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Addie Mae Chapman, 97, and her son Dan survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Date published: 12/7/2009
By RUSTY DENNEN Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, dawned like any other day for Addie Mae Chapman. "I was fixing breakfast," she recalled, for her husband, Rubert, and their 3-year-old son, Dan, at the family's bungalow on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. The sound of droning overhead drew her outside where Dan was playing. It was a little before 8 a.m. She looked up in the sky. "All these planes were coming in." There were dozens of them, launched earlier, in the predawn darkness, from the decks of Japanese aircraft carriers far out to sea. By the time the bombs and torpedoes began dropping on Pearl Harbor, a few miles away, Rubert, a first lieutenant in the Army, knew something was terribly wrong. "He put on his uniform and off he went," she said. Their lives would be changed forever. Addie Mae, now 97 and living at Chancellor's Village retirement community in Spotsylvania County, still remembers that fateful day, though her recollections have been dimmed by time and illness. She and Dan, 71, a retired airline pilot who lives "I feel like I remember seeing those airplanes," said Dan, who suspects that some of his memories were shaped by conversations he later had with his mother. "I came in and said, 'Dad, look at all the airplanes!' Mom said that Dad's comment was, 'I've seen enough airplanes'" from training runs by U.S. airmen over the island. "Then the phone rang and he headed down to the base." DASHING FOR SAFETY While the attack was still under way, a truck came to pick up Addie Mae and Dan, moving them and other families to shelter. "They said all women and children get in, that they were gonna take us down" to an old school, she said. Along the way, bullets--possibly from anti-aircraft fire--hit the canvas top of the vehicle. "I was scared. We had no idea what was happening. We hadn't been told anything. We didn't know what would happen next or whether we would be hit or not." The route to the school passed by the harbor.
Date published: 12/7/2009
Despite the fact that Adm Kimmel was charged with dereliction of
duty in the attack, the fact is he had no responsibility for the
defense of Ohau. This rested with Gen Short and the US Army who
had radar, AA guns, long range bombers and fighter aircraft. As it
turned out the Japanese destroyed the least useful ships moored
on battleship row, leaving fuel tank farms, machine shops and the
US submarine base undamaged. Most of their merchant marine
was subsequently destroyed by the subs.
I think we need more people like Rubert and Addie Mae. I think that once the last of "America's Greatest Generation" is gone, our country will be even worse off than it is now.
May God bless our vets and their families. And may God continue to bless the USA even though we give him less and less reason to do so everyday.
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