Did the Japs Win?

by Evelyn W. Guthrie
(Republished from "AIR RAID-PEARL HARBOR", U.S. Naval Institute. All rights reserved.)

March, 2005

Evelyn Williams Guthrie (1898-1987) was born in Boston and educated at Notre Dame Academy, Girls' Latin School, and Radcliffe College (B.A. in English and Psychology, 1919). She later studied German at Berlin University while her husband was assistant naval attache from 1935 to 1938. In the 1920s, she was a secretary with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. During World War II, she was a secretary at the Mare Island Navy Yard and was also a censor at the Honolulu post office. Following Rear Admiral Guthrie's retirement from active duty in 1950, Mrs. Guthrie acted as his secretary while he was West Coast representative of Wallace Press of Chicago. Since his death in 1971, she has traveled extensively and has worked as a travel agent in recent years. Mrs. Guthrie has written an unpublished book titled, Home is Where You Hang Your Hat, which describes her experiences as a Navy wife. She now lives in San Mateo, California. (Courtesy of Mrs. Evelyn W. Guthrie.)

Perhaps I should start out by saying that I am a Navy junior; my father was Rear Admiral Yancey S.Williams. My husband was Harry A. Guthrie. Hal was graduated with the Naval Academy class of 1921. By February 1941, he was a commander on the staff of Rear Admiral John H. Newton, Commander Cruisers Scouting Force. The flagship was the USS Chicago, based at Pearl Harbor. The fleet was often at sea, so when the Honolulu Red Cross Motor Corps asked for volunteers, I jumped at the chance to keep busy. Having recently returned from our embassy in Berlin, where my husband was naval attache, I was well aware of the world diplomatic situation. American wives were being evacuated from the Far East, so I thought I might avoid future evacuation from Honolulu if I joined the Red Cross.

I was in a class attended by service wives and local residents. We all passed the first aid, but when it came to the course in mechanics, the local bigwigs of the chapter decided not to include the service wives. Fortunately, one of our members was the daughter of a Navy captain and arranged for us to take the mechanical course at Pearl Harbor. Our teachers were a couple of hard-boiled, old-time machinists. From their initial attitude, we gathered they were really out to give us the works. Thanks to our sense of humor, we prevailed. As our lessons progressed and we emerged greasy and grimy from contact with our car engines, the machinists gradually began treating us with great respect. We all passed the examination, which included changing a tire on a heavy truck, with flying colors and the congratulations of our instructors.

By early December, my husband and I were expecting war to break out at any time. On 5 December, we considered conditions so precarious that we went to a lawyer's office and signed our will. I drove him to Pearl Harbor, and his ship left port on 6 December as part of a task force taking planes to the Marines at Midway. At the time, I had no idea where the Chicago was headed or how long she would be out of port. On the morning of 7 December I was up early and writing a note to Hal when I heard antiaircraft firing. I jokinly added in my note that the Army was certainly up early on a Sunday. I then found my newspaper had not been delivered, and when I tried to phone there was no sign of life on the line. Since we did not have any programs from the mainland before nine o'clock on Sunday mornings, I never thought of turning on my radio. I decided to walk out to the drugstore, mail my letter, and pick up a Sunday paper. As I was leaving our apartment, the landlady called to me and excitedly announced that Pearl Harbor was under attack. It never occurred to me to doubt her word.

I ran back to the apartment, quickly changed into my uniform, grabbed my first-aid kit, and dashed down the back way to my car, a heavy Buick. About that time, two naval officers who lived in the same apartment house came running out, understandably excited about getting back to their ships. They leaped at my offer to take them to Pearl Harbor, and one of them asked if I would also go around the block to the next street to collect his division commander. With my three passengers, I stepped on the gas for Pearl Harbor, but the roads quickly became clogged with traffic. About the time I got to the Oahu Prison, I found I could not make much headway. We had been taught in our course always to leave enough room to turn a car around, so I did and headed for Red Hill Road. This was a back way to Pearl Harbor and gave us a clear track to the naval base.

I pulled up to the old officers' club landing to drop off two of my passengers. A scene of unbelievable horror greeted us. Several of the battleships were afire. Men were jumping overboard and trying to swim through the fiery oil on the surface of the water. I confess that I felt tears streaming down my face at this nightmarish spectacle. But there was still one passenger in my car, and he asked me to take him to Ten Ten Dock. This dock was opposite the naval air station on Ford Island. It was very wide and had rails on which a large traveling crane was operated. My passenger, Lieutenant Johnny Andrews, was an old friend of my husband's and mine. He told me his ship was docked there and had no fuel, ammunition, or stores on board. As he left, I wished him luck, and he thanked me politely for the ride.

I started back along the dock just as a Japanese plane made a dive-bombing attack on the battleship Pennsylvania in Dry Dock No. 1. Her antiaircraft fire drove off the attacker, but not before the plane dropped its bomb on one of the two destroyers docked forward of the battleship. I had the impression that the bomb blew off the destroyer's bow. It created a terrific blast and repercussion that enveloped my car and made it careen back and forth across the dock. I did not hit anything, nor did the car receive a scratch. When I got it under control, I pressed down the accelerator and drove quickly to the Red Cross headquarters in town. I must have been numb from the experience, because I don't recall anything else.

Things were rather confused at the Red Cross. There was no one there to give orders. Finally, four of us decided to go to civilian defense headquarters to volunteer our services. A supervisor swiftly dispatched us to Tripler Army Hospital. Piling into my car, we dashed to Tripler and reported to the duty officer. The scene there was a bloody one. A stream of ambulances and vehicles of all types was converging on the hospital. As the wounded were brought in on stretchers, we cut their clothing from the area of their injuries, and after that they were taken directly to an operating room. We then split up, and each of us was sent to a hospital ward to help with the casualties.

These men were all from Hickam Field ground crews who had tried to get some planes airborne. In their vain attempts, they were badly wounded. At infrequent periods, a nurse or a doctor of the regular hospital staff would arrive to give them some attention, but there was little that could be done for them. All of those who had lost an arm or a leg died that day. From about ten o'clock in the morning, when I arrived in the ward, until late in the afternoon, when some real nurses arrived, I was alone and felt helpless. I could only hold the hand of a dying man, give him a drink, or help the wrought-up hospital corpsman who was busy wiping up blood from the floor so no one would slip.

About 4:00 p.m., a doctor arrived and told me to return to my headquarters, because Tripler had had an unusually good response from volunteers. I collected the other three women who had come with me, and we returned to our Red Cross office. A supervisor took a good look at our disheveled appearance and told us to go home for a rest and clean clothes. We must have been a sight. Our uniforms were wrinkled and soiled with blood. We probably looked as if we had emerged from a battlefield, which in a sense we had. Someone handed me a tin cup and told me to drink up. It was straight whiskey and almost removed my tonsils. But it gave me the lift I needed to drive home.

In the next few days, we all plunged into activity. We were busy at the Red Cross headquarters and also involved in the urgent business of delivering surgical dressings to the naval hospital and to Tripler. During the course of one of my trips, I picked up several enlisted men at the Pearl Harbor gate and gave them a ride to town. They told me their ship had just come into port, having missed the attack. As we drove along a stretch of road which went past cane fields and the airport, there were armed Hawaii National Guardsmen posted at intervals. They were of Japanese descent, and I could see the look of consternation on the faces of my passengers. A chief petty of officer with four gold hash marks had the courage to speak up, "Gosh, Ma'am, did the Japs win?" I didn't think I could ever laugh again, but we all did when I explained the identity of the guards.

During the height of the Japanese attack, Mrs. Guthrie drove an officer to Ten Ten Dock, where his ship was. The dock is shown here with the light cruiser Helena moored alongside. A bomb blast sent her car careening wildly along the dock, but she managed to regain control of it. (U.S. Navy: Naval Institute Collection.)

   

While her husband's ship was based at Pearl Harbor, Mrs Guthrie served as a volunteer worker with the Hawaii chapter of the Red Cross Motor Corps. In the group photo she is the third from right in the fourth row. (Courtesy of Mrs. Evelyn W. Guthrie.)

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