A boy watches war begin

HAYDEN - Bob Wadsworth holds a piece of green, twisted, torn metal.

It doesn't look like much. But for him, it's part of his life. A big part.

“I’ve had this thing since 1941,” the Hayden man said.

That “thing" was part of a Zero fighter plane shot down on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

His father, Aaron, served in the Navy and found it not far from their home at Kaneohe Naval air station on Oahu.

It was thought by many to be a piece of the first Japanese plane shot down in the war as the initial targets were on the Kaneohe air field.

“That Japanese pilot crashed right by our house,” Wadsworth said. “Dad brought this home.”

Today, Bob Wadsworth is 86 years old. On the date that sent America into World War II, 79 years ago, he was 6 years old, closing in on 7. The Japanese Zero planes flew so low he could see the pilots.

“I reflect on it a lot, though the world has changed so much. And the culture has changed so much that people don't relate to this,” he said. “If you asked an average person about December 7, they might not even remember what happened.”

But he does.

He remembers that morning “like yesterday.”

“I’ll never forget it. I mean, I was not a little kid. And I was maybe advanced for my age, too, at the time,” Wadsworth said.

His family had lived on the base a year before the attack. It was a good life for a boy, and he used to play in the sugarcane fields. He also watched and learned from military men.

“As a kid, I'd go down to the boathouse and they let me ride on the PT boats and the bomb boats. I'd sit on the bow and with my feet over to the side and ride around the harbor,” he said.

“The Army had an airfield adjacent to Kaneohe and they had P-40s and P-39 fighter planes there. And I would go there.”

The night of Dec. 6, Aaron Wadsworth was on duty, so his son rose the next morning to meet him so they could walk home together.

“On my way to the boathouse I saw a seaplane, a Catalina PBY on fire in the bay and fighter planes firing at the targets being towed by aircraft, so at first I thought it was target practice,” he said.

But then he saw a fighter plane on fire and the red circle of Zero fighters circling and strafing the area.

A group of sailors ran past him toward a burning hangar. One grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to the barracks for cover.

“I said, ’Is that the Germans?’ and he said, ‘No, it's their friends,'” Wadsworth said.

Young Wadsworth remained between two buildings. He recalled that a man with a .45 handgun near him was firing at the planes as two others braced him.

He saw a PBY Catalina amphibious aircraft in the water under attack and a man jumped out and began swimming to shore.

“I think he was strafed in the water. I think they killed him,” Wadsworth said.

When the Japanese planes left, Wadsworth ran home to join his mom and sister. Later, they were evacuated to a beach house, where he slept between his mom and another lady. They stayed there for a few days before returning home.

“I'm a little kid watching this stuff going on,” Wadsworth said.

His father survived the attack and returned with that piece of the Zero plane. He was among a group of sailors who captured a two-man Japanese submarine that ran aground.

Aaron Wadsworth was transferred to other naval stations and his wife and children went with him. The family later settled in Southern California, where Bob attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School and played varsity baseball.

He signed a professional baseball contract with the Hollywood Stars in 1953, a Triple-A farm club for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and played until 1959. His last season was his best, a 12-10 record with 16 complete games. An elbow injury cut his career short.

He later worked for Wonder Bread, and then as a full-time Major League Baseball scout with the Atlanta Braves and the Seattle Mariners.

His connection to Dec. 7, 1941 arose again unexpectedly.

About 10 years ago, Wadsworth read a book about the PBY Catalina and it included a recollection of the Kaneohe Bay attack by a sailor named Joe Crownover.

“Some forty of us enlisted men sprinted about a quarter of a mile to the hangar area where we found most of our planes ablaze,” Crownover wrote.

Wadsworth is sure one of those men pulled him to safety that day, and he believes Crownover might have been responsible for shooting down the first Japanese plane.

“I had a chance to open up on them at low altitude," Crownover wrote. "I could see my tracers hit the wings of three planes, and I saw gasoline leaking out of the small holes.

“I saw one plane fly away on fire but didn’t see it go down.”

That plane, Wadsworth said, could be the very one Aaron Wadsworth brought a piece of home, and the one his son has to this day.

When Bob Wadsworth looks back on Dec. 7, 1941, he recalls that even though he was a kid, he was never scared. Not while watching planes soaring past, hearing guns fire, bombs explode and seeing men shot.

“I was too oblivious to be scared. You know, kids are oblivious. I wasn't afraid at all," he said. "I saw those Zeros. I can see them today.”