yellowwing
12-07-05, 01:49 PM
The Sentinel Online
By Linda Franz, December 5, 2005 (http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/12/05/news/news02.txt)
About 15 survivors of the surprise Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941 are expected to attend a memorial service honoring them on Wednesday in the East Wing Atrium inside the Capitol at Harrisburg.
The starting time of 12:55 p.m. coincides with 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, which is the time that the attack began 64 years ago.
The “simple but elegant” service is open to the public, Naval Supply Systems Command spokesman Mike Randazzo says. Rear Adm. Daniel H. Stone, commander of Naval Supply Systems Command, will speak.
The annual memorial program was started by Pennsylvania survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack and has been coordinated for about 15 years by Jerome McAvoy, a Vietnam-era veteran.
Here are stories of three local veterans who survived the attack.
Sergeant warned him
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor didn’t surprise Robert Moreo, now of Lower Allen Township.
The 23-year-old Marine arrived on Oahu about four days before the attack after spending more than 11 months at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he worked in the office. The top sergeant in the Guantanamo office told Moreo not to underestimate Japan because it already had plenty of combat experience.
Moreo says the sergeant thought the Japanese would hit Pearl Harbor because so many ships were there.
On his way to Hawaii, Moreo told others he was sure the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor.
On the morning of Dec. 7, a soldier stuck his head in Moreo’s tent and said “Moreo, Moreo, you were right. they’re here. Break out the men.” The soldier told him he had seen Japanese insignias on the planes flying overhead.
“About that time, they were flying right over us ... We had all our rifles all packed up,” Moreo says.
For protection, they jumped into a sewer trench that was being dug. Many of the men had no helmets.
“I could see this plane. (The pilot) had a big smile on his face; you could see him,” Moreo remembers. “He did a lot of us in.”
The Marines eventually were sent to the waterfront during the attack.
“We went down to the dock,” Moreo says. “It was almost like having a ringside seat except the bombs were dropping. I started praying.... There had to be 300 planes. It seemed like water coming out of a faucet.”
He saw ships get hit, including one nearby where the sailors had grouped together on one side of the ship. It then sank, spilling sailors into the water.
“The water was full of oil and it was burning,” Moreo says. “They were trying to swim to shore.”
Moreo didn’t sleep for three days and three nights after the attack. He worked a linking machine, putting bullets into ammunition belts.
“Then I had a machine gun on submarine dock No. 1,” he says.
More than a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Moreo left the island aboard a “tug ship” assigned to the 1st Defense Battalion.
“We landed on Johnson Island,” a white coral atoll with no vegetation, Moreo recalls.
He spent more than a year there and nearby Sand Island. “It was like being a prisoner,” he says.
Moreo transferred to Marine aviation and returned to the United States for training. By 1944 he was back in the Pacific as an air gunner.
After a little more than six years in the Marines, Moreo was discharged near Christmas 1945.
Bombers appeared
On Dec. 7, 1941, Frank Navagato was a 22-year-old machine gunner with the Army Air Corps at Bellows Field on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, when Japanese bombers swooped out of the sky to strafe the airfield and drop bombs on nearby Pearl Harbor.
“It was a stab in the back,” recalls Navagato, now 86 and a Lower Allen Township resident. “The island is so small and we had three air bases.”
During war games, American pilots used to dive down on the bases themselves, Navagato recalls. But Dec. 7 was different. “They were shooting real bullets.”
Navagato was out “roaming around the fields” when the Japanese struck.
“I ran and got my gun and started shooting at the Japs” with a 1903 Springfield rifle, he says. “You had to duck or die. They shot a lot of guys on the ground.”
Three pilots attempted to take off from the airfield for a counterattack. Two were killed on the ground and the third was shot down shortly after taking off, Navagato says.
“I could see them Japs looking down over the side of the plane at us,” he recalls.
After growing up in an orphanage, Navagato joined the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936 and worked five hitches of six months each. When he got out of the CCC in March 1939, he joined the Army Air Corps.
“I wanted to go to the Philippines,” Navagato says. “They didn’t have an opening.” Instead, he was sent to Hawaii.
Navagato spent 25 years in the military before retiring in 1964.
Morticians in demand
Ross Shuler lived in Mechanicsburg when he enlisted in the Army in April 1940. By Dec. 7, 1941, he was assigned to the 19th Infantry Regiment and stationed at Scofield Barracks on Oahu.
“I was down eating breakfast and all of a sudden the whole island started to shake,” Shuler remembers of the Japanese attack. “They strafed our barracks and Wheeler Field,” a nearby air base.
“When it hit, right away we went down and got out .50-caliber machine guns and fired back. It was just a mess — one of them things where we were caught off-guard,” Shuler says.
He remembers two American P-40 fighter planes dogfighting the Japanese pilots.
Shuler, now 84 and living in South Middleton Township, says he recalls being on alert for at least a week before Dec. 7.
“The Navy took the biggest hit,” he says. “They had big rubber mats where they laid the guys. If you were a mortician, they wanted you.”
From Hawaii, Shuler traveled with the 24th Infantry Division to Australia and then to Goodenough Island, a staging point for operations in New Guinea. While fighting in Dutch New Guinea in 1942, Shuler was shot in the foot and hip. He still carries shrapnel in his hip.
Shuler stayed in the Pacific until the war ended and was discharged shortly after he came back to the States in 1945.
By Linda Franz, December 5, 2005 (http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/12/05/news/news02.txt)
About 15 survivors of the surprise Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941 are expected to attend a memorial service honoring them on Wednesday in the East Wing Atrium inside the Capitol at Harrisburg.
The starting time of 12:55 p.m. coincides with 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, which is the time that the attack began 64 years ago.
The “simple but elegant” service is open to the public, Naval Supply Systems Command spokesman Mike Randazzo says. Rear Adm. Daniel H. Stone, commander of Naval Supply Systems Command, will speak.
The annual memorial program was started by Pennsylvania survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack and has been coordinated for about 15 years by Jerome McAvoy, a Vietnam-era veteran.
Here are stories of three local veterans who survived the attack.
Sergeant warned him
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor didn’t surprise Robert Moreo, now of Lower Allen Township.
The 23-year-old Marine arrived on Oahu about four days before the attack after spending more than 11 months at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he worked in the office. The top sergeant in the Guantanamo office told Moreo not to underestimate Japan because it already had plenty of combat experience.
Moreo says the sergeant thought the Japanese would hit Pearl Harbor because so many ships were there.
On his way to Hawaii, Moreo told others he was sure the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor.
On the morning of Dec. 7, a soldier stuck his head in Moreo’s tent and said “Moreo, Moreo, you were right. they’re here. Break out the men.” The soldier told him he had seen Japanese insignias on the planes flying overhead.
“About that time, they were flying right over us ... We had all our rifles all packed up,” Moreo says.
For protection, they jumped into a sewer trench that was being dug. Many of the men had no helmets.
“I could see this plane. (The pilot) had a big smile on his face; you could see him,” Moreo remembers. “He did a lot of us in.”
The Marines eventually were sent to the waterfront during the attack.
“We went down to the dock,” Moreo says. “It was almost like having a ringside seat except the bombs were dropping. I started praying.... There had to be 300 planes. It seemed like water coming out of a faucet.”
He saw ships get hit, including one nearby where the sailors had grouped together on one side of the ship. It then sank, spilling sailors into the water.
“The water was full of oil and it was burning,” Moreo says. “They were trying to swim to shore.”
Moreo didn’t sleep for three days and three nights after the attack. He worked a linking machine, putting bullets into ammunition belts.
“Then I had a machine gun on submarine dock No. 1,” he says.
More than a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Moreo left the island aboard a “tug ship” assigned to the 1st Defense Battalion.
“We landed on Johnson Island,” a white coral atoll with no vegetation, Moreo recalls.
He spent more than a year there and nearby Sand Island. “It was like being a prisoner,” he says.
Moreo transferred to Marine aviation and returned to the United States for training. By 1944 he was back in the Pacific as an air gunner.
After a little more than six years in the Marines, Moreo was discharged near Christmas 1945.
Bombers appeared
On Dec. 7, 1941, Frank Navagato was a 22-year-old machine gunner with the Army Air Corps at Bellows Field on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, when Japanese bombers swooped out of the sky to strafe the airfield and drop bombs on nearby Pearl Harbor.
“It was a stab in the back,” recalls Navagato, now 86 and a Lower Allen Township resident. “The island is so small and we had three air bases.”
During war games, American pilots used to dive down on the bases themselves, Navagato recalls. But Dec. 7 was different. “They were shooting real bullets.”
Navagato was out “roaming around the fields” when the Japanese struck.
“I ran and got my gun and started shooting at the Japs” with a 1903 Springfield rifle, he says. “You had to duck or die. They shot a lot of guys on the ground.”
Three pilots attempted to take off from the airfield for a counterattack. Two were killed on the ground and the third was shot down shortly after taking off, Navagato says.
“I could see them Japs looking down over the side of the plane at us,” he recalls.
After growing up in an orphanage, Navagato joined the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936 and worked five hitches of six months each. When he got out of the CCC in March 1939, he joined the Army Air Corps.
“I wanted to go to the Philippines,” Navagato says. “They didn’t have an opening.” Instead, he was sent to Hawaii.
Navagato spent 25 years in the military before retiring in 1964.
Morticians in demand
Ross Shuler lived in Mechanicsburg when he enlisted in the Army in April 1940. By Dec. 7, 1941, he was assigned to the 19th Infantry Regiment and stationed at Scofield Barracks on Oahu.
“I was down eating breakfast and all of a sudden the whole island started to shake,” Shuler remembers of the Japanese attack. “They strafed our barracks and Wheeler Field,” a nearby air base.
“When it hit, right away we went down and got out .50-caliber machine guns and fired back. It was just a mess — one of them things where we were caught off-guard,” Shuler says.
He remembers two American P-40 fighter planes dogfighting the Japanese pilots.
Shuler, now 84 and living in South Middleton Township, says he recalls being on alert for at least a week before Dec. 7.
“The Navy took the biggest hit,” he says. “They had big rubber mats where they laid the guys. If you were a mortician, they wanted you.”
From Hawaii, Shuler traveled with the 24th Infantry Division to Australia and then to Goodenough Island, a staging point for operations in New Guinea. While fighting in Dutch New Guinea in 1942, Shuler was shot in the foot and hip. He still carries shrapnel in his hip.
Shuler stayed in the Pacific until the war ended and was discharged shortly after he came back to the States in 1945.