Everday Heroes

In my memory, the next ten days were an exhausting blur of long patrol flights sometimes all day and sometimes all night.  I had been re=assigned as second mechanic and gunner on Gibson’s crew.  When we were not flying we spend long hours maintaining the airplane.  Whenever I was off duty I simply fell onto that cot in the corner of the hangar and went promptly to sleep.  On Christmas Eve we had one of the hunter/killer night patrols.  The next day Gibson roused me around noon.

“Hey, knucklehead,” he said.  “you are sleeping Christmas Day away!  They are serving Christmas dinner at the field kitchen.”

I took my mess kit, ate a Christmas dinner of turkey, dressing, and all the trimmings—which I barely taste, then hit the sack again because we were scheduled for patrol the next morning.  We continued to find nothing out there except empty sky and ocean.

Replacements started coming in—new men and some PBY squadrons from stateside to supplement the few airplanes we were flying around the clock.  VP-22 got new personnel and on December 30^th my temporary duty on Ford Island ended and I reported back to VP-11 at Kaneohe.

During my absence, most of the wreckage at Kaneohe had been cleaned up.  The shattered and burned PBY-5s on the ramp had been cut up and sent back stateside as scrap.  The bombed and burned hangar had been cleared and re-construction had begun.  Meanwhile, we operated out of a small hangar located between the bombed No. 1 and the still incomplete No. 2 hangars.

PBY squadron VP-71 had arrived at Kaneohe.  We were to furnish airplane maintenance and relief flight crews while jVP-11 waited for its own airplanes.  The destroyed “country club of the Pacific” was slowly becoming operational again.  I was once more assigned as second mechanic on my old 11-P-11 flight crew with Davenport and with Clark and Willis as pilots.

Richard, Glover, and I spent New Year’s Eve in the station beer garden quietly sipping Acme beer while they brought me up to date.  The senior pilots, most of whom had been ensigns, had been promoted to lieutenants.  Most of the Aps, including our friend Bobby Hines and Max Ricketts, had been given temporary commissions and were not lieutenants junior grade.  The only enlisted pilot not given a commission was a screwball NAP first class named Miller.  His record was not good and he had a reputation for raising hell and getting in trouble with the Shore Patrol on liberty.  Instead of a temporary commission they made him a CPO.  Glover chuckled when related the reason that was given why Miller was not commissioned with the rest.  The selection board simply informed Miller that an officer was a gentleman by act of Congress and they could find no evidence that he was a gentleman!  He was assigned as third pilot on Lt. Clark’s flight crew.

News about our shipmates who had been casualties was depressing.  Our VP-11 dead included AOM3c Buckley, AMM1c Formoe, Ensign Foss, AMM3c Manning, seaman Robinson (an newly arrived recruit), Ensign Smartt who had been the JOOD relieving Foss, and S1c Luther Weaver, Dick’s parachute loft buddy.

VP-11, VP-12, and VP-14 at Kaneohe had lost a total of eighteen dead plus Isaac Lee, a civilian contractor’s employee.  Kaneohe wounded had number sixty-six. 

Our leading chief, “Duke” Byron who had been hit in the belly had been taken to the hospital at Kaneohe on the 7^th and a Japanese surgeon had saved his life by removing four or five feet of intestine.  Duke was on the way stateside on a hospital ship and would live.  Our leading yeoman, Ken Nash, had lost an arm.  Joe Crowder, a radioman, had lost an eye.  Most of the many other wounds were relatively minor and the wounded had been or would be returned to duty.

Dick and Glover also related the system that had been set up to recognize acts of heroism on December 7^th.  Few officers had been present in the ramp and hangar area and there was no record of individual acts.  The base commander had requested that names of those who had performed in an outstanding fashion be submitted so that commendations could be written up.

“Kee-rist,” Glover had said, “who the hell wants a medal for just doing what we are trained to do?!  There wasn’t any heroes down there—just a scared bunch of knotheads that were mad and trying to fight back!  Hell, they are recommending John Finn of VP-14 for a Congressional Medal of Honor because he stood out on the open ramp with a fifty-caliber and kept shooting after he got a bullet in his arm!  Hell, we all saw old Joe Brooks out there holding a thirty-caliber on his shoulders while someone fired it—the hot barrel burned the skin off his hands.

“You know that radioman, Perry?  Scuttlebutt is that he turned in his own name—probably get a Navy Cross out of it.  Claimed he was out there firing a Springfield rifle and was sure he hit that one we shot down.  Only time I got a glimpse of Perry, he had a rifle all right, but he also was under a bomb truck!  Hell, everybody on the ramp were pumping bullets into the sucker when he came back.  Nobody shot him down—everyone did!”

“Well,” I said, “I know for a fact that it was Dick cut open his belly tank.  I saw his tracers hit and I saw the fuel start streaming out.  Why didn’t you turn in Dick’s name?  That alclad skin wasn’t Any protection—we might as well have been out in the open.”

Richard had been sitting quietly sipping his beer but he jumped on my statement, “BULL—ain’t no one turning in my name for no damn medal!!  Like Glover said, you don’t get a medal for just doing what we are trained to do!  I don’t know how we got out of it without getting hit—we were a dumb couple of country boys to set that gun up in an airplane that wouldn’t catch fire so they just kept on strafing us.  Let the Finns and the Perrys have their tinware—we ain’t no heroes and we don’t want no phony medals.

The three of us got liberty the next day, took the big baby blue LaSalle, drove in to Honolulu, and got more than a little bit drunk.

[Uncle Dick’s children and I have always known our fathers were heroes regardless of what they said about December 7^th.  Yes, they did what they were trained to do, but Uncle Dick was an expert marksman and his younger brother kept feeding him ammunition that horrific day.  No one will ever be able to tell us different.  Richard S. Frieze shot down that Zero.]

First War Patrol

Chapter 26

December 1941

The thirty of us from Kaneohe were taken by truck to the Pearl Harbor Naval Base where the motor launch would take us to Landing A on Ford Island.  The boat, normall spick and span in grey paint and shined brass works, was filthy with oil and blood from picking up bodies and debris in the oil covered, wreckage strewn waters.

We stared in silent awe as the boat crossed to the island.  The tall tripod mast of the ARIZONA leaned at an angle above the sunken hull of the battleship.  The dull red bottom of the capsized OKLAHOMA was sprinkled with the blue-white flares of cutting torches in the on-going attempt to cut through to men still strapped inside the battered ships, only some of which I could identify—WEST VIRGINIA, CALIFORNIA, TENNESSEE, MARYLAND.

In the big dry-dock in East Loch, the wreckage of the destroyers CASSIN and DOWNES leaned against each other, trapping the battleship PENNYSLVANIA, flagship of the Pacific Fleet, in the damaged dry-dock.  Over beyond Ford Island was the battered bulk of the NEVEDA which had been the only battleship to get under way during the attack.  Under intense dive bombing, NEVADA had been beached on Hospital Point rather than be sunk blocking the narrow entrance to the harbor.  The waters of the bay were covered with a thick scum of oil and pieces of wreckage.  Motor whaleboats were everywhere picking up the flotsam and still occasionally pulling aboard an old covered body.

Not a word was spoken in our group until the boat desposited us at Landing A.  As we debarked onto the wide concrete landing we walked past a row of tarpaulin covered bodies that had been pulled from the bay.  From behind me I heard someone mutter bitterly, “God damn the sons-a-bitches!”

No time was wasted.  We were escorted to our living quarters that were a roped-off corner of the least badly damaged PBY hangar on the island.  Rows of folding cots had been set up.  Since the Ford Island barracks were overflowing with survivors, the corner of that hangar was where we would sleep while maintenance work on airplanes was done.  The windows of the hanglar had been painted black so that work could continue twenty-four hours a day.

As soon as we had deposited our ditty bags (I had brought only a spare suit of dungarees and one white uniform) on a chosen cot, we lined up at a desk near the VP-22 operations office for assignment.  I was assigned to 22-P-6 and was informed that the airplane was on the ramp and was scheduled for evening patrol.

22-P-6 had not come through the attack unscathed.  The fuselage, wing, and tail suraces were peppered with bullet holes.  Those below the waterline had been patched properly by the metalsmiths but those on the upper surfaces simply had fabric patches doped over the holes.

The plane captain on 22-P-6 was a harried second class AMM named Gibson.  His face was grim and there were dark circles under his eyes.  He greeted me warmly because both the original plane captain, a first class, and the third mech had been wounded in the attack and were in the hospital.  He had been promoted to plane captain, I would be second mech, and our third mech was a seaman striker for AMM.

When I commented that Gibson looked bushed, he sighed and said, “Don’t rightly remember when I had some sack time—we worked all day yesterday and last night to get this old bird flyable.”

The pilots came aboard while Gibson and I were finishing our pre-flight checks of the equipment.  All guns were loaded and we were carrying two five hundred pound bombs and two depth charges on the wing racks.  When he found that I had more than fifty hours of flight time, Gibson put me in the mechanics tower for takeoff and the first watch.  He would try to get some sleep when we were airborne.

When I scrambled into the tower, I saw that there were two bullet holes in the instrument panel.  I called them to Gibson’s attention.  “I know,” he said tiredly.  “I checked all the lines behind the panel and they look okay.  Slapped some tape on the holes outside.  Just get “em started!”  He fired up the putt-putt and the instrument panel came alive.

When we taxied out on the oily water of Pearl Harbor, motor whaleboats were still busily clearing debris from the takeoff sea lane on the east side of Ford Island past Battleship Row.  When we were in position, a green flag was waved from the nearest boat and we started our takeoff run.  Just as the airplane came up onto the step I heard a loud thud from somewhere below.  In response to the annunciator light on the panel, I moved the mixture controls from Full Rich to Automatic Rich for climb and maneuver then slid down out of the tower.

In the galley compartment directly below the tower Gibson was standing staring mournfully at a hole in the bottom of the airplane.  We had hit a piece of debris that curled the aluminum skin inward leaving a hole about six inches wide and over a foot long between hull frames.  Through the hole we could see the Naval Hospital passing below as the airplane banked out to sea.

While we were contemplating the damage, the PPC turned the airplane over to the co-pilot and came aft.  He whistled and groaned, “What a hell of a way to start a war—shot up airplane and we knock a hole in the bottom!!”  Will it sink us when we land, Gib?” Gibson sighed and shook his head dolefully.  “Dunno, sir.  Maybe—maybe not if you can land close to the ramp and they get us out of the water in a hurry.  I’ll bend that tin back, dope a bunch of fabric patches on it, and pile on some mattresses for collision mats.”  He sighed again and reached for his tool box as I climbed back into the tower.

That first war patrol was an anti-submarine sweep down between Molokai and Maui where there had been reports of a submarine in the vicinity of Lahaina Roads, the old Navy anchorage off Maui that was used before Pearl Harbor became operational a few years before.  We had also been alerted that all fishing boats and sampans had been ordered to stay in port.  We were to check out any vessel we encountered.  It was rumored that such boats were being used to re-supply enemy submarines.

Gibson finished his makeshift patch of the bottom, caught an hour of sleep in the forward bunk, then came to relieve me in the tower.  I went aft to take position on one of the waist machine guns.  Just as I started aft, the pilots spotted a large fishing boat underway ahead.  Jus as I stepped into the waist compartment and reached for the interphone headphones, the pilot made a low pass past the fishing boat.  Without orders to pen fire, the third mech opened up with the port 50-cal machine gun and raked the vessel from stem to stern.

There had been two men visible on the boat—one on deck and one standing in the cabin hatch.  As fountains of water and splinters from the boat sprayed into the air, the man on the deck went over the side.  The other man ducked back into the cabin.  I grabbed the gunner by the arm and yanked him away from the gun.  The pilot was yelling, “Cease Fire!  CEASE FIRE!” on the interphone.

We circled and came back, our co-pilot calling on the radio for a ship to come out and investigate the fishing boat.  The boat did not seem to be badly damaged.  It had laid to and the man from the cabin pulled his deck hand from the water.  They both stood up and did not appear to be injured.  When we were informed there was a ship on the way we continued our patrol—after the pilot had some very harsh words with the trigger-happy seaman striker.

It was after dark when we approached Pearl Harbor to land.  Gibson and I had placed three bunk mattresses over the makeshift patch, piled on two cases of fifty caliber ammunition for weight and I agreed to sit on top of those when we touched down to try to hold the mattresses in place against the force of the water when the airplane settled down.

I do not recall that pilot’s name but he made a great feather light power landing headed straight for the launching ramp on Ford Island.  Alerted by radio, the beach crew was ready with the big side mounts already in the water.  As the airplane slowed and settled, water poured in all around the mattresses.  Our timing was good—I heard the tail hook clank into place, the tractor on the beach wheeled us around, and the side mounts banged into their sockets.  Our first war patrol was safely over.

First War Patrol

Chapter 26

December 1941

The thirty of us from Kaneohe were taken by truck to the Pearl Harbor Naval Base where the motor launch would take us to Landing A on Ford Island.  The boat, normall spick and span in grey paint and shined brass works, was filthy with oil and blood from picking up bodies and debris in the oil covered, wreckage strewn waters.

We stared in silent awe as the boat crossed to the island.  The tall tripod mast of the ARIZONA leaned at an angle above the sunken hull of the battleship.  The dull red bottom of the capsized OKLAHOMA was sprinkled with the blue-white flares of cutting torches in the on-going attempt to cut through to men still strapped inside the battered ships, only some of which I could identify—WEST VIRGINIA, CALIFORNIA, TENNESSEE, MARYLAND.

In the big dry-dock in East Loch, the wreckage of the destroyers CASSIN and DOWNES leaned against each other, trapping the battleship PENNYSLVANIA, flagship of the Pacific Fleet, in the damaged dry-dock.  Over beyond Ford Island was the battered bulk of the NEVEDA which had been the only battleship to get under way during the attack.  Under intense dive bombing, NEVADA had been beached on Hospital Point rather than be sunk blocking the narrow entrance to the harbor.  The waters of the bay were covered with a thick scum of oil and pieces of wreckage.  Motor whaleboats were everywhere picking up the flotsam and still occasionally pulling aboard an old covered body.

Not a word was spoken in our group until the boat desposited us at Landing A.  As we debarked onto the wide concrete landing we walked past a row of tarpaulin covered bodies that had been pulled from the bay.  From behind me I heard someone mutter bitterly, “God damn the sons-a-bitches!”

No time was wasted.  We were escorted to our living quarters that were a roped-off corner of the least badly damaged PBY hangar on the island.  Rows of folding cots had been set up.  Since the Ford Island barracks were overflowing with survivors, the corner of that hangar was where we would sleep while maintenance work on airplanes was done.  The windows of the hanglar had been painted black so that work could continue twenty-four hours a day.

As soon as we had deposited our ditty bags (I had brought only a spare suit of dungarees and one white uniform) on a chosen cot, we lined up at a desk near the VP-22 operations office for assignment.  I was assigned to 22-P-6 and was informed that the airplane was on the ramp and was scheduled for evening patrol.

22-P-6 had not come through the attack unscathed.  The fuselage, wing, and tail suraces were peppered with bullet holes.  Those below the waterline had been patched properly by the metalsmiths but those on the upper surfaces simply had fabric patches doped over the holes.

The plane captain on 22-P-6 was a harried second class AMM named Gibson.  His face was grim and there were dark circles under his eyes.  He greeted me warmly because both the original plane captain, a first class, and the third mech had been wounded in the attack and were in the hospital.  He had been promoted to plane captain, I would be second mech, and our third mech was a seaman striker for AMM.

When I commented that Gibson looked bushed, he sighed and said, “Don’t rightly remember when I had some sack time—we worked all day yesterday and last night to get this old bird flyable.”

The pilots came aboard while Gibson and I were finishing our pre-flight checks of the equipment.  All guns were loaded and we were carrying two five hundred pound bombs and two depth charges on the wing racks.  When he found that I had more than fifty hours of flight time, Gibson put me in the mechanics tower for takeoff and the first watch.  He would try to get some sleep when we were airborne.

When I scrambled into the tower, I saw that there were two bullet holes in the instrument panel.  I called them to Gibson’s attention.  “I know,” he said tiredly.  “I checked all the lines behind the panel and they look okay.  Slapped some tape on the holes outside.  Just get “em started!”  He fired up the putt-putt and the instrument panel came alive.

When we taxied out on the oily water of Pearl Harbor, motor whaleboats were still busily clearing debris from the takeoff sea lane on the east side of Ford Island past Battleship Row.  When we were in position, a green flag was waved from the nearest boat and we started our takeoff run.  Just as the airplane came up onto the step I heard a loud thud from somewhere below.  In response to the annunciator light on the panel, I moved the mixture controls from Full Rich to Automatic Rich for climb and maneuver then slid down out of the tower.

In the galley compartment directly below the tower Gibson was standing staring mournfully at a hole in the bottom of the airplane.  We had hit a piece of debris that curled the aluminum skin inward leaving a hole about six inches wide and over a foot long between hull frames.  Through the hole we could see the Naval Hospital passing below as the airplane banked out to sea.

While we were contemplating the damage, the PPC turned the airplane over to the co-pilot and came aft.  He whistled and groaned, “What a hell of a way to start a war—shot up airplane and we knock a hole in the bottom!!”  Will it sink us when we land, Gib?” Gibson sighed and shook his head dolefully.  “Dunno, sir.  Maybe—maybe not if you can land close to the ramp and they get us out of the water in a hurry.  I’ll bend that tin back, dope a bunch of fabric patches on it, and pile on some mattresses for collision mats.”  He sighed again and reached for his tool box as I climbed back into the tower.

That first war patrol was an anti-submarine sweep down between Molokai and Maui where there had been reports of a submarine in the vicinity of Lahaina Roads, the old Navy anchorage off Maui that was used before Pearl Harbor became operational a few years before.  We had also been alerted that all fishing boats and sampans had been ordered to stay in port.  We were to check out any vessel we encountered.  It was rumored that such boats were being used to re-supply enemy submarines.

Gibson finished his makeshift patch of the bottom, caught an hour of sleep in the forward bunk, then came to relieve me in the tower.  I went aft to take position on one of the waist machine guns.  Just as I started aft, the pilots spotted a large fishing boat underway ahead.  Jus as I stepped into the waist compartment and reached for the interphone headphones, the pilot made a low pass past the fishing boat.  Without orders to pen fire, the third mech opened up with the port 50-cal machine gun and raked the vessel from stem to stern.

There had been two men visible on the boat—one on deck and one standing in the cabin hatch.  As fountains of water and splinters from the boat sprayed into the air, the man on the deck went over the side.  The other man ducked back into the cabin.  I grabbed the gunner by the arm and yanked him away from the gun.  The pilot was yelling, “Cease Fire!  CEASE FIRE!” on the interphone.

We circled and came back, our co-pilot calling on the radio for a ship to come out and investigate the fishing boat.  The boat did not seem to be badly damaged.  It had laid to and the man from the cabin pulled his deck hand from the water.  They both stood up and did not appear to be injured.  When we were informed there was a ship on the way we continued our patrol—after the pilot had some very harsh words with the trigger-happy seaman striker.

It was after dark when we approached Pearl Harbor to land.  Gibson and I had placed three bunk mattresses over the makeshift patch, piled on two cases of fifty caliber ammunition for weight and I agreed to sit on top of those when we touched down to try to hold the mattresses in place against the force of the water when the airplane settled down.

I do not recall that pilot’s name but he made a great feather light power landing headed straight for the launching ramp on Ford Island.  Alerted by radio, the beach crew was ready with the big side mounts already in the water.  As the airplane slowed and settled, water poured in all around the mattresses.  Our timing was good—I heard the tail hook clank into place, the tractor on the beach wheeled us around, and the side mounts banged into their sockets.  Our first war patrol was safely over.

Monday, December 8th 1941

Monday, December 8^th

 

FDR addressing Congress on December 8th 1941

                                        When I woke, cramped and stiff, and crawled out from under the workbench it was still raining lightly in the first light of dawn.  Dick had covered his beloved machine gun with tarpaper from the gardener’s shed.  Both he and Glover, wrapped in soggy blankets, were asleep sitting in two or three inches of red mud against the back wall.  I stood up and saw no one moving on the hillside.  The invasion had not come.

                                        Dick and Glover came to life.  Glover threw off the wet blanket and shivered.  “I don’t know about you two,” he said, “but I am one certified medical emergency.  Break out the commander’s Old Crow!”

                                        Dick demurred, “Hey, you know what he said!”

                                        “Bull hockey, brother, you think he gonna hand out Old Crow and not expect the seal to be broken after a day like we put in yesterday?!”  He reached under the bench for the bottle and broke the seal.  We passed it around and a pull at it made our muddy, wet, miserable conditions more bearable for the moment.

                                        Just at dawn, the exec cam by again.  I felt a bit guilty about the bottle of booze, but he never mentioned it.  He just told us that the island was quiet and that, hopefuly, the Japanese were not coming back right away.  The carrier ENTERPRISE and all available ships and planes were out combing the seas around Hawaii and had found no sign of the attackers.  He also said that breakfast could be had from a field kitchen that had been set up down behind the Ad building.  (I do not know why the main galley at the mess hall was not in use.)  We could stand down, clean our guns, and get something to eat.

                                        The rain was slackening to mist.  We carried the big 50-cal to the shed where Dick could field strip, dry, and lubricate it out of the rain.  Glover would help him and I, as the junior member of the crew, was elected to go get us some chow.

                                        It would have appeared to an observer that I was an infantryman, not a sailor, as I walked down across the base.  My uniform was solid red mud and coffee stain.  I was wearing the doughboy tin hat cocked at a jaunty angle and had a bandolier of ammunition across my chest.  The Springfield was slung by its strap from my shoulder.

                                        The cooks had a good chow line set up and were offering a full breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee.  I explained that we had three men in an outpost gun pit at the hill.  They provided me stacked containers of everything—enough to feed four or five men—and I trudged back to the shed.  We had another shot of Old Crow apiece then filled our empty bellies.

                                        Before noon, the word was passed that the island was secure and there appeared to be minimum danger that the Japanese would be back in the near future.  We were in stand down, turn in our guns, and assemble with all station personnel in the quadrangle before going to our barracks to clean up.

                                        We probably looked more like a rag tag mob than a military organization when we formed up in the quadrangle.  The base commander, Commander H.H. “Beauty” Martin, addressed us and gave us a concise report of the effects of the attack.  He complimented us on the manner in which we had responded with initiative and courage to the sudden sneak attack.  He stated that President Roosevelt had already addressed a joint session of Congress and asked for a declaration of war against the Empire of Japan.  (It was the speech that labeled December 7^th, 1941 “The Day of Infamy” and would give rise to the war cry “Remember Pearl Harbor”.)  Congress had already approved the declaration and we were now officially and formally at war.  Glover nudged me and muttered, “Don’t’ know about him, but I have been officially and formally at war since yesterday morning!”

Burial of the Kaneohe dead following the December 7th attack

                                        The commander went on to recap our losses at Kaneohe and the fact that we had been effectively destroyed as an operating military command.  (Kaneohe was to go down in history as the most thoroughly destroyed military installation on the island.)  We had lost a total of nineteen killed at Kaneohe (including one Army private and one contractor’s employee) and more than 75 had been wounded, some very seriously.  Our one operational hangar was totally destroyed and we had lost all but three of our thirty-six airplanes (VP-11, VP-12, and VP-14) and those three had been transferred temporarily to Ford Island where facilities were still operation and more airplanes had survived because the attacrs were concentrating on battleships.

                                        Martin then stated that Ford Island was short of qualified combat crew members and volunteers would be accepted.  Almost half of the people present stepped forward and raised a hand literally in union.  He smiled and said that we could sign up at the Ad building after we were dismissed.  There was dead silence over the base while Martin closed by reading the names, rates, service and squadron of the nineteen people that had been killed.

                                        I was far enough up in line to sign up and be accepted for the Ford Island relief flight crews.  Dick and Glover were too far back (Glover shrugged later and said, “Hell—shouldn’t never volunteer for anything anyway!”) and would stay at Kaneohe to assist with cleaning up the wreckage and getting the squadron once more operational while we waited for replacement airplane to come in.

                                        That evening Dick, Glover, and I sat in the ships’ service beer garden with cold bottles of Acme beer, a local brand, Dick looked at me and said accusingly, “Hey, nipplenoggin, how come you went and got yourself on those relief flight crews?  There may be Japs out there anywhere—be just like you to get your butt shot off!”

                                        “I noticed the two of you didn’t hesitate to step forward and raise your hands!”

                                        “Well,” Dick said, “you don’t know what kind of shot-up airplanes you’ll be flying in or who you will be flying with either.  You think I’m going to like writing to the folks if you get out there and get yourself shot down?”

                                        “Speaking of the folks,” I answered, “we ought to send them a telegram that we are all right.  This shindig must have made headlines and you know how they will be worrying.”

                                        “Post office on the base wasn’t open today,” Glover stated, “I checked.  They said they would take telegrams tomorrow.”

                                        “Well,” I said to Dick, “I’ll be on the way to Pearl in the morning.  You be sure to get one off and I’ll write them first chance I get.  Don’t let him forget, Glover.  Mother will be worried sick.”

                                        We were all angry at the “slanteyes” and thirsting for revenge for the unprovoked sneak attack that had killed our friends and destroyed our equipment.  The Pacific fleet ahd been badly damaged and we barely constituted a “thin blue line” in the Pacific, but we turned our attention to waging war against the Empire of Japan in the Pacific with what little we had.  It had now officially become World War II and the war cry rang across the United States—“Remember Pearl Harbor!”

(Brother Dick can be a man of few words.  Recently after the death of our mother, I found his wire among her effects.  It said simply and tersely, ERNEST FRIEZE, EIGHTEENTH AND ESTHER, VANCOUVER, WA—BOTH SAFE MERRY CHRISTMAS—RICHARD FRIEZE.  He sure had not wasted much money on that wire!

                                        We did not know until much later that our mother was visiting our grandparents in the Ozarks on that fateful Sunday.  They had retired from the Bona store and moved to Greenfield.  She caught the next train home and did not know about Dick’s telegram util she arrived several days later.  Meanwhile, our grandparents wept for us during that time because of a rumor in Missouri that we had both been killed in the attack.  Mercifully for mother, the rumor did not start before she caught the train.  Amon her effects was a clipping from the little newspaper in Greenfield, Missouri, “The Vedette” published late in December.  It is headlined “Beware of Rumors” and reads as follows:

“War is productive of many rumors, and the government warning to disregard all rumors is wise.  Mrs. Ernest Frieze of Vancouver, Wash., who had been visiting her parents, Mr. and Mrs. C.B. Stanley of this city, left hurriedly for home on receiving news of the bombing of Hawaii, as her two sons, Richard and Conrad, are in the naval aviation service in the islands.  Shortly after her departure a rumor swept over the city that both boys had been killed, and although their names did not appear on the casualty lists and Mr. and Mrs. Stanley had had no word, the rumor persisted until a letter was received form Mrs. Frieze on her arrival at home, that a message had been received the boys, who were uninjured in the bombardment.”)