Some Kids at Pearl Harbor

From the Dec. 7, 2011, Nashville Tennesseean.

You always hear about the military personnel at Pearl Harbor, but this is a story from a kids' view.

TOM McCREARY pulled his father's revolver out and shot at Japanese planes flying over his house.

His sister BEE BEE LEWIS remembers donning a gas mask. 

These two visited the Clement Railroad Hotel Museum's World War II exhibit on Wednesday.

Their father, Thomas McCreary, was raised in middle Tennessee and ran away from home at age 14.  He joined the Army and later served in the Navy and ended up in Hawaii where he married their mother and had three children.  They lived on Honolulu Street near Diamond Head Crater Park, about 20 miles from Pearl Harbor.

Thomas McCreary was a boiler master and had recently received orders to report to the USS Arizona on December 8th.  Had the attack come the following day, he would have been aboard.  At the time of the attack, Bee Bee was three and a half and Tom 15.  He remembers the Japanese strafing his neighborhood.

The Story From Another Angle.  --GreGen