Agnes Shurr
Agnes Shurr, U.S. Navy
"Before the war, we nurses were often invited to dinner on other ships in Pearl Harbor, and I remember one of the captains asking me something that I have remembered often over the years. He said, "What do you folks think of the situation? Do you think there is going to be a war?" He must have thought we had information he didn't. I was asleep that Sunday morning on the hospital ship Solace out in the middle of Pearl Harbor, "in the stream," as we say. "COMMAND BATTLE STATIONS!" was the first thing I heard. Our sailors were in their dress whites waiting to go ashore on liberty, but when the explosions started, they went around in the liberty boats, picking up injured and wounded
out of the water. We received casualties almost immediately. Our ship was painted white, had a red cross on each side, and must have stood out among the other ships in the harbor. But it was never hit. Later that morning the ship moved to a more secluded area in the harbor. We worked all through the day without stopping. Late at night, I was
sitting at the dinner table with other nurses when the executive officer came and talked to us for awhile. "Well," he said, "we don't know what's going to happen next. But we're all still here, kind of like rats in a trap! We're going to carry on the best we can." Because we were so busy, I hadn't been aware really of the seriousness of our own situation. I could
see the ships in the water and the smoke rolling up and hear the sounds of ships firing at aircraft. But around the table, it began to dawn on me that we were really in a precarious and dangerous position in the harbor. A few days later we were allowed to go ashore for the day, and the air raid siren sounded, so we had to return to the ship. Somehow that was more frightening to me because I didn't know if we would be able to get back on
the ship or be stranded. The ship was my safe haven. In Honolulu one day, I was carrying a lot of art supplies and dropped them as I was crossing the street. A young American:Japanese boy stopped and picked them up for me. I remember thinking, "These are the people who just bombed us." Of course, he was probably a good American, but I couldn't help thinking that. After all these years, I still recall one boy who was very badly burned. His mother wrote him a letter that I'm sure she meant to be encouraging,
that said, "When you think your troubles are terrible, you need to put on a tight pair of shoes, and you'll forget about your other troubles." All I could think was that he couldn't even get shoes on. Of course, she didn't know how bad he was, but he did kind of smile."