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Jacksonville, Florida It had probably only been a few minutes since I heard the first explosions as I sat in the little Catholic church about a mile outside of Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay. But, as I stood outside the base ordnance shack, carrying the Springfield rifle had just picked up, it seemed like hours. Around me, all was chaos. The hanger was in flames. The 33 PBY Catalinas located on the beach or floating just offshore, were mostly burning wreckage, from which men struggled to remove .50 caliber machine guns before the explosions ruined them. Bomb craters dotted the landscape. Those of us outside the ordnance shack – most of us numb with shock – looked up and saw a Japanese plane making what looked like another strafing run. The plane was so low, you felt like you could pick up a rock and hit it. We could see the pilot, a good-looking fellow with a thin mustache and a white scarf. He was smiling and waving. As he passed, everybody must have shot at him. I remember thinking, "He's hit. He has to be hit." And then he hit the hill. Psychologists have a term for moments that are so vivid, so emotionally-jolting that they burn themselves into our collective memories. They call them flashbulb moments.  A day of infamy: More than 2400 Americans gave their lives in the attack of Pearl Harbor. Today's young people are always going to remember where they were when they first heard the news on Sept. 11, 2001 that New York's World Trade Center had been hit by hijacked-airliners. For Baby Boomers, theirs are the memories of Nov. 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. For my generation, those of us whom Tom Brokaw has called the Greatest Generation, the memory of Dec. 7, 1941 has remained vivid even as other memories fade. I was 24 on the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt would dub "a day of infamy." I'm 89 today, about to be 90. But I remember every detail of that day as clearly as I remember last night. I had grown up on Chicago's Southside and enlisted in the Navy the previous March. After basic training, the Navy sent me to paradise, the island of Oahu in the Hawaian archipelago. I was assigned to Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay, on Oahu's east coast, a short hop across the mountain from the Navy's main Pacific base at Pearl Harbor. Kaneohe Bay, which was still under construction in December, 1941, served as the base for 36 Navy patrol seaplanes, PBY Catalinas, divided into three squadrons. I was assigned to a beach crew. Our job was to maintain the planes while they were on the ground. But Sunday, Dec. 7, was my day off. I rose early, ate breakfast in the mess, and then headed off the base for Sunday services at a nearby Catholic Church. When I heard the first bombs, I thought it might be a training exercise. But I quickly realized there were too many, and they were too close. I ran from the church, intending to return to the base. A grey Plymouth coupe stopped, and the driver offered me a ride back to the main gate. There, I found complete confusion. Most of us were just dumbfounded. We had no sense of what was happening, no feeling, but numb. Marine guards armed with pistols fired at the Japanese attackers as the planes swooped back and forth over the base, dropping bombs and strafing the buildings. Like a lot of my fellow sailors, I wasn't armed. Sidearms had been issued a few weeks earlier because of concern about sabotage. But there had been so many instances when jumpy sailors almost shot each other that the base commander had the men disarmed except for night sticks for the guards. At the gate, someone shouted at me to take cover. I flattened myself against a building as a Japanese plane passed overhead, strafing the roof. Then someone screamed at us to get out of there, and I ran toward the barracks, intending to change out of my dress whites. At $5, those sharkskins were awfully expensive. But then another plane passed overhead, and I dove into a ditch. I got red clay all over my dress whites, impossible to get out. I was changing into my dungarees when a plane strafed the barracks. I threw myself on the floor and dragged my mattress over me. I guess the others did the same because nobody was hit. We were very fortunate.
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