Above the Thunder (9 page)

Following the main highway as it was then, we passed very near the water's edge at Aiea. There I could have reached out and almost touched the bow of the naval repair ship
Vestal,
which had been run up on the beach, its afterdeck blasted and smoking. In the immediate background the USS
Arizona,
whose sunken hull is still the tomb of a thousand men and is part of a national memorial, was burning fiercely. Beyond that and to the right and left, other ships, hangars, and buildings were going up in smoke and fire. Not far away we could see the Aiea dock, where numerous vehicles of various kinds were taking on loads of wounded from small boats, then speeding away toward hospitals. Sgt. James Carney, of HQ Btry, was in the Schofield hospital recovering from
a broken leg sustained in football, and he was able to assist in handling the wounded men brought there, most of whom were from Wheeler or Schofield. He said that the corridor floors became slippery with blood.

Leaving the shoreline of Pearl Harbor, we passed a large number of huge storage tanks that I had been told held most, if not all, of the reserve fuel for the Pacific Fleet, and even I, in my massive ignorance of such things, wondered why the Japanese had not bombed them. Maybe they would be hit in further strikes later in the day. In fact, though, they were not, although it would have required small effort and would have been a truly devastating blow to the crippled fleet. Adm. Husband E. Kimmel later observed that destruction of the fuel reserve would have forced withdrawal of the fleet to the American West Coast. But it appears that high-level Japanese planners of the strike had failed to include the tank farm on the target list, and the Japanese fleet commander, Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, having hit his assigned targets, withdrew his forces instead of exploiting his incredible success.

We went on through Honolulu, past Waikiki and Diamond Head, and around the cliffs at the southeast end of the island, where I had thought we would surely encounter, amid the jumbled boulders and steep slopes, one of the reported roadblocks. We stood to our guns grim and ready, fully expecting to meet our doom. Nothing happened, and we proceeded on past Bellows Field and Waimanalo and then, in a dismal drizzle of rain, we pulled off into a guava-thicketed field below Nuuanu Pali. Two of our firing batteries, armed then with British 75 mm howitzers, took positions from which they could support the defense of the Kailua-Kaneohe Bay sector. The other firing battery, Btry A, was temporarily assigned to man two large coast defense guns of 240 mm bore. They labored long and hard to get those two pieces far up into the narrow confines of the dead-end Kalihi Valley and emplace them on concrete Panama mounts, which provided a 360-degree traverse capability. Service Battery was busy all day and night getting ammunition and other critical supplies to all battalion units.

During a recent field exercise I had lost my raincoat. It had not been replaced, and the overcast, drizzly afternoon there on the windward side of Oahu was chilly, so I sought out the supply truck and asked Sergeant
McCart if one was available. He invited me to see what I could find. He had piled supplies into the truck with more haste than order, but I dug out a short overcoat, wool OD. It bore the taro-leaf shoulder patch of the old Hawaiian Division, the patch to which the new 24th Infantry Division had fallen heir. I put the short coat on over my wet khakis and, having no immediate task, did what every good field soldier does when he gets a chance: I lay down in the supply truck and went to sleep.

It was late afternoon when Sgt. Edward Bylotas woke me. He said I was to go with him as radio operator to establish an observation post, which would be taken over by Btry C as soon as that undermanned unit could get a crew together and lay a field telephone line out to the position. Pvt. Ernett Onderdonck would drive our half-ton command car. We took off northwest along the highway, the top down on the clumsy vehicle. I sat bolt upright in the rear seat, wearing my short coat and my old-style World War I British helmet, cradling my BAR across my knees, feeling quite powerful and dangerous.

In gathering darkness, we concealed the vehicle in bushes near the highway and carried our BC-scope (battery commander's telescope, a periscopic binocular observation device mounted on a tripod) out to the beach on Kualoa Point, at the northwest end of Kaneohe Bay. The tract of land, covered with coco palms, was unoccupied except for one darkened, modest dwelling, which we carefully avoided.

Eddie started setting up the BC-scope in the trees at the edge of the sand, and Onderdonck and I immediately began pointing out to him what he certainly could see for himself: it was a hell of a poor place for an OP. We were at the water's edge, where the first Jap ashore could take us out of action if a prelanding bombardment didn't beat him to it. We were at sea level, where our range of vision was most limited. And my SCR-194 “walkie-talkie” radio would not even consider raising its voice to the one back at the battalion command post (CP). But, said Eddie, this was where they had told him to put the post.

While we were discussing this, a light suddenly appeared outside the single house nearby, and we could see a man carry a lantern out to the beach and hang it on a tree. He then went back into the darkened house. Although we had no instructions regarding such matters, we
took it upon ourselves to enforce the blackout to which we ourselves were subject. Onderdonck and I walked over to the house and knocked on the door. A man who was obviously of Japanese ancestry opened the door a few inches and looked at us, a dim light glowing behind him in the house. We asked him the reason for the lantern on the tree, but he gave no reply, just stared at us as if wondering where we had come from so suddenly. We told him to take it down immediately. Without a word, he took down the lantern, carried it into the house, and closed the door.

When we got back to Eddie, he had taken down the BC-scope. We would go back to the CP and recheck our instructions, he said. He asked me to go with him this time. When we arrived, Lt. Jay D. Vanderpool pointed out on a map the desired location, on the nose of a ridge that jutted out about the middle of Kaneohe Bay's shore line, between Libbyville (now called Kahaluu) and Heeia. It was about four miles from our first spot.

None of us three had eaten since the apples and roast beef in the dispersal area, so we felt our way around the blacked-out bivouac until we found the kitchen tent. Supper had been served while we were gone, and there was nothing left but coffee. George Kimball, hopping back and forth across a torrent of muddy water running through the middle of his work area, filled our canteen cups with hot black coffee, and we stood out under the dripping guava trees and drank it gratefully. Then we were off again, blundering down the road with the doubtful aid of the command car's slitted blue blackout lights.

A narrow paved road rounded the nose of our OP hill, and beside it we again concealed the car. Then we climbed up to the military crest of the point and set up the BC-scope. We had no entrenching shovels, shelter halves, or blankets for protection from the rain and the wet ground. Our post was just where we flopped down beside the BC-scope. I extended the aluminum antenna of the notoriously inadequate SCR-194 radio and managed to contact the CP to let them know we had arrived.

Kaneohe Bay was totally dark, all the marker buoy lights having been extinguished for security reasons. Across the bay, buildings were still smoldering at the Kaneohe Naval Air Station, and a narrow path of
light from that source shimmered on the water to the foot of our hill. By chance, our base point (a point on which our batteries would register to obtain accurate firing data and from which they could transfer fire to any targets we might locate for them), the tip of a small island in the bay, lay in that path of light; otherwise we could not have seen it. We could see nothing else, except that once during the evening we saw flashes through the clouds over the Koolau Mountains and heard heavy firing from the direction of Pearl Harbor. I heard later that this was our own antiaircraft batteries firing at planes coming in to Ford Island from the American carrier
Enterprise.
Several were shot down.

On a schedule of two hours on and four off, Bylotas took the first watch of the night. Onderdonck and I lay down to sleep on the wet ground. At 0200 hours, Bylotas woke me up and I went on duty. I heard boat engines down in the bay at about 0230 and soon made out that several craft were moving about in the darkness. I could only think of one explanation for them: they had to be enemy landing boats assembling, preparing to put troops ashore at daybreak. I awakened Bylotas, and he agreed that it sounded mighty suspicious. As we talked, Ernett woke up and the three of us discussed it.

Although the 25th Division had three direct support artillery battalions, of which our own 89th was one, it then had only two infantry regiments, the 27th, Wolfhounds, and the 35th, Cactus. The third regiment, which the 89th was supposed to support, was a Hawaiian National Guard regiment, and it had not been fielded. Thus, ours was a field artillery battalion with no close combat troops in front of it. If the enemy had come in at Kaneohe Bay that morning—and missed the few shot-up sailors and Marines at the naval air station—their welcom ing committee would have consisted of Bylotas, Onderdonck, and Kerns—backed, of course, by the eight British 75s of the 89th's two light batteries. We agreed that in such event we would remain in position and adjust artillery fire on them until it appeared they were about to cut us off from retreat, then we would withdraw along the ridge toward Btry C, using our small arms whenever we could. I was glad for the 140 BAR cartridges I carried in seven heavy magazines in my ammo belt.

I had been able to communicate with the battalion fire direction
center (FDC) and inform them of the boat engines. They calmly said, “Roger. Keep us informed.” Meanwhile, they twice relayed to us very interesting but unverified (and later proven false) reports of enemy landings, one at Waimanalo Bay to our right, the other near Kahuku Point to our left. That was enough to keep us on our toes.

One of the boat engines sounded much larger than the others, and as we sat talking we heard it come in very close to the beach just below us. Then, shockingly, a searchlight came on and began sweeping the shoreline directly below our OP. I worked the bolt on my BAR and drew down on that light. Another second and I'd have blasted it, but Eddie said, “No, no! Don't fire until we check it with the CP.”

I fumed and fussed but called the CP. “Do not fire,” they replied. “Just keep us informed.”

Then all three of us fumed and fussed. The light went out and the unseen boat moved slowly away.

A short time later, probably about 0400, we saw two long boats slide slowly into view in the streak of light from the burning hangars. Just beyond them was our base point, from which we could easily and quickly transfer fire. They were heading toward the beach, side by side, and our imaginations extended them into a long line of troop-laden landing craft moving toward us through the darkness. Bylotas, certain that this time we'd get fire, dictated a fire mission to me and I relayed it to the FDC. The response was, “Roger. We will not fire at this time. Keep us informed.” Were Bylotas, Onderdonck, and Kerns going to have to defend Oahu's northeastern coast without even artillery support? It had begun to look that way to us, and we were highly teed off.

At last, gray dawn began to herald a new day, Monday, 8 December 1941. As the light spread over Kaneohe, we started to see them. Just as we had suspected, there they were, dozens of Japanese landing boats scattered over the bay. Again we cranked up the radio to send a fire mission. Surely they would give us fire now!

But wait—just a minute—those look like—oh, hell! They were U.S. Navy PBY Catalina amphibious patrol bombers that had been dispersed about the bay for better security from any further Japanese attacks. During the night, as we learned, Navy people in small boats had been
moving about the bay, servicing the Catalinas in preparation for patrols to be flown on Monday. Lacking the usual navigation aids, one crew had become disoriented and had used its spotlight to scan the beach for a moment. It was then that I had almost gone to war with our own Navy.

After daylight, Onderdonck, a big former merchant seaman from Galveston, and I went looking for food and drink. Without using our truck to gad about or go to the battery—which would have been the sensible thing, though we did not then feel at liberty to do so—we could find only green bananas and warm Coca-Cola, which we purchased from a roadside vendor near our position. We carried that loot to our aerie, and that's all we had to eat and drink on Monday and Tuesday.

On that Monday, Capt. “Nick” Carter's Btry B of our battalion pulled one of its howitzers out of position and took it down to Waimanalo Bay, where it was bore-sighted on the periscope of a Japanese miniature submarine that had become stranded on a reef. But, according to Lt. Philip Grimes, one of the battery officers, orders to fire were never received. The submarine's crew of two abandoned it. One of them drowned in the surf. The other, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, was captured by personnel from nearby Bellows Field, becoming the first POW taken by the United States in that war. He was the sole survivor of the ten young officers who manned five midget subs that took part in the Pearl Harbor attack. The Navy salvaged the submarine and it toured the continental United States in a war-bond sales campaign.
³

I remember the men discussing an alleged argument between Colonel Bledsoe and an Army Air Force officer at Bellows who wanted us to hold fire and let his people bomb the sub. By the time the argument ended, the whole affair was over. However, on 31 January 1942 one of the 89th's OPs reported two submarines off Manana (Rabbit) Island, and the AAF marked their location with flares. Btry B then fired twenty rounds, the first ever against the enemy by the 89th. Effect, if any, on the submarines was not determined.

About 2100 hours on Tuesday evening, the long-awaited telephone line and observation team from Btry C finally arrived and relieved us on the OP. They told us we were to go to Btry C for the rest of the night, then return to HQ Btry on Wednesday morning. We drove back to the
highway, then found a narrow gravel road that led a half mile or so back toward the mountain wall to a patch of woods in which, we had been told, was Btry C's position. We were met by the first sergeant, the only man we actually saw that night. He told us, apologetically, that there was no way we could get anything to eat or drink until morning. He said that the battery commander (BC) was asleep in his tent and had posted outside it four guards, who would have no relief during the night. Two cooks were permitted to sleep until 0400 hours, at which time they would start preparing breakfast. Everyone else was out on the defense perimeter and required to be awake and alert all night. Only he, the first sergeant, was permitted to move about. He told us we could choose to either sleep in our vehicle or join his men on the perimeter and said it was rumored that a group of sailors from a sunken Japanese ship had made their way ashore and were operating as a guerrilla force, making sneak attacks against American units and installations. It was another completely unfounded tale, of course, but it was apparently a nerveshattering fact to the Btry C commander. That particular officer did not long remain in a command position.