Veterans vow to never forget

Groups come to Las Vegas to offer updates on fundraising for Pearl Harbor museum

DAVID BECKER/VIEWLas Vegas resident and Pearl Harbor survivor Ed Hall talks about the loss of life that occurred when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.Hall was an 18-year-old Army Air Corps private stationed at Hickam Air Field and spent the days after the attack picking up the dead and wounded. DAVID BECKER/VIEWLas Vegas resident Clif Dohrmann displays a photograph that shows the destruction at Kanoehe Bay Naval Air Station after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Dohrmann was stationed at Kanoehe Bay during the attack. Advertisement

"I took the truck up to the (flight) line and did what I could," said Ed Hall, Silver State Pearl Harbor Survivors Association Chapter 2 president and a former U.S. Army Air Corps private who ran supplies around Hickam Air Field when he was 18.

"I picked up the wounded, I picked up the dead and took them to the hospital. That's what I did the rest of the day, pick up the wounded and pick up the dead. It was a helluva mess. I went two days without sleep. Hardtack and a chocolate bar, that was my food for three days, along with water."

Likewise, PHSA Chapter Vice President Clif Dohrmann has a story or two of his own about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which included airstrikes on Hickam Air Field and nearby Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station.

"We had 33 planes strafed in Kaneohe, and when it got over, we had 33 burned out planes," said Dohrmann, who was 20 at the time and worked on and tested fighter planes during World War II. "They took everything we had. We were done for, completely out of it."

Dohrmann, an 86-year-old former second-class aviation mechanics mate, and Hall, 84, along with a dwindling number of other PHSA members who were either at or near Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, still have vivid war stories to tell. The National Park Service and the Arizona Memorial Museum Association want to make sure that happens.

On Wednesday, representatives of the park service and museum association are gathering at 1 p.m. in the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1753, at 705 Las Vegas Blvd. North, to give a presentation on where the $54 million USS Arizona Memorial Museum and Visitor Center capital improvement project stands.

The event is one in a series of meetings being held to inform the public about the effort to rebuild the 28-year-old visitor center and museum at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu.

The contingent looking to drum up financial support for the job will have visited veterans organizations in Mesa, Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz.; Las Vegas; and six cities in California -- San Diego, Los Angeles, Ontario, San Pedro, Santa Monica and San Francisco -- before the anticipated groundbreaking at the end of 2008. The museum association reports that it has $47 million of the $54 million needed.

The current park service facility sits on 11 shorefront acres. The new facilities will add an additional six acres to the current site.

The campus-like setting that usually sees some 1.6 million visitors a year will have a new main entrance, a bookstore, a new ticketing and audio sales structure and three museum buildings that will tell what happened before, during and after the Japanese attack.

There also will be a new pavilion where the USS Arizona's bell and Tree of Life will be relocated. Also, the theater will be renovated for the first time in its 28-year history, and the ship's anchor will be relocated to a special site at the water's edge.

All of this work is expected to be completed by the end of 2010, 69 years after the attack.

For Hall, Dohrmann and the other local PHSA members, to have a new USS Arizona Memorial Museum and Visitor Center is vital to the memory of Dec. 7, 1941.

"I lied about my age when I went into the Iowa National Guard when I was 16, and so I have a feeling for the flag and America," said Dohrmann, who was born in Grand Mound, Iowa, and returned to Des Moines when he was discharged in November 1947. "I joined the Navy when I was 18, and the flag became so important to me ... and it still is today."

For Hall, who was born in Greenville, S.C., and landed a number of jobs, working on a tugboat and as a taxi driver to name a few, after returning to Tampa, Fla., upon his discharge from the Army Air Corps in June 1945, the attractions will keep the events alive and in people's memory.

"It was a disgrace and should never happen again," Hall said. "That's why we have our slogan, 'Remember Pearl Harbor -- Keep America Alert!' "

REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR

* What: Representatives of the National Park Service and Arizona Memorial Museum Association will speak about capital improvement projects at Pearl Harbor.

* When: 1 p.m. Wednesday

* Where: Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1753, 705 Las Vegas Blvd. North.