HEADLINE OF THE CENTURY

Add for December, 2012: This is the link to PEACEFUL ARIZONA, which was written by Gordon Freitas in the the 1970s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qTF7KTo0sIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qTF7KTo0sI

FOR MP3 OF STUDIO ORIGINAL FOR AIRPLAY CONTACT: rj@hawaii.rr.com

Take a listen, please. For full story of the KKUA HOME GROWN album series see:http://archives.starbulletin.com/97/12/01/features/story1.html

Headline of the Century

by Ron Jacobs

In the mid-1930s, Ellen Carroll came on vacation to the Territory of Hawaii from San Francisco. One night, dancing under the stars at the Moana Hotel’s famous banyan tree, the pretty young woman with the bright red hair met my uncle, the tan, suave Samuel E. Jacobs, who had arrived in Honolulu in the early 1930s from New York City to seek adventure and fortune.

“Al Kealoha Perry and His Singing Surfriders were playing. You could hear the ocean. Uncle Sam cut in, we began dancing and it was love at first sight,” remembers my Aunt Ellen, “What a romantic setting!” My parents, who arrived in Honolulu two years later, witnessed the wedding of Sam and Ellen at Judge F. M. Brooks’ house in Nuuanu Valley on March 3, 1939.

My favorite aunt and uncle were avid golfers. Sam was a charter member of the Toastmasters Club and the Aloha Temple of the Shriners. He also belonged to the Honolulu Police Reserve and worked undercover with Army Intelligence to trap the infamous Otto Kuen, a German who spied for the Japanese, flashing signals from his home on Windward Oahu to Admiral Nagumos’s fleet.

In the winter of 1941, Sam Jacobs was selling Cadillacs, La Salles, and Pontiacs for Schuman Carriage. Ellen worked for Riley H. Allen, longtime editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

I recently asked my Aunt Ellen, now 76, widowed and living in Hollywoood, Florida, to share her memories of that day.

Dear Ron,

The following are some anecdotes that I remember from December 7, 1941.

Your Uncle Sam and I were living in a rented guest house at 274-B Lewers Street in Waikiki. That Sunday morning I was pouring a waffle when Web Edwards (“Hawaii Calls” radio announcer) issued an announcement with the memorable words, “This is the real McCoy.” Ben Glazer and Harold Davis—“selectees”—whom Uncle Sam and I met at the Jewish Community Center—were in the backyard with Uncle Sam and our springer spaniel puppy, Jakey.

The three of them had planned to go to town and clear a plot of land on which Uncle Sam was planning to open a used-car lot, down on Kapiolani (now the site of the Blaisdell Center). He had talked the Ward sisters into letting him have the area—something which no one else had been able to do.

In any event, they had this planned for after breakfast, which we never had. The radio also said that all servicemen were to report to their posts and that meant Harold and Ben. I remember saying goodbye to them and they scrambled back to Fort DeRussy on Ala Moana.

Then the radio told us to crawl under the bed, which we did, along with Jakey. I guess we were under the bed about 20 minutes when we looked at each other and said, “this is silly” and decided to get busy. I called Riley H. Allen, editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, for whom I worked as executive secretary. He was the boss and very much in charge. I enjoyed working for the Starbull and everyone connected with the paper. Back in those days we seemed to have a special camaraderie. Mr. Allen said he didn’t need me, but called back in a half-hour or so and said I had better come down to the paper.

I remember that we drove down Kapiolani Boulevard and then cut over to Ala Moana at the Honolulu Advertiser—don’t ask me why. All I know is we missed the Japanese planes which supposedly bombed the waterfront and we finally got to the Starbull at 125 Merchant Street, downtown. Uncle Sam took me inside, made sure I was safe, and then took off for Schuman Carriage on Beretania Street, which had some broken windows and, we later learned, a death.

Shortly after I got to the Starbull we had an air raid and Riley Allen, Paul McIree (the paper’s treasurer) and yours truly got under the lithograph tables, which they had decided was the safest place to be in case we were bombed. The all-clear sounded and we headed back upstairs. There were all sorts of rumors that had to be checked out. The big one was the destruction of the Japanese Sunday School class at McCully and King Streets. It was caused by falling U.S. Navy anti-aircraft shells. That was awful. Part of the ferocity of the attack was due to the fact that we were “on maneuvers” and had nothing but dummy ammunition. There was immediate censorship. I did what I was told to do until closing.

The 50 years since that day have become blurred details of the excitement, fear and activity. Betty McDonald, our society editor, insisted that Uncle Sam and I stay at her house together with Helen Smith and her husband, Don, a free-lance photographer. The McDonalds lived up against the mountains out at Black Point and figured we would be safer there than at Waikiki.

Sam and I went home, left Jakey with lots of food and water, and then drove out to Betty and Mac’s with our headlights covered with the blue paper they gave us at the Bulletin.

Dinner that night was soft-boiled eggs and toast. We were all fearful and bewildered. It was dark. I can remember getting dinner by flashlight. All the wahines slept together on the living room couch, which opened up. The men were protecting us and had worked out shifts between them. (Don, when it was his turn, paced the “widows walk” with a bottle in one hand and a gun in the pocket of his robe.

I laugh now, but at the time it was serious and we were plenty scared.)

Sunday evening, December 7. All night long we could hear the movement of troops and ammo. In addition, from our location up against the mountain we saw what we took to be Japanese planes returning Sunday night. ‘Thank God,’ we thought. They didn’t bomb us, but flew in quietly and secretly. They exited the same way. We actually saw the planes from the “widow’s walk.” I remember going out there and keeping very quiet—we were scared even more deeply, if such could be possible.

It was terrible trying to wrestle with the unknown while we were really in the dark in more ways than one. There is so much you know and so much you don’t. Don’t ask me why but the Army’s censorship bureau was in charge and all I know is that, at the time, nothing was said other than there were “sporadic raids.”

We later learned that a friend, Eddie Harris, had been talking on the phone during an attack, with one hand holding the phone and the other hand in his pocket, when an unexploded anti-aircraft shell hit his shirt. A fragment struck his hand that was in his pocket, leaving him not only with a constant memory of the day, December 7, 1941, but with his masculinity intact.

On Monday, we all headed for the paper as usual. Uncle Sam and I stopped at the house, checked on Jakey and then went on to work. I distributed gas masks until nearly 5 o’clock and remember wishing I could go home at 4 like everyone else.

They put barbed wire on the beaches because we didn’t know whether or not the Japanese would return. One night somebody got a finger stuck on a machine gun. What an eerie sound, especially in the middle of the night with it being so black and everyone under curfew.

The war sure played havoc with all of our plans and wishes for the future. Pearl Harbor taught us one thing though; and that is we must plan for the future. No one but the Good Lord has the final say and it is going to be done His way, come hell or high water. Looking back, in spite of the ruthlessness of the assault, we were able to organize and ultimately win the war.

I hope this letter helps you to remember Pearl Harbor.

Love and aloha,

Aunt Ellen

© 1991, 2011 Ron Jacobs (Originally published in HAWAII MAGAZINE, December 1991.)

December 7, 2012

We, who were here on the most infamous day of the Twentieth Century,

REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR