Above the Thunder by Raymond C. Kerns Page A

goodnight. Gibson was going to play golf next morning, he said, and I was going to make my flight schedule.
    Then we’d get together and think of something to do Sunday afternoon.

– One –
THE PINEAPPLE SOLDIER

    According to accounts I’ve read, he was Lt. Akira Sakamoto. I can envision him pulling his flying goggles down over his eyes, hastily rechecking the “ready” switches for guns and bombs, and rolling his Aichi-99 into a howling plunge toward Wheeler Field. Behind him twenty-five more dive-bombers from the Imperial Japanese Navy’s aircraft carrier Zuikaku began peeling off to follow him down in line astern. Higher up, the Zeros of their fighter escort, encountering no American opposition, prepared to join in the attack.
    It was Sunday morning, 7 December 1941. My watch told me it was 0740 hours, but most people think it was nearly 0800 by the military clock. At that moment, few Americans, if any, knew that several hundred Japanese warplanes were streaming over the Island of Oahu, intent on destroying the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet where it lay at anchor in Pearl Harbor. Surprise was essential for success, and the attackers had achieved total surprise, seeming to drop out of nowhere—but actually coming in from a large carrier force some two hundred miles north of Oahu. Another essential was early destruction of the planes and facilities of the United States Army Air Force on Oahu, which had as its primarymission defense of the naval base at Pearl Harbor. Wheeler was the Army’s principal fighter base in Hawaii, and Sakimoto’s task was to nip reaction in the bud.
    As his bomber slanted downward, Sakimoto could see rows of Curtiss P-40s and P-36 fighter planes tied down, wingtip to wingtip, on Wheeler. There was no hostile activity in evidence. He could see some strollers, an automobile here and there, a few people on the golf course, and soldiers moving between barracks and mess halls. It was evident that neither Wheeler nor adjoining Schofield Barracks had been alerted. Sakamoto’s heart must have raced in exultation and excitement as he concentrated on aligning his sights on what had sud denly become, by orders from Tokyo, enemy aircraft there below.
    As the howl of Lieutenant Sakamoto’s diving plane rose in pitch and volume, it finally intruded on my consciousness and that of a few other men in the latrine of our barracks. With my razor poised in midair, I gazed silently at First Sergeant Regan of Service Battery. We stood there staring at each other, wondering if the pilot would be able to pull out. The howl suddenly ended in a thunderous, building-shaking crash.
    Pvt. Burnis Williamson yelled, “He’s crashed in the quadrangle!”
    It sounded as if he had, but when we rushed out to the third-floor porch and looked into the grassy square surrounded by concrete barracks like our own, we saw nothing unusual. And now we became aware of continuing howling and crashing and shuddering, so we ran to the east windows of our room.
    We could see smoke already boiling up from Wheeler, nearly a mile away. Planes were trailing each other in from over the mountains of the Waianae Range, dropping their bombs on the airfield, then pulling up and banking around toward our left to sweep across Schofield with their machine guns chattering.
    Since we had no mandatory formations on Sunday, most of our men were still in bed; my personal schedule had gotten me up early. I was expecting to make my first solo flight that day at John Rodgers Airport, which was where Honolulu International is now. I wanted to get breakfast before the mess hall closed at 0800, and then I’d ride the bus to the airport. But many of our men, tired from a long Saturday night after payday, lay like logs in their bunks. Only “Pappy” Downs rose up on an elbow and growled, “What the hell is going on, anyway?”

    This 1950s aerial view of a part of Schofield Barracks is much as