Clutching onto each other for their lives, Jack Holder
and his shipmates huddled in a ditch on Hawaii’s Ford Island
as a Japanese pilot overhead tried to kill them.
Holder, of Phoenix, Arizona, recalls hearing a "screaming
aircraft [and] moments later, a terrible explosion" on the
morning of Dec. 7, 1941, just as a section leader had
started roll call.
"I remember everything vividly,"
Holder said.
A 19-year-old Navy aviation machinist’s
mate second class the time of the attack, he and his
shipmates raced outside. "We all [ran] and jumped in the
ditch, [and sat] there clinging to each other," he said.
Then a bomb hit the hangar next to them.
December 5, 2016 - "Screaming aircraft [and] moments later, a
terrible explosion," Pearl Harbor survivor Jack Holder recalls about
the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attack on the island
of Oahu began. Here, Holder is seen after the 75th anniversary
commemoration at Wheeler Army Airfield that honored the more than 30
people killed there in the Japanese attack, Wheeler Army Airfield,
Hawaii. (DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando)
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"All of our aircraft were parked between them. Half of
them were on fire," he said. Japanese fire strafed his
hangar.
A Japanese pilot spotted the sailors and
circled back. His fire strafed the ditch, Holder said,
hitting the dirt piled up next to the ditch.
"I could still see him making the approach with
the grinning white teeth and the leather helmet," he said. "It's a
memory I'll never forget."
Witness to Death and Destruction
From Ford Island, an islet in the harbor, Holder said he saw all
around him the devastation caused by two waves of Japanese
bombardments.
"Between the two attacks, I watched the
Arizona, the West Virginia, the Tennessee, the Nevada, the Oklahoma,
the California, all on fire, all sinking," he said.
"I've
been asked a million times I guess, what my thoughts were at that
time, and I guess my most vivid memory is 'God, please don’t let me
die in this ditch,'" he said.
Racing through his mind, he
said, was "everything in the world -- anger, wonderment, the
excitement of how do we retaliate, all of those things -- but we got
our revenge in Midway."
On the Frontlines of War
A
PBY5-A Catalina flight engineer who served in the Navy for eight
years, Holder, like many young men, soon found himself on the
frontlines of the war.
"I survived Pearl Harbor. I then went
to the battle of Midway. I was in the second aircraft response to
[the] Japanese fleet approach in Midway," he said.
It was
then on to Guadalcanal, he said, where he flew 48 missions over the
area and the Solomon Islands. Then, after B-24 Liberator training,
Holder said he went off to Europe and flew 56 missions over the
English Channel.
Learn to Respect, Be Willing to Defend
Nation
Holder spoke during an interview Dec. 5 at Wheeler
Army Airfield, where he was attending a commemoration to honor the
more than 30 people killed there when Japanese attacked military
sites throughout the island of Oahu.
To be in Hawaii for the
75th anniversary of the attacks, he said, is wonderful. "It brings
back all those memories. It brings back a healing moment, brings
back a lot of relief," he said.
"You relive the moments.
You're so grateful for our wonderful country in which we live," he
said. "You regret the sacrifices but you also exhilarate from the
victory that we made and how we're doing now."
Holder, in his
presentations to young people, has a message:
"I tried to
stress with them the need for them to stay in school, learn all the
education they can," he said, "and remember that we live in the
greatest country in the world, learn to respect it, and be willing
to protect it."
By Lisa Ferdinando
Provided
through DVIDS Copyright 2017
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