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When I left the barracks, I could see the planes on the beach and in the water. They were in ruins, most of them burning wreckage. So I ran to the ordnance shed and found a Springfield rifle. They had been packed in grease, which we did our best to wipe off. Then we went outside to battle aircraft with small arms, a mostly pointless fight that felt better than doing nothing. I learned later that the attack began at 7:53 a.m. Hawaiian time, with the outlying bases, including Kaneohe Bay, Hickam Field, the island's largest air base, and Wheeler Field, the island's principal fighter base, attacked first. Then the Japanese turned their fury on Pearl Harbor itself, attacking Bellows Field and Ford Island, a Marine and Naval air station in the middle of Pearl Harbor, as well as the Pacific Fleet, much of it lying helplessly at anchor. Ninety minutes after it began, the attack was over: 2,403 Americans were dead, including 68 civilians; another 1,178 were wounded. Eighteen ships were sunk, including five battleships. Nearly half of the American fatalities – 1,102 men – were caused by the explosion and sinking of battleship Arizona. At Kaneohe Bay, 19 men, including one civilian, were killed. Only six of the 33 planes on the ground survived the attack, and they were all seriously damaged. Only the three planes which were on patrol at the time of the attack, survived unharmed at Kaneohe Bay. Lieutenant John William Finn, was awarded a Medal of Honor after he pulled a .50 caliber machine gun from one of the grounded PBYs, mounted it on a makeshift stand and defended an exposed section of the parking ramp, suffering repeated wounds, until he was ordered to take cover and seek medical attention. In all, 14 sailors and officers involved in the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the surrounding bases were awarded the Medal of Honor. A special military award, the Pearl Harbor Commemorative Medal, was later authorized to all military veterans of the attack, one of my proudest possessions. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, confusion continued to mix with anxiety. We figured a landing force was going to come. If they had, they would have had a field day. I spent that night as part of a machine gun crew assigned to an observation tower on a hill overlooking the base. At one point, the jumpy gunner wanted to fire on an approaching aircraft, but I recognized it as a Mustang, an America fighter, and stopped him. We heard later that some American planes had been shot down by friendly-fire in the nervous aftermath of the attack. In one sense, the attack was a great success for the Japanese. Having wiped out our air defenses in the opening moments, the Japanese lost only 55 airmen. Only 29 of their planes were lost during the battle. But it was an incomplete success. While they hit our battleships hard, our three aircraft carriers were not in port and so were undamaged. Those carriers would later ruin the Japanese. Six months later, we surprised them at Midway and won a big victory that evened the odds. After that, it was just a matter of time. Soon after Pearl Harbor, I was transferred to the newly commissioned battleship U.S.S. Massachusetts. It served first in the Atlantic, where we took part in Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. Then the Massachusetts was sent to the Pacific and took part in campaigns in the Solomons, the Marshalls, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. I spent 30 years in the Navy, 24 on active duty and six in the reserves. I was married on New Year's Eve, 1949, to Hilda Camille Anderson, and we remained married until her death in 1990. Today, I live in Jacksonville, Florida and remain active with several veterans groups, including the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. Charlie Patton is a metro reporter for the Florida Times-Union
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