Most of us have, through the years, heard that an Army radar plotter, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, tried to warn military officials of possible danger on Sunday morning December 7, 1941.

I, for one, never knew the name of this Army Private who wanted to stay at his mobile radar "listening post" at Kahuka Point, even after his overnight shift had ended. His name was George E. "Sonny" Elliott. This would be his date with history. The beginning of what President Franklin Roosevelt would label "A day of infamy."

The other Private who was working with Elliott was Joseph L. Lockard who was officially the "operator" of the radar unit, Elliott was the "plotter."

Their shift had been dull and uneventful. It would have been interesting to them to watch the scheduled arrival of twelve B-17s which were coming from the west coast of the United States. The planes would have caused a large blip on the scope. They decided to hang around the radar unit a little longer. They felt it would be a good opportunity for Elliott to operate the set for a while. Elliott was new to this line of work.

At 7:02 am, "something out of the ordinary" appeared on the screen. Lockard plopped down into his regular position. He had never seen such a large blip. At first, he suspected faulty equipment and attempted to make adjustments. He then realized there was not one, but two large blips.

At this point, Elliott rushed back to his "aircraft warning plotting board" and within a minute determined the blips to be at three degrees east or north and 137 miles north of Opana.

Elliott called the Information Center at Fort Shafter. At the time Lockard was just not sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. By now, it was seven minutes after the first blip appeared.

Elliott was only able to reach a male telephone operator. He told him what he had seen. Elliott was told nobody was available. The operator called back a few moments later, with Lieutenant Kermit A. Tyler on the line. Tyler told Lockard the blips were either the B-17s from the U.S. mainland, or Navy planes on patrol,  and said to forget about it. 

Lockard and Elliott continued to plot what they saw as a "fine problem." Then they left with their overlay map to show their superiors and to eat breakfast.

At this point, the Japanese warplanes were about 30 miles from Oahu.
When the warplanes were over Ohau’s Kahuku Point, Japanese Commander Fuchida fired his flare pistol into the sky. This was the order to attack! The 183 planes of the first wave broke formation. Dive bombers up to the 12,000 foot mark, horizontal bombers leveled off at 3,500 feet and torpedo bombers dropped to sea level and into mountain passes to avoid detection as they headed for military targets in Honolulu.

The two waves of attacks resulted in a loss, to our military, of 2,008 Navy men and 109 Marines.

Elliott died in Port Charlotte, Florida, on December 20, 2003, of complications from a stroke. He was 85.