As it was, the devastation was immense. For days afterward, rescue crews worked to cut holes through the Oklahoma’s hull to rescue the men trapped inside. Some were saved; many others died of asphyxiation or drowning. But the grimmest fate was that of three young sailors—Clifford Olds, Ronald Endicott, and Louis “Buddy” Costin—on board the West Virginia, which had sunk to the bottom of Pearl Harbor, trapping the men inside the pump room. It was well-provisioned, with food rations and fresh water. But there was no feasible way to drill through the pressurized hull underwater to rescue the men without causing a blowout that would kill their rescuers. No rescue was attempted, though the seamen made themselves heard, banging away in the hope that someone above would save them. They survived for more than two weeks in these agonizing circumstances. “Pretty soon nobody wanted to do guard duty, especially at night when it was quiet,” said Marine Corps bugler Richard Fiske. “It didn’t stop until Christmas Eve.”
The Japanese also destroyed 188 American aircraft and damaged another 159—many of them lined up at Hickam Field in neat rows, easy targets for Japanese bombers. Army lieutenant general Walter Short, worried about Japanese saboteurs on Oahu, thought that they would be better protected that way. Like naval admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Short dismissed chances that the Japanese might attack Pearl Harbor. Kimmel believed that any Japanese attack would happen at sea. Short and Kimmel would both lose their commands after the attack and spend the rest of their lives defending their decisions. Still, Kimmel didn’t need to be told what the attack meant for his future. Watching the bombing from his office window, he ripped his four-star admiral shoulder boards off of his sleeve and replaced them with two-star shoulder boards. By one account, after a bullet whizzed through the window and narrowly missed the admiral, Kimmel said, “It would have been merciful had it killed me.”
Not just its human losses, but also the images of a devastating military rout, with the mighty U.S. fleet in flames, coupled with the chilling success with which the Japanese had caught us unawares, ensured that Pearl Harbor would stay forever in the minds of Americans who lived through the events. Those up in arms about “fake news” today should have heard some of the fake news that proliferated after the attacks about Japanese saboteurs, who were seemingly everywhere. According to one rumor on Oahu, Japanese milk delivery drivers used radio transmitters to help guide in the enemy planes. “The stories spread faster than they could possibly be disproved or checked,” Lord wrote. Two months later, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, mandating internment.
Hindsight offers consolations, not only the advantage of knowing that we would win the war, but also that the heroism that would make that feat possible was present on December 7, too, almost everywhere one looked.
John William Finn, a chief petty officer in the Navy, was stationed at Kaneohe Bay. The bombs woke him from a Sunday morning slumber; he drove over to the base, only about a mile from his home, and he saw the bombers in the air. By the time he arrived, many of the base’s seaplanes had already been destroyed. The base had no antiaircraft guns, so Finn detached the machine gun from one of the planes, mounted it on a stand in an exposed area, and started firing—and barely stopped for the next two hours, though he suffered 21 separate wounds from shrapnel, one of which caused him to lose feeling in his left arm. His Medal of Honor citation described his “complete disregard for his own personal safety.” He later shrugged: “It just wasn’t my day to die.” At 99, he stood next to President Obama at Arlington Cemetery on National Medal of Honor Day.
It certainly seemed that it was 19-year-old Donald Stratton’s day to die. On board the Arizona, the seaman first class could see the Japanese pilots’ faces, they flew so low; some were smiling, even waving. Stratton suffered burns across 70 percent of his body and survived only when Joe George, a boatswain’s mate on board the USS Vestal, a repair ship docked alongside the Arizona, disobeyed orders and threw out a line to Stratton and other desperate Arizona crewmen. They climbed across, hand over hand, 70 feet to the Vestal. Stratton spent about a year in the hospital—at one point, doctors put maggots on his body to eat the masses of dead skin—before being discharged and sent home to Nebraska. He reenlisted, endured another boot camp, and fought at Okinawa, where he dodged death again.
Many other Arizona survivors might not have made it without the heroics of Lieutenant Commander Samuel Fuqua, who was knocked unconscious by one of the first bombs, came to, and got busy fighting the ship’s fires. After the Arizona took its fatal blow, which killed many of its men in an instant, Fuqua became the ship’s senior surviving officer. Strafed constantly by enemy fire, he led the ship’s evacuation. “I can still see him standing there, ankle deep in water, stub of a cigar in his mouth, cool and efficient, oblivious to the danger around him,” said a crewman, Edward Wentzlaff. On his way in to shore on a boat, under heavy fire, Fuqua hauled survivors out of the water.
Perhaps the most inspiring moment of the day on the American side was the sight of the USS Nevada, though damaged by bombs, pulling out of the harbor, the only ship from Battleship Row to get moving. The Nevada managed to shoot down a handful of Japanese planes, but, at risk of sinking, it was grounded off an area known as Hospital Point. Many, like Seaman Thomas Malmin, who was aboard, recalled seeing, through clouds of black smoke, the ship’s flag flying on the fantail. Malmin “recalled that ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ was written under similar conditions, and he felt the glow of living the same experience,” Lord wrote. “He understood better the words of Francis Scott Key.”
Less dramatic gestures of resistance were also plentiful. “Praise the lord and pass the ammunition,” said the chaplain on board the New Orleans as its men attempted to fire back at the marauders. A boatswain’s mate on the Monaghan, waiting for ammunition to be brought up to the deck so that he could begin firing at the Japanese, threw wrenches at their planes in the meantime. At Ewa, the Marine air base, a lone Marine, armed only with a pistol, stood beside a ruined plane, firing away at the Japanese bombers, even as they swooped down on him. Japanese lieutenant Yoshio Shiga, one of those enemy pilots, called him the bravest American. The defiance extended to the infirmaries, too. A doctor refused a navy seaman’s request for orange juice, thinking that it might be fatal, since the seaman had a serious stomach wound. When he protested, the doctor told his nurse to get the juice; the patient would probably die anyway, he whispered. “I heard you, doctor,” the seaman called out, “and I still want orange juice.” He didn’t die.
The hardiness extended as well to the nation’s political leaders. Roosevelt’s speech set the tone, with its stark opening sentence and its direct, euphemism-free admission of what had occurred: “The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost.”
The president’s Republican adversaries in Congress, including isolationists who had accused him of trying to get the United States into war, now lined up behind him. “There is no politics here,” said Joseph W. Martin, the House minority leader. “There is only one party when it comes to the integrity and honor of the country.” He was echoed by the Senate minority leader, Charles L. McNary of Oregon. “The Republicans will all go along, in my opinion, with whatever is done.” And the isolationist congressman Hamilton Fish of New York, a World War I veteran and reservist, urged Americans to get behind the president. “And if there is a call for troops,” Fish added, “I expect to offer my services to a combat division.”