The book When Our Mothers Went to War features the story of Ada Ulmer, a young Navy wife and nurse who was living near Hickam Field at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941.

At 8 a.m. on December 7th, Ada awoke to the sounds of planes and gunfire in her neighborhood. “There was firing going everywhere and planes coming down in flames," she said.

In the days that followed, she slept with a butcher knife under her pillow. She volunteered as a nurse at Tripler General Hospital and the Naval Hospital, tending wounded men with head trauma and severe burns.

“Those who could be pulled out of that burning oil were taken right to the hospital,” she said. “We tried to save their lives.”

Video: Ada Ulmer Remembers Pearl Harbor