It was a beautiful morning, a perfect sunrise.
Dawn’s pink fingers shot up into the light blue sky, a golden glow shone over the mountains behind Honolulu.
Diamond Head was a dark green silhouette against the pale blue sky. The waves of Waikiki rolled easily to shore, and all was calm along the white beach.
The town opened its eyes and everyone tumbled out of bed into the cool morning.
On this beautiful day that happened to be a Sunday,-10 year-old Tokuda Jr. was going fishing with his dad by the Ala Wai Canal.
Little Tokuda jumped out of bed, got dressed and ran down and got his bamboo fishing pole from the garage. After a short drive with hardly any traffic, he and his dad were standing by the water flipping their lines out to catch tiny mullets. Their white bucket would be full of fish by noon.
They looked up into the blue sky and smiled, feeling peaceful in their island world.
On this particular morning across town, 20 year-old Tommy Akana and two friends were going surfing in town at Ala Moana.
They were putting their boards in the back of the Woodie and stopped a moment to look up into the morning sky. No wind, they knew it would be glassy with perfect waves.
They felt good, and like all 20 year-olds believed they’d live forever, especially living in Paradise. Soon they were paddling out into the shining green waves.
Sunday morning church bells ring early in Honolulu. At 7 a.m. the chimes of the bells sung out like sweet hymns across the city. Twenty different churches were ringing out in harmony, Christian and Buddhist alike.
Susan White and her two blond, teenage daughters were wearing their best Sunday dresses. They walked to their old four-door Plymouth to drive to church.
On the way their hands were folded on their lap, and felt at peace in the most peaceful place in the whole world.
They walked up the steps to the church and joined with others filing into the pews. Light sunlight streamed down through the stain-glass window.
All was right with the world, to the innocent girls it would always be this way.
On this beautiful morning in the harbor Midshipman Sam Lewis was painting the side of the ship. He was sitting on a scaffold painting the metal hull. He was frowning having to work on Sunday morning.
He glanced down at his watch, it was 7:45 a.m. For some reason he thought about the date, Dec. 7, 1941. He kept brushing white paint on the ship’s name, USS Arizona.
Just then he heard a distant buzz in the sky, He looked up the valley and saw the planes, hundreds of them.
Little Tokuda and his dad looked up and heard them too, along with the surfers, and the girls in church.
They all heard the boom, boom, boom, as dark smoke covered their world.
Dennis Gregory writes a bi-monthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com
