Pearl Harbor was completely a surprise attack. There was no intelligence then. Every approaching threat was picked up on radar and the military attending the radar that day were asleep at the switch. There were even submarines belonging to the Japanese in the water.
There is a strategic reason why Hawaii is a state of this nation. It wasn't always so much as a possession no different that Bikini Island and Guam. Hawaii was a 'forward' position for the west coast of the USA. Boy. Was it ever.
Survivor recalls 'day of infamy'
John FahertyThe Arizona Republic
Dec. 7, 2005 12:00 AM
Just before 8 on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Homer Q. Stewart was enjoying a cup of coffee when he looked up and saw a lone aircraft cross over his ship's deck.
The small plane was so low that he could see the Japanese pilot smiling. Moments later, the sky was filled with planes, and he immediately knew war had begun.
"We all figured sooner or later we were going to fight them," Stewart, 85, said this week from the easy chair in his apartment inside the Pennington Gardens care facility in Chandler.
On that morning, his ship was docked "about half a city block" from the USS Arizona and the USS Oklahoma. "
(The Japanese) wanted cruisers, battleships and especially aircraft carriers. Being on a destroyer, we were just a small fry to them,"
Stewart said of his ship, the USS Mugford.Stewart was told to man his battle station, so he got behind a 5-inch gun mounted on a pedestal and started firing at incoming aircraft. They fired just about non-stop for four straight hours, according to a Department of Navy incident report.
The Mugford is credited with shooting down three Japanese aircraft. "I don't know if it was any of my shells that got 'em," Stewart said.
The Mugford was not hit by a bomb or a torpedo that morning, but it was strafed repeatedly by machine gun fire from Japanese planes. Remarkably, no men on the ship died that day.
No time to be scared
Stewart remembers everything about that morning: the sights, the sounds and smells.
He remembers watching the Oklahoma go down.
He remembers the oil-slicked water burning and men swimming though that water, staying below the surface as long as they could.
He remembers watching kamikaze pilots streaking into ships, and people dying.
He does not remember feeling frightened.
"I'm not saying I was brave. But it happened so fast, none of us had time to be scared," said Stewart, who still caries a lot of his native Oklahoma in his voice.
He is concerned, however, that Dec. 7, the "day of infamy," is sliding out of people's memory and being relegated to history books.
He knows young people think of his war as ancient history.
"They just don't think about it much," Stewart said. "But it did happen. It is real. And it was not that long ago."
When he sometimes wears a shirt that identifies him as a Pearl Harbor survivor, some people are surprised to learn it happened recently enough for a participant to be standing among them.
Soldiers in his thoughts
Stewart came to Arizona with his wife in 1953 and started working at Reynolds Metal Co. They had two children together. Now a widower, his home is filled with pictures of his grandchildren. He calls himself "a union man, a Democrat and a Methodist."
Having seen war, he thinks daily of the young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When he thinks of them, he remembers the morning 64 years ago today when his ship finally made it out of the harbor. "Only after we got out to sea did we start to think about it. We were a somber group of people. It was very quiet."
Of course, Pearl Harbor was just the beginning of the action for Stewart and the USS Mugford. There were many other battles fought across the Pacific.
"I wouldn't take a million dollars for all the experiences I had. And I wouldn't give you 10 cents to do it all over again," he said.
