Honoring the Survivors' Legacy - 70th Anniversary of the Attacks on Oahu

B-17 frames the devastating results from Japanese attack on Hickam Field, December 7, 1941. The smoke in the background is from USS Arizona which Japanese bombed. The B-17s arrived at Hickam the morning of the attack.

MAX BAKER

Rank:  Private

Age:  19

72nd Bomb Squadron/5^th Bomb Group—up to 7 Dec 1941

31^st Bomb Squadron/5^th Bomb Group—a few weeks later

• Grew up as a Pennsylvania farm boy
• At time of attack he was awake in bed thinking about getting up to get some breakfast.
• When he heard explosions, he assumed it was the Navy practicing.
• His bed was below the barracks window and he sat up and saw a low flying plane with a giant red meatball painted on its wing.  
• He didn’t what it was until another young man yelled it was the Japanese.
• He jumped out of put, put on his coveralls and ran out the barracks.
• Across the street was a parking lot and he decided to hide under a parked car.
• A few minutes later he thought it was a bad idea since the Japanese would probably strafe and or bomb the cars and ran back across the street to the barracks building where he stood tightly against the reinforced concrete building wall (corner of J-Wing along Vickers Ave).
• After the first wave, he ran back to his dorm room to grab his WWI gas mask and helmet, and then headed to the hangar line where the squadron planes were parked.
• When he got there the planes were badly shot up or completely, utterly destroyed.
• There was an undamaged B-17  about  1/8 mile away from the hangars out in the revetments and he and two others ran out to the plane when the second wave of Japanese planes swooped in on them.
• The all laid face-down on the runway as the strafing bullets hit around them and miraculously no one was injured.
• After the air raid, Max returned to his dorm and found that a bomb had penetrated through the barracks roof (3^rd floor), down through the flooring and into the second level where it exploded on a time-delayed fuse.  
• “As for my personal belongings, almost everything was gone, except I had one pair of socks which were rolled u p and then I had a Bible which my grandmother had given to me when I went overseas.  It was lying there, pock-marked with pieces of reinforced concrete that hit it, and it was bloody.”
• His grandmother and aunt had inscribed the Bible, “Give God the morning’s first minutes and He will bless the day’s long hours.”
• Casualty reports to the US mainland were inaccurate and Max’s obituary was printed in two Pennsylvania newspapers.  
• “Upon hearing the news, my mother had a nervous breakdown.  Even though she later heard that I was alive, she never fully recovered.”
• Max donated his Bible in 2008 where it is currently in a display case in the Kenny Conference Room/PACAF Blg.
• Max currently lives in Topeka, Kansas  

Quoted excerpts and portions of information gathered from COURAGE BEFORE EVERY DANGER HONOR BEFORE ALL MEN,  written by Joanne Pfannenstiel Emerick, 2010, with author’s permission.

Compiled by Jessie Higa—Nov 2011