TuzigootJournal: Pearl Harbor Feedback

Got some feedback from our Pearl Harbor posting:

Frances Sumner, Valerie Easterling’s mother, grew up in Hawaii. She wrote:

I was eleven months old when PH was attacked. My dad worked there as a machinist. He was called in during the attack and he and his brother dodged strafing by Japanese planes while going into the Navy Yard. Frances

I responded: Wow, that's interesting. Did your Dad talk to you much about that day and the aftermath?

Frances replied: Yes, my dad talked to me about it. I also have memories of scary things happening although I didn't understand what it was. Also, we have a veteran friend in Honolulu who was there as a welder. My dad was a machinist. Dad's good friend lives in Calif. They met when dad grabbed his brother and jumped over a barrier to escape the Japanese bullets. Dad landed right on top of him. My uncle wrote a history of the whole period that is kept at the University of Hawaii, I think it is. My cousin got copies somehow. I remember growing up in Honolulu during the war. We went back to Kauai afterwards.

If you're still in Honolulu, you can find Booth Road where I lived exiting off the Pali Road. We lived almost at the end of the road on the top of the mountain. My mother sat on the stairs crying while she watched the Japanese planes. Before she died I asked her about a memory I had of kissing her and trying to get her to stop crying. She was surprised that I remembered that. There's more but those were scary times. Frances

My brother, Lael, corrects and expands on (my version of) family history:

Enjoyed reading about Pearl Harbor where my first 2 ships were homeported and Sheila lived for 2 years. I was deployed to the South China Sea or the Mainland most of the time. Heather was born at the Tripler Army Hospital; the big pink hospital on the hill.

To add to and correct your reference to your personal connection to Pearl Harbor; Dad was principal of Montezuma Kansas schools on 7 December 1941. [I said NW Oklahoma.] Believe he had 5 teachers under his command. … Dad wrote a letter to his father stating his intention to enter the military despite his deferment status as a teacher. It was March 1942 that he went to Kansas City for a military physical. There he wrote a post card to Mom back in Oklahoma stating something like "..WE HAVE JOINED THE NAVY." I recall a conversation with Mom that led me to believe from her body language that she never liked the postcard. Anyway, you were gestating by March. … Seems like Dad and Mom made the decision to create you before Dad got himself killed in the war. I seemed to be the result of the postwar celebration [Lael was born in March, 1946.].

… You were born in Waukegan Illinois because the Navy makes good decisions sometimes. The program Dad signed up for was the Gene Tunney physical training course to make chief petty officers out of school teachers and coaches to train recruits. … One of the few personal details Dad shared with me was that the 90 day Gene Tunney training program was the toughest thing he had ever done. Gene Tunney was a champion boxer and was given the rank of Commander and tasked with the development and implementation of the program. A program that assigns people already trained in educating young people to continue what they did best in the Navy was a brilliant solution to the problem of building a navy rapidly.

Here are some Pearl Harbor pictures I found on the internet:

This one is of the Arizona engulfed in flames, going down.

And here's the USS Arizona Memorial with the ship's hull visible below.

Here's a story on the USS Oklahoma and a picture:

"On 3 March, 1943, the capsized USS Oklahoma (BB-37) was slowly but inexorably torqued to an angle of 30 degrees. Old streetcar motors were mounted to a dock on Ford Island, then connected to the special towers on the ship by a series of steel cables and pulleys. "Old Okie" as she was known to her crew, was raised, then stabilized, then raised again, in measured steps, until she was finally vertical, then pumped out and made seaworthy. She had rolled more than 90 degrees and was being raised primarily to get her out of the way. Built in 1912, she was too old to bother restoring, and worse, she had been on the bottom of the harbor so long that everything was corroded beyond repair, so she never saw action again. She was made watertight and soon after the War, the battle wagon went on her last voyage - being towed across the Pacific for salvage. She sank during the trip.