Remembrance "It Must Be a War Game"

By WARREN K. TAYLOR

A retired California Superior Court judge, he was aboard the Sumner, a hydrographic survey ship, on Dec. 7, 1941.

I was in the officers' mess ((when)) the officer of the deck came flying in to say planes were dropping bombs. Within 100 yards was a plane with a big red dot on it. I thought it must be a war game -- the reds against the blues.

We were given credit for shooting down the first Japanese aircraft of the war. One of our old blunderbuss antiaircraft guns lined up one of the planes and hit him. A bomb hit near two destroyers in dry dock. Their seams opened % up, their oil drained out and caught fire, their magazines went off. They were cremated.

I was scared to death -- those bombs exploding and the realization that your life isn't worth much. In four years at sea I sat through 78 air attacks, but nothing was as frightening as the attack on Pearl Harbor.