Original subtitles

NARRATOR: December 1941.

On a quiet Sunday morning in Hawaii,

353 Japanese planes darken the sky over Pearl Harbor naval base.

After a devastating surprise attack,

16 ships are badly damaged

and almost 2,500 men are dead.

MAN: Americans of every walk of life

saw the pictures from Pearl Harbor, the explosions on Arizona,

the sunken ships in the harbour.

As such, it has remained a touchstone of American culture.

War...

The nation was wounded.

After two years of neutrality,

this was the catalyst that finally drew the United States into the war.

The were caught short, the Americans, but in the end,

it worked in the Allies' favour, 'cause it galvanised a nation.

The attack on Pearl Harbor

is one of the most infamous events of the Second World War

but there are many stories surrounding the incident

that have been omitted from the record books.

"You're gonna die. If you don't get help, you're gonna die."

And one man stepped forward and saved their lives.

What do you say to that? "Oh, hey..."

"Nice job." No!

You gotta give him a medal for that!

This is the secret history of Pearl Harbor.

Our freedom has shown its ability to survive war...

During the winter of 1941,

the USA was intent on staying out of the war

that was raging across Europe.

They had given naval support to the Allies in the Atlantic

but their war really began in the Pacific Ocean.

Japan had been flexing its political muscle across Asia

for several decades.

Spurred on by Germany's aggressive fight for dominance in Europe,

they made the monumental decision to attack America.

Their target - the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii.

MAN: In one sense, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

was not a surprise at all.

Since the 1920s, American war planners

had been considering the possibility

that Japan would attack the Hawaiian Islands

as Japan sought to expand its influence across the Pacific.

That said, the actual attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,

was a sneak attack.

WOMAN: So, this is really a case

of America being caught with its pants down.

You know, they're enjoying 'Dumbo' in the cinema and 'Citizen Kane',

they're chewing their gum,

it's a Sunday morning when this attack happens -

they're not thinking about the war in the Pacific.

But in just 90 minutes,

Japanese bombers would rain down death and destruction

on the tropical paradise of Hawaii.

There were two waves of Japanese attacks.

The first took place, it's generally thought, at 7:48.

That's when the aircraft first appeared over Pearl Harbor.

I turned on the radio. "This is war!

"This is war. All servicemen return to your bases.

"This is the real McCoy," he said. "This is the real McCoy."

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt

would later call 7 December 1941,

a date which will live in infamy.

The entire thing was over relatively quickly

and the devastation that it left was incredible.

More than 2,000 American service members and civilians were killed,

200 American aircraft destroyed, largely on the ground.

There's no way to call it anything else but a devastating attack.

Japan may have won the day

but their declaration of war

awoke a sleeping giant.

TESSA DUNLOP: It's so naive of them to think

that a sneaky, pre-emptive attack on a Sunday morning,

that kills more than 2,000 American boys

is going to flatten morale.

That's like a mosquito biting your rump!

It's gonna put you in a rage!

And it works like a dream.

Over 3,500 men were serving at Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

But what's not as well documented

is that there were women stationed there too.

A mere 150 military and civilian nurses

were on hand to treat thousands of troops.

These young women weren't prepared

for the horrors they were about to experience.

One of the army nurses, stationed at Tripler Hospital,

Was Teresa Stauffer Foster.

My mother, I think, was given a choice of Alaska or Hawaii.

Uh, what would you choose, between Alaska and Hawaii?

So she chose Hawaii

and I think a lot of the women felt the same way.

Aged 25, Teresa was eager to swap her quiet life in Pennsylvania

for paradise in the South Pacific.

These women went to Hawaii in 1941

and they were very young women,

so they liked to have a lot of fun

and there was just the sheer pleasure to be in Hawaii in 1941.

WOMAN: It was very straightforward nursing care.

Hospitals were mostly empty, so the nurses had a lot of down time.

They went to parties, they went to the beach, they went to the theatre.

Um, you know, there were only 150 nurses

and tens of thousands of troops,

so they were in high demand for social engagements

while they were in Honolulu, in Pearl Harbor.

But on 7 December 1941,

the fun would come to an abrupt end.

It happened on a Sunday morning

and everything's kind of relaxed on a Sunday morning,

so these women thought, well,

it was very unusual for these planes to be flying over

as they're walking through the garden next to the hospital.

They looked up and they saw the symbol of Japan on the planes

and suddenly realised that this was not a drill,

this was not a practice for the navy on a Sunday morning -

this was maybe the real thing,

so that's when they changed and went right back to their duty stations.

Realised that now we are in war.

Nothing could have prepared them for what followed.

The sudden influx of life-threatening injuries

was overwhelming.

No more than 150 nurses,

more accustomed to treating sprained ankles,

were faced with over 1,000 critically wounded men.

On 7 December 1941,

Japan declared war on the USA.

As bombs and bullets rained down on the Hawaiian island of Oahu,

military nurses stationed at Pearl Harbor

faced a massive influx of mortally wounded troops.

Just 150 nurses in total

were on hand to tend to the thousands of injured men -

a ratio of over 10 to 1.

There were somewhere around 80 army nurses

who were divided among Tripler Army Hospital

and a couple of outlying dispensaries.

The number of navy nurses

is probably not that much greater than that.

They were largely at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital

but there were also navy nurses

aboard the hospital ship USS 'Solace',

which had just arrived at Pearl Harbor.

These young women, more used to treating minor injuries,

were suddenly overwhelmed by life-threatening traumas.

People would come in with crush injuries

from buildings falling on them,

um, shrapnel embedded in various parts of their bodies,

limbs hanging off, bullets in any part of the body you can imagine,

head injuries.

Nurses reported they saw patients actually swimming from their ships

and crawling up onto Hospital Point with burns and injuries

and it's hard to imagine but the harbour would have been super-loud,

on fire - the water's on fire because there's so much oil.

The navy nurses really had their work cut out for them.

Despite the overwhelming nature of the crisis they faced,

the nurses were desperate to help the critically injured troops.

WINNIE WOLL: Anna Urda Busby was a nurse at Tripler Army Hospital

on December 7

but she was also a patient at the hospital.

She had a severe infection of her face

and, um, she was trained to respond

if she heard the sirens go off in emergencies,

so she got out of bed and started dressing

and the fellow nurses looked at her and said,

"You're not going anywhere near the patients

"with a face as red as you have right now.

"You stay here and take care of the women's ward

"and that's all you need to do."

That's like asking a man in battle, when they the barrel of the gun

and everyone around them starts falling, you know, do they run away?

No, they have a duty to do, they have a responsibility,

to their country, to their fellow nurses,

so they did what they could,

the best that they could for as long as they could.

Over 2,000 died in the attack on Pearl Harbor

but without the efforts of brave nurses like Teresa Stauffer Foster,

countless more would have perished.

My mother decided back in, uh, 1991,

to return to Hawaii for the first time in 50 years

and it was a very emotional experience.

We ended up going back with my youngest son,

who was 16 at that time,

and my husband and myself

and it was very emotional but to share it with my son -

I think even today, he realises what...what it was like.

It was a great feeling.

The nurses of Pearl Harbor

were collectively praised for their efforts by President Roosevelt

but their story remains all but air-brushed from the record books.

Pearl Harbor is such an iconic piece of American history

but nobody had written about the nurses -

everything was always about the men and the sailors,

which - don't get me wrong, it's an incredible story,

they're incredibly important in the story

but I feel like the nurses really have been overlooked

and their history hasn't been told.

Just hours before the hospitals were packed to capacity with injured men,

the day had begun just like any other peaceful Sunday morning on Oahu.

Enjoying the clear, blue Hawaiian skies that day

were a handful of private aircraft,

flown by civilian pilots.

What's been less well documented

is that they were the first to engage with the enemy.

STEPHEN HARDING: Several of the pilots initially thought

the aircraft they saw in the air were hot-dogging American pilots,

just showing off on a Sunday morning

and then, almost to a person, they realised, as soon as they saw

the big, red roundel on the wings of the aircraft

and the tracers going by

that war had happened.

It's believed that there were six private planes flying that morning,

some on sight-seeing tours of the island,

some pilot training and some just out for a joy-ride.

When the Japanese bombers first appeared out of a clear, blue sky,

they suddenly found themselves in a war zone.

For the civilian pilots, it was simply a question of fear,

followed by the recognition that they had to respond in some way,

or they and their passengers were gonna die that day.

And not only the pilots - can you imagine

what the student pilots were thinking at that point?

They'd gone up for a flying lesson

and suddenly they have no control,

because the instructor pilot would take the controls over

and so they just had to sit in either the front or back seat,

wherever they were,

and deal with whatever was happening.

It was probably incredibly frightening.

One of the first planes engaged

was flown by flight instructor Guy Tomberlin.

He was teaching a student over the north shore of Oahu

when he unwittingly ended up in the crosshairs of the Japanese fighters.

He is giving a flying lesson, as you do on a nice, sleepy Sunday morning,

looking over the vistas of Hawaii

and suddenly, out of nowhere, these red tracers,

Japanese enemy firepower,

actually knock some holes in the fabric covering his rear fuselage.

It's likely that the enemy pilots deliberately targeted Tomberlin.

MAN: The Japanese were a little concerned

that private airplanes could follow them back to their ships

and give the position of the aircraft carriers away

so they were inclined to shoot at, discourage,

and Tomberlin was one of those

that was discouraged from being too interested in what was going on

and he had been shot at.

He immediately took back control from the student pilot

and corkscrewed down to low level.

It was undoubtedly a frightening experience,

because Tomberlin had not been a military pilot.

His only flight experience was as a civilian

and yet he instinctively did the right thing -

he jinked, he corkscrewed

and he just made it harder to be a target for the Japanese.

Guy Tomberlin and his student manage to land safely...

..but not all the pilots were as fortunate.

Two of the aircraft were Piper Cubs

that were, uh, being flown by two young American soldiers

from the California National Guard,

who had brought along one of their buddies for a sight-seeing tour

earlier on the morning.

In fact, the two pilots, Henry Blackwell and Clyde Brown,

were due to go back to the United States the following week,

so this was sort of their farewell aerial tour of Honolulu.

After taking in Waikiki Beach from above,

the two Piper Cubs headed west

and turned straight into trouble.

They were flying south of Pearl Harbor

and some of the Japanese airplanes that were involved in the attack

shot them down.

All three of the young soldiers died.

They are considered to be the first Americans killed

during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Henry Blackwell, Clyde Brown

and their friend and passenger Warren Rasmussen

were the first civilians killed in the attack

but their remains have never been officially identified.

Their bodies were never found.

There were parts of at least one of the aircraft washed ashore

on one of the beaches to the west of Pearl Harbor

and were found and identified

as having come from one of these two Piper Cubs.

Unfortunately, the only physical remains -

a few days after the attack,

some American soldiers were patrolling a beach,

actually to the east side of Pearl Harbor,

and they found a US Army enlisted man's dress shoe

with the foot still in it.

68 civilians died that fateful day

but were it not for a child's piano recital,

there may have been dozens more.

A seventh private plane,

carrying 10 crew members and 17 passengers,

were scheduled to be in the Oahu airspace.

That American clipper was a flying boat -

it was a scheduled flying service from California to Hawaii

and then would go on to the Philippines

by virtue of stops at islands across the way.

And, uh, it had been due in

just about the time the air attack was beginning

and it would have taken off the night before,

'cause it was a long flight to get to Honolulu.

The pilot of that airplane,

his daughter was in a piano recital

and he wanted to delay his flight just long enough

that he could hear his daughter and get to the airport

and then take off.

As a result, the clipper got a late start

and that probably saved their lives,

because they were 30 minutes behind schedule.

They were notified by radio of the attack on Pearl Harbor

and rather than landing on Oahu,

they diverted to Hilo on the Big Island.

So his daughter's recital kind of saved them from, uh, some grief.

The US Air Force managed to launch just five fighter aircraft

during the attack on Pearl Harbor,

meaning there were more civilian pilots in the air that morning

than military aviators.

Their incredible experience is a story that has gone largely untold.

Unfortunately, as with a lot of really fascinating stories,

uh, about World War II,

it essentially is a footnote.

These small trainer aircraft were overcome,

their occupants either lived or died

but then you had the tragedy of Pearl Harbor

and the fall of the Philippines

and then World War II.

So they did, in fact, become footnotes.

The three soldiers who died in those private planes

became the first of over 2,000 casualties

sustained during the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor.

But without the heroic actions of one sailor,

there would have been at least half a dozen more deaths that morning.

The story of Joe George remained a secret to his daughter, Joe Ann,

for over half a century.

My father got out of the navy when I was probably in the third grade,

so I remember lots of times, 'cause he was on ships,

I remember being on the dock, waving goodbye to him

or greeting him when he came back

but as far as talking about what he did,

I knew he was at Pearl Harbor, I knew that he boxed -

you know, he talked about that a lot

but he didn't talk about his war experiences.

Joe was stationed at Pearl Harbor

on a repair ship called the USS 'Vestal'.

On Friday, 5 December 1941,

the petty officer and amateur heavyweight fighter

found himself in hot water.

Joe was in a boxing match

that was part of an informal, uh, fight card

in what was called a smoker,

where ship's guys would get together and stage fights -

gloves, nine rounds, you know, all the rules -

and George won and one of the things that he did a lot was to celebrate

and he did a little too much celebrating

and got in a fight with another seaman

and was arrested by the shore patrol.

Ordered to stay put in his cabin while he awaited punishment,

Joe was on board the 'Vestal' on the morning of Sunday, 7 December.

The repair vessel was moored alongside a battleship

that was targeted and heavily bombed by the Japanese planes -

the USS 'Arizona'.

The 1,700-pound bomb hit

on the second turret on the front of the ship,

the 14-inch guns,

and glanced off the side

and went down through the deck of the 'Arizona',

down in an area called the magazine

and the forward magazine

is where they stored the silk bags of black powder

that powered the big guns on that ship,

so that when that bomb went off, it not only blew itself up

but it ignited those thousands and thousands of pounds of black powder

and it created a tremendous explosion

and a fireball which basically blew off the front of the 'Arizona'.

One of the sailors on board the 'Arizona'

was a 19-year-old navy seaman named Donald Stratton.

WOMAN: My grandfather was in his battle station

and he was there when the fireball kind of happened

and, um, to use his words, he said, "Holy hell!"

I mean, it was a massive, massive explosion

and it incinerated more than 80% of the crew instantly.

To be 19 years old and to see your shipmates just...

perish right in front of you when the bomb hits

and just, you know, vaporise you.

I mean, the two captains, all they found

was their class rings welded to the metal.

They didn't... they didn't find no body.

That's how intense that bomb blast was.

Your survival instincts kick in at that point

and it was all about, you know, finding...finding safety,

finding cover, putting out any flames that were near.

Obviously the Japanese were still strafing at that point,

so it was also, you know, trying to put out fires,

trying to stay hidden.

You know, obviously, a ship is metal

and, uh, that fireball heated the ship up

to a point where it was almost, um, unbearable.

Um, you're basically cooking in a ship like that.

The intensity of the blast even sends sailors on the 'Vestal',

which was moored alongside the 'Arizona',

flying into the water.

The two ships were tied together

and there was a clear danger that if the 'Arizona' sank,

it could take the 'Vestal' down with it.

COL. GENE PFEFFER: The captain of the 'Vestal'

had been blown off the ship.

He swims back.

One of his junior officers

had preliminarily given the order, "Abandon ship,"

but he said, "No, no - we're gonna move!"

And so he ordered the deckhands

to cut the ropes that held the 'Vestal' tied to the 'Arizona'.

But Joe George refused to obey his captain.

He left the confines of his cabin

and instead of cutting the ropes,

took matters into his own hands,

a decision that would save the lives of six men.

When the USS 'Arizona' was engulfed in flames

during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,

one man refused to watch it burn.

Instead of cutting his ship free from the stricken vessel,

Joe George offered a literal lifeline

to a group of men who faced certain death.

George was one of the guys that was told, "Cut the ropes,"

and he was prepared to do that - he had an axe -

but then he saw that there were six guys

who had come out of the anti-aircraft gun director

up on the high part of the forward tower of the 'Arizona'

and couldn't get off the ship because the fire was so extensive.

Donald Stratton was one of those six sailors aboard the 'Arizona'.

Desperate for rescue,

he spotted Joe George on the 'Vestal'.

I think, for him, it was kind of, just, like, this amazing moment.

I think it's kind of a movie moment.

The smoke at that point was just so heavy,

coming from the ship and from the oil that was on the water,

the water was on fire

and they were trying to figure out any way that they could get off

and the Hawaiian trade winds kind of changed directions

and blew some of the smoke,

at least enough to where they could get a glimpse

of this large man on the ship next to them, on the 'Vestal',

and they just started saying, "Hey, sailor! Hey, sailor, up here!"

And just started yelling and yelling and yelling

and Joe finally turned up and looked at them

and that's kind of when everything just started moving in slow motion.

Instead of cutting the ties that bound the 'Vestal' to the 'Arizona',

Joe George risked going down with his ship

and threw a line 70 feet up and across

to Donald Stratton and his crewmates.

COL. PFEFFER: 70 feet's a pretty far throw.

Uh, it's weighted on the end but you have to know what you're doing

and you have to have done it before.

It would be a one-in-a-million shot to do that for the first time.

with the rope tied off,

the six sailors began to travel across the line towards the 'Vestal'.

NIKKI STRATTON: My grandfather's hands were completely burned.

He has no fingerprints.

Can you imagine the damage, um, just trying to get across that line

and then having to go back up, like, vertically,

to try to get back on the ship?

COL. PFEFFER: So, even with his burned hands,

he went down that rope

and George was at the other end, saying, "You can do it!

"Come on! You can do it!"

NIKKI STRATTON: "Come on, kid! You can do it!

Don't look down. You can do it!"

And he just kept encouraging him and telling him to keep going

and to not look down and to just kind of get to the 'Vestal'.

Donald Stratton was the second of six men to cross the line

to the relative safety of the 'Vestal'

before the 'Arizona' sank to the bottom of the harbour -

all saved by Joe George.

RANDY STRATTON: It was just how God lined everything up,

because without him being the person that he was,

with Joe George being a tough guy,

you know, and not... not obeying orders,

you know, being at the right place at the right time,

my dad would have never made it off the ship.

I think this just wave of relief, um, kind of washed over him

and then he kind of looked down

and he realised just how badly he was injured.

He looked down at his arms and they were just so burnt

and, uh, the skin was actually getting in the way

and so what he did is he basically pulled it off like a tube sock.

He just kind of rolled his hands down

and just pulled any of the excess burnt skin off.

Despite sustaining burns to over 65% of his body,

Donald Stratton survived

and wanted to find the sailor who had saved his life.

He never saw him again,

so my grandfather, at that time, he never knew who saved him.

He never got the name of the guy.

With the help of naval historians,

Randy Stratton was able to learn about Joe George's heroic actions

in December 1941.

Over 50 years after the event,

he finally tracked down the sailor who saved his father's life.

We left...I don't know how many messages I left

of the people saying, "Oh, hey, was your husband on the 'Vestal'?"

And then Thelma George called back and said,

"Yeah, my husband was on the 'Vestal'."

And then we knew we had our man.

It was the best feeling ever

to know that, you know, we found the guy who saved my dad's life.

But the bad part was he'd already passed.

Joe George died at the age of 80 in 1996

and his wife, Thelma, passed away 19 years later.

Their daughter, Joe Ann, remembers when she met Randy

and found out exactly what her father had done

during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I remember it as being very overwhelmed to know that your...

You know, that's the part when you go back to the beginning,

when you find that out -

when you don't know the whole story

and then you find out what he really did on that day.

At first I couldn't talk about it.

I cried every time and I'll do that again,

every time someone would ask me about that.

I couldn't...

deal with it.

Joe Ann has since visited the site of her father's heroics.

It is an emotional experience when you go on the 'Arizona'.

When your parent has been there

and you know what they went through on that day,

it's a hugely emotionally overwhelming experience

you feel inside of you.

MAN: Intense fires raged aboard 'Arizona'

and in the surrounding oil-slicked water...

On the 76th anniversary of Pearl Harbor,

Joe George was finally recognised for his bravery.

In a moving ceremony,

he was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal for Valor.

This is so special and so wonderful,

because it is the culmination...

..of all the hard work that so many people did

to see my father recognised

and this is the result of all of that hard work.

And what it says

is this man saved those six men

off the USS 'Arizona'

on December 7, 1941,

under the worst of conditions.

Over 1,100 men lost their lives on the 'Arizona'

during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Just 335 survived.

Donald Stratton was only 19 years old on the day he almost died.

Thanks to Joe George, he lived for another 78 years.

He's lived a great life

and there's only one reason why he's lived a great life

and that's Joe George.

That's what you say to that.

Donald Stratton passed away in February, 2020,

at the age of 97.

We have four generations of our family that...

that are alive because of him.

Most of the other guys went on to have families of their own as well,

so there are generations, um,

that here because of... of what Joe George did.

JOE ANN TAYLOR: Oh, god, it makes you so proud.

It makes you so proud.

I think your father is a hero as a little girl -

your father's a hero to you.

That's just the way little girls are with their daddies

but to find out that your father did this...spectacular thing

under such, you know, chaos

and war going on

and everything that was happening in that moment in time,

and that your father had enough perseverance and...

We feel this enormous pride in my father,

that he had such wonderful character.

Joe George was one of many heroes at Pearl Harbor

on 7 December 1941.

But there was one man whose bravery was hidden from the press.

22-year-old Texan Dorie Miller's name

was kept secret for three months,

simply because of the colour of his skin.

Dorie Miller was aboard the USS 'West Virginia',

which was anchored in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

When the Japanese bombs began falling,

Dorie Miller was a messman.

He was not trained on big guns

but he sprang into action.

And he rushed up to his battle stations

to immediately see what he could do

and found that that part of the ship

was already destroyed - it had been hit

and he saw the captain on deck, who was, in fact, mortally wounded

and he carried him, physically, to safety on the deck,

where the captain continued giving orders until he died.

And then he was required

to pass ammunition to the gunners on the main deck

but the gunners weren't there,

so he took up the station and he thought, "Right, I can do this."

Dorie Miller was more accustomed to firing up a stove

than firing a trigger.

African Americans were not even allowed to use those guns.

They weren't trained - I mean, he was essentially a cook.

Um, but when horror happened,

rather than hiding, he helped.

He grabbed the gun and he started shooting at the Japanese planes,

trying to save lives, trying to stop it.

And he was fearless.

He kept on firing until he ran out of ammunition

and until the order was given to abandon ship,

at which point he actually continued -

he carried other wounded men he found with him,

took them to safety

and later it was reported

that he had unquestionably saved these men's lives,

so throughout, he continued his service under fire.

Despite his lack of military training,

Dorie was on target with the anti-aircraft gun.

LINDA HERVIEUX: Dorie Miller took out

between two and four Japanese planes.

He was very modest - he said he thought he only hit one.

But one thing was certain -

Dorie Miller performed above and beyond what he was trained to do,

above and beyond what could be expected.

YVONNE LATTY: It was a big deal

but after everything happened,

they didn't even publish his name in the paper.

So it was almost like a secret -

secret, you know, that this African American man was a hero.

They didn't want anyone to know.

It was the black press that, sort of,

outed him as a Pearl Harbor hero.

At the time, the US Navy commended the actions of, in their words,

"an un-named negro sailor."

It wasn't until March 1942,

that Dorie Miller's true identity was revealed

and he was awarded the Navy Cross for his efforts at Pearl Harbor.

He was not given the Medal of Honour,

the highest American honour.

The gravely wounded captain of the ship was given that award,

the man Dorie Miller tried to save.

The speculation among the black press

was that the army, the navy, the military, Roosevelt's White House

did not want the first hero of the war to be a black man.

Dorie Miller continued to serve his country in the Pacific theatre.

He was killed on board the aircraft carrier 'Liscombe Bay'

when it was sunk by the Japanese during the Battle of Makin

in November 1943.

Dorie Miller was a hero the Americans didn't want to acknowledge

but a hero that the Americans could not ignore.

After Dorie Miller,

nobody could make the case that black sailors were not valiant,

that black soldiers were not courageous.

YVONNE LATTY: I believe that Dorie's legacy

is telling African Americans that we were there.

You know, we were there - we were at every major battle of World War II

in some capacity,

doing our best not only for ourselves but for America.

African Americans suffered from racial prejudice in the US

before, during and after the Second World War

but what has been less well documented

is that after 7 December 1941,

Japanese Americans were suddenly looked upon with suspicion

by their fellow compatriots.

Even today, the reverberations of the attack on Pearl Harbor

can be felt in the community.

Growing up in Hawaii, of course,

we all learned about Pearl Harbor at a very young age

and it was shocking, really, and very hurtful

because I'm Japanese American and to find out that Japan had attacked us,

it was just unbelievable.

In 1941, the USA was seen as a land of opportunity

for economic migrants from Japan.

At the time of Pearl Harbor, in the continental United States,

there were, say, roughly 130,000 people of Japanese ancestry,

either born in Japan and emigrated

or born in the United States and US citizens.

In Hawaii, there were more than that, about 158,000.

Japanese Americans made up something like 35%

of the population of the Hawaiian Islands.

Second-generation Japanese American Edwin Nakasone was born in Hawaii.

He was 14 years old during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I could hear boom, boom, boom going on

and this is south of where I lived

and this was Pearl Harbor being bombed.

The memory is still vivid in Edwin's mind

over 75 years later.

I went outside and I saw a plane coming right over me.

The cockpit was open,

the goggles of the pilot, Japanese pilot, was up on his forehead.

I remember this all very clearly.

The scarf blowing in the wind, white scarf,

and I looked up there and saw the big red balls underneath the wings

and on the fuselage

and I thought, "Oh, the Japanese are attacking us!

"Japanese attacking us!"

The country of his ancestry was bombing the country of his birth.

In the space of a few seconds,

Edwin's life had been turned upside-down.

On 7 December 1941, America was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor.

Life would never be the same again

for over 150,000 Japanese Americans who called Hawaii their home.

STACEY HAYASHI: Most of them were just hit with disbelief.

They would see the planes, the Zeros

and they saw the Hinomaru,

which is the red, you know, circle of Japan

and their hearts just sank.

We're gonna be looked upon as being spies and saboteurs and so on

and would not be doing well

but we did not have any inkling of allegiance to the Japanese -

or the Japanese emperor and so on.

After the dust settled,

the nightmare became a reality for Japanese Americans.

STEPHEN HARDING: In the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor,

in Hawaii, the American military imposed martial law,

uh, which, of course, restricted people's movements -

there were blackouts.

STACEY HAYASHI: There was a curfew

and they blacked out all their windows, cars' headlights

and there was just, like, a little strip left open.

At night, we had to close the doors, had to close the windows

but that was how Pearl Harbor greeted me and greeted us.

Despite being American citizens,

Edwin and his family were suddenly looked upon in a different way.

Scared, yes. We were scared.

My dad, who had just returned from Japan

about one month before the start of the war,

he was immediately picked up and quizzed

by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI,

and we were afraid he would be taken away forever.

But after one night, he came back,

so he was looked upon as being a loyal person

and not to be worried about him

as a saboteur or a spy or anything like that.

And so he came back, so we were very, very happy.

But for the 125,000 Japanese Americans

settled on the west coast of the continental USA,

the future looked far less certain.

In Hawaii, they were treated mostly with respect and, uh, trust,

whereas on the mainland, they were stripped of all their belongings,

their businesses, their farms -

everything that they had worked so hard their whole lives for.

STEPHEN HARDING: President Roosevelt signed an executive order

that ordered the confinement in what he termed, in his executive order,

concentration camps.

It was not used in the way that

that term later came to be understood

but for them to be interned and isolated in camps.

Toke Yoshihashi was born and raised in Pasadena, California.

He was 18 when Japan declared war.

I had to work December 7 and I had already...

..knew that Pearl Harbor was bombed when I went to work.

But customers would come and say how terrible it was,

and it was a terrible thing and it...

You don't feel too good, you know,

because we look like, just like the enemy

and you think, well, everybody's looking at you.

I didn't feel too good, no.

Toke and his family were soon rounded up

and sent to an internment camp in Arizona.

You're gonna be locked up

and all you could take was what you could carry,

so we...in our family, we each had a suitcase that we took

and it was mostly personal things and clothes - that was about it.

STACEY HAYASHI: It was a civil rights debacle -

you know, over 110,000 people were incarcerated

for nothing - just for looking like the enemy.

I was upset, yeah.

I didn't think it was right that they should do this.

Yeah. And here's this soldier, armed soldier with a rifle, you know?

He's watching us cross the street into the camp.

And yeah, I didn't feel too good, you know?

Despite being forsaken by the government,

when these same citizens were asked to fight for their country

in March 1943,

many of them voluntarily chose to join the struggle.

STEPHEN HARDING: It was very hard for them to understand

why their country, the land of their birth for two-thirds of them,

would suddenly pull them from their homes, put them on buses

and ship them out in the middle of nowhere

in camps surrounded by barbed wire

that had guard posts with machine-guns in them.

And the fact that they were

still willing to serve their country after that

is a testament to them, I think.

STACEY HAYASHI: A lot of these guys volunteered from behind barbed wire

to fight for a country that had incarcerated them,

taken away all their belongings -

yeah, it...it's mind-boggling.

Toke chose not to sign up

but in April 1944,

the army conscripted him.

TOKE YOSHIHASHI: I was willing to go if they drafted me

but I wasn't gonna volunteer.

I was born here. I'd never been to Japan.

I don't speak...not fluent Japanese

and, uh, I felt America was my country,

so that's why I was willing to go.

Toke served in Europe

with the all-Japanese American 442nd Infantry Regiment

until the end of the war.

So, Japanese have this sense of pride -

it's 'Haji', so you never want to make shame for your family name

and so, upon leaving Hawaii, a lot of these boys were told,

"A Make OK but no make shame."

'Make' means you die and that's a Hawaiian word,

um, so...it's better that you die rather than shame the family name.

I didn't get scared

until the day we started having to go out

and do a little shooting, you know.

The 442nd Regiment fought with valour

and returned home as heroes.

It's very ironic, you know,

because this group of people that nobody wanted

and the government suspected them,

they went on to become one of the most highly decorated units

in US military history, to this day.

In 1980,

a presidential investigation

deemed that the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942

was racially motivated.

It led to reparations being paid to the detainees.

By then, the camps were long gone.

STEPHEN HARDING: Most of them started closing before the war,

especially since so many Japanese American young men

had volunteered for military service.

They eventually were all shut down

and quite honestly, nobody wanted to remember them all that much.

It's sort of like moving on from a period in your history

that you're really not very proud of, I think.

The attack on Pearl Harbor

is one of the most devastating events in US history.

But rather than wallow in pity,

it became a call to arms

for a nation that went on to help win the war for the Allies

in both the Pacific and Europe.

It was a tactical defeat but it wasn't a strategic defeat.

Um, in fact, the attack could have been worse.

The Japanese did not go after the oil storage facilities

or they didn't go after the ship repair facilities,

so even within a day, within 24 hours,

Pearl Harbor was an up and operating naval base.

STEPHEN HARDING: Pearl Harbor was undoubtedly

a devastating short-term blow

but because the Japanese were not able

to knock out the aircraft carriers or the Pacific fleet,

you ultimately had an American victory at Midway,

which, arguably, changed the course of the Pacific war fairly early on.

TESSA DUNLOP: Just let's be honest about it.

They were caught short, the Americans,

but in the end, it worked in the Allies' favour,

'cause it galvanised a nation

and we know - and it's extraordinary the Japanese didn't recognise this -

they thought it would dent American morale.

That was so naive.

What they've done is they've woken up the mighty American giant.

And you do that, as we know, at your peril.

Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2021