On
November 26th 1941 Hawaii suddenly went on a war alert. Scuttlebutt had it that the Secretary of War had
sent out a “war warning” message.
Working hours were extended to 1600 (4 PM). We put ramp sentries on our neatly lined up
airplanes to guard against sabotage. We
were also ordered to fly evening patrols with the airplanes fully armed for the
first time. We had ammunition for our
machine guns and under the wings that were two five-hundred-pound contact bombs
and two 375-pound depth charges, all armed.
We simply raised an eyebrow when Lt. Clark informed us that our orders
were to report, attack, and sink anything in the Hawaiian Defense Area flying a
Japanese flag.
(In
retrospect, those evening patrols would not have been effective even if the
Japanese fleet had been approaching from the direction we searched. Our flight path in each sector—and we did not
have enough airplanes to cover the whole 360 degrees—was 350 miles out, thirty miles
across and return. A simple time and distance
calculation shows that, had one PBY been flying directly at Admiral Nagumo’s
fleet on a patrol limited to 350 miles out, the PBY would have returned back fifty
miles short of the point where Nagumo would have had to be in order to race in
and launch his airplanes 250 miles out at dawn.)
We
on 11-P-11 flew two of the evening patrols during the last week of
November. We saw nothing but broaching
whales and thousands of square miles of empty ocean.
Also
during that last week in November, VP-11 was supplied with kits of parts to
install self-sealing fuel cells in the port gasoline tanks of the
airplanes. They were neoprene rubber
cells with a core material that would seal any bullet holes the wing might
collect in battle. We were also
furnished kits of armor plate for installation on the fifty caliber machine
guns, the back of the pilots’ seats and behind the tail gun position in the
tunnel compartment. Special crews were
formed and I wound up on the second shift evening crew. Dick was less fortunate—he was assigned to
the third shift crew that would work midnight to 0800. Tropical working hours were no more. We were to work seven days a week until all
the airplanes had been modified. We were
girding for the war that everyone felt was inevitable.
Another
event of that fateful week was that on Thursday, December 4th, Ensign
Foss notified me that my examination packet for the Annapolis prep school had
arrived. It was to be an eight-hour
examination under his supervision. He
said we would schedule it for Monday, December 8th. In the meantime, he had said nothing to
anyone and would keep the packet locked in his wooden desk in the squadron
offices. My heart sand and I was almost
jumping for joy. Glover was the leading
petty officer of my second shift crew and he kept shaking his head at the way I
bucked rivets for the armor plates on 11-P-4 until midnight—whistling cheerfully
and smiling or grinning the whole time.
“Damn,
young Frieze,” Glover finally said. “You
look like a cat with canary feathers in its teeth! What the hell has got into you?”
I
just shook my head and grinned wider, “Nothin’, Glover, just feeling good, that’s
all.”
He
shrugged, shook his head again, and pulled the trigger on the riveting gun.
Earlier
that week I had received a letter from Elaine in which she told me that two of
my VHS classmates would be in Honolulu with the Willamette University football
team to play the University of Hawaii team on Saturday, December 6th. I wangled special liberty on Friday the 5th
and went into town in the evening. The
WU team was staying at the Moana Hotel in Waikiki.
It
was the usual peaceful Hawaii evening.
The coconut palms lining the boulevard waved in a soft evening
breeze. The sidewalk lei stands near the
Royal Hawaiian filled the air with the delicate odor of pikake and ginger
blossoms. In the fading sunset there was
the usual air of tranquility and no hint of the danger that was heading toward
us from the vast reaches of the North Pacific.
The
football players were not allowed out of the hotel after supper so I visited
the two of them from VHS in their room, a corner room overlooking the beach and
the ocean. They had not been close friends
of mine (I no longer recall their names), but we visited for a while. They duly admired my crisp white uniform and
I asked about mutual friends at home.
During the conversation one of them wanted to know why there were so
many servicemen on the streets of Honolulu.
I
recall my answer clearly, and the two of them were to quote it in Vancouver
when they finally got back stateside. It
was really just a bit of bravado, “Hey, we’re sitting on a powder keg out here,
boys, and one of these days someone is liable to light the fuse!”
They
just laughed (and I joined them). We had
no inkling that two days later we would be in a shooting war and they would be
walking beach patrol as volunteers to assist the Coast Guard and Army while
they waited for transportation home. A
Japanese attack on Hawaii could not have been more inconceivable to us or,
indeed, to anyone. We were sure that if the
Japanese pulled anything it would be somewhere in the Far East.
Since
the football players were confined to the hotel for the night, I wished them
luck in the game the next day (I do not recall who won that Saturday), said
goodbye and wandered off to the Waikiki Tavern for a couple of drinks before I
caught the “Red Peril” back over the Pali to Kaneohe.
On
Saturday afternoon, since I had the duty that weekend, I again worked on the
second shift ground crew on airplane 11-P-4 in the hangar. The armor plate installation ahd been
completed. We drained all the gasoline
out of the big wing fuel tanks and ventilated them in preparation for installation
of self-sealing cells in the port tank.
It
was not an easy job. The big black
rubber fuel cells had to be collapsed and worked into the integral fuel tanks
through small manholes barely large enough for a man to get through worked into
position, then joined together with rubber crossfeed tubes.
We
had all but one of the cells in place when we were relieved at midnight by the third
shift crew who would work until eight on Sunday morning. My brother Richard and his pal Joe Brooks
were on the relieving crew. I recall
that Joe was kidding Dick about a crap game in the head from which they had
just come. Dick had always been a much
better poker player than a crap shooter and he never knew when to drag some
money after two or three good passes. He
had once more gotten on a roll and ran up a pot of two or three hundred
dollars. Instead of dragging a stake, he
shot it all, rolled box cars, and came away broke.
I
went to the barracks, showered, and rolled into my bunk blissfully aware that
the next day was Sunday and I could sleep in late. I would miss morning chow in the mess hall,
but I went happily to sleep anticipating getting up at leisure and wandering
over to ships service for some bacon and eggs.