Pearl Harbor memories ring through for residents 75 years later

The morning was mostly clear on Oahu that Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941. Scattered clouds danced around the Hawaiian island mountains.

Shortly before 8 a.m. local time, all hell broke loose. Japanese high-altitude bombers, dive-bombers, torpedo planes and fighters, shielded from view by those clouds, launched an all-out attack on U.S. resources in Hawaii.

America was brought into World War II when Japanese dive bombers struck the Army Air Forces’ Wheeler Field, north of Pearl Harbor, and Hickam Field, near Ford Island’s Battleship Row.

Just 15 minutes later, America’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was being laid to waste.

An hour later, it was over. More than 2,400 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians, were dead. Nineteen ships — eight battleships among them — were destroyed or heavily damaged. It was by luck that three U.S. naval aircraft carriers were out to sea.

Our history books paint the picture of death and destruction of that infamous day. But a handful of people are living witnesses to the carnage. Others carry the memory of their families who were on Oahu that day.

Here are some of their stories.

Woody Wolverton

Woody Wolverton can’t eat fruit anymore. It’s not because of its taste. It’s because all he had for a month when he was 7 was oatmeal, Spam and fruit.

Wolverton’s father was a captain in the Army when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The family lived on Oahu.

Before the attack, Wolverton’s father warned his family that an attack was expected. Like most youngsters on the island, he wore a gas mask on his belt — just in case.

Wolverton and his family were supposed to spend that Sunday on the beach. But when he woke up and peeked out the window, he saw Japanese fighter plants coming in so low he could see the pilots. He saw the bullets flying across the grass.

“I dove away from the window and went and woke my mother and dad up and said we’re being attacked by the Japanese,” Wolverton said.

The Wolvertons and other American military dependents hid in barracks until silver buses took them up to the mountains. The buses were camouflaged with black paint to hide them in the night. He slept on a grass mat. He thought he would die.

He remembers his mother grabbing him and his little brother and saying, “Look out there, boys, because if you live through this you’re seeing history made.”

Shannon Gault

When Shannon Gault was 19, her dad told her about Pearl Harbor for the first and last time. 

Her father, Gordon Bolser, and his roommate, both U.S. Navy flyers, heard the bomb blasts from their off-base apartment. They rushed over to Pearl Harbor and took a motor whaleboat to their seaplane that was sitting in a field. As they prepared for shove off, two Marines with rifles joined them. 

The crew made their way into the sky when a Japanese Zero caught up with them. Gault said her father dove into a cloud and lost the Zero.

“That’s all he ever said about it,” she said. “You know those guys, they didn’t ever talk about it.”

In 1965, Gault’s father wrote a letter to Wyatt Blassingame, who was writing a book about Pearl Harbor, recounting what he saw and did that day. For five hours, Bolser wrote, the four searched the north of Oahu for Japanese fighters. When he landed, the Marines deplaned, and he never saw them again.

Len Glaser

Len Glaser was eating at The Royal Restaurant in Jersey City, N.J., with his parents and younger sister listening to WQXR, a classical radio station, when a message blared across the radio.

“We interrupt this broadcast for an emergency message ... Pearl Harbor, in the Territory of Hawaii, has been savagely bombed by warplanes of the Japanese Navy. Many casualties occurred and ships have been sunk right at their piers ... Further information will follow .. Stay tuned to this station.”

Glaser remembers turning to his father and asking if he would have to go back into the Navy to fight.

Thirteen years later, Glaser was stationed aboard the USS Rio Grande, with its homeport in Pearl Harbor. He served as an ensign and operations officer.

Sue Troup

Sue Troup’s second oldest brother, Allen V.  Shearman Jr., was aboard USS Mugford 389 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Shearman, who went by the nickname Cookie, was 17, and thought he had the best Navy duty station in the world, she said. Though she was only 5, she remembers Dec. 7, 1941.

 “I remember the news,” she said. “I remember not being able to talk, and I remember how horrified my parents were.”

Troup’s brother survived Pearl Harbor. His ship wasn’t hit. It wasn’t on Battleship Row — where the USS Arizona and Oklahoma were destroyed — because it was being refitted. Later in the day, however, the USS Mugford 389 took on sailors from the Arizona and Oklahoma who had survived, including Cookie’s best friend, Chuck Longstreet.

Years later, Troup visited the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii.

“It was kind of incredible to me to stand there and just reflect that this is exactly where my brother was when it happened,” she said. “The whole thing is very sad, but I really felt that I needed to go there and visit where it happened.”

Doris Kaplan

Doris Kaplan might have been 4,125 miles away from Pearl Harbor in Clayton, Mo., but she can remember that fateful day in 1941. She was 13.

“I had a girlfriend over and we were just talking and having a nice time when my father turned on the radio. My father happened to be in World War I. Not World War II, but World War I. He had been to France, and he got so upset. He said ‘Oh no, not a war again, oh no it can’t be, it can’t be.”

Kaplan recalls not knowing what she could do to comfort her father. Her mother was visibly upset, but Kaplan’s father had experienced war.

“It was a scary day, but being 13, I didn’t realize exactly what it meant until I got a little older,” she said.