The Forgotten Volunteers Who Helped Save Pearl Harbor’s Wounded
The “Day that will live in infamy” unleashed several more days of chaos and despair. The survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor sustained varying degrees of injuries and trauma. Medical personnel and other military staff sprang into action immediately, but those conditions required even more hands and hearts. The unexpected response came from the “working girls” and employees of other, less respectable businesses of Honolulu’s Hotel Street. Though prostitution was legal, and the U.S. military and the territory of Hawaii regulated it, polite society stigmatized these women. However, these men and women played an important role in the immediate effort, earning them the title of “Hotel Row Heroes,” and their story deserves our attention.
Life on Hotel Street Before the Attack
Hotel Street is the real name of the street that runs parallel to King Street and Beretania Street in Honolulu. During the years of World War II, the street maintained a culture supported by a red-light district, tattoo parlors, and bars that catered primarily to servicemen stationed nearby or on leave. The women employed throughout these establishments—particularly in the brothels—occupied a marginalized yet vital place in the social fabric of the port city. A large part of Honolulu’s economy relied on the district.
December 7, 1941: The Day of the Attack
The immediate moments following the attack threw the port of Pearl Harbor and the surrounding area into sudden chaos. Incoming wounded quickly overwhelmed the hospitals. Military members, law enforcement, and frightened and confused civilians crowded the streets. The injuries sustained
Most people know about the Arizona’s fate, but eight battleships lined Pearl Harbor’s waters that morning.. All sustained some damage, and four sank: the Arizona, the Oklahoma, the Utah, and the West Virginia. (The West Virginia was later raised and repaired.) Those ships accounted for 1,770 deaths, 1,177 of them on the Arizona alone. Dozens of other military ships sustained bomb damage as well.
Six airfields also endured damage: Hickam, Wheeler, Ford Island, Ewa, Kaneohe Bay, and Bellows. Schofield Barracks, the main Army installation on the island, also took damage. The bombs struck nearby neighborhoods as well, killing many civilians, and stray anti-aircraft shells exploded over Honolulu. We can see that the carnage was much broader than just one battleship at the port.
Incoming casualties quickly overwhelmed the military hospitals (Tripler Army Hospital and Naval Hospital Pearl Harbor), as well as the civilian facility, Queens Hospital. Smaller dispensaries and infirmaries treated minor wounds, and other civilian medical facilities, schools, and churches became makeshift aid stations. Despite the facilities available and created, there was still a desperate need for blood, bandages, comfort, and hands to help.
The Heroic Response of the Pearl Harbor Volunteers from Hotel Row
The women in the brothels came rushing to the hospitals and aid stations to donate blood and assist the wounded. Some provided food, water, and clothing, and others helped calm the terrified servicemen and civilians. It wasn’t their job, but these Pearl Harbor volunteers did it.
This would be enough of a story, but it doesn’t end there. Many bar owners closed their doors and joined the rush to the aid stations, and some offered space for blood donors and volunteers to rest. Many bar owners donated ice and liquor for sterilization and pain control. Some helped coordinate food, blankets, and shelters for disoriented servicemen who lost everything.
Tattoo shops became informal first-aid stations, because they had alcohol, bandages, and sinks. The owners patched up minor wounds quite often and could handle the work easily. They cleaned and wrapped minor injuries for civilians and servicemen who couldn’t get into the hospitals.
Taxi drivers and small hotel owners in the immediate areas helped transport wounded people to hospitals and deliver supplies when the roads were impassible. Some of the boarding house owners offered shelter to stranded sailors who couldn’t get back to base due to curfews and damage. Oral history collections and local newspaper retrospectives carried numerous stories indicating that everyone with a steady hand tried to help.
Despite the perceptions of the public of the businesses along Hotel Row, the owners and employees rose to a dreadful occasion with a determination to meet whatever needs they found. They provided goods, services, and comfort wherever they could. Care and recovery often require more than just medical attention, and that was where the Hotel Row denizens proved invaluable.
Lessons for Us Today from the Pearl Harbor Volunteers
History has largely ignored the Pearl Harbor volunteers of Hotel Row. The official accounts excluded their contributions to those first few days following the attack. “Respectable society” often dismissed or erased their involvement.
However, we shouldn’t lose this important knowledge. Their story highlights resilience, compassion, and humanity in the face of tragedy. The irony of the situation is that those who were considered “immoral” demonstrated extraordinary moral courage.
The account of the Hotel Row Heroes should help us see the importance of honoring overlooked voices in history, and that’s what I try to do with my Radicals, Renegades, and Rebels series. Sometimes we need to expand our definition of service and sacrifice to include those we may wish didn’t exist.
Your Turn
Let’s return to the scene – Hotel Row, 1941 – where men and women stepped out of the shadows to help when it mattered most. Let’s remember and celebrate their compassion.
I’d love to hear about other times when marginalized people performed deeds that need to be remembered. Can you help me find them? Post a comment with someone’s story that needs to be told.
Sources
Much of what we know about the Hotel Street community and the Pearl Harbor volunteers during World War II comes from oral histories and retrospective research rather than wartime newspapers, which largely focused on military operations. Context for the district’s legal and social structure appears in Denby Fawcett’s “The Brothels of Chinatown” (Civil Beat, 2015) and in “Prostitution and the Politics of War” (Radical History Review, Duke University Press).
Personal accounts of the women themselves are drawn from Jean O’Hara’s postwar interviews and later analyses such as Brittney Bonser’s “Patriotutes of Hotel Street” (Hawai‘i University International Conference, 2019). Their documented acts of aid — donating blood, providing supplies, and assisting the wounded — are echoed in the popular summary “The Unexpected Heroines of Pearl Harbor” (PearlHarbor.org) and supported by wartime materials in the Hawai‘i War Records Depository at the University of Hawai‘i.
Additional background on the neighborhood’s economy and culture comes from Images of Old Hawai‘i (“$3 for 3 Minutes”) and tattoo-culture archives detailing the presence of artists such as Norman ‘Sailor Jerry’ Collins on Hotel Street during the early 1940s. Together, these sources reveal a community that, despite stigma, played a quiet but crucial humanitarian role in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack.
However, here are three sources I did find:
Hawai’i War Records Depository – University of Hawaii Manoa Library Website
The Unexpected Heroines of Pearl Harbor – Pearl Harbor
Prostitutes with hearts of gold helped Pearl Harbor survivors
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