LAKEPORT, Calif. – On the 69th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, county residents – among them some of the men who had been witness to the attack – gathered in Lakeport for the annual remembrance ceremony.
Men like Jim Harris, 86, of Lucerne and Henry Anderson, 92, of Lakeport were just young men when they watched the Japanese planes sweep in over Pearl Harbor on what might normally have been a quiet Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941.
By the time the two-hour attack was over, an estimated 2,400 people had been killed, most of them Navy men. Among them were the crew of the USS Arizona, who was sent into the depths after being hit by Japanese bombs.
Harris was one month past his 17th birthday and assigned to the USS Dobbin when he saw the planes fly in so close that he could see the “red meatballs” – or the Japanese suns – on the wings.
Anderson was older, but still a mere 23, and assigned to the USS Tennessee on that day. A bomb destroyed the ship's first and second turrets, and to this day he has a piece of that bomb's shrapnel, which had dropped through the seat where he had been sitting at breakfast.
Fred Layton, aboard the USS Ramsay, also saw the planes fly in and heard the call for general quarters, according to his widow, Vanya, who wore his hat and a Hawaiian shirt at the Tuesday ceremony in her role as a Pearl Harbor “sweetheart,” the Pearl Harbor Association's affectionate term for widows.
The commemoration began in Library Park at the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association's memorial mast before moving inside to the warmer confines of the Lakeport City Hall council chambers.
CHP Commander Mark Loveless and three of his men attended – local CHP officers in dress uniform are fixtures at the annual event – as did acting Lakeport Police Chief Brad Rasmussen, sheriff's representatives and members of the county's many veterans groups.
Master of ceremonies this year was Steve Davis, the county's retired California Highway Patrol commander, filling in for Ronnie Bogner, who normally leads the event.
This year, Bogner and his wife, Janeane, accompanied Pearl Harbor survivors Walter Urmann, USS Blue, and Bill Slater, USS Pennsylvania, and Alice Darrow, widow of Dean Darrow – who was aboard the USS West Virginia – are in Hawaii for the last Pearl Harbor Survivors' convention.
That meant that only Harris, Anderson and Layton were in attendance at the Lakeport ceremony. Bud Boner, USS Tennessee, and Floyd Eddy, USS Trever, were absent, although Boner later attended the luncheon.
It was noted that another survivors, Chuck Bower, US Sub Base, had died Nov. 12, and a Santa Rosa resident and survivor, Mario Lucchesi, died in October, Davis reported.
At the beginning of the ceremony, Pastor Shannon Kimbell-Auth said that on Sept. 1, 1923, Japan suffered a major earthquake and America responded by sending millions of dollars in aid.
Kimbell-Auth said the Japanese emperor sent a five-word telegram in response: “America, we will never forget.”
She used the example, she said, to illustrate the propensity to forget such deeds.
“Let us pray it might be otherwise,” she said.
Sea Scouts Basil Arnold and Robert Karns from the ship Whisper raised the flag on the mast, Harris led the flag salute and the United Veterans Council's Military Funeral Honors Team offered a rifle volley and the playing of “Taps” before the group crossed the street to the council chambers, where Miss Lake County Outstanding Teen Faith Hornby sang the national anthem.
Davis told the group that it had only recently dawned on him how young men like Harris and Anderson were when they faced the attack. Both men would continue in their military service after the attack, with Harris serving in the South China Sea before eventually serving at D-Day in June 1944.
The men “literally saved the world by their early 20s,” Davis said, before they quietly went home to their lives after the war ended.
Brad Onorato, district aide for Congressman Mike Thompson, said the Japanese attack proved to be a defining moment for the United States, which mobilized around its military as it entered World War II.
Recognizing the local survivors, Onorato said, “We salute them and we thank them for their service.”
Onorato, noting that about 3,000 Pearl Harbor survivors are still living around the United States, presented ship pennants that were flown over the US Capitol to Harris, Anderson and Layton. Also receiving a pennant was Penny Lunt, who had been a small child living living near Pearl Harbor, where her father was stationed.
Local businessman Bill Kearney, this year's guest speaker, is a US Army veteran, having served as a combat medic during the Vietnam era.
Donning a Hawaiian shirt in honor of the Pearl Harbor survivors – whose official “uniform” consists of Hawaiian shirts and white pants – also thanked them for sharing their experiences.
“The thing that moves me the most is how much we love our country,” said Kearney, who was drafted at the age of 25, when he said he knew more of the world than must have been true for the younger recruits at Pearl Harbor.
After service in the military, he said, there is a tendency to come home and keep it all inside.
“Freedom is what means the most,” he said, explaining that the average Pearl Harbor casualty was 23 years old.
In her benediction, Kimbell-Auth said the remembrance was an acknowledgment that the nation was made better due to the Pearl Harbor survivors' stoutness of heart.
A brief “tolling of the dead” was held, with Kearney reading the names of local Pearl Harbor survivors who died between 1988 and 2000 while Sea Scout Basil Harold tolled the bell.
At the following luncheon, where members of the Board of Supervisors were present, they read the rest of the names of survivors who had died from 2000 up until the present.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at [email protected] . Follow Lake County News on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LakeCoNews , on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lake-County-News/143156775604?ref=mf and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/LakeCoNews .
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