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Other Japanese bombers swarmed over Hawaii's military airfields, Hickam and Wheeler, Kaneohe and Ewa. Dive-bombing and strafing the American planes neatly parked on the runways, they quickly won control of the sky. They wrecked hangars, warehouses, barracks -- as well as the Hickam Field chapel and the enlisted men's new beer hall, the Snake Ranch. And in the midst of all this, a rainbow appeared over Ford Island.
To many of the Americans, the whole morning had a dreamlike unreality. Disbelief had been the overwhelming first reaction -- this couldn't be happening, it was a trick, a drill, a silly rumor, a prank -- disbelief and then pain and then anger, and still disbelief.
Admiral Kimmel was preparing for his golf game with General Short when an officer phoned him with the news that Japanese planes were attacking his fleet. The admiral was still buttoning his white uniform as he ran out of his house and onto the neighboring lawn of his chief of staff, Captain. John Earle, which had a fine view of Battleship Row. Mrs. Earle said later that the admiral's face was "as white as the uniform he wore."
"The sky was full of the enemy," Kimmel recalled. He saw the Arizona "lift out of the water, then sink back down -- way down." Mrs. Earle saw a battleship capsize.
"Looks like they've got the Oklahoma," she said.
"Yes, I can see they have," the admiral numbly responded.
General Short, who couldn't see the explosions, bumped into an intelligence officer and asked, "What's going on out there?"
"I'm not sure, general," said Lieut. Colonel George Bicknell, "but I just saw two battleships sunk."
"That's ridiculous!" said Short.
Down on Battleship Row, Fuchida's bombers kept pounding the helpless battlewagons. The West Virginia took six torpedoes, then two bombs. One large piece of shrapnel smashed into the starboard side of the bridge and tore open the stomach of the skipper, Captain Mervyn Bennion. A medic patched up the dying man's wound, and a husky black mess steward, Doris Miller, who had once boxed as the ship's heavyweight champion, helped move the stricken captain to a sheltered spot.
Fire and smoke swirled around the bridge. Bennion told his men to leave him; they ignored him. He asked them how the battle was going; they told him all was well. After Bennion died, an officer told Miller to feed ammunition into a nearby machine gun. Like other blacks in the Navy of 1941, Miller had not been trained for anything but domestic chores, but he soon took charge of the machine gun and started firing away. A young ensign recalled later that it was the first time he had seen Miller smile since he last fought in the ring.
Caught by surprise, and then often finding all ammunition neatly locked away, the defenders hacked away the locks and fought back with any weapons at hand -- machine guns, rifles, pistols. This usually achieved nothing, but there were some surprises. At Kaneohe Naval Air Station on the east coast of Oahu, a flight of Mitsubishi Zeroes was strafing the hangars when a sailor named Sands darted out of an armory and fired a burst with a Browning automatic rifle.
"Hand me another BAR!" shouted Sands. "I swear I hit that yellow bastard!"