A survivor’s story

Deepa Bharath

Jake Gray was a year old when his father, Jack Simons, took off to

Pearl Harbor.

He hasn’t seen him since because his parents separated, but the

53-year-old private investigator from Rancho Cucamonga knows his father

is alive and longs to meet him.

On Friday, he made a trip to the Costa Mesa Hilton with the hope of

reuniting with his long-lost father, and wishing that Simons might have

registered at the 40th annual Pearl Harbor Survivors State Convention.

Gray was initially disappointed that his father had not made it to the

convention. But his face lighted up when he heard that Herman Jones, his

dad’s shipmate aboard the Oklahoma, was in the same room, sharing his

memories with other survivors.

“You knew my father?” Gray asked Jones, showing him an old black and

white photo of a young man in a sailor’s uniform.

“Yes, I knew Simons,” Jones nodded, looking at the photo. “He was a

good sailor, part of my gunnery gang. I remember him. He was a quiet man.

You could rely on him for anything.”

Gray smiled.

“I’ve heard about my dad only from the stories my mom told me,” he

said. “I heard he used to play the trumpet, and the night before the

bombing, they had a battle of the bands between the Oklahoma and the

Arizona.”

Gray was not the only one rejoicing in memories of the past. Several

Pearl Harbor survivors in their Navy hats and badges met with old friends

and talked about the days of yore.

Martell Twitchell, 94, of Folsom was a chaplain in the Navy stationed

in Pearl Harbor at the time.

“I heard three services scheduled for that day, and none of them took

place,” he said with a smile. But he still remembers his dear friend,

chaplain of the Pennsylvania, who was killed in the explosion.

“We had watched a football game together the previous day,” he

recalled. “Then we went to my house. It was my son’s third birthday. We

had cake, and he said he had to go back to the ship to get an early start

on his services.”

That was the last Twitchell saw of his friend.

“I simply can’t forget it because of the time we spent together right

before he died,” he said.

Louis Nockhold, chairman of the convention, is a true survivor. He was

a 19-year-old sailor waiting in line to iron his uniform when the bugle

sounded as a warning to all on his ship, the Honolulu.

“I opened the hatch and looked up, and I saw a plane coming straight

at me,” said the Newport Coast resident. “The plane was about to bomb us,

but we were saved by the USS Bagley destroyer.”

The Japanese warplane exploded right in front of his eyes.

“I still feel like I’m the luckiest man alive,” Nockhold said. “We

could have been torpedoed that day.”

For Jack Hammett of Costa Mesa, Pearl Harbor is not an incident, it’s

living history, a lesson to future generations. The former Costa Mesa

mayor has talked about his experiences in Newport-Mesa schools.

“Our young people need to be aware that a situation like that can come

up any time,” he said.

Interest in the infamous Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, has been

heightened recently with the release of the Touchstone Pictures film

“Pearl Harbor” coming May 25.

Still, the annual convention to most survivors is not a place for a

party or movie hype, but a reunion, said Mae Garcia of Sacramento.

“It’s a chance to meet old friends and renew friendships,” she said.

“More than anything else, it’s amazing that we went through all that and

survived.”