Shock attack on Pearl Harbor

7th December 1941: The Japanese achieve complete surprise when they attack the US Pacific Fleet before declaring war ...

0342 7 December 1941 USS Condor a converted fishing boat now commissioned as a coastal mine sweeper “Sighted submerged submarine on westerly course, speed 9 knots.”

Type A Ko-hyoteki class submarine, No.19, grounded in the surf on Oahu after the attack on Pearl Harbor. One of five midget submarines launched 10 miles offshore at about 0100 on the 7th December.

0637: The first shots fired in the Pacific theatre. The gun crew of the USS Ward which hits and sinks one of five Japanese midget submarines attempting to enter Pearl Harbor Naval Base, although not the one they had been alerted to by the USS Condor.

0720: Captain Mitsuo Fuchida arrives over the coast of Hawaii. He commands the Japanese strike force of 183 dive bombers, torpedo bombers, level bombers and fighters.

0740: Fuchida arrives over Pearl Harbor and sees everything is quiet. He draws back the canopy of his Nakajima B5N 'Kate' torpedo bomber and fires a green flare - the signal to attack. This is confirmed by the radio signal "To, To, To" ("Totsugeki seyo!"—"Strike!") to the planes in the air above Hawaii.

Fuchida¹ ordered the attack at 7.49am with the words “To, To, To,”. Four minutes later, he was confident that they had achieved complete surprise - there was no anti-aircraft fire and ‘Pearl Harbor appeared to be asleep’. He radioed a message to the Japanese Fleet to confirm this, the simple words “Tora, Tora, Tora” were picked up around the Pacific:

Thus, without losing time, “Tora-Tora-Tora” was broadcast to Taiwan, French Indochina, Malaya, Borneo, HongKong, Shanghai, Guam and Wake lsland. And the Imperial Army divisions, stationed across Asia, which had been holding their collective breath to hear the outcome of our air-raid, went into their respective planned combat actions.

I was relieved to have reported “Tora-Tora-Tora”myself, but it was yet to be proved if the surprise attack would really succeed and annihilate the US Pacific Fleet.

I stood up on the seat with the binoculars in my hands and started to give out combat orders, paying attention to the surrounding battle conditions.

As soon as we saw black smoke coming up from Hickam Airfield, smoke came up from Ford Island as well. Soon after I saw columns of water rise one after another where the battleships were berthed. The battle was developing in our favor.

0755: the first of seven torpedoes hits the West Virginia. Photograph taken from a Japanese plane during the torpedo attack on ships moored on both sides of Ford Island shortly after the beginning of the Pearl Harbor attack.

0806: The forward ammunition magazine on the USS Arizona explodes causing the catastrophic loss of the ship. The bombs and subsequent explosion killed 1,177 of the 1,512 crewmen on board at the time, approximately half of the lives lost during the attack.

Lloyd Bunting² was training with the 50th Reconnaissance Squadron based at Hickam Field, his experience of how things began seems to have been fairly typical:

Sunday morning December 7th, 1941 was another beautiful day. I was returning from the shower clad modestly in my Army issue towel and with breakfast in the mess hall, or a snack at the P.X., on my mind. When I entered the barracks I noticed lots of the men were clustered at the window and I went to see what was interesting them. It seemed there was unusual activity over Pearl Harbour.

Some guessed it was bombing practice or some such normal exercise. Then we noticed other planes crossing our air base enroute to Pearl Harbour. Suddenly a low flying plane, barely higher than the barracks, banked giving us a view of a big red ball insignia under the wing.

Gee !, then more speculation, perhaps a happy conclusion to Japanese / U.S. negotiations had something to do with it. Loud explosions made us decide to be elsewhere. We were being bombed, and we were on the top floor. By the time we got to the ground, the building was being shaken by the explosions and wall tiles were crashing down the steel staircase behind us.

Panorama view of Pearl Harbor, during the Japanese raid on 7 December 1941, with anti-aircraft shell bursts overhead. The photograph looks southwesterly from the hills behind the harbor. Large column of smoke in lower right center is from the burning USS Arizona (BB-39). Smoke somewhat further to the left is from the destroyers Shaw (DD-373), Cassin (DD-372) and Downes (DD-375), in drydocks at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard.

Radioman Ted Mason³ had a grandstand view from high above the USS California:

Torpedo planes in single file roared in at no more than a hundred feet above Southeast Loch, whose waters pointed like a dagger at the battle line. As they reached the channel, they launched their long, slim tin fish. The torpedoes entered the water with a modest splash. Their white wakes were arrow straight as they headed unerringly for the sides of the Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona, and Nevada.

The planes banked and flashed up and over the ships, perfect targets for our antiaircraft batteries. But only some .50-caliber machine guns and the 1 inch “pom-poms” in the Maryland were firing as yet. I cursed the fate that had made me a radioman instead of a gunner’s mate. If I had a .50-caliber in my hands, I would score some hits!

As I watched, one plane was hit. It burst into flame, lost altitude, and plunged into the water near Pearl City. At the same time, Val dive-bombers were peeling off and striking at the battleships, and at the cruisers and destroyers moored in East Loch. I had seen newsreel films of the German Stukas, which descended in near­ vertical dives upon their targets. But the Japanese planes came at us in a steep glide, the wind screeching past their blunt engine cowlings and fixed landing gear in a banshee death wail.

The pilots’ aim was very good. Alongside the ships, the near misses sent up columns of water hundreds of feet high, accompanied by muffled explosions and spreading concentric shock rings. The hits were marked by the hideous red flashes of high explosives that ripped through steel as if it were cardboard. I knew that every hit, and many of the near misses, were bringing death to numbers of my countrymen.

0930: The forward magazine of the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Shaw (DD-373) explodes. Shaw was docked in the floating drydock YFD-2. At right, The bow of Nevada (BB-36) can be seen after her aborted escape attempt out channel.

0930: Sailors stand amid wrecked planes at the Ford Island seaplane base, watching as USS Shaw (DD-373) explodes in the center background.

U.S. Navy sailors in a motor launch rescue a survivor from the water alongside the sunken USS West Virginia (BB-48) during or shortly after the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor.

The original December 1941 caption. "Three civilians were killed in this shrapnel-riddled car by a bomb dropped from a Japanese plane eight miles from Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The attack took place in a residential district, near no military objective.” The actual circumstances: The occupants of the automobile were members of the McCabe family. They lost their lives when a U.S. five-inch anti-aircraft shell exploded nearby while they were driving through Honolulu, en route to their workplaces at Pearl Harbor.

After just one hour fifteen minutes the attack was over - 2,403 Americans were dead, including 68 civilians. 19 U.S. Navy ships, including 8 battleships, were destroyed or damaged. But the Japanese had been unable to locate three US aircraft carriers, all out at sea on manoeuvres.

The damage was a serious blow but not completely devastating to the US Pacific Fleet. The Japanese had not achieved their objective of making an early knockout blow. And by the nature of the attack, made before a declaration of war, not only was the US Navy fired up but an entire nation was galvanised to seek revenge.

1. For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, the Commander of the Attack on Pearl Harbor

2. Lloyd Bunting: https://bunting.com.au

3. Battleship Sailor (Bluejacket Books)