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Rubert Chapman, who died in 1983 at age 74, was
Addie Mae Chapman Addie Mae Chapman, 97, now lives at Chancellor's Village in Spotsylvania, but in 1941 she lived on Oahu, Hawaii, with her son and her husband, who was in the Army. She has vivid memories of the Japanese attack on Dec. 7. |
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.
"The whole thing was blazing and some of the ships were sunk," she said.
They stayed overnight at the school with other families, their pets and whatever they could carry from home.
"It was very noisy," Addie Mae said. No lights were allowed, and everyone slept on the floor.
"They thought they [the Japanese] were coming back," Dan said. The next day they went to a friend's house.
Addie Mae wouldn't see Rubert until four days later, when they said a hasty goodbye.
A HARROWING JOURNEY
The women and children boarded nine hospital ships for a hazardous nine-day journey to California.
One day, "I remember we were going to our room from dinner," Dan recalled. The ship was completely dark. "It was blacked out. They were worried about Japanese subs. One of the doors hit a child, and people were crawling around the deck trying to find him, thinking he might have gone overboard."
From California, Dan and Addie Mae, who was pregnant with Dan's brother, Raymond, boarded a train for South Carolina, where relatives picked them up.
They returned to the family farm in Pendleton, then moved to a house in Anderson.
Meanwhile, Rubert, a Clemson University graduate and chemist before he joined the Army, was in the thick of the fighting in the Pacific, island-hopping at Tinian and Saipan.
Addie Mae didn't hear much from him during the long absence. "They [the Army] didn't want that happening, evidently," she said.
Back home, times were tough. She worked in a hardware store, a dime store and a grocery store to feed a growing family.
It would be 3 years before Addie Mae would be reunited with her husband, except for one brief visit when he was granted leave to see Raymond, who was sick.
FARM GIRL TO ARMY WIFE
Born on her family farm, Addie Mae was one of 10 children. She was captain of her basketball team in high school.
She and Rubert met while he was attending Clemson, about three miles from Pendleton.
After graduating in 1932 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, he worked as a high school principal, salesman, manager of a flour mill store and credit manager, and then joined the Army in 1940.
The couple were married, and the Army sent Rubert to Hawaii.
AFTER THE WAR
Rubert returned to the States in July 1945 and got out of the Army, then re-enlisted in 1947.
The couple moved often as Rubert rose through the ranks in the military.
His Army career propelled him into key chemical and biological warfare positions at places such as Fort Detrick and Edgewater Arsenal in Maryland. He retired in 1963 with the rank of colonel.
Addie Mae smiled, "We'd been to umpteen places. Seemed like every five or six months we were moving. I got tired of that."
The Chapmans lived in the house in Anderson, and Addie Mae began playing golf with Rubert, who had a passion for the game. She learned quickly, becoming a state champion for three years and champion at the local golf club for 23 out of 26 seasons. She played her last tournament at age 90.
Rubert died in 1983 at age 74.
Addie Mae lived in Anderson until about a year and a half ago, when Dan moved her to Chancellor's Village.
Dan says of his mother, "This lady lived through a lot in her life--from farm girl where she literally worked in the fields, to being in a war zone" and surviving an iconic moment in the nation's history.
Rusty Dennen: 540/374-5431
Email: rdennen@freelancestar.com
| According to military reports, 2,403 Americans died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, including 68 civilians, most of whom were killed by anti-aircraft shells landing in Honolulu; 1,178 Americans were wounded in the attack. The U.S. declared war on Japan the next day. |
