At Pearl Harbor luncheon, all but a few veterans are gone

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Sandra Anderson Mathis sat at the head of the table in the Barn Door restaurant as the clock struck 11:55 a.m. and the guests bowed their heads in silence to mark the moment America entered World War II.

Mattis sat where her dad, retired Air Force Maj. Richard Anderson, would have been if he’d lived to see another Pearl Harbor Day. But a part of him was here — his Pearl Harbor Association cap, a framed photo and the memories.

“This is a wonderful way to celebrate his legacy, his life,” said Mathis, who described Anderson as an amazing father and a humble, noble, hardworking man who loved his Pearl Harbor comrades. “He would never seek recognition, and he was always very quiet about his war experiences, but he loved the camaraderie here because these men went through this together, and they were boys, not men.”

Blind and using hearing aids that amplified words but often made them harder to understand, Anderson was failing at last year’s luncheon, part of an ever-shrinking group of men who were on the ground floor of World War II.

The San Antonio chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association had a robust roster of 64 members a quarter century ago. Now it’s down to four.

Most of the 42 people at the Red Barn on Thursday were family and friends of Pearl Harbor veterans who’d come to salute their loved ones. Just two veterans of the battle were there. William St. John, 96, and retired Tech Sgt. Kenneth Platt, 95 were in fine spirits, more so than usual in a year where both have struggled with illness.

Veteran John Buchanan was at another event while Gilbert Meyer, who served aboard the USS Utah, was thought to be observing the 76th anniversary of the attack in Hawaii.

Retired Army Maj. Virgil Lee Ward, who isn’t an association member but was at last year’s luncheon, wasn’t on hand.

Anderson and Leo Wally died this year, while another veteran, Bill Hayes, has moved into a nursing home. Attendees were unsure if he was alive.

“The thing is, it’s part of life, but you develop a relationship with these men and unfortunately you only see them once a year, and the only other time is when the family says he’s passed,” said Irene Hernandez, who coordinates the luncheon.

“So that’s why it’s important to keep the memory of the attack alive with all the children and grandchildren. We always put on our invitations ‘Lest we forget,’ because we don’t want to forget about it.”

The waves of Japanese warplanes that roared over Pearl Harbor killed more than 2,330 American sailors, soldiers and Marines. It was the first of a string of Japanese victories across the Pacific. When the Philippines fell, Tokyo’s brutality to U.S. and allied prisoners was so horrific it led to war crimes trials after V-J Day. The tide of the war changed after the Battle of Midway in mid-1942.

Platt was sound asleep in his bunk at Schofield Barracks when Japanese machine gun bullets crashed through a window four feet away. He quickly crawled underneath his bed.

“I still think about what they done,” he said, but added there is no anger. “None whatsoever.”

A radioman first class, St. John had just gotten off work with a fellow sailor, Woodrow Strauss, at a newly established air station on Kaneohe Bay surrounded by three towers that stood 180 feet when the attack began. They saw plane after plane drop their bombs in the distance.

“I was coming off midnight shift, so I was up and about, and was eyeball to eyeball with one of the Japanese pilots,” he recalled. “The only reason he didn’t shoot me was he had a tower he had to go up and over, so he didn’t have a shot at me. And he would have ripped me in half.”

Johnnie Singleton was drinking coffee and making cinnamon toast in the officers’ pantry aboard the USS Maryland when bombs hit his ship and the nearby USS Oklahoma. He’s gone now, but his wife, Rosa, and sister, Della Elam, sat at a table to honor him.

“It was luck,” Rosa Singleton, 76, of San Antonio said, “that he was here.”

sigc@express-news.net

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