashwell burst back into the mess, shouting: “Air Raid ...
Air Raid! Pass the word!” He then sprinted for the guard house, to have
“call to arms” sounded.
[Illustration: _Browning Machine Gun Drill On Board Ship_
Marines man a water-cooled, .50-caliber Browning M2 machine gun during
a drill on board the gunnery training ship _Wyoming_ (AG-17) in late
1941. The M2 Browning weighed (without water) 100 pounds, 8 ounces, and
measured five feet, six inches in length. It fired between 550 and 700
rounds per minute to a maximum horizontal range of 7,400 yards. The two
hoses carry coolant water to the gun barrel. The gun could be fired
without the prescribed two and a half gallons of cooling water--as
Gunnery Sergeant Douglas’s men did on board _Nevada_ (BB-36) on 7
December 1941--but accuracy diminished as the barrel heated and the
pattern of shots became more widely dispersed. Experience would reveal
that a large number of .50-caliber hits were necessary to disable a
plane, and that only a small number of hits could be attained by any
single ship-mounted gun against a dive bomber.]
That Sunday morning, Technical Sergeant Henry H. Anglin, the
noncommissioned-officer-in-charge of the photographic section at Ewa,
had driven from his Pearl City home with his three-year-old son, Hank,
to take the boy’s picture at the station. The senior Anglin had just
positioned the lad in front of the camera and was about to take the
photo--the picture was to be a gift to the boy’s grandparents--when
they heard the “mingled noise of airplanes and machine guns.” Roaring
down to within 25 feet of the ground, Itaya’s group most likely carried
out only one pass at their targets before moving on to Hickam, the
headquarters of the Hawaiian Air Forces 18th Bombardment Wing.
[Illustration: