Sally and Suzanna had a garden party on Sunday afternoon in January--sort of the celebration "My dining pavilion was featured in House Beautiful." I arrived early and positioned myself to soak up a little afternoon sun as well as get the best people watching view of the party. And by mid-afternoon, Sally's pavilion and backyard over-flowed with guests, among them movers-and-shakers of west-Berkeley and dressed-to-the-tens Bay Area interior decorators and designers. Champagne flowed and La Farine desserts dazzled on the dinning-room table. Quite coincidentally, I sat beside the demure Dorothy Mitchell-Irwin, now 91. Sally's cousin, she was down from Redlands for the party. A Redlands native, Dorothy went to school there from kindergarten to college, graduating from the University of Redlands in 1938. After meeting her first husband-to-be on a Hawaiian cruise they married and shortly after moved to Honolulu. But they divorced within a year. "I thought I was so smart, but I was so naive" she said. Dorothy remained in Hawaii and got a job working for a civilian contractor to the military. And so on December 7, 1941 she was there and remembers.
When I think of December 7th, 1941 I usually also remember the Thanksgiving before. My boyfriend at the time, Hilbert Crosthwaite was a young Lieutenant on the submarine, ARGONAUT. He had duty on Thanksgiving night and invited me to join him and another officer on board for dinner. (I don't remember what we had, but the Navy was famous for good food.) While we were eating the teletype started clacking and we could hear it. The other officer took the communique and read it. The sense of the message, from Washington I think, was that the United States had lost track of the Japanese fleet but that it was still somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
December 7 was on a Sunday. When the telephone rang early that morning I ran downstairs to answer it. (Later on one of our boyfriends put an extension upstairs, but I was the one awakened and ran downstairs to answer it.) It was a roommate's boyfriend, Warren Gardner, and he said: "The Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor!" We had not been out with him the night before, and anyhow he was inclined to play jokes on us, so I said: "Stop yer kidding-and go back to bed." "No," he said, "it's true, If you don't believe me turn on the radio." So I did and this is what I heard Webbley Edwards say: "And if you do not live throughout this day, happy landings. The radio station is now going off air.`' All the radios were off air so no enemy planes could follow the beam into Honolulu.
Well! That got my attention. I ran upstairs to waken my roommates and met with the same unacceptance until out our upstairs window which overlooked the Ala Wai Canal and the golf course beyond, we-saw a small white plane flying low over the canal with a big red circle under the wing!
You can imagine we got dressed in a hurry. In order to calm my nerves and keep busy I decided to wash clothes in the kitchen sink. We did not have a washing machine and as a rule we took our laundry to a Japanese mamasan every week. I remember thinking: if I'm going to be a Japanese prisoner, at least I'll have clean clothes. Later we were advised to pack a bag and what we should put in it. We still had it at the end of the war but we hadn't used it.
When we heard what we thought was a bomb explode a block from our apartment we all ran out to see what had happened and while we were gone the sink overflowed and flooded the kitchen floor. That kept me busy too. Now I'd have clean clothes and a clean floor.
Some Japanese bombs did fall farther away from our apartment, but the one in question was an anti aircraft shell which misfired from Fort de Russey's Battery B anti aircraft Coast Defense gun. This was an Army Fort to protect Honolulu shoreline from Diamond Head to Fort Armstrong down town. Well fortunately that shell fell on an inter section of Aloha Drive and Lewers Ave. It made a hole in the pavement that was quickly repaired.
The Japanese bomb wiped out a low-income area of mostly Japanese residents and we thought it was ironic they bombed their own people. Now there's a beautiful hotel for service people at Fort de Russey and a museum on the site of Battery B, as it was called.
We kept ourselves busy all day. Early in the afternoon one of the room mate's boyfriends who lived in Manoa Valley came to see if we were OK. I think 3 or 4 fellows lived in the house. So we all piled in Fred Barnett's open air convertible and he took the 3 of us home. We were driving down Beretania Blvd. between the Honolulu Academy of Arts and Thomas Square when we heard a terrible racket that sounded like machine gun fire, and we all DUCKED. A big PBY was flying overhead and we were thankful it was OUR plane. But the noise was caused by a flat tire. Auwe! We all piled out of the car while the tire was fixed.
Those fine fellows opened cans and fixed a tuna casserole that tasted mighty good. My two roommates worked for Hawaiian Electric Co. and one was a Home Economist, so I'm sure we must have helped. I'm not sure where everyone else slept, but I slept on the floor in my clothes.
I might add that we expected the Japanese would come ashore at Waikiki.
