Within about five minutes of the Pearl Harbor attack, Navy ships began putting up a tremendous anti-aircraft barrage, according to the U.S. Army Center of Military History.

The ships had 353 large-caliber and 427 short-range weapons aboard — several times the Army’s anti-aircraft strength on Oahu, the center said.

Unfortunately, the citizens of Oahu became victims of the aerial defense aimed at invading Japanese.

“During the attack, panicked Naval gunnery crews forgot to use fuses or set them improperly, or mistakenly fired shells that only exploded on contact,” said Thurston Clarke in “Pearl Harbor Ghosts.”

Navy 5-inch shells rained down on Honolulu, with the exploding shrapnel taking its toll. Although the Navy tallies 68 civilians as being killed, lists vary.

Historian Nanette Napoleon, who has researched Pearl Harbor civilian deaths for 20 years, counts 60 deaths, including six local sampan fishermen who were coming into Kewalo Basin on Dec. 8, 1941, when they were strafed and killed by Army P-40 pilots who mistook them for the enemy.

One falling shell killed a carload of men and a 12-year-old girl who was standing outside her home. Joseph Adams, 50, and his 18-year-old son, John, along with Joseph McCabe, 43, and David Kahookele, 23, were driving on Judd Street at Iholena Street when all were killed by shrapnel that perforated their 1937 Packard.

About 100 feet away, 12-year-old Matilda Faufata was hit in the chest by shrapnel and died in her mother’s arms.

Three structures were burning near the intersection of King and McCully streets. Lunalilo School had been hit and was on fire. Patrick Chong was killed by an explosion at Schumann Carriage. Kuhio Avenue was cratered. A shell hit the grounds of Iolani Palace, and another exploded in the driveway of the governor’s residence, killing an elderly person across the street, according to “Pearl Harbor Ghosts.”

The shelling increased panic among civilians, with some loading into cars and fleeing to high ground. “Broken water mains sent geysers flying 50 feet in the air, and fire engines and ambulances mounted sidewalks to pass jammed intersections,” Clarke wrote.

Kathy Lei Ayala was 6 when the attack occurred.

“I’ll never forget that Sunday morning,” she said. “The sound of explosions, Japanese planes flying overhead, sirens going off. And as we ran outdoors, our baby sitter dropped dead of a heart attack.”

Catherine Kobayashi was a young nursing student at the Queen’s Hospital when the casualties started to arrive.

“We saw these trucks coming in, and we saw arms hanging out of them. We saw them on the curb and said, ‘Oh, these are all dead bodies!’” she said in December 2015.

Twelve civilians were killed by shrapnel from a falling shell at the Cherry Blossom, a restaurant and saimin shop in lower Nuuanu that catered to single men who lived in nearby rooming houses. Five of the dead were from the Hirasaki family, who owned the shop.

The vast majority of those killed on the ground were of Japanese ethnicity, Napoleon said.

While many of the Japanese planes were hit, only nine were lost on the first wave as a result of American defensive action. In the second wave, stiffer anti-aircraft fire contributed to 20 planes being downed, according to the Army’s Center of Military History.

Napoleon said a Japanese bomb killed one civilian, and eight others died from Japanese strafing. Six of the civilian deaths at the hands of the Japanese — three firefighters and three civilian workers — were at Hickam Field, Napoleon said.

Napoleon said the civilian casualties are the “forgotten story” of Pearl Harbor.

“Every year, the Pearl Harbor anniversary comes along and we learn more about it,” she said. “But every year, until recently, the only people you ever heard about were the military casualties.”

Even local historians don’t know the civilian stories that well. “So I said, how sad,” Napoleon said, adding she has been on a mission to raise that public awareness.