Captain Minor Genda is aboard the Akagi awaiting a final intel report from the consulate in Hawaii in the dawn hours of December 7, 1941. Admiral Chichi Nagumo announces that the attack will not focus on infrastructure, as Genda hoped, but rather on the battleships moored at the harbor.

Douglas Wada and his friends head out to fish Diamond Head Bay, abandoning their normal fishing spot in Pearl Harbor after finding their bait cache gone.

On deck the USS Helm at 8:00 am, Lieutenant Commander Chester Carroll and his 13-year-old son hear the buzz of approaching aircraft. One bombs a nearby airfield, and Carroll orders a counterattack. The USS Helm, after a brief delay, returns fire on Japanese planes. His gunners take out a plane, but he quickly realizes the planes are not attacking his ship, but the harbor itself. Carroll escapes the harbor and takes aim at a small sub stuck in the reef.