A Day That Will Live
Bruce McCandless and the Attack on Pearl Harbor
(From Fire and Iron: The Autobiography of Admiral Bruce McCandless)
Note: This is an excerpt from a memoir that was dictated by my grandfather Bruce to my Aunt Sue in the early 1960s and is now being edited and supplemented for possible publication. The “Sue” referenced in the excerpt below is not my Aunt Sue but my grandmother Sue, Bruce’s wife.
Sue drove down with the kids to pick me up at six p.m. and we went home to resume unpacking. On the 5th a moving van had rolled up and offloaded thirty-odd boxes, barrels and crates into our carport. This was our long-awaited furniture from Norfolk, the stuff I had sent for partly on the strength of a newspaper headline: TOJO ELECTED PREMIER! HAILED AS GREAT VICTORY FOR MODERATES. The children went to bed soon after we got home, but Sue and I worked late into the night, unpacking and carrying things into the house. The lawn was littered with debris by the time we finished. We knew we ought to tidy the yard, but we were both bushed and figured the clean-up could wait.
At around eight the next morning, Sue, who was up and about with the children, came into the bedroom. “Bruce,” she said. “Something very peculiar is going on down at Pearl Harbor.”
“Un-huh,” I grunted.
“There’s lots of smoke.”
“Not surprising. Just a ship getting underway.”
“Bruce, there are anti-aircraft bursts in the sky. I just saw a plane go down.”
Jesus, I thought. That was a screw-up. “Some dumb bastard must have hit the tow-plane instead of the sleeve.”
Wait a minute. This is a Sunday morning! There would be no firing going on. And target practice wouldn’t be held over Pearl anyway, but well out at sea in the operating areas.
I tumbled out of bed and opened the curtain.
Pearl Harbor and the ships within it were obscured by hills, but sure enough, there were antiaircraft bursts blossoming in the blue over the harbor, planes were milling about — there went another one, down in flames — and ugly columns of oily black smoke were rising into the sky. I pulled on some clothes and called out to Sue to turn on the radio. Hawaiian music flooded the house, then ceased just a few moments later when an announcer came on to say, “All Army and Navy personnel are requested to return to your stations immediately.”
We had a pretty good idea of what was happening. This was it, a Japanese attack — long anticipated but still unexpected. I kissed Sue and the kids goodbye, waded through used packing material to the car, and roared off down the strangely deserted streets to meet up with the war. All the while I had that headline ringing through my brain: TOJO ELECTED PREMIER! HAILED AS GREAT VICTORY FOR MODERATES.
At the Navy Yard gate I was halted by a group of Marines, several of whom shoved rifles and automatic weapons through the open windows of my car. This was understandable, if somewhat uncomfortable. In those early hours of shock and dislocation it seemed entirely possible that the Japanese might try to storm the Yard or other harbor facilities — if not with uniformed personnel than with fanatical fifth columnists from the local Japanese-American population. The Marines weren’t going to let them in without a fight. In fact, it looked like they weren’t going to let anyone in without a fight.
“Who are ya and whattaya want?” demanded a sentry, briefly interrupting the interrogation in order to fire a few rounds at a low-flying plane. It was easy to tell our aircraft from theirs that day. Ours were on the ground and burning. Theirs were over our heads and bore the bright red meatball insignia that was meant to represent the rising sun — a symbol of Japanese ascendancy.
“McCandless, U.S.S. San Francisco, returning to ship in the Repair Basin.” I have no idea why I said what came next. “Say, what’s going on around here, anyway? Are we at war?”
“What are you, a wise guy?”
“I’m a lieutenant, Sergeant…Dwyer. Now if — ”
“You’re goddamn right we’re at war. No cars allowed in the Yard. Park over there by the highway and proceed on foot!”
I resented the delay, but I didn’t argue the point. When jumpy Marines with automatic weapons tell you to proceed on foot, that’s what you do. Once inside the gate I started running through the Yard, along palm-bordered roads and across neatly trimmed lawns strewn with brass empties from chattering .50 caliber machine guns. A car overtook me, and its driver — one of the Yard officers — beckoned me over. I hopped on the running board and on we went, careening through the streets toward the sights and sounds of chaos. When we reached the pier where the San Francisco lay I jumped off, losing my hat in the process. So great was the force of my years of indoctrination that I chased the lid until I caught it, fortunately after only a few bounces. We had had hammered into us the precept that officers boarding or leaving a ship in civilian clothing had to wear a cover so they could properly salute the colors and the officer of the deck. Chasing my hat as Pearl Harbor exploded around me was thus a sort of reflex action. I suspect I wasn’t alone. It was hard to know how to act in the face of this sudden disaster, and sometimes reflexive behavior kicked in, ridiculous though it was.
Taking a quick look as I ran down the pier toward the ship, I could see the upturned bottom of the capsized battleship Oklahoma, with one of her propellers showing. The Arizona was burning furiously in her forward half. There were blazes on Ford Island and oil fires on a number of other ships being fought, not very successfully, with hoses. A heavy pall of choking black smoke hung over the whole area.
After checking in with our very busy officer of the deck, the OOD, I hustled to my room and shifted into uniform. I put on a steel helmet and strapped on a .45 and reported back. As our antiaircraft guns were either missing or without ammunition, their crews had been sent across the pier to help the New Orleans man hers. The OOD had called away all our boats and sent them to pick up survivors in the oil-slick waters of the harbor, and was now organizing resistance with the only means available: small arms. The Yard had shut off all our services. We were without lights, power, steam, water, compressed air — everything. The Frisco was a dead ship, as silent as a tomb.
Now a wave of dive bombers came screaming in, heading for the ships in the Repair Basin, including ours. The New Orleans, on our right, and the St. Louis and Honolulu, across the slip to our left, put up a terrific cone of AA fire. It was quite a sight to see 5-inch mounts being fired in anger from alongside the pier in a navy yard, an action that was strictly forbidden under ordinary circumstances. This AA fire was so intense that only a few bombs landed in the Basin, with only two hits of consequence: the Rigel, Dad’s old command, was slightly damaged, and the Honolulu was holed. Following waves of aircraft swerved and went after other, less bellicose targets to our right in the drydocks and down the channel. I believe it was this withering fire that saved us, and Japanese accounts later declared that the barrage was so intense that every plane of this group that got back home had holes in it. By contrast, I suspect our small arms fire was a futile gesture. However, it was also quite satisfying. At one point, as I reloaded my .45, I caught sight of an African-American sailor with a .22 caliber target rifle from the armory blazing away at the Japs for all he was worth. No words were needed. We locked eyes for a moment before we both went back to shooting.
Rumors of the wildest kind filled the air. The Japanese fleet was just offshore…our ships were going out to meet it…landings were in progress…paratroopers had been spotted on Ewa. All false, of course, but plausible under the circumstances — a surprise raid by the cream of the Japanese naval arm, elements of eight carrier air groups — 353 planes — operating from six carriers, their Sunday punch aimed straight at the heart of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. We tried not to speculate too much. Soon we knew one thing for sure: A general sortie of all ships from Pearl Harbor was ordered. The San Francisco couldn’t comply, for obvious reasons, but we cheered wildly as the nearby St. Louis cast off her lines, backed clear of the pier, and pointed her bow toward the sea and the enemy that had done this awful thing.
*
From the holocaust of Pearl Harbor, which has been debated and described from just about every angle, the San Francisco emerged with only a few minor wounds to her personnel, some of whom were off the ship at the time, and a broken searchlight. But all around us lay death and destruction. And had we been in the drydock as originally scheduled? Destroyers Cassin and Downes were badly battered, the Pennsylvania was damaged, as was the drydock, oil fires raged around the ship, ammunition and some torpedoes exploded, the Cassin toppled over onto the Downes, and the whole area became an inferno. But for a providential delay, the Frisco would have been smack-dab in the middle of it.
The aftermath brought a painful reckoning. During the course of an hour and a half, Japanese airplanes and midget submarines killed 2400 Americans, injured almost 1200 more, and damaged or destroyed 19 ships and 347 aircraft. The next few days and nights were extremely chaotic, but Pearl Harbor and the fleet rallied. Fires were extinguished or, in the case of the Arizona, which sank with the loss of over a thousand men, burned themselves out. Survivors were rescued. The wounded were treated, the dead were buried, and attempts were made to extricate the men still trapped in sunken or overturned ships. Three days after the attack, the Maryland was blasted free of her imprisonment inboard of the overturned Oklahoma and brought into the Repair Basin; now the Tennessee, inboard of the West Virginia, could also be hauled out. The Pennsylvania was undocked. With minor repairs to these three plus the arrival of the Colorado from the West Coast, we soon had four battleships available for service. The other five would be out for a long time — the Arizona and Oklahoma forever. Our cruisers and destroyers, however, had come through the attack fairly well, although light cruisers Helena and Raleigh were torpedoed. Destroyers Cassin, Downes, and Shaw, all in drydock, seemed to be total losses. But there was good news on the aircraft carriers. By one of the strange workings of fate, the Enterprise and her escorts, under Vice Admiral Bill Halsey, had been due to enter Pearl Harbor on December 7 right around the same time the Japanese attack began. They were delayed a day by bad weather, though, and consequent difficulties in fueling their destroyers, and thus didn’t arrive in Pearl until after the assassins had departed. Thus some of the ships the Japanese most wanted to destroy were exactly the ones they failed to touch.
Gradually the enemy’s attack plan became clear. This had been a raid, albeit a powerful one, a hit-and-run affair rather than an assault on the islands coupled with an uprising of the Hawaii’s large Japanese-American population. Fears of such an uprising turned out to be misguided. In fact, while Japanese diplomatic personnel were certainly engaged in spying, the Japanese-American citizens of Hawaii conducted themselves with the highest loyalty to the United States. Even the FBI failed to turn up a single case of espionage or treason. At the time, though, and under the circumstances, the suspicion and dread with which we viewed any possible enemies, including internal enemies, is no doubt understandable.
This is not the only way in which American thinking was wrong. Our Army and Navy forces in the islands weren’t asleep at the switch, but were very much on the alert; however, it was the wrong kind of alert. We expected Japanese military moves, but thought they would come in the Far East or perhaps the Philippines. Locally, we expected acts of sabotage, and our alert was toward internal acts instead of external ones. At Wheeler Field, for example, the Army had about a hundred pursuit planes lined up wingtip to wingtip on the runway where they could be watched. This was a smart anti-espionage move, but it made the aircraft sitting ducks for the Japanese attack on December 7. We underrated the Imperial Navy’s air arm but fortunately found out that the Emperor’s submarines, by and large, did not measure up to our expectations. There were other surprises in store for both sides. Though few of us really comprehended it at the time, two entire civilizations, differing greatly and neither quite understanding the other, were now at war.
Other observations: The battleship, queen of the seas for centuries, was now relegated to a secondary role, soon to be supplanted by the aircraft carrier. Out went the concept of a monolithic, Jutland-like battle, with long columns of giant battleships slugging it out with each other through massive salvos from their heavy guns. In came the carrier task forces that would do battle without seeing their opponents except through radar and the eyes of their aircraft pilots. Paradoxically, by wrecking our battleship line while leaving our aircraft carriers, heavy cruisers, and destroyers undamaged, the Japanese forced us to place our hopes in our carrier task forces, composed of these three types of ships. These, with submarines — also largely untouched during the Pearl Harbor attack — were to be the principal architects of the Empire’s doom. There could be no strategy based upon the supremacy of our battleships, because that supremacy was ended before the war formally began. It was unpleasant shock, but in the end it was a beneficial one.
On December 11, a voice came over the loudspeakers in the Yard, calling for everyone’s attention. An announcer intoned: “The Imperial Japanese government declares that a state of war exists between it and the government of the United States.” Well, that wasn’t exactly news to us, but let’s say it confirmed something we strongly suspected. The speaker went on to tell us that Nazi Germany had joined its ally in declaring war on the U.S. We knew this was bound to happen, but our hearts sank and a deep hush came over all those who had gathered to listen. Then the announcer gravely informed us that the government of Mussolini’s Italy had decided to commence hostilities against us as well. At this point everyone laughed like hell and went back to work. Who was going to line up to kill us next? Luxembourg? The human mind can only take so much.
One of the first things I did was recall my radiomen, signalmen, and coding officers who stood their duties ashore in the Navy Yard’s facilities, helping out in return for using their equipment instead of the ship’s gear and incidentally keeping their skills sharp at the same time. With the communications division organized again, I spent much of my time in the Coding Room — Radio Central — Communications Office structure. One night a group of men with Asian features came barging into the facility unannounced and those of us present suspected we were being overrun. I drew my .45 immediately, as did two of my colleagues, and a lot of angry shouting ensued from both sides. It turned out the men were yard workers assigned to the ship, who were simply seeking refuge during an air raid alarm. Our pistols went back into their holsters, a mutual sigh of relief went up, and everyone felt a little foolish. It’s a marvel that someone wasn’t hurt in these sorts of encounters, in which over-worked Asian-American welders, machinists, painters, etc. interacted with overworked and very edgy white and African-American servicemen. It was one of the natural hazards of being in a place where East and West intersected in a time of conflict. While we were of course at war with the Japanese, we were also working with Japanese-American citizens all the time. At one point the captain sent me over to Naval District Headquarters to get a new, confidential chart of the harbor. In uniform and with my written authorization to obtain officer-messenger mail (which could mean almost anything), I was directed to “Mr. Yamaguchi, up in Operations,” who scrutinized my credentials with an air of patient skepticism, looked me over twice, and finally opened up a safe, handed me the chart, and had me sign the usual receipt.
Over the harbor circuit, which all ships I port were required to keep open, were sent orders ad “flashes” from District Headquarters. Around sunrise one morning not long after the attack came a message to all ships to hold their anti-aircraft fire as American aircraft — the Hawaiian Air Force, we’d called it, before December 7 — would be taking off from Hickam Field. Looking that way, we half-expected, half-hoped to see a mighty aerial armada becoming airborne. Instead four planes — one B-17 and three fighter escorts — roared off into the wild blue yonder. That was all we could muster.
Sometime late in the week after the attack, I managed to get home for a few hours during the day, carrying the now-required gas mask and wearing my now-mandatory uniform. Sue and the kids were safe and unharmed, though they were all a bit shaken by what had happened. Shortly after I had left them on the 7th, a squadron of Japanese dive bombers had banked low around our house on the way toward the harbor, coming so close that Sue could see the two occupants of each plane and the red roundels on the upper sides of their wings. Living completely blacked out all night, every night, was a lot different than enduring an occasional drill. All three had spent the first night next door with our landlords, the Dungs, with security more important than sleep. A few Japanese planes jettisoned their bombs over Honolulu and quite a few casualties were inflicted on civilians, so their fears were not unwarranted.
Sue suffered as well from rumors. All sorts of alarming reports had reached her, included statements from alleged eyewitnesses who swore that the San Francisco had been bombed and torpedoed with heavy loss of life, then settled alongside her dock a burning wreck. This was a reasonable description of what had actually happened to the California, so the statements weren’t completely off-base. But our landlord, Mr. Chin Dung, who was employed in the Navy Yard as an electrician, managed to get away from his work long enough to get a look at the San Francisco and catch a glimpse of me, and then got word back to Sue that I was alive and well and the ship undamaged. She was primarily relieved to hear about me, of course. She swore to it. But for a Navy wife and daughter like Sue, the health of one of the nation’s heavy cruisers mattered as well.
Sue and I talked things over and decided the only sensible course of action was for her and the children to return to Long Beach as soon as possible, by Pan Am clipper if that were an option, otherwise by ship. There might not be any choice. The authorities were already talking about interning local Japanese-Americans and evacuating all American military dependents to the mainland. Things were happening fast, and there was no way to know how they would turn out. We were certain of only one thing: change. In the wake of the misfortune that had befallen the nation, it seemed selfish to think of ourselves and our little family, but we had only a few moments together and we couldn’t help feeling fear and regret. The bombs that fell on the island of Oahu on December 7, 1941 ended a beautiful chapter in our lives. Nothing would ever be the same.
