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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Last local Pearl Harbor veteran honored at Spokane Memorial Arena

The Greatest Generation never forgets, especially on Dec. 7.

On a chilly Friday afternoon on the grounds of Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena, the place of honor belonged to Ray Garland and his remembrances.

Surrounded by veterans and their friends and families from every generation, the 96-year-old Coeur d’Alene man contemplated the Pearl Harbor memorial.

Behind him stood an Air Force color guard and the flags of each branch of the service, including Garland’s beloved U.S. Marines. A wreath was laid on the memorial, and a bugler played taps.

Garland seemed alone in his thoughts.

“The only thing I could think about was representing the few that are no longer with us,” he said.

In Spokane and across the rest of the nation, the Day of Infamy has also become a day of remembrance for the departed veterans of World War II.

And there are many. On Friday, in our part of America, Garland sat alone, the last remaining local survivor of the Japanese attack.

When the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the Greatest Generation had no notions of greatness.

In Massachusetts, 17-year-old George H.W. Bush was a senior in high school and looking forward to attending Yale University.

Ray Garland was a 19-year-old kid from Montana who had joined the Marines “because I liked their dress blue uniforms.”

The morning of Dec. 7, 1941, found Garland in Pearl Harbor, on the deck of the battleship Tennessee, part of a detail that would raise the American flag at 8 a.m.

He never got the chance.

He said he remembered seeing planes flying in and thought maybe, they might be presenting the colors. After the bombs fell, he and his crew members, who were mostly older than he, grabbed fire hoses to beat back the flames.

“Like everybody else,” he said, “I was a little scared.”

Garland said he was burned while fighting the fire, and ended up in the sick bay. But he considers himself lucky. If the bombs had hit the Tennessee, he said, he would likely not have survived.

By the end of the day, 2,403 Americans had died and the Greatest Generation was born.

Like the rest of their generation, they were forged by the fire and fury of the Japanese attack of the morning of Dec. 7.

Bush would go on to fly for the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific. Garland would go there too, fighting in the Aleutians and the Gilbert and Marshalls campaigns.

Both fought until the job was done, then rolled up their sleeves and went home to win the peace. Bush, who died last week, went on to become president and commander-in-chief.

Garland moved to Spokane, married and raised a family and then returned to the colors in 1950 by fighting in Korea.

Friday’s ceremony honored them both and the generation they represent. Air Force Col. Brian Newberry, a former wing commander at Fairchild Air Force Base, did the honors.

“The lesson of Pearl Harbor was that we would never give up,” Newberry said in recounting the long march to victory over Japan in 1945.

Newberry noted that long after being shot down over the Pacific, Bush “always pondered why he had survived.”

Garland could have said the same thing as the Tennessee’s neighbor, the battleship USS Arizona, took the brunt of the attack.

“I watched her turn over,” Garland said.

Newberry’s poignant message was that Pearl Harbor forged a generation that “stood for something greater than themselves: freedom.”

Reporter Rebecca White contributed.