Journal+of+December+7+,+1941

December 7, 1941 Hawaii

Dear Diary,

My airmates are all dead. My friends in the navy are at the bottom of the sea. The U.S. Pacific Fleet is totally devastated.

I realize how you might want a total account of what happened so I will tell you what happened from the morning of December 7th. It was a normal Sunday morning, I just had woken up to beautiful weather as a aircraft streaked across the skies. In my morning daze, I admired the excellent craftsmanship of the airplane until I realized something was very very wrong. That airplane that I had been admiring was not one ours, it was a Japanese Stutka Bomber.

It was at that point when the sirens started all around the Pear Harbor and Hawaii. I dashed around my dormitory rushing to put my clothes on so that I could help defend the base from the Japanese. While I was going through these actions at breakneck speed I was utterly confused. Japan had never declared war on us, how come they were in U.S. territory without announcing their intentions first? Could it be that their intentions was to not attack us? My last question as answered at that point when I heard a whine of a bomb dropping and going off in the distance accompanied by screams.

As I rushed to my stationed airfield to help defend against the Japanese air force which was starting to do bombing runs on our finest battleships and carriers while at the same time swooping around with their machine guns blazing, I was greeted with a site of utter devastation. The command office had become a crater from the multiple bombs that it must have been struck with and as I ran on the path toward the airfield I was soon surrounded by a crowd of people running exactly the other way. Blood streamed from their wounds and ash streaked their faces as they wide panic-stricken eyes roamed around unseeing.

When I finally arrived at my airfield, I was greeted by a fiery inferno. All the finest aircraft bestowed upon by the ingenuity and toil of Americans were burning to ashes before my very eyes. I could see how even my dear airplane had already been swept by the fire and the ammunition it was loaded was going off. I don't know how to exactly describe this scene, but at that point I felt utter helplessness. With no further use that I could think of myself, I lent a helping hand in the fire-fighting crews and helped fight the fires that were threatening to sweep through the entire island.

Sincerely, Paul Tibbets Squadron Leader