I swam along underwater as much as I could, wiping oil from round my nose and mouth and away from my eyes with one hand as I came up for breath, flame driving me under again. In this manner I made my way, half-blinded, to one of the harbour islands. I was lucky to make it to shore. Hundreds died trapped on board their ships. Hundreds more drowned in the burning sea. Others were blown skyward, falling to earth in bits and pieces.

Ships were aflame, men on fire leaping overboard, seas ablaze. Billowing black smoke, shrapnel and lumps of debris flying, bombs falling, vessels sinking. Screaming and shouting, roaring planes.

The sky was dotted with the black puffs of anti-aircraft smoke. Machine-gun fire was coming from our ships, the ones not hit. But to no avail.

There was nothing I could do to help in the way of counterattack, but I stripped off, wiped myself down and went to help rescue men struggling ashore, many burned, wounded, and throwing up oil and sea water. At first I just waded out and pulled men in, but after a while took charge of a liferaft and ferried the wounded to the nearby naval base. I had no time then to think how the raid might have affected the rest of O‘ahu.

The planes roared away after about half an hour, but the fires and explosions and flying debris continued as we went to and fro, bringing in the wounded and the half-drowned. The dead had to wait.

It wasn’t until I was given a truck to drive and we began moving out from the over-filled Naval Hospital to take the wounded to the general hospitals and emergency sites that I saw the devastation in the city. The roads to the port had been strafed, houses were on fire, trees had been beheaded, shops had been annihilated and there was glass everywhere. There were bomb holes you could stand to your neck in. People lay dead or wounded in the streets. Wrecked cars had been blown from the roads with people inside. Everywhere there were people crying, carrying the dead and wounded or doing their best to put out fires and clear the roads. Trucks and vehicles of all descriptions had become ambulances.

As I drove back and forth all I could think about was my family. I knew that Ela and the boys would have driven in to pick me up. Though I couldn’t abandon the work I was doing, my worries were making me sick. My eyes traversed the wreckage of the streets, trusting not to see what I was looking for.