Lee Embree - Pearl Harbor Photographs

Pearl Harbor Photographs

Embree first enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1936. By 1941, the year of the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Embree had become a staff sergeant.

The day before the attacks, Embree was assigned to be a passenger on one of the four-engine B-17 Flying Fortresses, which were based at Hamilton Field, California. Embree, and the rest of the personnel on the planes, were headed to the Philippines from California. Their trip included a refueling stop at Hickam Field, which is located near Honolulu, Hawaii. Embree, who was being permanently transferred from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the Philippines, brought his Speed Graphic camera with him for the trip.

The 38th Reconnaissance Squadron, which included 12 planes including the one Embree was flying in, arrived in the skies over Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, just 30 minutes after the start of the Japanese attack. According to a story in the Peninsula Daily News, the planes would have arrived even earlier if the squadron had not conducted a navigation check shortly after leaving California. All of the B-17s were defenseless. The planes carried no machine guns or ammunition in order to carry more fuel and less weight on the long flight from California.

Embree, who was 26 years old at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, managed to take photographs from the air of the damaged USS Arizona using his personal camera. He also took pictures of Japanese planes and even the pilots' faces as they were flying past his B-17. He recalled in a later interview that he could see Japanese fighter pilots, "grinning from ear to ear."

The American squadron of unarmed B17s were hit by both Japanese and friendly fire. American forces on the ground mistook the planes' Army Air Corps insignia for the Japanese rising sun flag. Embree survived the attack because he had switched seats with a flight surgeon on another B17 before taking off from California. They had switched so Embree could connect his mounted camera to the B17's 24-volt electrical system for the routine California to Hawaii flight. A bullet hit some incendiary flares on that B17 during the attack, which killed the flight surgeon and another man on that plane.

Embree snapped a number of pictures of the attack, but eventually stopped. In an 2001 interview, he explained "Many people have asked me why I didn't take more photos from the air...I can only answer that I was so flabbergasted at what I saw that I forgot about the camera that was in my hand."

Embree's plane ran out of fuel by the time of their third circle over Pearl Harbor and was forced to land, even as the attack was still in progress. While the Japanese had destroyed the hangars and airplanes at Hickam Field, they had strategically not damaged the airfield, which allowed Embree's plane to land. Embree and his crew quickly evacuated their planes, and removed anything that might catch fire, and fled into the brush surrounding the base. They stayed in the bushes that night, living off of cold sandwiches, coffee and sheltering under a tarp.