On December 7, 1941 I was eight years old in third grade at Aliiolani school, living in Honolulu on Kaimaki Avenue. My dad, William D. Pendlebury was a civilian employee at the Hawaiian Ordnance Depot.

Early Sunday morning, I saw a lot of planes when I went on the porch to get the Sunday paper and told my parents they were “practicing”. My dad came to look and said “they are not practicing, that is live ammunition”.

The radio told us we were being attacked by the Japanese. My dad was called into work. Before leaving, he took my mother, brother and me to a friend’s house near a school that was being utilized as an emergency center.

Mother, Dorothy E. Pendlebury, carried her newly baked Christmas fruit cakes and a rifle so “the Japs wouldn’t get them”.

We spent several days without my dad while rumors of paratroopers landing, and water poisoning, abounded. When the situation settled, we had food shortages (things from the mainland), used blackout curtains, had night-time travel restrictions, air raid and poison gas attack drills. We built an air raid shelter in our yard and the school yard had trenches, (usually muddy), where we children had to go during an air raid alert – never knowing if it was real or practice. When a second siren sounded indicating a poison gas attack, we ran into our class room, wet newspapers and stuffed them in all the cracks to the outside. We lay under our desks until the “all clear” was sounded. After several months, the army came in and everyone in the school from Kindergarten on up was fingerprinted, provided with an ID card and fitted with a gas mask. We were sent through a room containing tear gas to be sure our masks fit. In July, 1942, my mother, brother and I sailed home as refugees. Dad had to stay there another year.

Even though I was a child, I will never forget. All Americans should remember Pearl Harbor. Two friends that I never saw again were Beverly Culver and Doris Obata.

Doris A. Grassi (Pendlebury)