Lenore Terrell Rickert

Lenore Terrell Rickert, U.S. Navy

"Everybody wants to know if we were afraid. Fear never entered into it. Most everyone who was there says the same thing. We never even gave it a thought, never worried about our personal safety. I was making rounds with the Medical Officer of the Day at the Pearl Harbor naval hospital when we heard a plane right overhead. Because of the patients, our aircraft never flew over the hospital. Even though navy planes were right there at Ford Island, and Hickam Field was on the other side of us, it just never happened. We ran to look and the plane was coming in between the two wards. We knew right away what was happening. I ran to the nurses' quarters to sound the alert, and that's when the actual bombing started. Then I could hear the bombing. I saw the planes up above, and I could see the bombs coming out six in a row. The first Japanese plane that was shot down crashed in the hospital yard, but there were only some minor fires from that. The ambulatory patients immediately left the hospital to get back to their ships. One patient, whose eyes were both bandaged, got out of bed, crawled underneath, and pulled a blanket down to lie on, so we could use the bed for the wounded. Everyone was worrying about the others and not themselves. The hospital really surprised me, everything went so smoothly. Up until that time, if you sent your weekly supply request on Friday, you were lucky if you received fifty percent of it the next week. On that day you scribbled what you needed on a piece of paper and someone ran over to the supply room and brought it right back. It was unbelievable, the way the whole hospital was that day. The corpsmen were spectacular during it all."