Excerpt from the book “Soldiers, Space and Stories of Life” by Chris Gibbons. Originally published in the December 7, 2011 Philadelphia Inquirer.
It was Sunday, December 7, 1941, just a few minutes before 8am, and a large formation of planes was traveling west in the clear, blue Hawaiian sky, towards the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. Initially, Army Tech Sergeant Dave Coonahan of Philadelphia didn’t think there was anything unusual about the planes. He was riding in a truck with some fellow soldiers headed for Sunday Mass, and planes were always taking off or landing at Kaneohe Naval Air Station, so Dave assumed it was just normal flight traffic. But as the drone of the planes grew louder, Dave thought the situation was somewhat odd. He looked up and was puzzled not only by the large numbers of planes, but their strange shapes as well. Suddenly, a voice came over the truck radio: “This is not a drill…this is not a drill!” Then one of the men shouted, “They’re Japanese Zeros!”
The droning engines of the Zeros changed to a terrifying whine as they quickly dove down into attack formation. The truck stopped and the men scrambled out, but they were totally unprepared for what was happening. “We had our guns and rifles”, Dave said, “But no ammunition.” Although the men were a relatively safe distance away from Kaneohe when the attack started, they could see and hear the devastation that the Zeros were inflicting on the air station.
“An older sergeant finally retrieved some ammunition, but by the time he brought it back, the Japanese had already destroyed over 32 planes at Kaneohe,” Dave recalled. “Some of our planes got off the ground and got a few of the Zero’s, but they gave it to us pretty good that day.”
After neutralizing Kaneohe, the Japanese then focused their assault on their main objective – destroying the U.S. naval fleet at Pearl Harbor. When the infamous sneak attack was over, the U.S. fleet was in ruins with over 2,400 Americans killed and nearly 1,300 wounded. 20 Americans were killed at Kaneohe – 2 civilians and 18 sailors.
That night, Dave’s battalion was ordered back to the beach at Kaneohe to defend against a Japanese amphibious assault. Although the attack never came, the battalion remained on the island for months. “If they decided to attack after our preparations, we were ready,” Dave said.
Dave grew up in North Philadelphia and graduated from Northeast Catholic High School before he was drafted into the Army. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dave’s 34th Combat Engineer Battalion helped with the construction of the Army fortifications on Oahu, and built the soldier’s barracks near Kaneohe. The men were initially quite pleased with their assignment in Hawaiian “paradise”, as they called it, and Dave thought the “luck of the Irish must be with me.” But his luck wouldn’t last as the dark clouds of war soon dimmed the army life he once knew.
Incredibly, Pearl Harbor wasn’t the worst of what Dave would experience. He fought throughout the Pacific for 47 months without receiving one furlough. His unit participated in the invasion of Saipan in June 1944, and he was part of the initial invasion of Okinawa in 1945. During my interview with him, Dave choked-up a few times as the bitter memories of Okinawa came flooding back. “It was awful there,” Dave said. “My worst memories of the war were at Okinawa.” When the Japanese finally surrendered in 1945, Dave’s unit was preparing to invade the Japanese islands of Kyushu and Honshu. “Thank God that never happened. It would have been a nightmare,” he told me.
When Dave finally returned to Philadelphia, the city buses were running hopelessly late, and he had to pick up his heavy barracks bag and walk home. I asked Dave if he thought the “luck of the Irish” had deserted him again that day, but he laughed and said, “Oh no, it was with me. I was home.”
Dave and his late wife, Mary, raised 4 children, and he worked for the Prudential Insurance Company for 33 years. He’s now 92 years old, and still resides in the same Oreland, Pa house where he raised his children.
On that fateful morning in December 1941, Dave never did make it to church. But when I asked him if he had anything special planned to mark the 70th anniversary of the attack, I wasn’t surprised by his response: “I’ll just go to church and pray for those who died that day.”
AFTERWORD
Dave Coonhan’s daughter, Kate, set up my interview with him at her home, and, like so many of the war veterans that I’ve interviewed over the years, Dave was humble, unassuming, and proud of his wartime service. I was unaware until the interview that Dave also fought in the Battle of Okinawa following the attack on Pearl Harbor. He kept his emotions in check when he spoke of Pearl Harbor, but the memories of Okinawa must have been his most haunting as Dave became visibly emotional when discussing them. The fact that he spent 47 straight days on the battle-lines is almost unimaginable. Dave was also a member of Sandy Run Country Club in Flourtown, Pa. for 69 years, and I was informed by a fellow member that shortly after my essay was published, it was framed and hung on a wall for all the members to see, as most knew nothing of Dave’s service during WW II. He died in January, 2016, and I sincerely hope that Dave’s story still hangs on that wall at Sandy Run.
More stories of World War II veterans, as well as veterans of World War I and the Korean War, can be found in the new book by Philadelphia writer, Chris Gibbons: “Soldiers, Space, and Stories of Life”. Amazon.com link is below: