6/17/2023 0 Comments Spritz reader online![]() ![]() Hidden in the bunker, she saw men succumb to their wounds. Seventy years later, Charlotte still vividly remembered the burnt flesh that hung in charred ribbons from some of the men. They were the lucky ones - others had been hit by the blasts and flying debris, strafed or horribly burned. Mostly young men, they were wide-eyed, scared, coated in oil. "Hush, ChaCha," said her mother quietly, "it's the Japanese."īefore long, survivors from the blasted and battered battleships began filtering ashore and into the bunker. Charlotte shook her fist, "those dirty Germans!" she recalled saying. The Arizona's detonation rocked the walls and floors inside the children's dungeon shelter. Once inside, Chuckie could not resist the noise, explosions and flames and ventured outside - this time Japanese bullets zinged around him before Charles hauled him back.Īs Charles returned home to get dressed before helping organize a defense, a massive explosive knocked him to the ground. As they ran, a khaki-colored airplane with red circles under its wings zoomed past so low that Charlotte saw the pilot's face.īefore that day, the children had often played inside the dimly lit, concrete-lined bunker they called "the dungeon" and the Nob Hill families practiced how they would hide there in case of an air raid. "Get up!" she remembered her father shouting, "the war's started." The family and the men, women and children from the other houses raced for shelter in a former artillery emplacement dug beneath a neighboring house. The first explosion at 7:48 that morning woke Charlotte from a sound sleep. The eight battleships moored along Battleship Row were the Japanese attackers' primary objective when they flew toward Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. ![]() At home, Pearl Harbor's lush tropical shoreline served as their playground.īut Ford Island was something else: a target. Until the Pearl Harbor attack, she recalled that she and the other children lived "free as birds" on Ford Island, taking a daily boat to school on the Oahu mainland. Lying in bed at night, Charlotte could hear voices from the movies being shown to sailors on board. Charlotte, Chuckie and their friends often ran out the nearby dock to meet officers disembarking from the ships. The air station and Pacific fleet defined the children's days and nights. The Coe family's house looked out on the harbor's South Channel and the double row of moorings known as Battleship Row. The Nob Hill mothers watched over their 40 or so young "Navy juniors" while their fathers went off to the air station's hangars, operations buildings and aircraft operating from the island. That island served as home to a naval air station in the middle of Pearl Harbor. Only the mother survived - seven other patrons taking cover there also died in the blast.Ĭountless children throughout Oahu also witnessed the attack, perhaps none more closely than 8-year-old Charlotte Coe who recounted her experiences that fateful morning as if they were a film that had been running continuously in her mind ever since.Ĭharlotte lived with her parents and five-year-old brother, Chuckie, in one of the 19 tidy bungalows lining a loop road in an area known as Nob Hill, on the northern end of Ford Island. ![]() ages 2, 3 and 8, together with a 14-year-old cousin, sheltered in the family's downtown Honolulu restaurant. The Hirasaki family suffered some of the worst losses that terrible morning: the Japanese-American mother, father and their three children. Eleven of the dead were children ages 16 and younger. Japanese fighters strafed and bombed a small number, most, however, died in friendly fire when shells from Coast Guard ships and anti-aircraft batteries on shore aimed at the Japanese fell into Honolulu and elsewhere on the island. Hundreds also died aboard other stricken naval vessels and in bombing and strafing attacks at nearby airfields.īut few people realize that 68 civilians were also killed in the attack. The toll that day among military personnel is widely known: Of the 2,335 servicemen killed in the attack, nearly half died on the USS Arizona when a Japanese bomb blew up the battleship's forward gunpowder magazine. By late morning, the surprise Japanese air and mini-submarine attack had left 19 vessels sunk or badly damaged and destroyed hundreds of airplanes. Seventy-eight years ago at dawn, more than 150 ships and service craft of the United States' Pacific fleet lay at anchor, alongside piers, or in dry dock in Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. ![]()
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