in the morning on Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack force, six carriers with 423 planes, approached Hawaii. At 6:00 a.m. the first attack wave of 183 Japanese planes took off from carriers 200 miles away from Pearl Harbor and headed for the Americans’ Pacific fleet.
Later Col. McMillin found out that if not for the mistake of one officer, whom he knew well, thousands of lives of American soldiers could have been saved. This officer disregarded reports that Japanese bombers were on their way to Pearl Harbor. He thought for sure that they were American B-17s coming from the U.S. coast.
At 7:00 a.m. the McMillin family was awakened by an enormous blast.
“What was that?” asked Jimmy. “An earthquake?”
“I don’t think so,” Col. McMillin said. “I think we’ve been attacked.”
The blasts continued one after another.
“All of you should immediately move to the shelter,” McMillin Sr. said with a commanding voice. All the barracks had basements that doubled as bomb shelters. “We cannot lose a second or we’ll be killed.”
After he helped them move into the basement, he jumped in his jeep and by 7:30 a.m. was at the Pearl Harbor command.
The building was in chaos. The attack was a complete surprise to everyone. Bombs, hundreds of them, were targeted at airfields and battleships. The attack lasted for almost three hours. The Americans lost 2,335 servicemen and 63 civilians in the three-hour attack. The majority of men lost were aboard the Battleship USS Arizona; a 1,760-pound air bomb penetrated the forward magazine, causing catastrophic explosions. The Japanese lost about thirty planes.
The McMillins were as shocked as everybody else by these events. Patricia, who was thirteen, cried for hours. Jimmy sat motionlessly. His mom wrote in a letter to her sister that she saw grey hairs on her fourteen-year-old son’s head.
James McMillin Sr. came home that day only for a minute to tell his family that they should pack their things right away. The military command had decided to evacuate the civilians from Pearl Harbor.
“The bus is already waiting for you,” he said. “You will go to the other side of the island. There is a little airport there. The plane will take you to San Francisco. You will stay there for a while. I will be here until the next orders. Good-bye and remember I love you all.”
The family was reunited only after the end of the war. Col. McMillin fought against Japan on many of different islands of the Pacific Ocean. He spent most of the time in the Philippines, where he was wounded. After his injury, he came back to the United States and rejoined his family. In 1944 the family moved from San Francisco to Boulder, Colorado, where Jimmy graduated from high school and started college.
McMillin Sr. didn’t stay in Boulder long. He was soon appointed a commanding officer of the Huntsville arsenal. Jimmy enjoyed his last year in high school. He was on the football team, and they won almost all their games. Jimmy beat the school’s record for scoring touchdowns. He was also pretty good in basketball, putting the ball through the hoop consistently. He became the team’s top scorer.
During the break between the football and basketball seasons, Jimmy was approached by the chief coach of the track and field team. “Hey, you’re fast. Our track team needs someone like you to fill the gap in mid-distance running—the 400-yard dash, 800, and the mile. Do you want to try?”
In sports, as in education, Jimmy was ready to try anything. He joined the track and field team and beat the school record in both the 400 and 800-yard dashes. He also won several competitions in Colorado. The coach told him that he would try to get Jimmy a scholarship at the local college. Jimmy was grateful, but he had a different path in mind—he wanted to serve in the army, like his dad. When Dad came home from the war, his jacket was covered with medals he’d been awarded for heroic deeds. Jimmy wanted to be a hero, too. When his senior year was almost over, he had a long conversation with his father about what he would do in the future.
“They want to give me a scholarship in track and field,” Jimmy told his dad. “But I don’t want to use it. I want to do what you’re doing, and I want to go to West Point. I’ll enter college in the fall, but couple of months later I will be drafted and that’s when I want to take my entrance exams for West Point.”
McMillin Sr. proudly approved his son’s decision.
Jimmy passed most of the exams but failed his physical. The doctors explained to him that he had high blood pressure; he should go and serve in the regular army for two years and then come back and be tested again.
“Sorry, but it’s the law,” said one of the doctors. “I’m pretty sure that in two years there will be no problems with your health. People mature in the army.”
But Jimmy’s high blood pressure was genetic. His dad had been lucky. When he entered West Point, his blood pressure hadn’t been checked. He was considered physically fit to serve in the army. Jimmy was a healthy boy, never complained about his health. He didn’t know about high blood pressure. He thought everything was fine with his health. That’s what his dad thought too. Medicine took a big step forward after the war but those advances weren’t timely enough to help Jimmy.
He was upset about his rejection of admission to West Point, but what could he do? He was ready to continue his life as a soldier. Jimmy spent several months going to a special school at a base in West Virginia where he learned cryptography. He was bright, and graduated from that school with the highest grades. He made the rank of Sergeant in the U.S. Army. His first posting was on a special mission to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where he was to talk with the Pentagon and all the U.S. Embassies throughout the world in a restricted language that was so sophisticated that no foreign secret services could decipher it. During his training period he was tested and examined so many times that his supervisors were confident in his trustworthiness. Before leaving for Moscow, General Andrew Bolling told him, “Son, we are relying on you, and we’re sure that you’ll never let your country down.”
Despite his academic and athletic achievements, there was a gap in Jimmy’s education. During all those years in high school, the months in college, and then Army school, Jimmy never had time for dates. He never had a girlfriend. He dedicated all his time to studies and sports. He lived in a warm and loving atmosphere at home that satisfied his need for love and security, and fostered his shy personality. He didn’t think much about dating. In Moscow, he told his roommate in American House that in America he’d never met a girl whom he really liked.
“Or they were afraid of me, or maybe I was too shy to approach them,” he said to his friend, “but I never went out with any of them.”
His spirits were low by the time he arrived in Moscow. On the flight to the Russian capitol he read some information about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—the country where he would be stationed for the next two years. He knew that after World War II, relations between his country and the USSR had become tense. After defeating the Germans, the Soviets put Communist regimes in power all over Eastern Europe. U.S. strategy now was to stop Russians from spreading their military power to the rest of the European continent. Jimmy also read about Soviet concentration camps that were no better than German concentration camps. Millions of Russians who thought differently than their govern-ment were sent to camps in the Arctic of Siberia where the winters lasted ten months. He found the information frightening.
“Well, I’ll live with other Americans in Moscow,” he thought, “and I’ll try to have no contact with the Commies.”
James and several other servicemen
