“Eighty years later, it is perhaps time to be open and honest about what happened on that dreadful day.”

By Simon Webb

THE JAPANESE ATTACK on Pearl Harbor famously killed more than 2,300 Americans and propelled the United States into the Second World War.

Yet hidden within the alarming death toll – one of the highest the country had suffered in a single-day since the Civil War – were a number of civilians. What’s more, these non-combatant casualties were all victims of friendly fire, not enemy bombs. Their story, which has largely been ignored by popular histories of the Second World War, remains one of the forgotten tragedies of the conflict.

In my recently published book, Secret Casualties of World War Two, I explore the shocking number of civilian deaths during the conflict caused not by enemy action but rather by so-called ‘friendly fire.’

During the London Blitz, for example, as many as half those killed were victims not of German bombs, but rather of British artillery firing at enemy planes flying overhead. Hurling thousands of artillery shells weighing between 28 and 80 pounds into the sky above the capital was a tactic fraught with risk. The chances of any individual shell bringing down a bomber were slim; many did not explode until they landed in the streets below.

America’s first experience of this kind of thing occurred in 1941.

Shortly before 8 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941 waves of Japanese aircraft began dropping bombs and torpedoes on the American ships at Pearl Harbour. The surprise raid was carried out by dive bombers, flying in low enough to identify their targets visually. Midget submarines also approached the coast and fired torpedoes towards the harbour. All the bombs dropped were aimed at military installations; none struck Honolulu, which is six miles from Pearl Harbour.

By a stroke of misfortune for the United States, a large-scale military exercise to test the air defences of the naval base had ended a day earlier. The crews of the anti-aircraft batteries that surrounded the harbour had been given leave, which many of them spent in Honolulu, and the ammunition for their guns had been locked away. It was therefore left to the ships under assault to defend themselves as best they could. This would prove disastrous for the inhabitants of nearby Honolulu.

The defence of the American ships during the attack on Pearl Harbour was for the most part undertaken with five-inch naval guns. Much of the artillery was only intended to engage surface targets, others were dual purpose; meaning that they could also be used for anti-aircraft fire.

In the heat of battle, both types of ordnance were fired against the Japanese dive bombers. Although the shells for use against aerial targets had time-fuses, which could be set to explode in mid-air, the others detonated only when they struck a target.

Not surprisingly, many of the shells fired missed the enemy aircraft and landed in the streets of Honolulu. The shells, weighing around 55 pounds, exploded on impact, killing dozens of civilians, the youngest of whom was a three-month old infant.

Entire families were killed during the bombardment.

Jitsuo Hirasaki was a 48-year-old Japanese-American who ran a restaurant in the city. On the morning of the attack, he was in his diner with his family when a five-inch shell flew through the window and exploded. Harasaki was killed instantly, as were his three children, their 14-year-old cousin and seven young men who just happened to be eating breakfast.

In all, 32 people died in the shelling of Honolulu. Another 36 civilians were killed elsewhere.

The earliest reports of the Japanese attack on Hawaii described not only the destruction of vessels at Pearl Harbor, but also ferocious bombing raids on Honolulu.

An NBC journalist in the city telephoned a live report to New York of the deaths and damage to property in Honolulu.

“The city of Honolulu has also been attacked, and considerable damage done,” he said in an eyewitness account broadcast across the United States.

Photographs of the devastation, along with the names of civilian casualties were published in newspapers and the deaths of babies and children in the bombing raid aroused great indignation against the Japanese.

The images and news stories, reminiscent of the London Blitz, certainly helped secure Congressional agreement for a declaration of war the following day. The only problem was that there was not a shred of truth in the idea that Honolulu had been bombed.

To be sure, a handful of civilians working at the base were killed by enemy bombs, including two firefighters, but these were rare exceptions.

During the defence against the bombers, the guns of the United States Navy killed 55 Japanese airmen, compared with the 68 civilians who died. All but a few of these non-combatants were victims of shellfire. It’s therefore a melancholy but indisputable fact that on that day, the American armed forces in Hawaii succeeded in killing more civilians than they did members of the Japanese air force; something which is not generally known. Eighty years later, it is perhaps time to be open and honest about what happened on that dreadful day.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Simon Web is the author of Secret Casualties of World War Two. He lives in the United Kingdom.