EYEWITNESS
“We expected them to come back. I thought the Japanese would take over Pearl and probably the States”
On the morning of 7 December 1941, Walter Charles Ebel and a friend were getting ready to go surfing at Waikiki Beach, totally oblivious of the horror that was heading their way. “My buddy and I were learning
to surf,” said Ebel. “We’d ride these [3.6-metre] 12-foot bores and sometimes you’d be on one wave and your board would be on another, so you’re just trying to catch it.”
And then, in the blink of an eye, everything changed. “I was looking out the hatch [aboard the USS Curtiss] and I heard this roar, and I just saw a plane drop a bomb right onto that poor island where the planes were. And then he came back by the hatch I was standing in, so he was side on, and he had this
