thedrifter
12-08-08, 08:18 AM
OCEANSIDE: Survivors of Pearl Harbor remember 'day of infamy'
By Renee Ramsey - For the North County Times
OCEANSIDE ---- More than 50 people crowded onto a small wooden fishing pier at Oceanside Harbor on Sunday to remember Pearl Harbor Day with prayers and baskets of flower petals scattered on the waves to honor those who died.
Adolph Kuhn, 87, of Oceanside said he escaped death 19 times on Dec. 7, 1941 ---- the day a deadly aerial attack by the Japanese on peacetime U.S. forces in Hawaii would force the United States into World War II.
“They flew so low, their landing gear was touching the tops of the trees,” Kuhn, who was in the Navy, said 67 years later, describing the surprise attack that killed more than 2,400 U.S. military personnel and civilians.
“I thanked my guardian angel 19 times,” he said about dodging bullets, leaping over bodies of the dead, then swimming through a harbor filled with burning fuel to join rescue crews headed for 18 damaged or destroyed ships.
When he reached the USS Arizona, he found only one badly burned, blinded survivor who died within minutes, Kuhn said. The USS Arizona that day suffered the greatest loss of life aboard any U.S. warship in history. Many of the 1,177 dead remain interred in the destroyed ship still visible today beneath the waters of Pearl Harbor at what now is the USS Arizona Memorial.
The last words of dying soldiers and sailors he encountered that day were cries for their mothers, Kuhn remembered. “That sticks with you a long time,” he said.
Kuhn and 10 other members of North San Diego County’s Tri-City Chapter of the national Pearl Harbor Survivors Association led the brief ceremony at Oceanside Harbor.
Harriet Holmes, 89, of Vista was an Army nurse who remembered being awakened and summoned to the hospital the morning of the attack, also on a Sunday.
“As we walked in, you could see the wounded everywhere. There were doctors doing surgery on the patio,” Holmes said. “You didn’t have time to be afraid. You automatically started working, and we kept it up night and day.”
Joe Walsh, 89, of Fallbrook, who was serving as a Marine, said he could neither remember what happened following an injury he suffered, nor the cause of that injury.
“I don’t remember a thing. All I remember is the first wave coming in,” he said, shrugging. He added that he hopes meeting with the local survivors’ chapter each month will one day jog his memory.
At Sunday’s ceremony in Oceanside, a young Marine from Camp Pendleton played taps from shore. On the pier, baskets of colorful rose petals were distributed to survivors, relatives, friends and onlookers to toss into the sea.
The dwindling numbers of now elderly eyewitnesses to what President Franklin Roosevelt would call “a day of infamy” are also seen in the local survivors’ chapter that once numbered 146, but now counts fewer than 20 members.
“Many of them have passed on,” said Tri-City chapter president William Greenhouse of Fallbrook.
Members rang a small bell for five chapter members who died during the last year: William Dunha of Vista, John Wright of Huntington Beach, Tom Hahn of Oceanside, Joe Marzurkiewicz of Oceanside, Earl Arneson of Escondido and Robert Culver of Portola Valley.
Greenhouse said he hoped one legacy of the attack on Pearl Harbor would be that Americans realize they are capable of surviving what he calls “the rough stuff” of history. “We’re in a recession now, but we’ve come out of worse things,” he said.
Ellie
By Renee Ramsey - For the North County Times
OCEANSIDE ---- More than 50 people crowded onto a small wooden fishing pier at Oceanside Harbor on Sunday to remember Pearl Harbor Day with prayers and baskets of flower petals scattered on the waves to honor those who died.
Adolph Kuhn, 87, of Oceanside said he escaped death 19 times on Dec. 7, 1941 ---- the day a deadly aerial attack by the Japanese on peacetime U.S. forces in Hawaii would force the United States into World War II.
“They flew so low, their landing gear was touching the tops of the trees,” Kuhn, who was in the Navy, said 67 years later, describing the surprise attack that killed more than 2,400 U.S. military personnel and civilians.
“I thanked my guardian angel 19 times,” he said about dodging bullets, leaping over bodies of the dead, then swimming through a harbor filled with burning fuel to join rescue crews headed for 18 damaged or destroyed ships.
When he reached the USS Arizona, he found only one badly burned, blinded survivor who died within minutes, Kuhn said. The USS Arizona that day suffered the greatest loss of life aboard any U.S. warship in history. Many of the 1,177 dead remain interred in the destroyed ship still visible today beneath the waters of Pearl Harbor at what now is the USS Arizona Memorial.
The last words of dying soldiers and sailors he encountered that day were cries for their mothers, Kuhn remembered. “That sticks with you a long time,” he said.
Kuhn and 10 other members of North San Diego County’s Tri-City Chapter of the national Pearl Harbor Survivors Association led the brief ceremony at Oceanside Harbor.
Harriet Holmes, 89, of Vista was an Army nurse who remembered being awakened and summoned to the hospital the morning of the attack, also on a Sunday.
“As we walked in, you could see the wounded everywhere. There were doctors doing surgery on the patio,” Holmes said. “You didn’t have time to be afraid. You automatically started working, and we kept it up night and day.”
Joe Walsh, 89, of Fallbrook, who was serving as a Marine, said he could neither remember what happened following an injury he suffered, nor the cause of that injury.
“I don’t remember a thing. All I remember is the first wave coming in,” he said, shrugging. He added that he hopes meeting with the local survivors’ chapter each month will one day jog his memory.
At Sunday’s ceremony in Oceanside, a young Marine from Camp Pendleton played taps from shore. On the pier, baskets of colorful rose petals were distributed to survivors, relatives, friends and onlookers to toss into the sea.
The dwindling numbers of now elderly eyewitnesses to what President Franklin Roosevelt would call “a day of infamy” are also seen in the local survivors’ chapter that once numbered 146, but now counts fewer than 20 members.
“Many of them have passed on,” said Tri-City chapter president William Greenhouse of Fallbrook.
Members rang a small bell for five chapter members who died during the last year: William Dunha of Vista, John Wright of Huntington Beach, Tom Hahn of Oceanside, Joe Marzurkiewicz of Oceanside, Earl Arneson of Escondido and Robert Culver of Portola Valley.
Greenhouse said he hoped one legacy of the attack on Pearl Harbor would be that Americans realize they are capable of surviving what he calls “the rough stuff” of history. “We’re in a recession now, but we’ve come out of worse things,” he said.
Ellie