Pearl Harbor Survivor Looks Back After 70 Years - Framingham, MA - The

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Pearl Harbor survivor looks back after 70 years

By Julia Spitz/Daily News columnist MetroWest Daily News Posted Dec 04, 2011 @ 01:15 AM Last update Dec 04, 2011 @ 01:33 AM

The word Survivor curves toward the back of Gerald Halterman's cap and, at 90, he's certainly On the Web earned the title. Natick veterans oral history It's the two words that precede Survivor that make him all the more unique: Pearl Harbor. project interview The longtime Framingham resident, who now lives at Orchard Hill in Sudbury, has told his story to schoolchildren in Wayland, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day attendees in Natick and more than a few news reporters through the years. But as we mark the 70th anniversary of the day Japan's bombs rained down on Hawaii and the day America entered World War II, there are few left to tell the story of hearing "the awful noise," of the planes coming in and being so close "you could see (the pilots') faces, you could see the goggles they had on," of being so close "you could see the USS Arizona blowing sky-high." There are few left who remember the names and faces of some of the 2,403 sailors, soldiers and civilians who died on "the date which will live in infamy," as President Franklin D. Roosevelt termed it. Few who can recall oil-soaked sailors making their way to signs bearing the name of their ships to determine who survived. And few whose thoughts about what Americans should remember on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011, carry as much weight. Words spoken by Ronald Reagan in his pre-presidential years best sum up what we should remember, said Halterman. "Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction," Reagan said in his inauguration speech as governor of California in 1967. "It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again." "It's every generation's responsibility to protect their freedom," Halterman said. "Eternal vigilance is needed." Halterman was raised in Carbondale, Ill., the eldest of seven, and gained a certain amount of notoriety for breaking his leg in a big football game on Armistice Day - Nov. 11, 1938 - and being carried off the field on a door, since there were no stretchers around. The following spring, shortly before graduation, he heard a radio speech that remains clear in his mind today. "You've never heard such a raving lunatic in all your life," he said of Adolf Hitler's diatribe. It seemed clear America couldn't stay out of the war forever, so the 18-year-old who'd never seen the ocean decided to follow a half-brother's path and joined the Navy in 1939. "Hindsight tells me the Navy was the best place for me to go," he said. "I feel sorry for the guys carrying the packs on their backs, walking through mud, not knowing where they're going. ... So long as the ship doesn't go down, you know where you're going to sleep. "When I went into the Navy in 1939, my mother pulled me aside and said, 'We're going to pray for your safety.' "When you're getting shot at, you're all by yourself, unless you have something like that to think about," he said. He was assigned to the USS Oklahoma and had received a plum onshore assignment with the 14th Naval District communications office, thanks to a few lucky breaks and his ability to type 38 words a minute. "When I was on the Oklahoma for those 18 months, we were doing war games, and you knew they weren't doing that for nothing."

On the evening of Dec. 6, 1941, he attended a battle of the bands staged by fellow musically-inclined servicemen, then headed to his midnight-to-7 a.m. shift.

"It was very quiet until about 0700 Sunday. We got a message from the USS Ward saying they had fired on, and dropped depth charges on, an unidentified submarine operating in the mouth of the harbor." He gave the information to the communications officer whose "duty was to route it to the correct people," and went off duty when his relief showed up, not knowing he may well have delivered the first message of the war as America would know it. He took a shower and was about to try to get some sleep "when I heard this terrible noise. I saw these Japanese torpedo planes coming in." More than 1,110 on the USS Arizona were killed. The USS Oklahoma capsized in 12 minutes, taking 429 lives with her. The ship went down quickly because the doors had been left open for an admiral's inspection planned the following day. "There were 32 guys that were trapped and cut out of the Oklahoma the next day. ... There was only one ladder up (from the lowest deck). They trampled themselves trying to get up that. It was the radio gang down there. A lot of them didn't get out. The three guys who worked with me in the communication office did not get out." He remembers the survivors covered in oil. "The others, they were bare flesh," suffering horrific burns.

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"Torpedo boats, our own, were crisscrossing the harbor, looking for any other submarines. They did hit one," a two-man Japanese vessel. It was brought ashore and "they put it up on stilts so you could see what it looked like," along with part of one of its former occupants' hands. Two of Halterman's younger brothers also joined the Navy. "One brother was collecting bodies off Okinawa and things like that, whereas I only had that one day" (of seeing the horrors of combat). However, he was at Pearl Harbor, the center of communications for the Pacific, for another turning point in the war. "The Battle of Midway. June 1942. I was on duty again. A message came in from our planes out there, addressed to Admiral Nimitz, saying they had spotted four aircraft carriers out there." The message from Chester Nimitz: "Sink the bastards," Halterman recalled. Midway began to turn the tide in the Pacific, but the Navy had to plan for every eventuality. "They wanted landing-craft officers for the invasion of Japan," though the invasion never happened "because of the courage of (President) Truman to drop the bomb." Halterman was sent to Iowa for four semesters of college, then to Fort Schuyler in the Bronx. After graduation, he was given a choice between amphibious training in Florida or going to Harvard. "Which do you think I took?" he asked with a smile. At a dance in Boston, he met Rosalie Sharpe of Wellesley, and they were married in 1945. Halterman went to Amherst College. "I had a broad education because of the G.I. Bill." He had a 35-year career in Raytheon's missile division. He and his wife settled in Framingham, had three sons, David, Ronald and Glenn, and he returned several times to Pearl Harbor as he helped to get a memorial to the USS Oklahoma installed. Rosalie died six years ago, and "I have since remarried, to a girl who had a handicapped son who was in the same Scout troop as my son Glenn." The survivor is happy to share his story, but there are some things that make him tear up from time to time. It's not so much the past, but the present, and all the service members still in harm's way. He wishes there could be a law that "if legislators declare war, their families will suffer the same as the others" by serving in equal numbers. Perhaps we would be a little wiser about the wars we fight, he said. (Julia Spitz can be reached at 508-626-3968 or [email protected]. Read the Spitz Bits blog at http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/spitzbits.)

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