Vets Recall Pearl Harbor Coeur D’Alene Man Finally Gets His Purple Heart

The packed parking lot at the U.S. Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Center told the tale well enough. The license plates carried a message in chorus: “Pearl Harbor Survivor.”

Forty-two of them were there Sunday, remembering the date that will live in infamy, now marriages, children, grandchildren and 56 years ago.

“Remember Pearl Harbor” was the motto. “Keep America Alert.”

The Spokane hall was full of the survivors’ families and friends. Yellowed newspapers and gray photos lined the walls. Current naval reservists stood in back, all khaki and blue and gold-striped. And up front were the heroes still heroic, despite a wheelchair or thinning silver hair.

The chaplain praised veterans for their “loss of life, the loss of limbs, the loss of innocence.”

Some embraced the fanfare. The target of most of it, though, seemed a little shy and tired.

Raymond Garland of Coeur d’Alene, a Marine aboard the USS Tennessee when planes filled the air like flies, was hurt in the attack. He was mentioned in the ship’s log but never got his Purple Heart.

“He never pursued receiving the award in deference to his fallen comrades,” Cmdr. Ted Fessel said solemnly. Garland received one later for valor in Korea, but only Sunday did he receive his World War II decoration.

Fessel read from the Tennessee’s log. “There was a large explosion forward. The foremast fell forward and burning powder, oil and debris was thrown on the quarterdeck of the Tennessee. The Arizona settled rapidly by the bow. The Nevada got underway but was struck by bombs and torpedoes and grounded in the chan nel. Large fires were raging around the the Arizona and the West Virginia.”

It was Garland’s ship, but the log told a story they all shared.

Garland had always figured the dead deserved the awards, so he never asked.

“Anybody who could get up and do his job…” He shrugged. “What I did was a little bitty thing.”

No one else seemed to think so.

“It was real nice,” he admitted at the end of the ceremony. “My mother got to see it, my grandchildren go to see it.”

His mother is 95. They posed for pictures. He, tall and straight and green in his vintage uniform; she, short and with a cane.

“Look at the camera, mother,” he said. “Smile.”

But people kept coming up, shaking hands, congratulating. He nodded and smiled and slowly backed his way out.

With all this praise and patriotism, there was something forlorn, too.

“I don’t think people remember Pearl Harbor,” Garland said. But he hoped that really wasn’t so.

Nick Gaynos was determined they’d remember. Whenever someone would walk by, he’d motion toward a twisted iron stalagmite sitting on a table. “This is the piece of shrapnel that missed me,” the former private in the Army Signal Corps would say.

A torpedo had buzzed above his head at Hickam Field before landing in the island sand. He ran after and grabbed the shard, it still hot in his hands. An old picture of him holding it is now stuck to it.

He brought a table’s worth of photos and souvenirs, too. There was a binder full of paper bills that looked American but read “The Japanese Government.”

He had some like that numbered in British pounds, too. It was money the Japanese printed, planning to use it once they conquered the Allies. Gaynos found them when he was part of the American occupying forces following the war.

“I saw the beginning, and I saw the ending,” he said.

“And this is the headline we were looking for.” He pulled out a newspaper, the Los Angeles Examiner, its giant letters loud and red: “WAR IS ENDED.” “VICTORY.”

Susette Pitts shuffled around a bit during all this. She was the lone woman of the 42 survivors seated up front, a naval clerk and hospital volunteer back at Pearl Harbor.

“I didn’t know I was going to be up there,” she said, smiling. “I felt like a peanut.”

She met her late husband five years after the war, only to find he was aboard the ship which escorted hers home after the Japanese attack.

Sunday, she pulled out his picture. “Did I show you Jack? This is my buddy.” He died in March of 1996.

In the corner, Gaynos still stood by his mementos. A bearded man bent over, looking at this rusty, gnarled piece of iron. Gaynos pointed.

“That’s the piece of iron…”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos