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The day that changed our lives forever started like any other Sunday.
It was December 7, 1941. Our family was up early, as usual, preparing for services at Makai Neighborhood Church. My mom, Akira Arrington, was in the kitchen mixing flour, sugar, buttermilk, and nuts into a batter that would eventually become macadamia pancakes. A bubbling saucepan on the stove held a mix of lychee, mango, guava, and lilikoi that would soon thicken into the compote we’d use to cover the pancakes. All of these fruits and a dozen more grew freely on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, but few of them originated here.
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But I couldn’t move, couldn’t take my eyes away from the slaughter. I watched a long line of torpedo bombers curl around the eastern mountains to approach the harbor from the sea. I watched their torpedoes fall into the peaceful waters of the inner bay, watched them skip over the water before they settled down. Something in me wanted to mark their passage, but the torpedoes were traveling underwater. I could only wait, helpless, until one of our battleships almost lifted out of the water. A few seconds later, the roar of the exploding torpedo reached my ears to blend with the constant explosions at Hickam and Wheeler airfields.
The blasts kept coming after that, so fast I couldn’t keep track even if I weren’t terrified. Within minutes, the harbor and the airfields were covered with an oily, black smoke pierced only by jets of flame as the bombs exploded. The stench of death and destruction reached my nostrils. Still the planes kept coming. Two waves of fighters and bombers, more than three hundred planes, for two hours that seemed more like two years. And my dad was right there in the middle of the fight.
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