After 66 years, some survivors wonder if they are the last reminders of the attack that led the U.S. into war.
By H.G. Reza, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 7, 2007
Their ranks thinned by age, Pearl Harbor veterans today are commemorating the 66th anniversary of the Japanese attack and wondering whether Americans will remember one of the most defining moments in history after they die.
"When we're gone, we're gone," said 87-year-old Jack Ray Hammett. "We're already just a paragraph in the history books. Will even that disappear when the last one of us dies?"
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a speech to Congress, immortalized the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other military installations on Oahu, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, as a "date which will live in infamy." Today, those words are remembered mostly by the generation that lived through World War II.
It is a generation in steady decline. About 16 million Americans served in uniform during the war. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates 2.7 million are living, but they are dying at the rate of about 1,000 per day.
The exact number of Pearl Harbor survivors, though unknown, is smaller, and they are older than the average WWII veteran. Hammett, a former Costa Mesa mayor, said he liked to think of his buddies as "walking, living history."
Some Pearl Harbor veterans in Southern California are keeping that history alive through Hammett's Freedom Committee of Orange County, a speakers bureau that arranges for survivors to speak before groups about the day that changed their lives and turned a reluctant United States into a superpower.
Jack Ray Hammett, shown in January 1941, was a medical corpsman for 30 years in the Navy and reserves. He was sleeping when the attack on Pearl Harbor began Dec. 7 and he spent the next several days treating the wounded and collecting the dead.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Martin K.A. Morgan, historian in residence at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, said Pearl Harbor was "where the United States rendezvoused with the destiny we are experiencing now as a world power."
"Almost everyone can trace how World War II touched his or her family," Morgan said. "When all of our World War II vets are gone, how much of this interest will continue?"
El Toro Memorial Park cemetery's annual Pearl Harbor Day ceremony today in southern Orange County will feature two speakers: Hammett and Orange resident Robert Thomas, who was awarded the Navy Cross for bravery during the battle. The medal is the service's second-highest award for bravery.
Thomas, 88, retired as a captain in 1964 and went on to become Orange County's first chief administrative officer. The county hall of administration is named in his honor.
The Japanese attack, which killed 2,403 Americans, jarred the country out of its isolationist lull.
"The effect was significant. But compared to the Battle of the Bulge, Okinawa and Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor was a minor battle," Thomas said. U.S. casualties in those battles ranged as high as 72,000 men.
Thomas, who had graduated from the Naval Academy months earlier, was an ensign aboard the battleship Nevada commanding a 5-inch antiaircraft battery. He suffered shrapnel wounds in his legs and right wrist but remained on deck barking orders until he collapsed.
"I was probably going into shock, because I felt so safe and serene, even while the attack continued," he said.
"I remember thinking, OK, you SOBs. You tried to kill me and you didn't."
Jack Ray Hammett, a Pearl Harbor survivor and former Costa Mesa mayor, runs the Freedom Committee of Orange County, which sends Pearl Harbor veterans to speak at schools and social groups. The 87-year-old is intent on keeping the memory of Pearl Harbor alive for generations.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Thomas recalled watching Japanese planes crisscross the smoke-filled sky, and the sound of explosions from enemy torpedoes and bombs hitting what was left of the Pacific Fleet. The curses of sailors desperately defending the Nevada punctuated the chaos. His father, a Navy captain, died in an aircraft crash during the war.
Hammett and his wife, Mary Jo, now 84, were sleeping when the attack began. He said they were awakened by his landlord, who arrived to collect the rent and told them the Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor, "12 miles down the hill." He peeked out the door just in time to hear a tremendous explosion from Battleship Row.
Hammett, a medical corpsman who served 30 years in the Navy and reserves, went to the Naval Hospital, where he spent the next three days treating the wounded and "stacking the dead like cordwood in a basement." After going home for a few hours, Hammett said, he returned to bury the dead, who had been laid out on tennis courts behind the hospital.
Mary Jo was 18, and although Hammett was on active duty, "we were on our honeymoon," he said.
Were it not for a sympathetic chief petty officer, Hammett said, he could have been among the dead.
Weeks earlier, he had been ordered to report to the battleship Arizona. Because Hammett was married, the officer sent a different corpsman.
"He's still aboard the Arizona," Hammett said solemnly.
The exploding ship, on which 1,177 crewmen died, is one of the iconic images captured on film that day, and the Arizona Memorial in Oahu has come to symbolize the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Arizona was one of 21 ships, including eight battleships, sunk or damaged in the attack. Almost 350 planes were destroyed or damaged.
Historian Morgan said the World War II generation was unique in that, for a while at least, its members accepted the sacrifices asked of them to achieve victory. When the U.S. was plunged into war, it had the 18th largest military in the world, and Americans were divided over supporting Britain in its war with Germany, which had a pact with Japan.
That changed quickly. Pearl Harbor became a rallying cry, and 16 months later, U.S. Army Air Forces P-38 pilots killed Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, responsible for planning the attack on Pearl Harbor, in an aerial ambush near the Solomon Islands.
"Americans mobilized under one ideological direction and made a great industrial contribution to the war effort," Morgan said.
"It was a breathtaking unity we didn't see after 9/11, but it began to come apart as the war continued and people grew weary of rationing and getting telegrams notifying them about loved one's deaths."
Hammett, who has health problems associated with age, said he literally sees the survivors' ranks depleting within Chapter 14 of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Assn., whose members come mostly from Orange and Los Angeles counties. There are 58 members, but only 10 or 12 are active, he said in an interview this week.
"Everybody wants to make it to the next anniversary. I'll be happy if I make it to Friday," he said.
hgreza@latimes.com
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