ABOVE – Recreation of Daichi Type 99 Val dive bomber for the 1970 movie “Tora, Tora, Tora” which was actually filmed around NAS Barbers Point and former MCAS Ewa Field in 1969.
Former December 7, 1941 Ewa Villagers Wally Sugai, Kiyoshi Ikeda, Yoshinobu Oshiro and Tony Bise reviewing maps and photos with Ewa historian John Bond.
Most of these incredibly valuable eye-witnesses have since passed away.
US Air Force veterans Shoso Yasui, Yoshinobu Oshiro, Kazuto Tomoyasu and historian John Bond look at maps and photos of Japanese planes and Ewa Field.
December 7, 1941 Ewa Plantation EYE WITNESS ACCOUNTS
2010-15 Historian John Bond conducted recorded interviews with:
Isamu Murakami, C-Camp teenager – later US military veteran and Lockheed SR-71 electronics engineer
Kiyoshi Ikeda, C-Camp teenager – later US Army veteran and UH Ph.D
Shoso Yasui, C-Camp teenager - later US Army Air Force veteran
Yoshinobu Oshiro, C-Camp teenager - later US Army veteran and Lt.Col. USAF Ret.
Kazuto Tomoyasu, C-Camp teenager – USAF navigator and USAF Lt.Col. Ret.
Ramsay Hishinuma, Tenney Village teenager – (father interned Honouliuli ) later US Army veteran Japan-Korea
Joel Fujita and (future wife) Francis Fujita, C-Camp teenagers – later US Army 442nd combat veteran Italy
Goro Arakawa - Waipahu teenager – later distinguished Waipahu Plantation historian and community leader.
Ewa Village Postmaster - Harry Ching oral history transcript (deceased 1990’s ?)
Not all names of Ewa Village interviewees are listed here as more will be added in a future revision as recordings are transcribed and large amounts of personal emails are added.
Numerous meetings with Ewa Villagers who witnessed the December 7, 1941 attack have had their recollections and oral histories recorded by Ewa historian John Bond on audio and video formats.
A few were from oral history projects done a decade or two ago and transcribed to printed documents.
Ewa Plantation saw extensive strafing, according to many still living eye-witnesses. Plantation office buildings, the mill buildings and mill tower were strafed, as were roadways and even the plantation baseball field were hit.
There were actually hundreds of Ewa Villagers watching with a mixture of fear and curiosity from the vantage point of home rooftops and a nearby canal embankment as the entire spectacle unfolded.
Some were still not sure if this was some kind of elaborate US military “exercise,” while others knew immediately they were watching an unprecedented Japanese air attack.
This strafing activity didn’t appear to be planned, but was more likely a result of many Daichi Type 99 Val dive bomber aircraft, having dropped their bombs at Pearl Harbor, needed to regroup before returning north of Oahu to their carriers. Zero fighters had already left the Ewa area.
Having the time and lots of unexpended 7.7mm ammunition available, they looked for and fired on available targets, including strafing cars along roads. In the Ewa Plantation community, it did not appear like the targets were civilians, but rather cars, plantation mill buildings and American symbols- such as the plantation baseball diamond which was strafed repeatedly.
Japanese Type 99 Vals were seen repeatedly swooping very low over the village and sometimes waving to villagers. Some eye-witnesses interpreted this as bravado while others believed the aircrew were waving at people to leave or “get down”. The Japanese pilots were seen pulling up in steep wing-overs, which allowed their rear seat gunners to spray Ewa Field defenders with 7.7-millimeter bullets. Kids ran out and collected the large amounts of spent brass raining down.
Ewa Plantation hospital treated large number of casualties
Photos of some interviewees from 1946 Waipahu HS yearbook
One of many Ewa attack waves is described in this Cressman-Wenger account:
…Around 0930, yet another flight of enemy planes appeared — about 15 Vals from Kaga and Hiryu. Although the pilots of those planes had expended their 250-kilogram bombs on ships at Pearl Harbor, they still apparently retained plenty of 7.7-millimeter ammunition, and seemed determined to expend much of what remained upon Ewa.
As in the previous attacks by Shokaku's Vals, the last group came in at very low altitude from just over the tops of the trees surrounding the station. Quite taken by the high maneuverability of the nimble dive bombers, which they were seeing at close hand for the second time that day, the Marines mistook them for fighter aircraft with fixed landing gear.”
By around 10 AM, the Japanese had decided to end further air operations and withdraw back to their carriers. While casualties among the Marines at Ewa Field had been light, the air assault had destroyed "all bombing, fighting, and transport planes" on the ground.
Ewa Field had no radio communications, no power, and only one small gas generator still in commission. 7.7-millimeter casings and attached metal links were found all over the Ewa plantation and village areas after the attack and were picked up by villagers as attack souvenirs, remaining in some private collections to this very day.
Japanese 7.7 mm brass casings found all over Ewa Villages and Ewa Field
In the end, nine Ewa Plantation Community civilians were wounded during the Dec. 7 attack. Two were serious, resulting in the amputation of a woman's arm, and two people were killed. One of them was six year old Lillian Oda, the last person to die, in January 1942, and was buried at Ewa Community Cemetery but then later reinterned. At least forty Ewa Plantation residents served in WW-II and at least five died in combat in Italy, in units like the 442nd.
Ewa Community Air Combat Timeline (times are approximate)
7:53 AM Shoso Yasui sees Kate torpedo bombers fly directly over Ewa Village
headed to Pearl Harbor. No shots have been fired until the lead Kate (Fuchida) fires signal flare, and Kates disperse into individual target attack runs on Pearl Harbor as Zero fighters swoop down on Ewa Field strafing parked planes. Most Ewa Villagers think the attack is another mock attack drill by the Army and Marines. But it does sound and look very realistic.
Shoso Yasui, Kazuto Tomoyasu, Yoshinobu Oshiro and John Bond at Ewa Hongwanji on Renton Rd. Shoso is pointing towards Ewa Field, which could be easily seen from nearby C Camp rooftops.
8:15 AM Daichi Type 99 VAL’s coming from Pearl Harbor after bombing Navy ships begin strafing Ewa Field and Ewa Plantation, as seen by USMC Sgt. John Hughes at Ewa Field and by Ewa Plantation teenagers Isamu Murakami, Kiyoshi Ikeda, Shoso Yasui, and Yoshinobu Oshiro, Kazuto Tomoyasu, Joel Fujita, Francis Fujita, and etc.
Nearly all are very close to the airfield, 50 yards for Kiyoshi Ikeda who lived close by, and about 500 yards for those standing outside the Ewa Hongwanji mission Sunday school or who climbed up on rooftops of homes in the villages to watch.
Color photo from 1970 movie “Tora, Tora, Tora” filmed at and over Ewa Field. Eye-witnesses, including Marine Sgt. John Hughes remember seeing low flying Nakajima Kate torpedo bombers directly nearby the villages and Ewa airfield.
Villagers come out and stand on village rooftops or nearby canal earth berms and watch the Ewa Field attack and many later reports of bullets whizzing through homes, streets, fields, Ewa plantation offices, mill area and even a baseball field, strafed by Japanese Vals at very low level using impressive highly acrobatic maneuvers. Pilot-crew of the two man Daichi Type 99 Val both wave to civilians and fire at the plantation and air field.
While the Zero fighter has very effective forward firing 7.7 mm machineguns the Val flew inverted rolls so that the back seat gunner could effectively aim and fire his 7.7mm machine gun. Large amounts of brass fell from the planes during the attack, both on Ewa Field and around the villages which the then younger kids picked up as souvenirs. (Many still exist today and John Bond has found two spent 7.7mm shells on the ground.)
8:30 AM Ramsay Hishinuma, camping with basketball team fiends overnight at Hau Bush, sees Navy SBD’s being shot down by Japanese Zeros from Hau Bush beach. This interview was extensively documented on the actual Ewa Beach location known as Hau Bush, which was then a private Ewa Plantation recreation area for residents with beach facilities, sports field and camping area.
Ramsay Hishinuma sees Navy Lt. Dickson parachute from his USS Enterprise SBD (the gunner did not make it out) landing nearby. According to Hishinuma, Dickson asked the boys “what the hell is going on?” They reply that they have no idea either. Hishinuma sees a Japanese plane “in trouble” heading seaward and crashing in the ocean. This Daichi Val is later claimed as a kill by Army P-40 pilots and also Marines at Ewa Field, however the Army pilot gets the credit.
8:30 - 9:45 AM Goro Arakawa (Arakawa’s a famous family store in Waipahu) has observed Japanese plans flying around the Waipahu Plantation Mill smokestack and then heading over to Ewa. He and his brother get into their car and drive as far as Lower Village on what is today Ft. Weaver Road, but are stopped by an Army – Civil Defense roadblock from entering Renton Rd. to Ewa Plantation. Everyone is told to go home and take cover. Because Goro Arakawa has family in the Hawaii Territorial Guard, they are given ammunition bandoliers to distribute to Army patrols along Fort Weaver Road.
Meanwhile Ramsay Hishinuma is trying to get back to his home in Tenny Village, Ewa Plantation, is also stopped along the north bound Ft. Weaver Road by another Army-CD roadblock. They know another way by foot through the cane fields but they later regret it as the whole journey is described as a terrifying experience as live rounds from Pearl Harbor continuously zip and whiz through the sugar cane. Hishinuma said he doesn’t know how they managed not to get hit by all of the continuous firing. Much of this would have been from ships firing 50 caliber machine guns at low flying overhead Daichi Val dive bombers.
9:15-10 AM Ewa Village Postmaster - Harry Ching, walks from Papipi Road into the Keawe forest and drags the badly burned body of a Navy SBD crewman to the highway (he is Lt. Dickinson's tail gunner) and turns it over to an Army patrol. This account is attached below as transcribed further by an oral history interviewer in the early 1990's.
Above Ewa Village attack view diagram was created by Isamu Murakami using the photo I sent to him by email, taken from a Japanese scout float plane early on December 7, 1941. The attack has not started in this early morning reconnaissance photo- suggesting at least a 7:53 AM time. No bombs have yet fallen on Pearl Harbor.
Geo-referencing the scout float plane Aichi EA131 "Jake" air photo from the cruisers Tone and Chikuma with a Google Earth image made recently. The photos determined that there weren't any aircraft carriers in Pearl Harbor so the quick decision was made to go after the big battleships. These first attacks are well documented by photos taken by Japanese Kate bombers from the Ewa Field side of Pearl Harbor.
Japan later released to the world a news reel film of the Oahu air attack with a soundtrack using the symphonic "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," a music theme most people today associate with the film "2001- Space Odyssey" (Also see German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche which inspired this "tone poem" symphony by Richard Strauss.)
Many Ewa Village homes remain from the December 7, 1941 era and MCAS Ewa’s airfield remains largely intact today. The Ewa airfield also became the primary US Navy carrier air groups used in the battles of Coral Sea and the Pacific War turning point - the June 1942 Battle of Midway. Navy carrier air groups from Ewa Field, known unofficially as Naval Air Station Ewa, also supported the April 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo.
The initial Ewa attack waves are described in these Cressman-Wenger accounts
For the 50th Anniversary of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack
Sweeping over the Waianae Range, Lieutenant Commander Shigeru Itaya led Akagi's nine Zeroes, while Lieutenant Yoshio Shiga headed another division of nine Zeros from Kaga. After the initial attack, Itaya and Shiga were to be followed by Zero divisions from Soryu, under Masaji Suganami, and Hiryu, under Lieutenant Kiyokuma Okajima, which were, at that moment, involved in attacking Wheeler to the north."
Shiga's Zero pilots, like Itaya's, concentrated on the tactical aircraft lined up neatly on Ewa's northwest apron with short bursts of 7.7- and 20-millimeter machine gun fire. Shiga's pilots, unlike Itaya's, however, reversed course over the treetops and repeated their blistering attacks from the opposite direction. Within minutes, most of MAG-21's planes sat ablaze and exploding, black smoke corkscrewing into the sky.
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Officer-of-the-day, Captain Leonard W. Ashwell noticed two formations of aircraft at 0755. The first looked like 18 "torpedo planes" flying at 1,000 feet toward Pearl Harbor from Barbers Point, but the second, to the northwest, comprised about 21 planes just coming over the hills, from the direction of Nanakuli, also at an altitude of about 1,000 feet. Ashwell, intrigued by the sight, stepped outside for a better look. The second formation, of single-seat Zero fighters (the two division from Akagi and Kaga), flew just to the north of Ewa and wheeled to the right. Then, flying in a "string" formation, they commenced firing. Recognizing the planes as Japanese, Ashwell burst back into the mess, shouting: "Air Raid ... Air Raid!"
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At his home on Ewa Beach, three miles southeast of the air station, Captain Richard C. Mangrum, VMSB232's flight officer, sat reading the Sunday comics. Often residents of that area had heard gunnery exercises but on a Sunday morning? The chatter of gunfire and the dull thump of explosions, however, drew Mangrum's attention away from the cartoons. As he looked out his front door, planes with red ball markings on the wings and fuselage roared by at very low altitude, bound for Pearl Harbor.
Up the center of the island in the direction of Wheeler Field, smoke was boiling skyward, as it was from Ewa. As he set out for Ewa on an old country road, wives and children of Marines who lived in the Ewa Beach neighborhood began gathering at the Mangrums' house.
***************************************************************** Elsewhere in the Ewa Beach community, Mrs. Charles S. Barker, Jr., wife of Master Technical Sergeant Barker, the chief clerk in MAG-21's operations office, heard all the noise and asked: "What's all the shooting?" Barker, clad only in beach shorts, looked out his front door, saw and heard a planes fly by at low altitude, and then saw splashes along the shoreline from strafing planes marked with red hinomaru.
Running out to turn off the water hose in his front yard, and seeing a small explosion nearby (probably an antiaircraft shell from the direction of Pearl), Barker had seen enough. He left his wife and baby with his neighbors, and set out for Ewa.
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The Zeros strafers who singled out cars moving along the roads that led to Ewa proved no respecter of persons. MAG-21's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Claude A. "Sheriff" Larkin, en route from Honolulu, was about a mile from Ewa in his 1930 Plymouth when a Zero shot at him. He momentarily abandoned the car for the relative sanctuary of a nearby ditch, not even bothering to turn off the engine, and then, as the strafer roared out of sight, sprinted back to the vehicle, jumped back in, and sped on.
He reached his destination at 0805 — just in time to be machine gunned again by one of Admiral Nagumo's fighters.
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That Sunday morning, Technical Sergeant Henry H. Anglin, the noncommissioned-officer-in-charge of the photographic section at Ewa, had driven from his Pearl City home with his three-year-old son, Hank, to take the boy's picture at the station. The senior Anglin had just positioned the lad in front of the camera and was about to take the photo — the picture was to be a gift to the boy's grandparents — when they heard the "mingled noise of airplanes and machine guns."
Roaring down to within 25 feet of the ground, LtCdr Shigeru Itaya, commander of Akagi's Zero fighters, carried out the first pass at Ewa Field aircraft before moving on to Hickam, the headquarters of the Hawaiian Air Force's 18th Bombardment Wing.
Thinking that Army pilots were showing off, Sergeant Anglin stepped outside the photographic section tent and, along with some other enlisted men, watched planes bearing Japanese markings strafing the edge of the field. Then, the planes began roaring down toward the field itself and the bullets from their cowl and wing-mounted guns began kicking up puffs of dirt.
"Look, live ammunition," somebody said or thought, "Somebody will go to prison for this."
In the midst of the confusion, an excited three-year old Hank Anglin innocently took advantage of his father's distraction with the battle and wandered toward the mat. All of the noise seemed like a lot of fun. Sergeant Anglin ran after his son, got him to the ground, and, shielding him with his own body, crawled some 35 yards, little puffs of dirt coming near them at times.
As they clambered inside the radio trailer to get out of harm's way, a bullet made a hole above the door. Moving back to the photo tent, the elder Anglin put his son under a wooden bench. As he set about gathering his camera gear to take pictures of the action, a bullet went through his left arm. Deprived of the use of that arm for a time, Anglin returned to the bench under which his son still crouched obediently, to see little Hank point to a spent bullet on the floor and hear him warn: "Don't touch that, daddy, it's hot."
This photo was taken right around the time MCAS Ewa was closed down in 1952. Ewa Plantation villages and camps still looked almost identical to the 1941 period.
Ewa Plantation Villages in relation to Ewa Field. The brown perimeter road would become the future Roosevelt Road. The blue line is the still operational Oahu Railway line. Photo taken in mid 1941.
View from the Mooring Mast towards Ewa Village, January 1941 - as the base is just being set up.
This Google Earth view shows the ground track of the initial arrival of Kate torpedo bombers lead by Fuchida. The planes passed directly over Ewa Village and Ewa Field, as viewed by eye witnesses like Shoso Yasui and John Hughes, before a signal flare is fired, splitting them up into specific attack formations.
This photo from 16MM film, was taken by approaching Kate bombers, and may also actually show Ewa Field under initial attack by Japanese Zeros.
The Waipahu Plantation Mill Smoke stack was used as a pylon checkpoint for Japanese VALS.
Waipahu teenager Goro Arakawa, stood on the roof of their family’s dry goods store on nearby Depot Road and watched VALS bomb Ford Island targets and then fly around the smoke tower and then head over to Ewa. Goro and his brother jumped into their car and drove over to Ewa but were stopped
from entering Renton Road by an Army-Civil Defense roadblock. They were then pressed into service to had out ammunition bandoliers to Army patrols along Fort Weaver road.
Ewa Field combat veteran Major John Hughes at an Ewa Field commemoration organized by Ewa historian John Bond. BELOW Hughes points to a photo which shows him and fellow Marines firing 1903 Springfield rifles at Japanese planes.
As first wave Kate bombers leave, they take this photo of Ewa Field burning. NAS Barbers Point was not an operational airfield until late in 1942. The historic Pacific War turning point Battle of Midway was staged out of joint Navy-Marine base Ewa Field.
This photo was taken during the second wave when AAA flak was more intense over Pearl Harbor. Ewa Field is also still burning from various aircraft fires. Waipahu Mill is to the right of Ewa Field.
The Buddhist Ewa Hongwanji mission on Renton Road. Many Ewa Village kids had gathered here on the morning of December 7, 1941 for Sunday school. Ewa Field is only a few hundred yards from this location. Most kids ran home once the heavy gunfire and strafing began.
As seen from near the Ewa Hongwanji and Tenny Village, where the bridge crosses the drainage channel (called “ahtsui” by villagers) is the Waianae Mountains. The Kate Bombers came over from the left side and passed nearly directly overhead to the right, heading towards Pearl Harbor. This was followed by Zero fighters coming in from the right side view, banking left and dropping downward to begin their strafing attack on nearby Ewa Field. Some villagers stood on the channel bank at center right to watch the attack and stay away from buildings that might be targets.
Tom Yanagihara stands where Lower Village used to be and where he lived as a child. This local Ewa Plantation village received heavy amounts of stray rounds and AAA flak fragments due to being directly across from Pearl Harbor. His neighborhood friend Lillian Oda was mortally wounded by an exploding shell fragment, likely an anti-aircraft shell that fell out of the sky.
Goro Arakawa – 1941 Waipahu teenager – later distinguished Waipahu Plantation historian and Waipahu community leader had a large collection of Pearl Harbor attack memorabilia which he shared during interviews with Ewa historian John Bond.
From Ewa Field, Marine eye-witness John Hughes describes seeing an Army P-40 pass over Ewa Field and shoot down two Japanese planes just seconds apart. Ramsay Hishinuma saw the plane splash into the sea offshore. A part of the plane was found along the Ewa shoreline after the heavy waves generated by Hurricane Iniki.
ABOVE: Crash site of another Daichi Type 99 Val which collided with a Navy SBD from the USS Enterprise after they engaged in a dogfight. The Japanese crew are still buried there today in an unknown sinkhole grave location very close to the Haseko development golf course clubhouse owned by a Japanese company.
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Ramsay Hishinuma was also interviewed for an article published in 2001 at the 60th Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Bruce Asato, Honolulu Advertiser
Ramsay S. Hishinuma, 76, of 'Aiea was compelled, like dozens of others, to tell his story for the 60th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, reflecting not only on the day, but on its impact over the 60 years.
"Sixty years have gone by, but it seems like yesterday that I vividly remember and shudder to think how close I came to getting killed by Japanese warplanes strafing the West Loch area of Pearl Harbor where we sought temporary refuge on that fateful morning. This is no way to describe how scared this 16-year-old was on that terrifying day.
"When I told my parents that my fellow members of the 'Ewa Speeders Athletic Club and I planned to camp out overnight on Dec. 6, I had no idea we were reserving ringside seats for the big show the following morning. Our ringside seats were at One'ula Park, known then as Hau Bush, just a few miles west of Pearl Harbor.
"We were just about to eat breakfast when we heard booming sounds. Soon the sky became very black with heavy smoke, and we knew something unusual was happening. Shortly thereafter, two Marine Corps planes appeared, obviously in trouble. One crashed on the nearby road and the other plowed into the wooded area. We also saw a Japanese plane crash in the water a few hundred yards offshore.
"Right above us, at just about tree-top level, we saw a plane with large red ball insignia on its wings and fuselage chasing a Barbers Point Marine dive-bomber. The machine-gun bursts from the Japanese plane were intense and ear-shattering. The Marine pilot was able to get out of his plane before he crashed, and he parachuted into the entanglement of nearby kiawe trees. He looked more than bewildered by the time we approached him and his first words were 'What the hell is going on?' We of course, were wondering the same thing.
"One thing for sure, we were not safe on the beach, and we headed for the road to 'Ewa town. The road had been blocked by Civil Defense, so we sought refuge at Lower Village, across from the 'Ewa Plantation hospital.
"But this was not a wise move, either, as Lower Village above West Loch was being peppered with shrapnel and bullets. Low-flying warplanes were strafing the moored ships nearby, and we were simply in the line of fire and getting fired on in a very intense way. It's a miracle how we were able to dodge all those bullets splattering the grounds nearby. We were scared out of our wits. We learned later that a 3-year-old was mortally wounded and a woman was hit in one arm that had to be amputated.
"When the firing subsided, we ran into the nearby cane fields. It was dark from the heavy smoke blanketing the sky, we had difficulty seeing where we were going. Since then, any eclipse of the sun reminds me of Pearl Harbor day.
"By the time we were able to stumble home, most of us were in a state of shock. I can vividly remember the look on my parents' faces, with tears streaming down in relief when they saw that I was unharmed and safe.
"To this day, when I go past Lower Village, which has been leveled and converted to a modern subdivision, I try to visualize 'the spot' where my young life nearly ended, and my thoughts go back how close I came to being killed.
"Since the attack, things changed drastically for our family, beginning with the internment of my father, who was a soldier in the Japanese army during the 1904 war with Russia. He immigrated to Hawai'i in 1907, seven years prior to World War I.
"Early in 1943, I tried to volunteer for the all-Nisei unit, later known as the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, but was denied the chance to serve because I was underage at 17. In 1945, soon after I was reclassified from 4C to 1A, I was drafted into the U.S. Army and served my country as a member of the occupation forces in Japan.
"During the early days of the occupation, I had a very unusual experience of meeting my cousin, who was a former kamikaze pilot who was demobilized when the war ended. For obvious reasons, he didn't seem happy to see me in a U.S.
Army uniform.
"As a 'survivor' of the Pearl Harbor attack, I feel very fortunate and blessed to be able to enjoy the so-called 'golden years,' but a scary thought still remains had I become a casualty of that terrifying and unforgettable day 60 years ago."
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Preserving 'Ewa Marine Corps field an uphill struggle
Honolulu Advertiser Columnist William Cole June 30, 2008 wrote:
"Joel Fujita, who's now 88, remembers being on the roof of his parents' 'Ewa Plantation home about 50 yards from the base front gate. He and three brothers climbed up on the roof to see what they initially thought was a training exercise.
A Zero fighter came over. You could see the canopy open," Fujita said. "He was waving to us, so we waved back, and about five minutes later, a plane came back and started to strafe in front of our house.
Fujita recalls a very different time, when Marines in 1941 used to walk over and wait in the family's front yard for the bus to town.
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An airfield gets its due during a ceremony recalling Dec. 7, 1941
Ewa took Zero fire, too By Dan Nakaso Dec 06, 2010 Honolulu Star Advertiser
Kiyoshi Ikeda ran to his home in Ewa Villages when he saw the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 69 years ago and was closing the door to his kitchen when a Japanese fighter pilot fired a round that landed two feet from him.
"Bakatare!" Ikeda yelled back at the pilot as other Japanese Zeros were already strafing Ewa Field just a mile from Ikeda's home, killing four Marines and wounding 11 more in three waves of attack, according to the 14th Naval District Command history.
Yesterday, Ikeda returned to the abandoned and weed-covered remains of Ewa Field for a sunny ceremony honoring one of the lesser-known sites of the Japanese attack that propelled America into World War II.
The ceremony was one of several held over the last few days that lead up to tomorrow's Dec. 7 commemoration.
World War II historians at the old Ewa Field yesterday wanted to honor the actions of the Marines that day -- and to bring attention to the forgotten airfield, which had once been the hub of Oahu military flight operations on the Ewa plain.
Before it was renamed Ewa Marine Corps Air Station, Ewa Field was carved out of a 3,000-by-3,000-foot patch of sugar field to tether dirigibles in the 1920s, according to Navy history.
On the eve of the Japanese attack, an estimated 700 Marines were stationed at Ewa Field, whose landing strip was designed like an aircraft carrier flight deck for Marine Air Group 21, which flew fighters, tactical bombers and scout planes.
Ikeda was a 14-year-old freshman at Waipahu High School and had gotten used to U.S. pilots making touch-and-go landings on the mock carrier flight deck day and night.
So when he saw Japanese Zeros flying overhead on Dec. 7, 1941, Ikeda assumed they were Americans training for battle.
Then he saw the attack unfold over Pearl Harbor and ran home, only to be shot at by a plane bearing an unmistakable red circle on its wings and body.
While five or six Japanese bullets pierced his neighborhood and one landed near Ikeda's feet, another Japanese fighter pilot merely waved harmlessly at another boy in the neighborhood, Ikeda said.
"I don't know why but that pilot shot at me," Ikeda said.
The second and third attacks lasted from 8:35 to 9:15 a.m. and consisted of heavy strafing by rear gunners flying in Japanese dive bombers and torpedo planes that were retreating from the Pearl Harbor attack.
The Japanese tail gunners killed three Marines who were firing back from disabled planes, according to the Navy, and wounded 11 other Marines who were trying to extinguish U.S. planes burning along the flight line.
Ikeda went on to a career as a sociology professor at the University of Hawaii but was forever touched by the efforts of the Americans who joined the fight after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the lesserknown battle of Ewa Field.
"It developed a model for me of what a good citizen should be," Ikeda said.
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'We grew up as Americans'
The journey to become U.S. veterans took the isle’s nisei boys from the sugar plantations to military intelligence and beyond By William Cole Nov 11, 2015
Shoso Yasui, left, Kazuto Tomoyasu, center, and Yoshinobu Oshiro, far right, met with Ewa Beach historian John Bond in 2012 to talk about life at Ewa Plantation and the attack on Marine Corps Air Station Ewa. Tom Reese Photo
They were barefoot nisei Japanese-American plantation kids growing up next door to Marine Corps Air Station Ewa who would witness the attacks of Dec. 7, 1941, and their parents’ concerns about Japan, and then go on to serve the United States.
The route to veteran status for Yoshinobu Oshiro, Kazuto Tomoyasu and Shoso Yasui — who as youths watched the diving attack planes from the Ewa Hongwanji Mission — came via a Japanese background midway in the Pacific, but as Americans in Hawaii who volunteered to do their part when they were older.
“We grew up as Americans,” said Tomoyasu, 84, who nevertheless experienced racial taunts after the war started.
He later went on to become a B-57 bomber navigator and spend 28 years in the Air Force.
“We didn’t grow up as Japanese kids, even though we were influenced a lot by our parents’ philosophy, like honor, duty, country,” the Aiea resident said.
Life lived between the Ewa Plantation and the Marine Corps Air Station meant community bathhouses with big redwood tubs where kids used to listen to their elders’ stories while soaking, and chasing errant fighter tow targets made of pure silk that were highly prized by the women of the camps.
“I cannot find the exact words, but I’m thankful for the country that I served in, and especially the military.
The military was the key to my success, I think,” said Oshiro, 87, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who was part of the Military Intelligence Service.
Yasui, meanwhile, who used to make model airplanes, recalled the Battle of Britain — “I was really interested in the war in Europe,” he said — and taking note of the early biplanes and sleeker Wildcat fighters that would ply the sky over Ewa Field.
Like the other two, Yasui, now 87, would serve in post-World War II Japan, in his case in an Air Force supply squadron.
Their lives converged at the Hongwanji Mission on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese planes appeared overhead, and the church provided a good vantage point.
Oshiro said he and some others were playing football, and “suddenly we see planes swooping down,50 feet above and strafing, just tat! tat! tat! tat! tat! We hear that.”
A man named Mr. Hanzawa came out and said, “Eh, go home! Go home!” the Pearl City man recalled. “You see that ‘hinomaru’ (sun flag insignia)?
That Japanese plane. Go home!”
Japanese aircraft that day attacked Ewa Field in three waves, and four Marines were killed. Nearly 50 aircraft on the ground were damaged or destroyed.
Oshiro’s father had come to Hawaii from Okinawa in 1905 and would work at the plantation for about 50 years. After the attack he gathered the family at home and said, “It’s not good. It’s wartime,” Oshiro said.
Tomoyasu remembered the days before the attack, when plantation kids would be on the lookout for the aerial gunnery targets trailed by some of the Marine Corps planes at Ewa.
“Sometimes they’d drop the tow target off the field,” he said. “And that tow target was about 4-1/2feet in diameter and about 30 feet long. It’s pure silk.
Anytime we’d get hold of that sleeve target, the ladies in the plantation would be able to wear silk underwear.”
On Dec. 7 he was bicycling home when an Aichi Type 99 came “down low over the cane fields and the rear gunner was shooting at anything that moved on the road,” he said.
Afterward the Japanese-American boys would sometimes be taunted by others because they were the race of the enemy, he said. “When we’d go to school, on the way back they’d be waiting, and sometimes we’d get into scuffles,” he recalled.
Tomoyasu said he always wanted to fly, “so I was already pointed towards the military.” At the University of Hawaii, he joined the new Air Force ROTC program, which provided a deferment until the shooting stopped in the Korean War, he said.
“When finished, I promised the U.S. government I would serve three years,” he said. He ended up with 28 years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. “Loved every minute,” Tomoyasu said.
In 1946 Oshiro was on draft notice but instead volunteered for the Army with the understanding that he’d get a better assignment. He said he was sent to Japan and became part of the Military Intelligence Service, using his limited Japanese to interview community members in postwar Japan.
“They wanted us to get the pulse of the community,” he said. He moved around Japan, interviewing Japanese who returned to the country from abroad and processing former Japanese prisoners while he was in the country from 1946 to 1950, Oshiro said.
He said he later switched to the Air Force Reserve before retiring in 1985.
The country that he was born into later gave the boy who wanted to be a flier the opportunity that seemed impossible after the Dec. 7, 1941, attacks, Tomoyasu said.
“When we were kids, you couldn’t imagine a nisei getting into the Air Force because of the war. Japan was the enemy,” he said
