It started as a serene Sunday morning in Hawaii.
Talk to veterans of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and that is often the first thing they tell you.
Beyond that, after the first wave of enemy planes descended at 7:48 a.m., everyone on the island of Oahu endured their own private hell amid the horror of explosions, flying metal, flames and warships that became tombs.
The day of infamy, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously called it, launched the United States into World War II. It remains one of the great generational markers in our history, even as it fades into distant memory as the cohort of Americans who lived through it dwindles.
But on the 70th anniversary of the attack, there are still Colorado veterans — sailors, soldiers, Marines and airmen — who witnessed that day and are alive to tell their stories. About a dozen remain in our state, among fewer than 3,000 Pearl Harbor survivors nationwide.
They are passing out of history yet remain part of it. Even the youngest survivors are in their late 80s, but their memories of that day remain stark, subject to immediate recall, as only the most vivid events of youth can be.
“I’ve seen a lot of courage and a lot of sacrifice and a lot of valor and a lot of whatever it takes to be in a battle like that,” said Pearl Harbor veteran Don Stratton, 89, of Colorado Springs. “I came out of it, and I made it. I’m still here. But there are so many of them that didn’t.”
Beyond the 2,459 Americans killed in the attack, Stratton is speaking specifically of his 1,177 fellow crewmen who died aboard the USS Arizona. Nine hundred of them remain entombed in the battleship, which today has a memorial built above its sunken hull.
Stratton was assigned to the Arizona’s anti-aircraft guns. He had just delivered oranges to a buddy in sick bay when the attack began. A bomb hit his ship, igniting the ammunition room and a million pounds of powder. Burned over 65 percent of his body, Stratton managed to shimmy on a rope to another ship.
Despite his wounds, the Purple Heart recipient re-enlisted for the war’s duration after his recovery in California.
“I have nightmares once in a while, and I jump at any sharp sound, but that’s all part of it, I guess,” Stratton said. “I try not to dwell on it. If you’re going to live for the future you have to do what you can.”
Stratton is one of 10 Pearl Harbor survivors who sat down with Denver Post photographer Kathyrn Scott Osler and videographer Mahala Gaylord. You can find the veterans’ stories at denverpost.com/mediacenter (search Special Projects from the drop-down menu).
Old men now, they recount the central moment of their youth for another generation.
“We were a bunch of kids,” said Jim Doyle of Denver, then an 18-year-old aerial photographer in the U.S. Navy. “We missed our childhood. The war made us grow up too fast.
“It was a day I’d like to forget at times. It hurts to even talk about.”
But seven decades later, he still tells his story. And because of that, we, too, can remember.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS:
Walt Himmelberg, 93, Colorado Springs. Himmelberg, above, was in the Army, serving in the 98th Coast Artillery.
“The sergeant and lieutenant came tearing along yelling, ‘Grab your rifles, grab your rifles! We’re at war.’ The Jap planes were flying overhead. We’d never had any airplane identification. The big red ball on the side of the plane meant nothing to us. A plane was hit, and when it came down we thought it was gonna kill us all. But evidently the pilot, when he got hit, fell forward onto his joystick and put it into a straight dive. It blew up about 20 feet in front of us. I got thrown into a telephone pole. To this day I’m still wearing a brace on my left knee. I don’t know whether to say you were one of the lucky ones to be there or one of the unlucky ones. But you were there and a part of history.”
Don Armstrong, 89, Sterling. Armstrong was a chief gunner’s mate aboard the USS Tennessee.
“Guys came running and said, ‘They’re bombing the island.’ We went up and hadn’t been up but a few minutes, and here comes a torpedo plane, dropped a torpedo on the West Virginia, which was tied up right beside us. Then the plane pulled up. I swear if I’d had a baseball I could’ve hit it. Great big red circles on the wings. We happened to have a machine gunner in the topmast. He hit the gas tank on the plane and it crashed over on Ford Island.”
John Eck, 90, Monument. Eck was in the Army, stationed at Pearl Harbor General Hospital.
“We saw the planes dropping bombs. We didn’t know what was happening. We thought it was the end of a maneuver because annually the Army and Navy had a maneuver that was supposed to end on Saturday. We thought this was a really realistic end to the maneuver. We knew it was an attack when the casualties started coming in. The casualties came in by the truckload. We had a triage officer on the truck, and I was on a litter. He said, ‘Take this one to the morgue.’ Well, we took him to the morgue and we set the litter down and he sat up. So this was quite traumatic. The Red Cross had a recreation building, and they used this as a temporary morgue. And row after row, four or five rows, the length of the building, the dead were lying there.”
Jim Doyle, 88, Denver. Doyle was a Navy aerial photographer’s mate/first class with a pilot rating.
“I saw a Japanese plane get shot down. The pilot was floating around in his vest. A Navy boat went over to pick him up, and I saw him blow his own head off. I saw a submarine. A ship, instead of shooting at it, ran over the top of it and sunk it. It was terrible. The thing that really bothered me was the smell of the dead bodies and the oil stink. You saw people lying on the ground wounded, and if you went over to help them you’d end up with them.”
George Blake, 90, Salida. Blake was in a U.S. Army coastal artillery battery.
“I heard the noise of low-flying planes, very low-flying, and a staccato sound like they were landing on a corrugated roof. We came out of the building and looked up, and there were many, many planes overhead, strafing. I was immediately sent to get ammunition because the amount in the barracks was quite limited. Came back, and everybody loaded up with ammunition and went to what we called the gun park. We’re loading .50-caliber machine-gun belts and carrying them out to two or three machine-gun positions. Then I was assigned to a .30-caliber machine gun right on the edge of the water of Pearl Harbor. Dug that in and prepared for what we thought would be a follow-up landing invasion by the Japanese.”
Bill Browning, 89, Colorado Springs. Browning was a radioman on the cargo ship USS Antares.
“We had just come back from Kanton Island, down below the Equator. We had taken supplies there to build a runway for the B-17s they were going to ferry out to the Philippines. Well, all hell broke loose. We were not inside the harbor and had not been selected as a target. They strafed us, but no one was hurt. I was too excited to be scared. I wasn’t in the middle of it, not seeing any of the ships being hit. I saved my fear for later on.”
Don Stratton, 89, Colorado Springs. Stratton was on an anti-aircraft detail aboard the battleship Arizona.
“We were firing at the dive bombers and the high-altitude bombers, but we could not fire at the planes coming in at the port side because the USS Vestal was tied up beside us. Our guns would have bore down right on them. Our gunnery officer went down to get more ammunition. I never did see him again. We got hit by the bomb, the big bomb. This one went down on the starboard side, beside the No. 2 turret. Went in the magazines and a million pounds of ammunition blew up. The fireball went 700 or 800 feet in the air and just engulfed us. I got burned on 65 percent of my body. I was burnt so bad, I ain’t never had a callus since.”
Francis L. Mack, 91, Colorado Springs. Mack was in the Army Air Corps at Hickam Field. He had plans to spend the day at the beach when the first wave of planes arrived.
“I heard a plane over Pearl Harbor. And its engine sounded a little different to me because I was a mechanic. I kept my eyes on it, and he dropped something and there was an explosion, and then he turned and strafed our hangar line. I headed for the hangar line because it had blown up. James Lewis was behind me. I felt a concussion. I didn’t hear any sound, I was so close to it. I looked back, and he was down. His entire back had been blown out. Dead as could be.”
Luz Valerio, 93, Denver. Valerio was in the Army, stationed at Hickam Field, an air base. He had just eaten breakfast and was at his bunk.
“I kept hearing planes but didn’t pay any attention to them because that was going on all the time. Then I stared hearing boom-boom-boom. What is that? I went out to see. You saw explosions going up on the other side of Hickam Field. The roofs on the hangars were caved, and people were running out. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. I looked over there, and a fellow that was gassing up an airplane caught fire, and he ran around blazing, burning.”
