EDITOR’S NOTE: William S. Brotherton celebrated his 13th birthday on Nov. 14, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, where his father was stationed. My dad was the writer. William S Brotherton, Nov 14, 1928 to March 29, 2018. He was just 13 at the time while his father, Kenneth E. Brotherton, U.S. Army, was stationed at Schofield Barracks. Just a few weeks later, William witnessed, and survived, the Japanese attack of the U.S. military installation. He later recounted that day. Thanks to his son, Bill Brotherton, following is his account.

It was Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941. My mom and dad were already up and I was just getting out of bed. My grandfather and I slept in the same room.

All of a sudden, there was a loud explosion. It lifted my grandfather’s bed slightly off of the floor. It woke him up and when the second explosion came, it did the same thing.

Now, my grandfather had a few choice words in his vocabulary and he used quite a few of them, exclaiming that you couldn’t even sleep on Sunday because of (deleted) maneuvers on the post.

When I heard the second explosion, I went out to see what was going on. Planes were coming in over Kaala pass. They had big orange circles on them. I first thought they were navy planes, decorated and the military was having maneuvers.

I went inside and told my dad that the planes were not army planes. I explained about the orange circles. He told me to go get my mother and go to church, since it was that time of the morning. I told my mother I would meet her outside. I wanted to see more of what was going on.

I stood between the boxing bowl and the gymnasium and watched. The planes coming in couldn’t have been more that 300 feet off the ground. I could hear something hitting the top of the boxing bowl, which I found out later were the empty shells from the plane’s machine guns.

My mother came out of the house, she had her umbrella. As we walked to church, our neighbors, who were also outside, asked my mother if the umbrella was her bomb shelter. Neither of us still realized what was going on. We walked on to church.

Quite a few people were standing out front. One of my buddies and I were standing to the right of the church in the grass. The planes were coming in across this huge parking lot in front of the church.

As one of the planes came across the parking lot, he must have seen the people standing in front of the church and he started strafing. From somewhere I had heard (true or false) that they sometimes used wax bullets during maneuvers.

Still thinking these were maneuvers, I said to my buddy, “I don’t know what it feels like to get hit with a wax bullet, but I’m not going to find out.”

He agreed. We both laid down in the grass. Lucky for us we did, as the bushes and the church got hit by some bullets where we were standing. As it was, nobody else got hurt either.

After Sunday Mass, we always had a catechism class, and two nuns come up from Honolulu. Shortly after the strafing, the nuns came to the church and they were both crying. Someone asked why.

They informed us that on their way from Honolulu, they went by Wheeler Field. They told us that the planes and hangers were all on fire. When they left Honolulu, they could also see smoke and fire at Pearl Harbor and Hickham field. It was then, we realized we were under attack.

Finally, we all went into mass. When you looked up at the ceiling of the church, you could see daylight coming through from where the bullets had pierced the roof.

After a period of waiting, the priest told us we could go home. We were not allowed to go home, however. The military police told us that we were to go the 19th infantry barracks. We would be safer there.

These barracks were made out of concrete. They were afraid of an incendiary attack, and since most of the houses were wooden frame buildings, they would really be unsafe.

When we got to the barracks, we found many other families already there. None of the people knew what was going to happen next. They fed us lunch and then supper. Finally, someone told us that we were going to be evacuated to Honolulu where they thought we would be safer.

As we passed by Wheeler Field, we could see all of the fires and some of the burning planes. To go from Schofield to Honolulu, Schofield being in the mountains and Honolulu being at sea level, you had to descend.

There were a lot of drop-offs, some of which are a couple of hundred feet down or more. This was very scary, since we could not use our headlights. When we got to Honolulu, we could see both Hickham Field and Pearl Harbor.

The Field was ablaze with fires and Pearl Harbor was just as bad. We finally got to our destination. All of the people, two bus loads, were to be placed Punahoe High School. We were to stay in the school for a week.

About the middle of the week, I got very sick. My mother took me across the street to a drug store. He gave me something to drink. As we were crossing the street back to the school, I heaved everything out. Later that day, 65 people were taken away to the hospital with ptomaine poisoning. Our Japanese cook had left pork out of refrigeration for a couple of days and fed it to us. She was gone the next day and we had a new cook.

There was one strange thing I didn’t think about until many years later. On Saturday, December 6, mom, dad, and I went down to Honolulu to do some Christmas shopping. On the way down, we noticed a fellow sitting on a hill which overlooks Pearl Harbor. He had a pair of binoculars and was looking, I suppose at Pearl. I never gave it much thought until later in life. I do not know what he was doing but thinking back, it was the day before Dec. 7. I often wondered if he was keeping track of ship movements. Good question. One that will never be answered.