Sunday December 7, 1941

I don't even know how to begin this. I am in shock. I am in disbelief. But somehow, I am not scared. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor this morning and it has been pure chaos ever since. It is now 5 p.m. This has been my first break since the first attacks began at around 8 this morning and I am exhausted- but I must write.

I should start at the beginning. Sunday mornings are usually routine in the orthopedic ward- my assignment was to push the beds of patients who were in traction, out onto the hospital's wrap-around porch where they could watch the inter-regimental football game.

As the other nurse,Mildred, and I were in the process of moving the patients, we heard a loud noise- it was a lot of planes approaching. We didn't really know what was going on so we stayed out on the porch. We thought it was one of the U.S. units on maneuvers so we all were waving to the pilots. But then suddenly, we began to see the red circles on the planes- it was the Japanese! We then noticed that the hospital was strafed. All of the patients on the porch were yelling for us to get them back inside.

I have no emergency medical training, and neither does Mildred, but it must have been the adrenaline that made us act quickly. We rushed the patients that were outside back into the ward. We then began to take the patients out of their beds, put them on the floor and surrounded them with mattresses. Once most of the patients were safe on the floor, I went back out to see what was going on. But as a I began to run out, someone yelled to me "Look out!" and I was pushed out of the doorway. A bullet hit right where I had been standing!

Battleship Row

We were then instructed to move the patients down to the basement but the electricity was out and the elevators were not running. Blasts from torpedoes, bombs, machine guns and anti-aircraft fire was everywhere around the hospital. Almost ten minutes after the first attack, causalities began to be carried in on chairs, doors, whatever people could find. Other hospital personnel began to arrive- we needed all of the help we could get. A few civilian women came to assist all of us as well. But then, there was a second attack- a bomb fell very close to the hospital. EVERYTHING was shaking. Supplies were falling from the shelves and plaster began to fall off of the walls.

I had no time to be afraid. A station for minor injuries was established in a vacant building formerly used as nurses' quarters. Patients in the brig and the locked ward were released. To make more room for casualties, ambulatory patients were transferred to two old frame buildings and five hospital tents in the rear of the hospital. Convalescent patients who "requested that they be returned to duty" were permitted to return as best they could to their commands.

We heard that the destruction done the battleships was imaginable but pushed it back in our minds- we could only focus on the bedlam that was in front of us.

I must go back to the chaos now- I don't know when I will have the chance to stop again.

Yours truly,
Pam

The hospital