Centenarians reflect on shock of Pearl Harbor
Posted: Friday, December 05, 2008 2:43 PM by Ian Sager
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John Rutherford
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Dec. 7, 1941, a day that will live in infamy, is a day most Americans living at the time will never forget. That was the day, of course, that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, plunging the United States into World War II.
Will Clark heard the news on his car radio in Des Moines, Iowa. Dick Day was dressing for church in Providence, R.I. Elizabeth Teal was home in Johnstown, Colo., and Yoshiko Akizuki was fixing dinner in Guadalupe, California.
Like the other centenarians, Will (right) was shocked by the news on his radio.
"This guy was talking about corn, pigs and horses," Will recalls, "and all of a sudden he said, 'The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor!' Well, my father-in-law and I sat there for a few moments, and pretty soon he looked at me and I looked at him.
"'What'd he say?' 'The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.' But then the guy went on talking about pigs and horses and stuff, and I couldn't believe it. In about five minutes, why, everything broke loose and they started talking about the attack on Pearl Harbor."
More than 2,400 Americans were killed and the U.S. Pacific Fleet was crippled in the attack. Within weeks, the late Dr. J.C. Lockhart of Peoria, Ill., was on the first relief convoy to reach Hawaii.
"Did get out to Pearl Harbor and was tremendously shocked at seeing so much more damage than had been reported," he wrote a friend at the time. "Honolulu was sick. Martial law, and all stores closed at 4:30, all restaurants at 5:00. No lights were ever turned on. The sentries are so quick on the trigger that no one even walks out at night, much less drives."
Conditions had changed considerably by the time Dick Day was posted to Pearl Harbor in 1943 by the Navy.
"I didn't see much evidence of the attack," he told me. "Most everything had been pretty well cleaned up. Honolulu was just like any other city."
Except blackouts were still in effect.
"There could be no lights showing at night," Dick said. "Everything had to be dark. Automobile headlights only had a one-inch square light. Even that was painted purple. When you put the lights on, you went around to see if you had light because it didn't show on anything. We'd look at the stars and see the outline of the buildings around Pearl Harbor to find our way around."
Blackouts were also the order of the day in Johnstown, Colo., where Elizabeth Teal was a civil defense volunteer, preparing for an enemy attack on Colorado.
"We were prepared for it, yeah," she said. "That's what civil defense was for, if we 
were attacked. Everything was uncertain at that time. They could have had enemies here in our own state, you know, our own country, just like in 9/11."
Actually, there were enemy forces in the area, but they were behind barbed wire.
"We had German prisoners of war here," Elizabeth said. "Right across the street from me. That big hotel. It was empty. That's where they kept the prisoners. They built a fence about eight feet tall around there so they couldn't escape. They marched them out to the fields, to the farmers' fields, to work in the sugar beet fields for us."
Yoshiko Akizuki knows all too well what it's like to be a prisoner. An American citizen born in this country in 1908, Yoshiko and her family spent the war years in a hot and dusty internment camp for Japanese-Americans in Gila, Ariz.
"We were citizens," her daughter Bernice said. "We had done nothing wrong. They just took us all. They took innocent people and threw us in camp without reason. It was definitely unjust."
Yoshiko worked in the camp's mess hall. Her husband Tsutomu worked in the fields. Bernice and her brother Ed went to school. Yoshiko gave birth to a second son, Gary, while in the camp.
"We just did our daily thing enclosed in a camp," Bernice said. "We made do with what we had. Day after day it was the same thing because there was nothing else to do."
Yoshiko and her family returned home to California after the war. Now 100 years old, she lives in Cupertino, Calif. Will Clark, 104, resides in Tucson, Ariz., with his wife, Lois, 101. Dick Day, 100, is in Grand Forks, N.D., and Elizabeth Teal, also 100, hasn't budged from Johnstown, Colo.
Family photos of Will Clark in the Army during World War II, Dick Day in the Navy during the war, Elizabeth Teal in 1943 and Yoshiko Akizuki with daughter Bernice and son Ed in 1933.
Will, Dick, Elizabeth and Yoshiko were four of the centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's TODAY show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.
