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Pearl Harbor survivors visit site one last time
A small boat rescues a USS West Virginia crew member from the water after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941 during World War II. Two men can be seen on the super-structure, upper center. The mast of the USS Tennessee is beyond the burning West Virginia. Japanese Imperial navigator Maeda guided his Kate bomber to Pearl Harbor and fired a torpedo that helped sink the USS West Virginia. This week, Takeishi Maeda and John Awschalck a crewman based the West Virginia at the time of the attack, met face-to-face for the first time and shook hands.
BY JAYMES SONG ASSOCIATED PRESS
PEARL HARBOR Hawaii
PEARL HARBOR Hawaii — This will be their last visit to this watery grave to share stories, exchange smiles, find peace and salute their fallen friends.
This, they say, will be their final farewell.
With their number quickly dwindling, survivors of Pearl Harbor will gather Thursday one last time to honor those killed by the Japanese 65 years ago, and to mark a day that lives in infamy.
"This will be one to remember," said Mal Middlesworth, president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. "It's going to be something that we'll cherish forever."
The survivors have met here every five years for four decades, but they're now in their 80s or 90s and are not counting on a 70th reunion. They have made every effort to report for one final roll call.
"We're like the dodo bird. We're almost extinct," said Middlesworth, now an 83-year-old retiree from Upland, Calif., but then — on Dec. 7, 1941 — an 18-year-old Marine on the USS San Francisco.
Nearly 500 survivors from across the nation were expected to make the trip to Hawaii, bringing with them 1,300 family members, numerous wheelchairs and too many haunting memories.
Memories of a shocking, two-hour aerial raid that destroyed or heavily damaged 21 ships and 320 aircraft, that killed 2,390 people and wounded 1,178 others, that plunged the United States into World War II and set in motion the events that led to atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"I suspect not many people have thought about this, but we're witnessing history," said Daniel Martinez, chief historian at the USS Arizona Memorial. "We are seeing the passing of a generation."
The attack may have occurred 65
years ago, but survivors say they can still hear the explosions, smell the burning flesh, taste the sea water and hear the cries.
"The younger ones were crying, "Mom! Mom! Mom!" said Edward Chun, who witnessed the attack from the Ten-Ten dock, just a couple hundred yards away from Battleship Row.
Chun, 83, had just begun his workday as a civilian pipe fitter when he was thrust into assisting in
"From the time the first bomb dropped and for the next 15 minutes, it was complete chaos," he said. "Nobody knew what was going on. Everybody was running around like a chicken with their head cut off."
Chun saw the Oklahoma and West Virginia torpedoed by Japanese aircraft. He heard the tapping of sailors trapped in the hulls of sunken ships. He escaped death
when Ten-Ten was strapped, leaving behind dead and wounded.
Today, scar tissue covers most of his arms and legs.
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"How I never got hit, I don't know," said Chun, who was later dranked and served in the Korean and Vietnam wars. "I'll tell you a secret. When your number comes up, you're going to go. Well, every morning I get up, I change my number."
"The only way he knew it was me was the tug on my toe." Hyland said.
"He (later) told me we looked like roast turkeys lined up."
Everett Hyland doesn't know how he stayed alive when almost everyone around him didn't. He was radioman aboard the Pennsylvania,
Badly burned, Hyland regained consciousness 18 days later, on Christmas night. During that time, his older brother visited.
which was in Dry Dock No. 1, and was helping transport ammunition to the anti aircraft gun when a bomb exploded.
Doctrine to prepare soldiers for new tactics
BY JOHN MILBURN ASSOCIATED PRESS
FORT LEAVENWORTH — Army officials say a new counterinsurgency doctrine should make soldiers and Marines better prepared to fight an atypical enemy but shouldn't be viewed as a roadmap for getting out of Iraq.
Two years in the making, it is the military's first major effort to combine chapters on low-intensity conflict, guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgencies contained in numerous documents from the past quarter century.
Written for battalion and division commanders, the manual discusses the tone and scope of counterinsurgencies, emphasizing a need to see operations as fighting a "three-block war." Additional documents outlining tactics, techniques and procedures will be produced.
"This isn't the silver bullet," said Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, spokesman for the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, where the manual is being produced.
Conrad Crane, director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., said the new manual has "more of a bite to it," with some focus on Iraq and al-Oaida.
"There are some people out there that you have to kill or capture," he said. "There been a reinforcement that there are some people who you aren't going win over."
The manual is to be published by mid-December, though a draft has been widely circulated since June and is being used by the Army and Marines, which are writing it together.