A crescent row of aging veterans held their hands to their hearts as taps rang through the Colorado Capitol Thursday morning, honoring the 65th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
As the somber salute to the fallen echoed off the marble walls, the attack survivors thought of the young men who died that day, servicemen not much older than the teens who now surrounded the veterans.
“They were heroes. The rest of us were lucky,” said Al Adams of Denver, who was a 19-year-old Arkansas farm boy in 1941. He had joined the Navy at the tail end of the Great Depression “so I could get something to eat.”
Adams says he got much more at Pearl Harbor than one might imagine – a sense of duty, honor, loyalty and causes worth dying for.
“I didn’t start living until then,” Adams said.
After a night of living it up in Honolulu, Adams had just finished breakfast that Sunday morning and made his way above deck on the submarine tender USS Pelias when Japanese bombers appeared like gnats on the northern horizon.
When falling bombs glinted against the morning sun, Adams raced to his post below deck; his job was to secure the hatches to keep the ship from sinking.
“I knew guys were dodging bullets and bombs to try to do their job and stay alive,” Adams said. “I know what war is all about.”
Milton Schachterle, 88, had planned a pleasure trip that morning, a flight over Hawaii with a friend who was a pilot. A radio operator, Schachterle had heard that Japanese planes had been detected on radar, though the warning was ignored.
Crewmen thought it was the Army practicing aerial maneuvers, even though Schachterle’s friend checked a logbook and saw no such activity. When Schachterle stepped above deck on the USS Phoenix, he saw shipmates frozen in their skyward gazes, until the first explosion.
“You don’t know what to think when you’re staring at something like that,” he said.
The attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2,390 Americans, injured 1,178 and forced America into World War II.
Sixty-five years later, after the hour-long ceremony at the Capitol, two dozen middle-school children gathered around Schachterle as if they were seeking autographs from a rap star.
Schachterle was aglow.
“I thought I must be in the wrong place,” he said.
Young people are drawn to such history, said Dan Clayton, director of the Regis University Center for the Study of War Experience. Each spring, a 50-member class on “what people do in war and what war does to them” is one of the first at the university to fill up.
Ryan Browne, a Regis senior, took the class two years ago and now helps out at the center. Students realize that soldiers in war were about their age, and they try to imagine themselves in the combat boots of their elders.
“It means more than if you read it in a book,” he said. “It puts a face on the war.”
Each year, civics teacher Jennifer Heider takes her students from Lakewood’s O’Connell Middle School to the remembrance at the Capitol. Her students hung hand-made medals on the seven Pearl Harbor survivors Thursday morning.
Then 13-year-old Rick Helburg stood before them and spoke about the sacrifices that were made that day in Hawaii.
“We appreciate what you’ve done for us,” Helburg said as he ended his speech and returned to his seat.
A boy next to him was slouching, but with a quick elbow and a darting glance from Helburg, he stood up straight and placed his hand over his heart.
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
