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Web Posted : 12/07/2001 12:00 AM
FREDERICKSBURG — Garth Sawyers walked alone in the museum, images of a scratchy black-and-white newsreel fresh in his mind, a World War II torpedo bomber on display nearby.
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An Army veteran of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Sawyers came from his home in St. George, Utah, to the Texas Hill Country knowing the journey would stir memories, but perhaps not quite prepared for the emotional impact.
"I think mostly about the people that were killed," Sawyers said of his visit Thursday to the National Museum of the Pacific War here. "It reminds you of the saddest day of your life."
Today is the 60th anniversary of the attack, but it might as well have been yesterday for 300 veterans who toured the museum along with Sawyers. Former President George Bush is to speak here today at 11:30 a.m. in observance of the 1941 attack.
On Thursday, Sawyers and many other Pearl Harbor veterans walked the two blocks north of the museum to take the first tours of the new Pacific Combat Zone and the PT Boat Exhibition. Now 80, he identified the old Army half-track, jeep and cargo truck outside the entrance to the museum addition with the enthusiasm of a man greeting long-lost friends.
Sawyers' memories were sparked by museum footage from a 1943 newsreel. He and 23 other veterans and their families sat quietly, while on film, President Franklin D. Roosevelt predicted victory, telling a cheering crowd the Axis powers "have asked for it and they're going to get it."
America abruptly entered the war at 7:55 a.m. Dec. 7, 1941, when the first wave of Japanese planes swept low over Pearl Harbor, shattering a tranquil tropical morning in Hawaii.
In the moments that followed, the base was consumed by the cacophony of roaring planes, exploding bombs and acrid, black clouds of smoke billowing from the Navy's Battleship Row.
The sneak attack stunned the United States. In all, 19 ships were sunk or damaged, 2,408 Americans were killed and another 1,178 wounded. Japan lost 29 aircraft and five midget submarines and 64 were killed.
"I had a good view," said George Duke, 80, of Jackson, Miss. "I got the hell scared out of me."
He wasn't alone. |
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World War II veteran Howard Boney Sr. (left) and his cousin-in-law Larry Knight enjoy a moment with re-enactors Barry Faltesek, John Kier and Gill Eastland on Thursday in Fredericksburg.
Express-News/Billy Calzada
Pearl Harbor survivor Thomas Powell of the Texas community of West Point reads plaques Thursday at the Pacific War Memorial Wall at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg. Powell, 88, served on the USS Helena.
AP Photo/Eric Gay
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Roy W. Gillette was a young second lieutenant whose soldiers downed a Japanese plane trying to strafe them as they headed to the Army's Hickam Field.
"I really think about the guys that were at Hickam there (who) got killed," Gillette, 82, of Fair Oaks Ranch said as he walked past shops and restaurants on Fredericksburg's Main Street with his wife, Eileen.
"After the second attack, my group and I went over and started taking wounded people to the hospital — and the dead ones, of course — and stacked them up at the hospital," he said. "But you know, you get to thinking about that and what they did to us. And no way in the world that I forgive them what they did."
Anger is a common emotion among Pearl Harbor veterans. So, too, is guilt.
Warren Miller, 77, of Omaha, Neb., saw the war from the first to the last, serving aboard the ill-fated USS Utah at Pearl Harbor. Four years later, he watched the Japanese surrender from the deck of the USS Detroit.
He refuses to buy Japanese cars and grows red-faced with frustration and resentment when other veterans of the war do, saying Tokyo "tried their best to do away with us and now we are supporting them."
Duke, a radioman assigned to a PBY flying boat, dived into a ditch to avoid the low-flying Japanese planes as they strafed Ford Island, where he was stationed. He then jumped into a plane and started firing at the enemy aircraft, an action that earned a commendation.
"I really kind of felt guilty being here because I'm alive and a lot of guys are out there 6 (feet) under a white cross," said Duke, a retired Shell Oil. Co. executive who recently marked his 59th wedding anniversary with his wife, Shirley.
"Why was I lucky enough to not get killed when a lot of my friends were?" he asked. "I have not come up with an answer. I don't think it's a celestial intervention by God. I don't know why. Why do things happen in this world? I don't know."
sigc@express-news.net
12/07/2001
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