The day before the United States was thrust into World War II, the USS Enterprise, a Navy aircraft carrier with room for 90 planes, was headed toward Hawaii after delivering a dozen F4F-3 Wildcat planes to the Marines on Wake Island, 2,300 miles west.
Rough seas forced the Enterprise to delay its arrival at Pearl Harbor by a day. That setback likely saved the lives of hundreds of crewmen when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian time on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941.
Simon Kamrar, an uncle of Boise resident Jan Bergesen, was aboard the Enterprise. Kamrar wrote a memoir that included his observations of that day. The Portland native, who joined the Navy out of high school, died in 1991 at age 84 and is buried in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego.
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