Reliving the Memory of Seven December

His buddy’s name was Hightower.

“James Sylvester Hightower,” the old man says, “from Fort Worth, Texas.”

He refers to the date the Marine way--day, month, year.

“Seven December 1941.”

The night before, he and Hightower were out “on liberty.” Other nights, they might have joined other Marines, sailors and soldiers carousing in the watering holes on Honolulu’s Canal Street. But on this night, Staff Sgt. Dawson Harris, a 24-year-old farm boy from Jonesboro, La., and his buddy Hightower just strolled off the base at Ewa--”EH-vah,” he says, is the correct pronunciation--and into the little town maybe a mile down the road. They probably picked up some beers before they dropped in on the Ornelas family.

Bill Ornelas was the gregarious foreman of the sugar cane plantation and his door was always open to Marines, especially ones bearing brew. His wife fried some fish and the four of them socialized until well past midnight.

Maybe it was 2 a.m. when then they walked back to the barracks. Maybe it was 3 when they climbed into their cots. Maybe it was 8 when they awakened to the rumble of aircraft overhead.

“We thought the Army Air Corps was having maneuvers.”

Harris went outside and saw the airplanes with the symbol of the Rising Sun. Nearly two years of duty in China--first in the Embassy Guard in Peking, then in Tientsin--had made him wary of the Japanese war machine. (It was in Tientsin that his Russian girlfriend Olga noticed his resemblance to a famous American crooner and started calling him “Bing.” But that’s another story.)

As the Zeroes dove and the strafing commenced the Marines reached for their Springfield ‘03s. Truth be told, Harris reached for another Marine’s rifle. On the occasion of his promotion a few days before, he had turned in his “aught-three” and was presented a sidearm. A pistol now seemed pointless. “I stole the first goddamn rifle I could.”

Now bombs were falling. Flames lept from building and broken Navy aircraft littered Ewa’s airstrip. Billows of dark smoke rose from the horizon in the direction of Pearl Harbor.

Ewa’s Marines had a problem. The ammunition was secured in a bunker. Forever seemed to pass before an officer arrived with the key.

Harris and about a half dozen other Marines hustled to a pit dug into the earth. Was this a swimming pool under construction or maybe the foundation trench for a diving platform? Some of the memories are hazy.

Marines scattered everywhere and fired at the enemy passing overhead. Harris felt a bullet whistle past his ear; it had been fired by a nervous young Marine beside him.

An expert marksman, Harris figures he squeezed off about 30 rounds. History notes that small-arms fire brought down one Zero, but the old man doubts that any of his bullets found their mark. “I forgot to lead them on the way,” he says. “I was just firing.”

Compared to Pearl Harbor itself, the toll was comparatively light at Ewa. The old man doesn’t remember how many men were killed or wounded. But among the casualties was a friend.

“Wilmer ) Bader,” he says, “from Wahoo, Nebraska.”

Bader was in a group of Marines pushing an airplane away from a burning building. A Zero make a pass and Bader lost a finger from his right hand.

The old man laughs remembering the something else. Wilmer Bader, it seems, was later outfitted with a prosthesis. “He liked to shake hands with people and leave his finger in their hand.”

Seven December 1941 ended with Harris and Hightower together again, manning a machine gun pointed toward the beach, ready for an invasion that wouldn’t come.

“We fired a few rounds,” the old man recalls. “But just to get familiar with the trigger.”

***

My father is 80 years old now. He dedicated 30 years, two months and 15 days of his life to serving his country in the Marine Corps and has now been retired from the Corps even longer.

Six years ago, he was one of the old men parading in aloha shirts through Honolulu during the 50th anniversary commemoration. The license plate frame on his car--a Japanese make--identifies him as a member of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Assn. (Hightower and Bader, incidentally, also survived the war.)

Dad has other stories--about the battle for Okinawa, about the occupation of Japan, about the skeletons of buildings he saw in Nagasaki, about the graciousness of the defeated Japanese.

The trouble is, for a man with a lifetime of stories, he’s not much of a storyteller. An anecdote here, a name there. The other trouble is, he’s been struggling with congestive heart failure for more than a year now. Several times his legs have swollen like a float in the Macy parade and he’s had to check into the Long Beach VA. His most recent stay ended a couple weeks ago and lasted more than two weeks. All considered, he’s looking well and says he’s feeling OK. The day I dragged the Pearl Harbor story out of him he had mowed the lawn. (We tell him to take it easy, but Dad’s stubborn.)

I’ve told him, awkwardly, that we need to talk--that I need all his stories for his unborn grandchildren. Months have passed since I resolved to interview him on video, but I’ve yet to muster the nerve. A vague sense of superstition makes me hesitate.

It’s not rational, I know. But it’s as though I think he’ll always be there, as long as he has stories to tell.

Harris’ column runs in the San Fernando Valley Edition of The Times.