Pearl Harbor vets reconcile in Hawaii

[thedrifter]

Pearl Harbor vets reconcile in Hawaii
By AUDREY McAVOY
Associated Press Writer

HONOLULU (AP) -- Sixty-five years ago, Takeshi Maeda and John Rauschkolb tried to kill each other at Pearl Harbor. This week, now both 85, they met face-to-face for the first time - and shook hands.

The Japanese veteran gripped Rauschkolb's arm with his left hand and briefly hesitated, as if he was searching for the right words. Then he said, "I'm sorry."

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese Imperial Navy navigator Maeda guided his Kate bomber to Pearl Harbor and fired a torpedo that helped sink the USS West Virginia.

Rauschkolb, a Navy signalman, stood on the West Virginia's port side as a series of Japanese planes pummeled the battleship with torpedoes and bombs. The West Virginia lost 106 men in the assault.

"He may have been shooting at me," Rauschkolb said as he shook Maeda's hand.

Overcoming the legacy of the attack, the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor and the Americans who survived the attack are coming together during a five-day series of Pearl Harbor attack anniversary observations in Hawaii.

Some, like Maeda and Rauschkolb, shake hands spontaneously after being introduced.

Others are doing so before crowds in a symbolic show of peace, like the Japanese and American World War II aviators scheduled to attend the opening of the new Pacific Aviation Museum on Thursday.

A significant share of veterans from both countries say they respect each other as professional military men who fought for their countries. Now in their 80s and 90s, they don't want to live burdened with hatred and want to die with peace in their hearts.

Rauschkolb, who had to swim under burning fuel to escape bullets being fired at him from a Japanese Zero fighter, admitted "it's difficult to accept" shaking hands with someone who fired a torpedo at his ship.

But he never believed, even during World War II, in hating his Japanese foes.

"I've never held anything against them," said Rauschkolb, wearing a white aloha shirt and his Pearl Harbor survivors' cap. "They were doing their job. I was doing my job. We were military. They were taking orders. I was taking orders."

Not all veterans can bring themselves put the past behind them. For some, the memories are too painful and their loyalty to fallen comrades too strong for them to reach out.

Don Stratton, a USS Arizona sailor who suffered burns over 60 to 70 percent of his body, said embracing the Japanese who carried out the attack is out of the question.

"I don't stand beside them. I don't sit beside them. I don't shake hands with them," Stratton said. "There's a thousand men out there on that ship that lost 65 years of their life and I'm sure they would not shake hands with them."

Over 1,100 died aboard the Arizona, accounting for almost half of the 2,390 Americans killed that day.

Maeda has been trying to make amends since 1991, when he and a few other Japanese Pearl Harbor veterans flew to Hawaii for the 50th anniversary of the attack.

He's since become friends with dozens of Pearl Harbor survivors, including many who have visited him in Japan. When in Honolulu, Maeda always pays his respects at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, where his friend Richard Fiske, another USS West Virginia survivor, was buried after his death two years ago.

"War is between countries. It has nothing to do with us as individuals. We have no quarrel," Maeda said. "So when the war ends, of course you should make up."

Japanese dive bomber pilot Zenji Abe, 90, led the push for reconciliation when he visited Hawaii with Maeda and other Japanese veterans in 1991. He said he wanted to apologize for bombing Oahu before the Japanese government declared war.

Japan's aviators took off from their aircraft carriers that morning believing their government had already delivered the declaration, Abe said. Striking before doing so was dishonorable and went against Japanese traditions of "bushido" or the way of the samurai, Abe said.

"Even if you are executing an early morning attack, you may not hurt your opponent if he is sleeping. You must make him stand and then go at him with your sword. This is bushido," Abe said. The assault "violated our nation's ideals. I felt bad," he said.

To atone, Abe asked Fiske - the West Virginia survivor who also became Maeda's friend - to place two roses on the USS Arizona Memorial on his behalf each month.

Fiske continued the ritual for 12 years until he died.

[thedrifter]

Pearl Harbor Survivors Meet for Last Time

By JAYMES SONG
Associated Press Writer

December 7, 2006, 7:58 AM EST

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii -- With their number quickly dwindling, survivors of Pearl Harbor will gather Thursday one last time to honor those killed by the Japanese 65 years ago, and to mark a day that lives in infamy.

This will be their last visit to this watery grave to share stories, exchange smiles, find peace and salute their fallen friends. This, they say, will be their final farewell.

"This will be one to remember," said Mal Middlesworth, president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. "It's going to be something that we'll cherish forever."

The survivors have met here every five years for four decades, but they're now in their 80s or 90s and are not counting on a 70th reunion. They have made every effort to report for one final roll call.

"We're like the dodo bird. We're almost extinct," said Middlesworth, now an 83-year-old retiree from Upland, Calif., but then -- on Dec. 7, 1941 -- an 18-year-old Marine on the USS San Francisco.

Nearly 500 survivors from across the nation were expected to make the trip to Hawaii, bringing with them 1,300 family members, numerous wheelchairs and too many haunting memories.

Memories of a shocking, two-hour aerial raid that destroyed or heavily damaged 21 ships and 320 aircraft, that killed 2,390 people and wounded 1,178 others, that plunged the United States into World War II and set in motion the events that led to atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"I suspect not many people have thought about this, but we're witnessing history," said Daniel Martinez, chief historian at the USS Arizona Memorial. "We are seeing the passing of a generation."

* __

The attack may have occurred 65 years ago, but survivors say they can still hear the explosions, smell the burning flesh, taste the sea water and hear the cries.

"The younger ones were crying, 'Mom! Mom! Mom!'" said Edward Chun, who witnessed the attack from the Ten-Ten dock, just a couple hundred yards away from Battleship Row.

Chun, 83, had just begun his workday as a civilian pipe fitter when he was thrust into assisting in everything from spraying water on the ships to aiding casualties.

"From the time the first bomb dropped and for the next 15 minutes, it was complete chaos," he said. "Nobody knew what was going on. Everybody was running around like a chicken with their head cut off."

Chun saw the Oklahoma and West Virginia torpedoed by Japanese aircraft. He heard the tapping of sailors trapped in the hulls of sunken ships. He escaped death when Ten-Ten was strafed, leaving behind dead and wounded.

"How I never got hit, I don't know," said Chun, who was later drafted and served in the Korean and Vietnam wars. "I'll tell you a secret: When your number comes up, you're going to go. Well, every morning I get up, I change my number."

Everett Hyland doesn't know how he stayed alive when almost everyone around him didn't. He was radioman aboard the Pennsylvania, which was in Dry Dock No. 1, and was helping transport ammunition to the anti-aircraft gun when a bomb exploded.

Badly burned, Hyland regained consciousness 18 days later, on Christmas night. During that time, his older brother visited.

"The only way he knew it was me was the tag on my toe," Hyland said. "He (later) told me we looked like roast turkeys lined up."

Today, scar tissue covers most of his arms and legs.

"I got a quick facial out of it. I used to be a freckled-faced kid," he said. "I don't have any lips. They could fix faces, but they couldn't build any lips."

And he was lucky.

Many of the dead were teenage sailors and Marines away from home for the first time. They died before they had an opportunity to get married, have children, build lives.

Four in five servicemen on the USS Arizona -- 1,177 in all -- did not survive the day. It was the greatest loss of life of any ship in U.S. naval history. They remain entombed in the battleship's sunken hull, which still seeps oil every few seconds, leaving a colorful sheen on the harbor water.

The survivors say they have more than horrific memories to offer. "Remember Pearl Harbor" is just the first half of the association's motto; the rest is "Keep America alert."

Martinez said many Pearl Harbor survivors were disheartened by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, "as if they had not done their job hard enough."

Once again, it seemed that America had been caught sleeping. Interest in Pearl Harbor and its aging survivors surged. The old soldiers are much in demand -- to sign autographs, walk in parades, speak to classrooms and pose for pictures. Visits to the USS Arizona Memorial are at record levels.

Not that everyone sees similarities between the two attacks. "There is no comparison," Hyland said. "That was terrorists killing a pile of civilians. Here, you had professional fighters versus professional fighters. Two different things."

There are those who are unable to forgive the Japanese, But others testify to the power of reconciliation.

"There are some guys that are going to die with hate in their heart. I don't have in me any hatred in my heart," said 87-year-old survivor Lee Soucy, of Plainview, Texas. "They were doing their job just like we were."

Hyland, who was almost killed in the attack, married a woman from Japan. They met at the 50th Pearl Harbor anniversary and wed the following year.

"I got over it a long time ago," he said.

* __

Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, who dubbed Americans who came of age during the Great Depression and World War II "the greatest generation," agreed to be keynote speaker for Thursday's ceremony. A moment of silence at 7:55 a.m. was to mark the time when the attack began.

Martinez, the USS Arizona historian, likened it to another reunion 68 years ago -- the final gathering of Civil War veterans in Gettysburg, Pa., when aging warriors in blue and gray shook hands and shared war stories. In 1938, as in 2006, the nation faced an uncertain future in a world gripped by conflict.

"The passing of that generation had its moment and we're going to have ours," he said.

But some veterans don't believe, or refuse to accept, that this will be the last major gathering.

"They claimed the 60th was going to be the last one. Now they have the 65th. When they have the 70th, then they'll be claiming, 'This will be the last one,'" Hyland said. "They've been crying wolf too many times."

Hyland does accept the fact that their numbers are falling fast.

"We all have our turn and our turn is getting closer," he said.

But until then, they are drawn to Pearl Harbor, and to each other. Military historian Douglas Smith, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I., says they are proud of their service and eager to return "to their glory days," but most of all they revel in the bonds they formed long ago, when they were young.

The bond is so strong that some ask to have their ashes interred inside the Arizona, laid to rest with shipmates who were not so fortunate as to survive Dec. 7, 1941.

"They're coming home," Middlesworth said. "They feel they're coming home."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Holding on to History: Pearl Harbor survivors find allies at Palomar College <br />
<br />
By: JOE BECK - Staff Writer <br />
<br />
SAN MARCOS -- Future researchers trying to understand what happened at Pearl Harbor on...

[thedrifter]

'When you're that young, you don't have fear': Local man was at air base during Pearl Harbor attack 65 years ago

By: JOSE CARVAJAL - Staff Writer

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Bob Sandwick was on his way to a popular hiking spot on the Hawaiian island of Oahu with several buddies from the Ewa Marine Corps Air Station when the attack began.

Just before 8 a.m. that day, the Temecula resident recalled Wednesday, nine Japanese fighters appeared from the northwest and began opening fire on the base. With machine guns blazing, the airplanes were going after American airplanes stationed near the runway.

Sandwick, a 22-year-old private in the Marines at the time, said the Japanese fighters were coming just as his group was exiting the base. As the planes began firing near the gate the group was about to go through, he said, his first thought was to find a rifle. His second was to find some kind of cover.

As it was happening, Sandwick, now 87, said there wasn't much time to be afraid.

"When you're that young, you don't have fear," he said. "You don't think you're going to die."

Today marks the 65th anniversary of the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and surrounding bases that drew the United States into World War II. The attack lasted two hours, and by the time it was over, 2,388 people had been killed and another 2,000 had been wounded.

Like Sandwick, the young men who were in their early 20s when they served at or near Pearl Harbor are in their 80s now, and the number who remember the attack because they were there that Sunday morning is dwindling.

In 1991, the national Pearl Harbor Survivors Association boasted 18,000 members.

"Now we've got about 5,800 on our roster," said Julius Finnern, the association's national secretary for 12 years and now its Wisconsin state chairman. "We're dying at an average of two a day."

The retired Sandwick, who is treasurer of the association's North San Diego North County chapter, says that the chapter's membership is also shrinking. There are now only 19 members, he said.

One of those is Joe Walsh of Fallbrook, who recalled recently the attack on Pearl Harbor.

"Chaos," said Walsh, who was a private in the Marines at the time and was on his way to church that morning. "Plain chaos. No one knew what the hell to do. I didn't know what was going on."

"We were fortunate to get out in a hurry," he added. "I ran down the dock, took a look and ran back."

Miles away, at Ewa, Sandwick was also under attack.

The Japanese plan had been to come in by surprise and disable American planes at the base before proceeding to the harbor to destroy the ships there, he said. And they succeeded.

The fighters came in three waves, and according to one historian's account, destroyed 33 of the 49 planes stationed at the base and damaged 16. By the end of it, four Americans had died at Ewa and 13 were injured.

There was little the Americans on the ground could do, Sandwick said.

"We were standing on top of toilets in the bathroom, shooting out the window with rifles," he said.

And, after the attack, it didn't take long to realize the significance of what happened.

"The commanding officer ... said, 'We're at war,'" Sandwick said. "It didn't take too long to realize we were at war."

After leaving the Marines shortly after the end of the war as a major and after having fought in several key battles in the Pacific, Sandwick spent 32 years selling aluminum with a company in Los Angeles. Before retiring, he ran his own aluminum business for several years. These days, he spends most of his time reading military-themed books, building model airplanes and tending to his model trains.

And every Dec. 7, Sandwick said, he joins a friend who was also at Ewa during the attack and the two throw a wreath into the Pacific Ocean.

-- Cox News Service contributed to this report. Contact staff writer Jose Carvajal at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2624, or jcarvajal@californian.com.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Thursday, December 07, 2006
Provo resident recalls horrific day
RUTH OLSON - Daily Herald

David H. Hawkins is a tall man, with short gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He still looks strong, despite his 85 years.

Sixty-five years ago today -- Dec. 7, 1941 -- he was 21 years old and serving as a Marine near a U.S. base named Pearl Harbor.

"It was on Sunday morning. We thought it was our day off," said the Provo resident.

He was reading the funny papers in his tent when a strange-sounding plane buzzed overhead.

"I put my feet on the floor, looked out, and there was a squadron of Japanese torpedo planes right at treetop height coming right in off the ocean.

"The mast sergeant hollered, 'Fire your guns!' about that time," he said. The ammunition was locked inside a room, but the sergeant knocked the lock off to get it out and the men ran to their guns.

"There was more confusion than you've ever heard of," he said.

Hawkins joined the Marines a year and a half before America joined World War II. The former New Mexico cowboy joined up because he didn't have the money to go to Brigham Young University and had heard there was a program that would allow him to take college courses by correspondence for free if he joined.

"I didn't know the war was going to start then. But when it started I would have joined anyway," said Hawkins.

In Hawaii, Hawkins was assigned to train sailors to use machine guns. He was stationed on the USS Enterprise and was on detail duty on Oahu, at the channel of Pearl Harbor across from the Hickam Air Field. They had the guns set up on a cement firing line, and planes would come flying over at 35-45 mph, dragging a sleeve behind them for the sailors to shoot at.

Then came that Sunday morning.

After freeing up the ammunition, the confident Marines stepped out into the sunlight.

"We thought we'd shoot every one of them down," he said. The problem was the planes they had practiced on had been going 35-45 mph and these were going at about 250 mph.

"We were shooting behind them. But we were all excited, you know?" he said, chuckling.

He said a colonel at Fort Kamehameha told them later that they had shot down eight planes, but Hawkins said he only saw one go down and one smoking.

"We were the first people to shoot on the island."

He said they were the only ones he heard shooting for another 30 minutes or an hour.

It wasn't too long before the Japanese realized where the firing was coming from and sent in Zero planes to fire on the gunners, he said.

"When they'd come we'd see them knocking up the dirt before they got there," he said. He and the other gunners would jump underneath the ammunition room when the planes came by, he said, then they would run back out after the planes had passed and try to hit them before they got out of range. No one at the guns was killed that day, he said.

There were not enough guns for everyone, he said, so the Marines fired the guns and the sailors watched. He said they could hear machine guns going off, and bombs from the harbor.

"It smelled like smoke and fire and dead men and dead sailors and big blasts going off all the time," he said.

Shells were exploding over Honolulu, he said, damaging rooftops in the city. The American planes were parked so close together that the Japanese were able to shoot and disable them and keep them from even being able to take off. The Americans' confusion didn't help matters.

"They were shooting at each other and everything."

"There was a lot of excitement and a lot of shooting and a lot of confusion. It was a bad deal."

The attack lasted a little more than two hours. At the end of it there were 2,403 dead and 1,178 wounded. But that was not the end of it for Hawkins.

There were rumors flying that the Japanese were going to attack by land, so the Marines hauled the machine guns down to the beach to wait for them. Hawkins said that he dozed off once or twice, dreaming of the Japanese.

"I was thinking then I was fighting them -- hand-to-hand combat," he said.

"Everybody was pretty nervous."

After the attack, around 11 p.m., he said, the Enterprise arrived in the harbor and Hawkins and his companions were ordered back on board. They had to confiscate a motor launch -- a type of boat -- to get back to the ship, and on the way down to the beach they were almost shot by their own troops.

"Everyone was shooting at everything that moved," he said. They managed to get to the launch though, and set out.

"We had about six Marines out there and one of them knew how to run a motor launch, and one of them knew how to crank it up," he said. They had to maneuver their way around a torpedo net on the way there, and as they were coming around it, he said, someone on the beach started firing on them.

"First thing we knew we was bouncing shells off our gunnel," he said. The Marines dived into the bottom of the boat, and the one who knew how to drive it backed the launch up and went around the other end.

Inside the harbor, he said, there was destruction everywhere.

"We saw all these guys floating in the water and oil burning on the water and all these battleships sunk," he said.

Since the gangplank had already been taken up on the Enterprise, the Marines had to climb up a rope ladder to get on board. Hawkins was the first one up the ladder, and he said when his head came over the quarter deck, there was an officer with a gun waiting for him.

"This officer on the ship held a .45 up between my eyes and said, 'Give me the password,' " he said. The problem was the message sent to the marines hadn't included the ship's password. Things were getting more serious until someone walked by who recognized Hawkins and vouched for him, and they managed to talk their way out of being shot. He said it was around 2 a.m. when they finally got on board. By the dawn of Dec. 9, the Enterprise had left the harbor.

Hawkins said he is not angry with the Japanese anymore, but he had been after the attack.

"I called the Japanese a lot of bad names," he said. But he said that's over now.

"I found out that I don't have any enmity in my heart against them anymore," he said.

"They were good people. They were good people."

Admiral William Frederick Halsey Jr., who Hawkins served under, was not too happy with the Japanese after the attack, either. Hawkins said someone heard the admiral muttering to himself about the Japanese sometime after the attack.

"He said, 'The only place you'll hear their language spoken is in Hades!' " Hawkins said.

For Hawkins, Pearl Harbor was only the beginning. He served throughout the rest of World War II, earning a Purple Heart among other medals, and didn't leave the marines until March of 1946.

One of Hawkins's grandsons is currently serving a mission in Japan for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Hawkins said when he first heard about the call, he told his grandson to do something for him -- once you get over there, Hawkins said, whip four or five of them for me. Then he went back and thought about it. No, he told his grandson later, he had changed his mind. It would be better if he went over there and baptized them.

Ellie