I’ve written about Dec. 7, 1941, a "day that will live in infamy," many times. Usually, it’s from a military (and man’s) point of views. This time, I thought I’d write about a local woman who took it as her duty to find a role for herself leading up to the war.
Former Hawaii Attorney General Michael Lilly told me that his mother, Ginger, joined the Red Cross in early 1941 because, as she said, "everyone in Hawaii knew there was going to be a war with Japan, and I wanted to be prepared."
Ginger Lilly signed up and attended three Red Cross first aid courses at Queen’s Hospital. She and 41 other women with their own station wagons trained to become members of the American Red Cross Women’s Volunteer Motor Corps. The studies were difficult.
"They learned to drive and maintain heavy army trucks and trailer rigs, change their massive tires and fix engines," Michael Lilly said. "They also learned first aid, emergency delivery of babies, blackout driving, military drill and defense against gas attacks."
Ginger Lilly wrote her sister, Ann Burns (nee Walker), in March 1941 that "I can change tires all by myself now and fix mechanical ailments too. Next week we have police tests and have to all drive in a convoy from Honolulu to Waimanalo."
At 8 a.m. Dec. 6, the day before the attack, Ginger Lilly, dressed in a heavy khaki Motor Corps uniform with broad leather belt and rakish fore-and-aft cap, drove her "woodie" station wagon to meet a Royal Australian ship at Aloha Tower. The ship carried officers headed for pilot training in Canada, ultimately to be shipped to England to fight the Luftwaffe.
"I was assigned six handsome young boys," Ginger Lilly said, "to tour Oahu before a one o’clock lunch at Bellows Field in Waimanalo."
"Have you ever heard of Pearl Harbor?" she asked the six fliers.
"No," they replied in unison.
She drove them up Aiea Heights, from which Pearl Harbor appeared below in a wide panorama of 96 warships, including eight battleships, nestled peacefully at their berths.
The Australian pilots took pictures of the beautiful harbor below but saw a problem.
"Suppose the Japanese used a submarine to block the harbor," one officer pointed out. "The entire Pacific Fleet would be a sitting duck."
After dropping off the pilots at Aloha Tower, a troubled Lilly attended a dinner party.
Lt. Charles Bryant, who was flying daily PBY Catalina patrol missions from Pearl Harbor, was in attendance. Lilly told him what the Aussies said.
Bryant only laughed. "Every day we fly search missions around the islands," he told her. "It is impossible for the Japanese to get within 1,000 miles of Hawaii without our spotting them."
The next morning, just before 8 a.m., Bryant ate his fateful words, Michael Lilly said, for his PBYs were not patrolling to the northwest of Hawaii from which six Japanese aircraft carriers, two battleships and supporting warships bore down on the Hawaiian archipelago and launched their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
As Ginger Lilly was having breakfast, she was startled by distant explosions. Running to her front yard, she looked up to see a squadron of Zero fighters, with bright red dots painted under their wings — American pilots called them "red meatballs" — flying down the valley from the Pali. "How wrong Charlie Bryant was!" Ginger Lilly later said.
Lilly immediately reported for duty in her Red Cross uniform, tin helmet and gas mask. Driving to Pearl Harbor, she used her station wagon to transport wounded service members, many of whom were in great pain and shock and terribly worried about their wives and children, to makeshift first aid stations set up in local schools, such as Farrington High School and Maemae Elementary in Nuuanu Valley.
"They pressed upon me scraps of paper telling their names and which hospital they’d be in, and begged me to find their wives and children."
Lilly heard "firing going on most of the day, and there were great clouds of smoke billowing forth especially from the direction of Pearl Harbor."
As night descended, her headlights were blacked out, with only a tiny blue beam looking downward, to help drive all night.
The sky was red from flames still shooting upward. Lilly went from warehouses to hospitals, taking supplies for the wounded and for the women and children in the school shelters.
In the following weeks, she remained on duty for days, operating out of the Motor Corps headquarters at Castle kindergarten in downtown Honolulu. For the rest of the war, she kept her wagon stocked with first aid kit, food, water, blankets, sheets, bandages and reading material.
Bob Sigall’s new book, “The Companies We Keep 4,” featuring many stories from this column, is now available at most local bookstores. Contact Bob at Sigall@yahoo.com.
