Today marks the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The events of that day shaped my life, even though I was a third grader more than a hundred miles from any of the attack sites, with no direct connection to anyone who was there.
As I’ve reflected on the 25th anniversary of the events that reshaped our world, my mind kept returning to another day that created a similar “flashbulb memory” for an earlier generation of Americans. Nearly 85 years ago, on December 7, 1941, Japanese forces launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and other military installations on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Millions of Americans would remember for the rest of their lives exactly where they were when they heard the news of the attack that sent the United States hurtling into the Second World War.
I wondered how the Americans who lived through Pearl Harbor remembered it on December 7, 1966, the 25th anniversary of what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy.”
Looking for some examples, I found a remarkable piece of journalism by Jack Lindermuth, published in the Shamokin News-Dispatch on December 7, 1966. In it, he tells the story of two men from Shamokin, Pennsylvania, Victor Witcoskie and Jack Kerstetter, who witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor firsthand. Twenty-five years later, their recollections remained vivid, and Lindermuth’s writing brings their remembrances to life.
I hope you’ll read it and find it as fascinating as I did. And I hope it prompts you to remember where you were on another infamous day in American history: September 11, 2001.
They Still Remember
Two Shamokin War Veterans Recall Experiences in Raid on Pearl Harbor
By JACK LINDERMUTH
It was a quiet Sunday morning. Peaceful. It was early and the sun was pleasantly warm. The surf was gently lapping against the pink-colored beaches and the trade winds, never still, were sighing through the palms.
High on the rim of an extinct volcano they called the “crater” a group of Army engineers was constructing an echelon.
The island of Oahu and Pearl Harbor stretched out below them like the scenery on a color post card, but the men were not concerned with the view. The men were working and talking, making plans for the things they would do later in the day when their work was done. You know how Sunday mornings are. Quiet. Peaceful.
There were other men who were sleeping that morning. Men who had returned from an evening pass and were resting calmly in their barracks at the mouth of the bay near Hickam Field.
Victor A. Witcoskie, 404 Center Street, Tharptown, was one of those men. He remembers that quiet morning.
“I was a member of the 15th Coast Artillery. We had spent the week before on a training mission in the field. We returned tired, dirty and in need of rest. They gave us a weekend pass and we all went to town. I was sleeping that morning.
“Suddenly, we were awake. There were planes flying low overhead. We heard guns and bombs exploding. We ran outside. Planes were winging low over Hickam Field. At first we thought it was a training mission.
“Then, we saw it. The planes were low. So low you could have hit them with a rock. On the wings we saw the Rising Sun. The red circle marking of Japan.
“There was nothing we could do. All our equipment had been put away for the weekend. All we could do was watch.”
Witcoskie, now employed as a carpenter by Raup Lumber Company, remembers that morning well. December 7, 1941.
Jack Kerstetter, 1531 West Walnut Street, Shamokin, was one of the men working on that construction project on the crater in Hawaii that fateful day 25 years ago. We were talking about it. He sat back in his chair, his face strained with the emotion of reliving that moment, and he told how it was.
“Suddenly, someone shouted,” he said. “Men turned and began gesturing toward the harbor. I looked. Planes were winging in low above the ships in Pearl Harbor. Every now and then there was an explosion. We were too far away to hear the sound clearly, but we could see the boats rock when they were hit and the water pluming up like a geyser when the bombs exploded below the surface.
“The planes circled and came in again, strafing the bow of the wounded ships, dropping more bombs. Then, there was a big explosion and a battleship went up in flame. A heavy smoke screen rose up and the horrible sight was shut from our view.”
Was it for real, or just a dream? Was it just another realistic training maneuver, or was it really a bombing? Kerstetter says he and his companions were too shocked at the moment to be sure. They ran down to their compound and went to the dayroom to make sure.
Despite the fact you are surrounded by other men, there is an aloneness in war. And Jack Kerstetter was alone that morning of December 7, 1941, as he raced to the dayroom. He knew there was a war. But that war was not there in Hawaii. It was far off in Europe and in China and Mongolia and a number of other places with strange names. There had been no indication the war was coming to Hawaii.
“Our division was newly formed and we had no barracks. We were living in tents. One tent had been set aside as a dayroom, equipped with a few books and magazines and a radio. The radio was on when we got there. It was never shut off in those days. Men were huddled around the radio and the announcer was saying: ‘This is for real! This is no training exercise. I repeat: this is for real. The Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor.'”
In that moment the war had come to Hawaii. It had come to Jack Kerstetter and Victor Witcoskie and thousands of servicemen like them. What had previously been only a dark cloud on the distant horizon had become an engulfing storm, precipitating U.S. involvement in a war which would last longer than any of them had dreamed.
All on a quiet Sunday morning.
“At first there was nothing but confusion,” he recalls. “Officers and enlisted men alike were dazed by the sudden attack and we walked around in circles like men in shock. But then things got organized. Order was restored. It was then we knew for sure we were in it.”
Jack Kerstetter was drafted into the Army in June, 1941, and completed his basic combat training at Fort Belvoir, Va. After completing basic training he was sent to Honolulu, Hawaii, to join the newly formed 24th Infantry Division. He was assigned to an engineer company and spent the next several months building bridges, waterlines, roads and other echelon construction projects.
Kerstetter was a corporal when the Japanese made that infamous 7:00 a.m. attack which took 1,500 lives and wounded an equal number of persons. The attack also destroyed the battleship, U.S.S. Oklahoma, and the [battleship], U.S.S. Arizona, badly damaged several other ships, and a large number of Army and Navy airplanes on Hawaiian fields were put out of commission.
Kerstetter remained with the 24th Infantry Division, participating in invasions on Leyte, Luzon, and New Guinea, until April, 1945, when he rotated to the United States for discharge. He made it through the war without receiving a single scratch in three combat invasions, but the scar in his memory of that horrible day in 1941 will never leave him.
Kerstetter, presently employed by the Fuhrmann and Schmidt Brewing Company in Shamokin, is reportedly one of six Shamokin residents who were on Oahu that quiet Sunday morning. He and Witcoskie are among the 150 members of the Pennsylvania Survivors of the Pearl Harbor Attack.
The organization is still looking for survivors of Pearl Harbor. Anyone who was on Oahu December 7, 1941, and is not a member of the organization is asked to contact Samuel P. Zangari, secretary-treasurer, Cool Creek Road, Wrightsville, Pa. 17368.
Victor Witcoskie passed away in 1982 at the age of 63.
John (Jack) Kerstetter died in 1989 at the age of 72.
Read more stories about the attack on Pearl Harbor
A Pennsylvania teenager remembers learning of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941
Ivan C. Lewis | Pearl Harbor survivor lost while serving with the 8th Air Force in 1943
Killed Aboard the USS Arizona – Seaman First Class Paul Shiley and the Attack on Pearl Harbor
What I’m reading on this 25th anniversary of 9/11
He Lost His Mother on 9/11. He Grew Up in Her Childhood Bedroom. | New York Times
Subscribe to the latest from Jake Wynn – Public Historian
Enter your email below to receive the newest stories.