With Dec. 7 marking the 84th anniversary and with so few veterans who witnessed that awful day first-hand remaining, the attack on Pearl Harbor seems like a moment fading into history with each passing year.
However, for two World War II veterans in Northern California, the horrors of Pearl Harbor seem as fresh as yesterday.
E. Paul Ball, 99, both a Navy and Army veteran, said the damaging effects of the Japanese ambush were still evident two years later when Ball arrived at Pearl Harbor in late 1943. The wreckage of bomb-out ships still floated in the harbor. Occasionally, Ball could smell oil and fuel permeating to the surface.
“It wasn’t a pretty sight,” Ball recently told the Daily Republic in Fairfield. “I wouldn’t want to see it again.”
Overcoming Discrimination to Serve
In Los Angeles, Luther Hendricks, 16, was stunned when a news bulletin came over the radio reporting Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Anger fueled up in Hendricks, and he was determined to join the Marine Corps.
“So, I got on my coat and went down to sign up,” Hendricks, 100, said. But he said he was told no because he was Black. He could have enlisted in the Army or Navy, but at that time, Blacks weren’t put in combat roles.
“And I wanted to fight,” Hendricks said.
In 1942, the Marine Corps decided to open its enlistment to Black men, and Hendricks joined in 1943. Despite having to wait longer than he wanted to join, Hendricks still contributed to the war effort, working at the Mare Island Navy Shipyard in San Francisco.
“I was not upset. I just went home and waited for my time,” said Hendricks. “I was so happy that I was going to have a chance to fight.”
He faced racism and discrimination, but Hendricks tried to put it aside because he was there “to serve.” He survived several crucial battles in the Pacific Theater in Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Guam, Saipan and the Philippines.
“The worst of it wasn’t landing on the beach; it was securing the island. The enemy was entrenched in (underground) strongholds. We had to dig them out,” Hendricks said. “And they were giving us everything they had.”
While his white comrades didn’t warm up to him and fellow Blacks initially, watching them fight and putting their lives in danger for the U.S. made them earn respect and trust.
It wasn’t until 1949, however, when Hendricks’ unit lifted segregation.
Decades after the war, Hendricks’ all-Black unit, the Montford Point Marines, were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal at a special White House ceremony. Receiving the medal from Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, made the long-awaited moment especially gratifying.
Day of Infamy Provides Lessons
Ball, 99, also heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor over the radio, coming home from church in Midway, Kentucky, with his family.
Like Hendricks, Ball also waited his turn, enlisting in the Navy two years later at 17, not yet a high school graduate. Ball was the second-oldest child in the family. Younger brother Hayward was killed fighting in the Korean War at just 22.
Despite not graduating from high school, Ball did receive a graduation ceremony from boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Station in Illinois. From there, he was assigned to Camp Shoemaker or “Fleet City” near Dublin, California. Nothing remains of the camp today that once housed a 3,000-bed hospital, along with a training and distribution center.
Ball believed he would be stationed on the USS Belleau Wood, an aircraft carrier that experienced heavy action in the Pacific from 1943-1945. But plans changed.
He never set foot on the ship and was assigned to ship services. Ball assumed it was because he had a background working in a grocery store. His unit delivered supplies to several bases and ships at various ports. On his first trip to Hawaii by plane, Ball saw the remnants of the Pearl Harbor attack.
The planes Ball traveled in were known as “Big Boxes,” flying out of Naval Air Station Alameda, which stayed true to its slogan, “Keep ‘em Flying.”
Ball stayed in the Navy for a while after the war, leaving in 1947. His brother’s death pushed him to join the Army, and although he was sent to a gun battalion, Ball was never deployed to Korea.
With only about 45,000 American World War II veterans remaining, Ball’s and Hendricks’ Pearl Harbor memories are important history lessons for younger generations. More than eight decades later, they think about all the soldiers that lost their lives and didn’t get anywhere near the century mark.
Both feel the “day which will live in infamy” shaped the nation and can’t be lost to history.
Hendricks said Remembrance Day and the sacrifices his generation made should serve as a lesson that today’s youth will be faced with challenges, but they can pull through and thrive.
