My grandfather and grandmother had related this story to me a number of times as I was growing up. My Grandfather had been the Engineering manager at Ewa Plantation and had to go into work that Sunday morning. He had no sooner arrived when the attack on Pearl Harbor commenced. The town of Waipahu and Eva Plantation were less than two miles from West Loch, and the bombing could easily be heard. The attack was confirmed by radio station KGU, and my grandfather dismissed his subordinates, and drove back home to Manoa, requiring him to travel through Pearl City and Aiea (adjacent to Pearl Harbor). He could see the battleships burning on Battleship row at Ford Island.

Upon returning home, both he and my grandmother as-well-as neighbors, all spotted "Japanese paratroopers" landing in the forest of Norfolk island pine trees above Manalani hights (east ridge of Manoa Valley). The hysteria of an island invasion was rampant, and could have been successful with the weakened island defenses. Fortunately for Hawaii and the nation, the Japanese didn't invade, and the Civil Defense forces discovered that the "Paratroopers" were actually a Boy Scout troop that had camped the night before, and the winds had knocked down a number of tents and laid them open in the guava bushes. From two miles away, they became parachutes.