LAKEPORT, Calif. – Seventy years and more than 2,000 miles separate four Lake County men from the attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, but as they gathered on Wednesday to commemorate the history-changing incident, it was clear that time and distance haven’t dimmed its power over their memories.
The Pearl Harbor Survivors Chapter 23 North, Lake and Mendocino Counties, hosted its annual remembrance ceremony in Lakeport Wednesday morning.
The event began with the raising of the American flag at the group’s memorial mast in Library Park and a rifle volley by the United Veterans Council’s Military Funeral Honors Team before it moved across the street into the warmer confines of Lakeport City Hall, where the council chambers were filled with community members who came to mark the day.
Master of ceremonies and honorary survivor Ronnie Bogner of Clearlake Oaks, who along with wife Janeane organizes the annual ceremonies, seated the survivors and sweethearts in places of honor at the front of the chamber.
All four of Lake County’s remaining Pearl Harbor survivors were in attendance this year: Clarence “Bud” Boner, USS Tennessee; Bill Slater, USS Pennsylvania; Henry Anderson, USS Tennessee; and Walter Urmann, USS Blue.
They were joined by two “sweethearts,” the affectionate title given to the widows of survivors: Alice Darrow, whose husband Dean served aboard the USS West Virginia and died in 1991; and Vanya Leighton, whose husband Fred – who died in 2008 – was aboard the USS Ramsay.
Also seated with the group was child survivor Jackie Wages, whose family lived on the naval base at Pearl Harbor. Her father worked on the base, and received a citation for bravery from President Franklin Roosevelt.
Adding to the occasion’s solemnity was the fact, as Ronnie Bogner pointed out, that the local roster of Pearl Harbor Survivors has been nearly cut in half over the last 13 months.
In November 2010 Clearlake Oaks resident Chuck Bower, who served at the US Sub Base at Pearl Harbor, died.
Then, in January of this year, Jim Harris of Lucerne, the local survivors group’s president who as a teenager had served aboard the destroyer tender USS Dobbin and who later was at the D-Day landing in Normandy, died.
Floyd Eddy of Kelseyville, who served aboard the mine sweeper USS Trever, died in May.
Because of fewer members and the advancing age of its leadership, the national Pearl Harbor Survivors Association announced on Wednesday that it would disband on Dec. 31, according to media reports from the ceremony in Hawaii.
Powerful memories of the day
Slater, the “kid” of the local survivors group who every year attends the ceremony with a bloody Mary in hand, recounted being on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania before having to go below deck on an errand.
“The one bomb that hit the ship was right where I was standing,” he said.
The bomb killed 24 men, according to Slater.
Boner, who was in the USS Tennessee’s third turret, also would have to go below deck, where he would remain until after 3:30 p.m. that day, seven and a half hours after the attack began.
Darrow, who graduated from nursing school in 1941, said the military was looking for young nurses, and she eventually decided to enlist in the Navy.
“The boys were the cutest,” she said.
She served at a medical facility on Mare Island, where her future husband was brought for treatment.
He had been blown off the USS West Virginia during the attack. As he was being picked up by a small boat, the Japanese planes strafed the water, with a bullet lodging in his heart.
While he passed out, he later was checked by doctors and released back to duty, only to pass out every time he ran to his station, she explained.
It was later discovered that he had a bullet in his heart, and while doctors believed they could remove it, in 1942 heart surgery was rarely done.
However, Dean Darrow got the young nurse to agree to go on holiday with him if he survived, and when he woke up from surgery he reminded her of her promise.
“He always said the best thing he got out of the Navy was his nurse,” she said, showing off the bullet doctors removed from his heart.
Urmann recalled that his ship, the USS Blue, a 1,500-ton destroyer, was anchored 1,000 yards from Ford Island and Battleship Row, where the USS Arizona sat.
He was on watch that Sunday morning and was acting as messenger when the attack began shortly before 8 a.m.
“It was a beautiful morning,” he said, remembering how he heard an explosion on Ford Island.
He said a Japanese pilot flying low overhead waved at him.
It took Urmann and his shipmates 40 minutes to get the Blue going and out of the harbor. While they were trying to get out, the Arizona blew up.
“I didn’t see it but I heard it,” he said of the Arizona.
He said the Blue blew up a Japanese submarine and would go searching for more Japanese but didn’t find them, and returned to the harbor the next day, a Monday.
“We couldn’t believe the debris and the damage we saw,” he said. “It was terrible.”
Urmann would be aboard the Blue when it was hit by a Japanese torpedo in the Solomon Islands in August 1942.
Despite attempts to tow the Blue in for repairs, historical accounts said the ship kept parting towlines and settling deeper into the water, and her crew was finally evacuated. After earning five battle stars in the war she was scuttled and sunk on Aug. 23, 1941.
Help from back home
Kelseyville resident Steve Davis, the retired commander of the California Highway Patrol’s Clear Lake office, was the Wednesday ceremony’s guest speaker.
Davis’ father and grandfather were employed in Bethlehem Steel’s San Pedro shipyard during the war, father and son working on a total of 26 destroyers until the war’s end.
With steel at a premium, that material was kept for the ships’ hulls and structure, while the insides of the ships were finished with wood, Davis explained.
He carried with him one of his father’s prized possessions, a tattered notebook filled with the measurements of every wooden item from the ships’ interior, measuring everything from cots to latrine lids.
The soldier and sailors fighting the war had a lot of help from those back home, Davis said.
“When called upon it takes a lot of heroes to save a nation under attack,” he added.
As a result of that kind of collaboration, he pointed out, “We are still free.”
As part of the day’s ceremony, Urmann led the singing of the national anthem and “God Bless America,” and the names of Lake County’s Pearl Harbor Survivors Association members who have died were read, with a bell tolled for each of them.
In honor of the 70th anniversary, Gov. Jerry Brown issued a proclamation and declared Wednesday “Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.”
“Seventy years ago today, the Imperial Japanese Navy mounted a surprise attack on our nation’s fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii,” the proclamation stated. “This assault opened the struggle for control of the Pacific that would claim the lives of over 100,000 Americans. In a speech to Congress the following day, President Roosevelt gave the seventh of December, 1941, its immortal name: “a date which will live in infamy.
“Today, while still deploring the treachery of one country attacking another without provocation, we remember with awe the valor of those who defended Pearl Harbor, and the many more who answered their country’s call in the ensuing mobilization. The 2,402 members of the armed forces who gave their lives that day will always live in our hearts as true American heroes,” Brown’s proclamation said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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