dropped down to forty feet or below, [where they] would drop the torpedoes. I could
 see the track that the torpedo was making in the water. Boy they were accurate, and
 headed right for the battleships. Then the planes would actually have to pull up in
 order to go over my head. I had a very unique experience. I believe I was the only
 person that day that looked a Japanese pilot directly in the eye. I looked at him and
 he looked at me. He could not do anything and I could not either. But he was not
 over fifty feet above me.

 Well the Maryland and the California and the West Virginia were right in front of
 me. They all got hit and caught on fire. The Oklahoma was slightly to my left.
 They had been hit so much on the port side, that it opened up and flooded on the
 port side. And because the ship could not open its sea valves and settle itself straight
 down, they capsized. I was looking directly at the Arizona when a dive bomber came
 down and dropped a bomb. I watched the bomb go right down the stack. If you
 could imagine a battleship jumping out of the water and then breaking in two in the
 middle, you know what I saw. And then it settled straight back down. The only U.S.
 admiral killed during the whole war, was Admiral Kidd, who was killed on the
 Arizona. That was his flagship. Anyway, this went on for about twenty minutes.

 Then I decided I had better get down to my squadron. So I got out and I ran down
 the road toward my squadron. All of a sudden, a bomb hit about fifty feet in front
 of me and I was surprised to see that this bomb, rather than knocking me over,
 sucked me toward it. A bomb, when it explodes, causes a vacuum where air is
 pushed up and everything is pulled toward the site of the explosion.

 We were really getting it hot and heavy. And by this time we had ships firing in all
 directions. We had added anti-aircraft; they had set up a screen at 5000 feet. Of
 course, there was nothing up there. And in the middle of all this confusion, the
 planes came in off the Enterprise. They were supposed to come into Pearl because
 the Enterprise was on its way back into port.

CJ: This was the U.S. ship?

RJ: Yes. That is the aircraft carrier. Well, we started shooting our own planes down.
 When they recognized what it was they got out of there, because they were unarmed.
 But the Japanese had a free hand [to do] what they wanted to do. We were firing
 our antiaircraft at 5000 feet and they were coming in at about 8000 feet, or under
 500 feet so they were perfectly safe. After about the first twenty minutes of the war,
 things were fairly calm. As far as seeing Japanese aircraft was concerned, they were
 now coming in at high levels. They were either dive bombing or just dropping bombs
 and flying off. After about an hour, the Japanese had done all they came to do; they
 had dropped everything and hit everything that they could. And they pulled out.
 The pilots wanted to come back and hit us again. Thank God they did not because,


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