Lake Ridge resident Betty Peet McIntosh was a reporter at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on Dec. 7, 1941, but her editors refused to publish her account of the attack, saying readers would be upset by the content.
Yesterday, the Washington Post published her story for the first time.
"Like the rest of Hawaii, I refused to believe it," McIntosh wrote in 1941. "All along the sunny road to town were people just coming out of church, dogs lazy in the driveways, mynas in noisy convention. Then, from the neighborhood called Punchbowl, I saw a formation of black planes diving straight into the ocean off Pearl Harbor. The blue sky was punctured with anti-aircraft smoke puffs."
McIntosh went on to serve as an intelligence agent in World War II. In February, McIntosh, a resident at the Westminster at Lake Ridge retirement community, was honored by the Library of Virginia for her wartime service.
"After the United States entered World War II, she returned to Washington, where she covered Eleanor Roosevelt and government activities," Library of Virginia materials read. "Fluent in Japanese, Peet was recruited in January 1943 to join the Office of Strategic Services, the country's wartime intelligence agency whose ranks included actress Marlene Dietrich and chef Julia Child."
