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Japanese Lieut. Fusata Iida turned to strafe Sands, but the sailor fired another BAR clip, then ducked the bullets that pocked the armory's wall. As Iida's Zero climbed again, gasoline began streaming from his fuel tank. Before takeoff, Iida had said that any pilot whose engine failed should crash his plane into the enemy, so now he turned for a last attack. For one incredible minute, the two enemies faced and fired at each other, Iida from his crippled Zero, Sands with his BAR. Then the Zero nosed into a highway and smashed into pieces.
As Admiral Kimmel stood near a window, a spent machine-gun bullet smashed the glass and hit him lightly in the chest. Kimmel -- who would soon, like General Short, be dismissed from his command -- picked up the bullet. To an aide, he observed, "It would have been merciful had it killed me."
In Washington the disbelief was just as overwhelming. "My God, this can't be true, this must mean the Philippines," said Secretary Knox on hearing the news. "No, sir," said Admiral Stark, "this is Pearl."
Knox called Roosevelt, and Roosevelt called Hull, who was supposed to meet Nomura and Kurusu at 1 p.m. But the envoys had trouble getting the message from Tokyo decoded and retyped and asked for a delay, so it was 2:05 before they seated themselves, all unknowing, in Hull's antechamber. Hull, who had already read their message and knew about the raid on Pearl Harbor as well, made a pretense of reading the document, then lashed out at the luckless envoys. "In all my 50 years of public service," he declared, "I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions." When Nomura tried to answer, Hull raised a hand to cut him off, then showed him to the door.
Fuchida's surprise attack lasted only about half an hour. Then, after a short lull, a second wave of 171 more planes roared in. By now the Americans were on the alert and firing at anything in sight. Twenty planes flying in from maneuvers with the Enterprise came under heavy American fire; two were shot down.
The battered Nevada (its band having finished The Star-Spangled Banner) managed to get up enough steam to proceed majestically out into the channel to the sea. Despite a gaping hole in its bow, its guns were firing, and its torn flag flew high. As it edged past the burning Arizona, three of that doomed ship's crewmen swam over, clambered aboard and manned a starboard gun.
"Ah, good!" the watching Fuchida said to himself as he saw the slow-moving Nevada. At his signal, all available bombers attacked in an effort to sink it and block the channel to the sea. Bombs ignited huge fires in the ship's bow. It escaped total destruction only by deliberately running aground.
More fortunate -- indeed kissed by fortune -- were Army pilots George Welch and Kenneth Taylor, who had gone from a dance at the Wheeler Officers' Club to an all-night poker game. They were still in formal dress at 8 a.m. when they saw the first Japanese planes open fire overhead. Under strafing fire, Taylor's car careened back to the P-40 fighters at Haleiwa Field. Taking off, the two went looking for Japanese planes and soon found them over Wheeler.