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Allentown native, others recall Pearl Harbor attack

Growing up in Allentown, Bill Muehleib would visit his grandmother's house and listen to Hawaiian music on the Victrola. A curious kid by nature, he always wanted to visit the islands.

He got his wish when he arrived in Hawaii in November 1940 as a member of what was then the Army Air Corps. A little more than one year later, he watched from Hickam Field as Japanese aircraft unleashed a lethal fury of bombs and torpedoes on Pearl Harbor.

As the attack escalated, Muehleib found himself away from the flight line and with a good view of the action. Enemy aircraft flew over, and he could see the bombs drop. He could see the impact.

Strangely, Hawaii seemed like a far-off place all over again.

"It was a rather disorganized experience," said Muehleib, 89, who lives in Virginia Beach, Va., and is national president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. "You actually felt like you were watching something that was happening somewhere else."

Muehleib, a private assigned to the 6th Pursuit Squadron in the 18th Pursuit Group, was one of several Allentown natives at Pearl Harbor. Among them was his cousin, fellow soldier Robert Muehleib.

Edward Muehleib, who was in Allentown on Dec. 7, 1941, and still lives in the city, remembers the uncertainty after he learned the Japanese had attacked a post manned by his cousin Bill and brother Robert.

"I was worried about them, hoping they were all right," he said. "We didn't hear anything for two weeks. Then [Robert] sent a letter" assuring the family both were fine.

Edward Muehleib eventually served in the Navy in the Pacific during the war. His brother Robert died in 1994.

Doctors are called

Betty Campen, a civilian government worker, lived near Waikiki, some miles away from the attack. Glued to the radio for news, she recorded events in her diary as they occurred.

I hear a call for a number of doctors being called to the Tripler General Hospital. It must be there really was damage done. It just can't be that this is all happening. It just can't be true and yet, when you hear these things over the radio and see the deserted streets, well, it really begins to sink in. This call for the doctors, really sounds bad.

A young woman with a sense of adventure, Campen had moved to Hawaii from Oregon. She clearly thought women could hold their own in the 1940s, an attitude destined to become more fashionable as men moved to the battlefield and women moved to the workplace.

Now they change one of their former statements that civilian employees of Pearl Harbor are now permitted to report to Pearl Harbor — except women. Darn, why can't they let the women [in] on a little excitement, instead of making us just sit here and "wonder" what it's all about. I can't even take any exciting movie shots. My chance to make myself famous and here I try to write a story of the happenings of "The Attack" when I know I can't write.

Campen, a wife and mother of two, died in 2007 in Chesapeake, Va.

'Here's a dive bomber'

Bill Temple, stationed well inland at Wheeler Field, probably wished the battle had been farther away.

Japanese planes targeted Wheeler in a furious bid to destroy sitting American aircraft before they could take off. Tech. Sgt. Temple, a member of the Army Air Forces, had witnessed the first rush of the attack and gone to fetch ammunition. But he had grabbed .45-caliber rounds. He needed ordnance capable of bringing down aircraft.

As the attack intensified, he began a return trip to the same hangar.

"I didn't want to run down the street again because I knew they were shooting past me," said Temple, now 92 and a resident of Virginia Beach. "I didn't get hit, but I didn't want to take that chance again."

He decided to run behind a row of buildings where workers had begun to dig foundations for new structures. He figured to hide in the foundations and gradually work his way to the hangar. As he began his trek, he noticed two men coming toward him.

"One had on a white jacket," Temple said. "The next thing I know, here's a dive bomber. I saw him release his bomb and you could tell right when he released the bomb where it was going to hit. And sure enough, it hit those two guys. The next thing I know that white shirt was way up in the air."

Dived into the water

Russell Argabrite was trapped below decks on the battleship USS California. A spring-loaded hatch blocked his way and above him came the sound of men yelling "Abandon ship!" Years later, he recalled the moment with a chuckle.

"Of course," he said, "there wasn't nowhere to go."

Then someone opened the hatch. A moment later, he dived over the side of the ship, still wearing his shoes, and swam toward Ford Island through a sea of black fuel oil.

"I think it took me a month to get it out of the roots of my hair," he said. "It's really gooey and it's really uncomfortable, and slick. You can't stand up. You got over there, and it's on the soles of your shoes and you can hardly stand up."

Reaching the shore, he was directed to a mess hall where the tables held wounded men. The 19-year-old Ohio farm boy got his first taste of war.

"Some of them had been burned, and there was just flesh hanging off them," he said. "You've never seen nothing like that. I'd seen a guy cut his thumb once, and that was the limit of what I'd seen before that. You can imagine. I'm a country boy here that maybe sees a guy get his foot cut on a bottle or something."

Argabrite, who spent much of his later life in Norfolk, Va., died in 1990. His Pearl Harbor memories were documented by the North Texas State University Oral History Project.

One confirmed kill

On the destroyer USS Phelps, ship's cook Frank Chebetar was at the controls of a four-barrel antiaircraft gun that he operated with a foot pedal. As members of the gun crew fed in rounds, Chebetar took aim at incoming Japanese fighters and bombers as the ship got under way. He saw the USS Utah, an old training battleship. It had capsized.

"The men were crawling over the side like ants," he said. "And they were still strafing everybody, even the men in the water."

Fighting through his fear, Chebetar and his gun crew kept pounding away at low-flying Japanese planes. He shot down one plane, but he wasn't celebrating.

"I was so scared that I even cried," said the Virginia Beach resident. "That's how bad it was."

Saving the car

Carl Ferreira, now living in Poquoson, Va., was 11 years old that morning, and his father worked for the Army Corps of Engineers. He lived about 16 miles from Pearl Harbor on Wilhelmina Rise, basically on the side of a mountain. He had a panoramic view.

That morning, he and his family listened intently to the radio as the first reports of the attack came in. His uncle, a bachelor, had been living with the family in a basement apartment and working at Pearl Harbor as a civilian blacksmith.

His uncle worked through the night on Dec. 6 and planned to leave work the morning of the 7th. Once the attack broke out, his family didn't see him until 10 a.m. He pulled into the driveway with his brand new car, a maroon Oldsmobile convertible with one of those spiffy Hydra-Matic transmissions, a true automatic. He parked the car, got out and said he needed to hitch a ride back to Pearl.

So why did he come home?

"I don't want some Jap blowing up my new car!"

The family didn't see him for the next few days.

Taking a tumble

Back at Wheeler Field, Tech Sgt. Bill Temple had run a gauntlet of enemy fire to reach a hangar, hoping to retrieve right-size ammunition. He found none, but he did come across an American pilot trying to get his P-40 into the air. Temple and another man loaded the plane as the pilot — still dressed in a tuxedo from a late-night party on Saturday — ran and changed into his flight suit.

Being the crew chief, Temple stood on the wing as the pilot settled in. He hooked up his oxygen supply, his safety belt, and performed other checks. About that time, a line of Japanese fighters made another run at the field. The pilot didn't wait for Temple to finish.

"He just reached out and pushed the throttle forward, and here we go down the runway," said Temple, a member of the 19th Pursuit Squadron in the same 18th Pursuit Group as Muehleib. "I'm hanging on the wing. I'm thinking, 'If I drop off now, that tail's gonna cut me in two.' So I waited for the tail to drop off a little bit and rolled on down the runway."

That pilot made it into the air and shot down three Japanese fighters in succession, Temple said.

Hugh Lessig is a reporter with the (Newport News, Va.) Daily Press, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.

Morning Call reporter Frank Warner contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2015, The Morning Call
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