Pearl Harbor survivors recall lost comrades, horror of day.

Byline: Jim Feehan The Register-Guard

Bill Oliver glances at his watch to see if it's time.

A few minutes shy of 7:55 a.m. Sunday, Oliver and three other Pearl Harbor survivors interrupt their breakfast meeting in the lounge of Eugene's Red Lion Hotel to pray for comrades lost 62 years ago during the Japanese surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

The prayer's timing coincides with the start of the bombing that sunk or damaged 19 ships, killed 2,390 Americans and wounded 1,178 more.

Oliver and the three other octogenarians gather every month as members of the Willamette Valley chapter of Pearl Harbor Survivors. They sometimes also visit local schools to share their war experiences with today's youth.

Among themselves, even as they kid each other about growing old and which military branch is superior, it's obvious that each retains vivid and somber memories of America's Day of Infamy.

"I went over there as a boy and on Dec. 7, I became a man," said Oliver, now 80 and living in Springfield.

Raised in Los Angeles, Oliver once danced with Hollywood starlet Deanna Durbin at a junior high dance. At 16, he lied about his age to enlist in the Army. He arrived in Hawaii in 1939 and worked as a truck driver in the 19th Infantry, 24th Division, stationed at the Scofield Barracks near Pearl Harbor.

When the bombing began, Oliver was on leave at a hotel in Honolulu.

He threw on some clothes, ran across the street and stole a Model A Ford that he drove to the barracks by way of the harbor.

"Ships were blowing up all over the place and shrapnel was flying toward me," he said.

When he arrived at the barracks, a Japanese fighter plane was strafing the compound's hospital.

The pilot came around again and had his sights on Oliver, who was running through a baseball field near the hospital.

"He was flying so low I could see him smile at me," Oliver said.

Howard Luckham, now 85 and living in Springfield, was aboard the USS Helena reading the comics when the first bombs fell. A native of Rochester, N.Y., Luckham was studying to be jeweler, but decided to see the world after studying a Navy recruiting poster.

A bomb blast tossed Luckham up against the bulkhead of the light cruiser, momentarily knocking him out. When he regained consciousness, Luckham awoke to badly burned crewmen on a deck being strafed by Japanese fighter pilots.

Crew members were defenseless because the ammunition was under lock and key, he said.

"There was a broken crate of potatoes on the deck. So we picked up potatoes and threw it at them."

Francis Kessel, 81, of Eugene, also remembers feeling defenseless that day. Raised on a farm in Missouri, he and his family moved to Salem during the Depression. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in March 1941 and, one month later, was stationed at Hickam Field near Pearl Harbor.

Kessel was heading back to his barracks after breakfast when the first bombs hit the air strip, he said.

"We stood around with no guns, no training and shrapnel landing in front of us," he said.

Jack Hartman, 82, of Springfield, grew up in Forest Grove and enlisted in the Navy right out of high school. On Dec. 7, he was having a cup of coffee on the deck of the destroyer USS Ralph Talbot when the Japanese arrived.

Hartman used his service knife to carve a piece of shrapnel from the lower back of a fellow sailor. Several years later, Hartman met up with the sailor at a meeting of Pearl Harbor survivors.

"He was wearing this big medallion around his neck like a hippie," he said. "Turns out it was the shrapnel I removed from him."

CAPTION(S):

Veterans Bill Oliver (left), Howard Luckham, Francis Kessel and Jack Hartman pray for the thousands killed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.