Losing historic battle veterans
Number of those who fought at Pearl Harbor dwindles day by day

By Scott Hadly
Saturday, December 6, 2008

They survived the date that will live in infamy, but after six decades, the veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack are succumbing to age.

On the 67th anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941, assault, the sailors, Marines and soldiers who endured the first shots of World War II are dwindling in number.

"We're dropping," said Thomas B. O'Reilly, former president of the now defunct Channel Islands Chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. The chapter included members from Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

"We abandoned the chapter because there was virtually nobody left," said O'Reilly, 88, who was a Navy meteorologist stationed at Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii when the Japanese attacked.

There were at least 48 chapter members four years ago, including 19 from Ventura County.

"We had to disband because there were only three of us left," said Sam Richiusa, who turns 89 on Thursday.

Richiusa, a Marine veteran who at that time was working on a base between Pearl Harbor and Honolulu, vividly remembers being strafed by Japanese aircraft. He jumped for cover behind bulldozers, trucks and trailers during the attack that left 2,400 service members dead.

He's participated in Pearl Harbor memorial ceremonies for years, wanting people to remember what happened and prevent it from happening again.

"People right now would like to attack this country," Richiusa said. "We can't become complacent, and that's why all wars should be remembered."

In Ventura County, there are perhaps fewer than a half dozen other survivors of the battle, according to Max Van Der Wyk, senior vice commander of the Disabled American Veterans Ventura Chapter.

Van Der Wyk, an 89-year-old World War II and Korean War Navy veteran, has put together remembrance ceremonies for the past 11 years.

Sunday's ceremony at the Ventura County Government Center begins at 11 a.m. and will feature a keynote speech by retired Navy Capt. Paul Grossgold, former commander of Naval Base Ventura County and now director of the county General Services Agency.

‘Two veterans die every day'

In his cluttered Pierpont apartment, Van Der Wyk looked at his three-page list of survivors, which shows marks and scribbles of those who have died since 2004.

"Two years ago, we had 1,000 members in this chapter," he said. "Now, we have 585."

There's a mark by the name of John Ferjo Jr. Earlier this year, Ferjo, a Navy veteran nicknamed "the Chief," died at 93 in Oxnard. He'd been on shore leave from the USS Chester during the attack and saw action across the Pacific during the ensuing war.

Another mark is next to the name of Edwin "Eddie" Baumgart. The Oak View resident, who narrowly escaped being trapped in the USS Oklahoma after it capsized, died four years ago at 83.

Veterans of World War II are dying at a rate of about 1,200 a day, a trend mirrored to some degree in the declining ranks of surviving veterans from Korea and Vietnam, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

"I usually find out about my guys in the obituaries," said George Compton, a retired Army colonel and Vietnam veteran who works as the veterans service officer for the county Human Services Agency.

On average, about two veterans die every day in Ventura County, said Compton.

"When I took this job (nine years ago), 75,000 veterans were living in the county," he said. "Now, we have about 58,000."

As for the veterans of Pearl Harbor, Compton sighed.

"When we lose them, we lose all that history," he said. "They were not only great people, but you've got to understand if they were at Pearl Harbor they were already in uniform before the war started. They didn't wait for the attack to join."

That's also why they are among the oldest of veterans from that war, Compton said. The national Pearl Harbor Survivors Association estimated there were about 6,000 survivors of the attack as of two years ago. That number might be down as much as a quarter, according to the group, which held its national convention last week at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas.

‘They're Japanese'

Solomon Jackson, a Ventura veteran who turns 89 on Dec. 28, joined the Marines as a 17-year-old in 1938 as a way to get out of Depression-era ranching in Arizona. Just out of the hospital for pneumonia, Jackson said this week that he doesn't think he'll make it to the ceremony Sunday, although he'd like to be there.

His memories of that day 67 years ago are as fresh as yesterday. Part of a Marine guard attachment at Pearl Harbor, Jackson remembers getting rousted from his bunk by gunfire. A buddy asked him, " ‘What the heck is the Air Corps doing an exercise on a Sunday for?' "

"I looked out the window, yelled at him to ‘take a good look at those planes. They're Japanese,'" Jackson said. "‘Get your rifle.'"

He spent the morning with his buddy dodging bullets and firing at the attacking aircraft. He watched as a bomb hit the USS Arizona. The explosion appeared to lift the battleship out of the water before sending it to the bottom of the harbor.

"I then seen the Oklahoma roll over and the guys jumping into the water and the water was on fire," Jackson said.

Pearl Harbor marked the start of a terrible four years of some of the fiercest fighting ever seen by American service members. Jackson had to hopscotch from island assault to island assault across the Pacific. He remembers shedding tears after seeing a family photograph next to the first Japanese solider he killed, but hardened his heart after seeing the bodies of fellow Americans who had been tortured before being killed by bayonet.

Jackson didn't talk about his experiences for a long time, but his attitude changed after one of his sons, a teacher, asked him to speak in front of his class about what happened.

"People want to know about things, and the more they know, the more they can learn about preventing them from happening again," Jackson said.

James Holmes, a fellow Marine survivor of Pearl Harbor who is now 89 and living in Camarillo, was stationed on the USS West Virginia during the attack. The battleship, which was in dock, was hit by nine torpedoes and several bombs. Holmes went over the side on a line and made it to the island.

Like what so many people think today about the terrorists' attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Pearl Harbor marked a day when history turned for Holmes' generation. But the memory of the assault has faded with the passing of each surviving veteran.

"Well, I think that it's necessary to remember what has transpired in the past, but by and large, you know, you can't expect the younger generation to understand or feel like we do about what happened," Holmes said.

Ellie