Alice continued her story as if no matter what she said, the experience of the day could never be truly understood or shared by someone who did not witness the attack. “You can't imagine it," she said. "There were flames on the water.” She repeated that to me several times. “And boats bobbing in and out of the smoke. Tugboats, fireboats, liberty boats—they were trying to rescue sailors in the water. The fireboats pumped out water but the harbor still burned.” Alice paused, “I can still remember the smell of the burning oil and the bombs and I’ll never forget the sound of bombs screaming down.”
Unlike many civilians in Hawaii, Alice had expected the Japanese. “I had been reading the newspapers and listening to comments about the American relations with Japan. There were escalating words between the two countries and so many little things were happening.” On the drive out to the Momsen’s home on Friday, December 5, Alice remarked to a friend that America would be at war within two weeks.
“It’s amazing to me that from the Momsen’s lawn, I watched the beginning of the war. I remember hearing a sentry yell, ‘When the hell are they going to relieve me?’ I think he was posted at the guard fence. I remember the ground shaking and the part of the dining room of the Momsen’s house was shot off. The next thing I remember is calling my mother to tell her I was safe and that I would get home as soon as possible. Mother didn’t know we were at war. When I told her, she ran next door to tell the neighbors. Of course, they didn’t believe her.
“I didn’t leave Makalapa until 2 p.m. that day. I was evacuated in a caravan and driven home. When I got home, mother told me that Mrs. Rudee called. Mrs. Rudee was an old family friend from their days at St. John’s Military Academy in Delafield, whose husband was not stationed at Hickam. Mrs. Rudee asked Mother if she and three other wives from Hickam could stay with us because their homes had been strafed by machine gun fire from low-flying Japanese planes and their entire housing area was evacuated. Of course, my mother welcomed them.
“When Mrs. Rudee and the other Hickam wives arrived, I remember staring into the car they came in. The car had been used as an ambulance during the attack and the back seat was covered with blood. A wool Army blanket had been draped over the seats, but some blood seeped through and couldn’t be hidden.
“By the time our guests arrived, my father had already covered the windows of our house with tar paper. The overall effect was to make the house feel hot and humid. The paper blocked out breezes and light and trapped in the heat. There was no TV then, and all our news came from the radio. Our radio was a large RCA model. There were large tubes in the radio, and they cast a glow from the back so my father put the radio on the floor against an interior wall so no light would shine from the tubes. Then he brought in our supply of surplus food from the garage. It was mostly cans of spaghetti, fruit cocktail and tuna, but it came in handy feeding the four extra women.
“The morning after the attack, my mother sent me to Hadley’s Bakery on Beretania Street to buy bread because she knew that food would become scarce—and she was right. People were already lined up on the sidewalk in front of Hadley’s and in front of every other store on Beretania Street, and for the rest of the war it seems like all we did was stand in line for something.
“The first few days after the attack, the rumors were rampant. Newspapers headlines reported parachutists landing at St. Louis Heights (St. Louis Heights is east of Honolulu, approximately five miles). There were radio announcements to boil water because the enemy poisoned the water. A few hours later, there would be announcements declaring the water safe and that everyone should fill their bathtubs in case the current water supply was poisoned. We even heard that the Lurline was sunk. My family believed that rumor because it supposedly came from the Matson manager’s line. But it wasn’t true.
“There was nothing routine or normal about those first days. There was no telephone service, the schools were closed, there were blackouts, wardens walked around with guns and there was an over riding fear that the Japanese would be coming back.
“I remember my father working long hours, seven days a week, supporting the military any way he could. The morning of the attack, he dispatched the fleet of Harders Company trucks to be used by the Army and the Civil Defense as ambulances and supply trucks.
“Radio announcements were broadcast telling us to stay off the roads and off the phones. Almost immediately, the phone lines to the outer islands and to the mainland were shut down.” When I asked Alice how she contacted Chris to tell him she was safe, she explained that she didn’t try because she knew she wouldn’t be able to contact him.
“Chris and I weren’t officially engaged then. Before the war, he left Oahu and took a job with the Dole Pineapple Company on the island of Lanai. That’s where he was living when he was drafted in November of 1940. That’s when he came back to Oahu for basic training at Schofield Barracks and when was in training he applied and was accepted to Officers’ Candidate School at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.”
Christian Sorensen was among the first men drafted in Hawaii. In November 1940, all across the United States, in city halls, auditoriums and church basements, lotteries were held which decided the fates of men by the chance selection of a numbered ball. At Iolani Palace on November 13, 1940, Governor Poindexter drew the first numbered selecting the first draftee from Hawaii at 9:20 a.m. It took nineteen hours to complete the quota of 6,500 men. Chris Sorensen was among those selected.
“After Chris returned from Lanai we dated more seriously. Then he left for Belvoir in October 1941. Our country was still at peace and I was a student at the University of Hawaii. Chris and I talked about marriage but didn’t make any formal plans. The war changed our lives over night. The day after the attack, the Military Governor closed all public schools on Oahu, including the University of Hawaii.” Alice never considered herself a scholar. “I signed up for a botany class at the university and thought I was going to learn about gardening,” she said. “After the university closed, students were urged to take defense-related jobs. My mother spotted an ad in the newspaper for a job with the Corps of Engineers in Honolulu. The pay was excellent and it seemed the right thing to do, so off I went to Pier Two and found my first job. It was a clerical position and I was paid the enormous sum of $125 a month. The salary seemed astronomical! Right before the war, girls who graduated from college were being paid $75 a month at local banks. After two months on the job, I was earning $155 per month—thirty dollars more per month than Chris who was an Army 2nd Lieutenant—he used to tell people he married me for my money.” Alice smiled.
“When Chris got home he told me about the afternoon the Hawaii boys at Fort Belvoir heard about the attack. They headed to Washington to the Hawaii Delegate Sam King’s office and pleaded to be sent back home so they could ‘demolish the enemy.’ Of course, the army wouldn’t transfer them. They had to complete Officers’ Candidate School and they came home the end of January as commissioned 2nd Lieutenants.
“Chris told me about the morning their ship sailed into Pearl Harbor. They sailed from California in a luxury liner which had been taken over by the military. He said most of the luxury was stripped from the ship to accommodate the numbers of troops on board. He described the feeling when the ship entered the harbor—the men were lined up at the railing. When they saw the devastation of the ships in at Pearl Harbor still smoking, six weeks after the attack, a silence swept over them.
“After war was declared, Chris wrote to me from Virginia and asked to marry me and I accepted. We had no idea how long he would be home or where he would be sent. When he got home, he was assigned to the 804th Aviation Battalion Engineers. (The 804th was responsible for building and restoring airfields.) He worked long hours, every day. Around the beginning of May his company was doing work in Kualoa; they were turning a pasture into a military airfield. His men leveled the land and burrowed bunkers into the sides of the mountains to store bombs. Then, they laid large metal landing mats down so the heavy bombers could use it as an air strip.”
To be continued
