As
the day wore on, other men wandered by. There
were many rumors, most of which later proved to be false. Japanese cane cutters in the fields out by
Ewa had cut huge arrows in the cane fields pointing at Pearl Harbor to guide
the attackers. A Japanese milk truck
driver had been caught by the Marines on the base at Kaneohe with a radio
beacon hidden in a milk can. Japanese troop
ships had been sighted off Kauai and invasion could be expected. Japanese troops dressed in dungarees had
landed up the coast by the Mormon Temple and were working in our direction. The ARAZONA had blown up and was lost with all
hands (the only rumor that day that was true!).
None
of us gave a thought to the fact that we had not had breakfast until a truck
pulled up and mess cooks gave us each a ham and cheese sandwich, an orange, and
a warm bottle of Coca Cola. We wolfed
them down hungrily.
A
little later another truck backed up to the bomb crater and we were ordered to
load our guns and ammo onto the truck.
Expecting invasion, we were to set up a “strongpoint” for a last stand
on Hawaiiloa Hill. We were the front
line. Other men were digging pits all
over the hillside behind us.
We
were beyond the station nursery. Nearby
there was a gardener’s shed that proved a godsend. It was padlocked but we forced the lock. Inside there were shovels, a mattock, and—best
of all—a heavy workbench with a vise at one end. It would be ideal for mounting the 50
caliber.
All
we knew about machine gun nests was what we had seen in old World War
movies. We dug a semi-circular pit into
the red earth at the base of the hill and dragged the workbench to it with the
vise on the inner end. In the shed we
found some empty five-gallon tins and a bunch of empty fertilizer sacks. They made great sandbags. We shoveled them full of the red dirt and
built a chest-high parapet covering the end of the workbench. Dick was to man the machine gun (by then he
considered it his own and fussed over it as if it were a baby) and Glover and I
would take positions with the rifles on each side of the workbench. We laid bandoleers of rifle ammunition and
the Springlfields ready on the parapet.
Dick had a new case of ammunition and some loaded spare magazines for
the machine gun.
As
we finished, an hour or so before sunset, the squadron executive officer came
by and approved our work. He reached
into the back seat of his car and produced a bottle of Old Crow bourbon
whiskey.
“Men,”
he said “we do not have any first aid kits to distribute. This is the best I can do—courtesy of the
officers’ club. Let me warn you,
though. It is strictly for emergency medical
purposes. I’ll have the crow of any man
caught drunk and he will go to sea on a destroyer!”
Dick
took the bottle and placed it under the workbench with our spare
ammunition. Meanwhile the exec was surveying
the hillside which teemed with men digging gun pits. A look of dismay came over his face. “Damn,” he said, “those white uniforms are
going to make great targets in the dark! Need to
do something about that.”
He
drove off in the car. Thirty minutes later
a truck pulled up nearby and two sailors unloaded garbage cans full of strong
black coffee. We were instructed to pull
off our whites, dip them in the coffee, put them on wet, and roll in the red
dirt. It made camouflage that blended
nicely with the dirt of the hillside.
Another
truck came by before dark and distributed a blanket to each man. It had also been distributing some World War vintage
doughboy steel helmets but was down to one left. It was tossed to Dick. He looked at it and tossed it to Glover. Gloved snorted, “I don’t want that piss pot!”
and tossed it to me. I looked at the ominous
sky, thought about the bullets that had been flying around that morning and
might be that night, and put it on.
The
cooks had not forgotten us. At dusk a truck
pulled up under the big tree that was our command headquarters and unloaded two
more garbage cans full of beef stew. There
was another of fresh coffee. Our supper
consisted of a paper cup of stew each which we had to eat with our fingers.
After
our evening chow, such as it was, we settled down to watch in our gun pit. There was much talk about invasion. We agreed that two shiploads of soldiers
could easily take over Oahu with all the confusion and lack of
preparedness. Glover’s comment was, “Shee-it,
boys, if it come at us tonight, tomorrow we will either be dead or we will be
pulling rickshaws over the Pali!”
We
also agreed that, if the Japanese were coming, they would not come up the
narrow peninsula from the land side.
They would more likely come ashore right on our ramp. Outposts had been established down near the
hangars to give warning. Otherwise, the
base had essentially been abandoned and we were dug in for what might be a last
stand.
