PEARL HARBOR VETERAN RECALLS DAY OF INFAMY.

Byline: Larry Grooms Special to the Daily News

LANCASTER - Pvt. Richard Culleton watched amazed as the first fighter plane roared in low, strafing the beachfront Army camp where he was pulling guard duty the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.

When a second Japanese fighter arrived, 18-year-old Culleton zeroed-in with his .30-caliber machine gun, becoming one of the first American soldiers to shoot back at Imperial Japan.

Now, 60 years later, Culleton is among the Pearl Harbor survivors returning to Honolulu this week to keep alive the national memory of that first ``Day of Infamy'' and to honor Americans killed and maimed in the attack.

Culleton doesn't characterize his personal actions on Dec. 7, 1941, as heroic, but his commanders did. In 1943, they put him up for the Legion of Merit medal.

And this year, Antelope Valley Rep. Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon's staff tracked down the errant paperwork and saw to it that Culleton received the long-delayed military decoration.

As Culleton tells it from his personal perspective, human reactions to the air raids on Pearl Harbor closely parallel those experienced by witnesses to the nation's second Day of Infamy, Sept. 11, 2001: disbelief, confusion, fear, anger, self-sacrifice and an overarching need to strike back at the attackers.

Another parallel was the near absence of American readiness for both attacks. Culleton, who joined the Army on Aug. 8, 1941, says lack of preparedness for war went all the way down to the individual soldier: ``I never had any training,'' he recalls.

Raw recruit

Four days after enlisting in Los Angeles, he was boarding in civilian clothes the SS President Taft for the long cruise to Hawaii. Culleton explains that his experience as an ROTC cadet at Los Angeles High School meant he didn't go to basic training. All he had to know was the Manual of Arms, General Orders and how to march in formation.

``I'd never even fired a weapon, no firing range, nothing,'' Culleton remembers.

But less than four months after reporting for duty with a searchlight battery of the California National Guard's 251st Coastal Artillery at Camp Malakole, Hawaii, Culleton got machine gun training on the job.

Because military commanders didn't expect a surprise aerial attack but did expect sabotage by Japanese nationals living in the islands, Pvt. Culleton went on guard with a truck-mounted machine gun and a single belt of ammunition that memorable morning.

He remembers having to remove the weapon and rest it on sandbags because the gun mount didn't allow the barrel enough elevation to fire at a plane overhead.

The Legion of Merit commendation reads in part: ``He opened fire as the second plane come over the camp, and was the first man in the camp to fire on the enemy.''

The text goes on to explain how Culleton rather quickly exhausted his paltry allotment of bullets, and then ran three blocks under fire to an ammunition warehouse and then ran back to his weapon carrying four ammo boxes to fire at attacking planes in the next wave.

The stickler 

The text does not mention, but Culleton clearly remembers, the most difficult obstacle to his fighting effectiveness in the opening minutes of America's involvement in World War II.

A by-the-book supply clerk wouldn't give Culleton the ammunition within reach because that particular ammo was assigned to another battery. So, Culleton dutifully ran to the far end of the building to get the bullet belts set aside for Battery A.

Culleton says he's always wished he had just grabbed the ammo at hand and colorfully explained the facts of war to the supply bureaucrat.

Culleton remembers with more humor what he calls the only thing that struck him funny that December Sunday morning.

As the attack began, somebody yelled for the bugler to sound the call to arms. The bugler confessed that he didn't really know that tune. The fire chief said he could play it. He did, Culleton recalls, ``but nobody had ever heard it before.''

Confusion and misinformation were rampant, Culleton says. Word got around that Japanese invaders would come ashore wearing fatigues, so the U.S. coastal artillery troops were ordered out of fatigues and into their khaki uniforms.

Later in the day the invasion fashion forecast was revised to khaki, so Culleton joined his buddies in a change back to fatigues.

The expected invasion never came, and neither did the expected sabotage.

In the long days and longer nights after the attack, Pvt. Culleton had a chance to see from higher ground near his camp all of the devastation done to most of the U.S. Pacific Fleet anchored in nearby Pearl Harbor.

``They sure struck a blow to our Navy,'' he says.

Contrasting the attack on Pearl Harbor with this year's World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Culleton says he believes the 1941 raids were less devastating to America.

``The attack on Pearl Harbor sure got the country changed, especially for the economy. But this 9-11 thing? How many layoffs have we had since then?''

A different life

Culleton's life changed, too, after Pearl Harbor. He made sergeant and was assigned to a supply unit. No bureaucrat, he sought transfer to the Army Air Corps and went on to fly North American Aviation-built B-25 Mitchell bombers.

But the war ended just as Lt. Culleton ended pilot training.

Back in civilian life, Culleton went to work for North American, helping to develop the XB-70 and B-1A and B-1B bombers for the company that became Rockwell International.

Retired now and living in Lancaster, Culleton is one of fewer than 10,000 military survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack.

He says that when he considers the heroes of World War II, he thinks first of his brother and all those who worked on the home front to design and build the famous P-51 Mustang fighters and the B-25 bombers that helped American warriors prevail in Europe and the Pacific.

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Photo:

(color) Pearl Harbor attack veteran Richard Culleton holds up the Legion of Merit medal he earned in the December 1941 battle.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer