Sylvia Saiki, a retired Department of Defense schoolteacher who lives in Pauoa, was a toddler at the time of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. She doesn’t have any recollection of the historic event that propelled America into World War II and had only sketchy information on the death of her paternal uncle, Patrick Kahamokupuni Chong, who was among the civilians killed that day by errant U.S. anti-aircraft fire.

“I knew that Uncle Patrick died on Dec. 7, but my father never talked about it much,” she said.

Another casualty: Chong’s infant daughter, Eunice Wilson.

As the 76th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor approached, I was able to help Saiki uncover more details about their deaths and connect her for the first time with a branch of their family that was equally in the dark about Chong, who was 30 when he died.

I first met Saiki and her daughter, Jessie Higa, 49, on one of my guided cemetery tours in September. We met twice after that to talk more about my research into the civilian deaths resulting from the Pearl Harbor attack.

I shared with them two documents that answered many of their questions: a Honolulu Fire Department report with the exact location where the incident took place, near the present-day corner of Pali Highway and School Street; and a Queen’s Hospital Civilian Casualty Report with testimony from Eunice Wilson, mother of baby Eunice.

A SUDDEN, DEADLY EXPLOSION

Wilson told authorities that in the clear, early morning hours of Dec. 7, 1941, she stepped out of her house to sit on her front porch with her 7-month-old daughter. Her 2-year-old son, Patrick Jr., was not at home.

Wilson lived in a two-story wooden house at 1457 Fort St., located just mauka of School Street on the lower slopes of Punchbowl. Today, Fort Street ends at Kukui Street, a block short of Vineyard Boulevard. In 1941, before the Pali Highway existed, Fort Street extended another mile beyond to Pauoa Road.

This was a densely populated, working-class neighborhood of single-family homes and tenement housing inhabited by a colorful mix of residents of Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and other ethnicities.

Wilson said that at about 7:45 a.m., Chong, a janitor at the Library of Hawaii, pulled hastily up to the house, got out of the car and informed her that he had just heard an announcement on the radio that Japanese airplanes were attacking Pearl Harbor. Wilson said Chong entered the house and turned on the radio, but “just as he did so a bomb exploded between my house and my neighbor’s house. I was thrown on the bed and a pile of lumber fell on and around me. My right arm was caught, but I managed to free myself.”

Chong and his daughter, who had been in her mother’s arms, were killed instantly.

The Honolulu Fire Department responded almost immediately to the blast site. Wilson was taken to the Emergency Hospital and then transferred to Queen’s Hospital.

The Honolulu City & County Emergency Unit (aka the Emergency Hospital) was located in a two-story concrete annex situated on the grounds of Queen’s Hospital. According to hospital records, more than 100 patients were delivered there on Dec. 7, 1941. They were quickly assessed and those with more serious, life-threatening injuries were admitted to the hospital.

Wilson did not mention in the report that her arm was so mangled it had to be amputated at Queen’s. She recovered quickly, and only 19 days later returned to work as a volunteer nurse with the Hawaii Red Cross.

TRAGEDY CLOSE TO HOME

The “bombs” that killed Chong, baby Eunice and 47 other civilians and injured dozens more were, in fact, errant U.S. anti-aircraft shells.

Responding to the surprise attack, military personnel rushed to anti-aircraft stations aboard ships in Pearl Harbor and at military installations throughout Oahu. In their haste, battery crews did not set the detonation mechanism on the mostly 5-inch, shrapnel-filled shells. Instead of exploding in the air near enemy aircraft, they rained down at 51 Oahu sites, exploding on impact.

“Eunice’s description of how Patrick and baby Eunice died was something we didn’t know about. We always thought that they died near Schuman Carriage Co. on Beretania Street,” Saiki said.

A newspaper report the day after the Pearl Harbor attack erroneously named Chong as the man killed at Schuman Carriage, which was located opposite Washington Place.

Saiki and Higa were stunned to learn the two perished at a Fort Street home just a few blocks from where Saiki’s parents lived. Saiki and Higa, who still live on their family’s property but in a newer home, took it upon themselves to walk to the site of the fatal explosion.

“Some of the original houses of pre-1941 are still there and I was overcome by emotion imagining friendly fire anti-aircraft shells exploding, causing the deaths of my grandfather’s older brother and baby niece on Dec. 7,” said Higa, a historian and tour guide for Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

“I’ve driven by this area countless times.”

AN EMOTIONAL MEETING

I suggested Higa conduct further research online, where she found a 2007 obituary for Patrick Kahamokupuni Chong Jr. of Waianae — the son of the man who died in the Fort Street explosion. The death notice indicated Chong was survived by his wife, Jennie, and five children.

Higa contacted one of his daughters, Patricia Badayos, by phone last month. Badayos, 46, said she was “completely shocked” to hear from Higa, since they had never been in contact with her grandfather’s brother, Joseph Chong, or his descendants.

“I had been trying to find out more about them for many years but always hit dead ends,” she said.

Since Badayos had never been to her grandfather’s grave, and didn’t even know where he was buried, she agreed to meet Saiki and Higa at Manoa Chinese Cemetery, where he and baby Eunice are interred, on Oct. 29.

“Being at the cemetery and seeing my grandfather’s grave was emotionally overwhelming for me,” Badayos said. “To see his name on the marker — which was my father’s name — made me sad because my father died before we had this chance to bring the two families together.

“At the same time I was really happy to find the grave.”

While there, Saiki gave Badayos a photograph of her grandfather. It was the first time she saw his face.

Later, at a nearby restaurant, the newfound relatives dug deeper into their shared past.

“My father didn’t know much about his father,” said Badayos, who is a real estate loan specialist with First Hawaiian Bank. “He only knew that he and baby Eunice died on Dec. 7 and that he served in the military. I knew my grandmother Eunice (Wilson), but she never talked about what exactly happened.”

After the war, Wilson went on to marry twice and had four more children. She died in 1997 at the age of 77.

The local Chong family members are planning to meet again during the week of Dec. 7 at the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, and are planning a larger family reunion with mainland relatives in January.

Nanette Napoleon is a historian in Kailua who has collected information about individuals killed on Dec. 7, 1941, for more than 20 years. Contact her at 261-0705 or email nanetten@hawaii.rr.com.