75 years later, Pearl Harbor stories live on

CEDAR RAPIDS - Chuck Elias never met his uncle William J. Shanahan, but grew up surrounded by his memory.

'When you walked into Grandma's house, his photos were all over the wall,” said Elias, executive director of the Cedar Rapids-based Freedom Foundation, an organization that serves active duty, reserve and honorably discharged military veterans.

Just like his father and grandfather before him, Shanahan, in October 1940, enlisted in the U.S. Navy. The Shanahans were a military family, after all. Along with their ancestors, all of Elias' uncles served and he himself served in the Army, despite his mother and grandmother pleading against it. They'd lost so many to war - including Shanahan, who was killed in action while serving aboard the USS Oklahoma, a battleship bombed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

The attack began early in the morning, around 8 a.m., 75 years ago. Japanese fighter planes, bombers and torpedo planes attacked the U.S. base in Hawaii in two waves. Eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, including the Oklahoma, which quickly capsized, leaving sailors who weren't instantly killed with two options: go down with the ship or jump into the water, ablaze with burning fuel.

Many who jumped burned to death or were killed by ongoing Japanese attacks. Of those aboard the Oklahoma, 429 died.

The death toll on the Oklahoma was second only to the USS Arizona, which lost 1,177 men. Overall, 2,403 Americans died and another 1,178 were wounded. Of the eight battleships attacked, four sank. Another 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed, along with three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship and a minelayer.

According to a Gazette article from 1942, 15 percent of those killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor were Iowans.

Survivors told stories of pure horror.

Lenora Watson, an Army nurse from Cedar Rapids, shared her story with Donald Tyne, director of Linn County Veteran Affairs, before she died in 2015.

'I remember her coming in and telling me how that day when the ships were being bombed, she was trying to pull men out of the water and they were all on fire,” Tyne said. 'She was grabbing bodies out of the water, trying to pull them onto the ship while they were still being bombed and their skin would peel off and they'd sink to the bottom.”

Shanahan's mother received notice of her son's death by telegram from the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Navigation, Elias said. She later learned from shipmates that he had nearly survived, but heroically returned to the capsizing Oklahoma to try to save his fellow shipmates. Shanahan's body was never recovered.

The pain of the loss haunted her.

Hearing of her son's heroism was 'irrelevant to her,” Elias said. 'She lost her son.”

Elias recalled a time when he walked into his grandmother's house one December to find her weeping on the floor, clutching a framed paper memorial of her son signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

'Every year, the first weeks in December, she was just not herself,” Elias said. 'It was catastrophic to see my grandma like that during Christmastime. I've never seen someone weep like that. It always stuck with me.”

Today, four mementos honoring Shanahan decorate a wall in Elias' office at the Freedom Foundation, 609 Center Point Road NE: a framed photo of the USS Oklahoma, Shanahan's obituary, a 48-star burial flag and the memorial document signed by FDR, of which there are only 13 in existence, Elias said.

He said he's been contacted by a museum in Oklahoma wishing to put the document on display, but he turned them down to keep it in his protection and to honor his uncle and grandmother, who cherished the items dearly.

In addition to honoring his uncle, Elias keeps the mementos to remember what President Roosevelt - in his Dec. 8, 1941, speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war - called 'a date which will live in infamy.”

'It is one of the most tumultuous times in our history,” Elias said.

l Comments: (319) 398-8364; elizabeth.zabel@thegazette.com