Living Through The Day of Infamy

The topic for week 4 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, is “Witness to History” and for this there was no other story to tell but this one.

My uncle, Walt Jakiela was 19 years old, fresh out of Navy radio school as a seaman second class, and in Hawaii for only three weeks on the morning of December 7, 1941.

As Walt walked out of the barracks, he noticed smoke billowing from burning sugar cane fields. He didn’t think much of it, and headed into the hanger.

Not long after that, the hanger began to shake and there were muffled sounds of exploding bombs as the Japanese bombers struck the ships in the harbor. He and his mates rushed out of the hanger to see the bombs and torpedoes dropping on the ships, which were like sitting ducks on the water. Fighters strafed the decks of the ships, and sailors were mowed down from above. At first, he thought the planes were Russian and then he saw the rising sun emblem of Japan.

There was a lull in the attack and he said that’s when he really became scared.

When the second wave hit, some of the soldiers had the presence of mind to set up machine gun batteries to shoot at the planes. Walt shot at quite a few but he didn’t think he shot any down.

He said the second wave was more like a clean up and the Japanese were picking off the targets that weren’t destroyed with the first wave. Planes which never got off the ground, barracks, ships, boats, and servicemen were shot at by planes flying through the thick smoke which Walt said made it feel like a tunnel, not knowing which way was which. All around were bodies of his fellow servicemen, injured or killed in the attack.

After the second attack, Walt helped with the treatment of the injured soldiers. He went along and marked the boots of the soldiers who had been given morphine injections. He and the rest of the survivors were asked to volunteer for mortuary duty but he chose instead to volunteer for the dangerous duty of flying out in search of Japanese planes. He just couldn’t handle seeing all the death.

“It changed my whole life” he said when speaking about his experience 50 years later.

When he spoke about the attack, he said it wasn’t exactly a surprise to the higher ups. They knew something was coming, they just didn’t know when.

He was a radio/gunner for U.S. Navy Patrol Squadron 23, which was made up of 12 patrol bomber seaplanes called “Catalinas”. They were used primarily for attacking submarines. His squadron was assigned to 12 hour daily search missions for over a week, but the men were never informed what they were searching for and the missions ended on December 6th.

Walt had joined the Navy in February of 1941 rather than be drafted into the Army and he stayed in the Navy for another 20 years. He saw the entirety of World War II as well as the Korean Conflict from various bases around the world.

Pearl Harbor wasn’t the only time he was a witness to history. In 1945, he was stationed at Saipan air base when the Enola Gay delivered the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6th. He said when the crew of the Enola Gay landed, its crew members said, “you can go home now.”

He earned two air medals with gold stars for his 50-plus missions throughout World War II, as well as the rank of chief petty officer, before his retirement in 1960.

After he retired from the Navy, he went to work for Grumman Aircraft company. He started as a field service representative, then a worker with the space program, and then a part of the program which developed the F-14 Tomcat fighter jet.

This information came from a newspaper article he sat for in 1991.

My Uncle Walt retired from Grumman in 1980 and he and my Aunt Eleanor moved to Ruston Louisiana to be near his older son. He died in 1997 at the age of 75.

I likely only met him a few times, but I wish I had known him. He was so young to experience what he did and I’m sure it did change his whole life. He’s a hero to me.