Lane, arrived from his home, four blocks away, according to Higa. His brother Lee is among the 14 of 189 killed at Hickam Field whose remains lay in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, but are, as yet, unidentified.Īcting commander of the newly opened base hospital, Capt. “They were in the kitchen adjacent to the mess hall making sandwiches when the bomb hit killing everyone except Charles.” “Brothers Lee and Charles Clendening were both in the same squadron and slept side by side on the third floor of I-wing,” said Jessie Higa, a volunteer historian for the 15th Wing at Hickam. Some of the Hickam Field dead had been asleep in the wings of Kowalski’s “big, beautiful” barracks building, which is now Headquarters, Pacific Air Forces and many more were killed in the consolidated dining facility, at the center of those wings, when a bomb tore through the roof and detonated. It was a sad day seeing people trying to identify who was still alive very traumatic.” Kowalski said in a 2012 interview with Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Public Affairs. “It was a fancy name for counting the dead,” Col. On arrival at wing headquarters, he was designated as the casualty control officer, charged with maintaining the Army department’s entire list of casualties, including those at Wheeler Field, Bellows Field, Schofield Barracks and Fort Shafter. Just before 8 a.m., Kowalski, the wing commander’s assistant, was awakened from his slumber after an all-night poker game, by the sound of explosions. “Joining the Army wasn’t running away from home. “For a young man who had never been away from home, it was fantastic … what stayed with me was those big beautiful barracks,” said Kowalski, a retired colonel, now 102 and living in Waikiki, Honolulu with his son. Andrew Kowalski, duty at Hickam Field, Hawaii, was like a dream. Stationed there was a son of Polish immigrants, who had joined the Army to escape a life of dust-filled lungs in the coal mines surrounding Lambert, Pennsylvania. More than 50 Japanese “Val” dive-bombers and “Zero” fighters began their attack runs moments after the first bombs landed at Wheeler, igniting a chain reaction of exploding planes. After weeks of alerts and drills, most of the base had been given leave for the weekend. That was his introduction to the war,” said Haigley, now 79 and living in Cockeysville, Maryland.įurther south, adjacent to Pearl Harbor, Hickam Field’s A-20, B-18 and B-17 bombers were parked wingtip to wingtip to make them easier for the few security personnel on duty to guard against possible sabotage. “My father never talked about it … my Mom told me that when he was summoned to the hospital they asked him to go over to the mess hall at Wheeler Air Corps … there he saw seven men dead at their tables before they had even had a bite to eat. Haigley saw the first of many scenes that would haunt him for the remainder of his life. When he pushed through the mess hall’s heavy metal doors, Capt. The building, which stands little changed today, was directly across the street from where a Japanese bomb had torn through the roof of Hanger 3, igniting stacks of ammunition stored there. From there he was sent to the mess hall at Wheeler Field. Army Medical Corps, had left his son on the porch of their home, near Generals Loop at neighboring Schofield Barracks, to report to the base hospital. His father, Thomas Brien Haigley Sr., a captain and doctor in the U.S. Army Air Forces base at Wheeler Field in the central valley of the island of Oahu, Hawaii.įor the United States, World War II had begun at 5-year-old Brien Haigley’s doorstep. However, the Japanese attack, launched from aircraft carriers that had sailed undetected across 3,800 miles of Pacific Ocean, commenced miles away from Pearl Harbor at the U.S. 7, 1941 the day the boy and a nation would remember simply as “Pearl Harbor.” The air, normally thick with the sweet smell of plumeria blossoms, suddenly reeked of acrid cordite and structure fires.įrom the west, planes with large red circles on their wings flew low over the boy’s home, objects falling from their bellies as they climbed skyward, igniting fireballs, destroying buildings and tearing flesh, the flesh of men who dressed each morning in the same uniform worn by his father. Not even a mile away, a huge explosion sent boiling black clouds of smoke into the sky. “I want you to remember this,” the man said and then ran inside the house.