Her War - Her Story: A Witness to the Attack on Pearl Harbor

Barbara Kotinek was just a young girl when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. She got an up-close view of the Japanese pilots when they flew over and the devastation along Battleship Row, especially the flaming USS Arizona. When the enemy flew over her Naval housing, they even waved to her and smiled. She climbed a clothesline to get a better view.

Her family was so certain that the Japanese were going to invade Oahu, that her father gave the young girl a gun so she could do the unthinkable: Shoot herself and her mother if Honolulu was invaded.

This short clip is from a searing, personal interview full of emotion, even decades after that “Day of Infamy.”  Watch the full film here:  

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