After the Pearl Harbor Attack

  • Published
  • By Senior Master Sgt. Douglas J. Gillert
SAN ANTONIO (AFPN) --  Dec. 7, 1941: 2nd Lt. Wells Lawrence and his July bride slept soundly in their Wheeler Field, Hawaii, quarters. They'd been at Hickam Field for a big Saturday night party and returned home after midnight.

At 7:55 a.m., sleepy calm turned to wide-awake terror. "A big bang startled me awake, and the window blinds started rattling," Lieutenant Lawrence recalled. "I jumped up and looked out the window. I saw a dive bomber making a run. It had 'rising sun' streaks painted on the wingtips."

Quickly dressing, the Lawrences ran next door. "We shared a duplex with my flight leader, a lieutenant named Wilmont. While we were there," Lieutenant Lawrence said, "a bullet came through the roof and hit the concrete floor, right between my wife and me. We felt sparks on our ankles."

They could hear more bombs exploding. Lieutenant Lawrence wanted to hurry to the flight line and launch his aircraft. Lieutenant Wilmont said to wait until the bombing ceased. When there were no more explosions, the men jumped in Lieutenant Wilmont's car and started toward the flight line. On the way, they picked up Maj. Aaron Tyer, their squadron commander. Despite all the smoke over the flight line, they found their planes unscathed and taxied them to the ammunition bunkers.

"While we were at the bunkers, a Japanese observation plane came over real low," Lieutenant Lawrence said. "The canopy was open and we could see the guy looking out both sides. Somebody with a machine gun up toward headquarters started shooting at him. Major Tyer said, 'Hey, Lawrence, give me your .45.' I gave it to him and he started shooting. Somebody hit the plane. It started to smoke and augured in."

Shortly thereafter, four Wheeler pilots launched a flight of P-36s. Unfortunately for an eager Lawrence, an equally eager Lt. Gordon Sterling was piloting Lawrence's plane.

"I found another airplane and took off," Lieutenant Lawrence said. "I was anxious to find somebody -- friend or foe."

Lieutenant Lawrence finally caught up with a P-40 and another P-36, and all three flew toward Hickam Field at 2,500 feet, just below the clouds. At Hickam, they saw burning buildings and aircraft, so they headed north around the island searching for enemy activity.

Unsuccessful in their search and low on fuel, they returned to Wheeler. There, Lieutenant Lawrence learned that of the first group that took off from Wheeler, two didn't return.

"Lew Sanders got shot down, and so did Sterling, who'd taken my plane." Lieutenant Lawrence spent the remainder of Dec. 7 patrolling the coastal area, but he never did encounter the enemy. That evening, he returned to Wheeler, ready for a fight.

"Following the attack, most of us were just plain mad," Lieutenant Lawrence said. "We'd been caught flatfooted, and we wanted revenge."

Transferred to the Solomon Islands in April 1943, Lieutenant Lawrence finally was able to strike back. As a P-38 pilot, he participated in numerous missions against the Japanese. On a subsequent tour in the Solomons, he commanded the 339th Fighter Squadron. The former commander, Maj. John Mitchell, had led the mission that shot down Japanese Admiral Yamamoto. "We learned the Japanese had a bounty on Mitchell, so he was reassigned out of the theater," Lieutenant Lawrence said.

At the time Lieutenant Lawrence was awakened from his slumber Dec. 7 by enemy dive bombers, Ray Perry and Walter Thompson began experiencing the terror of the attack on Hickam Field.

A driver for an Army quartermaster colonel, Mr. Perry was attempting to reach Hickam to help transport wounded to Tripler Army Medical Center.

"I drove down the railroad track, because both highways leading there were impassable," Mr. Perry said.

"I could see the fires before I got there. Hangar 35 -- the Hawaii Air Depot -- was one of the first buildings hit. Then they hit another hangar filled with airplanes, dropping a bomb right through the roof. Most of the other airplanes were on the flight line and were easy targets.

"Our boys set up machine guns on tables and fired them out the windows along the hangar line. They did the best they could.

"Just past the barracks we turned left at the fire station, parked between two hangars and started loading the wounded.

"Somebody hollered, 'Here they come again!' We ran inside a hangar and stayed there until the noise died down. Out of 15 guys trapped outdoors, only three survived the attack."

Because he lived near the main gate, Mr. Thompson reached Hickam before Mr. Perry. A civilian worker at the Hawaii Air Depot since his Nov. 14, 1941, discharge, he shared a home with three other bachelors.

"A guy visiting with us was in the service," Mr. Thompson said. "He thought he'd better get back to his unit, so two of us drove him out.

"Entering the base, we saw cars that had been strafed. One was burning. After dropping our passenger at his barracks, we started home. But we thought, 'Where are we going? This is our base being attacked.' So we turned around and came back.

"We entered a barracks, and one of our buddies was lying there all blown to hell. We got a blanket and covered him. About then, three more airplanes swooped down hangar row, strafing the street. We hid under an old wooden building across from the hangars. It was a shoe repair shop, and half our squadron was hiding there."

After the attack, Mr. Thompson and others joined a fire brigade and later went to the Hickam clinic to check on a neighbor who was an engineer there. At the clinic, "bodies were lined up everywhere, and trucks were hauling them to a morgue downtown," he said.

Mr. Thompson's outfit had been receiving and maintaining B-17s in the months before the attack. Another flight of the bombers was due to arrive that morning.

"I don't know if it helped the Japanese or not," Mr. Thompson said, "but a Honolulu radio station played Hawaiian music all night as a beacon for the B-17s."

Note: this article reprinted from Airman magazine, December 1991.