By Brian Zanzonico
Through bleary eyes, he glanced at the clock above the door, hopped out of bed and started toward the bathroom upstairs to brush his teeth before breakfast. His plan was to choke down a plate of pancakes and bacon, swallow a cup of coffee and return to his spot between the sheets of his bed until after noon. But as he reached the staircase, he heard the rumble of fighter planes getting louder and closer. He ran to the nearest window.
"I looked and said, 'My god, those are not our planes,'" the Elmont resident, 87, said in an interview at the Elmont American Legion Hall last week. "The first wave [of Japanese planes] came over [nearby Air Force base] Wheeler Field, and they dropped eggs [bombs] on all of the hangars and planes. I saw all the men from the Air Force running, scattering."
Castronovo ran outside and saw men from his company (25th Division, 35th Infantry Company E) firing their rifles in an attempt to blow the planes out of the sky, a desperate move Castronovo called "a million-to-one shot."
Once the Japanese planes inflicted their damage on Wheeler Field, they shifted their focus to the naval fleet. "Right into Pearl Harbor," Castronovo recalled. "They bombed and bombed and bombed, and came wave after wave after wave. I can't forget it. It's like a tape in my mind. And they timed it so beautifully. At 8 a.m., those who aren't on duty usually head to Mass or breakfast. They attacked at five minutes to eight."
He watched helplessly as smoke poured out of the damaged vessels in Pearl Harbor, turning the bright Pacific morning black. "Those sailors were so gallant," he said. "They didn't have time to put their shoes on, but they gave it their all. It was just too little too late."
Castronovo and others headed to the beach to man machine guns. They figured paratroopers would be dropped at any moment to begin a ground offensive, so the island had to be protected.
In the days after the attack, Castronovo and other men in his division were assigned to eight-hour shifts securing Oahu with barbed wire and positioning large machine guns every 100 feet in anticipation of a follow-up strike.
Once the island was safe, Castronovo's 25th Division at Scofield was sent to Guadalcanal. It took them 23 days to cross the equator and reach Guadalcanal, the largest of the Solomon Islands, about 1,000 miles northwest of Australia. "We had two destroyers, one on each side of our ship," he recounted. "Every eight to 10 minutes we had to change course, or we'd have been sitting ducks. That's why it took so long."
Once they arrived in the jungles of Guadalcanal, a general briefed them on the objective: take over an island "infested" with Japanese. Conservatively, the general said to expect 15 percent casualties.
During one battle, Castronovo was behind a machine gun, with friends Nick, Damone and Reynolds manning the gun next to him. He was ordered to get water for the canteens and more grenades. "As I got up, I was a target," he said, his eyes welling with tears and his voice shaking. "Nick, Damone, Reynolds. They were all killed. My best buddies. I found out then and there that you don't die unless it's your time."
Seven months after reaching Guadalcanal, Castronovo contracted malaria and was taken off the island. He was sent to several hospitals in the Pacific before being taken to New Zealand. He then volunteered for a malaria study in a hospital in Tennessee. On Dec. 12, 1944 -- four and a half years after entering the Army -- he received an honorable discharge.
After leaving the Army, Castronovo met a girl named Lillian, whom he married in 1945. They moved to Elmont in 1948, and had six children. Lillian died in 1988.
Castronovo spends much of his time now watching sports or dropping in on his friends at the American Legion Hall on Hill Avenue. Sports has been the one thing that helps his mind wander from the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. He didn't think about the attack much when he was younger, and busy raising his family, but lately he has been haunted by the memories of war and of Pearl Harbor.
"Every night, I think of all the things that happened," he said. "I'll say to myself, 'Are you dreaming? Did you do that? Was it real?'"
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