PRIDE, SERVICE and DEDICATION THE HONOLULU FIRE DEPARTMENT ON 7 DECEMBER 1941
By Daniel A. Martinez, Historian, Pearl Harbor National Memorial
On December 7, 1941 the early morning light spread over Honolulu’s downtown streets with reflected streaks of golden sunlight that danced along the sides of its now sleepy buildings and streets. The quiet of that fateful morn was a far cry from the Saturday night before where hundreds of sailors, soldiers and civilians gathered in its bars, amusement galleries, and dance halls. It had not been a typical night in the small city but rather a raucous evening of merriment and pleasure, perhaps enhanced by the upcoming celebration of Christmas just 18 days away.
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ost of the sailors returned to their ships by midnight. So too the soldiers and airmen who made their way back to their bases and posts. No one could suspect a terrible danger was approaching through the northern seas of the Pacific that night and its deadly presence of the Japanese Navy was now less than 230 miles away. Scattered across the city were fire stations awaking as a change of shifts were underway before 8 am. For the firemen and captains who manned them, Sunday was to be a usual day of maintenance and cleanup, but that all changed that morning. At the Kalihi Station Engine Company 6 was almost set to begin its day when the phone rang at 8:05 a.m. The call was from the alarm bureau of the Honolulu Fire Department and it was deadly serious. In the months prior to that fateful day of the outbreak of the war, the Honolulu Fire Department was entered into a “mutual aid pact”, Richard L. Young recalled…”We (HFD) assisted the military Departments in any of their emergencies because of the mutual aid pact. At that time it was a simple instrument of policy that was acted upon whenever the military needed help. The city would
