On Saturday, Dec. 6, 1941, the residents of Naval Air Station Ford Island were ready for Christmas. A long training exercise had ended for the men of Patrol Wing Two, bringing a brief sense of routine back to the families. A small gathering took place at the home of Cmdr. Logan C. Ramsey, hosted in place of Rear Adm. Patrick N. L. Bellinger, who was said in later accounts to have been ill that evening.
It was an ordinary evening. As guests prepared to leave, Ramsey offered his goodbyes with a remark that would later feel painfully prescient. In her reflection “Only Yesteryear,” his daughter, Mary Ann Ramsey, recalled: “As our friends were leaving, Dad called out, ‘Well, let’s hope the Japs wait until after Christmas before they start raising hell in the Pacific.’”
Much of what the Ford Island community remembers about Dec. 6 comes from the work of independent historian Jessie Higa, whose decades of research and oral histories have preserved the lives of the residents.
Those recollections shape the modern gathering now known as In Harm’s Way. Organized by the Ford Island Historical Community Association (FIHCA), the event gathers residents of the historic Nob Hill and Luke Field neighborhoods and their guests beneath a great banyan tree each Saturday preceding Dec. 7.
“When you live on Ford Island, history is right outside your front door,” said Karen Machart, FIHCA president and a Luke Field resident. Her home, designated Quarters 117 in 1941 and occupied at the time by then-Lt. Leroy F. Watson and his family, sat mere yards away from the explosion and sinking of the USS Utah. “This gathering gives us a way to pause and remember the families who lived in these same houses long before we did.”
Attendees dress in 1940s-era clothing, and this year the evening included music by the United States Air Force Band of the Pacific and the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific Band, echoing the sounds that filled neighboring Pearl Harbor that night during the “Battle of Music,” when individual ships fielded their own bands and competed at Bloch Arena.
A central part of the program involved short vignettes about the 1941 residents of specific Ford Island homes. Penned by Higa and read aloud by current residents, the pieces focused on where families were that morning and how their lives changed afterward.
As the sun dropped toward the horizon, attendees gathered for a series of toasts, including one to those who would be lost when morning came to Pearl Harbor. As the light faded, a Marine Corps bugler stepped forward and played Taps, the notes carrying across the harbor in full view of Battleship Row.
The gathering’s name likely draws inspiration from the 1965 John Wayne film “In Harm’s Way,” portions of which were filmed in the Nob Hill. The film’s opening scene depicts a raucous Officer’s Mess party at the neighborhood pool — a far cry from Ramsey’s modest dinner, but a reminder of how an ordinary evening was prelude to history.
This year’s event included remarks from Rear Adm. Chris Cavanaugh, a current resident of Quarters K, in the home once occupied by Adm. Patrick Bellinger and his family. During the air raid, families sheltered in the house’s basement, a converted World War I gun battery known to neighborhood children first as the “dungeon,” and by the fall of 1941, as the “shelter,” as tensions with the Empire of Japan escalated.
Cavanaugh shared accounts of children planning to bring chairs, lemonade, and fudge into the basement if an attack came — details drawn from “The Children of Battleship Row.” He also noted that it was Bellinger who transmitted the first alert that morning: “Air raid, Pearl Harbor. This is no drill.”
Looking toward the harbor, Cavanaugh tied that history to the present force stationed in Hawaii.
“Our sailors and their families remain our center of gravity,” he said. “We have never been in better hands.”
He closed by gesturing toward the USS Arizona Memorial, adding, “May we all live up to the legacy of those who came before us on these hallowed grounds.”
The evening ended with music, dancing, and conversation, as neighbors drifted home ahead of Dec. 7.
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