Rose Garden Resident

Letters & Opinions

Barney's fishing trip put a face on Pearl Harbor

By Linda Taaffe

I learned my most memorable history lesson about the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor while working as a bartender at a nightclub in Palo Alto during my college years.

It was during this time that I met Boni Lee, a native of Hawaii who was at Pearl Harbor the morning that the Japanese attacked. He never served in the Army. He was a civilian, living where he was born when World War II started.

Boni Lee was a tiny man, with a quiet presence and observant blue eyes. In the winter he wore flannel shirts and jeans. In the summer, he wore short-sleeved, button-up plaid shirts and jeans. He walked slow and deliberate like someone who had put in years of manual labor. Based on his appearance, he looked no older than 65, though he had to be nearing his 80s. While his appearance was in contrast with everyone else in the club who came to see reggae, speed metal and other live music venues, his smile drew people to him.

He would come in every night to visit the staff and recycle bottles out of the trash after closing.

He would show up at around 11 p.m. and stay until 3 a.m. on most nights. He never came empty handed. He would bring handfuls of candy or fruit from a tree that he had grafted so it would produce varieties of plums year round. We all knew him as Barney.

Barney liked people, especially those who enjoyed a good story, for he had many to share. Most were about life in his native town on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. Barney's town was a tight-knit community where families would go fishing, crabbing and clam digging together. Barney liked to make the daily catch for his family. He could hold his breath for several minutes and dive for abalone. On one occasion, he came face to face with a moray eel. His arm bore the scar to prove it.

His daily fishing routine is how Barney came to be caught in the direct line of fire during the attack on Pearl Harbor, where an estimated 2,390 people were killed.

That Sunday started like most Sundays. Barney was out on the peninsula at Pearl Harbor checking fishing nets in the water with some co-workers at the end of their nightshift when the Japanese fired their first bullets over the Hawaiian Islands just before 8 a.m. Barney had planned to bring his daily catch home to his wife, whom he had recently married.

He heard the planes overhead first, and saw them second. The sky was crowded with planes. Barney said the planes dropped so close to the ground as they passed overhead that he could see the pilots' faces. He recognized the red rising sun on the wings. It was the Japanese.

Bullets begin bouncing off the ground around Barney and his friends. He managed to dodge the bullets and found shelter behind the bucket of a bulldozer on a runway strip. All around black smoke and flames rose from the peninsula as bombs fell over the island. The sounds of sirens, planes and explosions ripped through his ears, and his eyes teared from the burning fuel.

Unaware of how much time had passed, Barney and the others decided it was time to make a run for it. They made it to one of their cars and attempted to drive the short distance back to town. Bodies of those killed in the attack littered the roadway. Barney maneuvered the car around the corpses, always looking to see if any of the bodies were someone he knew, he said. Somehow, he made home unharmed.

At home, he found his wife safe too. Others from his town were not as fortunate. For weeks, those on the island spent their evenings behind blacked-out windows to help conceal the island from nighttime attacks. Even after the war, Barney said life in his town never returned to the way it was before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

It's been six years since I've talked to Barney. I don't know where Barney is today, or even if he is still living. Every December, I think of him. He put a face on Pearl Harbor.