“After the battle, Chris told me how excited his men were when they watched ‘our boys take off.’” Alice paused. She crossed her arms on the table. “You must understand, the victory at Midway was the success story that lifted the morale of the entire nation. But for those of us who lived in Hawaii, it was much more. Before Midway, the threat of a land invasion was quite real and fear was part of our daily lives. After the battle, we felt that the probability of an invasion was greatly diminished.” That sentiment was echoed by almost every woman I interviewed.
Alice repeated her point. “Everyone knew that we had to beat the Japanese. If we lost, there’s no question that the Japanese would have worked themselves down the island chain and Hawaii would been invaded.” Then she softened her voice and her demeanor. “I am grateful to God for the blessing of bringing our country through those terrible years.” Her shoulders relaxed, she sat back and sighed. “There were
some good times though, and Chris and I were newly married and very much in love.”
(Photo is of Richardson Hall at Fort Shafter. During World War II, this building became known as the “Pineapple Pentagon” and was the site of Army logistical planning for the battles in the Pacific Theater during the latter years of the war. Today, it serves as the headquarters for U.S. Army Pacific. Photo credit: US Army
Alice sipped her coffee, and then continued. “During the war, Chris and I lived in army housing at Schofield Barracks across from McComb Gate. There was no family housing on base then and only soldiers who were married to local girls could get quarters. The military families who had been living in Hawaii before the attack had been evacuated to the mainland, not only for their safety, but to relieve the island of the extra stress of supplying them with food, gasoline and security.
“Our apartment was so close to the Schofield McComb gate that I felt the rumbles from the army trucks and heavy armored equipment.
“Sometimes at night, Chris and I walked to the base to see a movie. When we approached the base gate, a sentry would shout, ‘Halt, advance and be recognized.’ And Chris would proceed, show his I.D. and I would stand back, about twenty feet away; then the sentry allowed us to proceed.”
Alice and I talked for five hours. The lunch crowd swelled and ebbed, and we were once more the only ones in the dining room. We arranged to meet again and planned to visit Navy Housing at Makalapa to find Commander Momsen’s house where Alice had been on December 7, 1941.
When I picked Alice up for our day at Makalapa, she was wearing shorts, running shoes, sunglasses and carrying a camera. “I want to take a picture of myself in front of Evelyn Momsen’s house and send it to her.” I, too, packed a camera planning to take the same photo.
We arrived at Makalapa Naval Housing by ten a.m. It was a pristine June morning, the mock orange and plumeria were in bloom and the feather-petals of the monkey pod trees carpeted the streets. As I drove up Makalapa Drive, Alice took a piece of paper from her purse and read the address of Commander’s Momsen’s home. “54 Halawa Drive.”
We wound our way down Makalapa Drive. A few women were mowing their lawns and a young mother jogged on the sidewalk while pushing a big-wheeled baby stroller. We continued slowly down the street and turned on to Halawa Drive reading the house numbers out loud. “Sixty-two, sixty, fifty-eight, fifty-six.” The last house on the street was fifty-six. There was no 54 Halawa Drive where the Momsen home should have been. In its place was a parking lot for the ……(Get Name of Houses…) Navy, Marine and Army officers walked through the lots, saluting each other, chatting about their weekend, carrying briefcases or bottles of water.
Alice and I got out of the car and walked around and headed back to the housing area. We asked some of the women in the neighborhood if they could help us, but no one knew anything about the Momsen residence.
Alice walked through a small field behind the homes on Halawa Drive; by mid-morning it was hot and the sun was intense. Alice pointed down the hill behind a high wood-slat fence. “Pearl Harbor was right there.” She walked up to the fence and tried to peer between the slats. Behind the fence was thick uncut brush. “The road was right down there. I remember looking down and seeing trucks loaded with wounded men. Some of them had burned clothes and burned skin and I think some were bodies of the dead.”
The road Alice referred to is Kamehameha Highway. It’s still there but it can’t be seen from where we stood because the view is blocked by sixty-years of untamed vegetation and a twenty-foot sound-baffle wall. Besides, even if Alice could have seen Pearl Harbor from where we stood, it would be an unfamiliar sight to her because the view is now obstructed by extended piers that were built after the war on reclaimed land from the harbor, including the reclaimed land under U.S.S. Arizona Memorial National Park.
Alice and I got back in the car. Our thoughts were that if we could locate Admiral Kimmel’s home, then we could determine where Momsen’s quarters were in relation to it. We drove down Makalapa Drive and parked in front of the “Admiral Nimitz House” presuming it had been Admiral Kimmel’s home in 1941. We climbed the steep hill next to the house.
Alice is 83, but her stride is strong and easy, and she kept a brisk pace to the top of the hill. From the crest, she turned and looked in the direction of Pearl Harbor. From our vantage point we could see over the cluster of two-story beige clapboard homes. Alice cupped her hands over her sunglasses. “No, this isn’t right either,” she said. We strolled for another twenty minutes, but never figured out where Commander Momsen’s home was. Our conclusion was that it was time for lunch.
The dining room of the Sam Snead Restaurant at the Navy-Marine Golf Course was filled with military men and women in uniform, civilian workers, golfers and mothers with young children. I noticed Alice looking over at a table of young officers.
“Yes, they are young,” I said to her, as if reading her mind.
She smiled.
“Weren’t you nineteen years old when you married your Chris?” I asked her; it was more of a statement than a question.
She nodded. “Maybe that’s why I was never afraid anything would happen to him—I was too young to think otherwise.”
I asked Alice how long Chris was stationed in Hawaii before he was sent to the Pacific Theatre. “Not long,” she answered.
“What about Christmas?” I asked. “Was he home then?”
“The second Christmas?” She paused as if to recall the holiday and I realized she meant the second Christmas that the country was at war. “Yes, he was home. It was our first Christmas as a married couple. We tried to make the best of it. There was no Christmas Tree Ship that year, so Chris made our tree out of scrap wood. He nailed a two by four to a wood platform, then drilled holes in the two by four and we collected Norfolk pine branches and stuck them in the holes—that was our tree.”
“What about stollen?” I asked.
“No stollen or springerle,” she answered. “The ingredients used to make them were too hard to come by. Citron and cardamom were luxuries. I didn’t mind, though.” Her answer surprised me because she had written an article about her childhood Christmases filled with German traditions and her mother’s fruitcake, stollen and springerle.
“The commissary had just basic items. Sometimes the shelves were bare. They weren’t like they are now, like grocery stores. In 1942 the commissary I went to was a warehouse at the dock and you bought what was available. Bread was one cent a loaf and a can of peas was six cents. Fresh produce wasn’t always offered and the only meat we could buy was ‘mystery meat.’ The wives stood in line at the butcher counter and we were handed a chunk of meat. We didn’t know what it was. I assumed it was either beef or pork since I didn’t want to consider other alternatives. And cooking it! That was a challenge. If I didn’t have a pressure cooker Chris and I would have ground our teeth down to our gums.” She continued, “You never knew what was going to be there. When Mike was a baby I never knew what brand formula would be there. I couldn’t imagine there were so many brands of formula, but he seemed to be fine with them and he didn’t have any allergies.”
I told Alice I read her article about Mike being born at St. Louis Hospital and asked her if she wanted to order a plate of pigs feet for lunch—it was an inside joke. Then I asked her what St. Louis Hospital was like.
“The official name of the hospital was the 147th General Hospital,” Alice said. “But I’m not sure how many people remember that. Almost everyone called it St. Louis Hospital because the Army took over St. Louis College and turned it into a medical facility for military families. It’s hard to imagine, but Tripler Hospital, as we know it, had not been built then and the hospital at Pearl Harbor was used for war casualties.
“During the early years of the war, all Oahu hospitals were crowded and, as a military wife, I went to St. Louis to have my baby. Half of the second floor of one building was designated for pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, with one large ward for new mothers. I remember there were twenty of us in the room—ten beds on each side of the room. Each bed had curtains around it for privacy.
“When Mike was born, on September 10, 1943, my mother was still on the mainland and Chris was on Howland and Baker Islands. When I went into labor, my father drove me to the hospital and dropped me off with a cheery, ‘Everything will be just fine. I’ll see you later’ and he left. Men didn’t get involved with births in those days. My cousin’s wife Margaret stayed with me for most of my labor, but even with Margaret with me, I felt all alone.
“Mother had been stranded on the mainland since May of 1943 when she had gone to Wisconsin to celebrate her parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. She thought she could just pop back to Hawaii after her visit. But she couldn’t book passage home; ships were still transporting troops as a priority and she didn’t return until April 1944.
“After twenty-eight hours of being in labor, I remember the doctors ‘putting me to sleep’ to have the baby. When I woke up I was in the ward. I was all alone with no news about my baby. I had no idea if it was a girl, boy, if ‘it’ was healthy, how much it weighed or what ‘it’ looked like. I asked a few nurses about my baby, but giving me information didn’t seem to be a priority. They had just completed a shift change and none of the new nurses knew about my baby. I often wondered if the doctors and nurses on the ward were disappointed that they were not out on the front lines with the soldiers.
“Finally, one nurse took pity on me and found out that I had a healthy son, but I still had to wait until the scheduled feeding time before I saw him. When they brought him to me, he had his hair curled in a kewpie-doll twist on the top of his head. I unfolded his blanket to get a look at him. He had all his fingers and toes.
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