Chapter 25
“Day of Infamy”
Sunday, December 7th, 1941
In
my dream I was lying on my back in my grandma’s back yard in Bona,
Missouri. I was near the row of
hollyhocks and sweet peas along the kitchen garden fence and there were a
couple of big yellow and black bumblebees buzzing around the flowers. Every once in a while, one of them would
swoop close, annoying me when I was trying to sleep.
Suddenly
I woke and became aware that I was not in the Ozarks but in the barracks, lit
by the morning sun, at Kaneohe Bay. The
bumblebees were airplanes diving and snarling overhead and past the barracks
windows. The man in the bunk next to
mine was sitting up in bed craning his neck.
I
rolled over, still annoyed. “What in the
hell is going on out there? Sunday
morning is a helluva time to be out flying!”
My
shipmate shook his head, “Dunno—got a glimpse of one of them and it was a khaki
colored fighter plane. Must be the Army
out on maneuvers again with a mock attack.”
I
rolled back over. “Well, I wish they
would take their noisy damn maneuvers somewhere else and let a fellow sleep!”
Just
then someone in the day room looking northeast toward the hangars called out, “Hey,
they sure are making their maneuvers real—someone has set fire to a barrel of
oil or something down by the hangar!
Lots of smoke coming up.”
Now
wide awake, I got out of my bunk clad in just my skivvies, and walked to the
day room. A huge column of black smoke
was boiling up from the ramp area and drifting west toward Kailua. Others came and crowded around the windows.
“Looks
like a helluva big barrel of oil to me,” I commented.
There
was suddenly an inexplicable silence and an air of apprehension in the
room. Just then a snarling airplane came
diving down across the officers’ country on the hill and banked low over the Ad
building where the color guard was just forming for morning colors. It was a single-seat fighter with a radial
engine and streamlined plexiglass cockpit enclosure. It had a tapering tail and wing and was painted
olive green on top and grey on the bottom.
Both the wing and fuselage bore large solid red circles and there was a
band of color around the aft fuselage.
Someone
called out, “Hey, ain’t that a Jap insignia?”
An
aggrieved voice answered with a snort as if unwilling to believe they were
Japanese, “Naw, them is those old Army P-40s with radial engines—think they
call them P-36s. They are the Reds for
maneuvers. Pretty soon the Blues will be
here to chase them away.”
The
fighter that banked past pulled up into a wingover then dived back toward the
hangar area. We watched in horror as
tracers reached out from it toward our parked airplanes.
“Army,
hell,” someone shouted, “THEM’S JAPS! WE
GOT US A WAR!”
WAR—the word sent a shiver up my
spine. I froze where I was for a minute
and watched on of our new PBYs burst into flame and add to the smoke now
pouring up in greater quantity. The
whole group turned and surged toward our lockers for our clothes.
As
I hurriedly pulled on dungarees, shirt, and shoes I had another Somnumbing thought—my brother Richard would
be down there at the hangar just finishing third shift. It was still five minutes short of colors at
0800. We had been hit ten minutes
before.
The
barracks was a scene of confusion as excited voices called out and men
scrambled to get some clothes on. I
grabbed a white hat, slammed my locker door, and raced toward the head and the
back door. Someone got a hold of an arm
and shouted, “Don’t go out there, dummy,--they are shooting up the place!”
I
yanked my arm free, “Gotta go find my brother—he’s down at the hangar!”
As
I slammed through the double doors someone was still shouting, “Frieze! Frieze!
Come back here, you knot head!”
I
leaped down the three steps from the breezeway between barracks buildings just
as another fighter dived on the area with its machine guns spitting tracers
uncomfortably close. I hit the coarse
grass and red dirt, but the pilot’s attention was on a car speeding down the
street toward the hangars. I did not see
if he hit it—I as trying to burrow into the ground.
The
enemy plane pulled up and headed out over the bay as I leaped up and ran full
tilt down the street. The noise was
abating as the several airplanes that we soon learned were the new Japanese
Zeros, all pulled away and headed out toward Chris Holmes Island to form up to
leave.
I
pounded down the street past the mess hall and around the corner past the fire
house. When I came into view of the
parking ramp, it was a shambles. Under the
pall of black smoke, I could see PBYs already down on the ground burning fiercely. Near the first one, I skidded to a halt and
watched as the aluminum skin burned like tissue paper. In the intense heat, a solid aluminum propeller
blade curled over as if it were made of wax.
The heat on my face was like a blast furnace.
A
combination of sweat and tears poured down my face as I raised my fists to the
sky and shouted insanely, “You bastards—you miserable stinking bastards!”
The
noise of the airplanes was receding as I continued on toward the hangar beyond
the smoke. There I began to meet men
straggling away from the hangar toward the sick bay and barracks. Some of them walked as if in a trance. One man was supporting another whose dangling
arm dripped bright red blood on the pavement.
I scanned each face for a sight of my brother. Among them was one of our ordnancemen. He was shirtless—I recall that he had several
tattoos on his arms and chest—and was carrying a 03.06 Springfield rifle. His eyes were fixed straight ahead and his
face expressionless.
I
caught his arm and called him by name, “Have you seen my brother? Have you seen my brother Dick Frieze?!”
The
man was obviously in shock. He looked at
me with vacant eyes, pulled his arm free, and walked on without a word in
return. I proceeded toward the hangar
though the smoke scanning the people moving about for a sign of my brother when
a voice haled me. It was a CPO with a
group of men trying to push one of the airplanes not yet on fire away from one
that was buring furiously. “You
there! Bear a hand!”
I
joined the group, putting my shoulder to the wing strut. We had gotten the big airplane a few yards
away from the fire when a hand fell on my shoulder and, with a feeling of
relief, I heard a familiar voice.
“Hey,
Bub, where were you when the shit hit the fan—sacked out?”
It
was Dick. Some of the tension went out
of me when I found he was not hurt.
