Most anyone who thinks of December 7, 1941, will immediately recall seeing old black and white images of the burning wreckage of the USS Arizona or hearing recordings of President Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech. Fewer know much about what happened just a few miles away at Hickam Field and Wheeler Air Base as the Japanese attacked the United States on that infamous day.
Incredibly, Battleship Row was not actually the Japanese Naval Air Force’s first target on December 7, 1941: Hickam and Wheeler, the two air bases, were. Both were strategically significant because the Japanese did not want American planes airborne to pursue them back to Japan’s aircraft carriers near the Kurile Islands.
Unfortunately, the American military command, under the leadership of Lt. General Walter C. Short, made it easier for the Japanese to carry out their plans. Short feared sabotage from the Japanese civilians living on the island more than a Japanese military strike, so he ordered fighters at Wheeler and bombers at Hickam to be parked wing-tip-to-wing-tip on the runways. They were, as many commentators have noted, sitting ducks.
On Saturday, my tour group received special access to Hickam and was treated to a marvelous explanation from local historian Jessi Higa, who told us the story of December 7 at Hickam and about the loss her own family suffered that day. Her grandfather’s brother was walking down a Hickam street with his child in his arms when the attack began. Both were killed in friendly fire. Jessi hopes to educate more people on the untold stories of December 7, 1941, and emphasize that civilians were heroes and survivors on that day, too. (Of the approximately 2,300 who died on December 7, about 68 were civilians.)
In addition to going to the USS Arizona memorial, we had exclusive Ford Island access to see the remains of the USS Utah. At Hickam, we went to Hospital Point and saw where the USS Nevada ran aground.
As tragic as Pearl Harbor was, one of our historians emphasized that there was one strategic silver lining to the “day of infamy.” Losing the battleships forced the navy to innovate and embrace the aircraft carrier as the sea-going military vessel of the future.
As historians and movies like Tora, Tora Tora suggest, while Pearl Harbor was a military defeat for the U.S. military, the Japanese lost the larger war when they committed to attack the United States on that fateful day.
