Vina Mikkelsen’s eyesight is diminishing, but her push to remember men like her late husband who were present at the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor isn’t.
The 91-year-old, who in recent years has taken to organizing herself the local remembrance of the attack that killed 2,403 Americans and pushed the United States into World War II, hung her lei on a wreath in downtown Spokane on Wednesday afternoon, 81 years later.
She did so with a bit of help from Brian Newberry, the former commander of Fairchild Air Force Base and chief executive of the Girl Scouts of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho, as well as a hand from Brian Coddington, spokesman for Mayor Nadine Woodward.
“I have to get help now,” Mikkelsen said. “That’s what life is about, is asking people to help you.”
Mikkelsen’s helpers this year included a volunteer to dial the phone numbers of friends and acquaintances to inform them a remembrance would happen at the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena.
“He dialed, and I talked,” Mikkelsen said.
For her efforts, Mikkelsen received a proclamation and standing ovation at the Spokane City Council meeting on Monday evening.
Mikkelsen’s husband, Denis, was a Navy radioman on the USS West Virginia. Denis Mikkelsen died in 2013, a member of a dwindling fraternity of service members that numbered roughly 87,000 on the day of the attack on the island of Oahu.
A Pearl Harbor remembrance day wreath is displayed on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022, at the Pearl Harbor memorial outside Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena in Spokane, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland/The Spokesman-Review)
Like many others, Denis Mikkelsen awoke that morning to shouts and sirens aboard the battleship, which later sank from torpedo damage. Mikkelsen abandoned ship and swam to shore after trying to prevent the rushing water from sinking the West Virginia, but was later ordered to return to put out fires, he told The Spokesman-Review in 2007.
“There was smoke everywhere. We didn’t have the proper gear. They gave gas masks instead of breathing apparatus,” Mikkelsen said .
Military members had to be at least 17 to sign up for military service at the time of World War II, and even then needed parental permission to do so. That would make the youngest remaining military survivors of the attack close to their 100th birthday.
There were civilians on the islands where the Japanese dropped bombs as well, of course, including Bob Snider. He was in third grade at the time of the attack, and his father worked as an Army mechanic at Hickham Field. The Japanese attacked that installation, too, hoping to thwart an American aerial counterattack , and Snider’s dad narrowly missed the attack as he rushed to work that December morning.
“Fortunately, he drove on the civilian road going there,” said Snider, who’s now 89 years old. “Everybody on the military road got killed.”
Snider said his father ordered him and his mom to hide under piled up mattresses in the family home that morning, and not to come out until it was quiet.
“When it was time to have lunch, when it was quiet, mother made lunch and neither one of us could eat it,” Snider said.
Newberry has been serving as host of the remembrance for the past several years. The honor guard from Fairchild once again attended with the colors, and a bugler played “Taps” after Newberry read off the names of members of the Lilac Chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, all of whom have died — most recently Ray Garland, a Marine, who died in April 2019 at age 96.
Newberry said Mikkelsen once again came calling this fall for him to serve as host.
“She’s the heart of this,” Newberry said. “She represents the grit of all the Pearl Harbor survivors. She’s why we’re here.”
Mikkelsen vowed to continue the tradition as long as she can.
“You bet your life I am,” she said.
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