Days passed. The 'alert' came one night about 2 AM, shouted along the tent lines, 'This is it, you guys. Movin' out. One hour.'
In a torrential downpour, we slogged through ankle-deep mud and climbed into the backs of canvas covered trucks. Flaps down, escorted by an armed military escort in Jeeps, all the trucks were blacked out except for dim lights gleaming through slits in the headlights. We formed up as a miles-long convoy rolling north along US101 from Moffett Field, and arrived shortly before dawn at Fort Mason, adjacent Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. The trucks filled the wharf in double and triple lines from end to end. A gangway led up to the deck of a ship alongside. We learned later that the vessel was the U.S. Grant, a World War I troop transport.
Herded below deck, we jammed into compartments where the narrow bunks were five high along aisles barely wide enough for passing. A 'Now, here this….' over the loudspeaker restricted all passengers to their compartments, and to passageways only when necessary until we were out of the harbor. We were to have our life preservers with us at all times.
Hours later, the ship's vibration, a rolling about sensation in my center of gravity, and creaking along the bulkheads, told me we were under way. Scuttlebutt was that we were in a convoy escorted by destroyers. Enemy submarines were suspected off the coast. Rumors abounded.
We took turns going on deck by compartment number. The convoy of ten ships zigzagged frequently to minimize the success of an enemy air or submarine attack. Finally, on the fifth or so day out from San Francisco, land appeared on the horizon and, shortly afterward, we saw Diamond Head. Our ship left the convoy and entered Honolulu harbor.
We disembarked under heavy military guard at the Aloha Tower pier and boarded the Toonerville Trolley, as we got to know the train on Oahu's narrow gauge railway. An hour later, we were at Hickam.
The devastation was appalling. Burned-out hulks of bombed aircraft were scattered about on parking aprons and in hangars, and piles of debris lay along roadways. The roofs of military barracks hung down along the outside of the structures; they had exploded up and outward over the walls.
As a senior technician, I was assigned to the recovery and repair of damaged parachutes, life rafts, inflatable life preservers, oxygen masks, and the escape-and-evasion kits that air crews relied on when they bailed out over enemy territory. All of the equipment that came to our shop was closely inspected and repaired if possible. As soon as parachutes and survival gear were fixed and ready for service, they were returned to the airplane from which they came, shipped to air bases in the forward areas, or into backup supply.
Many of us joined Hickam Field's armed civilians, officially titled the Hawaiian Air Depot Volunteer Corps. We were a group of employees who, during non-duty hours, trained to handle and fire a rifle, pistol, and aircraft machine gun. We patrolled base storage areas at night where high security was needed, armed with '03 Enfield rifles, also aircraft maintenance hangers, warehouses, bombsight repair shops, and an engine repair line underground at Wheeler Field, near Wahiawa in the Oahu highlands.
As armed civilians, we were each given an identification card to carry in our wallets. The card stated, in fine print, that if captured by the enemy while carrying a weapon, we were entitled to treatment as 'prisoners of war.' The Army Air Corps military officer who commanded our unit said that, since we did not wear military uniforms, nor carry formal military identification tags, the card would certify us as 'combatants.' The statement on the card was supposed to keep us from being shot as spies in the event Hawaii was invaded by the enemy.