Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack commenced at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian Time (18:18 GMT). The base was attacked by 353 Imperial Japanese aircraft (including fighters, level and dive bombers, and torpedo bombers) in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers. All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four sunk. All but were later raised, and six were returned to service and went on to fight in the war. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and one minelayer. 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded. Important base installations such as the power station, dry dock, shipyard, maintenance, and fuel and torpedo storage facilities, as well as the submarine piers and headquarters building (also home of the intelligence section), were not attacked. Japanese losses were light: 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost, and 64 servicemen killed. One Japanese sailor, Kazuo Sakamaki, was captured.
Strafing off Barber's Point
The "Kiho Maru", "Myojin Maru", "Shin-ei Maru",and the "Sumiyoshi Maru" had set out days before the Attack on Pearl Harbor. According to one of the survivors Seiki Arakaki (1920–1987) his sampan the "Kiho Maru" captained by Sutematsu Kida had been at sea since December 4. On the morning of December 7th he and the crew saw columns of smoke rising from Pearl Harbor and believed “Something was happening”. When night fell, Oahu was abnormally dark from the wartime blackout. That night he learned of the Attack from another sampan with a radio that pulled up alongside. On December 8 the "Kiho Maru" set course to return to her home port of Kewalo Basin along with the three other sampans also returning to Kewalo Basin. Arakaki recalled when the four fishing boats were two miles from Barber's Point, “There were four or five Army P-40s flying over us,… Each picked out a target and attacked”. Sutematsu Kida, his son Kiichi Kida, and Kiho Uyehara were killed leaving only Arakaki alive but shot in the knee. On the "Myojin Maru" captained by Kaichi Okada; he, Ogawa Mataichi, and Riyozo Okogi were killed off only Sannosuke Onishi (1899–1982) survived. On the other two sampans five were wounded and two were unscathed. A Coast Guard destroyer arrived and sent launches to connect the ship to the two crippled sampans and tow the boats the rest of the way to Kewalo Basin.The seven wounded were sent to Queens Hospital and put under armed guard. Arakaki said in his AP interview he and the other fishermen had been interrogated, accused of aiding Japanese submarines and being in possession of “enemy bullets”. In retrospect the strafing was believed to be in reprisal to the Attack in Pearl Harbor being that the fishing industry was ethnically dominated by Japanese-Americans. The report stated the sampans were “returning fire”. Despite these allegations the incident was an instance of mistaken identity when the planes incorrectly identified the sampans as Japanese naval vessels.