IGX

No war heroes in my family, but we've got (had) some witnesses to the attack.

My dad was 9 days shy of his 2nd birthday. His aunt, who later had an affair with my grandfather and become his step mom, was holding him out front of one of the family member's houses. They said the Japanese were flying so low they could see they didn't have their masks on. Don't know how true that was.

Great uncle Tommy was a janitor or like a building maintenance guy, and was working that day. My grandmother said the only thing he said was that he tried to help pull someone out of the water, and the skin came off the guy's arms he was burned so badly. Then he didn't really talk about it again. They were worried because it was like 3 days after the attack before he came home.

Great uncle Carl worked for the water company. Given his unfortunate ancestry and somewhat sensitive position of employment, he got locked up for a while. I have no clue if he was part of this timeline http://www.hawaiiinternment.org/timeline#year_1932 or what really happened. The family claimed he was pulled from the bathtub. No word on whether he was dragged out with his bits dangling or if he could get dressed first.

I guess a couple of my grandmother's other brothers just sat on one of their porches, smoked a few cigarettes and tried to watch as best as they could.

I'm fuzzy on the details given that a large, even part Portuguese family is tough to get an accurate story from and anyone who could answer a question is dead now, so....