Dick Schimmel was from Allentown, Pa., an encyclopedia salesman's son--the fifth of eighth children--and a lousy student. He wanted to travel, so he joined the Army in 1940. He told his recruiting officer he wanted to go to Hawaii.
"Sure, kid," he said, "but what do you want to do? What outfit do you want to be in?'
"The cavalry?"
"We don't have the cavalry anymore," the recruiter said, "but we'll put you in this new thing-- Signal Aircraft Warning."
"What's that?"
"Who cares? You're going to Hawaii."
Joe McDonald was from Archbald, Pa., about 90 miles north of Allentown. The son of Irish immigrants, he enlisted and got shipped off to Hawaii too. All he knew was he was going to be working with this this new technology the British had developed. The U.S. Navy had dubbed it "RADAR," an acronym for "radio detection and ranging."
Schimmel and McDonald didn't get glamorous gigs. They didn't peer down into oscilloscopes hunting bogies. They worked in the information center at Fort Shafter on the island of Oahu, a little east of Naval Station Pearl Harbor. They were switchboard operators who had a direct line to each of the six mobile radar stations scattered about the island. They'd get information and relay it to plotters who physically placed arrows on a large map of the island to designate airplanes picked up by the radar.
Schimmel came off duty on Dec. 6, 1941, at around 5 p.m. McDonald relieved him. He'd be alone most of the night; the plotters didn't arrive until 4 a.m. when the radar units got switched on. (They were typically monitored only between the hours of 4 and 7 a.m., because that was time that the unexpected was most expected.)
A mobile radar station at Opana on the northern shore of the island had been operational since Thanksgiving. It was the job of Pvt. Joseph Lockard (another Pennsylvania native, from Williamsburg) and Pvt. George Elliot (from Chicago) to guard the equipment.
The grunts slept in a tent beside the SCR-270-B Radar Unit with their sidearms. Almost as an afterthought, they were to power up the unit at 4 a.m. and watch the five-inch screen of the oscilloscope, where vertical blips interrupted a white horizontal line when movement was picked up.
It was training. It was practice. It was pretty boring mostly.
Less experienced with the gear than Lockard, Elliott watched over his buddy's shoulders as the white line hummed and occasionally hiccoughed. When it came time to shut down at 7 a.m., Elliott reminded Lockard their supervisors had granted permission to run the unit a little longer, so Elliott could log some screen time.
They switched places. Elliott watched the screen as Lockard instructed him on how to detect traffic.
At 7:02 the horizontal line leapt to the top of the screen, the biggest blip either of them had ever seen. Lockard thought it must be a malfunction. But he tested it and everything seemed fine. He calculated the blip to be a large group of aircraft quickly approaching the island from three degrees east approximately 137 miles out to sea.
They called it in.
McDonald was alone in the information center. The plotters had already left; McDonald should have been off-duty but he'd agreed to stay until 7 a.m. so that his replacement could eat breakfast. Now an excited voice was in his ear, babbling about a large number of planes coming in from the north, three points east.
"I'm not sure what to do," McDonald said. "Nobody's here."
For the previous couple of weeks, the information center had been on "high alert." Nobody told them exactly why, but the rumor was that the Japanese Navy had disappeared. No one could say where most of their ships were. But on Dec. 6, that alert was cancelled.
McDonald was flummoxed; he made a note of the time. He happened to see Air Corps Lt. Kermit Tyler sitting at the plotting table. He walked in and told Tyler that the Opana station had reported a large number of planes coming in from the north.
It was Tyler's second day on the job. He'd had no training. But he knew six B-17 bombers were arriving from the mainland that day. He presumed that was what Lockard and Elliott had picked up. It was nothing to worry about.
McDonald went back to the switchboard, and called the Opana radar unit back. Lockard picked up the phone and McDonald relayed what Tyler had told him. Lockard grew agitated, and told him the "whole scope is covered" with planes. McDonald went back to Tyler, who then talked directly with Lockard.
"Don't worry about it," the lieutenant said.
McDonald was frustrated and afraid. More than once he thought of picking up the phone and calling a superior officer, risking a court martial for going over Tyler's head. But it wasn't his place.
At about 7:45 his replacement arrived. He went back to his tent, pitched on a hill overlooking the naval station, and told his bunkmate Dick Schimmel, "the Japs are coming."
A few moments later, they could hear the drone of planes. Then they could see them, flying in single file. The lead plane dived and the others followed. It was all black smoke and noise, the shearing of metal. A radio played in a nearby tent.
They climbed atop the mess hall roof for a better view. The planes were so low some were throwing rocks at them.
An inquiry would later find that no one did anything wrong. Inexperienced, untrained Lt. Tyler was exonerated and continued his career in the Air Force, retiring in 1961. McDonald was honored posthumously in 2005, with the Army Commendation Medal. Lockard was promoted, sent to Officer Candidate School, and received the Distinguished Service Medal in 1942.
After some lobbying, Elliott was awarded the Legion of Merit medal in 1946, but refused to accept it on the grounds it was a lesser medal than Lockard received. He was always bitter that Lockard was widely credited as a "hero of Pearl Harbor" while he remained a footnote.
Schimmel, 99, is in Honolulu today, along with about 40 Pearl Harbor survivors, an honored guest at a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the attack.
Last year, due to the pandemic, there were no survivors or eyewitnesses in attendance. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 240,329 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are still alive in 2021; only about .015 percent of the people who fought that most necessary war are still among us.
We pledge not to forget but we always do. The past is not another country, but a remote planet, inaccessible, alien and ultimately forgotten, reduced to the pieties and petty morals of what we call "history."
Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@adgnewsroom.com.