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Las Vegas residents keep Pearl Harbor attack alive in their own ways

Updated December 7, 2018 - 6:10 am

Las Vegas residents Edward Hall and Winifred Kamen share a connection to the “day of infamy” when Japan launched a surprise attack on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

One has no memory of the attack that left 2,403 Americans dead, including 68 civilians, while the other will never forget.

Hall, 95, was a fresh-faced 18-year-old private first class in the U.S. Army Air Corps, working on kitchen duty when he heard a loud thud that he thought might be a malfunctioning air compresser.

He stepped outside the mess hall and took in a scene of unimaginable chaos as explosions and flames erupted around him under skies full of Japanese Zeroes.

Kamen, 77, was just 4 months old when her mom swaddled her in blankets and hid her in a linen closet to protect her from the bullets that were raining down on the barracks where they were living.

Everything she knows of the attack was handed down to her by her mother. Her father, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, didn’t ever talk about the attack and was often deployed after he and her mother divorced.

With the number of living Pearl Harbor veterans dwindling — Hall is believed to be one of just a handful in the Las Vegas area — the time is approaching when succeeding generations will no longer be able to hear firsthand accounts of that fateful day that dragged the U.S. into World War II.

And that concerns Hall and other veterans who still stand by President Franklin Roosevelt’s words: “May we never forget.”

‘Do you want to die?’

Hall remembers working in the mess hall at Hickam Air Force Base, cleaning a frying pan, when he heard a thump outside.

When he stepped out the door, he saw debris flying. Then a nearby hangar blew up, sending men fleeing.

“What the hell’s going on?” he remembers shouting at one of them as he became aware there were dozens of airplanes flying overhead.

The man pulled him under the eave of a barracks, shouting, “Do you want to die?”

“There was shooting going on like you wouldn’t believe,” Hall said of the moment he realized they were under attack. “I’m still amazed I didn’t get hurt.”

One low-flying plane shot 2 inches off the roofing Hall and his comrade were crouching under. In the distance, he heard a loud explosion and saw a dark cloud, which he later learned was the USS Arizona being struck. It quickly sank, killing 1,177 sailors and Marines.

“She’ll never be decommissioned,” he said thoughtfully of the ship that is now a maritime memorial. “Her crew is still aboard.”

After gathering his wits, Hall jumped into a pickup and began driving around the base, resolving to save as many of the wounded as he could.

For hours, he drove two to three people to the hospital at a time. On one trip out to pick up more survivors, a stream of bullets tore through the cab, shattering the windshield but miraculously missing him and the medic who had joined him and was in the passenger seat.

On two flat tires, Hall drove back to the motor pool to change them out.

At one point, Hall stopped to check on a number of downed Americans. When he rolled one over to check his pulse, the man’s intestines spilled out. Hall grabbed the man’s .45 automatic pistol and strapped it on his waist. He needed a weapon.

Though he didn’t fire it that day, he kept it.

Carried into hills

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Kamen’s mother and father were sleeping at their home at the Schofield Barracks on what was then Wheeler Air Force Field.

There had been an officers’ party the night before, so her parents were sleeping in when the explosion woke them. Kamen’s mother placed her 4-month-old in a closet, wrapped in blankets, as the bombs went off.

Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @brianarerick on Twitter.

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