Members of the ‘Greatest Generation’ remember the day of infamy

Bob Collyer was just getting up that Sunday morning from his berth on a light cruiser, irritated by the noise the reserve pilots were making on a non-duty day.

He heard an explosion, looked out and saw planes flying low overhead, the Rising Sun symbol of Japan painted on their tails. He finally convinced his bunkmates to get up.

An officer corralled Collyer to ferry sailors, trapped on the ill-fated line of battleships which were getting torpedoed, bombed and strafed. Some were wounded, others needed to be deployed elsewhere.

After three trips, the zeros started shooting at his 35-foot motor launch. “Then we left.”

“What did the captain tell you?” asked Joan Collyer, Bob’s wife.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” smiled Bob. “We did, but we worked long hours after that before we saw a bunk again.”

Collyer was the first to speak at the Friday Harbor American Legion’s Pearl Harbor commemoration, Dec. 7. This year marked the 60th anniversary of that fateful day in December 1941. He was one of four men and one widow, all islanders, who remember what President Franklin Roosevelt called “a day which will live in infamy.”

Tony Surina, who has organized these memorial services every year since the 50th anniversary, led some 180 members and friends of the Friday Harbor post as they honored those who survived the attack.

Surina began making videotapes of the survivors’ recollections, some of whom are now deceased. The videotapes are available at the Legion with their other archives and memorabilia of American wartime military service going back to the Civil War.

This year was of special interest, since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. have been compared to that first blow against America.

Fred Hoeppner was a signal ensign on the battleship California on Dec. 7, 1941.

He was in complete disbelief when he saw the Japanese planes. He was in a cabin with a Naval Academy graduate who was sleeping off his shore leave and grumbling about being wakened. Hoeppner shouted, “Get up! This is no maneuver practice. This is real!”

His fellow officer took one look outside, shouted “Holy ___!” and the two sounded the call to battle stations.

Hoeppner, only three months in the service, put on his full regulation white uniform before retrieving the top secret code and signal book out of a safe. “It took me a few attempts to remember the combination with all the noise and confusion, but I finally secured it.”

“Then it all fell apart,” said Hoeppner, shaking his head.

Hoeppner said he didn’t think it was much different from Sept. 11. “(The recent attack was) total surprise ... we were totally unaware of such a possibility ... Yet we still, as a nation, overwhelmingly support our president. Personally I think we are doing things the right way.”

Hoeppner said things didn’t go well after Pearl Harbor until the military got the politicians out of the picture. He also felt that Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm were military defeats in varying degrees.

“Today we’re doing it right,” he said. “Professional military are running the show. This is demonstrated during Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s daily briefing when he often answers: ‘the military commanders will decide that.” in answer to tactical questions.

Neal York recalled that he was on a ship, sleeping soundly, when a sailor came in yelling, “Get out of here fast, the Japs are bombing us!”

“I was in one of two cans (destroyers) at a battleship dock,” he said. “I ran and ran and lost a shoe in the process. An ambulance saw me and asked me to help. I worked all day, all night and all the next day before I slept again. We didn’t eat. I was covered with grease and oil. A supply man got ahold of me and gave me a pair of pants, skivvies and shoes. I ate and then decided to call my mother to tell her I was alive.”

York loved the Navy, he said, and stayed on for six years, but was leery of big boats. He stuck with destroyers, became a chief and was a postal officer for six years.

Phyllis Fredericksen remembers how her late husband Jack, a third class gunners mate on the heavy cruiser New Orleans was awake early and about to send a telegram to his mother. Dec. 7 was her birthday.

As a gunner, he was at his station helping to pass ammunition as the New Orleans was one of the few vessels who opened heavy fire on the Japanese aircraft.

“It was Chaplain Forgie, on the New Orleans, who shouted ‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!’ ... words immortalized in a wartime song soon after the war started.”

Jack Fredericksen made it through the entire South Pacific war and their ship picked up 600 survivors off the Lexington when it was lost in battle.

Pete Ferguson was born and raised on Ford Island, a U.S. Naval facility near the entry to Pearl Harbor. Ferguson and his brother were sons of a major in the Army Air Corps.

Only teen-agers, the boys thought it was a war game till their father told the family to pile all the mattresses in the house in the basement and get beneath them to avoid shrapnel.

Their father put on his uniform — “You could cut your finger on the crease of his trousers,” Ferguson said — and went to Hickham Field where his planes now were under attack.

The boys took their 10- and 12-gauge shotguns upstairs and shot at the Japanese planes from their windows. “We didn’t shoot any down and luckily they didn’t notice us,” he said.

After a few months of helping tear sheets into bandages and other tasks, the family was evacuated to the states.

The Legion served a potluck dinner with the entree of fresh roasted turkey provided by Sharon Jones. Jones came up from Ocean Shores, as she did for the observance in 1991.

— Howard Schonberger is a Columnist for sanjuanjournal.com and The Journal of the San Juan Islands. He can be reached at (360) 378-4191, ext. 12, or email.

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