CLEARLAKE – After decades of waiting, a Pearl Harbor survivor received a medal commemorating his service during the attack nearly seven decades ago.
Henry Anderson of Lakeport wasn't expecting to get the Pearl Harbor Medal, accompanying ribbon and Pearl Harbor Survivors Association hat that fellow survivor Jim Harris handed him during the monthly breakfast meeting at the Main Street Cafe in Clearlake on Monday.
Last month, Harris – who in addition to being at Pearl Harbor was later at the D-Day Invasion of Normandy in 1944 – received a much-desired French Liberation Medal, as Lake County News has reported.
On Monday, it was Harris' turn to make sure his fellow veteran got a token of service he'd been seeking.
“After getting all of this I feel like I fought the whole war myself,” said Anderson, who was accompanied by his son, Norman, himself a Vietnam veteran.
Anderson, who turned 91 on Aug. 27, has been waiting for that medal for a long time. Nearly 68 years, to be exact.
He was a 23-year-old storekeeper first class assigned to the USS Tennessee when, on the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked.
When the attack began minutes before 8 a.m., Anderson and a group of sailors had left the Tennessee and were off on a trip across the harbor in a motor whale boat to pick up supplies.
He said the Tennessee was moored in “Battleship Row,” tied ahead of the doomed USS Arizona and alongside the USS West Virginia.
At 7:58 a.m., Japanese planes attacked the Tennessee, according to a US Naval chronology of the attack.
The ship was hit twice, once in turret two and then in turret three, with the latter explosion killing a gunner's mate, Anderson told Lake County News in a previous interview.
A piece of the shell that hit turret two landed right in the spot where Anderson earlier had eaten breakfast. He still has a piece of that shrapnel, which he keeps as a memento.
Anderson had sent paperwork to the Navy asking for the medal, but hit bureaucratic dead ends. Finally, group members – including Ginny Craven of Operation Tango Mike, who was officially made an honorary Pearl Harbor Survivors Association member Monday – helped coordinate the effort to get the medal.
Sharing memories at the morning gathering was Bud Boner, who also had been about the USS Tennessee and in the number three turret at one point, noting that he lost half of his division.
Chuck Bower and wife, Charlotte, also came for the morning. Bower was stationed at the sub base at Pearl Harbor.
Alice Darrow's late husband, Dean, was aboard the USS West Virginia. When the ship was hit it listed and he was thrown off the ship and found himself swimming through oil-soaked waters. As he was pulling himself into a rescue boat, the Japanese planes strafed the water, with a bullet lodging in the lower part of his heart.
It wouldn't be until much later, when he had dizziness and shortness of breath, that doctors found the bullet. In 1942 heart surgery was a rarely performed procedure, but Darrow took the risk, and asked his pretty young nurse if she would go on liberty with him if he survived.
On April 17, 1942, he had the surgery. They were married four months later.
“You didn't have time in those days,” Alice Darrow recalled Monday.
She said she filled the hole the bullet left in his heart with her love. They were married nearly 50 years when he died.
Darrow was there with her companion, Walter Urmann, another survivor and a widower. Urmann was aboard the USS Blue.
“It was hell,” Urmann remembered, the years giving no softer cast to his memories. “I saw the Arizona blow up. I heard the Arizona blow up. There are 1,100 people still down there.”
Harris, who was with the USS Dobbin, recalled having just come up on deck after breakfast when the attack started.
He said he watched as the USS Arizona – the ship synonymous with the attack – was hit, with the battleship launching six to eight feet out of the water.
“There were no survivors, or at least we couldn't find any,” he said, recalling pulling badly burned and dying men from the waters throughout the day.
The Japanese dropped torpedoes, and Harris and his shipmates watched in horror as the torpedoes went alongside them and underneath them before hitting the Tennessee, West Virginia and Oklahoma.
Noticeably absent Monday was the group's comic foil, WK “Bill” Slater, who had served aboard the USS Pennsylvania.
Slater, who usually attends the annual Pearl Harbor commemorations with a bloody Mary in hand along with his humorous observations, was reported to be at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, where he's recovering from a pulmonary embolism. The group sent him their best for a speedy recovery.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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