2021/2022
Collection 17

The Brothers at the Dock

1941; Honolulu, Hawaii

This story was told to me by my father and grandfather, who taught me poker when I was five years old.

On December 7, 1941, in Honolulu, Hawaii, my great-grandpa Louis Frederick Poehler and his younger brother, Elmer Poehler, were on the USS St. Louis dock, and they had been playing poker all night.

They were in the United States Navy and worked as firemen, in charge of keeping extra water on the ship to put out fires.

They were winning their hands of poker, and they were up $9. They sat out the next hand so they could get a round of drinks. After the next deal, Louis had a flush!(1) He bet all-in. Elmer also thought he would win, because he had three kings — and mostly because they were competitive brothers.

They heard a plane. They looked up. Maybe because they had been up all night, the brothers thought that it was one of their own planes. Then Louis and Elmer saw “the meatball.” “The meatball” was the sailors’ nickname for the red circle, which symbolized the sun, on the Japanese flag.

The Poehlers knew that they were in trouble. They started running for their lives to the armory that was three miles away. They would not look back. They kept ducking and running. Nothing would stop them. Sometimes the planes were coming from every direction. The Japanese dropped bombs like kids drop bread crumbs for ducks.

The Japanese had an alliance with Germany in World War II and performed a sneak attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor. They sank 9 Navy vessels, damaged 14 others, and obliterated 188 U.S. military planes. More than 2,400 Americans died that morning; more than 1,000 were wounded.

Louis and Elmer kept running and ducking. They hid under tables and stools — anything they could find on the way to the armory. It was a terrifying one hour and fifteen minutes of sprinting for their lives. They stayed in the safety of the armory for about ten minutes, until the bombing stopped.

The Poehler brothers then ran back to the ship and helped put out the fires that were burning on their beloved USS St. Louis.

After the fires were extinguished and the smoke began to clear, Louis looked back at the table where they had been playing cards. He saw that his cards were gone, but Elmer’s were still standing. Louis’s flush would have beaten Elmer’s three kings, but Elmer won because Louis’s cards were no longer there. Louis lost $9 to his brother. That was definitely the craziest game of poker!

What was crazier than the cards still standing was that the brothers were still standing unhurt. The Poehlers had just lived through a moment that changed the world forever. Because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States immediately declared war on Japan. The war continued until 1945, when Japan surrendered after the U.S. had dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities.

Maybe if cards weren’t important in my family, the Poehler brothers would have slept through the planes’ attack, and I would not be here to tell this poker story.

Atticus Poehler; Missouri, USA

1. A flush is a hand of cards all in the same suit — hearts, for example.

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