When my wife Karen and I visited Hawaii on the 60th anniversary of the Japanese attack, we experienced an emotional twinge because of the fact that this was probably the last big roundup for Pearl Harbor survivors. Even the youngest of the servicemen and women from that time are now in their late 70s, and many more did not live that long.
Despite the size of the gathering on this occasion, the streets of Honolulu were populated by far fewer survivors than for the reunion ten years ago. Even as the ranks of survivors thin, many physical reminders of the attack remain to be seen by today’s Hawaii visitors. Karen and I were fortunate enough to take a daylong bus tour of the battle sites. At the former Bellows Field, for instance, we saw the impact site for a downed Japanese aircraft and the beach where a midget submarine washed up after her skipper became disoriented.
At Opana, on the north shore of Oahu, we could look up to a high ridge and see where a radar truck was located in December 1941. The visit was enhanced by the presence on our bus of Kermit Tyler; 60 years ago he was on duty in an Army information center and told the Opana radar operators not to worry about the large blip they saw early on a Sunday morning. Some historical accountings have pointed an accusatory finger at Tyler for not being more alert or energetic. He quietly explained that he was inexperienced, standing only his second watch that day, and really had very little opportunity to bring about timely action. He takes comfort from Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz’s statement that the outcome would have been far worse if the fleet had been alerted and out to sea.
At Schofield Barracks we saw the courtyard quadrangle that was used for the filming of a dramatic strafing scene in the 1953 movie From Here to Eternity. Another stop was Fort Shafter, where Tyler was on duty in 1941 and still the headquarters for the Army in Hawaii. A ring of stately palm trees and houses that date from a century ago could not be very different in appearance now from in 1941- One of those houses was then occupied by Lieutenant General Walter Short, an officer whose name is still linked with that of Admiral Husband Kimmel as the scapegoats of the Pearl Harbor debacle.
Wheeler Field was the base for the Army Air Forces fighters of 1941—or pursuit planes, as they were then known. The hangars still bear the U.S. aircraft insignia of long past: a red ball in the middle of a white star in the middle of a blue circle. At another air base— Hickam, adjacent to Pearl Harbor—the evidence of Japanese strafing remains after all these years. The barracks that were recently built in 1941 are still pockmarked by the indentations made by Japanese machine gun bullets.
At Pearl Harbor the landscape mostly is familiar after 60 years. Some of the Battleship Row mooring quays still stand alongside Ford Island. The white Arizona (BB-39) memorial is a shrine that some million and a half tourists visit each year. On the other side of the island is the partially capsized Utah (BB-31), now a rusting hulk. Ford Island itself is populated with dilapidated buildings from a naval air station long since abandoned, a huge banyan tree with spreading root- trunks, and the still-used houses of service personnel who live there.
Several of the Japanese pilots made the journey to Hawaii 60 years after their hit-and-run visit. In a number of cases, the reconciliation between the old warriors has been remarkable. In one ceremony, Japanese and American survivors from 1941 shook hands. Marine Dick Fiske of the West Virginia (BB-48) and dive-bomber pilot Zenji Abe hugged each other in sincere embrace, for they have become good friends. But the feelings of those two men are not universally shared. During the hand-shaking ceremony, one Arizona survivor stood quietly off to the side, explaining, “I’ve got a thousand shipmates out there who wouldn’t shake hands, and I won’t either.” Some things change during the passage of more than half a century; some things don’t.
Before too many more years pass, the last survivors will be gone, but the legacy of Pearl Harbor will endure. During many of the events of the 60th-anniversary week, Karen and I were with Jeff and Doreene Russell, a young couple from New Mexico. He’s a policeman; she’s a mother and homemaker. Throughout the week, the Russells showed up in a variety of 1940s outfits, all of them originals, not replicas. Whether Doreene was in an Army nurse’s uniform or a polka-dot dress and white gloves, she looked as if she had stepped off the pages of the old Life magazine. (Karen, who knows about such things, told me that Doreene’s hair-styles were dead-on accurate for the ’40s.) The couple was able to hear recollections first-hand. People such as the Russells will keep the legacy of Pearl Harbor alive even as more and more pages fall off the calendars of future years.