“Soldiers, Sailors From Here On Duty in War-Hit Hawaii” was how the Pearl Harbor attack, 80 years ago next week, was reported in The Star. Nineteen men and three women from East Hampton were believed to have been stationed in or near Honolulu, Hawaii, when the bombing began.
“This small town is very much in the war,” read the front-page story. “Every heart aches for these anxious families.”
Stories like this appeared all around the United States following the Dec. 7 attack. Word was slow to reach home if a loved one survived or was lost, but even by the time The Star appeared four days later, it was known that a 20-year-old Mattituck man, Russell Penny of the Army Air Corps, had been killed.
East Hampton and the rest of eastern Long Island rapidly mobilized. Civilian defense registration offices opened at the Newtown Lane police headquarters and in Amagansett, Montauk, Springs, and Wainscott. Observation posts were established. One, organized by members of the American Legion at Daniel T. Miller’s house at Fireplace in Springs, was put on a 24-hour basis by order of the authorities at Mitchel Field.
A week later, a wooden tower for airplane spotters was under construction next door, on the John N. Cole property. It would be one of hundreds of posts “from Halifax to Hatteras.” Three squads of observers were set up, with Fannie Gardiner, Ralph Venegas, and John Hasselberger as their captains. Pairs of volunteers took two-hour shifts in the new tower, and The Star made a point of listing each of their names. Dr. and Mrs. William T. Helmuth signed on for the graveyard shifts, from 2 to 4 a.m.
Louise Mulford of Amagansett took on registering Red Cross volunteers for training classes. A $20,000 Red Cross fund drive started slowly, with just $600 coming in during the first month after the attack.
Air raid alarm instructions made the Dec. 11 front page, too. Residents were to keep off the streets and at night extinguish or dim their lights. At the high school, students were told to walk home; there would be no buses. Children who normally took a bus were to arrange to accompany friends headed out on foot. The rules were posted following a chaotic evacuation two days before, after a report of airplanes approaching Long Island set sirens blaring at about 8:30 a.m.
Military guards were briefly stationed at the Shinnecock Canal following the attack, “armed to the teeth, tin hat, and all,” said The Star. By that Tuesday, however, they had been sent elsewhere.
In Amagansett, the Hadel family got a telegram that a Navy man, Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class William Hadel Jr., had been killed aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia. But later that day, the young man’s uncle Bart Hadel, the Amagansett postmaster, received a cablegram from Hadel himself that he was, in fact, alive. The cable read, “Still kicking. Pay my insurance.”
There was uncertainty about Hadel for almost another month, however. Rear Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s Dec. 16 telegram reporting his death appeared to have been sent a short time after the one Hadel sent announcing that he was fine. It was not until Jan. 6 that William Hadel Sr. received a correction from Washington, as well as a letter from his son saying that he was ashore, alive and well.
East Hampton police followed an F.B.I. order to see if any Japanese were within their jurisdiction. One man was identified, Gisaburo Tahira, a houseman at St. Philomena’s Rectory on Buell Lane. Under wartime restrictions, Tahira, a New Yorker, was not allowed to leave the rectory grounds.
F.B.I. agents had by then questioned several Germans in East Hampton, taking one, Frank Raufiesen, who worked at the Little Inn on Napeague, into custody. Anyone deemed an “enemy alien” was required to turn in cameras, radio transmitters, short-wave sets, or firearms.
In early January, rubber rationing was announced and a new 135-foot minesweeper launched in Greenport, built in just 60 days. The war by then had all but engulfed life on the East End.
