A collection of memories from that infamous day

Over the years The Spokesman-Review has interviewed many Inland Northwest who had survived the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Most of them are gone now, but their words live on.

John (Sid) Kennedy: He was in sick bay recovering from minor surgery. “I heard machine gun fire and looked out the window.” He saw a Japanese plane soaring across the bay. Six people stood outside the door, watching the action. “So, I went out and got them. I could hear the rounds hitting the doorway.” The morning passed in a blur as he helped move the wounded to the operating room. “One of the worst injuries I saw was a pilot who’d had his leg blown off,” Kennedy said. “Unfortunately, I had to move bodies to the morgue, too.”

Ray Daves: “I thought, ‘The world’s gone crazy! What have we done to provoke these people into this carnage?’” He described himself as a “scared little boy” that day, but added, “I sure grew up in a hurry.” He was on his way to breakfast when he saw the first bomb drop on Ford Island. “I prayed, ‘God, don’t let it get my friend, Jim (Sinnot).’ I knew he was on Ford Island. … We all lost friends at Pearl Harbor.”

Bob Ohnemus: “I was stringing up a clothesline when I heard a boom. I thought some dummy was out shooting off ammunition.”

Denis Mikkelsen: The 19-year-old sailor was asleep aboard the USS West Virginia when the ship was attacked. “I was told to close the hatches, but before I could get them closed the water was pouring in – we were sinking that fast.” When the order came to abandon ship, he went into the harbor wearing only shorts and a T-shirt and swam to Ford Island.

Charlie Boyer: “I said, ‘Look at the show the Army’s putting on.’ Then I saw the big ol’ red meatballs on the wings of the plane. I said, ‘Army, hell!’” Boyer was a 21-year-old seaman stationed at Naval Air Station Kaneohe. “Time seemed like forever. I’d say a few of us were pretty scared.” He told of a fellow soldier on guard duty who shot at a fence post. “He swore it moved.”

Warren Schott: He looked out the house he shared with his wife Betty, close to Battleship Row on Ford Island, and spotted a plane flying low, directly toward them. Then it torpedoed the USS Utah. “I said, ‘Betty, we’re at war!’”

Betty Schott: “Slamming a door for days after the attack would make you jump.”

Bud Colburn: “I’d figured on going to church that morning. But I didn’t quite make it,” said Colburn, had just gotten off duty. He spent the day driving the wounded to the hospital. “I took the guys they were bringing out of the water.”

Bob Snider: That morning, the 8-year-old boy ran to the pier when he heard the noise of the attack. His father, a civilian aircraft mechanic working at the military bases, called him into the house. “We watched the Japanese bombers coming – it seemed like they’d never stop.” And the noise intensified as shrapnel pelted the house. “It sounded like a terrible hailstorm.”

Russell Telecky: The crew member from the battleship Nevada said the damaged ship managed to get enough extra steam to make coffee an hour later. It so impressed a reporter from Time that the next issue of the magazine noted, “Come hell or high water, the Nevada has coffee.” All of his classmates from training school died on the USS Arizona. “If you think about the dirty stuff, you have to cry.”

Glen Hills: Aboard the USS Medusa, the 18-year-old “was in the shower, getting ready to play in a tennis tournament,” when he heard the terrible roar of explosions tearing at the hulls of American ships. “My first thought was, ‘How did the Germans get here?’ Then I saw the Rising Sun. And I knew.” The assault lasted almost two and a half hours. “It seemed like a couple of weeks.”

Susette Pitts: She helped nurse men back to health at the hospital at Pearl Harbor. “It’s something that’s very hard to describe, but you feel it in your bones when you talk about it. … It was scary when those planes came in. They didn’t care who they hit. I knew girls who tried to hide under the couch.”

Harold Kern: “It was a turning point in many of our lives. We didn’t go to war. The war came to us.”

Compiled by Scott Maben.