It sounded like a swarm of bees.
Joedy Cronin Adams, then 12 years old, stepped onto her front porch at 8 a.m. and looked up to the sky over Oahu, which was a canvas of planes. And they were headed toward her.
“I heard the noise outside and it sounded – it was just very, very loud. Extremely loud,” Adams recalls.
The planes flew low past her house, so close she remembers making eye contact with one of the pilots, who didn’t smile. There is another vivid recollection: the big red circles on the wings.
It was Dec. 7, 1941, now referred to as the Day of Infamy – when the Japanese military launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to enter WWII.
Adams was stationed with her family at Kaneohe Naval Air Station in Oahu, located on the Eastern side of the island. Both before and after the attack, Adams lived in Coronado.
Kaneohe was bombed and strafed in two waves, several minutes before Pearl Harbor was attacked, according to an archive from Hawaii Aviation.
Adams, now 95, is one of the few still alive who can give an eyewitness account of the day.
According to Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors, there are 16 remaining survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack out of the roughly 87,000 military personnel who were on Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941.
After those 16, only child survivors will be left to hear and learn from, she said. In her California chapter, there are three remaining child survivors.
Farley described Adams as “an inspiration to Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors because she witnessed it first hand,” adding, “She’s got total recall and she is a perfect eyewitness to what happened.”
“I never saw a man dress so fast”
After a momentary pause, her vision locked on the red circles, Adams ran into her parent’s bedroom to tell them what she had seen.
It was a Sunday morning, so her father – Joseph Cronin, chief of staff and operations officer of Patrol Wing 1 – was at home instead of on duty. By the time she got to the room he was already on his feet and pulling his khaki pants over his pajamas.
“I never saw a man dress so fast in all my life,” she said.
Adams said that, following the attack, her father rarely spoke about it.
“But he did say this one thing: They attempted to get the planes out of the burning hangars, and they apparently were successful, even though they were damaged, … they weren’t totally destroyed… and he said they pulled the PBYs (amphibious aircraft) out; they got two of them out of our hangar.”
Kaneohe was a major base for the Navy Patrol, with 33 PBY seaplanes, versatile aircraft used as patrol bombers during WWII. According to Naval History and Heritage Command, all but six of the 33 were destroyed during the attack, and only three were fit for service by the end of the raid.
Adams recently located a picture of a line of sailors attempting to save a plane at Kaneohe. A long rope is attached to the plane, which is burning, and seven sailors are pulling on rope to move it. At the front, a man with a small white mark on his hat puts all of his weight into the rope. Adams said she believes that man is her father, since the marking is specific to commanders and he was the only one at the airfield that day.
Sitting in her living room surrounded by Pearl Harbor memorabilia, Adams beams as she uses her magnifying glass to point out the small insignia on the man’s hat, holding onto the one detail her father disclosed to her of the day.
Farley, whose father was aboard the USS California, which was sunk by bombs and torpedoes on Dec. 7, 1941, said he very rarely talked about Pearl Harbor.
“But let me tell you, you put two Pearl Harbor survivors together and you will hear stories that you will never find in a book.”
“But let me tell you, you put two Pearl Harbor survivors together and you will hear stories that you will never find in a book,” Farley said. “They didn’t talk about it with their family or their kids because we would have no conception as to what they went through … With two survivors together, they don’t need to explain what they went through, what they saw, what they witnessed, what they endured, the atrocities.”
A shower of bullets
Joseph Cronin ran out of the house to the hangars, leaving Adams and her mother inside.
A young ensign came to the door and told them to get to the basement of the bachelor officer quarters. Adams recalls needing to time their run from their front steps with the passage of the planes overhead – interludes lasting only a few seconds, where they had the least chance of getting shot.
Sitting in the basement of the BOQ, Adams said the bombing was so loud it made her eardrums hurt. When they had to leave the building because it became a target, Adams understood the noise. All of the glass windows had been shot at and shattered.
Adams and her mother escaped to a friend’s house in Kahala by car. In an effort to avoid getting trapped in a burning vehicle, they pulled over and hid in the brush anytime planes flew overhead. Adams said she witnessed a civilian casualty after the man’s car was strafed and caught fire.
“When I saw him, he was just black char. All I remember seeing was this body, black char, with smoke coming out of the body. I mean, it was a sight I’ll never forget.”
“When I saw him, he was just black char,” Adams said. “All I remember seeing was this body, black char, with smoke coming out of the body. I mean, it was a sight I’ll never forget.”
After running to the brush, a line of bullets showered the middle of the road, and Adams remembers seeing them bounce off the pavement from her hiding place.
“That’s my father!”
Adams and her mother reached the safety of their friend’s house in the hills. They did not hear from her father until five days later.
Five days of silence. Five days of not knowing whether he was dead or alive.
Adams and her mother would come to know this feeling of waiting well, as Joseph served during the rest of WWII and they had very little information on his whereabouts.
In fact, the day that WWII ended, when the Japanese signed the Instrument of Surrender on the USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945, Adams had not heard from her dad in about three weeks.
By then, she had made it back to Coronado with her mother and completed her freshman and sophomore year of high school. She was attending a matinee at the movie theater with her friend when a newsreel came on before the screening.
Adams said she can recall the details. The words read, “Big news! Signing of the surrender” and a picture accompanied it with Adm. Chester Nimitz aboard the USS Missouri. In the background, a group of sailors stood at attention. She could pick out her father.
“I jumped up in the middle of the theater, and my friend Patsy was next to me and she said, ‘Joedy, what are you doing?’”
“That’s my father! That’s my father! … I recognized him in the background, and then before the movie was over I ran home. I got on my bike and went home and told my mother,” Adams said.
Adams said most people don’t realize the sacrifice that the wife of a servicemember goes through, adding that one of her biggest takeaways from Pearl Harbor was an increased patriotism and respect for her country.
“I love to tell the story because it’s important that we stay alert,” Adams said. “It’s important that we keep our military up and it’s important that we don’t become lax.”
