Survivors share their stories

They do not consider themselves heroes. They are survivors of a defining moment of the 20th century, witnesses to the event that killed nearly 2,400 Americans and plunged the United States into World War II.

As their numbers dwindle, they fear that their memories of what happened at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, will pass with them.

“There is not a person on the face of the Earth that loves his country or flag more than I do,” said Ray Daves, president of the Lilac City Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. “If everyone felt that way, there would be no attacks on our nation, because we would be so vigilant.”

Last week Daves and four other Pearl Harbor survivors from Spokane shared their memories with The Spokesman- Review. At a time when our nation is engaged in a war against terrorism, World War II veterans, who are dying at an estimated rate of 1,800 a day, believe their stories are more important than ever.

Daves, a Navy radioman, was on his way to the mess hall at Ford Island, Hawaii, on that Sunday morning 63 years ago today after standing his watch the night before.

“I heard the airplanes and looked out and saw the Rising Suns,” he said of the markings on the Japanese aircraft. “It was like a swarm of bees.”

The first wave of the attack targeted the U.S. battleship fleet, which the Japanese perceived as a threat to its southward expansion. Daves saw high-altitude bombers and torpedo planes flying low. The bombing had begun.

He ran to his duty station at the radio shack, but all the positions were already filled with radiomen sending and receiving messages. His commanding officer sent him to the roof to see what he could do. On the roof two sailors manning a machine gun asked him to get more ammunition from a storage area they had broken a lock to get into.

“I heard this terrible explosion,” Daves said. “There goes the Oklahoma,” he remembered thinking.

The battleship was on fire and starting to roll.

“There was another explosion. ‘There goes the Arizona,’ ” said Daves, whose good friend was among the 1,177 sailors entombed aboard that battleship.

A burning Japanese airplane came hurtling toward Daves, close enough that he could see the pilot slumped over in the cockpit before the plane crashed near the building.

“The plane’s ammunition was popping off and a loaded casing or something hit my left hand,” said Daves who was sent to sick bay to get it sewn up.

For this injury Daves, now 84, received the Purple Heart after the Navy’s paperwork finally caught up with him two years ago.

Betty Schott, 87, was on Ford Island, too, one of the few women present that day. She and her husband, Petty Officer Warren Schott, lived in base quarters about two blocks from where the USS Arizona was docked. She heard aircraft approaching and looked out her bathroom window to see smoke rising from the airplane hangars on the south end of the island.

Her husband, now 88, looked out the bedroom window in time to see a plane torpedo the USS Utah, she said. As the plane swooped up he saw two red suns on the bottom of its wings.

“This is not funny, this is war,” he told her.

The couple gathered a neighbor woman and her two small children and headed in her car for the relative safety of the Administration Building. Along the way her husband steered the vehicle away from the strafing fire of a Japanese warplane and into the shelter of a supply building. There Betty Schott waited out the first wave while her husband reported to his duty station.

Later, she and other Navy families found shelter in the bachelor officers’ barracks, where they awaited a Japanese invasion that never came.

“It was just chaotic on the little island,” she said, “so many injuries and dead in the water.”

Across the harbor, Pfc. Joe Wagner was returning to Hickam Field from an all-night party at Kaneohe. He got back to the Army Air Corps base in time to see the first Japanese torpedo plane pass by on its way to Ford Island.

He was the crew chief for one of the A-20 light bombers stationed at Hickam. Fearing a gas attack, he ran to his barracks to get his mask. Explosions were going off everywhere by then. He made it to his plane, but the airfield was being strafed so he took shelter with others under a “tug,” a tractor used to move equipment on the runway. When the strafing stopped between the first and second waves, his crew got the A-20’s engines warming up for the flight crew.

The second wave was worse at the Army base, Wagner said. The enemy knocked out 11 bombers.

“But we were able to get nine off the ground,” including the A-20 he was in charge of maintaining. “All they could do was get out of the way,” he said of the U.S. planes.

“The Japanese understood our Navy had to be taken out,” said Wagner, now 83. “They also understood the importance of air power in island warfare better than we did.”

Wagner lost three friends in the attack that day.

Seaman Denis Mikkelsen had just finished his watch aboard the USS West Virginia when general quarters were sounded. Before he could reach his battle station the crew was ordered to abandon ship. He swam to Ford Island.

“I don’t remember seeing Japanese aircraft, there was a lot going on,” he said. “I had to cross open ground and there were bombs going off.”

Later, he returned to fight the fire aboard the battleship. Smoke filled the sky.

“I was scared,” said Wagner, who was 19 at the time. He lost a good friend aboard the Arizona.

Radioman James Sinnott also was awakened by explosions that morning. He had just gotten to sleep after standing watch until 7:30 a.m. He thought a plane had crashed on the Ford Island runway. Outside he saw the Oklahoma roll over. He had served aboard the Arizona and the Tennessee and lost a lot of friends on those battleships.

He ran to the Administration Building, “but there were so many people, they didn’t need me.”

He ended up driving around the island in a station wagon with another sailor, picking up the wounded and taking them to the hospital. He recalled watching the Nevada get under way in an attempt to escape the attack. The damaged battleship was ordered beached for fear it would block the harbor’s narrow entrance if sunk.

Sinnott, now 82 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, said he has returned to Pearl Harbor every five years since 1966.

“I don’t think I’ll make the next one,” he said last week. “Everybody’s getting old, and they don’t want to go over to Pearl anymore.”

Julius Finnern, national secretary for the Pearl Harbor Survivors, recently told the San Jose Mercury News that the organization was losing two members a day. He estimated there are 6,000 Pearl Harbor survivors remaining nationwide.

Carol Hibberson, a Spokane author who writes about World War II, said she has interviewed veterans in their 80s who are just now willing to open up about their combat experiences. She said there are about 25 Pearl Harbor veterans remaining in Eastern Washington, North Idaho and Western Montana.

Every year on Dec. 7, the survivors meet to commemorate the surprise attack that changed their lives and awoke “the sleeping giant.” This year, the Spokane chapter will be the guests of the Navy League at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Boone Avenue.

Occasionally, some of them go to area schools to tell their stories once again. Some of the questions the children ask bring back repressed memories, Daves said.

“A little boy asked me, ‘How many Japanese did you kill?’ ” said Daves, who also survived the sinking of the carrier USS Yorktown at the battle of Midway in June 1942. “They’re just kids and don’t know any better, but you don’t ask questions like that.

“They had jobs to do,” he said of the enemy, “and so did we.”

Daves said there is not a single survivor he knows who would not gladly do it again, nor is there anything they would not do to keep it from happening again.

“I don’t know why I was spared,” Daves said. “I thank the good Lord who spared me. I know there was a reason.”