There is a generational passing of the torch taking place in the arena of World War II ceremonies and memorials.
And it has never seemed so real than on this 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, when finding a living veteran of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to speak at such an event is, sadly, almost impossible.
Nearly all of them are gone from the world. And those who aren’t are nearly 100 years of age or older.
“I believe this World War II generation really was the greatest generation. They really did save the world,” said Kathy Hare, the daughter of Kenneth Dixon, a Pearl Harbor veteran who, with his wife, Maxine, worked and raised a family in Bakersfield.
Hare has agreed to take hold of that passed torch. On Tuesday, she was expected be one of two second-generation speakers who will share stories of their fathers in hopes that Americans will remember and honor the actions and sacrifices made by the generation that now fades into history.
Marc Sandall, an organizer of the Pearl Harbor Day event at Historic Union Cemetery, said it continues to be important for Americans to mark this day, to remember Pearl Harbor.
“It serves as a reminder that there are heroes among us,” said Sandall, who lost a distant cousin, Merrill Keith Sandall, when the USS Arizona was sunk in the harbor that day. Sandall’s late father, Walter D. “Sandy” Sandall, was also a veteran of that global conflict.
“Our country sacrificed so much,” Sandall said. “If we don’t take time to remember, we won’t know where we came from.”
With the passing of the World War II generation, Sandall said he is calling upon the adult children of the veterans of World War II to fill the gap left by the passing of their loved ones.
Stuart Seiden, the son of Pearl Harbor survivor Hy Seiden, is also one of those who was expected to speak on Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
“I will talk about what my father experienced on that day,” he said. “And I will explore a little bit about what my father’s thoughts were about Pearl Harbor and why it’s important to remember it.”
In 1941, Hy Seiden was 26 years old, a corporal in the U.S. Army stationed with the Royal Hawaiian Coast Artillery at Fort Kamehameha.
It was a few minutes before 8 a.m. Hawaiian time and Seiden was asleep in his tent when things started going south. He woke up to what he thought was a drill, the elder Heiden told The Californian in 1997. But when he saw the rising sun insignia on the Japanese planes overhead, he sprung into action, helping to issue guns to the men in his company.
He witnessed four Army buddies who were crushed and killed by a crashing Japanese plane.
Later, when he was transferred to a crew on Hawaii’s north shore, no one bothered to inform his sergeant — or his mother in Yonkers, N.Y.
She received a telegram that her son was missing in action. A month later, the mix-up was discovered and he called home to say he was still alive and well.
Heiden’s son remembers hearing that story.
“When he returned to Honolulu, he figured he’d better check in with his commanding officer,” Stuart Seiden remembered.
The man’s reaction?
“Seiden, where the hell have you been?”
Later in life in Bakersfield, the elder Seiden would take it upon himself to organize the annual Pearl Harbor Day ceremonies. Some 16 years ago, that torch was passed to Sandall.
“I figured, even though we didn’t have a chapter here, it was important enough to remember the guys that fought there. Not only the dead ones, but the ones that are still alive,” Hy Seiden told The Californian. “As long as I’m alive, I’ll conduct them.”
Hare said she was also to speak about her father and his experiences on that crucial day.
“My dad was one of those veterans who didn’t talk about it much,” Hare said.
It wasn’t until she was older that she began to comprehend the significance of her father’s experiences at Pearl Harbor.
Indeed, a lot of World War II combat veterans didn’t talk much about their wartime experiences until they were well advanced in years. But longtime Bakersfield resident William “Bill” Harrer, a veteran of Pearl Harbor who died in 2012, opened up about his experiences during a family trip to Hawaii and on other occasions.
John Harrer, one of Bill Harrer’s sons, also captured audio recordings of his dad.
And the elder Harrer spoke with this Californian reporter in 2011.
Harrer was almost too young to wear the uniform of a U.S. Marine when he enlisted right out of high school. The teenager had needed his mother’s signature.
“I saw a poster that said ‘Join the Marines and see the world,'” Harrer recalled. “That sounded pretty good.”
Five months later, as he walked toward what he thought would be routine guard duty at the Pearl Harbor naval yard, Harrer’s morning was about to change — and the whole world would change with it.
“The bombs started exploding,” he remembered 70 years and a lifetime later. “It all went bad from there.”
As Pfc. Harrer turned back to join his unit, he came inches from becoming one of the more than 2,400 Americans killed in the attack.
“I heard something whistle by my ear,” Harrer remembered.
A chunk of shrapnel had just missed him and was embedded in the road beneath his feet. Harrer couldn’t resist. He took a moment to dig the hunk of metal out of the pavement, slipped it into his pocket and rushed back to his barracks, where he was met with complete bedlam.
He kept that piece of shrapnel as a reminder for the rest of his life.
John Harrer remembers one day as a kid watching a Hollywood-made World War II movie.
Excited, he remembers going to his dad and asking him, “Hey, Dad. Did you ever kill any Japs?”
His father stopped short.
“He said, ‘I never killed anybody,'” John Harrer remembers. Then his father added, “Don’t you ever call them that again.”
It was just one of many lessons the Harrer children would hear over the years.
Later in the war, in Guam, the young Marine was called upon to guard a Japanese prisoner.
“He became friends with him,” John Harrer remembered. “The Japanese prisoner drew a pencil drawing of Mount Fuji, and gave it to my father.
“Dad had great empathy for soldiers on the other side,” he said.
To this day, John Harrer thinks about his father a lot, nearly every day.
It’s a generation that is leaving us, one at a time. And the world will never be quite the same.
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