His Account: Mike at Pearl Harbor

This is the 3rd and final installment of Mike Molden's accounts of his life years ago. These 3 installments are from someone that was there, in history. I can only imagine what Pearl Harbor must have been like. You and I have newsreel, photo's and eyewitness testimony. Mike has something much better, his memory of Pearl Harbor. Enjoy his first person account, and thanks Mike!

December 7, 1941

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, I was working in the Parachute Shop back at Patterson Air Field in Ohio.. I had been working most of the night because I was on the night shift. The attack on Pearl Harbor Sunday morning was being reported on the radio (Saturday night because of the time zone differences). The reports came in in the form of continuous news flashes. Awhile after the work shift began, our supervisor instructed all parachute riggers to go immediately to the aircraft maintenance main hangar. Several hundred men from aircraft and aircraft systems repair shops, and other shops on the air base, were already there. They were milling about. I joined them and wondered why we (in Ohio) had been called together.

A military officer climbed to the platform at the top of an aircraft maintenance stand. Drawing attention by tapping on the stand's railing with a metal object, he told us that the U.S. Army Air Corps needed skilled workers and supervisors immediately at Hickam Field in Hawaii. Whoever wanted to go, he said, should raise his arm and his name would be listed. That meant an immediate deployment to Pearl Harbor.

Since I was single, footloose and fancy-free at the time, my arm got caught in the updraft and I was soon on the list to leave for Pearl. We were told to wait, and the others instructed to return to their shops. Those that stayed, lined up, and our names, badge numbers, and job titles were entered on a list. We were each given an instruction sheet and told to make sure we complied with our directions.

The next morning I reported to the dispensary for immunization shots (both arms), and then on to the Personnel Office to sign papers that came at me from all directions. I had a week to get my affairs in order; after that, I would be on stand-by for departure. A week later, along with several hundred other volunteer workers, I boarded a train on a siding next to a warehouse, and was on my way west.

The train, with all its windows covered by blackout curtains, left Patterson Field in the dead of night, and arrived three days later at Moffett Field near Mountain View, California. We lined up for bedrolls, and were pointed toward rows of tents in a muddy field adjacent to a dirigible hangar. An instruction sheet, tacked to the tent's center pole, told us where the mess halls were located, and that the meals were scheduled by tent number.

More trains arrived the next day and the days following. Hundreds of civilian workers joined us in the tents waiting for the next leg of our journey. We quickly got to know each other; we had come from all across the country: New York and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia, Alabama and Texas, Utah and California. The Air Corps bases at which we had signed up were Griffiths and Olmstead, Patterson and Robbins, Brookley and Kelly, and Hill and McClellan. We were the new vanguard, ready to move out very soon after Pearl. How fast things were changing.

Days passed uneventfully. One night at 2 AM we were awakened to voices shouting along side our tents. 'This is it, you guys. Movin' out. One hour.'

In the early morning hours and in a torrential downpour, we slogged through ankle-deep mud and climbed into the backs of canvas-covered trucks. The flaps were down, and we had an escort: armed military guards in Jeeps. All trucks were blacked out except for dim lights gleaming through slits in their headlights. We formed up as a miles-long convoy rolling north along U.S. 101 from Moffett Field, and arrived, shortly before dawn, at Fort Mason, adjacent to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. The trucks filled the pier from end to end; a gangway led up to the deck of a ship alongside. We learned later that she was the U.S. Grant, a World War I troop transport.

Herded below deck, we jammed into compartments where the narrow bunks were five high along aisles barely wide enough for passing. A 'Now, here this....' over the loudspeaker told us we were restricted to our compartments, and to passageways only when necessary, until we were out of the harbor. We were to have our life preservers with us at all times.

Hours later, the ship's vibration, a back-and-forth shifting in my center of gravity, and creaking along the bulkheads, told me we were under way. Scuttlebutt was that we were in a convoy, escorted by destroyers. Being in a restricted area, at first we couldn’t go up on top to check things out. Enemy submarines were suspected to be in the area.

However, soon we took turns, by compartment number, going on deck. On our way to Honolulu, the convoy zigzagged frequently to minimize the success of an enemy air or submarine attack. Finally, on the fifth day, land appeared on the horizon and, shortly afterward, we saw Diamond Head. Our ship left the convoy and entered Honolulu harbor.

We docked and disembarked, under heavy military guard, at the Aloha Tower pier and boarded the Toonerville Trolley, as we got to know the train on Oahu's narrow gage railway. An hour or so later we were at Hickam Field. The same Hickam Field all shot up just a few days ago.

The devastation was appalling. Burned-out hulks of bombed aircraft were scattered about on the parking aprons, and huge accumulations of debris lay next to aircraft hangars and along the roadways. The roofs of military barracks hung down along the outsides of the structures; they had exploded up and outward over the walls.

It’s hard to put into words the destruction plus we knew how many fellow military and civilian personnel had died there.

~~~

As a senior technician, I was assigned to the recovery and repair of damaged parachutes, life rafts, inflatable life preservers, oxygen masks, and the escape-and-evasion kits that air crews relied on when they bailed out over enemy territory. All of the equipment that came to our shop was closely inspected, repaired, if possible, and, when called for, tested. As soon as the damaged survival gear was fixed and ready for service, they were returned to the airplane from which they came. The work we were doing was for real, flying boys depended on us and we knew how important it was for all of us to do our very best.

Many of us joined Hickam Field's armed civilians, officially titled the Hawaiian Air Depot Volunteer Corps. We were volunteer employees who, during non-duty hours, also trained to handle and shoot a rifle ('03 Enfield), a pistol and 30 cal. machine gun. Our off work duty was to patrol and guard designated locations at night where high security was needed. We patrolled aircraft maintenance hangers, warehouses, instrument repair shops, and an engine repair lines underground at Wheeler Field, near Wahiawa in the Oahu highlands.

As armed civilians, we were each given a card to carry on our person. The card stated, in fine print, that if captured by the enemy while carrying a weapon, we were entitled to claim rights as a 'prisoner of war.' The Army Air Corps military officer who commanded our unit said that, since we did not wear military uniforms, nor carry military identification tags, the card would certify us as 'combatants'. The statement on the card was supposed to keep us from being shot as spies in the event the enemy invaded the Hawaiian Islands. The Volunteer Corps was dissolved a few months after the Battle of Midway.

During the war years, I fixed and packed thousands of man-carrying and cargo parachutes, and serviced many other types of life-saving, survival, flotation, and escape-and evasion gear. My work at Pearl Harbor right after the attack made me proud to be an American.

Mike