by Robert J. Cressman and J. Michael Wenger On the afternoon of 6 December 1941, Tai Sing Loo, the colorful Pearl Harbor Navy Yard photographer, arranged with Platoon Sergeant Charles R. Christenot, the noncommissioned-officer-in-charge of the Main Gate at the Navy Yard, to have his Marines pose for a photograph between 0830 and 0930 Sunday morning, in front of the new concrete main gate. The photo was to be for a Christmas card. As war clouds gathered over the Pacific basin in late 1941, the Un

Some 200 miles north of Oahu, Vice Admiral Nagumo’s First Air Fleet —formed around the aircraft carriers Akagi , Kaga , Soryu , Hiryu , Shokaku and Zuikaku —pressed southward in the pre-dawn hours of 7 December 1941. At 0550, the dark gray ships swung to port, into the brisk easterly wind, and commenced launching an initial strike of 184 planes 10 minutes later. A second strike would take off after an hour’s interval. Once airborne, the 51 Aichi D3A1 Type 99 dive bombers (Vals), 89 Nakajima B5N2

At 0740, when Fuchida’s fliers had closed to within a few miles of Kahuku Point, the 43 Zeroes split away from the rest of the formation, swinging out north and west of Wheeler Field, the headquarters of the Hawaiian Air Force’s 18th Pursuit Wing. Passing further to the south, at about 0745 the Soryu and Hiryu divisions executed a hard diving turn to port and headed north, toward Wheeler. Eleven Zeroes from Shokaku and Zuikaku simultaneously left the formation and flew east, crossing over Oahu n

Although the Japanese accorded the battleships and air facilities priority as targets for destruction on the morning of 7 December 1941, it was natural that the onslaught touched the Marine Barracks at Pearl Harbor Navy Yard as well. Colonel William E. Farthing, Army Air Forces, commanding officer of Hickam Field, thought that he was witnessing some very realistic maneuvers shortly before 0800 that morning. From his vantage point, virtually next door to the Navy Yard, Farthing watched what prove

Several of the many memoirs in the Marine Corps Oral History Collection are by Marines who were serving at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, and personally witnessed the Japanese attack. Two such memoirs—one by Lieutenant General Alan Shapley and a second by Brigadier General Samuel R. Shaw—vividly describe the events of that day as they remembered it. General Shapley, a major in December 1941, had been relieved as commander of Arizona ’s Marine detachment on the 6th. He recalled: I was just fini

The authors consulted primary materials in the Marine Corps Historical Center Reference Section (November/December 1941 muster rolls) and Personal Papers Section (Claude A. Larkins, Roger M. Emmons, and Wayne Jordan collections), as well as in the Naval Historical Center Operational Archives Branch (action reports and/or microfilmed deck logs for the 15 ships with embarked Marine Detachments, and those units included in the Commandant, 14th Naval District, report), in the office of the Coast Gua

Robert J. Cressman is currently a civilian historian in the Naval Historical Center’s Ships’ Histories Branch. A graduate of the University of Maryland with a bachelor of arts in history in 1972, he obtained his master of arts in history under the late Dr. Gordon W. Prange at the University of Maryland in 1978. Mr. Cressman, a former reference historian in the Marine Corps Historical Center’s Reference Section (1979–1981), is author of That Gallant Ship: USS Yorktown (CV-5) , and editor and prin