Suburban Pearl Harbor veteran: 'It's indelibly etched in my brain'
There aren't many things Charles T. Sehe remembers with clarity about Dec. 7, 1941 - a day that would live in infamy.
Yet, one thing he cannot forget is seeing the faces of the sailors he was having breakfast with that Sunday morning before all hell broke loose at Pearl Harbor.
"I can see their faces. I don't hear their voices anymore. Other things are a little dim and faded. Seeing those planes, that was clear," said the seaman second class, then stationed on the USS Nevada.
"About 90 feet above the deck ... we saw the planes coming in, but we couldn't do anything about it," said the 93-year-old Geneva native and a member of the American Legion Geneva-Fox River Post 75. "It's indelibly etched in my brain."
Japanese planes decimated U.S. Navy battleships and destroyers in a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that forced the U.S. into World War II. The attack was 75 years ago on Wednesday, but three survivors from the suburbs remember it clearly. Sehe, Everitt "Jim" Schlegel of Batavia and Joe Triolo of Zion say it's important to recount for others the scenes that unfolded before their eyes that day.
When the attack began, Sehe, then 18, took his position at the searchlight platform from where he could see the whole harbor. Planes were crisscrossing each other.
He and his shipmates - many like himself new recruits from the Great Lakes Naval Station near North Chicago - sprang into action.
"We wondered how are we going to get out of there. These ships were tied up in harbor and some of them in tandem," Sehe recalled. "It was very well planned as I look at it now. I just couldn't believe what it was, but now I think I wouldn't want to go through it again."
The attack came in two waves. Five of the men with whom Sehe was having breakfast moments before were killed instantly at their gun stations. Two were burned severely.
"Our battleship was the only one that got underway. It was moving down the channel," Sehe said. "They saw us moving and they wanted to sink us in the channel so that no ship could get in or out. We got eight bomb hits, but the kids that were the gunners, they kept their guns firing. Our ship shot down four planes. It's just unbelievable ... they were scared, but they weren't afraid."
The bombs caused numerous fires throughout the ship. Sehe and another sailor used blankets and mattresses to put them out, but "it was hopeless."
Sehe was later tasked with picking up the bodies of the gunners killed in their positions.
"I just couldn't do anymore ... once I recognized those two guys who were at the breakfast table," he said. "Anytime a veteran has the ability to talk about the experience, he should, if he is able to. The significance of his duties can only be recognized in the time span of three generations."
Mountain troops
On that day, Schlegel, 97, was on stable duty serving in the Schofield Barracks on the Oahu island of Hawaii.
When the attack began, his first thoughts were to get under cover and of his mother at home.
Schlegel then ran into every building on the barracks alerting soldiers of the attack and to draw their equipment.
"I was in an unusual outfit," he said. "We had horses and mules. We were known as the mountain troops. We were just there to provide support to the airplanes. We didn't know that we didn't have enough equipment."
When Schlegel reached the quarter master, all of the equipment was assigned and all that was left was a 45-caliber pistol with seven bullets.
"That was all I had for that day," he said. "If I said I wasn't (scared), I'd be lying. I just was over excited not knowing what the hell was going on."
Schlegel and his troop members were tasked with monitoring the Japanese planes coming through the mountain pass.
"We thought they would be landing some paratroopers," he said. "It was our duty to go up in the mountains and check to see if anybody (landed)."
Luckily, he didn't have any contact with the enemy that day, he added.
Lessons learned
Survivor Triolo, a 21-year-old gunner on the USS Tangier when the attack began, saw the explosion of the USS Utah and remembers shooting at the plane that dropped torpedoes on her.
He is haunted by the memory of the sailors who were entombed on the ships that capsized. "They were alive for many days. They were doomed to perish on those ships," said Triolo, now 96.
He believes the United States is unprepared for an attack on its soil and said commemorating the anniversary of Pearl Harbor is a stark reminder of that. Triolo said having a strong military acts as a deterrent to war.
"Russia is becoming a significant country again because of military might," he said. "We have less ships, less Marine Corps, less Army and it's going to cost money to build all of that back up."