George C. Larsen
On The Edge of War is a World War II memoir laced with fine storytelling, engaging wit and everyday observations that allow the reader to enter the serviceman’s world as our country approached the day of infamy, Dec 7, 1941.
Larsen joined the Coast Guard on October 29, 1939, and four months later was transferred to the Hawaiian Islands where he became a radio operator. He was engaged in intercepting Japanese military code for US Navy Intelligence while stationed at the Diamond Head Radio Station. He was at this radio station during the Pearl Harbor Attack on December 7, 1941.
During World War II Larsen traveled around the world, through the South Pacific, Tasmania Sea, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea. He spent time in Calcutta, India and La Havre, France. Larsen tells his story so that you feel you are sitting across the table from him. You feel the peril and laugh with the good times as he recounts life for the enlisted man during World War II. His storytelling reminds the reader that we all need to enjoy life, even during time of war.
George Larsen was born in San Francisco in 1918 and joined the U.S. Coast Guard in 1939. He became a radio operator and was stationed at Diamond Head Radio Station during the Pearl Harbor attack. Recently his story was featured in newspapers across the world when the U.S. Postal Department wanted information about what he did at the Diamond Head Lighthouse, which was part of the new issue of stamps honoring historic lighthouses. After World War II George Larsen got married and had two children. He worked as a lighting director and cameraman for K.R.O.N. television in San Francisco for almost 30 years. Highlights of his career in television include an Emmy and involvement in the first television transmission from the United States to Paris, France. Larsen was in charge of studio camera production and part of the television crew for many major sporting events in the Bay Area. He retired in 1985. He is the President of the Bay Area Chapter Two Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. Larsen has spoken about his experiences during World War II to Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, schools, women's clubs, men's clubs and even the Marin County Jail where the inmates were studying U.S. history.
Sunday December 7th.
About 7:55 a.m. I was rudely awakened by the rattling of all the bedroom windows. My first thought was that it felt like an earthquake, the building was shaking and there were loud rumbling sounds like heavy thunder! Then I heard sounds like heavy firing of guns. As I started to get up, I thought what a day to start war games on, it’s Sunday, don’t they have any sense at all? It’s just like the Army to pull a stunt like this, of course I thought that the Navy was in on the act too. Just about that time my watch partner, Lesko, who had relieved me at 2 a.m., came rushing into the bedroom exclaiming that the USS Ward had depth charged a submarine just off of Barbers Point at about 6 a.m. He said he picked up the message because it was sent on our frequency 2670 (our high frequency main channel) but was sent to NPM the Navy radio shore station. I asked him if he sent that message to our downtown head quarters and he replied, “No I didn’t because it was sent to NPM.” I told him he should have sent it into our office just to keep his watch covered, since we knew Anthony was in on that kind of stuff. As I was getting dressed I heard faint sounds of airplane engines. I quickly dashed out of the room, ran through the kitchen and out the back door just in time to see 3 planes fly over the house at about 500 feet above me. They were flying in formation and I could see big red dots on their wings. I watched them flying in the direction of downtown Honolulu and in line with going to Pearl Harbor! I ran in the house and told everyone, “Three Army planes flew over the house, I know they weren’t Navy planes so they must be Army planes because they had big red dots under their wings as some sort of disguise for war games. Looking out towards Pearl Harbor I could see huge clouds of smoke billowing up into the sky and it looked like a bunch of planes were zooming around Hickam Field and Pearl Harbor. Since this action came as a big surprise, I wondered if the military brass were trying to see what our reaction would be by throwing this surprise drill. Just about that time Chief Kerns, our man in charge that day, told me to cover the harbor channel and the commercial channel until we found out what was going on. Since we had an excellent view of the Pearl Harbor channel entrance from the operating position where I was operating, I could see any ships coming out of the Pearl Harbor channel entrance. Looking through that particular window I observed a destroyer running very slowly towards the open sea. She was not making much headway and seemed to be blowing white smoke out of her single stack which I took to mean that it hadn’t quite got enough boiler pressure to go full speed. Suddenly a huge geyser of water erupted just a few yards off her stern. I didn’t know if she had dropped a depth charge or if there was a plane bombing her. This started us to wondering if this was a make believe war game or was it the real thing? I thought that if this was the real thing I wanted no part of it! At about 8:30 a.m. Chief Kerns sent my partner Tony Silva downtown to our headquarters with all of the logs and messages from the night before. His mission was also to find out what was going on. He took the panel truck, our official vehicle, and drove as fast as he could on Kapolanai Boulevard to our district office downtown. During this time I was busy logging everything I heard on 2670 kcs and 500 kcs (kcs now known as hrz). The first thing I heard was a distress call from a commercial sport fishing boat on 2670, our Coast Guard frequency. The caller sounded very excited and said “some Army Air Force pilot has gone berserk and is shooting at us with his machine guns.” An Army Colonel, who was a guest on his vessel, was wounded. He gave his location as just off of Barbers Point. He pleaded with us to do something about it. We acknowledged his message and passed it on to our downtown headquarters by teletype. He also informed us that the boat was disabled and was sinking. I looked out of our window facing north, where we could see the mouth of the entrance channel to Pearl Harbor and the Barber’s Point area but couldn’t see the fishing boat. After watching that destroyer getting bombed and the fishing boat getting strafed, this started us wondering if this was a real war or a drill. The time was now about 8:30 a.m. In the kitchen you could hear a radio on low volume, playing heavy military marches or martial music. Then an announcement was made that we were being attacked by an unidentified enemy air force. We still hadn’t got any official notice from Headquarters, but we figured that it had to be the Japanese Navy! Just about then I was looking out the west window where I could see the Diamond Head buoy, (that was used to mark the end of the race for sailing boats from the West Coast to Hawaii), and I saw a tremendous set of geysers which came out of the sea and shot about fifty or sixty feet in the air. It looked as they were about 500 yards from the shore. I held my breath expecting shells to come bouncing or skipping right up to our building.
