LAKE COUNTY – Sixty-seven years later, Pearl Harbor is a clear, piercing memory for those who saw it and lived.
On Sunday, men who once were sailors in the Pacific came together as part of an annual ceremony to recount the 67th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was a turning point in their lives and the life of the nation.
The attack, which led the US immediately into war with Japan, proved a unifying moment for the nation.
The day's theme was remembrance, edged with a significant sense of an era drawing quickly to its close, as the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association Chapter 23 North's numbers dwindle.
This past year the chapter – now at about eight members – lost another of its number with the death of 87-year-old Fred Leighton, the first member to die since 2005.
Since 1988, the association has lost 29 members, of those, 16 have passed in the eight years alone.
The day was made particularly poignant by the gathering of all of the county's known survivors, who sat together in the front row of the ceremony at the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association's memorial mast in Library Park, overlooking the lake. Master of ceremonies Ronnie Bogner commented that it was the first time he had seen them all together.
They included Henry “Andy” Anderson, 90, Lakeport, battleship USS Tennessee; Clarence “Bud” Boner, 86, Glenhaven, battleship USS Tennessee; Chuck Bower, Clearlake Oaks, US Sub Base; Floyd Eddy, 85, Kelseyville, high speed mine sweeper USS Trever; Jim Harris, 84, Lucerne, destroyer tender USS Dobbin; WK “Bill” Slater, 84, Lakeport, battleship USS Pennsylvania; and Walter Urmann, 85, Clearlake, destroyer USS Blue.
Beside them were the sweethearts, the widows of Pearl Harbor survivors – Alice Darrow, 89, of Kelseyville, whose husband, Dean, served aboard the USS West Virginia and died in 1991; and Leighton's wife, Vanya, who, in tribute to her husband, wore his USS Ramsay hat at a jaunty angle.
Dec. 7 this year fell on a Sunday, the same day of the week as the attack occurred nearly seven decades ago.
Survivors say it had been meant to be a relaxing day, with church and sports activities planned, and the bonus of a half-hour extra sleep and a breakfast served 45 minutes later than normal.
That, of course, wasn't to be, as the sailors found themselves jolted into the desperate defense of the base.
This year the military survivors were joined by civilian survivors Penny Lunt of Clearlake Oaks; Jackie Wages, formerly of Clearlake and now living in Cloverdale; and Ed Moore of Lakeport, whose families lived in Honolulu at the time, with their fathers serving in the Navy.
Bogner thanked community residents for coming to honor the survivors and remember the attack. “It means a lot to the survivors,” he said. “It's something we need to remember.”
The morning ceremony began at 9 a.m., 7 a.m. Honolulu time, and ended at about 10:15 p.m. By 8:15 a.m. Dec. 7, 1941, the USS Arizona already had exploded minutes earlier, a tragedy that took the lives of 1,177 sailors. More than 2,300 members of the US armed forces died in a two-wave attack consisting of more than 350 Japanese planes.
The ceremony included military touches such as the United Veterans Council Military Funeral Honors Team bugler playing the “church call” and “call to assembly,” as well as “Taps.”
The Coast Guard Auxiliary and Sea Scouts raised a US flag that had flown over the USS Arizona memorial, with Clear Lake High School freshman Crystal Wilcox singing the national anthem. The honors team also offered a rifle salvo in tribute at the end of the commemoration.
Tom Lincoln, a worked as a photojournalist in the military, read the poem, “A Soldier's Christmas,” which recounts a young soldier's sacrifices to protect his fellow citizens.
Guest speaker Sheriff Rod Mitchell talked about how the speed and exchange of information and news has changed since 1941. Then, people had to wait for days and even weeks to know what had happened to their family and friends in an attack that he said changed the world.
He said that the men and women who had survived the attack hadn't let it alter their core as human beings. “The terror of that day did not change you.”
Looking at the group of survivors, Mitchell quoted Gen. Joshua Chamberlain, a Union military leader during the Civil War, who described the “bonds birth cannot create nor death sever” among those who face battle together.
Mitchell lauded them for both their patience and their sacrifice. “In this instant, and always, thank you.”
The tolling of the dead included Deacon Tommy Sowell's reading of the names of the late Pearl Harbor Survivors Association members, accompanied by the ringing of a bell, which also has the mens' names engraved upon it.
“We owe a great debt to these men,” said Sowell.
The survivors were welcomed forward for the “ships and stations,” recounting their assignments and what they were doing during the attack.
Eddy remembered “throwing lead at those bums” – the attacking Japanese.
Harris, who later would be at Normandy on D-Day, said of the Pearl Harbor attack, “It was a hell of a day.”
Darrow said her husband had been blown off the USS West Virginia and into the harbor. The Japanese began strafing the water, hitting him as he was being pulled into a rescue boat.
Dean Darrow was hit by a bullet that lodged in his heart. He would meet his future wife at Mare Island, where she worked as a nurse. He would undergo open heart surgery in a time when the procedure wasn't common, and convinced the lovely young nurse to go out on a date with him if he made it through.
He did, and she said they had about 50 years together before his death in 1991.
The morning's moment of comic relief came from Slater, who appeared with his customary bloody Mary in hand, promising to keep coming to the events as long as Bogner has a drink waiting for him.
Civilian survivors also saw horrors
The reminiscences continued during a luncheon the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association held at the Tallman Hotel in Upper Lake.
Lunt, who was a toddler when the attack occurred, said being welcomed to take part in the event has been tremendously healing. Her father served aboard the USS Solace, a hospital ship.
The red sun off a Japanese plane fell into her family's yard, said Lunt, recalling that it was made of canvas. She recounted an incident that happened a few years after the attack; while attending school on a naval base she heard planes coming in and dove under a table, refusing to come out. The school had to call her mother to come and get her.
Moore, born in Hawaii, also was a very small child when a Japanese bomb hit in an alley between his family's home and that of a neighbor. Japanese pilots were trying to escape a group of US fighter planes that had gotten off the ground, and were dropping weight in order to pick up speed and get away, he said. Luckily, the family escaped harm, and Moore would arrive at age 5 in Lake County, his parents returning home after leaving the Navy.
Wages was a 10-year-old girl in December 1941. When the harbor was attacked, her father, Porter Smith – a chief hull inspector at the base's dry dock – told her to go upstairs and get the mattress from her bed. Doing what she was told, she brought it downstairs and placed it on top of the dining room table, and then hid underneath the table with her brothers.
She said civilians were taken to the lava caves for safety. Both she and Lunt remembered being evacuated by ship from the island.
Wages said she saw bodies of soldiers, sailors and Marines stacked up outside of hospitals, with no coffins available to bury them.
Her father would receive citations for bravery and exemplary service from President Franklin Roosevelt for his actions in the wake of the attack.
Keeping the history alive
Bogner, who along with wife Janeane organized the day's commemorations, reported during the morning ceremony that it's estimated that 847 Pearl Harbor survivors are left in California.
Harris, who said that copies of the survivors' stories will be placed in a repository at the memorial flag mast, is concerned about making sure that the true story behind Pearl Harbor is known and remembered by younger generations and the nation as a whole.
Knowing the history, he said, is critical, pointing out that Japan hadn't always been an enemy, as it had become by the time of the attack. “It was years in the making.”
He urged fellow veterans to speak to young people about their experiences and history, to let them know that war is the last resort.
“There's no glory in war,” he said. “There's only glory in vets.”
Bower said he signed up to go into the Navy on Dec. 11, 1940. Shortly before he left to report for duty, his grandmother kissed him and said she was sorry to see him go, because she predicted war with Japan would begin within a year.
“That's all I could think of when they were dropping the bombs on us,” he said.
The group thanked the Bogners for stepping up to organize the events for the chapter, whose members, noted Harris, are now getting older and are more challenged to keep up with the work necessary to create the events, which they plan to continue.
“Same place next year,” said Slater. “I'm an optimist.”
Keeping connected
The local Pearl Harbor Survivors Association Chapter 23 North holds informal monthly meetings, where members have breakfast and catch up over coffee.
For the veterans who saw that day, it remains real and immediate.
In October, they gathered with the southern portion of the chapter, from Santa Rosa, in Clearlake. In all, about 16 survivors and sweethearts got together to have lunch and catch up.
Frank Senello, president of Pearl Harbor Survivors Association Chapter 23 South, served on the submarine Narwhal. “To me, Dec. 7 is more important for what America did after Pearl Harbor,” he told the group.
Don Blair, who had been aboard the USS Nevada, recalled the day after the attack, and his emotional reaction at hearing the national anthem. “There was a hell of a lot of sailors who wept that day.”
Bower said he had spent the remainder of Dec. 7 picking up the bodies of the dead. “Thank God I'm still here.”
The young men who died that day, many of them entombed in the Arizona, aren't forgotten by men like Bower.
“I think the real heroes are still there yet,” he said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
{mos_sb_discuss:2}
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
