Pearl Harbor Survivors Share Recollections of Day of Infamy

As time depletes their ranks, the aged men in Hawaiian shirts and white trousers are depending on children like 9-year-old Haleigh Hallgrimson to ensure that the memory of the attack on Pearl Harbor doesn’t slip away.

Haleigh, a bronze medal commemorating her grandfather’s service that day hanging from her neck, was the youngest attendee at an Orange County memorial service Saturday commemorating the Japanese divebombing and strafing of the U.S. naval base.

“Most veterans are reticent about talking about the war,” said Andrew Weniger, 80, of Huntington Beach, who was an Army private at a base adjacent to Pearl Harbor. “But we owe it to those who didn’t survive to make sure that younger generations know our stories, so they can pass them on after we’re gone.”

The observance at El Toro Memorial Park in Lake Forest drew about 70 people for a ceremony punctuated by bagpipe renditions of the national anthem and “Amazing Grace,” and survivors’ recollections.

In Ventura County, two World War II fighter planes buzzed overhead in a show of patriotic support as survivors took turns on an outdoor stage sharing details of the day that America was attacked 61 years ago.

“We were awakened with some of the most awful percussion and sounds we ever heard,” said 82-year-old Solomon Jackson of Ventura, a former Marine who was stationed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

After convincing his bunkmate that they were under fire, Jackson grabbed a rifle, ran outside and, along with other Marines, started shooting at a kamikaze flying low overhead. “He went down in the water. He was really riddled,” Jackson said.

A small group of residents and political leaders gathered under blue skies at the Ventura County Veterans Memorial to hear the oral histories.

All sat rapt as Jackson reached the end of his recollections.

The aftermath of the attack, he said, was a sea of bodies floating in the harbor, many of them on fire. “It was a horrible sight,” he said.

At the service in Lake Forest, Frank Weitzel, his yellow satin Pearl Harbor Survivors Assn. jacket glinting in the noon sun, said it saddens him to see the number of veterans attending the ceremony shrink.

“This organization is slowly dying off,” said the 80-year-old Huntington Beach resident, who was aboard the Navy cruiser San Francisco when Pearl Harbor was attacked. “I come every year because these are the only people who truly understand what it was like to be there that day.”

As the survivors die, he said, it becomes increasingly crucial to make sure younger generations have at least some sense of the day’s events and its impact on history. Weitzel and others in the Los Alamitos chapter of the survivors’ group visit local high school history classes to talk about their experiences.

For Haleigh, wearing the medal and attending the observance each year is a way to remember her grandfather, Clarence James Martin, who was on board the battleship Pennsylvania during the bombing. “It must have been tough work for him to survive,” Haleigh said.

“She doesn’t yet understand what war is,” Jeannie Hallgrimson said after the ceremony, a cap emblazoned with the Pearl Harbors Survivors Assn. insignia nestled in her lap.

“But she understands that her grandfather and the others at Pearl Harbor that day did something that deserves to be remembered.”