Sybil King stood alone, staring out her window as
hoardes of airplanes streaked by overhead, bound for
Pearl Harbor. Moments before, her husband, Navy
officer Adolph Chandler King, had stood alongside her
before leaving to take his place among men who would
live or die in battle. The odds of winning were slim
in the face of a surprise attack against United States
ships and warplanes strategically placed to ward off
land-based sabotage, rather than aerial assault.
When Chandler left his bride of less than a year
standing at the window, the two didn't know when or if
they would see each other again.
The couple was hardly out of bed that morning when,
just before 8:00, they had heard the scream of
airplane engines and the echo of gunfire. Like others,
they had wondered what was happening: though the
island of Oahu was peppered with military bases,
maneuvers didn't normally take place on Sunday
morning. Too soon after Chandler had left, the truth
became evident: Pearl Harbor and other military
installations on the island were under attack. After
negotiations between the United States and Japan had
failed that morning, the enemy had wasted no time in
unfolding its deadly plan.
Japan accomplished its mission in two waves of
assault. The first group of 183 airplanes, composed of
high-altitude bombers, dive-bombers, torpedo planes,
and fighters, was replaced an hour later with a second
wave of 171 planes.
"Everything was in a state of confusion," says Sybil.
"People were realizing Japan had attacked; it was
being announced on the radio. Army bases were being
strafed. Ships were being bombed. Our planes were
destroyed. There was complete chaos. The local airport
was hit."
In two hours' time, the skies, blackened by smoke
roiling from disabled ships, cleared of Japanese
warplanes - the sound of their shrieking engines
replaced by the cries of wounded sailors - and
Americans struggled to deal with their dead, dying and
wounded. Some men died of horrible burns, ravaged by
the black, grease slicked, burning waters tainted by
the oil of ruptured engines. Other drowned, some days
after being trapped within the hulls of sunken ships.
The final toll in American lives was 2,403, with half
that number casualties of the U.S.S. Arizona.
"It has been a horrible memory in my life. The worst
part of it is remembering the smell of burning oil and
flesh," says Sybil, 63 years later. "We lost many of
our good friends that day and they will never be
forgotten. You can't imagine anything so horrible."
When by chance she sees on television an account of
the battle, she says, "I just start crying, after all
these years."
Among those killed was Chandler's civilian flying
instructor, who was shot down while flying the very
plane Chandler had piloted the day before in a
sightseeing trip over the islands with Sybil. Usually,
Sunday was the day the couple chose for a leisurely
flight, but their plans had changed when Chandler was
scheduled for duty that day aboard the cruiser U.S.S.
Honolulu, which was in dry dock for the installation
of radar.
Her initial reaction to the attack was anger.
"Who did these people think they were!" she recalls
thinking. "A little country like Japan taking on a
giant like the United States. How dare they attack us?
We could annihilate them in a week. The Japanese were
no match for Uncle Sam."
Three days after the war started with Japan, its Axis
powers, Germany and Italy, also declared war on the
United States.
* * *
Saturday, December 6, had been a beautiful day.
Following their morning flight, the pair had dined
with the family of U.S.S. Sirius Commander Charles B.
Momsen, at Pearl Harbor's submarine base.
"He cooked steaks on his grill outside," Sybil muses.
"Little did we know that at that very time a Japanese
miniature submarine had already entered the gates.
Commander Momsen was the officer in charge of that
security post."
Living in Hawaii's tropical paradise with Chandler had
been the icing on the cake of a storybook courtship
and marriage. The pair had met at a July dance in
Union City when Sybil, from Dyersburg and a home
economics major at the University of Tennessee at
Martin, was 19 years old and Chandler was home from
the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The 1939
Miss Tennessee was as troubled as she was beautiful,
for she had recently lost her mother.
"It was a bad time for me; when you lose your mother
when you're a teenager it's a hard thing," she says,
her eyes reflecting her anguish.
Chandler became her knight in shining armor. They
managed a second get together at Christmas time and
were engaged during "June Week" at Annapolis a year
after their meeting.
"We got engaged on a submarine," says Sybil,
describing the ring ceremony she and Chandler
undertook along with 25 other midshipmen and fiancés
in which their rings were dipped into the waters of
the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and the Caribbean Sea.
"It was just a beautiful ceremony," she says
breathlessly. The couple married in 1941 following
Chandler's graduation. Sybil joined him in Hawaii in
October, scant weeks before the December 7 invasion.
Sybil recalls it was at night when Chandler's parents,
Glen and Kathleen King in McKenzie, heard about the
assault while attending a Republican dinner.
"I wired them that Chandler was alright even before I
knew he was," she says. "That was very foolish, but I
knew he was - I knew he was alright."
Following the attack, martial law was immediately
declared.
"There was a complete blackout," Sybil relates,
"People were told not to go out in the streets. The
ones who had to be out were escorted by the home
guard."
That evening, Sybil invited an Army wife with two
small children to spend the night; they had been
looking for shelter because their house on Hickam
Field had burned during the attack.
"I asked them to stay with me for the night. They
could sleep in my bed because I couldn't go to bed,"
says Sybil, "I stayed at the window watching the smoke
and listening to the reports that Japanese were
parachuting into the island, that more planes were on
their way... These were only rumors but my anger by
then had turned to fear because I didn't know what was
true or false."
Following a "dreadful night," Sybil says, "the next
day was even worse."
Riding the streetcar to her job with the U.S. Army
Engineers in downtown Honolulu, she says, "I saw
trucks pass by with wooden boxes that looked like
caskets, which is what they were."
Still unaware of the full extent of damage at Pearl
Harbor or whether her husband was among the dead, a
friend took her to the base where she learned that,
despite a near miss that damaged the U.S.S. Honolulu,
his ship was one of only a few vessels able to escape
the harbor during the attack.
"It was a time of anguish and shock," says Sybil. "The
dead were buried each afternoon for several days and
it was not until New Years Day that a memorial service
was held for these heroic men."
The day after the attack, Sybil relates, "a call for
plasma went out and within an hour 500 people were
waiting at Tripler Hospital and blood could not be
taken as fast as it was offered." Though she
registered immediately to donate her own blood, it was
February 23 before she was called.
While most Navy dependents began to leave the islands,
Sybil was hesitant to leave her job in which she felt
she could be an asset to the American cause and also
because she believed she would be able to see Chandler
more often if she remained. As time went by, however,
it became clear his time at home would be rare and, in
March, she decided to return to the mainland. She had
arrived in Hawaii aboard a Matson line ship in four
nights and three days. The return journey aboard the
U.S.S. Grant, in a convoy escorting the U.S.S. Nevada
in a zigzag course designed to thwart attackers, took
14 days. Rooms built for two people accommodated six
in bunk beds of three each.
"Even though I almost felt like a deserter for leaving
Hawaii, the mainland looked wonderful when we sailed
into San Francisco Bay, with snow falling and the
returning naval officers all in their white uniforms,"
says Sybil, who remained a part of the war effort,
becoming secretary to the supply officer at the Naval
Air Station in Alameda.
The face of the nation that had been struggling to
emerge from the Great Depression faced the new
challenge of rationing. "Canned foods were rationed
because tin was needed for K-rations for soldiers,"
says Sybil. "Coffee because our ships were being used
for military purposes (rather than import/export of
goods); shoes because the Army needed combat boots.
The first item rationed nationwide was sugar. We had a
book containing stamps for a 52-week supply. There
were red coupons for meat and butter, blue for canned
foods. Gasoline was rationed and, when we transferred
across country, we had to apply for extra stamps. When
we had a blowout on the way, we spent the night in
order to go before a board to get a new tire. Before
the war women wore silk stockings, but silk was needed
to make parachutes and bare legs became the fashion."
Although the United States was swept into World War II
with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the war in other
parts of the world began much earlier. In Europe, the
war began in 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland.
In China, it began even earlier with Japan's 1931
invasion of that country.
"The Pearl Harbor attack united the country as never
before until then," says Sybil, relating the American
people had been divided between interventionists and
isolationists. "It's the same sort of reaction that's
going on today. It (the war in Iraq) has divided the
country at a time when we should be united.
"There was a lot of opposition to war even though
Hitler had already conquered so many nations," she
continues. "Part of the people wanted to stay out of
any war across the Pacific or Atlantic. The peace at
any price faction was strong. President Roosevelt was
trying to pacify an isolationist nation into his
belief that the world war would eventually reach the
United States."
While many, like Sybil, had felt indignation that the
tiny country of Japan would take on the "sleeping
giant" of the United States, the war continued for 44
months after Japan's initial attack. By the war's end,
the United States incurred 291,557 battle deaths as
well as some 6,000 civilians, and 670,846 wounded,
among 16,112,556 American service members.
The USSR lost some 11 million military members and 7
million civilians; Poland lost 5,800,000 citizens,
including three million Jews killed by Nazis. Germany
lost 3,500,000 service members and 780,000 civilians;
China lost more than 2 million military members and as
many as 22 million civilians; Japan lost 1,300,000
members of the military and 672,000 civilians; and the
United Kingdom lost 264,443 military personnel and
92,673 civilians.
"World War II was fought by more men over more of the
globe with greater loss of life and destruction of
property than any other war," Sybil says soberly.
The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945, with Germany's
surrender at Reims in France, though the war in the
Pacific continued for three more months. Following the
first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6 and a
larger, plutonium bomb on Nagasaki two days later,
Japan surrendered aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo
Harbor on September 2, 1945.
"It had not been an easy victory," says Sybil, whose
husband had remained a part of the war effort,
attaining the rank of lieutenant commander before his
discharge in 1945. By war's end, the U.S.S. Honolulu
had earned eight battle stars for World War II
service, including the Battle of Guadalcanal.
Chandler and Sybil's daughter, Patty, was born in
Florida in 1944 followed by Kay's birth almost three
years later in Seattle, Washington.
The Chandler's life has not been without tragedy. Kay,
who had been an employee of Glamour magazine in
Memphis, was killed in an automobile accident at the
age of 36, three years after her marriage to Mike
Brignardello. Chandler died in 1994.
But the family has grown to dynamic proportions thanks
to Patty (an award-winning photographer) and husband
Thomas' brood which includes Sybil's grandchildren,
John, Mark, Holly and Heather, their spouses, and
eight great grandchildren.
"I'm so glad we have a big family," smiles Sybil. "I'm
from a small family and I just love having a lot."
Sybil remains president of Southern Scientific, Inc.
of McKenzie, a company she and Chandler founded, along
with John Padgett, in cooperation with former Bethel
College professor, Dr. Ireland. Chandler later bought
out Padgett's share of the company.
Originally responsible for the accounting department,
Sybil laughs that she also "packed starfish and a
little bit of everything" once it was discovered that
Chandler was allergic to formaldehyde. "Besides, he
traveled a lot to high schools and colleges," she
says.
Sybil is among the most civic and community-minded
citizens of McKenzie, though she wearies quickly of
recounting her accomplishments.
"The Morning Glory Garden Club was formed in my home,"
she admits, then says quickly, with a dismissive toss
of her hand, "Through the years just everything that
came about, a lot of church things."
She is an active member of the United Methodist Church
in McKenzie.
"I love doing things," says Sybil, who has been
involved with RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteer Program)
as a member and advisory board member, and a member of
the United Neighbors board as well as the advisory
board for the Bank of Gleason.
