Читать книгу Pearl Harbor Child - Dorinda MD Nicholson - Страница 3

Dorinda and I first met on a misty, rainy morning in Hawaii. We were co-presenters, sharing a microphone as we told the story of December 7th for a shipboard audience while circling Ford Island inside Pearl Harbor. Her comments that day were from this book about a native-born child living in the harbor, and were blended with thoughts and perspectives from my military viewpoint and background. Later, our joint presentation, which began in the rain, was ended by an unforgettable double rainbow that appeared as we sailed out of the harbor.

As a WWII submarine commander and later an author of books about war and military history, I have always been fascinated with Pearl Harbor and what happened there. But until I met Dorinda that day, my knowledge of the attack was based on media reports and writings by other military authors and military reports, the reminiscences of naval persons who were there.

Dorinda's story is different, unique, and remained untold for fifty years, until she wrote this book. At the time of the attack, she was only six years old, but her memories are unforgettable, and Pearl Harbor Child duly chronicles those of her family and some of her friends as well—intense and personal at the same time.

She and her family lived on the Pearl City Peninsula, just across the channel from Ford Island, where lay the moorings of the aircraft carriers and battleships. The old battleship Utah was only a few hundred yards from her house. Standing in her front yard, she watched the Japanese torpedo planes scream past at treetop level, strafing her street on their way to attack the American ships anchored peacefully in the harbor. The attacking planes flew so low she could clearly see the goggles on the pilot's faces.

Turning back to look at her house, she saw incendiary bullets skitter across it as parts of the roof caught fire. Not knowing what to do, her father gathered his family into their '39 black Ford, and drove through the smoke­filled streets away from the harbor into the nearby sugarcane fields, where they hid, fearing a Japanese invasion.

She tells us about watching our ships burn in the harbor, and later digging bullets out of her kitchen wall, and what it was like to carry a gas mask everywhere. Dorinda not only provides us with a child's unsophisticated view—from the vantage point of a half a century later, her book also enriches that account with today's deeper understanding.

The original intended audience for this book was children, but to me, the most compelling fact is that it is multi­generational. Today, millions of Americans still have personal family connections to WWII. Pearl Harbor Child will help them strengthen those connections, while giving today's children a first-person account of an event that changed the world.

Capt. Edward L. Beach US Navy (retired)

Author of

''Run Silent, Run Deep"

''Submarine!"

''Scapegoats-A Defense of Kimmel and Short at Pearl Harbor"

''Around the World Submerged"

''The Wreck of the Memphis"

''Keepers of the Sea"

''Salt and Steel"

and many others