Fewer around to recount horrors of Pearl Harbor
Black smoke filled the sky above Pearl Harbor, and black oil spread across its waters. Robert Antell steered his Navy patrol boat through the harbor and saw lifeless bodies that had been blown from ships and men swimming through burning oil slicks trying to reach shore.
Sixty-five years ago, on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Antell knew his country was at war.
‘‘Everybody was on their own, and it was just mass confusion,’’ the Amesbury resident said.
Now 86, Antell is part of a shrinking group of Massachusetts veterans who were stationed at or near Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in December 1941. According to Don Tabbut of Winthrop, commander of the state’s Pearl Harbor Survivor and Friends Association, there are fewer than 60 left.
On Sunday, Tabbut spoke at a Pearl Harbor commemoration at Faneuil Hall in Boston, and today he plans to toss wreaths into Boston Harbor to remember men who died aboard the battleships USS Arizona and USS Utah.
Tabbut had arrived at Pearl Harbor in November 1941, and worked as a Navy radioman, helping to guide pilots around the island of Oahu. The night before the attack, he drank beer and talked with friends he had met at Navy radio school in San Diego.
‘‘The next morning, I awoke with a terrible hangover,’’ said Tabbut, who is 83. Hearing the bombs, he ran out onto a porch overlooking a Navy airstrip and saw a Japanese plane drop a bomb on the runway. ‘‘I could see the red rising sun on the bottom of the plane’s wings.’’
Tabbut ran downstairs, but an officer prevented him from leaving the barracks. Just 150 feet from the harbor, Tabbut watched the attack unfold.
‘‘I can remember watching the USS California get hit with torpedoes and sink to the bottom of the harbor. It didn’t get completely covered with water, as the depth of the harbor wasn’t that much. Then I saw the Oklahoma heel over and sink on her side. Now came an awful explosion; its location wasn’t known to anybody. It turned out to be the Arizona blowing up.’’
Peter D’Andrea is 86 and lives in Saugus, not far from his boyhood home in Everett. D’Andrea, one of four brothers to serve in World War II, doesn’t have any plans to mark Pearl Harbor Day, and said most of his friends from the war have died. He had kept in touch with an old Army friend in San Antonio, but now that man can no write well enough to return his letters.
‘‘Army life was good before the war; it was like you had a job. Hawaii was paradise,’’ said D’Andrea, a retired General Electric welding inspector.
At Fort Shafter, near Pearl Harbor, Army Corporal D’Andrea had expected to work his regular shift as an antiaircraft observer for the 64th Coast Artillery. But instead of searching the skies for enemy aircraft, he was given the morning off. ‘‘I got up and showered and was getting ready for breakfast. I never made it to the mess hall. All I could see was a big red ball on the planes,’’ said D’Andrea, who grabbed a gun, loaded it with ammunition, and started firing at the sky.
Emery Arsenault was also part of the 64th Coast Artillery and just a half-mile from Pearl Harbor that morning. Shortly before 8 a.m., he looked at his radar screen and saw trouble. ‘‘All of a sudden, the scope on the radar filled up with blips, and about two minutes later, all of the Japanese planes came over us at treetop level and they started strafing the beach,’’ and Arsenault took cover under a tree.
Arsenault, 85, who recently moved from Lynn to live with his daughter in Peabody, spent another two days near that tree before he was allowed to leave his position. ‘‘Everybody was afraid that they were going to invade us after the attack,’’ he said. He left Pearl Harbor in 1943 and went to work in the maintenance department of Trans World Airlines.
Arsenault also has no plans to mark Pearl Harbor Day. He had hoped to attend the 65th anniversary ceremonies this week in Pearl Harbor but said health and financial issues prevented him from making the trip. ‘‘I wanted to go,’’ he said. ‘‘I think this is going to be the last one they have; there’s not that many of us left.’’
In Amesbury, Antell will meet with other retired police officers and reminisce. Antell, who served as an Amesbury police officer for 37 years, said he frequently thinks about Pearl Harbor Day and the impact it had on his life.
Two weeks before the attack, Antell had dinner aboard the USS Arizona with James Landry, a friend from Amesbury High School. It was the last time the two men would talk — Landry died aboard the Arizona, which is still underwater at Pearl Harbor.
On the morning of the attack, Antell awoke aboard a 40-foot motorboat used by the USS Chester that he helped maintain. After a wave of Japanese planes flew over his head at the entrance of Pearl Harbor, he was summoned to put out a fire caused by a downed Japanese plane at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital.
He spent the rest of the day in his motorboat ferrying officers from dock to dock; at night, he patrolled the harbor with Marines, expecting a Japanese invasion.
‘‘Everything was in the water, oil, mostly oil; things floating and bodies. ... There was fire all over the harbor, just debris all over the place,’’ Antell said.
Reminders of the war are throughout his modest house in Amesbury. Over his bed is a framed picture of the Chester. Antell was aboard the heavy cruiser on Oct. 20, 1942, when several of his shipmates were killed by a Japanese torpedo.
He was aboard the USS Aaron Ward on May 3, 1945, when several Japanese planes crashed into the vessel, killing 42. Antell received the Purple Heart for injuries in the attack. ‘‘I was in the engine room when the bomb exploded; my clothes were blown off of me. All I had was a belt, a knife, and my shoes.’’
Antell said that despite the years, he has not forgiven the Japanese for the attack. When asked about what he learned during the war, he replied, ‘‘I guess to be hard-hearted.’’
Steven Rosenberg can be reached at rosenberg@globe.com. 