I found one survivor out in the water there, and two dead men. Later they sent me out on a motor launch to look for survivors. “I was on the (battleship) USS Tennessee, waiting to go ashore, when all of a sudden this plane came over between the (battleship) West Virginia and us. “Believe it or not, it was my birthday, I had just turned 23 years old,” said Pete Janovich, a retired barber shop owner from Norwalk. It was from World War I, and it wouldn’t fire. 50-calibers (machine guns) on the quadrangle. “We wanted to fight back, so we broke into the ammo lockers and set up some. “Everybody was running around like chickens with their heads cut off,” recalled Levkus, who was at a replacement depot at Schofield Barracks. “We had more than 30 killed.”Īl Levkus, 70, of Long Beach, recalled how ill-prepared many units were for a shooting war. “We took one bomb hit that penetrated to the third deck and exploded,” he said. Scharfen chuckled again, and then his face grew serious. Navy ship that ever fought a battle from dry land, because we were in dry dock, see?” I saw the planes, saw the red spots on them, and I knew they were Japanese. But it didn’t take me long to get ‘em up. He added, chuckling, “And to tell you the truth, when the attack started I was in the head”-that’s Navy lingo for bathroom-”so they really did catch me with my pants down. “I was a gunner’s mate second on the (battleship) USS Pennsylvania, which was in dry-dock getting its bottom scraped,” said Scharfen, a retired cabinetmaker. Vincent Scharfen, 76, of Long Beach told a story that highlights a familiar theme among Pearl Harbor veterans-the feeling that the nation was “caught with our pants down.” It established in the American psyche a fear of surprise attack and a need for constant readiness that persisted long after World War II ended, and may have contributed greatly to the fears and tensions and tremendous military spending of the Cold War era. The attack-and the lack of military preparedness that it exposed-shocked Americans as perhaps no other single military action has. battleships were sunk or badly damaged, as were a dozen smaller ships. servicemen died in the attack, and 1,700 were wounded. Most Americans today are not old enough to remember firsthand the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, by naval air forces of the Empire of Japan. They were stories of quiet courage and aching sorrow and even a little humor, told by men who were witnesses to history on Dec. A lot of stories like that were being told when a dozen Pearl Harbor survivors gathered this week at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Long Beach for a ceremony marking the 52nd anniversary of the attack that changed America and the world.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |